Napoleonic Naval Armaments 1792-1815 (New Vanguard)

apo eonic Nava Armaments 1792-1815

CO

CHRIS HENRY has been Interested in military history since he was a small boy. His interest In artillery developed whilst he was a volunteer worker at the Tower of London, and he later became Senior Curator at the Royal Annouries Museum of Artillery at Fort Nelson. He is now the Head of Collections at the Museum of the Royal Artillery.

BRIAN DELF began his career working In a London art studio producing artwork for advertising and commercial publications. Since 1972, he has worked as a freelance illustrator on a variety of subjects Including natural history, architecture and technical cutaways. Some of his recently Illustrated books have been published in over thirty countries. Brian lives and works in Oxfordshire.

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INTRODUCTION

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BRITISH GUNS AND GUNNERY

4

• • • • • •

Briti h gun aniag arronade and new d i n Drill and organi ation T 1 and quipm nt Ta tical do trill mall b re artill IJ' and \Ii" I gun • HO\\litz rs • maJl arm • Ammunition

.R k

GUNNERY IN THE FRENCH NAVY

37

• r nch gun arriag • Fr nch ammunition • French drill and rgani ation

GUNNERY IN THE SPANISH NAVY

40

CONCLUSION

42

GLOSSARY

42

B BLiOGRAPHY

43

COLOUR PLATE COMMENTARY

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INDEX

48

First published in Great BritaIn In 2004 by Osprey Publishing, Elms Court. Chapel Way. Botley. Oxford 0)(2 9LP. United Kingdom. Email: infoCospreypubiishing.com 02004 Osprey Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of pnvate study,

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Artist's note

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Readers may care to note that the original paintings from which the colour

o

EONIC NAVAL A

AME TS

1792-1815

plates in this book were prepared are available for private sale. All reproduction copyright whatsoever is retained by the Publishers. All enquiries should be addressed to: Brian Dell, 7 Bureot PatI<. Bureo\, Abingdon. Oxon. OX14 3DH

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INTRODUCTION

addressed to the Publlshels. ISB

1 841766356

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he apoleonic era has often been con idered as the high point in the development of the art of warfare at ea dUling the age of the ail. It featured complex time-eon uming mano uvre de igned to bring line-of-battle fleets together, culminating in a duel of hip- mashing broadside that di abled enemy ve el and brought about their capture or urrender. The commonly perceived view of elson' heyda has been that Briti h gunnery doctrine required hip to get as cIo e as po ible to their enemie and mash their opponents' ve el with heer weight of metal. ccording to thi version of events the Briti h routinely aim d for the enemy hip , hull • while French tactics were to de tro their enemie ' rigging. Thi e tabli hed view of naval gunnery from the apoleonic era does not take into account the many other form of naval warfare used b differing countrie • from the use of frigate and imilar ve els in commerce raiding or protection, to the activitie of gunboats in amphibious assaults and siege . However, what they all did have in common was that the ke weapon in the naval armoury was the mooth-bor muzzle-loading gun. everthele ,each nation con idered the use and upkeep of its weapon different! . Technology was beginning to change and the de ign of the heavy gun was being overhauled with new and radical thinking, often d veloped by the commanders them elve without assistance from the admini tration ashore or e tabli hed tactical doctrine . This was an age of individual lateral thin.king rather than collective improvement.

Editor: S,mone Dnnkwater Design: Melissa Orrom Swan Index by Alison WortI1lngton Originated by The Electronic Page Company. Cwmbran, UK Pooled In China through World Print Ltd.

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A 32·pdr carronade. This example was brought from the wreck of HMS Pomone, a frigate that sank Just off the Needles In 1811. The carronade has suffered some damage from thll sea but still retains Its breeching loop. (Museum of Naval Firepower, Gosport)

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Although at first glance it might eem that the technology.of moothbore weapon was very imilar acro nation in fact, a gradual refinement took place, principally the introduction of the calTonade, along with improvements in method of loading and firing. The carronade itself w nt through man tran ition that led it to become more imilar to th traditional type of gun it was initiall intended to replace. There were everal factor that affected the ability of the gun to perform its work. Firstly the gun was, unlike land artillery, alwa} moving - the veil of the ea al""o. affected the aiming of a naval gun. econdl other than in hore bombardments the target was alwa wood and therefore \ as unlikel to ink by gunfire alone, 0 the tructure of an enemy hip hull 'Nas not alwa the be t target to hit. au ing casualti to the enemy crew was important, as \ ras de troying the machinery enabling them to ail their ve el, namel the masts, rigging and teering gear. Tactically, the main aim of gunne was not to de tro an enemy ship but to di able it and capture it.

BRITISH GUNS AND GUNNERY One 01 the more common munitions aboard warships was the hand grenade for close-quarter action. This example was brought up from HMS Pomone and still has Its original fuse in place. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

TYPES OF NAVAL GUNS IN BRITISH SERVICE Type

Calibre

Length

42-pdr

7.018in.

32-pdr

6.41in.

24-pdr

5.82in.

10ft 9ft 6in. 10ft 9ft 6in. 10ft 9ft 6in.

18-pdr

5.29/5.18in.

12-pdr

4.62in.

9ft

9-pdr

4.2in.

6-pdr

3.66in.

4-pdr 3-pdr

2.91in.

9ft 6in. 9ft 9ft 6in. 9ft 7ft 6in. 7ft 6in. 7ft 8ft 6ft 6ft 5ft 6in. 4ft 6in. 5ft 61n.

Weight (cwtlqtr/lb) 6700 6500 5800 5500 5200 4920 4720 4200 4000 3400 3200 2910 2420 2300 22 00 1620 121 0 11 1 0 71 0 11 1 0

During the apoleonic period the main ship weapon was the mooth-bore gun; rifling was not really adopted until the 1 60. mooth-bore gun generall fired a olid projectile, or projectile, althou h there had been orne experimentation with the u e of e plo ive hell. un were named according to the weight of olid hot the were de igned to fire. Anonymous laboratory note in the Ro 'aI Artillery library indicate that mortar hells were prepared for &- 12- and 24-pdr gun on occasion the corre ponding ize being hand grenade, 4 Yrin. and 55-in. hell (Caruana, p.2 2). The main broad ide armament of the hea\ gun hip f-the-line was typicall th 32-pdr of approximatel 6.4-in. calibre, although imilar maller weapon featured on the gun decks of mo t hip of war ranging down in ize to 3-pdrs of approximatel 2.91-in. calibre. The allocation of gun to each deck and the layout of each gun deck had to be carefull worked out 0 that the hip remained table and 0 generally the heavier gun were placed on the lower decks. On a hip-of-the-line uch as one of 74 gun the lower deck held the 32-pd ,the upper deck 1 pd or 24-pdrs and the quarterdeck 9-pdrs. ote that hip were classified b the number of 'great gun aboard but thi often did not take account of additional armament, uch as caITonade, which rna have been fitted ub equentl . The number of maller weapon like vivel gun al 0 very rarel gets a mention. Counting all weapon, hip listed as' eventy-fours' would in fact usuall have carried more than 74 gun ,though mailer gun and caITonade are not included in the accompanying table which ets out typical armaments.

GUNS Nature

Weight

Length

Calibre

Charge

Max. range • (in yards)

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32-pdr 56cwt 9ft 6in. 6.41 81b 2,493 50cwt 9ft 6in. 5.823 81b 2,630 24-pdr 9ft 5.292 61b 2,130 18-pdr 42cwt • These ranges were taken from an exercise carried out by HMS Excellent with the guns fired at 10 degrees elevation in 1839. These are some of the earliest recorded experiments with scientific methods and although they post-date the wars they show the range of British heavy guns at sea.

A small bronze swivel gun of the period on a wrought-Iron yoke. The yoke is interesting in that it Is only designed to be depressed. The gun cannot be elevated above the horizontal and it Is therefore probable that this piece was used In a fighting top or fired from a height. (Author's collection)

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An early photograph of HMS Victory showing the guns on the quarterdeck. (Author's collection)

TYPES OF GUNS IN VARIOUS SHIP CLASSES Type of ship 100

Calibre of gun Deck Total 32-pdr never standardised 30 24-pdr never standardised 28 12-pdr never standardised 30 6-pdr never standardised 12 (HMS Victory c.1805) 74 32-pdr Lower 28 18-pdr Upper 28 9-pdI Quarter 14 9-pdI Fo'c'sle 4 18-pdr Lower 20 44 12-pdr Upper 22 6-pdr Fo'c'sle 2 20 9-pdr Upper 20 14 6-pdr Upper 14 * Guns were removed and modified over a ship's life and therefore these complements were by no means standardised. They represent a theoretical armament.

The larger broadside gun were nonnally of cast iron but could on occasion be made of bronze. In the 17th century iron gun had b come cheap and reliable although the had the disadvantage of being heavier than tho e of bronze. British iron gun of the apoleonic period were mainl of the Blomefield pattern, 0 called because the In pector of the Artillery Thomas Blomefield d igned them in the latter part of the 1 th century. Blomefield had taken up the post at the age of 36 but b the end of hi career built up a reputation as an expert on gunnery. Hi gun are di tinctive because the are very plain in de ign and have a breeching loop cast into the cascable. This appointment of a 'land' artilleryman to de ign naval gun reflects the fact that the Board of Ordnance was re pan ible for upplying arms and munition both to the Army and avy. Blomefield' de ign were introduced into the avy, however, in an attempt to tandardise gun pattern. Blomefield' de ign first made an appearance in 17 6 , hen the were proofed at Woolwich. In fact his d ign became 0 tandardi ed that after the apoleonic Wars the were quoted in ould' Ob ervatums on a course oJinstruction in Artillery of 1 25 as

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used for' pper Deck 74 Gun hip, Garrison and Battering train '. Although there was therefore a et of tandard official de ign ,nearl all of the iron gun cast during thi period were manufactured b civilian COntractOI ,uch amuel Walker of Rotherham, the Carron mpanyof Falkirk, and the Low Moor Ironworks of Bradford. However, the Board of Ordnance kept a great degree of control a er the tolerance required for the uppl of government gun and many companie were to fall foul of their trict rule, not least the Carron compan itself. The Blomefield guns themselve incorporated a number of noveltie which, it was thought, would improve them over the old pattern . Firstly the metal of the gun \\ redi tributed 0 that the greate t thickne was around the breech where the greate t train was during the explo ion of the propellant charge. The cascable area was manufactur d without decoration and the metal. was evenl di tributed around it 0 there were no weak pots and the gun were provided with a breeching loop moulded into the cascable for containment of the bre ching rope (who e function is xplained later). In comparison with the earlier Armstrong tern, Blomefield reduced the muzzle veil from 17.7in. to 16.97in. and reduced the neck diameter from 13. in. to 13.2in. that other Although Blomefield' guns predominated, that is not to typ were not in use. Old gun did find their wa onto Royal avy hip and full tandardisation was never achieved. It was not unu uaJ to have a

Sectional view of a Blomefield 32-pdr gun shown with a cartrldge and shot loaded. From this position a pricker would be forced down the vent to pierce the bag. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

An early pattem of C8rTOnade, probably from the 1780s. The early form of carTOnade was very similar In shape to the howitzer. This ellample has trunnions and a square cascable button to which a wrought-Iron tiller would have been fitted to aim or elevate the piece. It has a dlspart sight on the muzzle for aiming the piece. This seems to have been common on many C8rTOnades. (National Museums of Scotland)

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, ix ounce oflamp black, three pints of pirits of turpentine, and three ounce of litharge are to be put in after the turpentine and black are well mixed, add one ounce of umber to give it a glo and one gallon of bright vami h.' There were al 0 other methods of u ing anti-corro i e coating but the e varied depending on the author. All of the e recipe repre ented a wa, of ealing the gun again t the carro ion inevitable in a alt-water emir nment. We know from the inventorie of the frigate Inconstant that the paint allowed was: Downs black 44 gallon White 44 gallon Red 44 gallon Yellow nil Oil 5.2 gallon turp 1 quart bru he L2 1 pecificall for a 32-pdr the follo'wing quanti tie were allowed for each gun: gun lIb 30z carriage 3lb 90z In hi not book William Rive con idered that 'gun are to be aled before load'd [onboard the hip] at ea. I don't approv of ealing on account of damp in the gun.' Riv r al 0 remarked:

GUNS OF BLOMEFIELD'S SYSTEM* Gun 32-pdr

Weight in hundredweight & quarters Length 56cwt 9ft 6in. 48-5Ocwt 8ft 46cwt 9ft 41cwt 8ft 39cwt 7ft 6in. 50cwt 24-pdr 9ft 6in. 48cwt 9ft 18-pdr 42cwt 9ft 8ft 37cwt 3qtr 34cwt 3qtr 12-pdr 9ft 33cwt 1qtr 8ft 6in. 29cwt 2qtr 7ft 6in. 21cwt 6ft 9-pdr 31cwt 9ft 29cwt 2qtr 8ft 6in. 26cwt 2qtr 7ft 6in. 25ewt 1qtr 7ft 6-pdr 8ft 6in. 23ewt 3qtr 22cwt 2qtr 8ft 21 cwt 7ft 6in. 20cwt 7ft 18cwt 2qtr 6ft 6in. 6ft 17cwt 3qtr * This list is the most common form of the system used and does not include some of the land service guns.

mix of earlier Annstrong/Fred rick pattem gun with Blomefield gun , carronade and other uch weapon. It i more difficult to generali e about the maller type of gun , uch as swi\'el gun and bow chas rs on mall ve el, because there were very many of them in ervice. orne were very old and Orne had been introduced during the war . Weapon of S- and 4-pdr calibre exi t d but wer not tandardi ed. The e w apon were reall the armament of the malle t ve el and were often al 0 used as gun for the hip' boats or launche carried by larger war hip.

'Precaution to be taken when gun are put down in the hold. The are to be pain ted over "ith a thick coat of tar and tallow. Well washed in ide the bore with fre h water and a good wad dipp din the mixture and pur in the muzzle.' British gun carriages

The gun carriage itself was of a typ known as a truck carriage after the mall wh I or trucks that it was mounted upon. The original de ign for a gun carriage in the apoleonic period was et out in 1732. It was a truck-mounted, tepped cheek de ign. Th d ign introduc d in 1791 was exact! the same e cept that its cheeks had bevelled edge that were angl d at 45 degree.

RANGES OF VARIOUS SIZES OF GUNS· Size Point blank (yards) 42 583 32 633 24 650 18 615 12 733 9 716 6 666 4 500 3 400 'As transcribed from the notebook

8

Out angle (yards) 2,915 3,165 3,050 3,080 3,665 3,580 3,330 2,500 2,000 of William Rivers of

Utmost range (miles) 1Y. 10/. 10/. 10/. 2 2 10/. 1Y. 1 HMS Victory.

B cause iron corrode easil at sea great efforts were made to en ure that thi did not happen. Gun maintenance was an import activity and the gunner was re pon ible for upervi iog it. If the bore of the gun became rusty it was po ible it could cause a firing accident. Gun were normally painted and the recipe was a follow:

A drawing of a standard gun carriage pattern from the notebook of William Rivers, gunner on HMS II1ctory. Rivers's notes contain few drawings but this image Is remarkably clear and gives the proportions of all the natures of gun carriage. The locations of the various eye bolts seem to be at variance with other drawings of the period, particularly positions Band E. (Courtesy Royal Naval Museum)

9

through. or around. the cascable loop would en ure that the gun would be controlled on r coil. The nvo tackle ,ere attached to the carriage through ring bolts and al 0 attached to the hip' ide in the arne wa . The tackle rope used were normally about 3in. in diameter. The were run through a ingle block at the ide of the hip and a double block on the gun. If one looks at the ide loop on the gun carriage the are de igned to take a block hook and not as i ometime uppo ed to p a rope through. In a rough ea. and when not in u e, the gun had to re trained from moving around the deck. There was a train tackle fitted to the end of the gun carriage and a ring bolt in the centre of the deck. This topped the gun from moving toward the gun port when the hip was heeling. The gun tackle could al 0 be used to top the gun from moving, safel lashing it to the ide of the hip. Thi proce was called housing the gun. It involved removing the quoin and lashing the gun again t the ide. Ther were man wa to do this and normally the muzzl was roped to the ide of the hip and mailer ropes or lashings werused to k ep the connection tight.

The stool bed of a replica 1S-pdr carriage showing the general layout of the quoin and stool bed. The metal ring on the right would secure the block for traversing the gun whilst the centre ring was for the breechlng rope. This second ring was not always fitted and Rudyerd's Course of Artillery of 1793 shows no such rIng fitted. The fore end of the stool bed rests on a bolt that pierces both cheeks. the head of which can be seen on the extreme right. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

The 1795 pattern carriage had an additional piece added to th front om but no clear image of this typ are known. It was called the 'breast ended preventer cleat carriage' and this ugge ts that it had an additional fitting for th breast tran om. probabl to act as a pacer between th ide of the hip and the gun carriage and assi ting traversing. Generally the carriage was of a relativel imple de ign mounted upon nvo turd wooden axle . The typical ea ervice carriage has been called the 1791 pattern carriage. but it can be een in the same form in earl drawing of weapon in the Royal Artillery library from the middle of the 1 th century at least. Each ide cheek was tepped 0 that leverage could be applied through handspike onto the bottom or rear of the breech. The carriage was not fitted 'vith an elevating cre, during thi period. 0 the elevation of the gun relied purel on the quoin (a liding wooden wedge placed underneath the breech end of the gun). we hall ee. adjusting the quoin was the pre en;e of the gun captain during action. In 1795 change were made to th ea-service carriage which reflected the introduction of th Blomefield pattern tern. In fact the carriage' implicity was deceptive - the type had been developed from earl truck carriages that had been introduced during the period just before the pani h Armada campaign. Gradual refinements had taken place to create a carnage that was relativel mall but trong enough to carry the weight of a gun of up to 3 ton . The carriage had to cope with the violent recoil of the gun in an enclo ed pace and be trained left and right for aiming. Thi meant that the rope controlling it had to be long enough to allow mano uvre but al 0 et up to re triet the recoil of the gun and allow it to be run in for loading and out for fuing. no matter how the deck was ri ing and falilng and tilting with the motion of the hip. The gun had to be run out and fired and reloaded in any kind of weather. The method of doing this was to use rope and tackle known as ide and training tackle. It needed a cr w of up to a dozen men to run the gun out using thi pulle tern. In addition a very large rope passing tran

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Details of the 32-pdr carriage Weight'9cwt 401b Material: elm Brackets: 6ft 3in. long x 5.75in. thick x 2ft high AxIetrees (oak): 31.5in. long (front); 36in. rear Arms: 6.25in. wide with 6.375-in. hole Trucks: front 1Sin. diameter. rear 16in.; 6in. wide Trunnion axis: 36in. above the deck. Quoin (COUld be of African oak. elm or sabicu): An original quoin from a 24-pdr sea-service carTiage recovered from the wreck of HMS Invincible which sank In 175S. The base of the quoin is inscribed with the name of the ship which is highly unusual and is thought to be because the ship had non-standard carriages since she had been captured from the French. (Author's collection, courtesy of J. Blngeman)

An 1S-pdr Blomefield gun and carriage. The carriage Is a reproduction but was made to the exact specifications of a naval gun carriage of the period. (Explosion, the Museum of Naval Firepower)

27in. long x 10.75in. x 6.75in. Breeching rope: Sin. diameter x 34ft long Side and training tackles: 3-in. diameter rope through 10-in. diameter blocks; ropes for side tackles were 54ft long overall, train tackle 66ft long

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r duced powder charg th ame ,. locit)· could be achie\'ed at hort range. o a very hea, hot could b fired from a light gun, though onI at comparatively hort range. The nickname of the carronade - the masherlit rall de crib d its function. Carronade were made in calibre from the 6-pdr up to th 68-pdr mon ters that were mounted on HMS Victory, though, as with me 42-pdr long gun, it i thought that the ammunition for the e w apons was impl too heav ' for practical enice at ea. From me beginning of its life, however, me carronade became widel accepted as a powerful weapon \\~th lethal capacity at clo e range. me hips were ev n xclusivel armed with carronade , like the GIa.tton, pre ent during Nel on' ,~ctory at openhagen, and famou as having Captain Bligh as its commander.

Another cammade of the period, but this time a commercial example fitted with trunnions. The weapon has a breaching loop and this Is the sort of weapon sold by commercial companies such as Bailey Pegg and Carron to fit out armed merchantmen. (Museum of Naval Firepower, Gosport)

COMPARISON OF GUN AND CARRONADE CALIBRE

Carronades and new designs

The great invention of this period was the introduction of the carronade, o called after the Carron Ironworks where many of the type were made and where it i peculated mat it may have originated. However, it has often b en argued thaL thi weapon was the brainchild of ir harle Gascoigne, the manager of the Carron Ironwor and it, po ible that it could have be n called the Gasconnade after ir Charle . Th re are veral contenders for the honour, including ir Charle , Lieutenant-General Robert Melvill, and the Carron Company, all of whom have a claim to be the real inventor. nfortunatel it has never b en proven who the true originator reall was. The fmt calTonad appear about 177 and w re very different to that which was ev ntuall accepted into the Royal avy. Th carronade was a much lighter thinner-walled piece than a con\'entional hipboard gun. It had a mall powder chamber in tead of a continuous bore and usuall had no trunnion. In tead it was fixed to its mounting b a cast iron loop underneath th barrel and had a horizontal cast loop at the rear of the gun to take an elevating crew. The carronade had fittings for ights at the reinforce, and a muzzle ring cast into the iron body of the weapon. RANGES OF CARRONADES (IN YARDS)

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Carronade Weight Length

Bore

Charge

68-pdr 42-pdr 32-pdr. 24-pdr. 18-pdr 12-pdr.

8.05in. 6.84in. 6.25in. 5.68in. 6.16in. 4.52in.

51b 31b Soz 21b Soz 21b lib Soz lib

36ewt 5ft 4in. 22ewt 4ft 6in. 17ewt 4ft 13ewt 3ft 9in. 10ewt 3ft 4in. 2ft 8in. 6ewt

Range by Elevation 4· 1· 2· 3· 500 730 940 1,100 430 700 900 1,050 380 600 800 975 360 580 770 950 340 550 745 920 310 520 715 890

5· 1,260 1,200 1,170 1,120 1,050 970

One of the mo t notable feature of can'onade was that the were de igned to have a greatly Ie ened windage. Windage was the name given to th gap between the ide of the round hot and me wall of the bore. The reduced windage meant that mor energy was projected onto the hot because Ie air e caped around its ide. The hot were cast in a pherical mould of the same diameter as the bore of the carronade. In a normal gun an allowance would be made for windage. The windage for the carronade was achieved b the hot hrinking after it had cooled down. For a greatly

Calibre 42-pdr 32-pdr 24-pdr l8-pdr l2-pdr

A further page from the notebook of William Rivers detailing experiments made with carronades In 1779. It concems the ability of the carronade to pIerce two large balks of wood 2ft 31n. thick at 160 yards range. After destroying both pieces the shot buried itself In a bank of earth up to 4ft. (Courtesy Ro~al Naval Museum)

gun 7.018in. 6.41 in. 5.823in. 5.292in. 4.623in

carronade 6.84in. 6.25in. 5.68in. 5.16in. 4.52in

Difference .178in. .16in. .143in. .132in. .103in

The reduced \\rindage combin d with a hort barrel meant that the proce of placing th ammunition into th.e muzzle was difficult 0 a mall rece was cast into the muzzl face to allow the loader' fingers to manipulate the hot. CaITonade were not generally mounted on truck carriage ince their de ign pr eluded thi' in tead the were mounted on lid . The e consisted of two parts. The upper mounting \va5 a wooden frame upon which the caITonade \ fitted. The lower mount of the carriage can isted of a long flat wooden board lotted along its length, through which a central pintle p ed to attach it to the upper carriage. The lower carriage was attached to th gun port at the muzzle end and the breech end r ted on two iron trucks which allowed th mounting to be traversed laterally in ide the hip. Thi whole arrangement meant that the gun could be moved up and down the tide and aero the face of the gun port. The upper carriage could also be angled, giving a theoretical traverse both on the main and upper carriage. One of the mo t innovative feature of this mounting ,...-as the use of an elevating crew. This method of elevating a gun had never reall caught on in the avy but in land ervice it \va5

13

widely used. The can-onade however, as well as a breeching loop, had a flat caseable ring, cast in the horizontal plane, and threaded to take a long pin turned with a coar e crew thread. Fixed to this was a handle with four protru ion that could be u ed to turn the cr w, thus moving the breech end of the can-onade up and down.. Contemporary draw-ing how that the de ign was uch that, on firing, thi crew and the loop underneath the ban-el would take mo t of the recoil strain and, although there was a very turdy br eching rop ,the crew must have been damaged by continuous firing. The viciousne s of the recoil of can-onade was leg ndary, and was all the more apparent becaus the were mounted in such a peculiar way. The mountings could easily be damaged by rep ated firings. The can-onade was not alwa mounted upon a lide and ometim the weapon was even cast with trunnion (horizontal projection ued to elevate the gun) and given a truck carriage in the bow or tern of the hip. The e, howe er, were commercially produced gun that did not conform to dmiralty pattern , although orne of them undoubtedly found their way onto hip of the Royal avy. Once the calTonade had been invented, tried and te ted other forms of gun came to the fore. William Congreve, the great artillerist and de igner, appli d his knowledge of gunnery to what he aw as the naval problem and produced many n w de ign (it was common for erving office to produce new de ign as a way of drawing attention to their kills). Congreve and another gentl man called John Gover pre ented their ideas to the dmiralty with mixed re ults. Congreve' gun appear to have been an attempt to marry the calTonade to th conventional long gun and did not really come into an u e until just after the apoleonic war. everthele, Congre e al 0 invented a highly unu ual y tern of mounting gun - their trunnions

(

An apron of lead from a caFTOnade recovered from HMS Pomone. This apron was designed so that It covered the entire lock of the caFTOnade, hence Its unusual shape. (Author's collection, courtesy of J. Blngeman)

= • 1

• --.---•.-----

.=---------....r.

14

... -~~.r-.u :

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• 1-

117)~';"7/# r //l-dZ/.._

A very interesting plan of the pattern for a caFTOnade slide that was fitted to a ship's launch. Drawn for the Admiralty and dated 1815. (Royal Naval Museum)

Side elevation of a carronade slide that was fitted on the Inside principle to all ships except for cutters. Drawn for the Admiralty and dated 1815. (Royal Naval Museum)

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6 ok~--.w

...

were mounted on a tiny-wheeled trolley - which would have con iderably reduced the space needed for gun carriages aboard hip. Although he produced a pamphlet detailing the e ideas, no real change were implemented by the dmiralty. Gover 24-pdr gun was accepted by the Admiralty and was used to equip orne older hip -of-the-line a a uniform armament. It was a move away from the traditional idea of a gun mounting and induded a fairly radical gun carriage de ign. According to A. Caruana the y tem was te ted aboard HMS Kent in 1799 and was adopted by the Admiralty. It can isted of a two-part carriage fixed at one end to the hip' ide and with a ratcheted elevating po t at the other. The carriage was traver ed b rope attached on either ide of the mount. A top carriage held the gun. Looking at contemporary image of the sy tern it would eem that the whole of the mounting would take up con iderable pace on a man of war. It i perhap for thi reason that the sy tern was not widely adopted in the avy and was u ed only on gunboats and bow mounts. When firing a gun at another hip, two key movements of the ban-el are involved, traverse, in other word the horizontal movement of the gun from right to left, and elevation, the raising or lowering of the breech in order to incr ase or decrease range. The difficulty was increased with the need to fire when the ve el itself was inclined or moving violently. Take uch inhibiting facto as make, wounded comrade and plinters flying in all direction and one can e that keeping one' head in action was far from easy. Firing quickly and accurately could onl be done through endle drill. The only standard ights available to the naval gunner were the quarter ights engraved on the breech ring and muzzle of a gun. Aligning them and aiming along them was a very imprecise way of pointing tho gun, though Bri.tish doctrine traditionally required that hip hould manoeuvre to uch do e range that it was rapidity of fire and not preci ion of aim which determined the outcome. In the apoleonic Wars the only way of eI vating and aiming a long gun along i upper urface was b the use of the tangem cale. Of course, fighting by the British was expected to be at cia e range and therefore theoretically device to improve long-range gunnery were not required. However, in gun handling ju t as in gun de ign, there was a degree of

15

innovation, and as tated previously it \">'as normall carried out by captain on an individual basi . Captain Philip Broke \">'as uch a man and i best knO\m as the captain of HM hannon, the frigate that famou ly captured the Chesapeake during the War of 1 12. Hi ob e ion with gtmnery refinements \">'as uch that he had all of hi hip' gun fitted with dispart ights (a rai d sight at the muzzle). The gun al 0 had tangent ights (the tangent ight was a raised ight fix d at the rear of the breech which allowed the gun to be elevat d and aimed at the ame time) made out of wood. The ewer dra\!ffi b Broke in hi not book (Broke papers HA93 77/16). The gun-decks on the Shannon were al 0 marked with pr -determined angle to which the gun could be travel ed 0 that they could be pointed and elevat d un iform I and as ord r d e en when their crew could not ee the target It is al 0 said that Broke' gun carriage had been altered 0 that they lay horizontally de pite the h er of th deck. Contrary to common belief thi commander and others like him proved that gunnery innovation did exi t during thi p riod. Unfortunatel th re were no real attempts at standardi ing these innovation, 0 gunnery practice varied throughout the av. Other innovation al 0 helped gun to fire at the right moment in condition of limited vi ion. was u ual it was the experimentation of captain at ea that led to the e innovation . One method was to fix a pendulum placed in a hatchwa to indicate the angle of inclination of the ship. (If the gun on both ide of a hip were bing u ed in an action it was u ually nece ary, ince the hip was nearly alway heeled over one way or another, to depre the gun on one broad ide and elevate tho on the other ide. Thi would be done by a general order from the captain.) Drill and organisation

16

The gun of a man of war were numbered from bow to tern on each ide. The fir t port gun was known as Port o. 1 and the tarboard a tarboard o. 1. The odd numbered gun on th port ide and the even numbered gun on the tarboard ide were knO\!ffi as me right guns and the other as the left gun . Gun on the variou decks were organised into divi ions and each was either as foremo t quarter or an after quarter. The officer commanding a divi ion was known as the officer of the quarter. he gun captain was the aman p tty officer in charge of a gun. In larger hip a lieutenant would command half the gun on a deck and maller group of three or four gun would be under the nominal. control of a midshipman. The e officer and petty officers, and the gun 'crew themselve, were not in any en e

"t-J_

One of the finest images of a carronade and slide available, but demonstrating some unusual fittings. The mount has trucks facing the gunport and may have been for moving the carriage when it was disconnected from the ship's side. (Royal Collection, Neder1ands)

BELOW An altemative method of mounting a carronade aboard ship. The carriage appears to be composed of two parts, much the same as the fixed slide would be, but this one has been fitted with axles and wheels. (National Maritime Museum)

An original document from 1820 showing the method of training a gunner In aiming at a moving target. It gives a good impression of the type of position taken up by the gunner before firing. (Museum of Naval Firepower, Gosport)

gunnel peciali ts; th had numerou other dutie in the hip. hip did have peciali t gunnery personnel, headed by the hip' gunner, a warrant officer appointed to the hip b the Ordnance Board. His role and dutie and tho e of hi ubordinate, will be explained hortly. In all there were typically 13 men and one bo allocated to each 32-pdr gun on a 74-gun ship. Thi did not mean that as man were alway available to man the gun in action and training often included practice in crewing a gun with fewer men. Men could be called awa for sail handling or imilar duties or could be drawn off to erve the gun on the other ide of the hip, though it was uncommon for gun on both ide to be in action imultaneou Iy. The men in a gun crew were allocated number and each had specific tasks to perform. an example, following the command 'clear for action', their main dutie were a follow: 3 4, 5 6, 7, Prepare to cast 100 e the gun, but never to cast it 100 e without order . 9 has charge of the ponge rammer and... taff toward the hip' ide. 10 fetche wab and two handspike one placed at the gun in the manner of9. 2 ee that a match and tub i at hand. Fetche a fire bucket and Ianthorn with a number of ent plug. 11 Hold priming cartridge, fetche powder hom priming iron, tube box and casts 100 e the apron. 12 Provide hot and wad, train tackle... and to ee that pare breeching with eizings are topped up near the gun. 1 The Captain of the gun fixe the lock, clears the vent, upplie flints, has a pare lanyard and examines the condition offlints in the lock. 13 Powderman i to fetch the cartridge from the magazine, in a alt bo after which he i only to fetch one at a tim in a cartridge case as there may be one, but not more than one in the area. In the drill manual, Instructions/ar the exercise o/the great guns 1818, th.e carronade drill is lightly different Here the crew i reduced to even men large! becau e the carronade was normally mounted on a lide (as previou ly de cribed) and did not need as much manpower to run the gun in and out

17

1 Captain prime, points, elevate, train lide. 2 econd captain stops vent and trains slide. 3 Loads 4 ponge 5, 6, 2 run out 5 Supplie cartridge and wad to 3 7 Keeps cartridge upplied. Prior to the e tablishment of HM Excellent on Whale I land in Portsmouth in the 1840 the avy had no training organi ation for gunnery. Therefore a great deal of the knowledge that crew had to acquire in the handling of guns was gi\en by in truction on board hip by the hip' gunner. uch knowledge was gain d empirically and handed down orally. The gunner of any hip was a key member of the crew. He was an officer of the ship but, as noted above, hi authority derived from hi warrant issued b the Ordnance Board. He thus had a dual re pon ibility, in part to the Board and in part, like any other member of the crew, to the hip' captain. Hi re pon ibilitie were very varied but he was undoubtedly the hip' enior ordnance expert. He needed to be knowledgeable in maintaining the gun and their related equipment, in handling and preparing ammunition, and in training men to use the weapon in action. In action the gunner would normally work in the magazine, upervising the handling and distribution of ammunition to the guns; he would usually not be directly involved with the operation of the gun themselve . In mall ve Is with few officers the gunner might also serve as one of the officers of the watch, in addition to his particular tasks. It is intere ting to not the captain' in truction to hi gunner on HM rybille during thi period, which lay down pecific duties uch as the time the gunner i to get up and hi re pon ibilitie toward ammunition upply. He had to be up at five o'clock in the morning and:

officer. In order to keep the crews trained he was in truct d to exerci two gun daily, except on unday an.d Thursda . To achieve all thi the gunner was assisted b various mate and others uch as a Quarter-Gunner (an assi tant to the gunner who maintained the gun and filled powder charge etc.). There was one quarter-gunner to every gun. According to the notebook of William Rivers the gunner of H Victory', the following could be conceived as the p cialist weap n personnel of a 100-gun first-rat or 98-gun econd-rate hip-of-the-line: Rank [Gunner's] Mates 2nd class gunners Armourer Armourer's mates Gunsmith Gunner's Taylor

second rate 4

25

23

1

1

2

2

1 1

1 1

It i nOt clear wh ther thi information i given olely in referenc to Rive ' hip only or relate to all HM ship -of-the-line but clearl there were quite a few gunnery peciali ts on board hip. It i at 0 clear that they were not onl expected to be experts in their field but al 0 worked the hip when required and wer regarded as elite eamen by other ailors. Positions of the gun crew at various tasks. The first positions are before and after loading and the third Image Is the position with four men a side on the training tackles. From Howard Douglas's Naval Gunnery. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

'He i to ee that all the gun are clean'd wash'ed and dried, that they are well ecured and ready for ervice, that their vents and tompions ar well in and no hot 100 e in the gun . He and hi mate to in pect the gun r gularly during the day and night.' "'·fn,,· L

He was expected to keep 251b of powder cartridges filled ready for use and loading and handling of powder was his re ponsibility, although he was never to open the magazine unle at the orders of the commanding

18

first rate 4

fj·•.

Different methods of firing at the hull or masts of a ship at just over 1,000 yards. From Howard Douglas's Naval Gunnery of 1820 (taken from a copy of the 1855 fourth edition). (Museum of Naval Firepower, Gosport)

lin. 3 .

Tools and equipment

Many piece of equipment w r required to fire a gun and maintain it. Th re were the general tool uch as the rammer, ponge, lin tack, worm, handspike apron oflead, gunlock and buckets. The handspike was a tout bar used to lever the gun carriage or barrel on the hip's deck. worm or wadhook was used to cour th in ide of the barrel to remove burning embers or blockage. It can i ted of a wooden taff with. a piral iron hook on its nd. The ponge was a taffwith a large heep kin head used for damping dO\vn burning j' 'ITl ' . mbers and cleaning the gun )., rlin • balTel. Th.e rammer was a long FIg••1. Fig.•0. taff with a cylindrical wooden head u ually lightly maller than the bore, used to ram home the powd r and cartridge. flexible ponge and rammer could al 0 be u ed; thi had the arne head as the rammer de cribed above but mount d on a length of turdy rop . This meant that the rammer could be bent to th muzzle of the gun and rammed from the ide without having to run in th.e gun fully. A priming 1.. iron was a tool for clearing the tatlOlllU')' Po deT-1IlUI. ~·r."IMI.?I vent and piercing the cartridge Eltra Powct..-. case. Thi was nonnall a non-

19

fi rrous metal pike. The vent needed to be kept dry in heavy eas 0 a fid or v nt cover (a mall piece of twine or even a wooden peg) was placed in the vent when not in use. There might al 0 be an apron - a lead cover to prevent damp ent ring the vent. Thi was often placed over the fid. Powder handling al a required a great number of tool and apart from cartridge case , leather buckets, bags and other uch items th re were orne peciali t pi ces of equipment used in the magazine . Much of what we know about naval gunnery come from information gleaned from archive and documents. However, recently gunnery implements have been recovered from many shipv.rreck and tudied by underwater archa ologi ts. One of the fine t finds in recent years has been the v.rreck of the Invincible which was found complete with gunnel ' tore. The hip ank in 1758, which i obviousl b fore the period under inv tigation, but it appear that many of th.e implements and tool were of exactl the same pattern as tho e in u e during the apol onic Wars. apoleonic period were fired by flintlock avy gun of the mechanisms, though there has be n orne debate in hi torical circle as to exactl when the gunlock was generally introduced. It is clear from letter written by the dmiralty in 1755 that gunlocks were to be fitt d for use on HM hip. The e locks were fIXed to the ide of the vent field on the gun and were u ed in conjunction with tin priming tube. The e tube were filled with an exploding composition, which meant that the whole proce of priming the gun became far more efficient than before. To prime the gun the charge bag was pierced with a priming iron. Then a priming tub was placed in the eilt and the gunlock cocked. Previou to thi the vent had to be filled with loa e gunpowder, which was time can uming and dangerou with burning ember around. However, this co view of th efficient gunlock i not wholly reali tic as we know that lin tocks were also kept on hand and that the gunfhnts them elve frequently br ke or the locks mi fired. What they did do, when they were functioning correctly, was peed up the firing proce .

Tactical doctrine

20

We are lucky to have a variety of ource that help u understand ea-servic gunnery. ince at least the 17th c ntury, ea-service gunnery was ingled out as a -pecial discipline and although pecific manuals relating to gunnery only appear at the end of thi period, general works uch as Falconer' Marine Didiono:ry deal with aspects of gunnery. part from the e sources there are other documents that pan the period of the apoleonic Wars but also refer to lat r practice. One of the be t i that written b General ir Howard Douglas who e father was Admiral ir Charle Douglas of the .Duke. Charle Douglas was a major innovator in the avy, introducing gun locks and ights for his guns. nfortunately rna t of hi ideas were not adopted until after the wars but like Broke he used them with ucce . Although a landlubb r, Howard Douglas was extremely intere ted in naval gun and v.rrote his famous tr ati e aval Gunnery in 1820 after the

apoleonic Wal but based on all the occurrence of tho e years. It was rei ued four time between 1 20 and 1 60 and has many intere ting ob ervation on naval gunnery during the mooth-bore p nod. There were man different technique for fighting the gun at ea. The basic tactic was for hip to be formed in a line of battle, with each hip following behind the one ahead. Thi allowed all of the gun along the sides of the hip to fire with a clear field of view. It i often not appreciatedju t how Iowa apoleonic naval battle could be ince the hip were at the mercy of the wind and might have to manoeuvre for hour to get into po ition. But once within range of one another the battle would become vicious and terrifying. Douglas had this to say about it:

ABOVE A leather bucket typical of the Napoleonic period with copper rivet fittings and a copper ring. These were used for dipping the sponge prior to swabbing the bore of the gun. The excess water was normally wiped off because, if the sponge were too damp, this could affect the firing of the gun. It Is a common misconception that the sponge was used to clean the bore of the gun. While this was one function, the main function was to put out burning embers in the gun barrel before loading a new charge and thus preventing a premature explosion. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

RIGHT One of the diagrams in Howard Douglas'S Naval Gunnery, which demonstrates how to manoeuvre across the wake of another ship and how to avoid this sit\lation. The ship which has its stem exposed to the broadside of the other is in a dangerous position. The weakest point of any ship was the stem through which guns could pour fire down the length of the vessel, destroying everything In the path of the shot. The stem did not have the strength of the sides of the ship and was normally covered In glass windows. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

A bronze gunlock also taken from the wreck of the Pomone. This example does not have the firing cock or frluen; being made of Iron these parts have dissolved in the seawater. This lock was made by Walter Dick of the Armouries of the Tower of L.ondon. (Author's collection, courtesy of J. Blngeman)

»

naval action are ubject to uch udden and unfore een mutation in the po ition of the contending hip. and are liable to uch great alteration in the di tance of the hip, that until the affair become clo e and the truggle i near its termination, no two round can be fired exactly under the same circum tance .'

Thi insi tence on action at clo e range i omewhat contradicted by the exi tence of other form of gunnery attack. For e ample the u e of ricochet fire sugge ts ubtle difference in the type of gunnery duel carried out. Ricochet fire had been known in naval gunnery ince the 16th century and basically used the same technique as a child who throws a flat tone to kip aero the urface of the water. Thi technique was well developed by the apoleonic era. A gun could b made to extend its range, even if it 10 tits elocity, by bouncing the projectile off the water and if the technique was employed correctly the hot would hit the target at the right velocity to cause maximum damage, e pecially if more than one hip were moored one behind the other. Thi phenomenon was conidered b Falconer to create more di order by going much more lowl than if thrown from the piece b greater force (Falconer p.231). In 1828 Beacham, when inve tigating thi ph nomenon said that a charge ofy, the weight of the shot from a 24-pdr of9ft 6in. and at I-degree elevation would achieve a range of 2,500 yards b ricochet fire. It was thought that the technique was Fig. SO. particularly ucce ful again t group of mall ve el when one ball could damage everal \Ie el. I t this point it would be imere ring to con ider the range at which ve el opened _.~, fire. A gun uch as the 24-pdr would have a A. point-blank range of around 250 yard . That i the hot would first make contact with the water when the gun was level at 250 yards. The gun was rna t powerful at thi range and had to be elevated by degree to g t more range. The modern author Tun tall tated that one of the rna t damaging attacks was to

.

.........

B.

21

use reduced charge and alternatel depre and le\'ate the gun at clo e range cau ing the maximum number of plinters. Battle could often tart at a range of 1,000 yards but rang between .. .. 150-250 o.rds were much more likely if a ve el v.'aS to be everely damaged. Raking the hip meant firing along its length from tern or prow 0 that the hot oured the whole length of the deck. It was een as one of the mo t effecti\'e form of tactical firing. arronade had their own tactical p culiaritie . The rna have had a de tructive effi ct at hort range but it \ oon found that ve els armed with the weapons were at a riou di advantage when faced with hip 'with longer gun , as was demontrated in th War of 1 12, ir Jame Yl 0, who commanded the British quad ron oppo ing the Ameri.can on Lake Erie, found that with only ix gun in the fle t that would reach the enem (who obviou I kept out of range) not a carronade was fired. 0 it becarn obviou that a mixed weapon complement was required. When the range was do d the carronade carne into its own. Small-bore artillery and swivel guns

22

The use of large numb rs of anti-personnel w apon on board the warship of the period is often overlooked by hi torian in favour of concentrating on the phenomenal effect of the big gun . Man malleI' weapon were mounted on the bulwarks and in the fighting top of larg l' hip as well as forming ignificant parts of the armament of the malleI' ve Is or being carried in hip' boats. mall gun were often mounted in the bow or tern to provide additional firepower to the front and rear of the \'e el that the broad ide could not reach. Di abling or killin enem ere\ was obviousl a high priority and the number of mall guns \\'as prodigious in all navie . The weapon could produce a withering torm of mall projectile that would be devasl:ating at hart rang . Apart from the gun that were mounted on carriage all over the hip, there were al a a large variety of gun mounted on the bulwarks on reinforced tanchion. The typicall were of I-in. to 2-in. calibr . The e gun, which we hall call coUectiv I wivel gun , were true cannon rather than mall arm . They could be made of br or iron and were mounted upon \Vfought iron yoke affixed to pin tie that would be located in hole on the hip's rail or on tanchion. The cascable could have pecially added iron or wooden handles called tille ,which were u ed to aim the gun . It might eem at fir t glance that the swivel was ju t fitted to a ocket on the rail but thi doe not take into account the recoil of the gun. Hence a knee behind the mounting often reinforced the tanchion and the upp l' head of the tanchion could be reinforced with an iron band. The e gun were not olel u ed for combat purpo e and it was quite common for them to b used as ignal gun when the need aro e. It \\'as usual for the e gun to be mounted on the higher points of the hip uch as the quarterdeck. The were kept loaded and pare charge

Two fine examples of swivel pieces for use aboard ship. The lower weapon made by Wilson is dated 1793 and Is missing its yoke. The weapon Is 1-ln. bore. The upper weapon was made by Barnet and has part of the cock missing. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

A method of range-finding by using two observers on ship to establish the angles between the observers and the main topgallant masthead. From Howard Douglas'S Naval Gunnery. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

were kept in a budge barrel near the gun. budge barrel was a wooden barrel with a leather in ert into which charge were put. It could be tied hut thus protecting the charge from an flying parks. wive! could fire a *-pound ball or a collection of mall hot known as partridge hot The charge was around 4 ounce of powder p l' gun. A French variation on this theme \\'as known as th.e espingole and was a completely brass weapon with a traight barrel terminating in a flat muzzle ring. The weapon was cast with trunnion and the rear part of the gun, in tead of having a cascable, had an e tended bronze handle, which had become tile tiller. It was fitted with a firing lock actuated b a lanyard 0 no trigg I' furniture was evident The bore of the e pingole \\'as around 2in. Only the French reall tried to introduce orne kind of randardlsation of larger bore S\vivel guns, with the pattern of 17 6 being the commone t has b en tated, the gun could be fired b a firing lock but in the larger models it was usualI fir d b applying a match to the vent b mean of a lin tock. Howitzers

HO\vitzers of the period are gen raJl known as hort-barrelled weapons with a mall powder chamber firing explo ive hell. me commentators have con idered the carronade as a form of hO\vitzer but its primary role was to fire olid hot at hon range. It is true that the carronade could be emplo ed to fire common hell but in reality tlli \\'as not done often. Ind ed weapon firing explo ive hell were oot normall u ed in hip-to- hip engagements, but were often emplo ed in bombardments of hore targets. he Briti h tended not to use howitzers at ea and relied on mortars for doe-in iege work. Hence the I3-in. ea- ervice mortar was normall used when explo i\'e hells were needed. William ongreve de igned a 100in. ea ervice howitzer to <:an]' out the same role as the mortar but it never caught on. Oth l' countrie , particularly in candinavia did u e the hO\vitzer to great effect again t the Briti h e peciall from mall ve els. Because of their defeat at openhagen in 1 07, the Dane found them elve with very few large wa hip. Therefore the adopted man of their gunboats and orne flat-bottomed ve e! for u e in the Baltic. The follO\ving i a de cription from Jame' aval History de cribing their e 'ploits again t the British:

23

A French swlvel gun or espingole. The lock Is missing but the remainder is as Issued. This weapon was in use right up until the Franco-Prussian War In 1870. (MllSeum of Naval Firepower)

A: Carronade mounting

'On the 4 June 1 0 , during a calm in th Great B It th Tick! r gun-brig command d b Lieut nant kinn r, \, atta ked b 4 Danish gun-boa , and after a c nfli t of four h urs in whi h th killed h " obliged to urr nder. few da c mmand r \ afterwards, the bomb v I Thunder r Captain ullield, and th gun brig Turbulent Lieutenant d, with a nvo of 70 v w r attack d b 2 Danish gun b a , \ hen th Turbulent was captur d. With 10 or twelve of th merchant hip: and on the 2nd of ugust, th gun brig Tigr Li utenant reensward \ taken b 16 Danish gunboats.' I arl, in their own wate the Dane had begun to use the gunboat as ffensiv ly as a larg v el and th wer abl to manoeuvre with gr at kill. report from W borg,Jutland, ugust 26 1 12 'Th ptain of the tta k \\ hims If atta ked b a Dani h flotilla of gunboats', publish d in aual Chronick ugust 1 12, plain: Is each '\Vh n th force oPPO ing us is onsid red, 1 gun-v m unting two 24-pd and two howitz rs and four rO\ boa ontaining vi els and h \vitzers. Then comm nced the a tion \vith a hea fire of round, grap and grenad (mis is the old-fashion d term fi r common pia iv hell us d with h \\~tz ) within pi tal hOL ntil t\ enry past thr e, \ hen it being till quite aim, th brig was a complete wr ck quite unmanageable and in a inking tat .'

24

Th implication was that mall-bor howitzers c uld inundate larger Briti h v Is with plo ive hell that wer tr m I damaging and lema! t th crew. 0 what were th gunboats like? Th w r obvio I h a\1l armed and meir armament app aT to ha\' b n a mixtur of long un and morta . It rna b that me m nti n of mortars indicat ho\vitz and not mortars, which would b tremel difficult to aim fr much a e el. typical weap n of th Dani h a can b n in the R yal Armourie coil cn n XI .1 1 dat d 1771. Thi w apon h a 3.4-in. calibre and a length f just 1ft in. The howitzer i ast with. trunnion and \\ u d from th b of a gunboat. Th w d ,R ian and Dan all emplo f d me form of r wed warship and th wed had p cific de ign dating fr m th 1770 b th

3

4

5

6

A

B: The Congreve rocket system at sea

C: Light guns

3

5

2

6

3

B

c

c

D1:3 -PDR 0

HE LOWER GUN DECK

1 Ring bolt

2 3 4 5 6

Cartridge case Fore axletree Side tackle Breeching eye Eye bolt

7 Hind stub axle

8 Lynch pin 9 Hind truck 10 Breeching 11 Cheeks 12 Tackle eye

13 Quoin 14 Hind axletree 15 Pully sheave 16 Train tackle 17 Gun captain

18 Hand spike 19 Breeching loop

20 Expanding shot 21 Gun lock

22 Flexible rammer

23 Capsquare 24 Forelock

D2:

R

25 Gun captain 26 Cascable 27 Quoin

28 Stool bed 29 Reinforcing bands 30 Tub 31 Hind truck

32 Cheek 33 Breeching 34 Crow

35 Fore truck 36 Ringbolt 37 Hook used instead of ringbolt 38 French spongemanl rammer

39 Muzzle astragal 40 Chase 41 Capsquare

42 2nd reinforce 43 1st reinforce 44 Cartridge case 45 Vent field

46 Bar shot 47 Side tackle

CH 36-P R IN AC ION

E: French and Spanish weapons

.

..E =E III III

en E

F

A very fine flintlock musketoon manufactured by the London gunmaker Mortimer In 1799. The musketoon was often used to augment the small anms fire of the ship's petit arti/lerie. This example was made for the East India Company, but was presented by the Defence Ordnance safety Group, Bath, to the Museum of Naval Firepower, Gosport. (Ex,plosion, Museum of Naval Firepower)

G: Naval ammunition

6

5

9 8 Comparison of gun flints from the two wrecks. The two flints on the left are from HMS Inlffnclb/e. while the one on the right Is of a stepped or pyramidal type removed from the Pomona. (Author's collection, courtesy of J. Bingeman)

G

naval architect Fr derick Henrik hapman. The Is w r thought to be of 60 tons d' pIa em nt and could carry two 24-pdr gun which w re ub tantial weapon and e\' n more d trllctive wh n uch gunboa were m d in Large numbe. maller ve ion of thi v el xi t d with onl n gun that ould fire aft Th gun w r mounted on carria in turn m unt d on rail along the bottom of lhe v 1. The \ ere manned b cre\ of 60 and 25 m n re p cdv I . The gunboats lhat fought with British \' els in th Balti ma hay be n built along imilar line to lh w di h n and indeed it i lhought that the I , whether Dani h, wedi h r R ian, w r vel imilar in de ign thr ughout the Baltic. If, as we beli ve, the boats were armed in om m ur with howitz rs th n the explosiv h I lhat w r fir d mu t hay been de\ tatIng in th rr m . The Scandina\~an c rtainl us d the howitz r and it i th ught that th w r 0 casionall used to dama e th rigging and masts of larger ve I. Carronad , t 0, carne to b us d b th dina\ians in a gr at d al of fir pow r could be contained in a mu h mall r w ap n that could be mounted on a gunboat 11 count r them th British also built oared gunb ats. nt mporary models how that th w r oft n arm d \vith a carronad on an unusual lid mount that ran on a wooden race givin 360 degr of trave e. earl all of th gun moun us d in th e boa w re t pp d carriage mount d on rail that allowed them t fire forward or aft onI . Th' did not pr nt much of a problem be aus oars could mano uvr th \. el. Small arms Although not p ificall part of a hip' artill ry, it i worth m ntioning th m k t, th tandard tljntlo k mooth-bor weapon of lhe p riod of about o/.-in. calibre. number of the e would be earn d b each hip as part of i armament ~uskets could be used b just about an aman to rep I boarders or clear the d c of an enem I hip from th fighting tops r th quart rd ck. The' were an ntial part of the naval armam m of th apoleonic Wars. In British rvi e th w r normall flintlock weapon imilar to lho us db, th Ann, but \~th a barrel 37in. long and in luding a numb r offi ature that distinguished them fr m land rvice weapon. One obvious pointer' lh flat butt plate pr umabl de ign d r. r tora purpo aboard hip. Other indicators wer th imple fittin and a flatter lock plat and cock. The were made at lhe Tower Annouri or at private manufa ture in nd n or Birmingham. rvice weapons were generall hort r lhan landrvic w apons and this again is probabl because of th conlin d areas aboard hip. The French favour d a long r weap n at 66.5in. Q\'erall but lhe , too, had cutd wn ve ions of 62in. In fact, a lot of the weap n that found th ir wa onto French hip did 0 because the

33

'Two 32 pounder hot were fired ingly with charge of 100b 11 oz of powder they entered at the arne place which made it impo ible to di tingui h their effects, together after penetrating the hip ide in firm wood they hattered a ound wooden knee: they then passed along the deck, cutting down a wooden tanchion 6 feet long and in. quare under the beam; thi the hattered into piece, cau ing many plinters ix of which were very large. And one of th m swept the deck as far as the pump . On of the two hot penetrated its own depth in the ound wood on the other ide of the hip and there it tuck.'

mu kets were can idered to be out of date for land use. In total there were probably 120 muskets and 30 mu ketoon carried on a large French hipof-the-Iine. The musketoon was a cia e-quarter hotgun- tyle weapon for repelling boarders and clearing decks. It certainly was not intended for accuracy. One contemporary chronicler de cribed the manner of firing as holding the weapon at waist height and off the hip. When the gun was fired, the firer kept his grip on it but let him elfb wung partly around by the recoil. It was obviously aimed in the general direction of the target and no more than that. The tock would have been for torage and nothing more ince lining up the weapon and aiming it from the tock would probably have dislocated the houlder of the firer. British mu ketoon could have a barrel of brass or iron, normally about 16in. long, and had a calibre of about 1 inch, although they were often lightly larger. A musketoon fired a group of mall hot and was effectively a flintlock hotgun. There were many type of this weapon and very few were tandardi ed. Ammunition

34

Ammunition was very imilar in all navi.e of the period reflecting the limitation of mooth-bore weapon at the time. It can b broadly put into three categories: round hot, anti-p rsonnel hot and anti-rigging hot. Round hot was a imple olid cast-iron projectile de igned to mash a hip' ide or cause splint rs to fly around on the in ide of a hip. The de tructive effect of round hot was enormou and it could generate showers of lethal wooden plinters even if it did not penetrate the hip's ide. Expeliments were carried out by HMS Excellent in 1838 with an IS-pdr again t the hulk of the Prince George. At 1,200 yards and 6 pounds of powder the hot penetrated 21-33in. into the wood to ee how much damage a round shot would do to a wooden butt with wooden tanchions upporting it. A 32-pdr hot was then tried:

William Congreve the Elder's unusual design for a 32-pdr. At 7ft 61n. it was a much smaller gun than the standard 9ft 6in. The original Idea was to create a much lighter gun (40cwt) that would stJII be strong enough to fire double-shotted. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

lWo examples of bar shot. These have been recovered from the seabed and show the two main types, one with a hemispherical cast·iron end and the other with a flattened cylinder-end. The bar clearly shows the construction of wrought iron, which has been worn away by the sea. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

Anti-rigging hot included all Oft of trange and unu ual contraption. tits imple t, the bar hot wa a plain bar connecting two hemi pherical end piece. It was wrapped with rag to make it uniform in the bar of the gun when fired. Chain hot con i ted of two ball connected by a length of chain. Star hot was formed of a central hub and four or five arms, which flew out to form a tar hape after leaving the muzzle of the gun. All of the e latter projectile were meant to cut cable ,ri.p ail and mash par and yards. Finally there were the anti-per onnel round. Grape hot was compo ed of a number of iron balls about 1.5in. in diameter clustered around a central pindle and mounted on a base, the whole then bing ewn into a bag. Canister hot was a imilar idea but consisted of mall hot, normally of lead, fitted into a metal tin or case. In each weapon the container broke up on leaving the gun and prayed a deadly cone of hot from the gun. Effecti e range was about 300 yard . Finally there was the carcass, an incendiary device that was used as a fire weapon. A carcass could either be a hollow cast-iron globe filled with an incendiary compo ition or it could be a metal frame filled with imilar ub tance ewn into a erge bag. Fire was one of the greate t hazards for a hip at war and the e weapon were viewed with orne horror. Contrary to popular belief red hot hot was not tried widely at ea. It required a furnace to heat it and it was al a difficult to handle on hip - therefore it tended not to be u ed. Howard Douglas writing in aval Gunnery condemned the revolutionary French for their use of heated hot but warned about the dangers of premature explo ion. (Howard Douglas p.29~) All of th.e e weapon needed a propellant and gunpowder was the ource of the explo ion. It was ewn into paper or erge bags and kept in a leather carrying case near the gun. Only a mall number of charge were kept near th.e gun becaus of th danger from premature xplo ion. It was the gunner' job to check and maintain the magazine that could be in various parts of th.e hip. William Rivers of the Vutory make a di tinction between two different type of gunpowder. Large Grain for long distance (Red). Large Grain for cia e engagement for salute etc. (white). Whether the colours indicated the colour of the containers or their markings is not clear. The difference was about the potency. The weaker mixture or white was obviously expendable. Saluting guns only required enough power to make an audible noise and hart-range work relied on the weight of th.e hot to do the damage.

35

.... -.-.... . - - -

Another page of Rivers's notebook illustrating a table for firing spherical ease shot or shrapnel shell. This demonstrates that the Invention by Henry Shrapnel could have been fired from all types of gun. (Courtesy Royal Naval Museum)

i

A ...... -

...

36

Powder was brought to the great hip of war b mall ve els called powder hoy. For the Portsmouth base, for example, th.e magazine were at Tipnor or Priddy's Hard in Go port. magazine was erected at Pridd ' Hard in 1777 and there are record of HMS Vu:tory being upplied from there in the Ordnance reports for 1793. In the return for that ear illiam Rivers recorded that the following were transported to Vutory: 600 x 32lb round hot 400 x 24lb round hot 1,260 x 121b round hot The barrel of powder cam from Priddy' Hard as well, arranged b a illiam Beach: omed powder 79 x 90lb 205 x 451b 316 x 251b 315 x copper hoops for full barrel 24 x copp r hoop for half barrels Cartridge case were an integral part of the ammunition of an hip. When first introduced all cartridge had been made of paper or parchment, but thi created problems for the gunner because, on firing. not all of the paper burned awa and the re idue eith r blocked the vent or continued to burn inside the bore of the gun and was difficult to ponge out. Cartridges made from a material uch as flannel were Ie likely to break when being carried and tended to b consumed alma t completel on firing. Long after field artillery had moved on to the use of flannel cartridge, however, the avy retained paper cartridge. There appears to hay been a certain amount of cro over as the avy exp rimented with, and did use, paper cartridge with flannel bottoms in the latter part of the 1 th century. In order to make the material tiff whether paper or flannel, cartridges were boiled in alum and then in alum and ize. It was also common to tie them in everal place with worsted tring. Thi method continued into the 19th century. Cartridge were made to a pattern. They were marked out on the material to be cut and th.en rolled onto a fonner (something like a rolling pin) that carre ponded to the ize and hape that the cartridge was to be. The cartridge could either be glued or ewn depending on the

Details of the Congreve rocket system, taken from Congreve's original manuscript. The drawing shows all of the types of rocket proposed by Congreve. The smaller natures of shell rocket are accompanied by a case-shot rocket designed for anti~personnel work. There are two rocket launches. firing or about to fire carcass rockets. The object on the left was a parachute flare for illumination at night. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

"T

material. Obviously glue would be used on paper whilst flannel was ewn. When the charge were tied up they were ewn over the top to retain their hoop by everal thche and choked off. Each one was marked with the type of gun it was to er e, what type of charge it was, and with the amount of powder, all painted in black. Rockets

It eem fitting in a book on naval armament to have a look at one of the great innovation of the apoleonic period, namely that of the war rocket. u ual we can rely on the Congreve family to elucidate the tory. William Congreve junior was the great proponent of the war rocket and certainl the avy was not low to recognise the potential of thi weapon. Congreve was not a oldier but he developed a tern of war rockets that would greatl influence military thinking in the future. ar rockets were not new; the Chine e and Indian had had them for centurie and the Fire Master at the Ro I Laboratory in Woolwich, General Desagulie ,had experimented with them. Congreve, however, refined a tern of weapon that could be, and were, used in battle b the a, and Anny. The ani difference between land and ea weapon was the wa in which they were launched. The rocket tern itself con isted of two main type of rocket, the carcass and the hell rocket. The former was a metal case with a pointed cone mounted on top. It con isted of an explo i e charge and a propellant charge tightl packed into the cylinder. The hell rocket was actuall a common iron hell filled with an exploding charge and mounted on the propellant charge. When the hell exploded it howered metal fragments down upon the target. The first time the were emplo ed in a naval context was in an attack on BouJogne in 1805. The weapon used were 6- and 8-pdr rockets fired from 112 mall boats. Each ve el had 48 rockets and the rockets were launched from a ladder-like construction tied to the mast of the boat. The op ration was carried out by the Royal Marine. The angle the rocket was fired at affected its range and it could be adjusted to uit. Each mcket was just like tabili ed by a large ungainl tick. On a modern fire\ ork in that it , 1 ovember a flotilla of th eve els and their escorts attacked Boulogne at a range of about three mile. The weather everely affected the launching and the whole attack was a bit of a damp quib after all th effort. everthele , ongreve did not gi e up and in 1 06 his rockets were used to attack Boulogne again but thi time he u ed metal-cased 32-pdr rockets with cut-down tave about 15 feet in length. me 1 launch were used in thi attack and about 200 rockets were fired. The Briti h claimed the attack as a ucce but in reality the Congr ve rocket could anI reall be used as a iege weapon at ea. Even 0, attacks on hipping in harbour could be lethal, though mckets were very difficult to aim because the

37

eldom followed a traight flight path. They could only be used in calm w ather and the were unpredictable. Further rocket attacks followed particularl on openhagen, \ hich was aid to be a particularly ucce ful engagement. In rockets favour, the were a terror weapon. They had not been used before and ci\ilian populations must have been hocked to be on the receiving end of th e weapons. An anchored fleet could now be at risk from a long-range weapon, though in fact the maximum range of the ongreve rocket was a relatively mode t 3,000 yards. wo mall loops were converted pecifically to fire the rockets - the Erebus and th.e Golago, of which a model till exi ts at the Royal Artillery Museum in Woolwich. The Erebus was us d to bombard Washington during the War of 1812. The e ship basicall had mall open ports through which the rockets were placed at an angle, with their ticks re ting in th deck of the hold. The were fired in broad ides and were indiscriminate.

GU NERY IN THE FRE

AVY

Much has been made of the uppo ed deficiency of French gunnery during the apoleonic Wars. It doe eem that their large warship uffered from change in administration and command regime \ hich eriousl affected their gunnery, but there are many example of French hips 'giving as good as the got'. In terms of maller hip action and the g;u.erre de course, or commerce raiding th French were a force to be reckoned with. Cast-iron guns for the French a were normall cast at pecial foundrie based at Rouelle near Angouleme, Indret and Bigonne. The various type were laid down in the regulation of 1767 and were de igned by the Inspecteur General de l'artillerie Manson. However, there were man variation to the e de ign , not least thoe impo ed by the various revolutionary committe . [n general, the ize were 36-pdrs on the lower decks, lS-pdrs on the upp r decks and S-pdrs on the fo'c' Ie and quarterdeck. PENETRATION OF ROUND SHOT AS DETERMINED BY THE FRENCH NAVY WITH VARIOUS TYPES OF ORDNANCE* Gun

Charge

Initial

French gun carriages

with British ea enrice carriage , the French made their carriage in proportion to th.e ize of gun the were going to mount. Compar d to Briti h carriage, the 36-pdr was quat and had veral different feature. The 36-pdr trucks were normall made of oak or elm. The e would be mounted on square axletree that had a turned end to fit the truck onto; each truck was held fast b a lynch pin of iron. In thi case, the ize of the axle was the same as the calibre of the gun and all gun carriage parts were calculated b their relation hip to the calibre of the gun. The two cheeks or brackets were mounted on top of the axletree and were fitted with bolts p ing from top to bottom through the axletree and with others passing between the two cheeks. Rin were also fitted at the rear tep and in the ide to take training tackle. The ke difference in the French de ign was that there were hole in the brackets to take the breeching rap a that it was the carriage and not the gun barrel that took the train on recoil. The e brackets w'ere normall made of more than one piece of timber (elm again). ccording to one authority it was thought that elm was Ie likel to plinter if hit b a round hot. French carriage and gun were painted and normall the calibre of the gun was painted on the ide of the carriage. in Briti h ervice the carriage al a required a ignificant amount of equipment to control and train it. The rigging con i ted of: on breeching rap , one breech u'op, one muzzle lashing, one eizing to eize the breeching rope, two running out tackle, one training tackle (thi latter was not meant to move the gun laterall but was meant to control it on recoil and run out, hence it was at the r ar of the gun), one train ling 0 that the gun could b hooked to it, on tampion and two port rope , one tie and one port tackle for the lid .

Range in yards

Velocity

38

Rocket launches as drawn in Congreve's book on his rocket system. The left hand boat Is about to fire while the rear one Is loading. (Museum of Naval Firepowerl

At thi time the French were not generally using bronze gun at sea. There were, however, e ception to the rule. In 17 060 brass lS-pOO were cast and a heavy 4 pdr d sign was in existence. The e last weapon were p cificall used to arm two hip. The Majesteu.x and the Ruyal Louise (later renamed Republicain, nk 1794) were both armed with bronze 4S-pOO on the lower deck and were intended to be llG-gun hip. It i not clear whether the 1 pdrs were de tined for either. There were al 0 attempts to emulate the carronade in French ervice. The canon obusierwas a notable early attempt to produce a hart weapon with a large bore and mall charge. It i Iikel that the French were experimenting ,vith imilar ideas to the Briti h but were never full able to come to the right combination, a that in their latter period the actualI adopted the carronade as a ea- ervice weapon in virtuall th ame format as the Briti h weapon.

109 219 438 656 875 1094 36-pdr 131b 3.70z 1,578 4ft 6.8In. 4ft 0.7in. 3ft5.8in. 2ft l1.4in. 2ft 6.4ln. 2ft 1.6in. 30-pdr 111b O.50z 1.591 4ft 1.9in. 3ft 10.1 in. 3ft3in. 2ft 8.6in. 2ft 3.6In. 2ft 24-pdr 81b 13.20z 1,610 3ft 10.4ln. 3ft 6.5In. 2ft 11.4in. 2ft 5.2in. 2ft 0.41n. 1ft 81n. 18-pdr 61b 9.90z 1,630 3ft 6.5in. 3ft 221n. 2ft 7.1 in. 2ft 1.2in. 1ft 8.41n. 1ft 4.8In. 12-pdr 41b 6.40z 1,640 2ft 10.9in.2ft 8.6in. 2ft 4.6In. 1ft 8in. 1ft 3.7in. 1ft 12in. * This table comes from the French Aide Mt3moire NavaJe and refers to expenments carried out after the Napoleonic Wars on oak targets. The power of powder changed very little in the first half of the 19th century and therefore the tab e presents an accurate estimate of the penetrating power of solid shot In the ear1ier period.

French ammunition

French guns were loaded with imilar ammunition to the Briti h weapon . Powder charge were made of parchment and can i ted of: 36-pdr gun 121b powder IS-pill gun 61b powder pdr gun 31b powder The e charge could be reduced depending on the type of action required or to ave on tore. Typicall there were 72 cartridge i ued per gun but anI a proportion of the e would be available at the gun for

39

for arming and fitting Spani h hip and their de ign and guns thereafter relied very heavily on French systems. Po ibly the rna t famous ve el of the Spani h avy during thi period was the Santissima Trinidad\ hich \vas one of the largest ve eI in the world, intended to mount 130 gun. he \vas built in Havana in 1769 but it was found that orne of her de ign facto forced her gun complement to be reduced. We know that when he was built she had: 32 x 36-pdr 33 x 24-pdrs 36 x 12-pdrs 1 x S-pdr 10 x 24-pdr howitzers (the e were actually omething like the French canon obu ier hown in Plate E) 6 x light wivel gun In all then he wa armed with 136 gun . with other nation the paniards favoured the 74-gun hip as the main hip-of-the-line but their ve els were often much more heavil gunned than their Blitish counterparts. The following list give the main almament of evera.l ve els:

afety purpo'e . In term of round hot, an allocation of 60 per gun was made but only ten were held near the gun, with the remainder held el ewhere on the hip. Other rounds included: 1tl round of grape hot and 10 rounds of bar hot. There were 120 wad per gun. Other more unusual anti-rigging round wer i ued as needed but were tared el ewhere in the hip. French drill and organisation

The gunner complement of a French 74 differed omewhat from that of a Briti h 74. There was a Master Gunner and, as would be expected, he \vas one of the rna t important men on the hip. The re t of the gunnery peciali ts were known as gunner' mate, econod. gunner' mate and quarter-gunner' mate. They were all drawn flt'om the Company of Bombardiers or the Compan of Appr ntice GUI1l'\el . Typicall a 74-gun hip would have three gunner' mat , three cond gunner' mate and 37 quarter gunners. The whole complement: would be reduced in peacetime. To become a gunner on a French hip one had to work one' way up from the apprentice level to the highe t levlel. Drill was carried out in a similar manner to th~ Briti h. An extremely rare and intere ring document has come to light c:oncerning gun dlill in the Revolutionary avy that detail the number and activitie of the gunners in 1795. Thi give the crew of a 36-pdr a!S one gun captain plu ordinary crewmen numbered from 1 to 7 in pairs making 15 men in all. It al 0 tate that an lS-pdr hould have a crew of: 11 men and an S-pdr 7 men, although it doe not pecify whether thoe e allocation erved both ide of the hip. There were 13 commands in the firing equen.ce: 1. Captain and crewman your gun . 2. Take out the tampion. a t off the tackle a.Jl1d breeching . 3. Run in. 4. Stop the touch hole. Sponge the gun and hcandle the cartridge. 5. Handle the rammer. 6. HandJe the cartridge. 7. Ram home the wad and cartridge. 8. Ram home wad and shot 9. Ram home. 10. Run out the gun. 11. Prick the cartridge, prime. 12. Point the gun. 13. Take your match, arm your locks. Thi drill was taken from the Ecole de Vaisseux neplinted at a tende. 0

au

40

ERY IN THE SPA

NAVY

During the reign of Charle III (1759-88) the Sp41ni h avy was heavily developed in a more cientific manner than before.. More hip were built than under the previous King Ferdinand VI andl Charle III thus laid the foundation for the pani h avy that would filght in the apoleonic Wars. At first, under Director de Can trucci6n
The method of supplying

The most famous ship of the Spanish Navy, the Santisslma

cartridges to the gun decks of a French first-rate ship. The cartridge boxes were returned

over 130 guns she was the largest salling ship of her time.

to the orlop deck by dropping

This huge vessel was not

them down the chute as

without her problems and was structurally altered several times

Indicated here. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

Trinidad. As a four-decker of

to make her more stable. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

Ship Number of guns Santo Domingo 68 Santana 112 San Felipe 112 San Jose 112 san IIdefonso 74 Conde RegIa 112 Mexicano 112 Real Carlos 112 San Juan Nepomuceno 74 "As transcribed from Ruiz and Juanola

Where constructed EI Ferrol EI Ferrol EI Ferrol EI Ferrol

Cartagena Havana Havana Havana Guarnizo

Date

1784 1784 1784 1784 1785 1786 1786 1787 1766

There were at least even pani h hip with. over no gun in the 17 0 . Mo t of the guns made for the panish avy \ ere cast in eville and there were three great torehou e for them in EI Fen:ol, Cartagena and in La Carraca. In the Americas Havana was the great Spani h naval base. Spani h naval cannon were mainly of cast iron but many more bronze gun were available to hip than in other European navie . The quality \vas variable and ometime hip had orne of their gun removed to arm gar11. on. One of the newer naval de ign that came about in the 1750 was the ebec, or jabeque in pani h, and many of the elate nligged craft were in ervice in th apoleonic period, typically anned with 24 gun . Spani h gun were mounted on a double bracket carriage not dissimilar to the British type but with orne de ign differences. The trucks were lightly mailer and each caniage was made up of two brackets or ch eks on a base plate. The plate was olid, unlike in British carriage, and iron bands bound the axletree to iL The e were led around the lower part of the front axletree and fitted to the outer ide of each bracket. Each cheek \vas pinned to the base with two large bolts that passed from top to bottom and

41

at the rear through the rear axle. There was a tran er e bolt going through the two cheeks which it i assumed the tool bed re ted upon. It i believed that th gun was restrain d on recoil by passing th br eching rope through the two cheeks b mean of a hole in each. The guns themsel e were not provided with a breeching loop - it eem that only the Briti h avy followed thi practice. Tool and quipment wer very imilar to tho e u d in the Royal Javy and we need not dwell on them here. On panish hip the following dimen ion were given for each gun: Projectile weight Gunport size

Size of gun position and area of manoeuvre

42-pdr 36-pdr 24-pdr 18-pdr 12-pdr 9-pdr 6-pdr 3-pdr

2.31m 228m 2.oSm 1.88--2m 2.oSm 2.5-2.1 Om 2.05-2.1 Om 2.05-2.1 Om

1.o66m 1.o41m a.99m a.769m a.8Sm a.68m a.68m a.68m

CONCLUSION The imilarity in British, French and panish naval gun and gunnery i remarkable. Their gun crew numbers were very imilar, as were their gun size and allocation of the number of guns aboard hip. 0 what was it that allowed the British to dominate their European contemporarie at ea? The an wer must lie in the way the crews handled their gun and the advantages that new inv ntions gave in rapidity of fire on Briti h hip. The e two factor , tied to the Royal avy' tactical doctrine, led the Blitish avy to become 0 powerful. Compared with American crew in ingle-ship actions in the War of 1812, it was clear that imilarl motivated crews could inflict defeats on the British. Tho e countrie that were defeated b Blitain had the added incentive to develop new method and technology to counter Britain' naval power. Hence the French were first to demonstrate the use of the hell gun, as advocated by Paixhan in 1822, and the fIrSt to introduce an ironclad, team-powered warship in the guise of the Gloire as propo ed by apoleon III in 1854.

GLOSSARY

42

Apron. of lead - Lead cover to prevent damp entering the vent. Thi was often placed over the fid. Breeching rope - large diameter rope u ed to control the recoil of the gun by passing it through the breeching loop or tying it around the cascable button of the gun. The rope was ecured to the hip' ide by iron loop . Ed or vent plug - A small piece of twine or even a wooden peg placed in the vent when not in u e. Flexible rammer the rammer, but the taff was turdy rope. Thi meant that the rammer could be bent to the muzzle of the gun and rammed from the ide without having to run in the gun full .

Handspike tout bar used to lever the gun carriage or balTel into po ition. Lynch pin - Iron pin that pa ed through the axl tree and ecured the truck on the axle. Priming iron - Tool for clearing the ent and piercing the cartridge case. Thi wa normally a non-ferrous metal pik . Quoin - Wedge of wood plac d under the breech of a gun to elevate and depres it. Quarter-Gunner - An as i tant to the gunner who maintained the gun and filled powder charge tc. There was one quarter gunner to every gun. Rammer - A long taffwith a cylindrical wooden head usually Lightly maIler than the bore, u ed to ram home the powder charge, wad and shot. Seizing - A mall rope u ed to tie two line, or par together. Side tackles - Rope and pulley that were attached to the ide of the ship and th.e ide loop of the gun carriage which were used to traver e the gun. Sponge taffwith a large heep kin head u ed for damping down burning ember and cleaning the gun barrel. Stool b d - The flat wooden plate upon which the quoin and therefore the breech of the gun re ted. Truck - The name u ed for the mall wheel fitted to a sea-service gun carriage. Worm or wadhook - A tool u ed to cour the in ide of the barrel to remove burning embers or blockage . It con i ted of a wooden taff with a piral iron hook on its end.

B BLIOGRAPHY Boudriot,j., & Barti H., Artillerie de Mer, Edition An cre, 1998. Boudriot,j., The 74 gun ship, Boudriot publications. Caruana A., The History ofEnglish Sea Ordnance 1523-1875 Volume 2, Boudriot Publication, 1995. Douglas, H., 1 aval Gunnery, fourth edition, 1855. Gomez Ruiz & Alon 0 Juanola, El Ejercito do los Borbones: Fernando VI y Carlos JIl, HMME,1991. Jame " ., The aval History ofOmat Britain, Richard Bentley, London, 1859 apier, GerardJohn, otebook at HMS Excellent, Instructions for the service of the great guns on board his majesty's ships, Royal aval Museum chive document, 1839. Rivers, William, Gunnery notebook c. 1793-1812, Royal aval Museum M 1998/ 1/1. Archive document Tun tall, 8., aval Warfare in the age ofthe sail, Conway aritime Pre ,1990 Captain's instmctions for the hip Sybille, Royal aval Mu eum Archive document, 181 . HMS Vu:tory Book of Ordnance, Royal aval Mu eum Archive document, 1792-93. Falconer' Marine Dictionary, 1780 Instmctions for the exercise of the great guns Royal aval Mu eum chive document 134/566.9.3, 1818

43

COLOUR PLATE COM

44

TARY

A: CARRONAOE MOUNTING The slide mounting was a move away from the independent ship's gun mounted on a truck carriage. The slide mount was part of the ship's furniture and could not be removed for other purposes as it was fixed to the side of the ship. The many images in existence of the carronade mounting show slight variations in the way in which it was traversed or fixed to the ship. A 1: Two examples of carronades on slide mounts The upper image shows a slide carriage that has been fixed to a pintle outside the ship's side and the lower image shows an alternative mounting with the gun on a truck carriage. The front of the carriage is again attached to a pintle or ring bolt and it would appear that the trucks were intended to move the carronade when it was not attached to the ship's side. A2: Early pattern carronade This form of carronade with trunnions was in existence from the late 18th century but was often referred to as a howitzer. The weapon is monuted on a slide that extends outside the gun port and therefore reduces the chance of setting fire to the fittings of the ship on firings. Because of the short length of the carronade barrel this was one of the biggest complaints that captains had concerning carronades. A3: 68-pdr carronade. 1805 pattern The 58-pdr was the heaviest carronade in service and required a shot of 8in. in diameter. It was used at sea for a time but was soon relegated to coastal defence work due to difficulties with its recoil and handling the weight of shot. It is interesting to note that the carronade was cast with a dispart sight whereas long guns were not.

The real cost of warfare at sea. A Spanish single-decker with a British frigate in tow as a prize. Note that the British ship's mizzen mast has been shot away and the mainmast Is damaged. War at sea was more full of Incidents such as this than sinkings and it was often the case that the vessel would be repaired and employed In the victor's navy. (Museum of Naval Firepower, Gosport) A4: Congreve's gun This shows the remarkable similarity between the carronade and Congreve's design, sometimes known as a gunnade. His invention was adopted by the Royal Navy but proved rather less effective than Congreve had led the Admiralty to believe. As with carronades the recoil was much fiercer than for a normal smooth-bore gun so that by 1830 Congreve's guns had been removed from service. AS: The Gover gun Gover's design was short and light and while it adapted well for secondary armament it was severely disadvantaged in some respects. The gun could not withstand being doubleshotted. It also had violent recoil at full charge of 61b of powder and was often fired at a reduced charge of 41b. A6: 24-pdr carronade This is the classic configuration of the sea-service carronade that continued in use until the 18505. One of the key design features was the inclusion of a mounting loop beneath the chase. It was intended to allow the carronade to be pushed further out of the gun port since the barrel of a carronade was much shorter. Unfortunately it had the added effect of causing the carronade to recoil violently even though it was fixed at the elevating screw.

B: THE CONGREVE ROCKET SYSTEM AT SEA The sea-service rocket frame was the same unit as used for land service and was usually fitted to ships' boats. The use of rockets on the decks of ships has been recorded although this practice was not favoured due to the high risk of fire caused by the rockets. The launch frame was suspended from the mast by a halyard by which it was raised and lowered to provide elevation. In all but the very calmest weather the frame was lowered to enable the rockets to be placed in the chambers. The rockets were carried and prepared in another boat, known as the tender, which withdrew when the rockets were fired. B1: 32-pdr carcass rocket c. 1813 This is a sectioned version of the rocket showing the warhead and rocket motors. B2: 12-pdr shell rocket This rocket had an explosive common shell attached to the end of the rocket. B3: 12-pdr case rocket This is essentially a grape shot version of the rocket that expelled a charge of shot on explosion. C: LIGHT GUNS C1: The French 1786 pattern swivel gun This was one of the few smaller bore weapons in the French Navy to be designed on a specific standard pattern. C2: The English Blunderbuss or Musketoon C3: The Espingo/e The espingo/e was completely cast from bronze and included a tiller in the design. The yoke was made of iron as was the pintle and a firing lock was fixed to the body by screws. This simple construction made its manufacture simple and thousands were made for French ships. C4: Bronze swivel gun This illustration is based on an example In the Royal Armouries collection. Note the supporting bar leading off from the underside of the yoke. C5: A small cast iron swivel gun The weight of such small weapons was rarely greater than 1cwt. C6: Another example of a bronze swivel gun These guns were extremely common and were often made by specialist manufacturers such as Richard Gilpin of

Southwark; most of the weapons produced by him were of small calibre such as this example. C7: An orgue or multi-barrelled gun in the Musee de la Marine in Paris It is dated about 1800 and is a very simple design. The tiller has been formed into a ring and each barrel would have been fired at the same time as the lock is centred above a central firing pan. 01: 32-POR ON THE LOWER GUN DECK The 32-pdr was the heaviest gun on most British ships-ofthe-line. There was a 42-pdr gun in existence but it was very rare. This example is seen here with part of the crew readying for fire. The gun is a Blomefield pattem weapon with a flintlock firing mechanism. Blomefield's refinements fed to a gun that was well balanced, had a less violent recoil and was unlikely to burst. It became the most popular gun in the Royal Navy. At 55.5cwt or nearly three tons, the gun could be a great danger if its carriage broke loose as was sometimes the case in battle, hence the massive breeching rope to keep it in check. A complex system of rope and training tackles was used to hold the gun inboard, train it and lash it to the hull in stormy seas. The gun and crew were worked in very cramped circumstances and if the crew were hit by opposing fire the effect could be devastating. One contemporary account states, 'A man called Aldrich had one of his hands cut off by a shot and almost at the same moment he received another shot which tore open his bowels in a terrible manner. As he fell two or three men caught him in their arms, and as he could not live threw him overboard.' One of the keys to the superior gunnery usually exhibited by the Royal Navy was the speed with which the gun could be reloaded. It was thought that a very well trained crew could reload in just over one minute, given the right circumstances. Clearty this rate of fire could not be kept up for long periods of time but the ability to fire so quickly had a devastating effect at close range and victory was often a case of superior morale and training over technology. 02: FRENCH 36-POR IN ACTION The French weapon described as a 36-pdr was considered equivalent to the British 32-pdr because French pounds were not equal to British ones. This gun weighed lOowt and had a length of 9ft 8in. In comparison with British ships the crews were well trained and were normally part of a unit of trained gunners who were part of the Compagnie des Bombardiers. First-hand accounts of the French in a.ction seem to suggest that they were every bit as capable as the British in handling their guns but their rate of fire was slower. The gun carriage itself was designed so that each feature was beneficial to the gun's handling. The carriage was low to keep the centre of gravity low and the cheeks were bound in iron at each side to prevent them from splitting under the strain of firing. The cascable of the gun sat direetly over the point of traverse to make the gun easy to move. When Wads and wad fo""e~ for the 12-pdr and 32-pdr gun. The wad was made from oakum and bound wfth twine. It was then forced into shape by pushIng it into a wooden block as shown here. During firing there would no"" ltv be a wad inserted between the charge bag and the shot and one In front of the shot. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

45

traversing it is thought that hand spikes were placed on small blocks of wood to give extra leverage. E: FRENCH AND SPANISH WEAPONS E1: French canon obusier This weapon was sometimes called a sea howitzer; a chambered weapon similar to the British carronade, but not as popular in service. It was introduced in 1787 but was found to be wanting. Hence the French eventually copied the British weapon and fitted it to their ships. This drawing is based on the 36-pdr example in the Musee de la Marine in Paris. E2: A Spanish 24-pdr naval gun and equipment Spanish guns were made in bronze and iron and the 36-pdr (Spanish pounds) was a huge gun. The carriage design was low and squat but lacked some of the refinements of the British designs. Much depended on the height of the gunport which was often non-standard. This plate has been drawn without the stool bed and breech support shown to illustrate the box-like structure of the gun carriage.

46

F: SMALL ARMS This plate shows principal naval small arms of both the French and British Navies. They are as follows: F1: French sea-service musket Its length overall was 66.5in. F2: French sling sea-service musket F3: French sea-service pistol F4: French sea-service blunderbuss All fittings Viere brass, as was the barrel. The overall length was 30.75in. F5: British black sea-service musket, c. 1805 F6: British sea-service pistol It is often forgotten that one of the greatest assets of a ship in close-quarter combat was its allocation of the small arms. At close range they could present a withering fire to anyone on the enemy deck. Muskets were used from every vantage point on the ship so that no member of an attacking crew was protected unless behind a solid piece of timber. F7: British naval volley gun by Henry Nock The Nock volley gun has been Immortalised in many books but it was as a naval weapon that the weapon was to have an effective life.

Guns were often removed from ships to stiffen a garrison or ann a strongpoint. Here a gun barrel from HMS Centaur is being hoisted up the Diamond Rock in 1804. (National Maritime Museum)

G: NAVAL AMMUNITION Although solid round shot was the commonest form of projectile, this plate shows details of the more unusual naval projectiles. Grape shot was also very common, therefore due to the nature of the plate it has not been illustrated here. The majority of the weapons below were meant to disable the rigging and masts of an enemy ship. G1: Link shot Many types of linked shot were available to the naval gunner and this example is little more than a weighted chain. G2: Chain shot was a common form of dismasting ammunition. Once fired it was common for the two spheres to fly outward causing the shot to spin one around the other. G3 and 4: Linked bar shot. These could be similar to a dumbbell in shape but were also formed by two hemispheres connected by a wrought iron bar of square section. They varied according to the size of gun firing them. G5: Manby's life saving shot. This was an unusual design of ammunition used to fire a lifeline to a ship in distress. It was first used in 1808 to rescue crew from the brig Elizabeth. The hooks on the bottom of the projectile were intended to catch on the wood of the stricken ship. G6: Shown here is another version of the expanding shot, which was loaded as a complete sphere in the gun but expanded on leaving the muzzle. G7: Knife-bladed shot, such as that shown here, acted on the principle that when the arms expanded during flight they would damage rigging and masts. G8: This image shows the typical cartridge canier with charge and wad inserted. G9: Shown here is the internal bore of a smooth-bore gun with a wad on either side of the shot and a vent pricker in place in the vent showing how the bag was pierced.

ABOVE A 24-pcIr gun truck also recovered from the wreck of HMS Invincible. The edge of the wheel Is marited with the size of the carriage and an H Indicating It was for the hind pair of tnlcks. The adze marits can stili be seen on the external edge. (Author's collection, courtesy of J. Blngeman)

A close-up vlew of the vent on the same gun and the weight Inscription above It in hundredweight, quarters nd pounds. (Museum of Naval Firepower) BElOW An early pattern Armstrong Frederick gun, In this case a 12-pcIr. The tnlnnion on this weapon Is marked with the letter B Indicating that It was cast by Willi m Benge. The carriages are reproductions. (Museum of Naval Firepower)

47

INDEX

Figures in bold refer 10 illustrations aiming 7,13-14, 15-16, 17 ammunition 5, 34-7, 35, 46, G carronades 12-13 French 39-40 "lVe! guns 23 aprons of lead 14, 20, 42 anti-personnel hot 35 anti-rigging hot 35 Bailey Pegg (compan ) 12 baT hot 35, 35, 46, G5 Bligh, CapL William 13 Blomelield, ThOm,lS 6 Boulogne, British attack on (1805) 37--.'1 bowchasero breeching ropes 42, Dl Broke, CapL Philip 16 budge barrels 23 canister shot 35 canon obusin 46, El carcasses 35 Carron Company and Ironworks 7, 12 carronades 3,4,7,12-14,12 drill 17-18 French emulations 39 mounting and lid 13, 14, 15, 16,33,44, A wedish use of 33 tacti 22 cartridges 36-7, 39, 40 Caruana, A. 5, 15 Cmtaur, HMS 46 chain hot 35, G2, G7 hapman, Frederick Henrik 33 CMsapeak, U 16 Congre'-e, W·tlliam,Jr 37,38,45 CongrC\-e, William, r 14-15,23,34,44 Denmark, action against British 23-4 Desaguliers, Gen. 37 Douglas, Adm. lr Charles 20 Douglas, Gen. ir Howard 20--1,22,35 drill and organisation 1&-19,40,01, D2 elevating screl\ 13-14 equipment SI% tool Erebus 38 tspi:ngrJks 23, 24, 45, C3 E.xallm~ HMS 1 ,34-5

48

lids 20,42 firing 15-16 French drill 40 mechanisms 20,21 musketoon 34 _aIsoaiming flints 33 France gtul and gunnery 23,24,38-40,42,45--6, C, D2,El mall arms 33-4, 46, FI-4

tacti

3

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Gascoigne, ir Charle 12 Gautier, Fran(ois 4~1 GlaUan 13 Galaga 38 Gover,John 14,15,44 grape hot 35 gun carriages British 9--11,9, 10, 11, 16 French 39, 45--6, D2 gun ere'. and officers 1&-19,19.40, Dl. D2 gunboats 24-33 gunlocks 20,21 gunners 1S-19, 40. 43 gunpowder 20, 35--6, 39

guns 18-pdrs 11 32-pdrs 6, 11, 34, 45, D1 Ammrong Frederick 47 Blomefield pattern &-7,6, • 11.45, Dl Congreve' 14-15,34,44, A effectiveness 4 Gover's 15, 44, A housing 11 materials 6 mounting 13-15. 22, 41-2, 44, A painting S-9 placement on board 5 running in and OUt 1~11 mall bore 22-3, 45, C smooth-bore muzzle-loading 3-5 types used in various hip cI 6 _ also France. guns and gunnery. pain, gunnery

45, C7

Pamon~,

HMS. gunnery reuieved from 3,5, 14, 33 powder ho !l6 Priddy' Hard !l6 priming iron 19--20, 43 Pri"a Georgt 34-5 quoin

10, 10,43

rammers 19,42,43 range-finding 22 ranges ,12, 21-2 ricochet fire 21 Rivers. William, notebook of 9,9. 13, 19,35, 36, 36 rockets 37-8,37,38.45,8 round hot 34-5 Royal LauiM (formerly &publU4in) 39

hand grenades 5 handspikes 19, 43 howilZers 23-4, 33

Samuel Walker (company) 7 Santissima Trinidad 41,41 Slwnnon, HMS 16 shot 34-5, 36, 40, 46, G penetration _ abo ammttllition hrapneJ hell 36 side tackles 10, 43 ights 16 small ann 33-4, 46, F pain gunnery ~2, 46, E2 hips 44,44 pong 19,43 tar hot 35, 46, G4 tool beds 10.43 weden. gunnery 24-33 swivel guns 5, ,22-3, 23, 24, 45, C Sybilk, H 1

lnumstant 9

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Invi"dbIL, HM

20, 33

3,

2~2,

21

ThuruUrtr 24

TicJUer 24 James, W. 23-4 Juan,Jorge 40 .&Il~

Tigres.s 24 tools 19--20, DI, D2 training 17,1 ,19 lrocks 9,43. 47 TurlJldmt 24

HMS 15

leather buckets 20 link hot 46, Gl loading 12-13, 17, 45 Low Moor lronwor 7 lynch pins 43

"em covers 20, 42 Vu:tary, HM 7 gunner's notebook 9,9, 13, 19,35,36,36 wadhooks 19,43 "ads and wadforme windage 12 woml 19,43

maintenance S-9 Majts/cJx 39 Manb 's life saving shot 46, G3 Melvill, Lt-{;en. Roben 12 musketoons 33, 34, 45, C2 muskets 33-4

aval Gumury (Douglas)

2~1,

xebecs 41

22.35

Yeo, irJame 22 yokes 5

45

The design, development. operation and history of the machinery of warfare through the ages

ava

apo eonie rmament 792- 815

There were many elemen to Briti h apoleonic naval succes but one of the key factor was

.

Full colour artwork

Unrivalled detail

Cutaway artwork

Photographs

OSPREY

gunnery. Other countries deveJoped different naval weapons to fit their maritime strategies. The French and Spanish systems deveJoped on similar lin ,while tho e of the Baltic navies tended to rely on smaller craft and weapons. Holland, during this period, was part of the Fren h sphere of influence and this had an effect on the development of it naval weapons. This title describes the systems of all thee countries as well as the fledgling navy of America, who e gunnery skills embarrassed the Royal avy at the height of their dominance.

ISBN 1-84176-635-6

PUBLISHING

www.ospreypublihing.com

1IIII111

I

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