Cannons

[Fjvmdjjcm]

Recently, I've been reading a book (How few remain) about the civil war and an alternate history in which the Confederacy won. In it it talks about artillery fouling (whatever that means) and braking down. I started thinking in the age of sail did ships have problems with cannons? How did they repair cannons? What problems occurred?

Can anyone answer?

[Sir Trafalgar]

Originally Posted by Mousebot1 Recently, I've been reading a book (How few remain) about the civil war and an alternate history in which the Confederacy won. In it it talks about artillery fouling (whatever that means) and braking down. I started thinking in the age of sail did ships have problems with cannons? How did they repair cannons? What problems occurred? Can anyone answer?

Fouling is the process where the reminants of powder are left in the barrel. Think of an artery high closestral causes it to get blocked up with stuff in the blood. Every time you fire a cannon soot remains on the inside if you didnt have proper cleaning of your cannons, or guns as they are more commanly referred to on ships, they would foul up. If you let the gun slightly fouled up the accuracy and range of the cannon might be effected. However if you negelcted the gun you could see it exploding on you. The ship's guns in those days were pretty simple compared to the ones used in the civil war. Ship's guns in the 1720s were usually made of either brass or the much cheaper iron. They were mounted on a wooden carrage and had a system of pullys to "run out the guns". They had simple match fireing systems, unlike the flint lock systems of the civil war. The guns of the 1720s were also mussle loading smooth bore cannons. That ment they had to be pulled in all the way so the mussle of the gun was in the ship, then it was swabed to prevent fouling. They next loaded the powder and shot. They then would run the gun out and fix the fuse. The cannon could then be fired by a match. A match is a slow burning rope that was affixed to a long stick. They would put the match to the fuse and ignite the carge sending the shot out of the gun. Its a lil more complicated than that but as you can see there is a lot of places things could go wrong. In the heat of battle they could miss a step and forget to load the shot, swab the gun etc usually not something that would make the cannon unusable for the next round it would fire. Pullies and ropes could break or be shot away making it harder to run the gun out. The powder could be wet or the fuses making the guns nearly impossible to fire. The match could burn out causing fire to slow down. They could be nocked off thier carrage and rendered unusable for the rest of the battle (probably what happens when you loose a gun) this was known as un seating a cannon. The most comman things that happen to guns were not really detrimental, unless it was a problem in manufacturing where the guns strength wasnt as strong as the designers inteded it to be and the gun would explode.

The confedrate land forces were using mostly the napoleon 12lbs, it was a big gun had a decent range and in the right hands could be very accurate. Though it was really outdated by the time of the civil war, since it had been desigened during the Napolionic era. It had a flint mechinism to fire the gun but it was still a smooth bore cannon. The Union troops used these as well but they had easier access to the more advanced artillery like the Parrot gun. It fired a 6lb shot but it could easily outrange most Confedrate artillery pieces and was very accurate even in the hands of a novice since it had built in range calculators in its sights ie a metal bar that you moved up and down that so it could tell you its range. It s lighter wieght gave it a much much faster reload time and it had a rifled barrel. Of course other artillery pices were used by both sides in the war and the land cannons were diffrent than the ones at sea, where breach loading was becoming comman place.

[Michael O'Dwyer]

I am sure there are some CW reenactors that can give you a better explanation but here goes.

Fouling is a general term for the bore of the gun, canon, musket becoming filled with partly burned powder, partly burned wadding, etc and the crew not being able to force another ball and charge down the barrel. For a rifle or musket it normally requires a good cleaning, which is something you don't want to do in a battle. With a cannon I am not sure but the same thing would sound logical to me.

Also the firing mechanize can break. In later period cannons at sea they use the same type of flint and lock that muskets used. In earlier years they had a small tough hole that they would charge with powder and ignite with a slow match. If the hole got clogged it might prevent firing.

Canons where poorly made and the metal, which was poor quality could become fatigued, it might crack, expand, explode.

The cannon barrels are loaded on a truck (I dont' think that's the correct term). the trucks are made of wood as are the wheels. Any cannon ball that hit them is going to take that gun out of commission until it can be repaired.

The guns are run out on tackle attached to the inner wall of the hull, if this tackle is damaged the crew may not be able to run the gun out.

Any gun damged is probably going to be left alone and the crew moved to working guns, to make up any loses in other places. Since the guns can weigh several thousand pounds it's unlikely that anything other than the tackle would be fixed during a battle.

EDIT: See that's what happens when you try to post and avoid NPC Aggro!

[ppitm]

The worst thing that can happen to a gun on a ship is the breeching and tackle being shot loose. The entire wheeled gun can then go rolling and trundling across a crowded, heaving deck like a juggernaut. Unless the crew manage to trip it up and knock it over the gun will crush everything in its path, or even smash through the side of a ship on an unlucky roll.

[Nebless Clen]

You're correct Michael; Naval guns are mounted on trucks and land artillery is on carriages.

While swabbing out a cannon did help some with cleaning the unburnt powder, it was mainly for dousing any still burning powder, wadding etc.... prior to putting the next powder charge in.

Just so you wouldn't get a flare up or explosion the gun captain would place his thumb over the touch hole right before the swabber did his thing. Overwise you would create a plunger effect of air being forced over the hot bits and BOOM!

How much unburnt powder remained in the barrel was a factor of the quality of the powder. Use really cheap stuff and not all of it would explode. Generally unless the fight went on a very long time fouling wasn't a big factor and you could keep up your reload and shooting times. Any loss of accuracy was offset by the short ranges of broadside actions.

Afterwards you could use warm, sudsy water or ammonia to really clean out the barrels.

If you read in your CW book about soldiers going to the back ranks or behind the ranks while in battle to clean their rifle barrels, what it really means is they fall back and then pee (ammonia product) down the barrel, cap it and shake, pour it out and then fall back into the firing line.

This is something Custer's troopers had to do during the Battle for the Little Big Horn and was one of (many) factors that caused the outcome to be what it was. His troopers had a very big problem with fouling (poor powder in the cartridges and I think the weapons design too) and the lines would fragment too much as they had to stop shooting to clear their pieces.

[MM2ss]

A few points if I may folks. As a civil war reenactor that has acted the part of cannoner of a few occassions, for everything from 4 pound coehords to a three shot live fire of a 32 pounder at Fort Gaines in Mobile, civil war cannons did not use the flint lock firing system, that would be more in line with the British navy system, from a little bit earlier, which was the first improvement of the the slow match firing method, though a match was always kept at hand should the flint fail to do its' duty.

The civil war period saw the use of the friction primed cannon, as did the Mexican American war.

The methods of cannon firing went as follows, first the brazier and hot poker method, the slow match(linstock for you history buffs), the flintlock method, percussion and friction primed. Admitedly, some of these methods were in use at the same time during some periods.

As for the tackled being shot away or the cannon breaking free, that is where the term "loose cannon" came from, it was one of the worst things that could happen to a ship, other than the mortal enemies of fire and flooding.

The purpose of the wet or greased sponge rammer, was as previously mentioned, to extinguis any burning embers from the flanned powder bags in common use at sea, as ladeled powder was discarded fairly early on in ship combat, being wastefull, time consuming, and dangerous. Also, the sponge was always used in conjunction with a thumb stop, a leather or heavey cloth thumb pad to cover the vent of the gun, preventing a possible shower of hot embers blowing out the vent hole into the gunners face, or igniting and unburned powder near the vent.

Now on fouling. Some light fouling was actually desirable, as it reduced the windage, that being the differance between the diameter of the bore and the ball, which would give better accuracy and velocity, due to less blow by of gas from the burning powder, however, too much fouling made a gun(or musket or rifle for that matter) much harder to reload, which is why some armies issued two sized of ball for muskets. Also, sand in the bore, or extreme fouling, with a round forced home, then fired, could and did sometimes explode a cannon.

Gun problems from back in the day, they are many and varied, consider the old Tudor "bar guns", a breach loading cannon, made of iron bars, sweated together into a tube, with an iron breach plug and wooden wedge to seal it up, they often leaked flames and gas from the breach and the seems in the barrel, also, they were prone to blow up. Cast iron guns were also common, as were flaws in them, USN Capt Dahlgren made a design, one particularly large version burst after three rounds, nearly killing the Secretary of the Navy...such incidents were not uncommon. Then there were problems that came from use, mainly the issue of "scooping", where on brass/bronze guns the iron ball would gradually wear a "seat" or dished out section into the rear of the bore, resulting in greater windage and a loss of range, accuracy, and efficientcy, the most common solutions? They would either melt down and recast the gun, which was expensive, or they would boare them up into a larger size, but with thinner walls, again contributing to burst barrels and the associated casualties.

Lastly, cannon mounts.
There were many, some used on land, others at sea, and some on both. There were Barbettes, bassically a pivot point for a large gun, used in the latter part of the age of sail some, but more so in the age of steam, and also used in forts, sled mounts, used in both as well, your naval carriage or trucks, siege mounts, field carriages, and the Naval howitzer carriage, which was intended for use by landing forces from the ships crew, instead of a truck or a field mount, it looked like a field mount with a wheel on the trail of the gun, but the wheels could be dropped off and it was able to be rigged into a sled for use on a ships boat.

I do believe this covers most of the common bits and pieces, and should be mostly correct, but let me know if any of it is wrong, it is late and I've been pulling 12 hour shifts, so the brain isn't fully engaged.