The Great Gun

Of the 14th century

This Naval history continues on from: "king's Knights 1350"

The Guns arrival on board ship was its ultimate destiny it revolutionized both the Ship and all Sea-Warfare.

It quickly became the most important sea-weapon that there had ever been. From the middle of the sixteenth century, and for the next three-hundred years, it was the chief weapon of sea-warfare, through its supremacy.

As soon as man had discovered the ingredients, when mixed, gave the explosive which we know as gunpowder, it was inevitable he would create machines which could use it as a propellent for missile weapons.

Man then wanted his ship and his weapon to go as fast, and as far, as possible. In both cases he could use Nature to help him-the wind for the ship and gravity for the missile. But Nature will not always help; her breezes sometimes blow in the wrong direction, and gravity always acts downwards.

Man however, is clever enough, in both cases, to invent a mechanical apparatus to do his work for him; and to do it better than he can do it, by using his own strength. In one case he harnesses steam; in the other he hits upon the correct mixture of natural products and makes gunpowder.

But in both cases he has done a great deal of prelimary work first, and displayed the utmost ingenuity before he makes his grand discoveries. Long before he discovers steam he can take his ship to sea, and he has learnt to throw things, heavy things, much further than his own unaided muscles allow.

One method was the centuries old sling, another was the securing of tension of a whippy object, with the release of that tension resulting in velocity, like spring traps of various kinds, or bows with arrows.

These principles gave him effective man-killing weapons long before gunpowder's appearance. They had been developed to give him the means to batter down walls. The great stone-throwers were also many centuries old.

So it is more accurate not to regard the gunpowder-propelled weapons as new weapons; but as old weapons launched by a new propellent force. "Artillery" meant ballistas and tre'buchets before it meant guns; one deviation of of "cannon" is "canna" a reed, a tube for blowing forth the Greek Fire; the word "gun" may be a shortened form of "mangonel."

Some of the biggest guns we know about, are the great siege-pieces, with which the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, and the great Dardanelles gun, now in the Tower of London.

King's Knights 1350

The gun-maker

It is often assumed that all early guns were muzzle-loaders; but this is not so. They were nearly all breech-loaders, and all built up guns were such. In fact, the gun-maker had not yet made up his mind whether it was a breech or a muzzle part of the gun that he was making.

In the end it was decided that the open-ended cylinder was going to be the barrel, and the breech was to be a new piece altogether. When this was built, it was blocked up at one end and tapered at the other. In loading, the ball, a small stone at first and eventually iron, was put into the barrel and the powder into the breech-block, which was known as the "chamber."

Originally, the gun was probably laid in a deep groove cut in a piece of heavy timber. When all was ready, the gunner applied to the fine powder in the touch-hole with a light on the end of a long stick-a very long stick if he were a wise man.

And then the fun began. Man must have discovered very soon, from hard experience, that the natural habit of all explosive gases is to find the easiest way out, and if the gun was secure enough, all would be well?

The gunner might expect that the explosion and the shot would emerge through the muzzle. And even if it did there was still the recoil to take into account. When unable to react in rearward direction, it could only operate upwards.

The early guns were not very efficient man-killers, they had not the range or penetrating power of the long-bow; nor could they compete with the accuracy of the aim.

There is plenty of historical evidence of the effectiveness of the long-bow. It was especially formidable in the hands of the English peasantry, whom generations of practice had made them into magnificent bowmen. It was claimed they could hit a knight at 200 yards' range.

There would appear plenty of justification that the early ship-gun was not the greatest man-killer. But in the end it won, for man is a persistant creature, and he quickly improved his weapon. And a far handier weapon resulted.

By the end of the fifteenth century, he had learnt to mount his gun much more effectively. The result was a swivel gun which could be very effectively aimed by turning the gun on a swivel with a handle.

The problem was, breech-loaders could not be made to fire fast enough, or, if so made, could not be relied upon to destroy the right people. The big breech-loaders were scrapped; while the small breech-loders continued for some time; and never quite died out.

The "Cast" Gun

The gun-founders soon discovered that the powder must not be allowed to explode in the breech, or its feeble force would be dissipated through lack of pressure around it. So they cast their bell shaped pices with a funnel at the base, of very small diameter compared with that of the bell itself.

This funnel was called the chamber, and at first its diameter was not more than a quarter of the bell's. The characteristics of this type of weapon is the "Mortar" and it was always a muzzle-loader. This particular form of weapon was named after the chemists mortar.

But the art of casting had gone much further than this before 1500, especially in the eastern Mediterranean. The Turks were trying hard to cast breech-loaders, and they were, very nearly successful.

To Englishmen, the best known peice of this type is the famous Dardanelles Gun in the Tower of London. It is dated 1464, it weighs nearly 18.5 tons, is 17 feet long overall, and its barrel has a bore of 25 inches! But, the problem of moving it was actually greater than making it so it was cast on site ready to be used.

It was made of brass, which in those days was held in a more higher esteem than iron. But the great gun failed in her slowness of fire. At the turn of the fifteenth century the gun-founders of Western Europe had hit upon a more serviceable weapon than the wrought-iron breech-loaders.

It was the heavy-muzzle loaders, cast throughout in one piece, complete with trunions and cascabels, of very thick metal at the breech end, and tapering to a lesser thickness near the muzzle. This meant that the danger of the explosion coming out any way but through the muzzle was all but eliminated.

Of course, a badly cast gun might burst, but there could now be no fear of the chamber flying out into the gunner's face, because in this sense there was no chamber. The loss of the breech-loading principle was in theory, a disadvantage, but in every other way the new sort was a great improvement on the built-up gun. its construction much stronger and its life much longer.

The "Perier" a stone-thrower

Though several reasons made it undesirable to mount grotesquely large cast guns in ships, they could not be big enough to throw shots of a definitely ship-killing nature. Save for a few "freaks," the biggest balls thrown from ship-mounted guns weighed about 60lb, but, after years of experience, a shot of about half that size was found to be the best.

The earliest guns of this type were, still "chambered," in the sense that the mortar was chambered; having, the inner end of the bore, where the powder was, of smaller circumference than the barrel's bore; but the difference between the bores of chamber and barrel was nothing like it had been.

So as long as it remained "chambered," the piece was probably used exclusively for throwing stone, and not metal round shot, the powder-charge being insufficient for launching the heavier projectile.

This chambered, stone-throwing type was called the "Perier," and it had a long story of its own, ultimately losing its "chambering" and coming in the end to throw iron shots.

But that was not until the end of the sixteenth century or a little later. It remained for all these years, a formidable weapon at close range, the full ship-perier in England throwing a shot of some 24lb, weight.

Other smaller guns of the "chambered" perier-type, short both in build and range, were called "Perieraes," "Port-pieces," "Fowlers" and "Slings." The second in the list was usually, and the last two were always, man-killers only.

"Cannon" and "Calverin"

The main line of evolution was through two types of guns called in the sixteenth century "Cannon" and "Calverin." The former was a true "battering-piece," throwing a heavy iron shot for a medium range, and of equal bore throughout.

The cannon threw a shot of about 50lb, weight. Of this class too was the Demi-Cannon, a smaller edition of the whole cannon, which had a round shot of about 32lb, weight. Other countries possessed a Quarter-Cannon.

But we in England did not favour it much; nor did we often put the whole Cannon into our ships, though we used it a great deal on land. The Demi-Cannon was by far the commonest representative of this class in English ships.

The ship-guns which won the day were the Calverins; very long pieces compared to other types, of as much as 32 calibres, as to the Cannon's 18 or 20, and the Perier's 8.

The original Calverin, was thirteen feet long, but the English fancied them, and came more and more to arm their ships with them. A close study leads to the conclusion that something like 95 per cent of the guns in the fleet which defeated Spain's great Armada in 1588 were of this type.

It is often asked what was the range of these pieces. There was not much increase in this respect between the defeat of the Armada and the battle of Trafalgar.

A rough averaging of the figures show that the Calverin's "point-blank" range was about 330 yards and its "random" range was about 1.25 miles, about a fifth longer than a "full" or sometimes "Royal" Cannon.

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Henry VIII's gun-foundries

The King after testing the guns that he bough. He set up gun-foundries, of his own, and encouraged others to do the same. Thereafter the English guns led for the next hundred years and more. They became so popular abroad that succeeding monarchs had to try, to limit the export of them to foreign countries.

The "cast" guns salvaged from the "Mary Rose" include a specimen of both full or "Royal" Cannon, and Demi-Cannon, firing iron shot. The length of the bore was thirty-two times its diameter.

Like the ships they became paramount in sea-fighting, and both remained so for approximately the same length of time-some 300 years. Nor did they greatly change during those centuries. The principles upon which they worked, did not change at all.

In the nineteenth century, the ship and the gun both go through fundermental changes. The weapon's influence on ships and shipbuilding was enormous and the influence that it exerted on War. Was also enormous.

To say that it revolutionized sea-fighting is an understatement; because it ushered in a new kind of sea-fighting: it created, "Modern-Naval Warfare."

The continuation of this Naval History will be: "Scurvy"

The Great Gun

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