Early use of cannon at sea

[Matle]

Thanks Dafi, those are quite convincing images I have to admit. Maybe the forces involved were not that great to threaten the integrity of the brackets/connections, and the inertia of the largest guns would perhaps take most/some of the forces. The rate of fire was as said not great. Even in the battles of the Northern 7-years war which were artillery duels, the ammunition consumption were surprisingly low.

 

It’s still a silly thing to do, to balance outside the hull like that.

[Louie da fly]

A little bit of extra information that might be of use in this discussion. It's taken from the preamble of a 19th century reprint of the 16th century "Complaynte of Scotland" - needs to be taken with a pinch of salt but the direct quotes from contemporary stuff could be worthwhile.

 

 

[Mark P]

Good Morning Louie;

 

Thanks for posting this. The extract from Matthew Paris is especially interesting, as you say, giving reasons to obtain the weather gage long before gunpowder had any part in it. I also rather like the description of James I & VI as 'able and spirited': not something with which most historians or contemporaries would agree, I suspect. Although he could exhibit examples of intelligent reasoning, and he did somewhat to encourage maritime exploration, his indulgence of flawed favourites, and his willingness to allow demonstrably corrupt and venal men to continue for many years as administrators of the Navy, despite their exposure by two special commissions, should be taken as more indicative of his character; which overall tended towards indolence and indulgence. 

 

All the best,

 

Mark P

 

 

[Louie da fly]

Glad you liked it. 

 

Are you sure that's the same James? He's described as James I "of Scotland" - my reading of that, unless the author got mixed up, is that he's referring to James I who reigned from 1406-1437 (thanks, Wikipedia!), given that he then goes on to describe the Great Michael as having been built in the reign of James IV.  

 

James VI who became James I of England on the death of Elizabeth Tudor, on the other hand - his character you've described admirably.

[Mark P]

Good Morning Louie;

 

Thank you for pointing that out. I do believe that you are correct, and the author is referring to James I of Scotland, whereas I am indeed thinking of a different James; the first of England. Ooops!

 

All the best,

 

Mark P

[Louie da fly]

Well, imagine my surprise on visiting Scotland to find that our Queen is officially Elizabeth the First - because Elizabeth Tudor was never Queen of Scotland.

[Mark P]

Thanks Louie;

 

That is logical enough, although I have never thought of that before. One for the pub quiz: 'Who is the queen of Scotland?'

 

All the best,

 

Mark P

[Jonathan_219]

Sorry I posted in the wrong forum thread, got confused where I was.

[AON]

OMG.  I never thought of it like that. 

That makes Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, the !st of Canada.

Somehow I find it hard to believe a whole nation got it wrong.

But then again, being the good docile child nation, possibly we don't really care about the number.

 

Sorry Mum.

[Louie da fly]

7 hours ago, AON said:

That makes Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, the !st of Canada.

 

And Australia, for that matter. And all the rest of the Commonwealth, except England itself.

 

But honestly, only Scotland makes it official. It's to do with national pride and individual identity, and at least partly to do with an attitude which resulted in books of British history until recently being entitled "A history of England".

 

The first monarch of England and Scotland was of course James the Sixth of Scotland and James the First of England (when I was a kid I saw a picture in a book with that title, and couldn't work out why there was only one person in it - true story)

[Lieste]

On 9/11/2020 at 7:23 PM, Matle said:

I doubt these conclusions, except the one about bowed guns and chasers.

 

How would you arrange the gun to not let it recoil? Using tight breech ropes? The brackets holding them to the hull wouldn’t last long I suspect. Likewise bolting the carriage to the deck would be rather unhealthy to the gun and carriage. The force won’t be magically transferred to the ship: it would first cause immense strain on the barrel, connections and carriage. It could work for the smallest caliber guns, though. Also, the forward motion of the cannonball wouldn’t change in any significant way. There is no advantage other than not having to haul a breech-loaded gun out and in case of muzzle-loaders you’d have double work. Loading outboard sounds like a silly thing to do when actions were close-fought and the other fellows  armed with muskets and bows would be using you for target practice. edit: To clarify for heavy breechloaded guns this make  sense, but not muzzle-loaded.

 

Anyhow, researchers have recently been studying guns and their carriages from the Mars (1563, discovered some years ago): these had wheels and brackets for breeching lines.  There was no doubt that broadside firing was the chosen tactic there, based on written sources and ship design. In the beginning of Nordic 7-years war the allied Danes and Germans still employed boarding tactics, while the Swedes had started using artillery-only and designed their new ships for gunnery duels. Their tactic relied on trying to keep a distance and pounding the opposition with superior artillery. The broadside of Mars actually sank a Hanseatic (or Danish) ship in one of it’s first engagements. Even though the Mars was ironically lost during a boarding action, the Danes and Germans quickly adapted and started building artillery ships rather than boarders (getting rid of the high sterncastles for example). The Mars did seem to have had stern-chasers of grand proportions (5 m long 48-pounders), but they would not have wasted so much weight on broadside artillery as they did if it wasn’t meant to be used. Now, I guess the author focussed on English practice but I doubt the English were late to follow these developments.

 

 

—

As for the hypothetical case of fixed guns moving the ship sideways: no, it wouldn’t. Here’s a visual example. A few years ago a copy of a Vasa 24-pounder was casted and tested. They performed some 50 test shots, measuring a muzzle velocity of 350 m/s. The recoil is a balance of momentum: the ball’s  forward momentum should equal the backward momentum of the gun. 

Ball momentum: 11 kg * 350 m/s = 3850 kgm/s

The gun weights about 1400 kg, solving for the gun recoil velocity

v = 3850/1400 = 2.75 m/s

 

Check out this video and estimate the actual gun velocity (it is 2-3 m long):

 

Now imagine that the gun is instead a ship weighing a 1000 tons instead of a 1000 kilos: its velocity would be 1/1000 of that of the gun - and that only it were placed on wheels and free to roll, rather than having water and wind pushing back.

 

Incidently, in the end of the 18th century Chapman designed and built ”gun yawls”, which essentially were small floating gun carriages with a single fixed 20-something-pounder. Plenty of sources exists from this time so if there was some significant recoil moving the boat someone should have written it down - I’ll have a look if someone has bothered telling that story. That’s something entirely different of course.

According to "Aide Memoire d'Artillerie Navale", the momentum of recoil is somewhat higher than the momentum of the shot. I'm (in the current version of the calculation - subject to error correction if I find that I have implemented the windage correction improperly) seeing a velocity for the C18th/C19th 32lb gun of 87% of the 'zero windage' case for half way between high and low guage, with recoil at zero windage 37% higher than the momentum of shot and wad. With the windage present, the total recoil is lower, but is 47% higher than the momentum of shot and wad.

That said, with gun weights for the later era's naval artillery from 170 (32lb) to 380 (longest 6lb) per lb of shot&wad - plus a carriage which is *at least* 25% of the gun's weight, there isn't going to be a lot of rapid movement of any gun - with some of the heaviest ones nearly brought to a standstill by an 0.1 coefficient of friction at the point the muzzle reaches the pre-firing trunnion position.

Particularly with lee-side guns, and more modest velocity and higher windages the use of breechings to *limit* recoil may be entirely optional with the longer, more heavily built pieces firing relatively light shot.
On the windward, with relatively shorter guns firing heavier shot, with double shot etc (the 32lb 9.5ft gun is 'shorter' than a 6lb 8.5ft gun by nearly 10 calibres, and the metal is thicker in proportion 44/32 to 34/32 for the 6lb too), the use of breechings may be mandatory... This isn't a one size fits all proposition IMO.

[Harvey Golden]

I've no knowledge at all about this particular subject, but I have recently been reading in the Hakluyt Society's publication of William ("of Gravesend, a Gunner" [c. 1535-1582]) Bourne's "A Regiment for the Sea" (1963/Kraus Reprint 1990).  There is a bibliography of Bourne's other writings, and a couple are titles suggesting some content of ship and/or shore artillery. They are manuscripts from the late 1500s, perhaps not re-published. (The "Regiment" itself concerns navigation entirely, but the re-print has a fine introduction and biography of Bourne).  

Best,

Harvey

[Mark P]

Good Morning gentlemen;

 

Thank you to both to Lieste and Harvey for your contributions. The main point here is that we will never know for sure. Personal opinions, based on what we know ourselves, and shaped by knowledge of much more recent times (even two hundred years ago is much more recent than the period when sea-borne artillery tactics were being shaped: that extends back to the 1400s, over five hundred years ago) can have no real weight in any discussion. We can only rely on what can be learned from contemporary sources. These make it clear that early tactics, gunnery, and firing/loading cycles were very different to those of the 'classic' sea-battle period. Test-firing of reconstructed guns, whilst extremely interesting, and showing well the effect of the shot's impact, cannot in any way be indicative of whether or not guns were fired from a fixed position. What cannot be doubted is that there is enough evidence for this to make it worthy of serious consideration; although at present it cannot be proven either one way or the other. 

 

I will look into the possible sources which Harvey gives, so thanks again for posting these. Incidentally, a William Bourne (if my memory is not playing me false) was accused by Matthew Baker, the leading Elizabethan shipwright, of attempting to steal Baker's design work and pass it off as his own. So the possibility of Bourne (if this is the same person, of course) actually being more of a gunner is rather interesting.

 

It is also possible that the meaning of the word 'regiment' in the modern reprint would actually be clearer if it was changed to 'regimen', which has a different meaning, but which may well be what Bourne was intending to impart to his potential readers of a work on navigation, not fighting. 

 

All the best,

 

Mark P

Edited January 14, 2021 by Mark P

[trippwj]

On 1/14/2021 at 4:21 AM, Mark P said:

I will look into the possible sources which Harvey gives, so thanks again for posting these. Incidentally, a William Bourne (if my memory is not playing me false) was accused by Matthew Baker, the leading Elizabethan shipwright, of attempting to steal Baker's design work and pass it off as his own. So the possibility of Bourne (if this is the same person, of course) actually being more of a gunner is rather interesting.

 

It is also possible that the meaning of the word 'regiment' in the modern reprint would actually be clearer if it was changed to 'regimen', which has a different meaning, but which may well be what Bourne was intending to impart to his potential readers of a work on navigation, not fighting. 

 

All the best,

 

Mark P

 

It is indeed the same Bourne. He also had a few other interesting treatises over the years.

 

Bourne, William. 1578a. A Booke Called the Treasure for Traveilers : Devided into Five Bookes or Partes, Contaynyng Very Necessary Matters, for All Sortes of Travailers, Eyther by Sea or by Lande. Imprinted at London : [By Thomas Dawson] for Thomas Woodcocke, dwelling in Paules Churchyarde, at the sygne of the blacke beare. http://archive.org/details/bookecalledtreas00bour.

———. 1578b. Inuentions or Deuises : Very Necessary for All Generalles and Captaines. http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=%2Fmpiwg%2Fonline%2Fpermanent%2Flibrary%2FEK71UE84%2Findex.meta&viewMode=index&mode=texttool&viewLayer=extended.

———. 1601. A Regiment for the Sea. Contayning Very Necessarie Matters for All Sorts of Men and Trauailers: Whereunto Is Added an Hydrographicall Discourse Touching the Fiue Seuerall Passages into Cattay. Written by William Borne. Newly Corrected and Amended by Tho. Hood, D. in Physicke, Who Hath Added a New Regiment for the Yeare 1600, and Three Yeares Following, and a Table of Declination. Whereunto Is Also Adioyned The Mariners Guide, with a Perfect Sea Carde by the Said Thomas Hood. Printed by T. Wight. http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3444832.

Bourne, William. 1587. The Arte of Shooting in Great Ordnaunce Contayning Very Necessary Matters for All Sortes of Seruitoures Eyther by Sea or by Lande. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A16508.0001.001.