Not a typical gun carriage

[bruce d]

A wheelbarrow as a gun carriage: well, why not? What is also interesting is that the model was in a naval archive before transferring to the modern Rijksmuseum. Perhaps a practical way of quickly shifting the position of a gun on deck, it is certainly not suited to a ploughed field.

 

“Model of a Wheelbarrow Gun Carriage

Netherlands, Netherlands, 1793

Object data

wood and brass

height 7.6 cm × width 19.7 cm × depth 8.5 cm × height 10 cm
width 25.5 cm × depth 16 cm

Provenance

...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883

Object number: NG-MC-745

Copyright: Public domain

Entry

Model of a wheelbarrow with one wheel.

In the cart, the cheeks of a gun carriage are mounted, and the fore end is hollowed out to the shape of a gun barrel. On the sides forked posts for the loading gear are indicated. The wheel is shod with brass. The feet have telescoping pins underneath to check the recoil.

This invention is one of many by Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen (1735-1819).

Scale unknown.”

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/NG-MC-745/catalogue-entry

[druxey]

I wonder whether this was for naval use at all. Imagine a heavy barrel and one person trying to maneuver it on a  pitching deck. Also, I doubt any naval wheel or truck would be metal shod as the deck would get worn. I'd say is was used on land, perhaps on a fort or redoubt. Was it used simply to move ordnance?

[bruce d]

10 minutes ago, druxey said:

Was it used simply to move ordnance?

It has devices to check recoil, see last para of the museum description.

I am guessing, but the issue of wear on a deck would not arise unless it was in use frequently, but might be acceptable if only used when attacked. Having said that, I believe Dutch gun carriage wheels (or was it Swedish?) were shod with iron in some cases.

All guesswork on my part! I just cant see it as a practical device with that kind of heavy load except on a solid, firm surface such as a deck. It just wouldn't help anyone in a land battle to depend on a wheelbarrow to cross bare earth. On shore perhaps, but not for a travelling band of soldiers.

[mtaylor]

From the description, I wonder if it was just a design exercise?   

[Jaager]

1 hour ago, bruce d said:

It just wouldn't help anyone in a land battle to depend on a wheelbarrow to cross bare earth. On shore perhaps, but not for a travelling band of soldiers.

When I obtained ship's boats plans in the National Archives - from the no longer Maryland Silver Co.   There were plans for mounting a howitzer at the bow of a launch.   This could be a way for a shore party to extend the use of a howitzer farther inland.  But a single wheel, a heavy load on sand?  Not me.

[rshousha]

DaVinci would have smiled. 

 

[mtaylor]

1 hour ago, Jaager said:

When I obtained ship's boats plans in the National Archives - from the no longer Maryland Silver Co.   There were plans for mounting a howitzer at the bow of a launch.   This could be a way for a shore party to extend the use of a howitzer farther inland.  But a single wheel, a heavy load on sand?  Not me.

 

They did have some designs which involved taking off the large wheels on a "land carriage" along with the trail. Smallish guns for this but still took manpower and time to unship and use on land.

[popeye2sea]

I can see this for use in a fort for quickly shifting a gun to another emplacement. And it looks like it is for a small caliber weapon.

 

Regards,

[Marcus.K.]

Concerning using such a Wheel Barrow on softer ground:

I remember my father having used a wheelbarrow during the build of our house and car port on very soft, wet ground with very heavy load in it (wet ground!) by having wooden planks along the way he needed to go - as a pathway for the wheelbarrow. Anyone using this wheelbarrow-gun-thing on (soft) land would need wooden planks and of course a lot of helping hands..

 

Concering steel around the wheels:

This is a 6-pounder gun and its carriage produced in furnace hope - the same foundary where US Frigate Constitution got some of her guns from.

 

Those wheels have steel bands around them.

Of course: those are not very heavy compared to the 24 pounders.. maybe in this case the load was acceptable for the decks. It might be different with more heavy guns of course - but I believe: steel may have been needed to keep the wheels in shape under the load..

 

To sum up: I think such a design may be useful and possible

Edited July 17, 2021 by Marcus.K.

[druxey]

Generally iron-shod wheels were used on land, not as sea; think forts.

[Lieste]

Recalling the sales proposals for Carron company 'guns of the new construction' and of carronades for arming the 'coastal villages and towns' with weapons in the 3, 4, 6 or 9lb size range, mounted on a small cart, and supplied with a dozen rounds - I wonder if this might be a local home-defence/militia proposal in similar vein.

It would be functional for moving a small weapon on the made streets, messuages and back lanes, without the difficulty of working with horses or oxen in confined spaces and under fire they were unaccustomed to.

Absolutely no proof that this is a thing for the Netherlands, but there was a proposal to do so for English coastal towns, and I don't see any reason to assume that there was no pressure/opportunity seen to sell ordnance to manors and parish councils where profit could be taken (sorry)... where the well regulated militia could be established to defend and secure the region against invasion.

[bruce d]

News flash: the Chinese invented the wheelbarrow as an aide to supplying troops in battle.

Yup, I found this ...

 

https://thegardenstrust.blog/2015/02/28/the-wheelbarrow-a-weapon-of-war/

 

... which, after describing the events and players behind the original single-wheel cart with trailing handles invented to get supplies delivered over difficult ground, goes on to say ...

"Later Chinese military strategists used  wheelbarrows  as a rapidly assembled  and highly manoeuvrable ‘mobile fort’,   deploying them around in a circle  as a barricade.  They were also developed into attack vehicles, with weaponry mounted on them."

 

Here is a picture of a Ming Dynasty wheelbarrow-weapon-thingie -

 

 

Yet another 'oh good grief'  discovery.

Edited July 19, 2021 by bruce d

[amateur]

The Dutch military Museum also has this one in their collection:

https://collectie.nmm.nl/nl/collectie/detail/263253/

 

it was a design by a rather famous Dutch admiral, Van Kinsbergen.

the NMM has no documentation either. Can't see which problem is tackled by this design.... (actually, I can think of a number of new problems attached to this one, pusing this thing with a full sized gun barrel is rather cumbersome, I think)

 

Jan

 

[wefalck]

It appears to be some sort of landing carriage - launches for landing-parties were armed with small guns in slide-carriages as amphibious artillery support. Their barrel could be transferred to landing carriages. Most designs where two- or three-wheeled, with the third wheel removable when in firing position.

 

A wheelbarrow would be a good option for operation on narrow tracks. At that time the Dutch were busy carving out a colony in SE Asia in the wake of the faltering VOC, an area probably with not too many roads, even by European early 19th century standards. If you are on uneven terrain, you would not push the wheelbarrow, but rather pull it. On the other hand, there are also two eyebolts at the front of the wheelbarrow, so that towing ropes could be attached for one or more men pulling on each of them - which was a common practice in civil engineering and mining. The man at the handles would mainly need to lift and balance it. As the centre of gravity of the gun would be more or less above the axle, when lifted up, it would not be a too heavy load for a single man with say a 3 pounder gun.

 

The Chinese wheelbarrows for over-land transport had much larger wheels, which facilitates their movement over poor roads and paths. Also the loads were put onto both sides of the wheel, rather than on top of it, which lowers the centre of gravity. Due to its relatively large mass and diameter, the wheel would also balance to some degree the wheelbarrow by the gyrostatic effect. Wheelbarrows for transporting goods over long distances were sometimes equipped with sails to aid moving them along. 

 

 

[bruce d]

3 hours ago, amateur said:

The Dutch military Museum also has this one in their collection:

https://collectie.nmm.nl/nl/collectie/detail/263253/

 

it was a design by a rather famous Dutch admiral, Van Kinsbergen.

It seems likely that the museum exhibit and model are the same design, certainly the description credits them both to Kinsbergen.

Thanks, nice find.

[bruce d]

Just for the novelty value, here is another 'not-typical' carriage from the same source. After staring a while, I think I understand how the components interchange as described in the text. 

Note the dish of the wheels is achieved with curved spokes instead of the usual method of mounting the spokes at an angle in the hub: does anybody know if there is a reason for this?

 

 

Object data

wood and brass

height 24.4 cm × width 52 cm × depth 35.2 cm

Provenance

...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883

Object number: NG-MC-780

Copyright: Public domain

Entry

Item description:

Model of a multipurpose carriage for a 4-pounder gun.

The barrel is missing, and so is some additional equipment. Assembled in one way as a field carriage, it can be rearranged in another way as a ship carriage. The main body consists of two cheeks connected by a long stool bed and forward by the transom. The quoin has a toothed rail underneath and is moved forward and backward mechanically by means of a worm screw with a crank; it slides in a groove in the bed, from which it cannot be lifted. When used as a field carriage, it moves on two large wheels, which have an axletree going straight through the cheeks. The cheeks are prolonged at the rear with a trail which has a pintle hole and is attached to the forward cheeks with braces. To convert the carriage to a sea carriage, the aft portion of the cheeks, the wheels and the axle are removed, and the remaining body is set on a lower four-wheeled carriage. This carriage consists of two low cheeks, connected by a vertical transom and the axletrees, which are attached to the cheeks with removable braces. The wooden trucks are double and the fore trucks are larger than the hind trucks.

Although this type of carriage is recorded in literature,¹ its origin is unclear. Jochem Pietersz Asmus (1755-1837) claimed it as his own invention,² which De Scheel seems to contradict.³

Scale (according to Obreen)⁴ 1:6.

Literature:

M. de Scheel, Mémoires d’artillerie contenant l’artillerie nouvelle, ou les changements faits dans l’artillerie françoise en 1765 avec l’exposé et l’analyse des objections que ont été faites contre ces changemens, Paris 1795 (2nd ed.), pl. X; J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, no. 780; H. van Goens, Handleiding tot de kennis van de zee-artillerie, Rotterdam 1861-65, p. 636, pl. XXVIII'

[wefalck]

Inclined or curved spokes give the wheel are certain springiness, thus protecting the wheel itself against bumps, as the well as the load.

 

I don't this is meant to be ship-board carriage, rather to be a gun to be used in a fortification. Probably something to be used in landing operations, where temporary field fortifications would be errected. The recoil on a low carriage with small wheels would be easier to control, than on a field piece with large wheel. Not sure since when braking shoes on field have been used. For carriages and waggons they were used at least since the early 1600s I think.

[bruce d]

3 hours ago, wefalck said:

... meant to be ship-board carriage, rather to be a gun to be used in a fortification.

I am sure you are right.

About  the wheels, I am not so sure. The angle of the axle, which must match the dish of the wheel, provided all the suspension according to the wheelwrights. The rule was that the bottom spoke was to be perpindicular to the ground in all directions.

Of course, if the local rules in Denmark were different, or if the curve served a purpose, I would be interested to know.

[Jaager]

On 7/20/2021 at 6:01 AM, wefalck said:

It appears to be some sort of landing carriage - launches for landing-parties were armed with small guns in slide-carriages as amphibious artillery support.

The US Ex.Ex. had another use for a gun in a launch.   They made heavy use of large (35 foot) launches for mapping.   What maps available of the invasion of Tarawa were from this expedition.   A gun was at a known position.  A distant launch, doing soundings would determine its distance from the fixed one by measuring the time between the gun flash and the time it took for the boom to reach them.

[amateur]

Quite a large part of this navy-collection of the Rijksmuseum is from collection of the department of the navy. That collection consists for a large part on demonstration-models, quirky designs and other experimantal stuff. Some of which made it to real life, many of which never got beyond the demonstration model.

 

Jan

 

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by amateur

[druxey]

A curved spoke would provide a little more shock absorption over rough ground.

[bruce d]

Perhaps I am about to learn something new. You see, I understood that a maxim of wheelmaking, wherever in the world you looked, was the principle of the 'upright' or 'bottom' spoke. The spoke at dead bottom was always meant to be at 90 degrees to the ground when measured from any direction: therein lies the strength of the wheel under load.

The 'dish' of the wheel, i.e. the amount of concavity on the outside face, was exactly related to the fixed cant of the axle to maintain this angle. This spoke was thought of as the pillar on which the load rested at any time. Wheelwrights (at least the British, American and French sources I have read) were extremely picky about the wood used for spokes, demanding the straightest grain. After initial shaping if a spoke blank had the slightest imperfection such as a tiny knot or change of colour on the 'sap face' (the back of the spoke which is the convex side of the wheel) it was rejected ('used for ladder rungs' was the dismissive phrase) because of the stresses. Right or wrong, the wheelwrights I have read about all considered straight, correctly profiled spokes to be the only way. Flex within the dished wheel was primarily side-to-side as the horse(s) moved, the jolts from passing over rough surfaces was not what broke/wore out wooden wheels.

I could go on, but it really would be interesting to see applications where curved spokes were used if anyone has examples?

Remembering where we are, I will think of a way to make it fit in with building model ships later  🤐 .

 

[druxey]

Perhaps this style of wheel was never actually used! The model was, after all, only a proposed one.

[wefalck]

I am not wheelwright, so I don't know anything about their reasoning. However, in reality it may not be sufficient to look at the static aspect, but also at the dynamics. Depending on the surface over which you move, the load will not only have a vertical force, but there may be other components, in all directions relative to the movement. In some cases, also the camber of the road is taken into consideration - having a curved axle adds springiness.

 

The reasoning of using would without defects makes a lot of sense, but I think it could probably also applied to wood, where the grain follows the curve of the piece (or rather the other way around.

[popeye2sea]

Check out EngelsCoachShop videos on YouTube. He often makes wheels where the spokes are set into the hub at angles. Especially for larger wheels and those intended for heavier loads.

 

Regards,