Gun Carriage questions

[allanyed]

20 hours ago, Lieste said:

I think he means the astragal of the button, not a breeching ring, which is what I take from your comment.

Hi Ron,

My fault for not being more clear. 

 

Yes Lieste, that is the distinctive ring to which I was referring, thank you for clarifying.  Also, the badge or cypher varied as well as the trunnions and astragal rings.  Sketch below with approximate eras may help.

 

Allan

Edited August 28, 2023 by allanyed

[druxey]

Blomefeld pattern guns are more trouble to cast, which is why I suspect you don't see them commercially. Now, 3D printing is another story!

[allanyed]

45 minutes ago, druxey said:

Blomefeld pattern guns are more trouble to cast, which is why I suspect you don't see them commercially. Now, 3D printing is another story!

Totally agreed Druxey   It can be done, but it is not so easy to do commercially, thus would be pretty costly.  The following is the original draft on cannon making from HMS Euryalus (36) 1803 Volume II.   

Allan 

Cannon barrels.pdf

Edited August 27, 2023 by allanyed

[Morgan]

20 hours ago, Retired guy said:

 

Good drawing Gary thanks for sharing, but look where the guns are, not in the middle of gun port? 
 

Regards

Richard

 

Hi Richard,

 

It is difficult to know what to make of the accuracy of this watercolour, there are some good and bad points.  For instance the gunports seem vertically elongated, more to starboard than port, then the sloped hances seem out of place, they are usually squared off at this time (1799).  But there are nice details concerning the sauve tete netting.

 

The guns should be 9-Pounders, and they are low in the port, is this accurate or just poor draughtsmanship?  

 

The guns being centre to the ports I picked up from Peter Goodwin, a former Keeper and Curator of HMS Victory, who recorded in an interview for ‘Shipwright 2011’ at page 13 that:

 

“When the work was undertaken to restore the ship in 1922, the only gun carriages available at the time would have been those that were from land-based installations.  So most of the gun carriages that were put on the ship, and then copied, were 1845 land-battened carriages.  I realised that although to the generals eye it’s a gun carriage, the guns did not fit square and central to the ports.  So having done some calculations based on those carriages and then looking at the calculations from Muller’s Treatise on Artillery of 1782 we redesigned the gun carriages as sea service carriages, which are different”.

 

He repeats this observation in some of his later publications pointing to low guns.

 

But there is another reason.  Centring the gun to the port both horizontally and vertically ensures that the chance of the gun hitting the port on recoil, when it can jump or kick, is minimised. 

 

Then there is the point that when housed within a gunport that requires the gun to remain inboard, then the method of housing is to haul the gun up against the upper sill of the gunport, with the quoins removed so that the breech rested on the stool.  The whole design of the ensemble of gun, carriage, port opening size, and height of upper sill eyebolts are such that this enables them to come together with maximum points of contact and facilitate a secure housing. A gun that does not fit centrally to the port will see it not meet all these points of contact and thereby produce a weak and unsafe housing of the gun.  A low gun will fail to place the muzzle alongside the upper sill eyebolts and produce a weak muzzle lashing, a high gun will see that the breech does not rest on the stool bed meaning the breech securing is weakened.

 

Of course not all guns were housed inboard, on the quarterdeck they could be housed run-out, and within the Captains apartments they could be fitted with sashes that closed around the gun leaving it run out.  This would explain the absence in the watercolour of sill eyebolts, sashes and half ports didn’t need these, but, they were still usually centred to the port.

 

I think the draughtsman's perspective is suspect.

 

Gary

[thibaultron]

6 hours ago, druxey said:

Blomefeld pattern guns are more trouble to cast, which is why I suspect you don't see them commercially. Now, 3D printing is another story!

The drawings for Blomefields should be done by mid Sept.. I'm not sure I will finish them before a planed trip.

[Javelin]

Noticed someone making an angled surface in his carriages rather than a regular top/bottom straight edge. I can't remember in which topic this was, but I remember someone asking whether there was any evidence. Since I came across this one in Rotterdam recently, decided to put it here for future reference. Any additional info on it would be welcome as it was placed at the entrance of the maritime museum, as a sort of attraction to lure public rather than inside the museum itself. No info was near the gun. I assume, considering there are no eye-bolt etc. that this might be an older type of gun/carriage? 

As you can see it does have that angled edge between top and bottom piece, much like I remember seeing someone doing here on his model guns. 

 

[allanyed]

Maybe I should start a new thread but this is in keeping with the overall subject.   What did Spanish naval long gun carriages look like in 1620?   I have done a couple hours of research and have found very little hard information.   I am leaning towards truck carriages with two trucks even though a lot of modern models show four trucks.  One source that is interesting is a video  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loldlSJ4k_8  There are about  25 seconds of WWII film, then the good stuff.  If anyone has any details they can share on the carriages for various size Spanish cannon in the early 17th century based on contemporary sources I would be grateful.

Allan

 

Edited December 22, 2023 by allanyed