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Naval Cannons

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crockett

Cannon
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I never noticed it before but some of the cannons on ships were quite a bit different, some have a loop of metal, integral, on top through which a rope is strung. It seems the smaller cannons were on the top deck while the larger below.
Some of the naval weapons are of interest to me. Years ago I lived around Boston and frequently looked at "Old Ironsides". At that time in the lower deck was a display of naval swords, pistols, muskets and rifles, boarding axes, and knives.
 
Since the guns were heavy they were placed as low as possible. The ships also were widest at the water line then tapered quickly called the tumble home. This made the ship more stable but sometimes the lower deck and heaviest guns had to remain behind sealed ports due to rough weather.
The overhead on the lowest decks could be less then six feet, this made the biggest guns serviced by men in the most cramped position.
The Wasa was built to be a singe deck ship, but the king ordered a second gun deck. No other alterations were made. It sailed with the lower ports opened and too close to the water line, a gust laid her too the side and water flooded it, down she went on her maiden voyage.
USS Essex was fitted with carronades an the gun deck. She crippled the British whaling trade in the pacific during the war of 1812. Only to be taken by two lighter frigates with long guns on the gun decks. They just stood out of range and pounded the Exxex to death.
Some of the first gun armed ships had guns stuck in Willy-nilly. The ark royal had land guns sea guns all mixed together.
 
This naval cannon topic open up a lot of questions to me, for example the waves would be moving the boat around, making it difficult to aim and then I suppose you couldn't fire all the cannons at the same time as the recoil may roll the boat over (?) so if they fired in sequence, how you could hit anything would be difficult- it seems. Reloading a cannon on a ship rocking around , must have been hard to do.
 
The ship moved smoothly, larger and larger, more and more steady. So ships would fire at a timed event , on the down roll, the ship would fire just at the high point in a ships roll, or on the uproll, as soon as the ship reached its low and tarted back up.
Ships could give a broadside, fireing all guns at once, it was no where near the power needed to capsize a ship. Most of the time a ship was in motion relative the target ship, so a ship fired ”˜as you bear’.
Big battle ships often fought in line, one ship behind another fireing at an opposite.
Single ships would not place them selfs side to side if they could avoid it. Instead they would race to get windward of the other and maneuver to keep as many guns pointing at the enemy while being exposed to as few as possible.
Napoleon said that God was on the side with the most guns. However a lucky shot to the enemy rigging could cripple a bigger enemy long enough for the smaller to cross the bows and damage more, or worse crossing the stern where the enemy could be injured to a point the bigger couldn’t recover.
 
As I remember in the 17th through the early/mid 19th century, the French Navy tactic was to fire on the uproll to damage the sails and masts. Then after the enemy ship could not move well or at all, they calculated whether or not it was worth it to take the enemy ship and if it wasn't worth it, they sailed away.

The British Navy in the same time period usually fired on the down roll as they wanted to kill the enemy sailors manning the guns, then board the enemy ship and take them. The U.S. Navy followed in those tactics as well.

Gus
 
Mostly after Quiberon bay. The French were hard pressed to match the Brits at sea. Then a worse blow fell after the French Revolution when so many French officers were murdered during the terror.
So fighting line to line the French tried to avoid battle unless they had overwhelming strength. Otherwise the French line would often take the leeward fire for the rigging and then fall off, the Brits couldn’t catch up.
Small ships fought to win. A Brit frigate was expected to fight any other frigate. It didn’t matter if it was a 24 against a 38 or not. However a sloop of war or armed vessel may well shoot at a Frenchman’s rigging to escape. And a Frenchman would hit the hull to cripple as soon as possible.
Five hundred yards was ”˜random shot’ and could hit the hull or rigging, or most likely miss compleatly. Getting up wind could save the smaller ship.
 
crockett said:
This naval cannon topic open up a lot of questions to me, for example the waves would be moving the boat around, making it difficult to aim and then I suppose you couldn't fire all the cannons at the same time as the recoil may roll the boat over (?) so if they fired in sequence, how you could hit anything would be difficult- it seems. Reloading a cannon on a ship rocking around , must have been hard to do.

During the Battle of Trafalgar, the British guns were equipped with flintlock mechanisms atop the breech to fire, which was much faster and more predictable and thus more accurate than the French method at that time of using a linstock to fire the gun.
 
Firing at "the top of the roll" provided some consistency, and the motion of the ship slowed down as up ward motion was reversing itself. During the war of 1812 the gangway pendulum was introduced. Ships often shortened sail when going into action because significant heel could prevent the guns from staying in effective elevation (especially the lee side).
 
I've been reading a little bit on this subject, some ships could sail faster than others (same side) so if they were in a line I guess it was a task to keep everything in order. As I understand it, if your side had smaller ships you would create a melee in which you mixed it up with the enemy to reduce the benefit of their greater fire power. During WWII tank units found out they should use the same tactics in open terrain (I am told).
I like to connect different times of history. The British tried to blockage the Colonies in the AWI. During the civil war you would have thought the confederate states would have anticipated the same thing.
 
The Brits put a gun on any ship that would carry it, and send it to fight. During the Anglo-Dutch wars of the seventeenth century the Brits learned you couldn’t sail a ten gun snow with a fifty gun man of war. They learned to group ships by size. They also learned that all things being equal a ships that kept together in line saved ships.
They made an act of parliament that ships had to stay in line. Woe be the admiral who violated the fighting instructions. Byng would die for it.
Since they were wind driven any time a ship broke ranks it could be isolated windward of any help.
The famous breaking of the enemy lines at Sony’s and then later in the napoleonic wars depended on squad sized lines sticking together, and hiting the windward part of the line, so the rest of the enemy fleet was cut off and unable to help.
The mixed chaotic messes seen in navel paintings was only the last few minutes of a battle.
 
Since guns were individually trained based on roll and pitch / wave size, and target / distance, I'm not sure that volley fire could be all that effective. Certainly not for a multi gun type broadside, such as was carried on a 1st rater. Sure, a hull is a pretty big target, but a mast isn't. (Lots of rigging around it though.) So accuracy would likely be best when the individual gunners touched off their own guns as they came to bear.

I'd be curious to know what sorts of ranges these gunning duels were typically fought at as well.
 
It sort of explains why the sails/rigging was often aimed at- easier to hit target.
 
I was on the USS Constitution a couple of times when I lived in the area. The lower deck has only about 5' of headroom- you have to move about hunched over.
At the time I really didn't pay attention to details. Naval cannons were huge compared to field artillery. I've read that a cannon's wadding would be aflame and start a fire on an enemy ship when they were close enough for the wadding to land on the other ship. I didn't know a cannon used wadding. Then on firing- was a match stick and fuse used or did they have the friction stick (I don't know the correct name) as used in the Civil War? I also never considered the confusion of reloading cannons in such cramped areas during a battle.
Another point...Sailors on a clipper ship were sailors and no more. They considered themselves the best sailors. On a whale boat the sailors were also the hunters and were sometimes not as good at the sailing duties. On a war ship the sailors were also the gunners.
There are a lot of interesting naval small arms such as boarding axes, knives, pistols, swords. I always thought an Elgin Pistol would be a good build/project.
 
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Hi Crockett,

Chain shot, Bar shot and Link Shot were used to break/shatter/dismast the spars holding the sails. If the sails went down, the enemy should could not move/maneuver and even the loss of some spars hindered movement and could set up a ship to be attacked from the stern. These were normally fired from guns on the top or second deck and not the largest guns on the below deck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain-shot

"Taking out an enemy ship's Masts" would of course severely slow down or stop the ships. The "Smashers" or Carronades on the top deck were sometimes used for that, as well as shooting into the enemy ships gun decks. However, even larger ships masts were sometimes to often, not all that easy to hit as your own ship pitched and rolled.

A "broadside" of all guns on the lower decks was intended not only to hit the enemy guns, but even more importantly to smash the wooden sides of the ships and send a shower of slivers into the enemy gun crews that killed/wounded more of them than the solid shot alone would do. If you took out their gun crews, the ships were much easier to board and take "as a prize."

"Wadding" could have meant actual wadding in earlier times, but by the 18th century, powder was normally sewn into cloth bags for use especially for the larger and lower deck guns. Some of the small "anti-personnel" guns on the top deck were also wadded for the first round and/or if they were firing down onto the tops of smaller ships. The "Ships of the Line" ran from at least 60 guns to over 100 guns in the largest ships and the latter were true behemoths like Nelson's 104 Gun HMS Victory.

I think friction primers were used in some of the U.S. Navy's Dahlgren and American Civil War period Naval Guns on both sides, but the large flintlock's used for Naval Cannon, were the largest/longest lasting improvement for many decades over a linstock.

Gus
 
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Col. Batguano said:
Since guns were individually trained based on roll and pitch / wave size, and target / distance, I'm not sure that volley fire could be all that effective. Certainly not for a multi gun type broadside, such as was carried on a 1st rater. Sure, a hull is a pretty big target, but a mast isn't. (Lots of rigging around it though.) So accuracy would likely be best when the individual gunners touched off their own guns as they came to bear.

I'd be curious to know what sorts of ranges these gunning duels were typically fought at as well.


Between fleets fighting in line ships were often very close, anywhere from a cable, 200 yards to ”˜pistol shot’ and ships often on the same tack so a broadside could be devastating even if not well aimed. A big ships mast were three to four feet thick at the deck. Thee mast represented a target 9-12 feet wide out of a space on the big line ships of around 180 feet. So just random shot had a 5-7 % chance of hitting a mast of aimed at the hull. And that ratio worked out about the same on smaller ships. So just letting fly at a range of a hundred yards with 30 guns from the smallest ship of the line should get 1-3 shots on the mast at its base. Although some of the shots would have came through the hull and lost some power the 24 and 32 lbs guns could cut through both sides of a ship of the line at a hundred yards.
 
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