Cannon History and Technology
Artillery 101

Once upon a time…  Artillery:  The First Four Centuries

During the mid 14^th century a Franciscan monk called Roger Bacon came up with the first recorded mention of gunpowder in Europe.   The Chinese and to some extent the Arabs had used gunpowder for years, mainly for fireworks rather than for cannon.  

The first recorded cannons in Europe were in Florence, Italy, around 1326.  An English illustration of the same period shows what these earliest cannons would have looked like.  These guns were brass, using the same technology as bell makers.

Early projectiles may have been arrows rather than cannonballs (usually known as “roundshot” or simply “shot”).  By the later 14^th century, chronicles mention large cannons firing massive iron shot, and these bronze or wrought-iron guns were usually set on the ground and surrounded by heavy timber frames to absorb the recoil when they were fired.  Smaller guns were also mentioned, and around the end of the century the first hand-held firearms made an appearance.

By the 15^th century, cannons were usually one of two types; large bronze muzzle-loading pieces, or smaller breech-loading guns

Some of these big bronze guns are truly massive, like the surviving examples of the Turkish “Dardanelles Gun” (c. 1460) and the Franco-Scottish “Mons Meg”, both of which can be seen in Britain today (Fort Nelson, England, and Edinburgh Castle, Scotland).  These were siege guns, designed to knock down the walls of medieval castles and cities.  In the 1470’s, light field carriages were invented, allowing cannons to accompany armies on the march.

For the first time, guns were carried on board ships.  A handful of medieval shipwrecks have been found, dating from the late 15^th century or early 16^th century.  Much of what we know about early guns comes from these shipwrecks, or from a few surviving guns from museums, or from period documents and illustrations.

By the mid 16^th century, cannons were really coming into their own.  While wrought-iron breech-loading guns were mainly used at sea, bronze guns were becoming essential pieces of equipment for armies and navies.  These were no longer the big bronze guns of the previous century.  Cannons had developed  into lighter bronze guns of various sizes, from small babies weighing a few hundred pounds to heavy siege guns weighing a few tons. 

Each size of bronze gun was given its own identifying name, based on the size of the shot it fired, its weight and its shape. In some cases, the guns were given names of either real or mythological creatures, like “saker” or “falcon”.  Larger guns were split into “cannons” and “culverins”.  

This method of classifying guns by name rather than anything else continued until the late 17^th century.  Here’s the way they classified guns in the mid 16^th century.

King Henry VIII of England is remembered in the history books as “Good King Harry” and the man with six wives (not all at the same time).  He also built up a powerful fleet.  When one of his warships called the “Mary Rose” sank in an English harbor in 1545, it was carrying a mixed armament of wrought-iron guns, bronze guns, swivel-guns and hand-held firearms.  The “Mary Rose” also relied on archers for point-blank defense, and if all that failed, she carried soldiers armed with swords, pikes and halberds. 

A swivel-gun is a particularly important development.  These were small breech-loading guns sometimes cast from bronze and sometimes made of wrought-iron.  Most were less than three feet long, and were mounted onto a swivel mount, a little like the "rowlock" of a rowing boat.  These were mounted in slots on the ship’s rail, and were fired at the enemy if they tried to board the ship.  Spare chambers were kept ready beside the gun, so it could be fired several times in quick succession.

This is the same period as the St. Johns Wreck, the remains of a late 16^th century Spanish vessel excavated by staff from the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum off the Bahamas.  [click to link button]

On land, guns were started to be mounted on field carriages which could move relatively quickly, at least as long as they had plenty of horses to pull them.  At sea, different types of carriages were used, and the variants are explored in Gunnery 101.

By the end of the 16^th century, wrought-iron guns were falling into disuse, as more reliable cast-iron guns started to become available.  Bronze guns were still by far the most reliable, and also the most expensive to produce.  They became more elaborate, with decorations, and inscriptions and even sculpted designs built into them.  By the early 17^th century, they were still common on royal ships, like warships or treasure galleons.  Everyday trading vessels were far more likely to carry cast-iron guns, or even no guns at all.

This was the time of the Spanish Main, when annual treasure fleets brought the wealth of the Americas to Spain on board specially-built treasure galleons.  Two of these were the Nuestra Señora de Atocha  and the Santa Margarita, both of which formed part of the 1622 Treasure Fleet.  Although both ships were wrecked in a terrible hurricane off the lower Florida Keys in September 1622, several of their cannons have been found and recovered by Mel Fisher and his salvors. 

The First Four Centuries  

The Heyday of the Muzzle Loader