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By
the start of the 18th century, artillery had reached a
plateau in its design. Gunfounders
were no longer experimenting with different types of construction
methods, and styles. Cast-Iron
guns were becoming more popular, and as the century progressed,
Bronze guns became increasingly rare, particularly at sea.
Certain fashions in the external design of guns came and
went during the century, but the general trend was towards an
increasing simplicity in style and form.
Where before, guns were cast according to the individual
whim of the gunfounder (as long as it conformed to the needs of
the buyer), increasingly guns were cast according to set design
patterns, leading to a greater uniformity of gun design.
Apart
from these gradual trends, most of which were superfluous to the
actual functioning of the weapon, there was little difference
between a gun cast in 1700 and one produced in 1780.
At least not in the one
real important role of a gun; shooting projectiles at the
enemy. The last two
decades of the century saw novel changes which were to influence
gunnery throughout the last fifty or sixty years of the
muzzle-loading era.
Fashion
in gun design?
Like
everything else, the product reflected the age.
While the basics of the guns remained the same,
decoration changed according to contemporary taste.
For example, when the Rococo style became popular in
the early 18th century, the embellishment of guns
began to reflect rococo design patterns, emphasizing
asymmetrical patterns on the decorations around gun
breeches and muzzles.
Also,
while the use of cast-on decoration decreased, incised
decoration became increasingly popular.
Although less grand, it reflected a more
mass-produced approach to gun production brought about by
the demands of the near-incessant warfare in Europe during
the “Age of Reason”.
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The need for large fleets and armies led to the
creation of “Artillery Designs”, or “Systems of
Artillery”. This trend was developed by the French and Dutch, then later
adopted by the British. The
first of these was the French “Système Vallière” introduced
during 1730’s and 1740’s.
French artillery design had a profound influence on Spanish
artillery, and the foundries of Barcelona and Madrid adopted the
Vallière system for themselves in the mid 18th
century.
In 1776, Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribauval was
appointed as the “Premier Inspecteur de l’Artillerie”, and
introduced a whole new system of artillery.
The Gribauval system dominated Continental European
artillery design well into the early 19th century, and
was adopted as the basic design plan by American gunfounders in
the late 1780’s. Similarly
the Dutch gunfounders who developed their own system of artillery
exported their designs to Britain, and together with British
designers introduced several partial artillery systems during the
century. First the
Danish Albert Bogard introduced an artillery design into Britain
which remained in use until the 1750’s, despite its structural
inadequacies. This
was followed by several partial systems, ending in the Blomefield
System of 1780, and his modern pieces were cast by the thousand to
arm the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Wars. In most of
these systems, both bronze (brass) and cast-iron guns were
produced according to these set designs.
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Bronze
or Brass?
While the word
bronze was rarely used in a 17th
and 18th century context, and
guns were described as being cast from
brass, this was an anomaly.
Technically, the composition of
copper and tin used in the guns was
bronze, not brass, although brass or
zinc were also sometimes added to the
mix of metals.
In effect, as metal composition
changed from gun to gun and foundry to
foundry, the terms bronze and brass were
synonymous during the 18th
century.
They called them brass, while we
call them bronze.
Simple, isn’t it! |
One
of the nicest of these systems was that of Vallière, who combined
functionality with decoration.
Each caliber of gun had a different design on it, so it
could be easily recognized. For
example his 4-pounder had a face inside a sunburst, his 8-pounder
had a monkey’s head, and his 12-pounder had the head of a
rooster on the cascable. He
also incorporated scrolls which gave the guns names, such as “La
Brillante” or Latin mottoes.
At first, American gunfounders of the Revolutionary War
followed British patterns, often based on John Muller’s
“Treatise of Artillery” (London, 1779).
Casting techniques were crude and American cast-iron guns
were probably unreliable, but by the 1780’s the notion of gun
systems was adopted. While
designers imitated the French designs of Gribauval, by 1801 Henry
Dearborn became Secretary of War, and introduced his own design,
emulating features of both the contemporary French and British
systems.
The
big innovation of the second half of the century was in
ammunition. The
“Sabot” was a wooden disc hollowed at one end to receive the
base of the roundshot, and the two were strapped together with
wire. It served as a
wad, but also developed into a support for the powder cartridge as
well, creating a form of one-piece ammunition.
When the gun fired the sabot would fall away, leaving the
roundshot to fly on its way alone.
Similar sabot systems were also developed for cannister
shot. Quill priming
tubes helped keep priming powder dry, and these were slowly
replaced by tin versions, which could be used to prick the powder
cartridge, obviating the need for a pricker.
The
Carronade
The
big naval gunnery breakthrough we mentioned earlier came around
1776, with the introduction of the “Carronade”.
They were named after the Carron Foundry in Scotland which
first produced these novel guns, and the name stuck regardless of
who produced the weapon. By
the early 19th centuries most navies in the world used
carronades in one form or another.
They were a short, light gun which could fire a heavy shot
for a limited range. This
differed from conventional, heavier, longer guns who fired a shot
further, mainly because ships which could only carry a light
armament could now mount far larger-bored guns, although the range
they could be used was reduced.
Carronade shot was also fired at a slower velocity than
shot from larger guns, which strangely enough gave it a greater
destructive effect, because it smashed through an enemy hull less
cleanly than regular shot. This
earned the carronade its nickname of “smasher”.
Because
they were so light, carronades could be mounted high up on a
warship without affecting its stability.
While early carronades were mounted on regular
truck-wheeled carriages, these proved unsuitable due to the
carronade’s violent recoil.
A new system was introduced for carronades involving slide
carriages and traversing tracers, and these slowly replaced the
carriages for regular guns during the mid 19th century.
Although
carronades fired a heavy destructive shot, its effectiveness was
limited by its short range, which was up to 300 yards, well short
of the effective range of most contemporary long guns.
Ships armed exclusively with carronades ran the risk of
being destroyed by long-range fire, so after the loss of the USS
Essex to the British
in this manner, most navies mixed carronades and long guns to
create a more integrated armament.
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So
were carronades no good in battle?
Yes
and no. After
the initial enthusiasm over its destructive power, naval
strategists started to become concerned with its limited
range. Its
design arose from the tactics introduced by the British to
fight the French in the 18th century.
As circumstances changed, the need for the carronade
diminished, and by the 1820’s it was quietly dropped from
use. It remains
a fascinating artillery experiment which ran contrary to the
stream of development in muzzle-loading artillery.
That alone makes it a fascinating type of gun. |
In
the first decades of the 19th century muzzle-loading
artillery reached its greatest peak of development.
New designs created lighter pieces firing the same size of
shot, while a host of imaginative experiments with projectiles and
rifling led to a gunnery arms race throughout Europe and America.
This was the period of the Industrial Revolution, and
change was inevitable.
Until
this period, shells could only be fired out of mortars. Contrary to Hollywood myth, nothing exploded on contact when
it hit a sailing ship, unless of course it knocked over a lantern
in the powder magazine. Mortars
were designed to explode in the air over a target, showering it
with balls just like a round of cannister shot dropped from above.
French experiments with the use of shells fired from
regular guns came to nothing until 1822, when General Paixhans
proposed a shell gun for use at sea.
It was introduced two years later, forcing the British to
adopt shell guns of their own.
By the 1850’s most warships carried a mixed armament of
guns firing shells and ones firing regular roundshot.
The problem was that roundshot traveled further than these
early shells, and by the time of the outbreak of the American
Civil War (1861-65), both shot and shell remained in use side by
side, and both proved ineffective against the new ironclad
warships such as the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia.
The
adoption of the ironclad also marked the end of the sailing ship
era. Although
warships had carried steam and sail side by side for years, these
new ironclads followed revolutionary new designs, far removed from
the graceful sailing warships of the previous century.
Similarly, the days of muzzle-loading guns were numbered.
Just as rifled shell guns were replacing smooth-bored solid
shot weapons, technical innovations led to the development of
efficient breech-loading guns during the decades following the
Civil War.
Naval
Armament had come full circle, and the earlier breech-loading guns
of the 15th century which had become obsolete were
reinvented with a vengeance.
Muzzle-loading guns were a thing of the past, and today
they are relegated to museums, and the seabed.
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