Cannon were identified by the weight of ball they were capable of throwing. By the 1600’s this became standardized. Their calibers went from the smallest – a two pounder used with swivel guns, mortars and small bore cannon on specially made carriages, to the largest – a fifty pound garrison gun.
The distance or range varied tremendously by the size of the ball and the amount of powder used to propel it. This proved to be very dangerous work for gun crews as cannon did explode, showering the crew with deadly metal shards. Factors that could come into play in which this occurred: in the heat of battle, artillerists expert in the balance of powder and shot per gun could inadvertently add too much powder; mistakenly insert two canisters (measured powder packed in paper); add a bit more powder to send a shot further to hasten the enemy’s retreat; improperly swab the barrel; improperly wade hot shot; or fail to remove unspent powder. In addition, shells sometimes exploded prematurely, or the weapon failed due to fatigue of iron or poor manufacture of the barrel.
Projectiles can be grouped into the following: cannon ball or shot, shell, canister or case shot, grape and pineapple, split shot, chain shot, bar shot, and hot shot. Each will be explained further in that order.
Cannon ball or shot was a sphere cast in iron. Mass times velocity gave it its most destructive punch; therefore it was less effective at a greater range. Fired in a flat trajectory, the iron ball was meant to bounce upon impact, like a stone skipping over water until it slammed into a line of infantry with the intent to behead or disembowel one or more soldiers packed tightly in ranks. Joseph Martin writes of soldiers eagerly chasing after spent British cannon balls that rolled harmlessly among them. Lugging the ball to the artillery officer, the ball was immediately added to the American munitions to return the favor; meanwhile the soldier was rewarded with a ration of rum for each ball he retrieved.
Shells were cast iron balls, but during pouring, were molded to have a hollow core. A small tube was figured into the manufacture so powder could be poured inside; this also enabled a fuse to be added. There were two basic types, non-fuse and fuse. The former, when fired, was expected to generate enough friction heat against the inside of the shell that it would ignite either while in route or upon impact. The second had a fuse inserted that was ignited prior to the shell being fired. If timed right, the shell would be over enemy troops when it exploded, raining down deadly steel shards. Unfortunately, as already noted, the shell sometimes exploded while leaving the barrel, which had a disastrous effect on the gun crew.
Canister or case shot and grape evolved from what were known as scatter projectiles. The earliest muskets would use ‘buck and ball’ when the commander wanted a more effective punch with his line of infantry. Beside a cartridge of ball, additional smaller pieces of lead were added creating a fanning effect when the gun was discharged. In the fourteen hundreds, stones and bits of metal were encased in a wad of cloth or leather giving the cannon more of a fowling piece or shotgun effect.
Canister was a thin metal cylinder filled with iron balls. Case was the same thin cylinder filled with lead musket balls. The cylinder was fixed to a ‘sabot’, French for wooden shoe. A strong seal is required to trap propellant gasses released from the powder’s explosion and keep projectiles centered in the barrel. This necessary gap is referred to as the windage. Wadding filled the role for solid shot and shell. The wooden ‘shoe’ or sabot did the same for canister and case. When released, the thin outer cylinder was immediately shredded by the shock of the explosion and its shared metal, along with the iron or lead balls, created a deadly cone pattern: in effect a volley from infantry with a two to three hundred yard range.
Grape shot was used when a longer range was needed. Similar to canister and case in its destructive affect on infantry, a canvas or leather bag contained the lead or iron balls which were half in size as musket balls instead of the thin metal covering. To make such an unwieldy container easier for gun crews to carry and load, a center rod ran up from a wooden base enclosed by the bag. The bullets were stacked around the rod and a length of cord was continually lashed around pulling the bundle into a shape that was both manageable and could fit the caliber of gun from which it would be shot. It was similar to a bunch of grapes thereby received its name. Pineapple shot was a variation of grape shot. When grape and case were used together, the result produced a killing field of up to 600 yards.
Split shot, per its name, was simply a solid ball halved then bound together. Loaded as one shot, upon firing, it separated with each half taking a different and unpredictable path due to asymmetry.
Chain shot was generally used aboard ship as it was designed effectively to carry away masts and rigging. Either split shot (two halves) or two solid shot were connected by a length of chain. Upon firing, each shot would pull in a different direction creating a rotating motion around a center mass. On land, it was most effective against a cavalry charge, taking out the horses legs or gouging a chunk of infantry in line.
Bar shot was similar to chain shot except a metal bar attached the shot at each end. The bar was one to two feet long. A type of this was referred to as a sliding shot. The connecting bar was actually two bars which, upon firing, would slide over each other by connecting grommets that expanded the distance between shot as well as its destructive force. All forms of bar shot were called angel shot for its appearance in flight to deliver a not so angelic impact.
Hot shot proved to haunt a gun crews’ sleep. Iron shot was heated in a portable forge that was brought to the rampart or upon the field of battle until red hot. A charge of powder was loaded but with a tight fitting dried wooden wad that was tightly rammed on top.
Wet cloth and oakum soaked in water were rammed home, acting as insulation between the hot iron and susceptible powder. The heated shot was then rapidly brought to the gun and loaded and fired as quickly as possible. This type of shot was most effective in ship to ship warfare and against fortifications housing supplies or munitions in wooden structures.
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RESOURCES
Boatner, Mark M. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. NY: McKay, 1966.
Butler, John G. Projectiles and Rifled Cannon. 1875 D. Van Nostrand Pbl. NY
Callahan, North. Henry Knox, General Washington’s General. South Brunswick, NY: Barnes, 1958.
Downey, Fairfax. “Birth of the Continental Artillery.” Military Collector and Historian, 7 (Fall 1955).
Manuey, Albert. Artillery through the Ages. 1985 U.S. Gov. Printing Office National Park Service.
Cast in iron or bronze, a cannon was loaded with prepared cartridge of paper or cloth containing gunpowder. The ball or grape was then inserted and rammed home on to the cartridge, unlike a musket cartridge that combined powder and ball in the same paper.
A cannon is any large tubular firearm designed to fire a heavy projectile over a long distance. They were first used in Europe and China, and were the archetypical form of artillery. Round shot and grapeshot were the early projectiles used in cannon.
Maximum range of eighteenth century guns was about 1 mile. Guns could: Batter heavy construction with solid shot at long or short range; destroy fort parapets and, by ricochet fire, dismount cannon; shoot grape, canister, or bombs against massed personnel.
Most of those launched cannonballs that weighed four or five pounds, 12 pounds max. A 25-pounder would have come from a water cannon — the kind you see in pirate movies.
The casualties from round shot were extremely gory; when fired directly into an advancing column, a cannonball was capable of passing straight through up to forty men. Even when most of its kinetic energy is expended, a round shot still has enough momentum to knock men over and cause gruesome injury.
Cannon. The impetus in the cannon is provided either by a spring or jet of compressed air. This makes the device work more like a catapult, where the cylinder propelling the human stops at the mouth of the cannon.
A cannon is a remarkably simple device. It consists of a strong metal tube with a plug at one end. There is a small hole for a fuse drilled through the tube. You load gunpowder into the tube from the open end of the cannon and then insert a cannon ball so that the gunpowder and ball are pressed against the plugged end.
To load the cannon, a quantity of black powder was ladled into the barrel and rammed in, followed by a 'wadding' of cloth or straw. Then a solid iron cannonball of slightly less diameter than the bore was rammed in, followed by more wadding.
Solid Shot - this is classically known as a cannonball. The weight of the solid shot that a gun would fire determined whether a cannon was a 6-pounder, 12-pounder, etc. Solid shot did serve as an antipersonnel weapon, but its main purpose was to batter down walls, buildings, and other fortifications.
The recoil of a rifle or a cannon is due to Newton's Third Law of Motion. The force the cannon exerts on the cannon ball accelerating it out from the barrel is equal and opposite to the force the ball exerts on the cannon to recoil it backwards. All missiles obey Newton's Third Law of Motion.
Fact #1: You need a team of ten to shoot a cannon. Most artillery pieces were manned by teams of at least 9 soldiers, though only 2 were needed in a pinch.
Soldiers often needed a minute or two to reload a rifle, since the grooves made it take longer to ram the ball to the breech. Rifles were often also built for hunting and were not capable of attaching a bayonet to them.
The Paris gun was used to shell Paris at a range of 120 km (75 mi). The gun was fired from a wooded hill (Le mont de Joie) near Crépy, and the first shell landed at 7:18 a.m. on 23 March 1918 on the Quai de la Seine, the explosion being heard across the city.
In the 15th century exploding shot was developed by filling hollow cast-iron balls with gunpowder and fitting a fuze that had to be lit just before firing.
In reality, an array of both exploding and solid projectiles were used in the Civil War and for centuries before, but solid shot predominated until around the1850s. The earliest cannons, developed in 1300s, fired nothing but solid objects — stone balls.
They are about 2 inches in diameter. Small iron (C) and lead (D) balls that are 1 to 1.5 inches in diameter came from the ship. They probably were used as grape or canister shot. Grape shot is a cluster of several small balls tied or wrapped with canvas in a bundle.
It depends on the cannon. The shorter range cannon (such as 6 pounder smoothbores and 12 pounder howitzers) had ranges of about 2/3 of a mile. The 12 pounder smoothbore (“Napoleon”) which was the most frequently used cannon could shoot about one mile. Rifled guns could shoot further, with greater accuracy.
Cannon balls are the most common projectile recovered from the Queen Anne's Revenge site, ranging in size from ½ to 24 pounds. Solid shot was used to pierce the sides of a wooden-hulled ship.
In war memorials with cannons and stacks of cannonballs, the cannonballs are sometimes stacked as a four-sided pyramid, with the base as a square of cannonballs with n balls on each side. An alternative is to stack them in a three-sided pyramid, which is in fact one of the Platonic solids, a tetrahedron.
After the Middle Ages, most large cannons were abandoned in favor of greater numbers of lighter, more maneuverable field artillery. New defensive fortifications such as bastions and star forts were designed specifically to better withstand artillery sieges.
Momentum is conserved in collisions and explosions . Conservation of momentum explains why a gun or cannon recoils backwards when it is fired. When a cannon is fired, the cannon ball gains forward momentum and the cannon gains backward momentum. Before the cannon is fired (the 'event') the total momentum is zero.
It was considered very good practice to fire three naval broadsides of cannon in five minutes in the Napoleonic Wars. Considering that the cannon was loaded when the time was started that meant two reloads, aiming, and shot in five minutes (or reload, aim, and shoot in 2.5 minutes per round).
Most often, this is done by applying tannic acid in three applications over a 24 hour period. The tannic acid acts as a rust inhibitor and soaks into the outer layers of the cast iron and is then painted over. There are a handful of advantages to using tannic acid and paint, namely the cost and ease of application.
Each cannon would be manned by two gunners, six soldiers, and four officers of the artillery. The right gunner was to prime the piece and load it with powder, while the left gunner would fetch the powder from the magazine and keep ready to fire the cannon at the officer's command.
Cannons were still “line of sight” weapons—that is, the gunner had to be able to see the target to shoot at it—but they could inflict damage on buildings and troops at longer distances than before—usually up to two miles away.
Black powder provided the destructive force for cannonballs and artillery shells. The combination of sulfur, potassium nitrate and finely ground charcoal requires a high temperature - 572 degrees Fahrenheit - and friction to ignite. White estimated he had worked on about 1,600 shells for collectors and museums.
RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) - Twenty-four hand grenades and one cannon ball were found in storage by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources last November.
Against ships, cannon crews utilized hot shot, a superheated cannon ball that could set a ship on fire; and bar shot and chain shot, (two halves of a cannon ball attached by either a bar or chain) that could pull down a ship's mast and rigging. The howitzer combined the principles of both the cannon and the mortar.
The USS Constitution earned the nickname "Old Ironsides" after battling the British ship Guerriere on August 19, 1812. British cannonballs seemed to bounce off its thick wooden sides, which were comprised of three layers of oak, and fall into the water.
A combination of different types of oak layered around each other made the ship's surfaces dense and difficult to pierce. The multiple layers of wood absorbed the cannonballs' impacts of the and dissipated the forces quickly.
The earliest cannons, developed in 1300s, fired nothing but solid objects — stone balls. The following century weapons makers did develop hollow iron balls filled with gunpowder and fitted with a fuse that had to be lit just before firing.
Cannons were still “line of sight” weapons—that is, the gunner had to be able to see the target to shoot at it—but they could inflict damage on buildings and troops at longer distances than before—usually up to two miles away.
They weigh from 8 to 10 pounds apiece and measure about 4.1 inches in diameter. These were the solid shot used in the eight-pounder cannons. Six smaller-sized balls (B) may have been shot for four-pounder cannons.
Bullets may be made of a variety of materials, including metal, plastic or rubber. Bullets for hunting and target shooting typically are made of lead or may have a lead core with a copper coating, and may include inserts made of plastic or other materials. Caliber is the measure of the outside diameter of the bullet.
The soldiers would carry about 30 pre-rolled musket cartridges in a cartridge box they wore on their hip. The cartridges were paper tubes filled with black powder and lead musket ball, usually about . 69 or . 75 caliber.
The flintlock musket was the most important weapon of the Revolutionary War. It represented the most advanced technological weapon of the 18th century. Muskets were smooth-bored, single-shot, muzzle-loading weapons. The standard rate of fire for infantrymen was three shots per minute.
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