aris Posted August 16, 2014 Report Share Posted August 16, 2014 (edited) Some pics from HMS Victory which sits in the Portsmouth historic dockyard 68 pounds of golf ball sized shot. This was an anti personnel charge which went into a front loading cannon These dumbells would shoot out if the canon and spin around - mainly to take out the enemies sails and rip them to shreds These are nasty. Several iron black balls bound by cloth and rope on a metal saucer with a pin holding it all together. Balls are anti personnel or even anti ship - the saucer and pin reminds me of the French THV armour piercing ammo of today Here is the whole setup A canon - they had various sizes. The charge was held in cotton bags and rammed down. Wadding was anything they had to hand. Bits if cloth, rope, etc. Edited August 16, 2014 by aris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Imperfection Posted August 16, 2014 Report Share Posted August 16, 2014 How much powder does that cannon need!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
la bala Posted August 16, 2014 Report Share Posted August 16, 2014 Great pics. wasnt it said that more people were killed or maimed by wood splinters than by the armourments Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aris Posted August 16, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 16, 2014 Guide told us that during the battle of trafalgar, the surgeon did 140 amputations. As for the amount of gunpowder - I neglected to get a pic of that. Think a sack the size of the foot portion of a sock. They had separate finer powder in a horn which the poured into a hole at the breach to ignite the powder. The room they kept the powder in was interesting too - copper lined to prevent sparks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
figgy Posted August 16, 2014 Report Share Posted August 16, 2014 They also used Grape Shot for anti personnel smaller than golf balls.One huge Puntgun and Punt. Now which way to the marsh. Can see a few new builds in the Wildfowling section from them with the kit. My new four pounder punt gun, takes out three hundred duck in one shot but an hours paddling back to where you fired it from. Figgy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RED BEARD Posted August 16, 2014 Report Share Posted August 16, 2014 It all sounds very painful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zapp Posted August 18, 2014 Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 I did that tour in 2002, its well worth it. It used to be done by serving senior navy ratings and the old chief petty officer we had was a gold mine of information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
propercartridges Posted August 18, 2014 Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 I did that tour in 2002, its well worth it. It used to be done by serving senior navy ratings and the old chief petty officer we had was a gold mine of information. hey zapp is that where you got your hat from in your photo bet you went allowed to smoke then Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mudpatten Posted August 18, 2014 Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 A full powder charge for the larger guns onboard HMS Victory was about 10 pounds of very coarse grain black powder. As an aside, if you look at the breaching ropes in the background of the pics of the cannon you`ll notice that the end of the rope is tied to the ring bolt with a loose overhand knot. When fired there is a degree of slippage in the knot which helps to reduce the felt recoil. Most traditional punt guns from the Portsmouth Harbour and surrounding areas of Langstone and Chichester employ a similar method to breach their punt guns. This is a mechanically very effective way of dealing with heavy recoil. Regrettably, this method was usurped around much of the rest of the coast where the Ralph Payne Galwey method of using two eye splices and trunnions which results in a far greater part of the often severe recoil being transmitted to the punt and the breaching rope itself. In it`s original form, punt gunning took many of it`s ideas from the ground breaking Naval technology of the day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
propercartridges Posted August 18, 2014 Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 wish I could borrow that ship for a day nip over to france and get a few ton of powder and back you try finding a ship that will carry powder over the channel and all our powder problems will be over what you say chaps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mudpatten Posted August 18, 2014 Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 Good luck with that! My family have been shooting Frenchmen for almost 200 years. I`m never quite sure why we`ve had to stop! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henry d Posted August 20, 2014 Report Share Posted August 20, 2014 2-6 HEAVE! As we used to say. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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