How to: Build a replica Cannon Part One

The Background

History Part One of this series begins with a very brief look at the history of a typical naval gun in use with the Royal Navy of the 18th- and 19th-centuries. The story of such cannons, however, begins in 12th-century China where gunpowder, the first explosive, was developed[1]. Gunpowder was employed in warfare to some effect from at least the 10th-century in weapons such as fire arrows, bombs, and the fire lance before the appearance of the gun. The earliest European references to gunpowder are found in Opus Majus written by English philosopher and Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon, in AD 1267. The earliest known European depiction of a cannon, however, appeared in a manuscript[2] by Walter de Milemete dated to AD 1326. The cannon depicted is loaded with a large arrow emerging from it and its user lowering a long stick to ignite the cannon through a touchhole.

Continued development led to the construction of larger, more powerful cannon. By end of the 15th-century, several technological advancements were made, making cannon more mobile. Wheeled gun carriages and trunnions (pivot points) became common, and the invention of the limber further facilitated the transportation of artillery.

By the middle of the 16th-century better powder had been developed, and cannon were being made in a great variety of lengths and bore diameters. The general rule was that the longer the barrel, the longer the range, but with some many variants, European monarchs began to classify cannon to simplify logistics. France opted for six sizes of cannon, the Spanish used twelve sizes, and the English sixteen.

Design The design for our replica follows the plans for an English type 24-pounder long gun, which was a heavy calibre piece of artillery mounted on warships of the Age of sail.  The 24-pounder saw service in the navies of France, Spain, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States.  They were used as main guns on the heaviest frigates of the early 19th-century and on fourth-rate ships of the line, on the second deck of first-rate ships of the line, and on the second deck of a few large third-rates.

A notebook dating to 1720 mention that the British used four lengths of iron 24-pounders: 10, 9½, 9, and 8½ feet long.  Ten surviving guns, which are likely examples of the 9½ foot (2.9 m) version, weigh between 48 and 49¾ hundredweight (approx. 2349 to 2527 kg).

Gun Drills Firing a naval cannon required a great amount of labour and manpower. During the Napoleonic Wars, a British gun team consisted of 5 numbered gunners - fewer crew than needed in the previous century. The No.1 was the gun commander who aimed the gun and directed the typical firing procedure as follows. The No.2 was the "spongeman" who cleaned the bore with the sponge dampened with water between shots, extinguishing any embers from a previous firing which might set off the next charge of gunpowder prematurely.

The bulk of the gunpowder was kept in the ship's magazine, a special storage area below deck for safety. Powder boys, typically 10-14 years old, were enlisted to run powder from the magazine up to the gun decks as required. Scrambling through the confined spaces of a warship to keep the guns supplied with powder may explain the sobriquet "powder monkeys" by which these boys were also known.

The No.3, the loader, inserted the powder, either loose or in a cloth or parchment cartridge, into the barrel followed by a cloth wad (typically made from canvas and old rope). The No.2 then used a rammer, or the sponge reversed, to drive it firmly into the breach. The No.3 inserted the projectile, followed by another wad to prevent the cannonball from rolling out of the barrel if the muzzle was depressed, and rammed home by the No.2. At the same time, the No.4 ("ventsman") pressed his thumb on the vent hole to prevent a draught that might fan a flame[3]. The charge loaded, the No.4 pricked the bagged charge through the vent or touch-hole and then primed the vent with finer gunpowder (priming powder) or inserted a quill (from a porcupine or the skin-end of a feather) pre-filled with priming powder.

The gun in its carriage was then "run out"; men heaved on the gun tackles until the front of the gun
carriage was hard up against the ship's bulwark, the barrel protruding out of the gun port. This took the majority of the gun crew as the weight of a large cannon in its carriage could total over two tons, and the ship would probably be rolling.

At the No.1's command the No.5 would fire the piece with his slow match[4]. The earlier method of firing a cannon was to apply a linstock - a wooden staff holding a length of smouldering match at the end - to the touch-hole of the gun. This was dangerous and made accurate shooting difficult from a moving ship, as the gun had to be fired from the side to avoid its recoil, and there was a noticeable delay between the application of the linstock and the gun firing. In 1745, the British began using gunlocks (flintlock mechanisms) fitted to cannon, which were operated by pulling a cord or lanyard. The gun-captain, the No.1, could now stand behind the gun, safely beyond its range of recoil, and sight along the barrel, firing when the roll of the ship lined the gun up with the enemy, and so reduce the chance of the shot hitting the sea or flying high over the enemy's deck.

The linstock slow match or the spark from the flintlock ignited the priming powder, which in turn set off the main charge, which propelled the shot out of the barrel. When the gun discharged, the recoil sent it backwards until stopped by a breech rope. This sturdy rope was fastened to ring bolts let into the bulwarks, with a turn taken about the gun's cascabel (the knob at the end of the gun barrel).

Gunners' Equipment The core element is the barrel so named because the earliest guns were constructed with iron staves bound securely by hoops as was the case in coopering a cask or barrel. The other key piece is the gun carriage, but cannon are useless without projectiles to fire and the equipment the crew needs to serve the gun. According to its section on gunnery, 1771 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica notes the equipment needed as follows:

The sponge is a long staff or rammer with a piece of fleece sheep or lambskin wound about its end, to scour the cannon when discharged, before it is to be charged with fresh powder. This cleaning prevents any spark or fire from remaining in the piece, which would endanger the life of the loading crew. Sponges were the most commonly used cannon cleaning instruments.

A wad-screw or worm is formed of two points of iron in the shape of a corkscrew and used to extract the wad out of the gun. It is also used when the cannon has to be unloaded or dirt removed.

The lantern or ladle serves to carry the powder into the barrel where a bagged powder charge is not used.

A rammer is a round piece of wood, commonly called a box, which serves to drive home the powder and ball to the breech. It is fastened to a stick twelve feet long, for the pieces from twelve to thirty-three pounders, and ten feet long for the eight and four pounders.

A priming iron is a pointed iron rod, used to clear the touch (vent) hole of burnt powder or dirt. It is also used to pierce the cartridge so the priming powder when lit ignites the main charge.

The primer must contain a pound of gunpowder at least, and is used to prime the vent hole.

The botefeux is used to hold a winding of match with which to fire the cannon. This may be a stick two or three feet long with a split to hold one end of the match.

Next... In Part Two, we will begin the build by constructing that essential component of the cannon, its barrel.

Notes:

1. Gunpowder was discovered during the late Tang dynasty (9th-century AD) but the earliest record of a written formula appeared in the Song dynasty (11th-century). Knowledge of gunpowder spread rapidly throughout Asia, the Middle East and Europe, possibly as a result of the Mongol conquests during the 13th-century, with written formula for it appearing in the 1267 Opus Majus treatise by Roger Bacon and a 1280 treatise by Hasan al-Rammah.

2. De Nobilitatibus, sapientii et prudentiis regum (Concerning the Majesty, Wisdom, and Prudence of Kings).

3. A leather patch was often used to cover the touch-hole, when the piece is charged, to keep dirt from entering the touch-hole.

4. Friction primers replaced slow match ignition by the mid-19th century.

Dispelling Some Myths: Ancient Olympic Medals?

 “I don’t believe it!” Bargain Hunt strikes again broadcasting “facts” that are at best described as misleading and at worst simply untrue. On October 2nd, 2020, the BBC aired a BBC Bargain Hunt Sports Special that included a sequence related to the Olympics. During this segment, the presenter, Eric Knowles, stated that wreaths and silver and bronze medals were awarded to victors at the ancient Olympic Games. This is not true.

A search of Wikipedia will quickly discover that winners of the various disciplines at the ancient Olympic Games were awarded an olive wreath (kotinos, κότινος). Each of these victory crown was cut from the Sacred Olive Tree (Olea oleaster) growing at Olympia and intertwined to form a circle or a horseshoe. As the sacred rite required, the olive branch was cut with a golden sickle by a boy whose parents were still living.

According to the geographer Pausanias, this prize was introduced by Heracles for the winner of a running race honouring Zeus. As a symbol of victory, olive wreaths were worn with pride and honoured throughout Greece. Olympic champions were often rewarded by their polis ("city-state") with vats of olive oil and large sums of money (in Athens, for example, a prize of 500 drachma, a small fortune, is known to have been awarded).

The ancient Olympics ended in AD 394 when the Emperor Theodosius I banned all pagan festivals as part of his campaign to impose Christianity as the state religion of Rome. For 1,500 years the Olympic games were consigned to history. In 1894, however, Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that led to the inaugural modern Olympic Games in Athens two years later.According to the official website of the modern Olympics, the winners in 1896 were crowned with an olive wreath (echoing the ancient Games) and received a silver medal. Runners-up received a laurel branch and a copper or bronze medal. In the second Games, in 1900, most winners received cups or trophies instead of medals. Four years later, in the 1904 Olympic Games held in St Louis, the first gold (shown right), silver and bronze medals were awarded for first, second, and third place.

The suggestion that medals were awarded at the ancient Olympic Games is simply not true. The mix-up probably arises because both the ancient and the inaugural modern Games awarded olive wreaths to the winners. Yet it was only the latter that presented silver and bronze medals as prizes. It seems that the Bargain Hunt production team mistakenly conflated the ancient and modern prizes together. Hopefully, any confusion caused can now be dispelled.

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Dispelling Some Myths: An Attack of the Vapours

 Here at Tastes Of History we are avid watchers of the BBC's "Bargain Hunt". If you are unfamiliar with the show, two teams of amateur collectors have 60 minutes at an antiques fair to find and buy the best bargains possible. Each team's three items are later sold at auction and the winning team is the one who makes either the biggest profit or the smallest loss.

Part of each episode explores an item of local historical interest, but the main attraction is learning about antiques and collectables. Of the latter, one type of collectable that appears quite often are scent bottles. Double ended scent bottles, an example of which is pictured right, seem particularly popular with the competing teams. Typically dating to the Victorian or Edwardian eras, these items are essentially two bottles, complete with stoppers and a hinged cap, joined at their bases. In describing them, the show's experts usually explain that one end was for perfume, and the other contained smelling salts. The latter, it is claimed, was to revive ladies who had succumbed to a fainting fit because of the tight corsets they wore. There is no issue with someone carrying or using smelling salts, but why are we to believe that women regularly passed out? Where does this idea that wearing a corset leads to fainting fits? It all smells a bit too much like an urban myth.

One popular theory is that women were fainting because their corsets were laced too tightly thereby restricting blood flow. Yet, search for Victorian period images and you will find pictures showing women horse riding, playing tennis, and engaging in other vigorous activities without hindrance while clearly wearing corsets. The tennis players pictured below are clearly wearing corsets as evidenced by the rigid looking bodice shape.

Many women called upon to wear accurate costumes (actresses, re-enactors, interpreters and so on) experience the day-to-day wearing of corsetry. Like their photographed forebears, or perhaps the historical characters they portray, very few feel light-headed or suffer fainting fits. From the introduction of bodices, stays and corsets, working women have been able to complete their routine chores and go about daily life without issue.

What follows owes much to Lucy of Lucy's Corsetry whose enthusiasm for corsetry is self-evident and is someone keen to dispel the myths of corset wearing. With that in mind, as Lucy points out, there are three inter-related causes for fainting or feeling light-headed: over-exertion, over-heating, and dehydration. Taking each in turn, we will explore why.

Overexertion It is possible for corsets to compress the ribs putting pressure on the lungs and thus reducing oxygen intake. This is most likely to be the case if the corset is not made to measure, or has been deliberately tightened to reduce the silhouette. Unsurprisingly, a tightly laced corset will prevent the ribcage expanding fully and thus restrict airflow to the lungs. As a result, if the wearer exerted themselves and needed large quantities of oxygen, but was unable to fully inflate the lungs, this could lead to fainting.

A tightly laced corset can slightly reduce lung capacity simply by the nature of pushing up the stomach and diaphragm, but again this depends on the reduction. In many cases the temporary reduction in capacity is small enough that it would only be noticeable in situations of hard exertion. By contrast normal breathing while at rest only uses about 15% of a person's lung capacity, and many sedentary people rarely use their full capacity[1]. So, while some women may have genuinely fainted from shortness of breath, this scenario was likely far less common than some might claim[2].

Overheating From personal experience fainting can be brought on by overheating. On a very hot August day, while wearing a combination of bloomers, corset, petticoat, thick cotton overdress and a hat, one became quite light-headed and pale; a certain precursor to fainting. The layers of clothing had acted to insulate the skin from any cooling effect, so stripping off in a cool, secluded place quickly restored the body's equilibrium. Indeed, one reason we perspire is to create evaporative cooling at the skin surface thereby regulating the body's core temperature. With the layers of clothing acting to disrupt this thermoregulation it was unsurprising that one dramatically overheated. In similar circumstances, and if unchecked, this can easily lead to fainting and, more worryingly, heat stroke[3].

Dehydration Physical exertion (work) on a warm day can lead to overheating. Fail to drink enough water and it is so easy to become dehydrated. Even today, many of us become chronically dehydrated when we do not drink enough water or eat enough hydrating foods. Imagine the scenario where a wealthier fashionable lady, choosing to wear a formal corset slightly smaller than her everyday one for a more dramatic silhouette, attends a society ball. The exertion of dancing, possibly combined with overheating and dehydration, might easily lead to feeling light-headed or indeed passing out. In such circumstances it is easy to see how wearing a tight corset and notably incidences of fainting might combine to create the myth.

In the scenarios already mentioned, overheating and overexertion can lead to further dehydration. In an already chronically dehydrated person, this may cause fainting much faster or more frequently. From experience, it is noticeable that while wearing a corset one may feel thirsty much more quickly than when uncorseted. It is important to be aware, therefore, of the cumulative effects of overheating and dehydration and ensure you drink more water than perhaps normal. Depending on the circumstances (ambient temperature, clothing layers, exertion rates, etc.), the average person should consider drinking somewhere between two and five litres of water per day. So, if you choose to wear a corset, then staying hydrated is imperative.

Blood pressure The majority of women wore corsets without negative effects. Clearly the factors discussed above can be mitigated. Working women were, in all probability, less tightly corseted than, say, a lady of leisure. Shortness of breath resulting from overexertion would have been lessened. In certain circumstances, for example, women working in the fields in summer may not have worn as many layers as Victorian sensibilities might have demanded. And dehydration can be mitigated by consuming sufficient water (or beer!) throughout the day.

One other factor contributing to feeling faint or light headed can result when the brain is starved of oxygenated blood. While stories of women fainting from lack of oxygen or breathing difficulties are largely rumours, abrupt changes to blood pressure can caused be exacerbated by tying a corset too tightly and too quickly. If a woman's is already experiencing low blood pressure, then putting on and tightly lacing her corset might cause a further decrease, most likely in her upper body as the heart struggles to pump blood against gravity. By contrast, blood could more easily be flow to the lower body, which might lead to a greater volume of blood and a greater pressure in the legs compared to in the upper torso. Affecting the circulation of oxygenated blood, particularly to the upper body and head, would easily contribute to a lady swooning or fainting.

Once a person has fainted, their body typically falls to ground assuming a horizontal position. With their head and feet at the same level, blood pressure can normalise throughout the body. As the brain starts to receive enough blood, and enough oxygen, the fainter will regain consciousness[4].

Fainting Culture The physiological factors are not the whole story, however. For these fainting myths to persist there must be something more than explanations centred on overexertion, overheating, dehydration and fluctuating blood pressure. For upper class women there may well have been something of a culture of fainting[5].

It is just possible that women adopted the pretence of fainting to avoid uncomfortable social situations. The strict rules governing Georgian and Victorian society and behaviour left many women with little other recourse. What might the archetypal "Southern Belle" (of the movies) do if she was determined to be the centre of attention at a ball? How might a lady avert a confrontation or having to talk with someone she wishes to avoid? What can she do if, intensely annoyed by a particular situation or person, she is unable to publicly express her anger for fear of being thought "hysterical"? In such circumstances, women might employ pretend fainting as a face saving avoidance strategy. Likewise, fainting might be one of few ways to abruptly change an uncomfortable subject or leave a room (how else might one escape to the toilet without announcing something so unbecoming?) while preserving your dignity.

While it remains entirely possible for anyone wearing a corset to faint for all or some of the reasons given above, the likelihood is that most wearers will experience no ill effects. Considering the sheer number of corsets worn at the height of their popularity compared with the available anecdotal evidence, it seems pretty certain that the correlation between corsets and fainting is more myth than grounded in reality.

After all this talk of ladies undergarments, one is feeling a little light-headed. Somebody pass the smelling salts...

Notes:

1. Lucy's Corsetry, (2015), "Fainting", retrieved August 30th, 2020.

2. Lucy's Corsetry (2014), "Corsets and the Victorian Fainting Culture", retrieved August 31st, 2020. It is also possible to feel “faint” from too much oxygen, which is why hyperventilation causes light-headedness and could potentially result in brief loss of consciousness.

3. Heat stroke occurs because of high external temperatures or physical exertion resulting in a body temperature greater than 40°C (104°F) and confusion. Onset can be sudden or gradual. If unchecked, heat stroke can be fatal. More information on the signs, preventative measures and remedial actions can be found here.

4. Lucy's Corsetry, (2012), "Corsets and Blood Pressure", retrieved August 31st, 2020.

5. Lucy's Corsetry (2014), "Corsets and the Victorian fainting Culture", retrieved August 31st, 2020.