“… Captain Aubrey stood by the starboard
thirty-two-pounder carronade contemplating the Emperor of Morocco's purple galley
as it lay off Jumper's Bastion with the vast grey and tawny Rock of Gibraltar
soaring behind it, while Mr Blake, once a puny member of his midshipman's berth
but now a tall, stout lieutenant almost as massive as his former captain,
explained the new carriage he had invented, a carriage that should enable
carronades to fire twice as fast, with no fear of oversetting, twice as far,
and with perfect accuracy, thus virtually putting an end to war.”
The above extract from the opening of O’Brian’s “The Far Side of the World” concentrates
on a weapon, the carronade, which figures significantly – and frequently decisively
– in much nautical fiction, as it did in real life.
British 68-pounder carronade of 1780 on a fortress mounting |
The “carronade”, an early, perhaps earliest, example of a
trade-name becoming the accepted term for an entire class of products was a
short smoothbore cast iron cannon. It took its name from the original
manufacturer, the Carron Company, which had an ironworks in Falkirk, in Scotland,
UK. The short barrel indicated that it was a short-range weapon, powerful
against ships but even more so against personnel in close actions. A carronade
weighed a quarter as much and used a quarter to a third of the gunpowder-charge
for a long gun firing the same roundshot over much longer range. The lower recoil forces meant that
slider mountings, rather trucks, could be employed. The light weight of the carronade
made it especially attractive for mounting at higher levels – and important
factor when a enemy’s deck should be cleared by grapeshot before boarding. They
could also provide a very powerful punch for a small vessel such as a gunboat
or sloop.
A carronade on a shipboard mounding - note the slide |
Though the basic concept remained unchanged, carronades were
manufactured for a huge range, from 6 to 42-pounders, and 68-pounder weapons
not unknown. They were not counted in a ship of the line's rated number of guns
so that, in practice, the actual number of weapons carried might be significantly
higher than the rating.
Antoine Vanner with 1808 24-pounder |
Three cannonades are on display at the Royal Armouries
Museum at Fort Nelson, near Portsmouth. All are on fortress-mountings, for
protection of walls and bastions of land fortifications against storming but the
weapons are otherwise similar to what would have been deployed at sea. The
largest is a 68-pounder, dated to 1790, while the two smaller weapons are
28-pounders and dated as 1808.
Touching them forges a bond between the visitor and the world
of fighting sail - and makes one very grateful not to have been on the receiving end of one delivering a shower of grape!.
24-pounder carronade of 1808, fortress mounting |
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