Some old Photos for your enjoyment

KeithB

Resident Half Fast Machinist
Do you recall the max diameter and length of the cannon casting?

And yes, share some stories please.
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
Recall...it is memorized.... 1 3/8 bore and length 19 1/2" 18th Century "sub artillery" was made to shoot lead lead round shot and musket balls.
A solid lead ball is 1/2 lb
Once you move to Artillery (3 pdr & up) it is cast iron solid shot , grape and canister.
I live in the outskirts of my small PA Brough. I checked wit the town laws on the books and "Ordinance" was not included to near 15 years I fired Ginger on the hour starting at 12 noon on the 4th of July! Pretty much shoot the neighborhood 3/4 ounce of Black Cannon powder and a wet wad!
One year my BIL asked me to shoot a ball! I wasn't about to shoot a lead 1/2 pound ball so I had a numbewr of 1 3/8 inch cannon ball made with plaster for demonstration purpose.
We set up a 3/4 inch 4x8 sheet of plywood 30 yards from Ginger and I loaded her with 1ounce of Goex fg powder
When she went off I expected to see the plaster ball blowen to bits by the board!
Not So see below:
PlasterCannonBall.jpg
The next morning I trace the shot though the trees beyond the board and it kept gaining altitude! Pretty much think it landed in the neighbooring town from the trajectory!
Then one yar after seeing Master & Commander: the other side of the globe; we fired it at 30 yards from a 4x8- 3/4 particle board wall!
One ounce 1f Goex, wad , hand full of .72 cal Brown Bess musket balls and a light over wad!
Needless to say ( no photos that year) She really proved her effectiveness on a boarding party! The largest piece of the 4x8 particle board was about 1 sq ft!
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Plaster is that impressive, I don't think you want to be shooting any full diam lead balls unless you take it
out to fiver's place and have him show you a safe mountain to shoot at.

The cannister sounds pretty devastating, too.

Bill
 

popper

Well-Known Member
The back track is horiz aiming. Anti-ship canister is to rake the gun deck, they chained cannon balls together to take out the rigging. Chained balls were also used against cavalry and advancing troops. My opinion of early army leaders is not very good.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
put it on some wheels and bring it out,, we can try for some rock chucks, or at least pick off a few ground squirrels... LOL
it'd be legal for deer hunting here too, but I wouldn't want to be the one packing it through the trees.
 

smokeywolf

Well-Known Member
This brings back memories. Dad had two line-throwing cannons. His default ammo was Metrecal cans filled with cement. Every 4th of July he'd drag one out to the alley behind their house, load it with rags and fire it it off.
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
I never understood the concept of marching in ranks into cannon fire, or massed musket fire for that matter. Never really thought about it until I was watching a documentary on the making of "Gettysburg". The author of the book, Shelby Steel IIRC, mentioned that had Lee ordered him to march in ranks into massed gun and cannon fire he might have been shot as a coward, or words to that effect. I thought about it for a second and decided I'd probably have been shot with him. Why men were sacrificed like that is simply beyond me. I'm all for honor and courage, but there comes a point where it's just sheer carnage to walk men into overwhelming fire. Cover and conceal, suppressing fire and movement, that seems more common sense to me and a better way to win a war. In my mind the idea of marching into fire should have died out when firearms became common. When it's swords and lances, fine, hack away at each other. Once the effective range of your weapons exceeded 50-75 yards, then it became a game of picking off the other guy when he showed himself. And once machine guns came into being, oh heck no! Going "over the top" might have been a faster and maybe easier death than dying of dysentery in the trenches, but it's still suicide. Must be that enlisted mans thinking kicking in, but guys like the aforementioned Custer that built their careers on the backs of dead "cannon fodder" never impressed me whole lot. Japan, China, Korea, Russia and the Brits all had people running the show that seemed unconcerned with how many of their own dead they racked up in various fairly recent wars. Our own American higher ups seemed to be in competition between sides on who could lose the most men at some of battles in the War Between the States. I find it all very sad, so many lives lost.
 
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Pistolero

Well-Known Member
In the days when slow firing muskets were the norm, and accuracy of an individual musket was
almost entirely random, the massed firepower of a large group of troops was very great. And
remember that after a couple of cycles of reloading and firing, none of which would hit a man
reliably at 50 meters, let alone 150 or 200, on purpose - they charged with bayonets which was
extremely effective.

The issue was that at the Civil War, suddenly the rifled musket was accurate, not entirely random
beyond 20 meters, and yet military tactics were the same as they had been for the previous 300-400
years.

Bill
 

462

California's Central Coast Amid The Insanity
Having your enemy endure massed fire. be it arrows, muskets, artillery, or machine guns, was as effective in Biblical times as it was in World War !, and it continues to exist today with artillery barrages and carpet bombing. About the only thing that has changed is the stand-off distance -- a long bow's 300-yards at Agincourt to the many-miles-high ceiling of a B-52.

Each generation has its war, and I'm glad that mine wasn't in the trenches of France or Belgium.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
As to Agincourt....I always remember "Let the grey gulls fly!" The arrows were apparently fleched with
grey gull feathers. And the fact that ordinary Englishmen, not only royals and the wealthy vassals of the kings,
were longbow men, and had their weapons at home, and had to practice regularly, and the wealthy provided prizes
for archery tournaments to keep up the strength to 'bend' a 100lb and greater pull longbow fundamentally
changed the relationship between the armed citizenry and the barons, dukes and kings. Eventually this
change in attitude was part of the forces that led to the Magna Carta, which restricted the power of the
king a bit. The ordinary citizen possessed a weapon that could take down an armored knight. THAT
was a game changer.

The longbow was a technology that changed society, history and Britain. And a lot of that came down
eventually to the British Colonies, and our ideas about arms for ordinary citizens were an outgrowth of that
and other things.

In many ways, Agincourt was an exceptionally important battle, and echoes still down the ages.

Bill
 
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JWFilips

Well-Known Member
The issue was that at the Civil War, suddenly the rifled musket was accurate, not entirely random
beyond 20 meters, and yet military tactics were the same as they had been for the previous 300-400
years.

Bill You hit it on the button there!
18th century battle tactics with industrial age weapons! Bad mix all the way around
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
AND, no significant advances in medical care, when the weapons took a leap in deadlyness,
although carbolic acid washing of wounds, and hand washing with soap and water for docs was
starting to catch on.

I shot a real 58 Cal Remington 1863 civil war rifled musket extensively in the 60s, owned by a friend.
We could reliably make a 3-4" group at 100 yds with that rifle. There was no excuse for missing
a standing man at 100-200 yds if you were a careful marksman. And a 575 gr soft lead, .58 cal
slug probably arriving at around 1000 fps, launched at around 1200 fps, was horrific if it hit
a bone, still pretty aweful even it it only hit meat.

Yeah, the US Civil War was a real bad one. I lived in Va for many years, often very near battlefields
and spent a lot of time going over them. Friends had many minie bullets and a few iron grapeshot and
one cannon ball recovered from battlefields before the feds went nuts and arrested people for that.
i was exposed to the projectiles and the weapons at an early age, always in sad awe of that war.

Bill
 
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popper

Well-Known Member
The marching drill we do came from pike defense and attack. Squad of pike on the outside, bow or shield and swords on the inside. Very maneuverable with training. When guns appeared, rank 2 or 3 deep were used. One of the Mexican war problems was 6 or 7 deep, cannonade went through a bunch of soldiers.
 

smokeywolf

Well-Known Member
A 58 caliber Minie or worse yet a 69 caliber ball of pure lead would flatten out to the size of a small frying pan if it hit a shoulder or hip. Due to massive tissue damage and loss of blood supply to the limb, this often resulted in amputation, with or without infection.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Yes, the original maneuverable defensive unit was the fighting square, pikemen to keep the cavalry back,
shields and swords all around. A human mass 'tank' sort of. When it was cold steel, then
the archers could rain down the arrows. That was about 1400 so 1500s, seems like. not sure how
the Romans actually fought.

And in a narrow pass, when cold steel ruled the world, 300 Spartans could hold back thousands of Persians.
And even today, 3,000 years later we know the name of the man who led them, Leonidas, and their reply to
Xerxes soldiers when they ordered the Spartans to "lay down your weapons".

"Molon Labe" - "Come and take them", echos down the millenia.

Guns changed that a lot.

Bill