Wrought Iron Culverin — Russia
Russia has always been a war-like nation, and this is perpetuated in her military museums, some of which are as fine and extensive as any in the world. Although there is a problem with taking pictures of exhibits, so in this article we can’t show very much.
This model of a wrought iron culverin is a very early cannon, being made about two hundred years after the invention of cannons. The wheels were solid wood, banded with iron tires and the barrel was forged by hammering it out of a piece of wrought iron. (As an interesting aside, most people have heard the quotation, “what hath God wrought”, but not very many are able to tell you that wrought is the past participle of the verb, work). The barrel ends in a curled up tiller or handle, which was used to aim the piece while another of the crew touched off the pow-der charge.
As was usual with these early guns, the bore was small, the ball was small and the powder charge was small, primarily because powder was hard to come by and was expensive, and the barrels were not strong enough to withstand the pressures of a large charge. The bore was an inch and a half to two inches in diameter and more than likely, a stone ball was used for a projectile or a handful of smaller stones were used for close-in work.
Ribaudequin
Ribaudequins or organ guns, consisting of several cannon barrels mounted on a two-wheeled carriage similar to a chariot, with spears projecting out the front, are in a class by themselves. The idea was’ that after the gunners fired the cannons, either singly or all at once by means of a powder train, they picked up the rear shafts of the cart and ran forward, trying to impale the enemy on the spears. When we say they are in a class by themselves, we mean there is some doubt that they ever existed, at least in some reputable historian’s minds (we are speaking only of the two-wheeled, spear carrying type here). These think that they are “a figment of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat oppress ‘d brain” as Shakespeare said of another weapon, and that they were created by some of the more inventive artists of the times and existed only in the pictures that these artists drew. On the opposite side of the coin, other historians point out that there are numerous references to multiple barreled guns in various inventories of the era, so that while the additional spears may be artistic license, the multiple barrels were not.
The name organ gun obviously came from the appearance of the barrels, with the rows of barrels being likened to the pipes of an organ. Since these were some of the earliest cannons, they were very small caliber. It is likely that most of the soldiers of that time, being recruited as they were from the peasantry, had never been in a war before, and when confronted with this awesome looking machine that spit thunder and death, were more than willing to throw down their arms and flee when it came trundling over the battlefield at them, with the dragon heads grinning and the spear points gleaming.
Falcon – 4pdr
The falcon was the forerunner of the larger 24 and 32 pdr naval guns, a miniature version, so to speak. This was practically the same gun as later types, except that the later guns were scaled up in size as better methods of casting and machining were developed. The falcon, by comparison, was a relatively insignificant pop-gun, shooting a ball three and a quarter inches in diameter, weighing only five or six pounds. It could shoot about four hundred yards at point blank range, and had a maximum range of about four thousand yards when elevated to a forty-five degree angle, by propping up the front of the carriage.
These guns would be used on small merchant ships, coastal luggers and the like, where two, three or four of these, pop-guns though they might be, would have a deterrent effect on pirates, enemy sloops of war, privateers and other assorted ne’er-do-wells. In those days, it was hard to tell what trials a ship would encounter, once it stood out to sea from its home port, so that it was well to be prepared for the worst, hoping all the while that the worst would never show up.
Contrary to general opinion, pirates did not always sail alongside in a fifty gun frigate. Often times, they would pull out from shore in a long boat with ten or twenty cutthroats aboard, and hope to take the helpless merchantman by surprise, boarding and killing or capturing the crew. In the time it took them to pull alongside, a determined crew with one or two of these falcons could put the fear of God into the here-to-for Godless clutch of pirates and easily make them decide to wait for a weaker, more defenseless ship to come along.
Falconet
The falconet is one type of the class of guns known as swivel guns (see also spingarda and servador). Another name for them was bulwarks guns, both names being obvious, since they were usually mounted on the bulwarks of a ship or fort and they were able to swivel and shoot in any direction. Since their range was short and their charge was relatively weak, they were used for close-in work, such as when the enemy sent small boats over to board or when the captain decided to lay his ship alongside the enemy and fight hand to hand. In the first case, the gun crew would use iron round shot on the small boats to try to sink them, and then, as they got closer, the gunner would switch to langrage, a fancy name for a cloth bag full of anything the gunner could get his hands on, such as lead balls, bits of scrap iron, nails and so on. By this time, of course, it was practically point blank range, and, unless the crew was overrun by the enemy, their fire could be deadly. Even if part of the ship was overrun by the foe, the little guns could be swiveled around and fired inboard to clear its own decks.
Also, when the two main combatants laid alongside one another, these guns were of great value in clearing the opponent’s deck.
The side that had the best gun crews, and could fire the fastest had a decided advantage. The swivels were small in size but large in value.
Saker
This is a miniature gun modeled after a saker that might have been used in one of the early colonies of America in the early 1600’s. It is mounted on a garrison carriage, with wheels (or trucks) on the front of the carriage only. In this period, there were no fixed classifications or standards, and the bore and barrel length varied somewhat from country to country and from maker to maker. The saker had a bore of about three and a half inches and shot a ball of about six pounds to an extreme range of approximately 350 yards.
One of the things I like about the guns of this period were the names the guns were given. Talk about variety! There were falcons, falconets, robinets, sakers, culverins, demi-culverins, minions, third-cannons, demi-cannons, cannons and cannon royal, to mention some of the commonest. But the users were not content to stop there. They went on to add other descriptive words to the names, such as short, long, light, heavy, bastard and anything else that seemed to fit the piece or the occasion. There were dragons and esmerils, double culverins and rib-audequins. And, to add a cliche to the end of this piece, others too numerous to mention.
French Stone Cannon
The stone cannon was called that, logically enough, because the cannonballs used in it were made from stone. Using stone for ammunition had some advantages and some disadvantages, but at the time, the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages. Chief among the pluses was the fact that the raw materials for cannon balls were everywhere and a great many of the local peasantry had experience in working with stone since most of the homes, from hovels to castles were made from stone. Thus it was possible to recruit a work force to make ammunition locally, without the trouble to carry it to the battle over long supply lines. Another plus was the fact that if the ball struck something hard, it would shatter, creating a form of shrapnel which could be disconcerting to the enemy, but better yet, prevented them from picking up the ball, dusting it off, ramming it down their cannon’s muzzle and firing it back at the erstwhile donors!
One of the drawbacks was the lack of weight as compared to an iron ball – for a 3-inch gun such as this, the stone ball would weigh roughly 3 pounds as against 6 pounds for an iron ball! Making a true sphere in stone was difficult, and as a result, windage (the space between the ball and the barrel) was large, thus losing a great deal of the power of the powder, and affecting the accuracy of the piece. The abrasiveness of the stone also caused a great deal of wear on the bore.
These were drawbacks, but for those times, not great ones. Troops were massed, and if a ball got to the troops, it hit them. With the weakness of the gunpowder, and the wide variations in its composition, accuracy depended more on luck than on skill. Besides, as far as the average soldier was concerned, being hit in the head with a three—pound rock didn’t feel very much different from being hit in the head with a six-pound iron ball!
The top of this barrel has the two dolphins (loops cast into the barrel for lifting) and has a rather ornate series of carvings on it. We say rather ornate, but in truth, by comparison with some barrels, it was plain as plain could be! At one time, in the late 1600’s and early 1700’s, the cannons cast in Venice, for example, could literally be classed as works of art! Not a square inch of their surface escaped the carver’s attention. Even the cascabel, the knob at the rear of the barrel, would be carved into a fanciful visage, or an animal’s head.
The box fitted into the trail behind the cascabel was removed when the gun was readied for firing. This was used to hold many of the tools used by the gunners of those days. Quadrants, vent picks, priming powder, and even a few rounds of powder and shot were carried in this handy, all-purpose chest. The chest on this model has, of course, working hinges and latch, and the ends are carved with the crest of the noble who owned the gun.
Round Battery — Russian
This Russian round battery is modeled after one that the master saw in a Moscow museum. It is a fascinating miniature gun, but we must say that as far as we are concerned, it raises more questions than there are answers. There was no printed material with the display, so all we can do is conjecture about its use and operation. First of all, the gun is obviously a field piece because of its wheels and lightly built carriage. With the barrels mounted on the wooden disc as they were, they could be easily rotated about the center pivot, bringing each one in turn into the firing position. With its short barrels and relatively small caliber, it could not have had much range. However, the builders must have thought that the firing of twelve shots in rapid succession would throw fear into the stoutest hearts of their enemies. The truth of the matter is that you needed a stout heart to get near the apparatus at all, either attacking from the front or firing from the rear of it.
For example, were all the barrels loaded before going into action? There is no indication of any type of cover over the vent holes. If there were none, it seems more than likely that with all the sparks flying around from firing the first barrel, others would be sure to go which in turn would set off more until all the barrels would have been fired (an early example of a non-nuclear chain reaction). In a situation such as that, what happened to our intrepid gunner — did he fall flat on the ground the second he touched off the first barrel? Our guess is that if he were smart, that is just what he did. Even with covers of some kind for the vents, there would always be some danger of unwanted ignition.
Another possibility was that some of the barrels were left unloaded, so that the gunner had a quadrant of safety, so to speak, where he could stand without worry while discharging the front cannon. This quadrant then became an ever enlarging island of safety for him as more barrels were fired. However, if that was the way it was, why not leave off two or three barrels since they wouldn’t ever be loaded or fired at any time?
A third possibility was that someone would be loading the rear cannons while the front ones would be firing. If that was the case, you could have counted me out when the applications were taken for the job of loader. A short life and a merry one! Extreme care would be necessary to fire only when all powder was covered very carefully, which would slow down the rate of fire to practically what would be possible with a single barreled gun.
As we said at the start, a fascinating model but, in my eyes, not a very practical gun.
Spar Deck Carronade — 18 Founder
Since you would have to find a very, very old sailor to find out what a spar deck is, we’ll cut directly to that old standard, Webster’s dictionary. Webster says, and we quote, “An upper deck of light construction above the main deck.” Now that we know that, we also know that carronades, invented by the Carron Foundry in Scotland, were relatively light cannons, hurling large projectiles with rather low powder charges, so this gun would do well on a spar deck. The carriage for the gun was pivoted at the front and had wheels in the back with the wheels mounted sideways.
Rope tackles attached to each side of the rear enabled the crew to swing the gun from side to side at will. The gun itself was on a sliding part of the carriage, so that the recoil pushed it backwards to the end of the carriage where it was loaded and made ready to be pulled back into position for the next shot. The spar deck carronade was a gun that was almost useless at far ranging shots but was deadly at close in work. As usual, this carronade was fastened to the carriage by a pin through the lug on the center of the bottom of the cannon, while the elevation of the barrel was accomplished by means of a threaded rod through the cascalvel. It all added up to a deadly arrangement for the enemy!
Resourse: “The Wonderful, Wacky, Terrible World of Artillery in Miniature” by Ralph Koebbeman