Cannon balls

[Andi]

Intersting research results on iron filled lead cannon balls from the Mary Rose sunked on 19 July 1545

http://www.telegraph.co.ukl

[fernando]

Precious material, Andi. Thanks for sharing.

[Andi]

This website about the Mary Rose is also very valuable:

http://www.maryrose.org/

Including an online database containing more than 14.000 objects found in the Mary Rose:

http://www.maryrose.org/discover-our...ction/archive/

I wish, to have such perfectly presented material available for other archaeological finds.

What is your idea for the cannonballs? Iron just as a low cost substitute for lead? In this case iron balls could have been used. I guess the other theory is much more plausible.

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Andi

... What is your idea for the cannonballs? Iron just as a low cost substitute for lead? In this case iron balls could have been used. I guess the other theory is much more plausible.

This is "too much sand for my lorry"; i don't have enough luggage to discuss these things. This leads me to get confused when reading that ammunitions with the dimension of cannon balls are destined to pierce personal armour
Within my ignorance, i would quicker realize that the outer part of the balls in lead would be to avoid wearing the cannon bore too quick. By the time of Portuguese discoveries, on of their advantages in the artillery area was to have foundries in India to melt and recast the cannons after a limited number of shots.

[kronckew]

at the time of sinking, the mary rose was thirtyfive-odd years old, and the pride of henry 8th's fleet.

he'd just had it overhauled and upgraded to use the newer long barrelled cast iron cannon. (bronze was better but very expensive). the iron bores were much less forgiving than bronze bores, and iron projectiles with any imperfections could stick in the bore, catastrophically. lead covered iron projectiles would 'lubricate' the bore, preventing the sticking (and reducing wear and tear), and allowing less windage for better efficiency and range. tests conducted with contemporary cannon repros and iron shot were more than adequate to penetrate enemy hull planking of a thickness similar to the mary rose at 90 meters. the repros no doubt had better bores as they were machined with more modern machinery.

the new cannon were heavier. the decks were strengthened to hold the additional cannon, and the crew was increased to man them, and just on general purposes (from 200-ish to 400-ish).

sadly, the mary rose sailed on it's last fateful day, and apparently with a couple of hundred extra crew as well as the extra weight higher up, was quite unstable (no uscg or lloyds of london back then to approve stability plans) . the guns were cleared for action by the unpractised crew as they manoeuvred to attack the frogs, and as the vessel healed over, the lower still open gun ports were submerged, zillions of gallons of seawater entered the ship and it sank like a stone without firing a single lead covered iron shot. only about 35 survived out of the 400 or so on board. the rigged anti-boarding nets trapping many, the survivors mainly were from the top-men in the upper rigging. the lines of communication and command in the unpractised crew were strained, and there was likely not enough time or knowledge to ensure guns were run back in and the ports closed as the ship turned. the officers were political appointees, noblemen, and probably didn't know port from starboard let alone how to command such a ship.

i managed to tour the remains in portsmouth during one of the periods when they were not spraying it with glycol/water mix. eerie and claustrophobic. they had racks of longbows for the crew, that came from the wreck & looked like they could still be strung and used. they'd set up a repro you could try drawing, it was 120# pull or thereabouts. the museum is well worth a trip if you are in the area. hms warrior is also worth a visit nearby, as is hms victory.

[fernando]

Originally Posted by kronckew

... the iron bores were much less forgiving than bronze bores, and iron projectiles with any imperfections could stick in the bore, catastrophically. lead covered iron projectiles would 'lubricate' the bore, preventing the sticking (and reducing wear and tear), and allowing less windage for better efficiency and range...

I am glad that my reasoning had some sense .

[kronckew]

we tend to forget the details over the centuries. back then stone cannon balls were still fashionable - literally. stone was cheap & plentiful as was labour. it was forgiving as it didn't jam in the bore (it'd break before the gun would). it was lighter and took less precious powder to propel. OK against troops, walls required heavier and non-shattering ammo tho for quick results.

in those days the powder was in general pretty poor, the formulae varied to the gunners whim as well as the purity and availability of the components, which were usually mixed dry & not corned in a powder mill. dry mix tends to have the components settle with transport vibration, and the mix would vary throughout the barrel. all in all giving a very variable result.

windage was not as much a problem as we are led to believe, having fairly quickly figured out that too tight a bore fit caused explosions killing the very expensively trained gunners (some of whom were not worth the powder it took to blow them up. note origin of this expression). too loose a bore produced a whooshy bang but little result down the field. a bright spark figured out that sticking local green grass wadding down the bore on top of the powder before the ball helped seal the bore. wanting perfection he also would top the grass with a layer of soft malleable river clay. sadly as they had to wait for it to dry, it seriously impeded the rate of fire, especially on larger siege gonnes. they eventually scrapped the clay.

naval cannon would of course add a layer of wadding over the projectile to keep it or them from rolling out of a depressed muzzle, which was very embarassing for the gun captain when it happened. if it happened to land artillery with an advancing enemy, the targets would frequently show him the error of his ways. survival of the fittest again resulted in leaps in technology.

thus finally later entered the pre-made round. silk bags of pre-measured and graded corned powder allowed rapid reloading and charge adjustment. the final load would be a silk bag of powder attached to a sabotted ball, the sabot made of wood, attached to the ball by two tinned sheet iron straps. the ball was inside the silk, so could not dribble out a downward leaning muzzle. the sabot/silk bags sealed the bore.

result!.

just as they finally figured that out someone went and re-invented the breech loader with percussion primed brass cartridge cases and ogival streamlined exploding projectiles with copper sealing bands to engage the new-fangled rifling, and the art of gunnery changed forever. for one thing, the projectile can now never dribble out the front end of the gun.

and then we forgot.

i watch the american tv series 'mythbusters' on satellite tv here and shudder when they make a cannon, either compressed air or chemical explosive driven. they are forever just ramming a ball (golf,pool or tennis) down the muzzle, ignoring the windage and wondering why they never get a good result (tennis balls work best as they, being hollow, can deform with pressure more easily to seal better with their fuzzy outer jacket).

rather than adding a sabot or wadding or both they usually* decide that the fix is to add more power - more charge, higher air pressure, or more modern propellants, such as dynamite (which alfred nobel early on found exploded too quickly to be a good propellant, exploding the gun before the projectile could move - the dynamite gun was an abysmal failure). bigger is not always better.

*-the cute ginger headed girl one has been known to use a sabot so i know she knows what they are. they don't remember often enough tho.

p.s. - i like things that go boom. sadly now restricted here in the UK to cheap imported chinese fireworks of minimal bangs during holiday seasons. back home in alabama i got to shoot and blow up stuff much more effectively. i recall with fondness our first howitzer made from 3"-ish pipe that just took a pool ball. we'd drop an illicitly obtained cherry bomb or ash-can firework with lit fuse down the bore, quickly followed by the pool ball (no wadding - we had to be quick). worked a treat. me and the participating culprits lived on a small lake, the balls easily made the other side a couple of hundred yards away. we bombarded the construction site building the new and hated high school on them other side. having one brain cell between us, we used it to make a good descision to only do it after the workers left for the day. the brain cell was insufficient to figure out that when we ran out of pool balls, and our supplier's dad couldn't find them when he wanted to play pool that weekend, we'd be in deep doo-doo. no more cannon. we made rockets instead. and that is another story best left for later.

[fernando]

Stone ball cannons had the chamber narrower than the bore.
Apparently this artillery system disappeared during the 17th century.

[Andi]

wrong thread - Sorry
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?p=160459&posted=1#post160459

Please delete this post

[M ELEY]

I must have missed this one from awhile back. Fascinating information on the construction of those early naval cannon balls. Who would have thought? Archeaology is so important to the world of weapons collecting, as it sheds light on many of the unknown lost facts. I'm currently reading a spectacular book on shipwrecks off the Scottish coast and the underwater archeaological work being done on them. Among other interesting tidbits- many of the Spanish and Portuguese guns of the 16th century had extremely crooked bores, resulting in them being prone to explode in battle. The problems had been hinted at in old texts, but it took one of these wrecks to supply direct proof. Another interesting find was an English war ship whose bow was wrapped in tarred horse hide; an experimental method to deter the dreaded terido marine worm (It didn't stop the little buggers!). Anyway, thanks to Andi for posting this great link.

[adrian]

Stone ball cannons had the chamber narrower than the bore.
Apparently this artillery system disappeared during the 17th century.

Interestingly this system, with a smaller diameter powder chamber, persisted well into the 19th century & was used with shell firing ordnance such as mortars, howitsers & some shell guns etc.

Regarding stone cannon balls, the Royal Armouries experimented with some stone shot from Mary Rose & demonstrated its ability to easily penetrate great thicknesses of timber representing the side of a ship, when recovered the shot was still mostly intact. So the use of lead covered iron shot is rather curious, I think that less wear to the bore than with iron alone was a definite benefit, many of the larger natures of ordnance on Mary Rose were bronze and iron shot would scour this badly, & I would surmise that the intent was to provide for a limited supply of heavier weight of shot than the stone shot.
Much later iron shot were of course used in bronze guns, but with a wood bottom strapped on (later rivetted on) to minimise bore damage.
Adrian

[fernando]

Glad to have you around, Adrain

Originally Posted by adrian

Stone ball cannons had the chamber narrower than the bore.
Apparently this artillery system disappeared during the 17th century.

Interestingly this system, with a smaller diameter powder chamber, persisted well into the 19th century & was used with shell firing ordnance such as mortars, howitsers & some shell guns etc...

Perhaps my approach was not a fortunate one. I was correlating the system of stone ball artillery along with wider chamber diameter. I could refer to stone ball artillery period ending, but would not mention the longevity the chamber wider than bore alone.
There is this work covering an historical artillery exhibition in the Oporto Military Museum, where the author brings about this chamber system which, around here, is called encamarado (enchambered, in a free translation) or releixo (relax), applied in cannons used on board artillery or siege operations, seeking to obtain the ammunition (pelouro) shatering, in order to cause (more) casualties. In this exhibition a XV century gross bombard, possibly Portuguese, was present with a caliber of 85 stone arratles (circa 40 Kgs = 33,5 cms. diameter), loading 25 arratles black powder, with a (useful) reach of 400 to 500 metres, with a +5º elevation.
Concerning the bore damage caused by stone balls, the Portuguese had the option to melt and recast their cannons every hundred shots, so possible as they had established fundries in Goa, Cochim, Malaca and Macau (Rainer Daehnhardt).

[fernando]

Originally Posted by M ELEY

... Among other interesting tidbits- many of the Spanish and Portuguese guns of the 16th century had extremely crooked bores, resulting in them being prone to explode in battle ...

Oh Mark, let me be skeptical about that theory ... at least on what touches Portuguese artillery, the dame i can defend. From what i read and hear, the unanimous opinion is that their cannons were extremely advanced and a major ( if not the major) reason for their success.
There ought to be a context for that assumption .

[fernando]

Stone balls pictured last week at the Navy Museum situated in Torre Del Oro, Seville, Spain.
Amazingly these things could often be rather assymetrical.
I have seen much worse, by the way.

.

[M ELEY]

Sorry, Fernando. I reread the article and it was a Spanish vessel, the El Gran Grifon, that wrecked off Stroms Hellier, Scotland, in 1588. The vast majority of the guns from that wreck (and, according to the article, the time period), the guns had been bored very poorly, with many that would have exploded if they had been used. They were bronze guns from Lisbon and were a small batch, apparently an experimental program to speed up production and cut costs. The chief gunfounder was an Italian named Bartolome de Somorriva, who came under serious criticism. In the years to come, the problem was addressed, but for this particular wrecked ship, the inspectors had looked the other way on her poor guns. Ironically, it was bad weather and a reef that claimed the ship, not a battle.

[fernando]

So El Gran Grifon wrecked when returning from the Gravelines battle. She belonged to the Invincible Armada fleet … some call it convoy, once the Spanish idea was not battling on sea but invade Britain with a powerful army; only 22 were war galleons, the rest 108 being merchant ships full of infantry for the assault.
Noteworthy is that, by the time these events occurred (1588), Portugal glorious days, on what touches naval might, were starting to weaken; the Filipes from Spain had taken control of the country on 1580 (till 1640) .
One of the first things the Spaniards did after taking over, a classic move, was to demilitarize Portugal, namely dismantling some arsenals, and taking command of others. It is written that 1000 cannons of the finest gunnery were remitted to Spain, as also several ships, which ended up being used to strenghten the said Invincible Armada. The personnel embarked in those ships were Portuguese, although the command was Spanish.
Naturally during this period, operational problems arose, as Portuguese (like any other would) did not feel comfortable working and fighting under foreign command.
So under the pressure put by Spanish to organize for extra gunnery production on an urgent basis and under unwilling ambience in the Portuguese foundries, aggravated by lack of qualified supervision, i wouldn’t be surprised that fresh material coming out of the foundries was eventually “second choice”.
Adding to this problematic, Somorriva was a notorious untrustworthy gun-founder.
I would then consider such bunches of crooked guns as a punctual war episode and not a standard procedure.
… As obviously i would admit any scholar would turn my story upside down but, as you know, one must say something to defend his club .

[M ELEY]

Excellent information, Fernando, and very well researched. I had forgotten to mention that the cannons in question were from Somorriva's foundries. You certainly know your cannons! I think you 'defended your club' well, my friend. I wasn't trying to imply that Spanish or Portuguese technology was defective at the time, merely that the constraints of war plus certain policies interfered with the normally exceptional process of cannon making. I need to read up on the Gravelines battles.

[fernando]

Originally Posted by M ELEY

... I need to read up on the Gravelines battles...

May i save you some time?

Indeed a part of this research was done for the subject in discussion. A nice work on artillery connected with the episode may be read
HERE
... despite the ommission of certain pages

The usual wikepedia article, concerning the battle, may be read
HERE

The portuguese version, for my surprise with a varied text, may be read
HERE

Very important for the desmistification of the battle, a portuguese view may be read
HERE

I assume the last two links constitute a problem for english speaking readers but, who knows, a good willing Portuguese friend in the neighbourhood will translate it for you, in case of interest .

Other details i took from a couple books in my micro library.
In short ...
According to the majority of historians, the Portuguese war vessels were the the Spanish Kingdom great expectation of success for their invasion of Britain. In fact, the Comander in chief of the fleet selected a Portuguese Galeon, São Martinho, for his flag ship. Nine of these twelve ships together with four galeasses from the Kingdom of Naples were the most powerful vessels in the fleet. Most of the remaining ships were normaly used for transport, having been equiped with artillery transferred from inland fortresses or smaller ships.
As already mentioned, the Spanish strategists were so confident that they would invade Britain with a relative facility, that they overlooked vital parts that were to be dealt on sea. In fact, the whole campaign was a disaster.

[M ELEY]

Thanks for the great links, Fernando. Of course I now remember this famous battle, as portrayed in the movie 'Elizabeth'. Drake's fireship attack was deadly, but the chief destroyer of the Spanish Armada was the horrid weather. That stretch of ocean around Scotland and Ireland has been claiming ships for centuries. It would seem that the main reasons England and Japan were never successfully invaded was because of none other than the angry seas. This respect for the tides is very apparent in Japanese mythology and legend.

[kronckew]

Originally Posted by M ELEY

... the main reasons England and Japan were never successfully invaded was because of none other than the angry seas. This respect for the tides is very apparent in Japanese mythology and legend.

even the great gaius julius caesar had trouble with the weather. his troops even refused to get on the boats for quite a spell. their initial landings were disastrous, and they left soon after - tho they of course spun that into a victory and a triumph for ol' gaius. the brits did pretty much what the japanese did to the mongols who tried to invade japan, tho the romans second attempt a hundred years later under vespasian was a bit more successful than the mongols second one. the romans came prepared that time and with better ships, the mongols not so much. the japanese learned from their initial experience. the celtic brits did not.

p.s. - the norman french successfully invaded in 1066. had not harold been a bit tired and short handed after forced march from his overwhelming victory over a separate invasion by vikings in the northeast a few days before, hastings and world history might have been a whole lot different.

ol' francis the duck's fire ships did very little direct damage, if any. it did scare the bejesus out of the spanish, and they essentially up-anchored and ran - straight into a storm. drake spent a significant part of the battle (which was actually spread out over quite a few days) looting a captured spanish ship rather than supporting the main english fleet. the spanish land commander in the netherlands was a bit hesitant about supplying the sea commander with his troops when the armada arrived, the delay proved fatal as they missed any good weather & gave the brits time to come up with a cunning plan. on both sides, cannon were basically ineffectual, doing little damage... the brits higher rate of fire, while psychologically impressive did little actual damage as the cannons were fairly light caliber. the heavier spanish ones didn't have the range, rate of fire or accuracy. the english long bow was likely more effective

good queen bess, after the 'victory' over the armada, had the fleet anchored and not only did not pay the sailors, but refused them permission to leave, many starved to death or died of disease. this of course did not apply to the officers.

many surviving spanish ships sailed around the top of britain and down to ireland, where they, out of supplies and water put ashore to gain help and food from their catholic brethren there, and were promptly slaughtered by the irish.

[fernando]

Originally Posted by kronckew

... on both sides, cannon were basically ineffectual, doing little damage... the brits higher rate of fire, while psychologically impressive did little actual damage as the cannons were fairly light caliber...

Indeed ... although the galleon São João, for one, was hit by 300 projectiles. Although it is recognizable that the superior fire capacity of the Portuguese (not Spanish) galleon São Martinho kept the Brit ships at distance. Contrary to what is said that the Armada fleet didn't shoot more than a couple volleys, flagship São Martinho sent off 200 pelouros only on the 2nd August, having been hit by 50 projectiles, some below the water level, which had to be plugged with lead plates by divers.
According to a relation of ammunitions listed at departure and arrival, São Martinho shot 47% of its pelouros, São Luis 60% and in other cases 87% were shot, from smaller galleons Agusta and Julia. It is therefore a myth that British ships could shoot more volleys than the Armada. It occurs that the number of ships that the main Armada galleons had to confrontate was much larger and the English were in numerical superiority. This is what explains that their projectiles hit more Armada ships and not the superiority of their gunners.
Despite in both sides actual war ships were in a rather inferior number than the total fleet boats, the English counted with the 34 galleons of the Queen squad, among 197 ships. The real battle was indeed fought bwetween these 34 vessels and the 9 Portuguese galleons, together with the 4 Naples galeasses. So the superiority of the British in actual war ships was considerable, only minimized by the fire capacity of each Portuguese galleon.
The real inferiority from the British side was their embarked infantry (15.551 men versus 27.365) but, as boarding operations were not relevant in such battle, this disadvantage became a vantage, as the difference in number was in terms of infantry, which had no role in combat

Originally Posted by kronckew

... good queen bess, after the 'victory' over the armada, had the fleet anchored and not only did not pay the sailors, but refused them permission to leave, many starved to death or died of disease...

Amazingly a similar situation ocurred with the Spaniards. By the time they returned from the battle some of the crews were already boarded for nine months as, during the fleet concentration in Lisbon before the departure, only the the crews of the Portuguese Crown were allowed to come ashore, having not been afected by a plague that spread aboard.
The situation was already dramatic even before any combat took place.