Figure 44—EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GUNNER'S EQUIPMENT. (Not to scale.)
The ladle full of powder was pushed home in the bore. Turning the handle dumped the charge, which then had to be packed with the rammer. As powder charges were lessened in later years, the ladle was shortened; by 1750, it was only three shot diameters long. With cartridges, the ladle was no longer needed for loading the gun, but it was still handy for withdrawing the round.
The rammer was a wooden cylinder about the same diameter and length as the shot. It pushed home the powder charge, the wad, and the shot. As a precaution against faulty or double loading, marks on the rammer handle showed the loaders when the different parts of the charge were properly seated.
The gunner's pick or priming wire was a sharp pointed tool resembling a common ice pick blade. It was used to clear the vent of the gun and to pierce the powder bag so that flame from the primer could ignite the charge.
Figure 45—SIXTEENTH CENTURY PATTERN FOR GUNNER'S LADLE.
Handspikes were big pinch bars to manhandle cannon. They were used to move the carriage and to lift the breech of the gun so that the elevating quoin or screw might be adjusted. They were of different types (figs. [33a], [44]), but were essentially 6-foot-long wooden poles, shod with iron. Some of them, like the Marsilly handspike (fig. [11]), had rollers at the toe so that the wheelless rear of the carriage could be lifted with the handspike and rolled with comparative ease.
The gunner's quadrant (fig. [46]), invented by Tartaglia about 1545, was an aiming device so basic that its principle is still in use today. The instrument looked like a carpenter's square, with a quarter-circle connecting the two arms. From the angle of the square dangled a plumb bob. The gunner laid the long arm of the quadrant in the bore of the gun, and the line of the bob against the graduated quarter-circle showed the gun's angle of elevation.