Observe the heavy breeching-rope attaching the gun to the ship's side; the tackle and block for running in and out; the wooden wheels, and the "quoins" or wedges for elevating the gun.
Such cannon were all built up of long rectangular bars of iron upon which heavy rings of the same material were shrunk, the whole weapon, on completion, forming a heavy and extremely tough cylinder of wrought iron. The chambers, or breech-pieces, for the reception of the powder-charge, were built separately, with much thicker sides and smaller bores than the rest of the gun, into which they were screwed. The guns must not, I think, be therefore considered breech-loaders; for though it may be possible that they were screwed in and out at each discharge, I think it more probable that, as they were such heavy masses of metal, the breech-pieces were left screwed up and the charges inserted at the muzzle. But when cannon came to be made of more moderate dimensions—big enough to be effective against walls and the sides of ships, and small enough to be transported with reasonable facility—some system of breech-loading was almost universal. I say "almost", because guns began to be cast in brass in Germany at a comparatively early date, and such guns were probably often muzzle-loaders, since cast brass would not have been strong enough for the breech-closing methods in vogue. These were comparatively simple. The breech of the gun, which was built up much in the same way as Mons Meg and others of the same kidney, terminated in a species of trough. Into this trough fitted an iron cylinder which contained the charge of powder and was called a "chamber". The muzzle of the chamber was bevelled off or turned down so as to fit into the breech end of the bore of the gun itself, and was held in position by iron wedges, generally at the rear end, but sometimes across the top. In some of the larger types the trough was made in the huge block of tough oak to which the gun was fastened. In the Tower of London you can see a gun of this kind that was fished up from the wreck of the Mary Rose. As most guns were provided with at least two "chambers", one would imagine that a fairly rapid fire could have been kept up, at any rate with the smaller guns. This, however, would not seem to have been the case, for the French account of the battle off St. Helens (when the Mary Rose capsized), which lasted for two hours, and in which a considerable number of ships were engaged, mentions that 300 rounds were fired as a fact indicating the uncommon fierceness of the fighting. And yet the Henri Grace à Dieu alone carried over 100 guns of various sizes!
But at first, even at a time when artillery of one kind or another was in common use on land, very few guns were carried afloat. Very likely the reason was that few were suitable; they were either too big, too small, or, as before suggested, could not be safely closed at the breech. Thus in the reign of Henry IV, 1399-1413, the Christopher, a rather important man-of-war, only carried "three iron guns with five chambers, one hand-gun, and one small barrel of powder". The barge Mary (Marie de la Tour) carried one iron gun with two chambers and one brass gun with one chamber. Another Mary (of Weymouth) had also one brass and one iron gun, the Bernard had two iron guns, and a ship referred to as the Carrake one. The Christopher's guns are said to have been "stoked". This may possibly mean fitted with "stocks" or oaken beds, like those previously referred to, in which case her guns were probably larger and heavier than those in the other ships. The invention of port-holes was probably coincident with the adoption of really heavy artillery afloat. Before then it would not have been safe to have carried such heavy weights on the upper decks of the kind of ship then existing. The Great Michael may possibly be taken as an exception, for she could hardly have had port-holes cut in her 10-foot thick sides. At the same time, since her heavy guns were probably breech-loaders, they may have been practically built into her sides, since at that time there was no such thing as training a heavy gun right or left on board ship.
With the numerous batteries of small guns also carried on board ships of this period, it was quite a different matter. They were mounted on swivels on the gunwale, or in openings or ports in the fore- and after-castles as well as in the tops. Others, and among them certain wide-mouthed pieces known as "murderers", were distributed in what were known as the "cubbridge heads", or those sides of the fore- and after-castles which faced inboard and commanded the waist of the ship. Here it was to be expected an enemy's boarders would make their assault, and here—the crew having retired fore and aft—they would be mowed down by charges of all sorts of iron fragments from the "murderers". The same system of dealing with boarders lasted some time after the disappearance of the lofty "castles" at bow and stern; strong athwart-ships bulkheads being provided at bow and stern both on the upper and main decks.
It was in Henry VIII's time that the manufacture of cast-iron guns, for which England soon became famous, began in this country. One Ralph Hogge,[37] at Buxted, in Sussex, cast the first iron cannon. This is said to have been in 1543, and it is stated that the house in which this was done is still standing near the church of that village, and that it has the figure of a hog with the date 1581 carved over the door. There is another story to the effect that this early gunfounder's name was John Howe, and that there is the following distich, cut in stone, still extant in Buxted:—
"I, John Howe, and my man John,
We two cast the first cannon".
This invention may be said to have sealed the fate of the heavy breech-loading gun for some centuries, though the system remained in vogue for small pieces for another 200 years. A cast-iron or brass muzzle-loading gun could be made so much more easily, rapidly, and cheaply than a built-up wrought-iron breech-loader of the same calibre that with the growing demand for guns afloat there is little wonder that the former drove the more expensive weapon clean out of the field. It must be remembered, too, that the casting of bronze guns had already reached great perfection on the Continent. What is known as "Queen Elizabeth's pocket pistol" at Dover is a standing witness to this. It is supposed to have been cast at Utrecht, and to have been presented to Henry VIII by the Emperor Charles V in 1544. It is 24 feet long, and is a very fine piece of workmanship. Its bore is 58 calibres long—that is to say, it is fifty-eight times as long as its diameter, a proportion not very unlike that upon which some of our most modern weapons are designed.
Early Breech-loading Cannon
The first was an Armada weapon. This type of gun remained in use afloat well into the eighteenth century