Gun-founding, even in bronze, was still a somewhat primitive art. But, once taught, the English founders soon excelled their teachers; and Norton’s eulogy, and the records of foreign efforts to obtain possession of English pieces, bear witness to the superiority of our workmen. The products of the most famous founders of that time in Europe were very imperfect. “Some of their pieces (and not a few) are bored awry, their soul not lying in the midst of the body of metal; some are crooked in their chase, others of unequal bores, some too light towards the breech turn their mouths downwards in their discharge, and so endanger their own vawmures and defences; others are too heavy also in their breach, by placing the trunnions too much afterwards, that coynes can hardly be drawn.... Some are come forth of the furnace spongey, or full of honeycombs and flaws, by reason that the metal runneth not fine, or that the moulds are not thoroughly dryed, or well nealed.... Yet thus much I dare say to the due commendations of our English gunfounders, that the ordnance which they of late years have cast, as well for neatness, as also for reasonable bestowing and disposing of the metal, they have far excelled all the former and foreign aforementioned founders.” Norton, a land gunner, was here referring to brass ordnance, alone used on shore.
Perhaps the most interesting witness to the success of the English gunfounders is Sir Walter Raleigh, who in his Discourses rebuked the detestable covetousness of those licensed to sell ordnance abroad. So great was the number of pieces exported, that all other nations were equipped with good English artillery for ships and forts and coast defence. “Without which,” he remarks, “the Spanish King durst not have dismounted so many pieces of brass in Naples and elsewhere, therewith to arm his great fleet in ’88. But it was directly proved in the lower house of parliament of Queen Elizabeth, that there were landed in Naples above 140 culverins English.... It is lamentable that so many have been transported into Spain.”
In 1589 Lord Buckhurst wrote to the justices of Lewes Rape, complaining of their neglect in permitting the surreptitious export of ordnance. “Their lordships do see the little regard the owners of furnaces and the makers of these pieces have of their bonds, and how it importeth the state that the enemy of her Majesty should not be furnished out of the land with ordnance to annoy us.”
It is not improbable, in short, that some of the Armada’s cannon had been moulded and poured on English soil.
The imperfection of the sixteenth-century foundry products may be gauged from Bourne’s evidence that the use of cartridges was inconvenient because, on account of honeycombs and flaws, “you shall scant get the cartridge home unto the bottom of the piece.” On the other hand loading by ladle was still considered dangerous. In his Art of Gunnery, of 1627, Thos. Smith, soldier, of Berwick-on-Tweed, warns the gunner always to stand to one side of the mouth of the piece when thrusting home the ladle; otherwise, the charge being ignited by smouldering débris in the cavities of the metal, it takes fire and kills the loader—“as happened in Anno 1573 at the siege of Edinborough Castle, to two experienced gunners.”[55] At about the same date as Smith’s book was written, Sir H. Manwayring, in The Sea-Man’s Dictionary, described the “arming” of cross-bar shot: i.e. the binding them with oakum, yarn, or cloth, to prevent their ends from catching hold in any flaws during their passage through the gun, which might break it.
§
Under the Stuart kings a continuous development of ship armament took place.
This development was not always in the right direction. The Commission of Reform of the year 1618 recorded, as we have already seen, the importance of artillery in naval warfare, but owing to the absence of all system it was long before the principle found effective application. Owing to divided authority, or to a lack of unity in the conception of the fighting ship, a tendency to excess in the number and weight of guns continued to be noticeable, an excess which was to react unfavourably on the performances of our ships both in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Progress was made in the classification of pieces and in the reduction of the number of different types carried; a change was also made in the forms of the guns, in order to enhance the fighting value of the gun armament in certain circumstances. The great guns were made still shorter than before; the quicker-burning powders now in use allowed this to be done. By which expedient the ratio between gun-weight and weight-of-metal-thrown was reduced; more guns could be carried for a given weight of metal; they could be more easily manipulated; and if they were of small ranging power they yet possessed a power of penetration sufficient for close-quarter fighting. Moreover, the reduction in length enabled an increase in calibre to be made; and this was one of the factors which led to the reintroduction of larger types than had formerly been considered suitable: the cannon-serpentine, the cannon, and even the cannon-royal, with its sixty-six pound shot and its eight thousand pounds of metal.[56]
In the Dutch Wars the preponderance in the size and weight of the unit shot lay with the English ships, and was in itself undoubtedly a great advantage in their favour; though complaints were made of the great weight and clumsiness of the pieces, “which caused much of the straining and rolling at sea.” Writing of naval ordnance in the year 1690, Sir Cloudesley Shovell recorded that, “our lower-deck guns are too big and the tackles ill fitted with blocks, which makes them work heavy; the Dutch who have light guns have lignum vitæ sheaves. The Dutch guns are seldom larger than twenty-four pounders.” By this time, it will be noted, the more scientific nomenclature had come into vogue; the cannon-petro was now known as the 24-pounder, and the heavy lower-deck guns referred to were the old bastard-cannons, known since the reorganization of the Commonwealth navy as 42-pounders.