On the lines of the Smasher the “lesser carronades,” more convenient in size and more easily worked, were cast, and quickly made a reputation in merchant shipping. The Smasher itself was offered to the admiralty, but was never fitted in a royal ship; though trials were carried out with it later with hollow or cored shot, to ascertain how these lighter balls compared in action with the solid 68-pounders. Meanwhile the Carron Company found a large market for the lighter patterns of carronade; the 24, 18, and 12-pounders were sold in large numbers to private ships and letters-of-marque, and to some of the frigates and smaller ships of the royal navy. The progress of the new ordnance was watched with interest by the board of admiralty. In 1779 we have Sir Charles Douglas writing to Sir Charles Middleton in full accord with his views on the desirability of mounting Carron 12-pounders on the poop of the Duke, and suggesting 24-pounders, three a side, upon her quarter-deck. To the same distinguished correspondent Captain Kempenfelt writes, deploring that no trials have yet been made with carronades. Shortly afterwards the navy board discusses the 68-pound Smasher and desires the master-general of ordnance to make experiment with it. A scale is drawn up by the navy board, moreover, and sanctioned by the admiralty, for arming different rates with 18-and 12-pounder carronades. The larger classes of ships, the first, second, and third rates, have their quarter-decks already filled with guns; but accommodation is found for a couple of carronades on the forecastles, and for half a dozen on the poop, which for nearly a century past has served chiefly as a roof for the captain’s cabin. This is now timbered up and given three pairs of ports, making a total of eight ports for the reception of carronades. In the case of smaller ships less difficulty is experienced. Ports are readily cut in their forecastles and quarter-decks, and in some cases their poops are barricaded, to give accommodation for from four to a dozen carronades.[87]
The new weapon found its way into most of our smaller ships, not always and solely as an addition to the existing long-gun armament, for use in special circumstances, but in many cases in lieu of the long guns of the establishment. The saving in weight and space gained by this substitution made the carronade especially popular in the smaller classes of frigate, the sloops, and brigs; many of which became almost entirely armed with the type. The weak feature of the carronade, which in the end was to prove fatal to it—its feeble range and penetrating power—was generally overlooked, or accepted as being more than compensated for by its many obvious advantages. The carronade, it was said by many, was the weapon specially suited to the favourite tactics of the British navy—a yard-arm action.
There were others, however, who were inclined to emphasize the disability under which the carronade would lie if the enemy could contrive to avoid closing and keep just out of range. And on this topic, the relative merits of long gun and carronade as armament for the smaller ships, discussion among naval men was frequent and emphatic. The king’s service was divided into two schools. The advocates of long guns could quote many a case where, especially in chase, the superior range of the long gun had helped to win the day. The advocates of the carronade replied with recent and conclusive examples of victories won by short-gun ships which had been able to get to grips and quickly neutralize the advantages of a superior enemy armed with long guns. When challenged with the argument that, since the advantages of the carronade entirely disappear at long ranges it is essential that ships armed with them should be exceptionally fast sailers, they replied, that the very lightness of a carronade armament would, other things being equal, give ships so armed the property required. As for out-ranging, they were even ready to back their carronades in that respect, if only they were well charged with powder. It was a matter of faith with many that, in spite of Dr. Hutton’s published proof to the contrary, a considerable increase of range could be obtained by the expedient of shortening the gun’s recoil; so that in chase it was a common procedure to lash the breechings of carronades to the ship’s timbers, to prevent recoil and to help the shot upon its way.
At first mechanical difficulties occurred in the fitting of the new carronade mountings which, though not due to any defect inherent in the equipments, nevertheless placed them under suspicion in certain quarters. Though the prototype had trunnions like a gun, the carronades afterwards cast were attached by lugs to wooden slides which recoiled on slotted carriages pivoted to the ship’s side timbers, the slide being secured to the carriage by a vertical bolt which passed down through the slot. The recoil was limited by breechings; but as these stretched continuously the bolt eventually brought up with a blow against the end of the slot in the carriage: the bolt broke, and the carronade was disabled. This happened at Praya Bay, where the carronades broke their beds, owing to slack breechings, after a few rounds. Captains complained, too, that the fire of the carronades was a danger to the shrouds and rigging.
A CARRONADE
In spite of these views the popularity of the new ordnance increased so rapidly that in January, 1781, there were, according to the historian James, 429 ships in the royal navy which mounted carronades. On the merits of these weapons opinion was still very much divided. The board of ordnance was against their adoption; the navy board gave them a mild approval. In practice considerable discretion appears to have been granted to the commanders of ships in deciding what armament they should actually carry.[88] But the uncertainty of official opinion gave rise to a surprising anomaly: the carronade, although officially countenanced, was not recognized as part of the orthodox armament of a ship. What was the cause of this is not now clear. It has been said in explanation, that the carronade formed too fluctuating a basis on which to rate a ship’s force; that a long-gun basis afforded a key to the stores and complement of a ship, whereas carronades had little effect on either complement or stores; or that it may have been merely inertia on the part of the navy board. Whatever the cause, the ignoring of the carronade, in all official quotations of ships’ armaments, led to great uncertainty and confusion in estimating the relative force of our own and other navies, to suggestions of deception on the part of antagonists, to the bickering of historians and the bewilderment of the respective peoples. This extraordinary circumstance, that carronades with all their alleged advantages were not thought worthy to be ranked among the long guns of a ship, is commented on at length by James. “Whether,” he says, “they equalled in calibre the heaviest of these guns, added to their number a full third, or to their power a full half, still they remained as mere a blank in the ship’s nominal, or rated force, as the muskets in the arm-chest. On the other hand, the addition of a single pair of guns of the old construction, to a ship’s armament, removed her at once to a higher class and gave her, how novel or inconvenient soever, a new denomination.”
While the products of the Carron firm were gaining unexpected success in the defence of merchant shipping, their value in ships of the line was not to remain long in doubt. Some of the heavier carronades had been mounted in the Formidable, Duke, and other ships, and their presence had a material effect in Admiral Rodney’s action of April, 1782. As had been generally recognized, the carronade was especially suited to the British aims and methods of attack—the destruction of the enemy by a yard-arm action. To the French, whose strategy and methods were fundamentally different, its value was less apparent. So that for long this country reaped alone the benefit of its invention; until in somewhat half-hearted way France gradually adopted it, and then mostly in the smaller sizes, and more apparently with a view to defence than for offensive purposes. In the action with de Grasse the carronades of the British fleet operated, in the opening stages, as an additional incentive to the enemy to avoid close quarters. And later, at the in-fighting, their weight of metal contributed in no small degree to the superiority of fire which finally forced him to surrender.
It was later in this same year that the carronade won its most dramatic victory as armament of a small ship. In order to give a thorough trial to the system the navy board had ordered the Rainbow, an old 44, to be experimentally armed with large carronades, some of which were of as large a calibre as the original Smasher; by which her broadside weight of metal was almost quadrupled. Thus armed she put to sea and one day fell in with the French frigate Hébé, armed with 18-pounder long guns. Luring her enemy to a close-quarter combat, the Rainbow suddenly poured into the Frenchman the whole weight of her broadside. The resistance was short, the Hébé surrendered, and proved to be a prize of exceptional value as a model for frigate design. The capture was quoted as convincing proof of the value of a carronade armament, and the type continued from this time to grow in popularity, until the termination of the war in 1783 put a stop to further experiments with it.
§