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32-pounder Gun
The 32-pounder guns (and the French 30-pounders) were sets of heavy-caliber pieces of artillery mounted on warships in the last century of the Age of sail, during the 18th and early 19th centuries. It was usually the most powerful armament on a warship. The British version fired a 14.4-kilogram projectile at about 487 meters per second, for a muzzle energy of over 1.7 million joules.Peter Goodwin. "HMS Victory Pocket Manual 1805: Admiral Nelson's Flagship at Trafalgar." Bloomsbury Publishing, January 2018. They were most famous being mounted on of the Royal Navy. Such a powerful gun with a large weight of shot posed serious damage to enemy ships. Variations Traditionally the caliber of a cannon was a good indication of the effectiveness of a gun. This was not quite true for the 32-pounders of the 1830s and later. The Royal Navy differentiated its 32-pounders by noting the weight of the piece in hundredweight (cwt). A 32-pounder 56 cwt was a heavy gun for ships of the line. It had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naval Gun
Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare and then subsequently used for more specialized roles in surface warfare such as naval gunfire support (NGFS) and anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) engagements. The term generally refers to powder-launched projectile-firing weapons and excludes self-propelled projectiles such as torpedoes, rockets, and missiles and those simply dropped overboard such as depth charges and naval mines. Origins The idea of ship-borne artillery dates back to the classical era. Julius Caesar wrote about the Roman navy's usage of ship-borne catapults against Celtic Britons ashore in his ''Commentarii de Bello Gallico''. The dromons of the Byzantine Empire carried catapults and Greek fire. From the Middle Ages onwards, warships began to carry cannons of various calibres. In the Battle of Tangdao in 1161, the Southern Song general Li Bao used huopao (a type of gunpowder weapons, possibly cannons) and fire arrows against ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naval Artillery In The Age Of Sail
The Age of Sail encompasses the period of roughly 1571–1862, when large, sail-powered wooden naval warships dominated the high seas, mounting a large variety of types and sizes of cannon as their main armament. By modern standards, these naval artillery pieces were extremely inefficient, difficult to load, and short ranged. These characteristics, along with the handling and seamanship of the ships that mounted them, defined the environment in which the naval tactics in the Age of Sail developed. Firing Firing a naval cannon required a great amount of labour and manpower. The propellant was gunpowder, whose bulk had to be kept in the magazine, a special storage area below deck for safety. ''Powder boys'', typically 10–14 years old, were enlisted to run powder from the magazine up to the gun decks of a vessel as required. A typical firing procedure follows. A wet swab was used to mop out the interior of the barrel, extinguishing any embers from a previous firing which mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Age Of Sail
The Age of Sail is a period in European history that lasted at the latest from the mid-16th (or mid-15th) to the mid-19th centuries, in which the dominance of sailing ships in global trade and warfare culminated, particularly marked by the introduction of naval artillery, and ultimately reached its highest extent at the advent of steam power. Enabled by the advances of the related age of navigation, it is identified as a distinctive element of the early modern period and the Age of Discovery. Periodization Like most periodic eras, defining the age is inexact and serves only as a general description. The term is used differently for warships and merchant vessels. By the 14th century naval artillery was employed in Europe, documented at the Battle of Arnemuiden (1338). The 15th century saw the Iberian naval ventures all the way along the African Atlantic coast and across the Atlantic Ocean, starting the Age of Discovery. For warships, the age of sail runs roughly from t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early Middle Ages, medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Kingdom of France, France. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the English Navy of the early 16th century; the oldest of the British Armed Forces, UK's armed services, it is consequently known as the Senior Service. From the early 18th century until the World War II, Second World War, it was the world's most powerful navy. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing and defending the British Empire, and four Imperial fortress colonies and a string of imperial bases and coaling stations secured the Royal Navy's ability to assert naval superior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ship Of The Line
A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed during the Age of Sail from the 17th century to the mid-19th century. The ship of the line was designed for the naval tactics in the Age of Sail, naval tactic known as the line of battle, which involved the two columns of opposing warships manoeuvering to volley fire with the naval cannon, cannons along their Broadside (naval), broadsides. In conflicts where opposing ships were both able to fire from their broadsides, the faction with more cannons firingand therefore more firepowertypically had an advantage. From the end of the 1840s, the introduction of steam engine, steam power brought less dependence on the wind in battle and led to the construction of propeller, screw-driven wooden-hulled ships of the line; a number of purely sail-powered ships were converted to this propulsion mechanism. However, the rise of the ironclad warship, ironclad frigate, starting in 1859, made steam-assisted ships of the line obsolete. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hundredweight
The hundredweight (abbreviation: cwt), formerly also known as the centum weight or quintal, is a British imperial and United States customary unit of weight or mass. Its value differs between the United States customary and British imperial systems. The two values are distinguished in American English as the short and long hundredweight and in British English as the cental and imperial hundredweight. * The short hundredweight or cental of is defined in the United States customary system. * The long or imperial hundredweight of 8 stone or is defined in the British imperial system. Under both conventions, there are 20 hundredweight in a ton, producing a " short ton" of 2,000 pounds (907.2 kg) and a " long ton" of 2,240 pounds (1,016 kg). History The hundredweight has had many values. In England in around 1300, different hundreds (''centum'' in Medieval Latin) were defined. The Weights and Measures Act 1835 formally established the present imperial hundr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri-Joseph Paixhans
Henri-Joseph Paixhans (; January 22, 1783, Metz – August 22, 1854, Jouy-aux-Arches) was a French artillery officer of the beginning of the 19th century. Henri-Joseph Paixhans graduated from the École Polytechnique. He fought in the Napoleonic Wars, was the representative (Chamber of Deputies of France, Député) for the Moselle (department), Moselle department between 1830 and 1848, and became "General de Division" in 1848. In 1823, he invented the first Shell (projectile), shell guns, which came to be called Paixhans guns (or "canon-obusiers" in the French Navy). Paixhans guns became the first naval guns to combine explosive Shell (projectile), shells and a flat trajectory, thereby triggering the demise of wooden ships, and the iron hull revolution in shipbuilding. Paixhans also invented a "Mortier monstre" ("Monster Mortar"), using 500 kg bombs, which was used to terrible effect in the Siege of Antwerp (1832), Siege of Antwerp in 1832. He was also a naval theorist claim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Blomefield
General Sir Thomas Blomefield, 1st Baronet (16 June 1744 – 24 August 1822) of Attleborough, Norfolk, was colonel-commandant royal artillery, to whose untiring labours as Inspector of Artillery and Superintendent of the Royal Foundries that the progress of the British artillery during the Napoleonic Wars was largely due. Life He was the son of Reverend Thomas Blomefield and Mary Matthews. When he was 11 years old his father sent Thomas to sea on HMS ''Cambridge'' under Sir Peircy Brett, who was a close friend of the Rev. Blomefield. Thomas's naval career was short lived; in February 1758 he enrolled as a cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was a talented student, and passed out as a lieutenant-fireworker eleven months later at age 15. He commanded a bomb ketch at the bombardment of Le Havre and joined Admiral Edward Hawke's fleet at Quiberon. Blomefield saw combat in the West Indies and Florida and served as personal aide-de-camp to General Conway, who was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
32-pounder 56 Cwt
The 32-pounder 56 cwt cannon was an artillery piece designed and used by the British Armed Forces in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was by far the most common 32-pounder used by the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, with 1,961 guns being recorded as in use and 1,733 being in storage at the end of March 1857. The cannon was a smoothbore muzzle-loading gun, being , and firing projectiles of . Sir Thomas Blomefield designed the cannon in the late 1780s and early 1790s as part of his system of gun construction. It was the heaviest cannon used by ships of the Royal Navy from the 1790s to the late 1830s, and it was used on the lower decks of ships of the line A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed during the Age of Sail from the 17th century to the mid-19th century. The ship of the line was designed for the naval tactic known as the line of battle, which involved the two column ... such as HMS ''Victory''. References {{reflist Cannon Nava ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carronade
A carronade is a short, smoothbore, cast-iron cannon which was used by the Royal Navy. It was first produced by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, and was used from the last quarter of the 18th century to the mid-19th century. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range, anti-ship and anti-crew weapon. The technology behind the carronade was greater dimensional precision, with the shot fitting more closely in the barrel, thus transmitting more of the propellant charge's energy to the projectile, allowing a lighter gun using less gunpowder to be effective. Carronades were initially found to be very successful, but they eventually disappeared as naval artillery advanced, with the introduction of rifling and consequent change in the shape of the projectile, exploding shells replacing solid shot, and naval engagements being fought at longer ranges. History The carronade was designed as a short-range naval weapon with a low muzzle velocity f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cannon
A cannon is a large-caliber gun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder during the late 19th century. Cannons vary in gauge (firearms), gauge, effective range, mobility (military), mobility, rate of fire, elevation (ballistics), angle of fire and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees, depending on their intended use on the battlefield. A cannon is a type of heavy artillery weapon. The word ''cannon'' is derived from several languages, in which the original definition can usually be translated as ''tube'', ''cane'', or ''reed''. The earliest known depiction of cannons may have appeared in Science and technology of the Song dynasty#Gunpowder warfare, Song dynasty China as early as the 12th century; however, solid archaeological and documentary evidence of cannons do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naval Guns Of The United Kingdom
A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions. It includes anything conducted by surface ships, amphibious ships, submarines, and seaborne aviation, as well as ancillary support, communications, training, and other fields. The strategic offensive role of a navy is projection of force into areas beyond a country's shores (for example, to protect sea-lanes, deter or confront piracy, ferry troops, or attack other navies, ports, or shore installations). The strategic defensive purpose of a navy is to frustrate seaborne projection-of-force by enemies. The strategic task of a navy also may incorporate nuclear deterrence by use of submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Naval operations can be broadly divided between riverine and littoral applications (brown-water nav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
