Where is the naval
Naval Guns (1400 to 1650) - Things that make you go Boom
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naval artillery has a long
if someone interrupted history in the
next few weeks we're going to look at
the rise and fall of ancient naval
artillery but for the minute we're going
to start to look at the heavy guns that
would characterize a good half
millennium of human naval combat the
spread of gunpowder weapons across the
world was gradual as starting out in
eastern Asia almost certainly in China
and then spreading south into the
western Pacific region and then south
west and west into India and then on
into what was then Persia and the Middle
East by the 1300s a gunpowder firearms
had spread to Europe and were being used
in a variety of battlefield and siege
conditions to batter down walls scare
horses and somewhat decisively bypass
Armour many of these early guns did not
fire what we would think of as
cannonballs the largest would fire a
large round shot usually made of stone
but smaller ones would fire either and
like an early form of shotgun or else
would project gigantic arrows and
sometimes with an inventive variety of
payloads attached to the head
there were also a number of major issues
with these early guns indeed a number of
the earliest handheld firearms deployed
to medieval battlefields resembled
nothing less than what we today would
think of us as a scaled-down cannon
attached to the other end a very long
stick this was because guns could be
made of bronze which was hideously
expensive and due to the ductile nature
of the material also had a limited
lifespan before work hardening caused by
the blasts made them dangerous and
they'd have to be scrapped all guns
could be made of iron now whereas a
bronze gun required a single intensive
casting along with a bit finishing an
iron gun was much cheaper and was often
built with knowledge adapted from barrel
making hence gun barrel unfortunately
iron guns also had a very distressing
habit of actively distributing
themselves and their crews across the
surrounding landscape on a worryingly
frequent basis unless they were so
heavily built that you might as well
have gone with the expense of a bronze
gun anyway and they were also remarkably
non-discriminatory in the people that
they killed several kings lost their
lives when their favorite guns just
decided that they were going to fire
themselves all over the place instead of
their projectile large-scale iron
working had not quite reached the level
of quality control necessary for the
reliable mass production of iron cannon
at anything approaching an industrial
scale
now when it came to taking something
that involved fire explosives random
explosions and extremely heavy loads
aboard ships made of wood canvas and tar
most captains were understandably
reluctant but a few intrepid individuals
were determined to discover new and
interesting ways to disassemble their
enemies and within a few decades of
their appearance
gunpowder artillery began to show up
aboard various warships in small numbers
in Western Europe the first use of guns
aboard ships appears to have been
amongst an English fleet near the start
of the Hundred Years War although it
seems to have been more a novelty than a
widespread practice and it's unclear if
this was a deliberate attempt to create
a ship that was armed with guns or
simply a practical use of guns that the
ship was already carrying anyway for use
in a land campaign and those aboard had
simply decided to use them for deterrent
value or possibly some form of practical
engagement value the ship was also
notably carrying a single handheld
firearm back over in Asia things had
become a little bit more organized with
standardized guns in relatively large
quantities being used by the end of the
14th century and there were however a
number of further limits to the use of
naval guns at this time the ships
themselves were generally quite small
and at least in Europe mostly Klinker
builds this meant they couldn't support
many or especially heavy guns to start
with apart from anything else the holes
would begin to warp and cutting gun
ports could seriously compromised the
ship structure and survivability in high
seas finally and as a result of the
above the decks of the ships were
generally not strong enough to support
large numbers of heavy point loads thus
these initial guns had very limited
locations on a typical ship where they
could be deployed and would have to be
of a relatively light nature at least
compared to what was eventually to come
there were now two advances that began
to see the more widespread use of cannon
on the Klinker built ships of older
design the strongest points were in the
bow and stern where there was a greater
concentration of strong timbers and less
movement of the hull in these vessels
reinforced platforms could be
constructed over relatively small areas
that allowed for the installation of a
single large heavy gun or a few small
weapons on the relevant platform and
these were generally used for Shore
bombardment due to their normally fixed
nature and slow rate of fire although a
few installations had a small degree of
movement allowing them to adjust to
their horizontal aim without having to
change the course of the ship itself due
to the nature of the ship construction
in the areas where these kinds of ships
most often galleys were employed a lucky
hit from a shot with one of these guns
could see a similar type of ship fly
apart into planking and match wood with
a single well-placed hit but the greater
advancement was the development and
spread of carville built ships these
were larger more rigid and significantly
structurally stronger than the older
designs as such they were often also
largely or purely sail powered which
freed up the substantial internal volume
and whole area for away from oars for
other purposes such as guns even so the
primary method of ship-to-ship combat
remained at the boarding action with
heavy guns still mostly mounted on the
more difficult to maneuver to wheel gun
carriages that were effectively
unchanged from their land-based
counterparts relying more on friction
than anything else to prevent unwanted
movement around the ship and hence they
were relatively difficult to move around
at the best of times
reloading was a deeply complex process
that could in some cases involve sending
people on ropes climbing down outside
the ship in order to reload more common
were smaller single or two-man weapons
that we usually mounted to the ship's
sides or in a crow's nest these had
limited anti-shipping potential but were
good at taking out men and between them
the objective was to disorganize and
diminish the enemy crew prior to a
boarding attempt
in defense against the same kind of
action the for and after castles of the
developing galleons would also often
mount guns that faced back or forwards
across their own decks to provide a
crossfire against enemy boarders who
would often be resisted from these more
fortified areas of the ship the forward
after castles would also contain a
smattering of these lighter guns on the
broad sides and ahead and aft in order
to unleash volleys anti-personnel fire
from the vantage points that they
provided most ships of this period also
had a relatively short length to beam
ratio which limited broadside space but
also made them relatively agile and so
guns were generally distributed all
around the ship with no particularly
emphasis on a given facing since a ship
may both find itself attacking or
defending from almost any angle and
could usually turn to present a new face
in relatively short order galleys of
course were a completely different
matter
with that said naval technology
continued to advance and a couple of key
breakthroughs appeared during the latter
part of the fifteenth and into the early
sixteenth century these were the naval
gun carriage a mounting that used for
small wheels instead of two large ones
at a friction brace this made guns much
easier to move around but necessitated a
complex rope and pulley system to both
restrain them when they fired and then
wheel them back out into a ready firing
position and also to prevent them moving
around on in unwanted directions whilst
the ship was underway this in turn meant
that reloading from inside the ship was
far easier and faster in the case of
muzzle loading varieties as well as
allowing the guns to be much more easily
adjusted for aim in battle situations
just as important was a system of
reinforcements for the decks of the
ships
this allowed the carriage of not only
more but also heavier guns and also
allowed them these heavier weapons to be
carried a higher in the ship which made
both multiple gun decks and heavy
broadsides possible this particular
advancement is usually credited to the
Portuguese in the latter part of the
15th century as Portugal was a
major player on the oceanic naval stage
at this time the guns themselves also
consisted of two major types beyond the
iron and bronze divide and the size
variations which we'll discuss later
most iron guns built up in sections as
described previously were relatively
primitive breech loaders but there were
also muzzle loaders the new gun carriage
system made the reloading of these more
accurate and stronger muzzle loading
weapons a lot easier the increased
accuracy was partly down to the fact
that early breech loaders were not know
her being entirely properly sealed and
thus the force of the shot was somewhat
variable additionally the difference in
size between shot and barrel could see
what was by now normally a spherical
shot made of iron or stone and bounced
around on its way out of the gun the
more precise casting of bronze muzzle
loaders would reduce these problems
quite considerably with this spread of
practical naval gun batteries corpse of
Naval Gunners would now start to show up
as a standard profession aboard ship as
opposed to the small cadres of
specialists brought in at great expense
and supplemented by larger numbers of
relatively inexpert general crew that
had been the practice before still these
advances in technology and tactics were
not reflected universally in the
Mediterranean the galley with fore and
aft guns would evolve into the galley s
a strange hybrid that was somewhat akin
to a lower profile and elongated galleon
with a galley like a bank of oars with
their lower center of mass they could
concentrate large numbers of heavy guns
in therefore and after castles as well
as broadside guns above the ore deck as
well as having a full rig of sail this
allowed them to retain the wind
independent movement of a galley as well
as having many of the advantages at
least in theory of a sail powered larger
vessel like a galleon they indeed would
prove devastatingly effective in combat
in the mediterranean environment against
the fleet's of more conventional galleys
as their strong construction and large
size made the
daunting prospects at the best of times
and their heavy gun batteries were able
to lay waste to anything smaller than
them that happened to come into range in
this theater the great galleons that
cogs and hulks and round ships had
evolved into by way of the carrick in
the oceanic environments of western
europe were somewhat out of place their
dependence on sale in a highly variable
and often calm mediterranean environment
would see them without propulsion as
often as not which was something of a
disadvantage in battle and even when
they were able to get moving the lighter
galleys another local sail powered craft
could often just run rings around them
but at the same time they were an even
more formidable formidable obstacle than
a galius their high sides and large
dimensions making them almost
unassailable as they often would drift
somewhat bemused through conflicts where
they could devastate an enemy fleet that
strayed a bit too close but could also
be relatively easily avoided and
sometimes surrounded by smarter crews in
swifter ships that said boarding was
still a major factor in at this kind of
warfare partly as a result of operating
in both the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic and also due to the inertia
that often comes from being the top Navy
and the Spanish took galleons to the
extreme every oceanic European power
built bigger and more powerful ships
with the mary-rose the great Harry the
great Michael San quelled Baptista all
Devon Lubeck and so on exemplifying this
but it would be Spain in the ascendancy
on the back of wealth plundered from the
Inca and Aztec empires and the
surrounding regions that would extend
this to the final form of the great
broadside and then board galleon concept
with ships like the San martín San Juan
gran green in Westar Senora del Rosario
Dragan zona Trinidad val/val in Sara and
Santa Ana all either built in or for
Spain or else requisitioned from vassals
these ships would all be present in the
famous Spanish Armada and
exceeded a thousand tons displacement
making them absolutely huge ships for
their time whilst other powers would
generally try to keep up necessity is
the mother of invention and a number of
navies found themselves going in other
directions the Dutch for instance simply
couldn't build such massive vessels they
possess the technical capability and
indeed the seamen ship but the ships
themselves were their towering castles
heavy gun payloads and are thus deep
drafts simply were unusable in the
shallow Dutch waters the english are
vastly economically out competed by a
nation that could bring in treasure
ships so full of gold and silver that
they sometimes would use the silver to
literally replace other ballast on their
yearly voyages were like was forced to
look elsewhere and so in both of these
countries and others a smaller and
faster vessel began to develop the
so-called race built a galleon which
also traces its origins back to vaguely
legitimate but mostly piratical activity
undertaken by independent sailors from
these nations who wanted a share of
spain's pickings this type of ship would
cut down the for and after castle and
reduce the numbers of troops present
instead increasing the number of guns
and gunners employing considerably more
heavy guns on the four-wheeled gun
carriages starting a trend towards gun
power being the primary deciding factor
in naval engagements to be clear this
was a far cry from later line of battle
tactics although some engagements by the
time of the Armada had already seen the
early use of these methods the method of
fire at this time generally was to give
a broadside and then wheel to fire the
forward guns than the other broadside
and then the stern guns Menace off a
carousel fashion in theory by the time a
ship came around again the first
broadside would have reloaded and the
objective was ultimately still to board
the enemy in most cases but by using the
ship's lower profile and greater agility
to keep the range open the greater
firepower would hopefully batter the
me ship and crew down to the point that
the small but fresh boarding parties on
the race built ship would have a
relatively easy job in overwhelming any
survivors it should also be borne in
mind that whilst these could be
described as heavy guns relative to the
anti-personnel weapons found in
relatively large numbers on earlier
ships they mostly still were not the
kind of heavy guns that you might expect
in a classic age of sail vessel there
was also the fact that due to the
aforementioned widespread nature of
anti-personnel guns just listening a
number of guns can be misleading in this
kind of time period especially if
someone who's more familiar with age of
sail warships for example the great
Harry or Henry Grass Adyar at various
times was recorded as carrying well over
a hundred and fifty guns a number that
wouldn't be matched in first-rate
ships-of-the-line
until pretty much the middle of the
nineteenth century if at all however
these were not 150 anti-ship cannon they
were in large part small one and two man
anti-personnel weapons very few of those
guns would qualify as anti-ship weapons
in any way shape or form
whilst the Spanish Armada incident
certainly seemed to vindicate the
concept it was not the immediate
downfall of the galleon there is
sometimes portrayed the English fleet
was not able to decisively defeat the
Spanish with guns alone they certainly
did heavy damage and they're voided
defeat themselves but it was a
combination of a weather a lack of vital
equipment due to the response to a fire
ship attack and the damage done by the
guns that cumulatively would finish off
the Armada the later loss of the revenge
which was Drake's flagship at the time
of the Armada battle itself although its
loss happened under a different command
as well as other encounters emphasized
that these ships still had their limits
in no small part due to the more
numerous guns aboard these ships still
being as we said relatively lightweight
if somewhat anti-ship devices it would
need another major war or series of Wars
the anglo-dutch Wars to really embed a
line of battle tactics as the standard
and major deciding factor in naval
combat and this needed a change in
design from the relatively beamy ships
of previous entries to something still
longer this of course meant
proportionally more side compared to bow
and stern area which in turn meant more
space for broadside guns and also made
ships less agile thus requiring the
protection of their fellows in action to
prevent them from being raked and hence
necessitating the development of
squadron line tactics but in all this
guns had also proliferated in size type
and role by the time the prototypical
first rate HMS sovereign of the seas are
finally rolled around
she was stuffed with almost every kind
of gun imaginable to gunsmiths of the
past couple of hundred years now to give
you just some idea of how varied
shipboard guns at this time could be
let's just say Schiphol guns of the
period included but were not limited to
the following and cannon and
water siege cannon seed water rippled
ribald a Quinn Rabbinate or robinette
Robin serpentine Alcon balconette minion
demi Seca Seca Demi cauldron culverin
culverin bastard demi cannon cannon
bastard cannon cannon serpentine cannon
a royal header arrow swivel gun bombard
and basilisk there are also a number of
qualifiers two gun types again including
but not limited to cut fortified and
drake and that was just english guns the
spanish french and basically anyone else
with any kind of major interest in sea
power had their own systems for
designation and could divide up the
categories that were given just now even
further and all of these guns had
different uses from small anti-personnel
weapons through two massive smashing
weapons to long-range high-velocity guns
that were designed for accuracy now I'll
briefly discuss some of the major types
so this will help draw a line under this
era of naval guns before we will move on
in the next video to the age of sail
proper the first thing that you will
have noted in there is that cannon is
not the catch-all term that it would
become in later times it was merely one
of many types of naval gun so the
qualifiers first a cut was a gun that
was shortened or its bore and shot
weight compared to the average gun like
the sawn-off shotgun of the naval
firearms world a fortified gun was like
the cut somewhat short for its overall
war but this type of weapon was created
by making the gun disproportionately
more substantial than average as
compared to the cut which was well a cut
add-on weapon and then you have the
Drake which was a gun that was made
lighter than average for its size
usually with somewhat thinner walls the
drake in particular was notable as it
meant that you could carry either larger
guns or more
guns than the ship the in question could
typically carry which was something that
would see a bit of a resurgence in the
19th century a US Navy ship of the line
now as for the guns themselves in
ascending order of size approximately
let's have a look at some of these the
serpentine was a small relative of the
culverin it was a high end weapon but it
was designed for anti-personnel use due
to its relatively small size the Falcon
was a slightly larger anti-personnel and
small boat weapon it was just about
large enough to fire a grape shot as
opposed to a single single shot
generally speaking it had a similar
relationship to the cannon as the
serpentine it did to the culverin thus
making it an iron gun as opposed to the
serpentine which was generally a bronze
weapon
there was the Falcon ette which was just
a smaller version of the Falcon and then
we had the minion now with a shot weight
of around five pounds this was the
smallest gun that up until the Armada
era was regarded as being a useful
anti-ship weapon a great many guns that
were carried on smaller and faster ships
would be minions with Falcons or Falcons
being used to cover the anti-personnel
role the deme Saker was roughly
equivalent to the minion where the
minion was the iron gun and the demi
Seca was the bronze weapon the Saker was
a medium weight version of the culverin
it fired a slightly heavier shot than
the minion with a reasonably larger
powder charge which gave it
significantly more striking power and
range then you have the Demi culverin
this was a scaled-down culverin that sat
between a seka
and a full-size culverin the Culver in
itself was a long barrel high-velocity
weapon regarded as a first class gun and
he preferred if someone expensive
armament for large ships due to their
longer range and superior accuracy
they were almost indelibly bound cast in
during at the medieval period then you
have the amusingly named culverin
bastard and boy is that gonna get this
video d monetized if I have to say that
enough times a hybrid weapon that was
more of the weight and size class of a
demi culverin but would fire a much
heavier shot with a minimally increased
powder charge because of this mix of
near culverin shot and near Demi
culverin powder it attracted the name as
it was an unholy crossbreed of the two
but it allowed you to fire a relatively
heavy all were on a relatively smaller
platform as compared to a full culverin
then you have avid ME cannon like the
Demi cauldron this sat between Annie
Cannon and in this particular cases and
mostly iron gun the minion although due
to the starting point of the cannon as a
gun with a relatively heavy shot weight
even a demi cannon would often fire a
shot that was heavier than that of a
full-sized culverin although with
considerably less accuracy and range
the cannon was a general-purpose gun
usually made of iron and regarded as
something of a common or second-class
weapon compared to the culverin it was
designed to fire a relatively large shot
using a medium to low charge of powder
in large part due to the recognition of
the limitations on iron guns of the
period ironically enough relative to the
culverin the cannon occupied the slot
the in many ways that the Karen aid
would later come to occupy in relation
to what would commonly be called ships
cannon in the classic age of sail the
bastard cannon much like the culverin
bastard was a hybrid of the demi cannon
and cannon on long pretty much the same
lines
the Canon serpentine was an attempt to
blend the cheapness and heavy shot of a
cannon with the longer barrel of a
culverin without the increased thickness
it had a slender appearance and hence
the name and would normally be the gun
you wanted to stay as far away from as
possible since he packed a fair amount
of powder and very large shot into a
fairly large bore but was made of iron
as opposed to bronze then you had the
cannon royal or cannon Royale this was
the largest gun that you might
reasonably expect to find afloat it
fired an extremely large and heavy shot
that was not particularly manageable for
this reason it wasn't very common and
more often it would be found as a
forward fixed gun for sieges or perhaps
a prestige piece that actually had
relatively little practical value as
this type of gun was more often found in
siege trains on land the pedrera was a
relatively large gun that sat between
culver ins and cannons in terms of pore
size but was specifically noted as
primarily intended to throw stone shot
and thus it could be made considerably
lighter compared to a culverin or cannon
for its bore size due to the fact that
stone shot weighed considerably less
than an iron ball of the same size most
accounts that relate to prod raros
either note the extreme bravery or
recklessness of somebody who tried to
fire a Potrero using a much heavier iron
shot or else were just plastered with
warning saying never never ever do that
so it was in fact possible to have a cut
demi culverin drake that would indicate
a lighter weight version of the culverin
firing an eight to nine pound shot that
had been cut down to have a shorter
barrel now as indicated previously and
you might appreciate somewhat more from
that listing there were two lines of
guns more expensive high-quality longer
range weapons generally made a bronze
which were the co-variants acres and
serpentines and the cheaper slightly
more prone to explosion but much more
easily accessible weapons made from iron
that nonetheless could fire considerably
heavier shot at the upper end of things
these being the cannons minions and
falcons along with their derivatives now
of course gun shot and charge weights in
any list are only approximations
especially in this period when
standardization very much was not a
thing and not only did different nations
use different rating systems but even
guns listed as a given type it might
vary considerably in the three weight
categories you might find the odd iron
culverin or bronze cannon they're as
around as well and that's before we got
into subdivision systems where you might
find anything from half a dozen to two
dozen further variances on what exactly
constituted a cannon or a culverin
despite the limitations of iron the iron
guns were typically less massive for
their bore than the bronze guns which
was compensated for by considerably
smaller charges in proportion to shop
way to thus giving a greater margin of
safety which reflected issues with iron
construction for their guns at at the
time
as weird and wonderful as that system
was there were two major flaws one being
the labyrinthine nature of the various
national rating systems resulted in
dozens of different powder charges and
shop weights as well as shot sizes being
needed for every single ship that
carried more than a couple of dozen guns
and getting it mixed up could be
absolutely disastrous as mentioned an
iron ball in a pedrera could easily
cause the gun to explode on ignition of
the powder a cannons charge in a
culverin would result in the ball not
really traveling far enough or with
enough energy to reach an enemy ship or
do any real damage if it's somehow made
it whereas a cauldrons charge in a demi
cannon would create a gigantic iron pipe
bomb and trying to cram a sakers ball
into the similar sized but slightly
different Falcon would simply result in
an inability to load the gun which
wasn't particularly helpful in battle
so as a result has the 17th century drew
on and large fleets of dedicated
warships and line of battle tactics
began to standardize so too with the
guns to a certain degree this was helped
by the change to the a primarily gun
based approach to battles and many of
the small pieces that would sit halfway
between anti-personnel and anti-ship
weapons were no longer required
additionally the reliability of
ironworking for the production of naval
guns was constantly improving and so
larger numbers of relatively
standardized iron weapons that probably
wouldn't explode and could begin to
approach the performance of bronze guns
began to appear bronze itself also
became ever more expensive but it would
persist for the largest guns which were
both the most prestigious and the most
dangerous and these would be installed
on flag ships and the like where their
additional power was appreciated and
their costs somewhat justified further
the various terms for guns began to die
out with the term cannon and gradually
coming to apply to most naval guns
albeit that the simple gun was just as
common the irony of this was that over
time the 42 pounder which was the most
common shot wait for a cannon in the
medieval classification would eventually
die out as 42-pound shot was just a bit
too heavy for easy management in a
Seaway in battle in a ship of the period
the 32 to 36 pounders that would form
the general heavy gun armament in a
typical engagement in a classic age of
sail ship of the line battle would
actually in this period have been
defined as demi cannon but all that was
for the future but now we'll wrap up
here having taken a journey from the
first guns aboard ships to the dawn of
the line of battle era
the series will continue later this year
and with three further sections guns of
the age of sail guns of the age of steam
and iron and finally guns of the age of
Steel
sit for this video thanks for watching
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