ROUND SHOTS AND RAMRODS

UNITED STATES NAVAL 24-POUNDER

REVOLUTIONARY WAR AND WAR OF 1812

I have not had so much fun in modeling in a long while, as I did doing the research and construction of this simple, cheap kit. Although I prefer to build airplanes (military warplanes at that), I probably couldn't tell you scratch about the weapons used on these machines. I have never been a weapons person, with the exception of .22 caliber rifles and a couple gauges of shotgun. I enjoyed the respite from handling extremely small parts of model airplanes and the simple mechanics and physics behind old cannons, which were referred to as guns in their day.

We, at the end of the twentieth century, tend to think of weapons as disposable commodities to be left on the battlefield or stacked in rusting heaps at war's end. But this was not so one hundred and thirty or forty years ago. For the land armies, whose use of cannons in the field began in the American War of Independence (prior to that field artillery was used only in sieges of forts and walled fortresses), these weapons were priceless items to be defended at all costs. Losing a gun to an opposing force was every bit as humbling as losing a regiment. Indeed, these weapons often were the last line of defense and artillery batteries saved the day for many a retreating army. Naval ships, which had employed cannons since the mid-16th century, valued their guns every bit as much and considered enemy guns seized during sea battles or sieges as valuable booty.

At this point I would like to pause and reflect. From the invention of the gun in the early fourteenth century to the mid nineteenth century, the advancement of the gun was very slow. There was little in the gun made in 1800 that would have puzzled a master gunsmith in 1400. The basic weapon, while it had improvements in manufacture, from its original welded stave form to its cast form, was still a simple smoothbore. Let me now take the uninitiated on an examination to see what and how the weapon works.

Starting at the front of the barrel we have the "muzzle"; the thickened circumference around it is called the "muzzle swell". The body of the barrel is called the "chase" and at intervals there are thicker hoops, which are called "reinforces", put partly for strength and partly for ornament. At the point of balance are two rounded protrusions known as the "trunnions", which fit into prepared surfaces on the carriage of choice, field or naval, and allowed the gun to be elevated and depressed. At the rear of the gun, the metal is rapidly reduced in diameter and finished off with an ornamental knob called the "cascabel", and generally speaking a solid cascabel indicates a field piece, while a pierced cascabel indicates a naval weapon, the recoil on board ship was partially checked by passing a rope through the cascabel. At the top of the breech end of the gun is the "vent", a drilling which passes down into the gun "chamber".

Internally the barrel is bored out to the required diameter or "caliber" until the chamber is reached, at which point the bore is slightly reduced so that the projectile, when loaded and rammed down, stops at the same place each time to give a regular volume of chamber in which the gunpowder will ignite.

To load the gun the charge would be prepared, which by the time of the Revolutionary War was weighed out into prescribed amounts and packed into bags made of linen, canvas, paper, or preferably flannel. The charge was placed into the muzzle and pushed into the chamber by a "ramrod". Above the charge would go a "wad" made from paper or wood to act as a seal above the charge to ensure that when the charge was fired, as much gas as possible was trapped behind the projectile and actually aided in pushing the projectile out. On naval guns a wad was often rammed home on top of the projectile to prevent it from rolling back up the muzzle on a tossing sea.

Once the gun was maneuvered into position for firing, a "vent spike" was stuck into the vent to open up the gunpowder bag and gunpowder from a powder horn was poured into the vent. The gunner would then apply a "portfire", which was a long rod containing a slow burning cord impregnated with saltpeter, to the gunpowder in the vent. Great care was taken to stand away from the weapon, for it would recoil backward several feet.

After firing, the gunners would apply a wet sponge rammer to the bore and scrub vigorously. This served two purposes; first it scrubbed away and removed the worst of the fouling generated by the exploding gunpowder and second it was hoped that this would extinguish any smoldering residue lingering in the barrel. Once the bore had been sponged, one gunner placed his thumb over the vent, a process known as "serving the vent" and held it there while the gun was being reloaded. This created a vacuum within the barrel while the charge was being pressed into the chamber and prevented the fanning of any spark that the sponge may not have extinguished.

The model represents a naval 24-pounder, which was the primary gun on board early U.S. Navy vessels during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. The U.S.S. Constitution carried thirty 24-pounder guns on her gun deck below the spar deck, which carried twenty-four 32-pounder carronades. The guns were mounted in naval carriages, which were sometimes painted green, black, red, or brown, but more than likely left in their natural wood, but treated with a protective varnish that had a slight red-brown hue. All 24-pounders made in the United States were cast from iron as tin and copper were not assessable natural resources at the time, so they were painted black to prevent rust. Even the bores were painted black with a scrub brush on a rod. At sea they were cleaned and painted often. Iron 24-pounder guns actually weighed some 300 pounds lighter than their bronze or brass contemporaries. The dimensions for a heavy 24-pounder are: Length: 9 ft. 6 in.; Weight: 5,488 pounds; Caliber of gun: 5.83 in.; Caliber of projectile: 5.54 in.; Weight of charge: 4 to 6 pounds; Types of projectiles: 24 pound round shot, grape shot, chain shot, and case or canister shot; Range: 300 - 400 yards.