Cannon Flintlock

[hawkeye1755]

Here are four pics from a cannon flintlock.
Never saw such a flintlock before.

Did anyone know the year of these flintlock?
:hatsoff:

 

[Titus]

too cool. :hatsoff: :hatsoff:

 

[Will Bison]

Can't give you a date but cannon locks were quite common on ships guns.

 

[Brian Boru]

And another... late eighteenth century

 

[Wes/Tex]

Don't know about original dates but these were in use thru the late 18th and early 19th century. Most surviving pieces are probably old pieces from the Royal Navy, though a few American pieces are known. The flintlock mechanism was used on all the lower gun decks on fighting ships where portfires and slowmatch would be too dangerous to use with all the powder around.

 

[davy]

Nice clean pictures guys! :thumbsup:

Davy

 

[trent/OH]

Don't know about original dates but these were in use thru the late 18th and early 19th century. Most surviving pieces are probably old pieces from the Royal Navy, though a few American pieces are known. The flintlock mechanism was used on all the lower gun decks on fighting ships where portfires and slowmatch would be too dangerous to use with all the powder around.

It was a real advantage to Nelson's fleet to have flintlocks on their guns because they could fire just as their guns came to bear. The enemy guns went off with less precise timing, meaning that when a ship is rolling, the shot may well go into the sea or through the sails, instead of striking timber and doing real damage. Watch a crew fire a cannon with slowmatch sometime: it will go off within 5-10 seconds of when the gun captain wants it to.

Read "Trafalgar: The Nelson Touch" by David Howarth and you'll have a grin on your face, and a tear in your eye.

 

[Wes/Tex]

Don't know about original dates but these were in use thru the late 18th and early 19th century. Most surviving pieces are probably old pieces from the Royal Navy, though a few American pieces are known. The flintlock mechanism was used on all the lower gun decks on fighting ships where portfires and slowmatch would be too dangerous to use with all the powder around.

It was a real advantage to Nelson's fleet to have flintlocks on their guns because they could fire just as their guns came to bear. The enemy guns went off with less precise timing, meaning that when a ship is rolling, the shot may well go into the sea or through the sails, instead of striking timber and doing real damage. Watch a crew fire a cannon with slowmatch sometime: it will go off within 5-10 seconds of when the gun captain wants it to.

Read "Trafalgar: The Nelson Touch" by David Howarth and you'll have a grin on your face, and a tear in your eye.

I've also read this was one of the reasons that the French navy preferred to shoot at the sails of an enemy rather than the hull. I suppose the height of the sails gave them more time through the roll of the ship for the guns to go off.

 

[trent/OH]

Shooting at the sails.....
Maybe that's why we don't read much of French naval victories, although that was an important one off of Yorktown.

As I understand a lot of France's modern navy ships have glass bottoms, so the crews can better see the old French navy. :rotf: :shake:

 

[PitchyPine]

Those are cool and quite collectible i imagine.

 

[JV Puleo]

They weren't shooting at the sails..they were shooting at the masts and the rigging. A dis-masted ship was helpless, easily taken and worth a bundle of prize money. The only drawback was that hitting a mast with a smoothbore gun from a rolling deck was a real trick. Using chain or bar shot to cut the rigging also worked. The masts could barely stand on their own without the rigging so even if a mast didn't fall it couldn't carry sail. The same was true if the yardarms fell to the deck...it was an effective stragegy if you wanted to capture an enemy vessel intact. The British approach...to get in close and knock out the guns was faster, more destructive and costly but it also worked.