Range of your cannon?

[Poor Private]

This past saturday(8-17-13) I took my .58 caliber South bend cannon to my uncles house. Since where I live is heavily wooded all I even hear is the ball ricocheting among the trees. My uncle lives on a semi private lake. so from shore we fired my little cannon to see if we could see how far it shoots. The firt shot was at maximum elevation and we never did see it land. we fired several more time from a flat elevation to about 30*(not using the elevation wedge). We could see the ball hit the water out about several hundred yards. Our last shot we used the elevation wedge set at it's lowest elevation. We could see it land in front of some lily pads at the fartest edge of the lake. My uncle said that was close to getting 1/2 mile out there. So we figured the first shot cleared the lake at a distance of 1/2 mile. Who would have thought that little cannon could fire a ball so far. Guess I better be more careful in inhabited areas.
So my question ishow far does your cannon shoot?

 

[Bon Sauvage]

May I ask what your powder charge was?

 

[Poor Private]

I went by the charge as reccomended by the manufacturer of the gun. 110 grains as a blank and 1/2 that for live firing so thats makes it 55. Oh should have said in ffg also.
it's the South Bend Replicas, The Continental cannon.

 

[flintlock75]

My cannon is a bit bigger, a 2" bore and fires an 8 oz. lead ball, with a light 300 gr charge of Cannon grade Goex it will send the ball accurately to 600 yards, a 55gal drum target is not safe. we conducted a long range test in an uninhabited area and set an 8'x8' target at 2 miles on the side of a hill, using 900 gr of powder and 5deg of elevation the ball hit the ground 300 yards short of the target and bounced out of sight over the target, we raised the elevation to 10 deg. and fired, the ball hit the target in the upper left corner, we fired 10 rounds at the target and 5 rounds hit directly and 2 hits from bouncing off the ground. We had our spotting scopes on tripods in the bed of the truck zeroed on the target, the lag time was quite long, we had time to fire the gun and climb into the truck to look through the scope before the ball got to the target. a chronograph test showed the velocity at 950 feet per second average. It was awesome fun to shoot at that range, we did recover 2 balls from the dirt that hit low and stuck. The gun a 1/4 scale of the 6 pounder field gun, barrel is 35" long wt. 120 lbs.,
carriage has 27 in wheels, total weight 170 lbs.

At another shoot we built a log stockade wall of 6-8" logs and set up 300 yards away, those 8oz balls went right through those logs like a hot knife in butter, the amount of damage was impressive, its no wonder that when an attacking force hauled a small gun like that to a stockade and laid siege, the stockade surrendered after just a shot or two.

 

[Col. Batguano]

For bigger coastal guns, 3 1/2 miles was their practical limit, which is 1 league, and the origin of the 3 1/2 mile territorial water limit.

 

[M. De Land]

Civil war 13 inch mortars had a range of two miles with a 230 pound shell.
Mine will heave a 16 pound bowling ball about 1/3 of a mile at about a 40 degree muzzle angle.
A heavier iron ball would go a good bit farther, I'm quite certain. Mike D.