#gunnery

HOWEVER.

(This is really picky, but @cosmicdesserttrolley is about to feel SO vindicated for assigning me "gunner" when the "assign prev a ship rank" post was really making its rounds.)

Konstam consistently conflates bar shot with chain shot, and langrage with grapeshot.

Uhhhh... my knowledge of Age of Sail gunnery comes from having been to Fort McHenry and to the North Carolina Maritime Museum one time each, and I know that while bar shot and chain are both for damaging masts and rigging, and langrage and grapeshot are both antipersonnel rounds, they👏🏽are👏🏽not👏🏽the👏🏽same👏🏽

It's something petty and trivial, but it does make me wonder how much else in this book I can't take seriously.

Captain Sir Philip Bowes Vere Broke of HMS Shannon, in Royal Navy captain's full dress uniform (over three years' seniority), pattern 1812-1835. Painting by Samuel Lane (NMM). Meaningfully, he is posed by one of Shannon's guns.

The guns on Shannon's main deck were spaced at roughly ten-foot centres, and as the carriage axles and wheels were about five feet wide, there was only five feet of space between adjacent guns. Allowing a few inches' margin, each man had a channel no more than two feet wide in which to work; heaving on tackles, passing side arms, cartridge shot and wad, using handspikes, standing clear of the recoil—step six inches too far and he could lose his toes under a truck or his eye on the end of a wad hook. Gun drill had to be as exact as a choreographed ballet with every hand, foot and bodily movement synchronised precisely with every other member of the crew—and all this in the thick of the smoke, deafening noise and horrendous carnage of battle whilst stupid with fatigue from the physical effort involved.

—Martin Bibbings, "A Gunnery Zealot: Broke's Scientific Contribution to Naval Warfare", in Broke of the Shannon and the War of 1812, edited by Tim Voelcker.

For a story on Air Force gunnery training

Mr. Tallboys was a stout dumpy man, with red face, and still redder hands; he had red hair and red whiskers, and he had read a great deal—for Mr. Tallboys considered that the gunner was the most important personage in the ship. He had once been a captain's clerk, and having distinguished himself very much in cutting-out service, had applied for and received his warrant as a gunner. He had studied the “Art of Gunnery,” a part of which he understood, but the remainder was above his comprehension: he continued, however, to read it as before, thinking that by constant reading he should understand it at last.

— Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy

Water Pail of HMS Courageaux, 74-gun, between 1800-1814