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72-625: The Nanaimo Bastion is a historical octagon -shaped blockhouse located at 98 Front Street in Nanaimo , British Columbia , Canada. The Hudson's Bay Company , which then held a royal lease on all of what was then the Colony of Vancouver Island , built it between 1853 and 1855 to defend its coal mining operations in Nanaimo. It has been called "Nanaimo's premier landmark", because of its shape and its high visibility from both land and sea. The Bastion

144-539: A cannon on the downward roll of the ship would often ricochet off the sea into the enemy hull. A merchant ship would more often aim at the bigger target of the masts and rigging in the hope of escaping a pursuing enemy. The higher trajectory required of carronades at ranges of 400 yd (370 m) or more was little disadvantage for their use by merchant ships or any naval ship fleeing a more powerful enemy. The theory for centuries had always associated long barrels with long range, but experience had also shown that shortening

216-454: A carronade was usually mounted on a lug underneath the barrel, rather than the usual trunnions to either side. As a result, the carronade had an unusually high centre of gravity . Towards the end of the period of use, some carronades were fitted with trunnions to lower their centres of gravity, to create a variant known as the "gunnade". Gunnades, introduced around 1820, are distinct from the earliest carronades, which also featured trunnions. In

288-547: A crosscut saw, broadaxe , adze , auger , and pit saw. The wooden structure sat on a masonry foundation and was three stories tall. It is the only remaining freestanding tower structure built by the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1891, the Bastion faced demolition threats. The city, recognising the historic value of the building, paid a sum of $ 175 for the building and moved it across the street from its original location (this would be

360-454: A disadvantage if they were fought outside their point blank range, such as in the case of USS Essex , a frigate equipped almost solely with carronades, which was reduced to a hulk by the longer-range guns of HMS Phoebe and HMS Cherub off Valparaiso, Chile in the March 28, 1814 Battle of Valparaiso . Warships often aimed at the enemy's hull to destroy its capacity for battle. A ball fired from

432-636: A number of octagonal churches in Norway . The central space in the Aachen Cathedral , the Carolingian Palatine Chapel , has a regular octagonal floorplan. Uses of octagons in churches also include lesser design elements, such as the octagonal apse of Nidaros Cathedral . Architects such as John Andrews have used octagonal floor layouts in buildings for functionally separating office areas from building services, such as in

504-484: A quasiregular truncated square , t{4}, which alternates two types of edges. A truncated octagon, t{8} is a hexadecagon , {16}. A 3D analog of the octagon can be the rhombicuboctahedron with the triangular faces on it like the replaced edges, if one considers the octagon to be a truncated square. The sum of all the internal angles of any octagon is 1080°. As with all polygons, the external angles total 360°. If squares are constructed all internally or all externally on

576-415: A regular octagon is 135 ° ( 3 π 4 {\displaystyle \scriptstyle {\frac {3\pi }{4}}} radians ). The central angle is 45° ( π 4 {\displaystyle \scriptstyle {\frac {\pi }{4}}} radians). The area of a regular octagon of side length a is given by In terms of the circumradius R , the area is In terms of

648-424: A result, effective or decisive naval battles were generally fought at ranges under (100 yd (91 m)) where the carronade's heavier ball was useful and its shorter range was not a huge problem. Technological improvements changed the capabilities of naval armament by the nineteenth century, but muzzle-loading smoothbore cannon were still not very accurate. Consequently, naval tactics in line of battle counted on

720-480: A right angle at the centre of the circle which connects its vertices. Its area can thus be computed as the sum of eight isosceles triangles, leading to the result: for an octagon of side a . The coordinates for the vertices of a regular octagon centered at the origin and with side length 2 are: Coxeter states that every zonogon (a 2 m -gon whose opposite sides are parallel and of equal length) can be dissected into m ( m -1)/2 parallelograms. In particular this

792-529: A significant tactical advantage during the latter part of the 18th century—though French ships mounted another type of weapon in the same role, the obusier de vaisseau . HMS  Victory used the two 68-pounder carronades which she carried on her forecastle to great effect at the Battle of Trafalgar , clearing the gun deck of the Bucentaure by firing a round shot and a keg of 500 musket balls through

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864-604: A single 68-pounder on a pivot, and then did the same with two of the aft 32-pounder carronades. By doing this, he replaced 70 pounds of broadside with 136 pounds (assuming that both 68-pounders would usually fire on the same side), and ensured that Raven would have less dead-space to her front and rear. Carronades were not counted in a ship of the line ' s rated number of guns. The classification of Royal Navy vessels in this period can therefore mislead; they would often be carrying fewer guns but more pieces of ordnance than they were described as carrying. The same applied to

936-409: A spherical cannonball in supersonic flight is much greater than in subsonic flight. For a given weight of powder, a larger ball, having a large mass, has a lower maximum velocity which reduces the range of supersonic flight. But the increase in the distance of subsonic flight may have more than compensated, as the air resistance is proportional to the square of the diameter but the mass is proportional to

1008-491: Is r16 and no symmetry is labeled a1 . The most common high symmetry octagons are p8 , an isogonal octagon constructed by four mirrors can alternate long and short edges, and d8 , an isotoxal octagon constructed with equal edge lengths, but vertices alternating two different internal angles. These two forms are duals of each other and have half the symmetry order of the regular octagon. Each subgroup symmetry allows one or more degrees of freedom for irregular forms. Only

1080-595: Is a Kingston-class Coastal Defence vessel that has been serving in the Royal Canadian Navy since 1997. Snuneymuxw chief Che-wich-i-kcan (historically known as "Coal Tyee") was the gateway to the coal industry in Nanaimo. It was in 1849 that he mentioned the presence of burnable black rocks near his village to a blacksmith in Victoria. The Hudson's Bay Company got word of the conversation, and asked Che-wich-i-kcan for verification. The Hudson's Bay Company at

1152-600: Is a zig-zag skew octagon and can be seen in the vertices and side edges of a square antiprism with the same D 4d , [2 ,8] symmetry, order 16. The regular skew octagon is the Petrie polygon for these higher-dimensional regular and uniform polytopes , shown in these skew orthogonal projections of in A 7 , B 4 , and D 5 Coxeter planes . The regular octagon has Dih 8 symmetry, order 16. There are three dihedral subgroups: Dih 4 , Dih 2 , and Dih 1 , and four cyclic subgroups : Z 8 , Z 4 , Z 2 , and Z 1 ,

1224-469: Is managed by the Nanaimo Museum and is open to visitors during the summer. It functions as a tourist information centre on behalf of Tourism Nanaimo, and holds exhibits on the history of the building. The Nanaimo Museum also hosts a daily cannon firing at noon during the summer months, just a few feet away from the Bastion. The Bastion is the main image on HMCS Nanaimo 's ships crest. HMCS Nanaimo

1296-450: Is true for regular polygons with evenly many sides, in which case the parallelograms are all rhombi. For the regular octagon , m =4, and it can be divided into 6 rhombs, with one example shown below. This decomposition can be seen as 6 of 24 faces in a Petrie polygon projection plane of the tesseract . The list (sequence A006245 in the OEIS ) defines the number of solutions as eight, by

1368-452: The Age of Sail simply was not accurate, regardless of whether the cannon was a gun or a carronade. Almost all barrels were smoothbore, not rifled, and tolerances had wide variations on everything from the actual roundness and straightness of the barrel to shot size in relation to the bore (windage). Sights were rudimentary or non-existent, and elevation was controlled by wedges and guesswork. As

1440-639: The American Civil War in the 1860s. The last known use of a carronade in conflict was during the First Boer War . In the siege of Potchefstroom , the Boers used 'Ou Griet', an antique carronade mounted on a wagon axle, against the British fort. The original design of the carronade included a different type of mounting on a wooden carriage, where the cannon itself had a projecting loop on

1512-554: The American Revolutionary War . A lightweight gun that needed only a small gun crew and was devastating at short range was well suited to defending merchant ships against French and American privateers . The French came in possession of their first carronades in December 1779 with the capture of the brig Finkastre by the frigate Précieuse , but the weapon was judged ineffective and was not adopted by them at

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1584-507: The Bucentaure ' s stern windows. The carronade was initially very successful and widely adopted, and a few experimental ships were fitted with a carronade-only armament, such as HMS  Glatton and HMS  Rainbow . Glatton , a fourth-rate ship with 56 guns, had a more destructive broadside at short range than HMS Victory , a first-rate ship with 100 guns. Glatton and Rainbow were both successful in battle, though

1656-488: The East India Company , which were not generally expected to engage in combat. A number of the merchant ships in the Battle of Pulo Aura were armed with cannonades. This was a fight between a fleet of East India Company merchantmen under command of Commodore Nathaniel Dance and a French naval squadron under Admiral Linois ; it was unusual for merchant ships to engage in combat, but they successfully beat off

1728-763: The Intelsat Headquarters of Washington or Callam Offices in Canberra. The octagon , as a truncated square , is first in a sequence of truncated hypercubes : As an expanded square, it is also first in a sequence of expanded hypercubes: Carronade A carronade is a short, smoothbore , cast-iron cannon which was used by the Royal Navy . It was first produced by the Carron Company , an ironworks in Falkirk , Scotland , and

1800-419: The apothem r (see also inscribed figure ), the area is These last two coefficients bracket the value of pi , the area of the unit circle . The area can also be expressed as where S is the span of the octagon, or the second-shortest diagonal; and a is the length of one of the sides, or bases. This is easily proven if one takes an octagon, draws a square around the outside (making sure that four of

1872-750: The g8 subgroup has no degrees of freedom but can be seen as directed edges . The octagonal shape is used as a design element in architecture. The Dome of the Rock has a characteristic octagonal plan. The Tower of the Winds in Athens is another example of an octagonal structure. The octagonal plan has also been in church architecture such as St. George's Cathedral, Addis Ababa , Basilica of San Vitale (in Ravenna, Italia), Castel del Monte (Apulia, Italia), Florence Baptistery , Zum Friedefürsten Church (Germany) and

1944-670: The single-ship action in which the French frigate Piémontaise captured the East Indiaman Warren Hastings on 11 June 1805, the naval historian William James compared the 18-pounder carronades on Warren Hastings with the 18-pounder carronades that the British Royal Navy used. The EIC 18-pounder was 5 ft (1.5 m) long, and weighed 15.5 cwt; the Royal Navy's 18-pounder carronade

2016-494: The 1840s, the Royal Navy leased several carronade-armed clippers from Jardine, Matheson & Co. in 1840 to supplement the steamships it used against Qing dynasty China during the First Opium War . The carronade disappeared from the Royal Navy in the 1850s, after improved methods for building cannons had been developed by William George Armstrong and Joseph Whitworth . Carronades were nevertheless still used in

2088-492: The Bastion and cannons were for defense. The cannons were fired in welcoming ceremonies when dignitaries were sailing into the harbour and the cannons were fired into the forest across the harbour to intimidate the First Nations. The largest level on the third floor sheltered settlers and offered a vantage point to fire down upon foes. The bastion was finished in 1854. The second floor now holds information and exhibits on

2160-467: The Bastion has historic information on the trade industry of Nanaimo, and gives more insight on McKay's role in the coal industry in Nanaimo. The Bastion's second floor was home to Nanaimo's arsenal. On this floor, two four-pound and two six-pound carronades were held. The cannons were brought over by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1853, when the Bastion was being constructed. Guns, ammunition and additional firing supplies were also stored here. The purpose of

2232-450: The French and American navies when they adopted the carronade. The carronade, like other naval guns, was mounted with ropes to restrain the recoil , but the details of the gun mounting were usually quite different. The carronade was typically mounted on a sliding rather than a wheeled gun carriage , and elevation was achieved with a turnscrew , like field guns , rather than the quoins (wooden wedges) usual for naval guns. In addition,

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2304-437: The French in series of engagements, convincing them they were actually facing a powerful force of Royal Navy vessels; this action was later used as the basis for the climactic battle in the book H.M.S Surprise , part of the famous Aubrey and Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian . The East India Company (EIC) also used carronades, and these appear to be larger, and heavier than those that Royal Navy used. In his discussion of

2376-607: The Hudson's Bay Company. Joseph's family had worked for the HBC for a couple of generations. He was Métis, born in Québec and worked his way across the continent with the Company. McKay spoke many languages, including Michif, English, French, and a number of Indigenous languages. He oversaw the construction of the Bastion, and used its first floor as his office to conduct the day-to-day operations. These operations would have included overseeing

2448-469: The ball and the inside of the gun barrel, as a result of irregularities in the size of cannonballs and the difficulty of boring out gun barrels . If the windage of a cannon was off as much as a quarter of an inch (.25 in (6.4 mm)), it could cause a considerable loss in power and accuracy. The manufacturing practices introduced by the Carron Company reduced the windage considerably. Despite

2520-450: The bore; for example, an 18-pounder carronade had its chamber bored equal to a 12-pounder. This reduced the weight of the cannon, but also had the effect of reducing the velocity of the cannonball , and hence range. A factor mitigating the deficiency in range was that carronades could be bored with a much tighter windage than long guns, so that more of the propellant went to moving the shot, rather than bypassing it. Naval artillery during

2592-422: The bottom that was pinned to the gun carriage, which was fastened to the side of the ship, with a pivoting mounting which allowed the gun to be rotated, while rearward recoil was contained, sometimes with a slider carriage. In some versions, a wedge was placed underneath the chamber to control elevation, while in later versions an elevating screw was used. Carronades had a chamber that was one-caliber smaller than

2664-525: The carronade's lack of range was a tactical disadvantage of this arrangement against an opponent who could keep out of carronade range, but within the range of his long guns. In the 1810s and 1820s, tactics started to place a greater emphasis on the accuracy of long-range gunfire, and less on the weight of a broadside. Indeed, Captain David Porter of USS Essex complained when the navy replaced his 12-pounder long guns with 32-pounder carronades. In

2736-429: The cube. The Victory ' s 68 lb carronade is reported to have had a maximum range of 1,280 yd (1,170 m) at an angle of 5 degrees with a 5 lb charge of gunpowder. The structure of Victory ' s forecastle limited the weight of the guns. The other gun on the forecastle was a medium 12 lb cannon, which had a maximum range of 1,320 yd (1,210 m). Carronades were not noticeably short range for either

2808-401: The effect of rapid broadsides at short range, to which the carronade could make a significant contribution. In smaller vessels such as frigates, privateers, and raiders, the captains still appreciated long guns for their increased range, since they were not expected to engage in fighting in line-of-battle, but rather often found themselves engaged in long chases or attempts to work to windward. It

2880-509: The eight orientations of this one dissection. These squares and rhombs are used in the Ammann–Beenker tilings . A skew octagon is a skew polygon with eight vertices and edges but not existing on the same plane. The interior of such an octagon is not generally defined. A skew zig-zag octagon has vertices alternating between two parallel planes. A regular skew octagon is vertex-transitive with equal edge lengths. In three dimensions it

2952-426: The eight sides overlap with the four sides of the square) and then takes the corner triangles (these are 45–45–90 triangles ) and places them with right angles pointed inward, forming a square. The edges of this square are each the length of the base. Given the length of a side a , the span S is The span, then, is equal to the silver ratio times the side, a. The area is then as above: Expressed in terms of

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3024-592: The entire armament of unrated vessels. For instance, the Ballahoo - and Cuckoo -class schooners were armed only with four 12-pounder carronades. Second, gunboats such as those that the Americans deployed at the Battle of Lake Borgne often had one large 18-, 24-, or 32-pounder gun forward on a pivot, and two smaller carronades aft. Finally, larger vessels carried a few 12-, 18-, or 24-pounders to arm their ship's boats— cutters , pinnaces , launches , barges , and

3096-404: The formulas for their length: A regular octagon at a given circumcircle may be constructed as follows: A regular octagon can be constructed using a straightedge and a compass , as 8 = 2 , a power of two : The regular octagon can be constructed with meccano bars. Twelve bars of size 4, three bars of size 5 and two bars of size 6 are required. Each side of a regular octagon subtends half

3168-489: The gun, mounting, and shot all together. The standard package of shot per gun was 25 roundshot , 15 barshot , 15 double-headed shot , 10 "single" grapeshot , and 10 "single" canister shot . "Single" meant that the shot weighed the same as the roundshot, while some other canister and grapeshot were also included which weighed one and a half times the roundshot. Its invention is variously ascribed to Lieutenant General Robert Melville in 1759, or to Charles Gascoigne , who

3240-412: The gun. The replacement of trunnions by a bolt underneath, to connect the gun to the mounting, reduced the width of the carriage enhancing the wide angle of fire. A merchant ship would almost always be running away from an enemy, so a wide angle of fire was much more important than on a warship. A carronade weighed a quarter as much and used a quarter to a third of the gunpowder charge as a long gun firing

3312-411: The guns of Nanaimo, as well as a timeline highlighting the building's history and construction. The third floor was used as storage and refuge for the HBC employees and families. 49°10′1.45″N 123°56′8.37″W  /  49.1670694°N 123.9356583°W  / 49.1670694; -123.9356583 Octagon A regular octagon has Schläfli symbol {8} and can also be constructed as

3384-463: The introduction of rifling and consequent change in the shape of the projectile, exploding shells replacing solid shot, and naval engagements being fought at longer ranges. The carronade was designed as a short-range naval weapon with a low muzzle velocity for merchant ships, but it also found a niche role on warships. It was produced by the Carron ironworks and was at first sold as a system with

3456-402: The last implying no symmetry. On the regular octagon, there are eleven distinct symmetries. John Conway labels full symmetry as r16 . The dihedral symmetries are divided depending on whether they pass through vertices ( d for diagonal) or edges ( p for perpendiculars) Cyclic symmetries in the middle column are labeled as g for their central gyration orders. Full symmetry of the regular form

3528-479: The late 18th century, a new type of cannon was developed in Britain which was a cross between a cannon and a carronade, called a "cannonade" (not to be confused with the term cannonade which refers to rapid and sustained artillery fire or the act of firing as such). An example was the "medium 18 pounder ", which was shorter and lighter than a gun, yet longer than a carronade. While seemingly a good idea in theory, it

3600-544: The like—to give them firepower for boat actions. For instance, each of the 42 larger British vessels at the Battle of Lake Borgne carried a carronade in its bow; only the three gigs were unarmed. At the other end, even a quite small vessel might carry the 68-pounders. For instance, Commander William Layman of the Cruizer -class brig sloop HMS  Raven replaced her two forward 6-pounder guns and 32-pounder carronades with

3672-628: The management of the local mines and settlement, ordering supplies, and storing/distributing trade goods. Part of the managerial duties included maintaining correspondence with Fort Victoria , Locally, messages and people were carried via small "express canoes" between Victoria and Fort Langley , while supplies would have been carried on larger vessels such as the Beaver and the Otter . In some cases, supplies had to be ordered from England, and could take up to two years to be delivered. The first floor of

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3744-405: The parking lot of the modern day Dorchester Hotel). It was moved a second time in 1979, when the roads were being widened. On December 12, 1985, the city of Nanaimo designated it a local heritage site . During the summer of 2010, the Bastion was torn apart to renew rotting boards and add stabilizing steel beams. The director of the event said that they were "making a historic movement". The Bastion

3816-412: The recoil. The mounting, attached to the side of the ship on a pivot, took the recoil on a slider, without altering the alignment of the gun. The pamphlet advocated the use of woollen cartridges, which eliminated the need for wadding and worming , although they were more expensive. Simplifying gunnery for comparatively untrained merchant seamen in both aiming and reloading was part of the rationale for

3888-400: The reduced windage, carronades had a much shorter range than the equivalent long gun, typically a third to a half, because they used a much smaller propellant charge (the chamber for the powder was smaller than the bore for the ball). Typical naval tactics in the late 18th century, however, emphasised short-range broadsides, so the range was not thought to be a problem. The air resistance of

3960-412: The regular octagon in terms of the side length a is and the inradius is (that is one-half the silver ratio times the side, a , or one-half the span, S ) The inradius can be calculated from the circumradius as The regular octagon, in terms of the side length a , has three different types of diagonals : The formula for each of them follows from the basic principles of geometry. Here are

4032-542: The same cannonball. The reduced charge allowed carronades to have a shorter length and much lighter weight than long guns. Increasing the size of the bore and ball reduces the required length of barrel. The force acting on the ball is proportional to the square of the diameter, while the mass of the ball rises by the cube, so acceleration is slower; thus, the barrel can be shorter and therefore lighter. Long guns were also much heavier than carronades because they were over-specified to be capable of being double-shotted, whereas it

4104-445: The sides of an octagon, then the midpoints of the segments connecting the centers of opposite squares form a quadrilateral that is both equidiagonal and orthodiagonal (that is, whose diagonals are equal in length and at right angles to each other). The midpoint octagon of a reference octagon has its eight vertices at the midpoints of the sides of the reference octagon. If squares are constructed all internally or all externally on

4176-506: The sides of the midpoint octagon, then the midpoints of the segments connecting the centers of opposite squares themselves form the vertices of a square. A regular octagon is a closed figure with sides of the same length and internal angles of the same size. It has eight lines of reflective symmetry and rotational symmetry of order 8. A regular octagon is represented by the Schläfli symbol {8}. The internal angle at each vertex of

4248-519: The span, the area is Another simple formula for the area is More often the span S is known, and the length of the sides, a , is to be determined, as when cutting a square piece of material into a regular octagon. From the above, The two end lengths e on each side (the leg lengths of the triangles (green in the image) truncated from the square), as well as being e = a / 2 , {\displaystyle e=a/{\sqrt {2}},} may be calculated as The circumradius of

4320-470: The time was going through a transition period, and they were more interested in the natural resources of Vancouver Island , rather than the fur trade . When they did verify the presence of coal in the Nanaimo region, they abandoned their previous coal pursuits in Fort Rupert and moved down island. Upon the confirmation of coal in Nanaimo, Joseph William McKay was sent as a company clerk on behalf of

4392-589: The time. However, in the action of 4 September 1782 , the impact of a single carronade broadside fired at close range by the frigate HMS  Rainbow under Henry Trollope caused a wounded French captain to capitulate and surrender the Hébé after a short fight. The carronade was a popular armament among Anglo-American opium traffickers. Its light weight meant that opium traffickers could maintain both speed and asymmetrical force projection in Asia. The Royal Navy

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4464-437: The weight of ball in powder before it introduced the carronade, which further halved the gunpowder charge. The advantages for merchant ships are described in an advertising pamphlet of 1779. Production of both shot and gun by the same firm immediately allowed a reduction in the windage, the gap between the bore of the gun and the diameter of the ball. The smaller gunpowder charge reduced the barrel heating in action, and reduced

4536-441: The weight of the gun or the gunpowder charge. Carronades were short range because of their small gunpowder charge but their lower muzzle velocity required a higher trajectory. But at sea the range of the long gun had little use; guns were on moving platforms, making timing of fire very difficult. Pitch and roll meant that most ships fought at close range of a few hundred yards or less. In battles between warships, carronades could be at

4608-483: Was 3 ft 3 in (1.0 m) and weighed 10.5 cwt (1,176 lb (533.4 kg)). James's figures show the EIC's 12-pounder carronades were 3 ft 3 in (1.0 m) long, and weighed 8.5 cwt (952 lb (431.8 kg)); the Royal Navy's 12-pounder carronade was 2 ft 8 in (0.8 m) and weighed 6.5 cwt (728 lb (330.2 kg)). There was usually a considerable gap (known as windage ) between

4680-400: Was constructed using the pièce-sur-pièce ( post-and-plank ) method. This entailed laying timbers across each other horizontally, with tenons cut into the ends. These tenons would then be inserted into vertical posts. This method was used partially due to the expensive cost of nails; by using the pièce-sur-pièce method, very few nails were needed. The logs were squared using only basic hand tools:

4752-446: Was dangerous to do this in a carronade. A ship could carry more carronades, or carronades of a larger caliber, than long guns, and carronades could be mounted on the upper decks, where heavy long guns could cause the ship to be top-heavy and unstable. Carronades also required a smaller gun crew, which was very important for merchant ships, and they were faster to reload. Carronades initially became popular on British merchant ships during

4824-402: Was found that the gun was less accurate and shorter-ranged than a long cannon, less powerful than a carronade, and -at 28 cwt - too light for the powerful charge, meaning recoil was excessive and often broke the breachings or ropes which attached the gun to the hull timbers. They were quickly removed from service in most cases, although a number were retained on ships in merchant service, such as

4896-518: Was initially reluctant to adopt the guns, mainly due to mistrust of the Carron Company, which had developed a reputation for incompetence and commercial sharp dealing . Carronades were not even counted in numbering the guns of a ship. Lord Sandwich eventually started mounting them in place of the light guns on the forecastle and quarterdeck of ships. They soon proved their effectiveness in battle. French gun foundries were unable to produce equivalents for twenty years, so carronades gave British warships

4968-418: Was manager of the Carron Company from 1769 to 1779. In its early years, the weapon was sometimes called a "mellvinade" or a "gasconade". The carronade can be seen as the culmination of a development of naval guns reducing the barrel length and gunpowder charge. The Carron Company was already selling a "new light-constructed" gun, two-thirds of the weight of the standard naval gun and charged with one sixth of

5040-401: Was much shorter and a third to a quarter of the weight of an equivalent long gun . A 32-pounder carronade, for example, weighed less than a ton, but a 32-pounder long gun weighed over 3 tons. Carronades were manufactured in the usual naval gun sizes: 6-, 12-, 18-, 24-, 32-, 42-, and 68- pounder versions are known. The smaller carronades served in three roles. First, they often constituted

5112-453: Was often better tactically to attempt to shoot the opponent's rigging down at range rather than close in for direct combat, where the weaker hulls of lighter vessels were at risk. They also often found themselves far from home or harbors, where repairs and spare yards, masts or rigging could be found. Generally, although the power of the "smashers", as they were called, was acknowledged, most captains continued to prefer long guns. A carronade

5184-532: Was used from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range, anti-ship and anti-crew weapon. The technology behind the carronade was greater dimensional precision, with the shot fitting more closely in the barrel, thus transmitting more of the propellant charge's energy to the projectile, allowing a lighter gun using less gunpowder to be effective. Carronades were initially found to be very successful, but they eventually disappeared as naval artillery advanced, with

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