Cannon bone

“ It has been implied, if not actually maintained, that a man could have his thigh carried away by a cannon-shot without being fully aware of it, or, if aware of it, that it did not cause much alarm—in fact, that it did not materially signify as to his apprehension, whether the ball took off his limb or the tail of his coat, or only grazed his breeches. ”

“ The pig-iron from which cannon are made should be soft, yielding easily to the file and chisel; the appearance of the fracture should be uniform, with a brilliant aspect, dark gray color, and medium-sized crystals. When remelted and cast into cannon, it should have about sufficient hardness to resist the file and chisel, but not to be so hard as to be bored and turned with much difficulty; its color should be a bright gray, crystals small, structure uniform, close, and compact. The density of gun metal should be about 7.25, and its tenacity about 30,000. ”

“ Many interesting relics have been raised by the pumps and attendant divers—coins, bones, jewels, timbers, cannon, muskets, pistols, swords, and a compass, which is so constructed that pressure on the top causes the legs to spread. One of the cannon, fifty-four inches long, has a separate powder chamber, the shot and wad still in the gun, and traces of powder in the chamber. It is curious that what we usually consider so modern an invention as the breech-loading cannon should be found side by side with stone balls. ”

“ You must not fancy that the cannon, or rather the cannon-balls, were in the habit of furrowing the bosoms of French braves, or any other braves, with cicatrices: on the contrary, it is a known fact that cannon-balls make wounds, and not cicatrices (which, my dear, are wounds partially healed) ; nay, that a man generally dies after receiving one such projectile on his chest, much more after having his bosom furrowed by a score of them. ”

“ The only metals ordinarily used for cannon are cast and wrought iron, steel, and an alloy of copper and tin, or a combination of these metals. Cannon metals should be able to resist the corroding action of the atmosphere, the heat and the products of combustion of the powder; should be susceptible of being easily bored and turned, and should not be too costly. The qualities necessary in cannon metals are strength to resist the explosion of the charge, weight to overcome severe recoil, and hardness to endure the bounding of the projectile along the bore. ”

“ All that the eye could make out for some moments in the dust and smoke, was a confused mass of men clutching each other, dealing blows with the butt-ends of muskets, or fencing with bayonets—men in blue and gray, wrestling, cursing, falling, and dying, in the midst of the crash of small-arms, and the thunder of cannon, which clothed the crest in flame. ”

“ That we may be understood, we will add that the trunnions are the short round pieces of iron, or brass, projecting from the sides of the cannon, and their relative position can be easily ascertained by a glance at the gun occupying the foreground of the Illustration where the dismantling is depicted. To perform the labour thus required in managing cannon, is called to serve the guns.
Cannon are cast in a solid mass of metal, either of iron or brass; they are then bored by being placed upon a machine which causes the whole mass to turn round very rapidly. ”

“ At handling sword or gun,
But yet they are too naked men
To bear the cannon's rung.
For a cannon's roar in a summer night
Is like thunder in the air;
There's not a man in Highland dress
Can face the cannon's fire. ”

“ The only engineer who has, by practical experience, satisfied himself that large masses of wrought iron are totally useless for making heavy ordnance is Mr. Nasmyth; whose monster cannon, which was to astonish the whole world, proved, when heated, to have so little cohesion that it would scarcely hold together whilst being lifted from the furnace to the anvil. ”

“ Cannæ. A town of Naples, province of Terra di Bari. It is celebrated for the great victory gained there by Hannibal over the Romans, in the summer of 216 B.C. The loss of the Romans is stated by Livy at 45,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry.
Cannon. A military engine of which the general form is that of a hollow cylinder closed at one end, and variously mounted, used for throwing balls and other instruments of death by force of gunpowder. Cannons are made of iron, brass, bronze, and sometimes of steel rods welded together, and are of different sizes. ”

“ According to a former story a gun was to be employed to throw the projectile from the earth to the moon; now the gun was to be employed to change the earth's axis. The cannon, always the cannon; these gunners of the Gun Club had nothing else in their heads but the cannon. They had a real craze for the cannon. Was this brutal engine again threatening the universe? Yes, we are sorry to confess it, it was a cannon which was uppermost in the mind of President Barbicane and his associates. After the Columbiad of Florida, they had gone on to the monster cannon of the place "x." ”

“ The tire is heated, and this expands it, or makes it larger. It is put on hot, and when it cools it shrinks, getting smaller, and gripping the rim of the wheel in a strong embrace. That is what the jackets of steel do to the big guns.
A big rifled cannon is loaded from the rear, or breech, just as is a breech-loading shotgun of rifle. That is, the cannon is opened at the back and the projectile is put in by means of a derrick, for often the projectiles weigh a thousand pounds or more. Next comes the powder—hundreds of pounds of it—and then it is necessary to close the breech. ”

“ As time went on, cannon, though primitively formed as described, increased in size that prodigious balls might be expelled from them against walled places, in imitation of the ancient machine which they had superseded; thus they soon became of enormous bore, until they attained the dignity of bombardes, like Mons Meg in Edinburgh Castle; but the difficulty of managing these pieces, and the growing knowledge that iron shot of much less weight could be impelled further by the use of better powder, gradually introduced the cast metal cannon used at the present day. ”

“ The method is a very old one revived, but with such scientific modifications as to have enormously increased the effectiveness of small-arms; with cannon its successful practical application to the larger natures has not yet been arrived at, but with field-guns it has added largely to accuracy of practice and facility of loading.
BREECH OF A CANNON. The after-end, next the vent or touch-hole. It is the most massive part of a gun; strictly speaking, it is all the solid metal behind the bottom of the bore. Also, the outside angle formed by the knee-timber, the inside of which is the throat. ”

“ The study of these points will save money, time, and what is of more value, brain-work, which might be better employed. Striving to produce perfect breech-loading cannon is like striving to square the circle. ”

“ Without entering into the history of artillery, it will be sufficient to state that the peculiar distinguishing excellence of modern improvements in cannon is the attainment of superior efficiency, accuracy, and mobility, with a decrease in weight of metal. ”

“ Nevertheless few have seen a man lose even a piece of his skin and of his breeches by a cannon-shot, without perceiving that he was indisputably frightened. Dr. Beith, surgeon of the Belleisle, hospital ship, in the Baltic, informs me that Mr. Wrottesley, of the Engineers, was struck by a cannon-shot, at Bomarsund, on the upper part of his right thigh, which shattered it and his hand, which was resting upon it. His leg was also broken by a splinter from the gun which the ball had previously struck. The femoral artery was not injured, and it was said he lost but little blood. ”

“ One object of this mode of manufacture is to correct the defects of one material by introducing another of opposite qualities, as for instance, trials have been made to increase the hardness, and therefore endurance, of bronze cannon by casting them around a core of steel which formed the surface of the bore. Built-up cannon are not necessarily composed of more than one kind of metal. ”

“ A shorter bore would cause much of the powder to be thrown out unconsumed, while a much greater length would retard the projectile by subjecting it to the friction of the bore after the maximum force of the powder had been reached. This accounts for the greatly increased length of the modern cannon. A change in the method of gun construction has accordingly become necessary. Guns are no longer made of cast iron, but are “built up” of steel. ”

“ You see, Ned, there is, theoretically, nothing to prevent the casting of a steel rifled cannon that would be fifty inches across at the muzzle, and making it a hundred feet long. I mean it could be done on paper—figured out and all that. But whether you would get a corresponding increase in power or range, and be able to throw a relatively larger projectile, is something no one knows, for there never has been such a gun made. Besides, the strain of the big charge of powder needed would be enormous. So I don't want merely to make a giant cannon. ”

“ Cannon shot and shells have been made in many new forms; and cannons themselves have been increased in calibre to an extraordinary size with proportionate efficiency, and have been constructed in various modes and forms never before conceived. The tent, the cot, the chest, the chair, the knife and fork, the stove and bakeoven, each and every one of them, have been touched by the transforming hand of homely genius, and have assumed a thousand unimaginable forms of usefulness and convenience. ”

“ Before their invention, machines were used for throwing enormous stones. These were imitated from the Arabs, and called ingenia, whence engineer. The first cannon were made of wood, wrapped up in numerous folds of linen, and well secured by iron hoops. The true epoch of the use of metallic cannon cannot be ascertained; it is certain, however, that they were in use about the middle of the 14th century. The Engraving beneath represents a field-battery gun taking up its position in a canter. ”

“ Monck; his great improvement consisting in lessening the weight of iron in front of the trunnions, and adding to that of the breech. In cannon, as in fowling-pieces, weight in the fore part is useless; conducing neither to the safety of the gun, nor to the smartness of its shooting. For endurance, it is necessary that the expansion should be equal in every part of the gun; rigidity in one part increasing the strain on the immediately adjacent parts, which, if much reduced, are thus rendered liable to fracture. ”

“ The same remark will apply to the principle of breech-loading fire-arms, examples of which may here be seen three hundred years old. One very singular cannon was observed, actually made from closely woven rope, so strong and compact as to be capable of bearing a discharge with gunpowder, and which had once seen service in battle. ”

“ Into beasts of prey he's turned them; when they show their teeth and growl
The lash is buried in their cheeks; they're slaughtered if they howl;
To their bloody Lord of Battles must they only bend the knee,
For hard as steel and fierce as hell should cannon fodder be. ”

“ We did manage to hit some, though with what effect we could not tell."
"Then the German gun is still a mystery," observed Tom.
"It is. But we shall discover it soon. We will never rest until we do!"
So more and new and different theories continued to be put forth regarding the big cannon, if such it was. Ordnance experts wrote articles, alike in London, Paris, and New York, explaining that it was possible for a cannon to be within the German lines and still send a shell into the French capital. But few believed that it was feasible. ”

“ In the same way that the overlapping wings of the palstave were represented on the faces of the socket celt, so the rings of metal which bound together the bars of which the ancient bombard was composed, were represented on the surface of the cast bronze cannon which superseded it. In every country the [183] general type of development of cannon has been the same, but the details of construction have varied in each. Even in our own time, the introduction of breech-loaders has been synchronous throughout Europe ”

“ A cannon, of very tolerable efficiency for close quarters, and slug or bullet charges, may be made by boring a hole partly through a piece of tough strong log, with a pump auger; bore a vent with a gimlet, put on one or two hoops or rings of iron or raw hide, and the gun is ready for use. ”

“ Within, however, the muzhik regains his childlikeness, and when he stands before the enormous cannon—"the Czar of Cannon," an old bronze gun—he invariably climbs upon the pyramid of giant balls which stands before it, climbs aloft and gapes into the yard-wide mouth of the gun. ”

“ PRIMITIVE WIRE-WOUND GUN.
Europe about the year 1325 or 1326, when the Florentine Republic certainly possessed cannon; and that in June, 1338, three iron cannon with chambers, and hand-gun, figured among the stores of the Christopher of the Tower; [185] that the barge Mary of the Tower had an iron cannon with two chambers, and brass cannon with one chamber; that the Bernard of the Tower had two iron cannon; [186] and that other cannon existed on board ships of the king. It is probable, though by no means certain, that these weapons were then quite new. ”