The Cannon that isn't the one at Yeppoon

Following on from the previous posts showing a 6” Breach loading Armstrong gun on a hydro-pneumatic carriage, I thought I’d tell a bit of the story of the cannon that features in the Yellow Pages add. The add shows a cannon inspector inspecting a large gun and commenting that “one of these went off at Yeppoon a few years back”.

The gun being measured is one of two 1867 Armstrong RML guns on the foreshore at Williamstown (there are two more at Fore Gellibrand). RML stands for rifled muzzle loader and therein lies the story.

Newcastle (UK) industrialist and inventor William Armstrong was inspired by reports from the Crimean War to develop improvements to British artillery. There are three major improvements attributed to Armstrong; the use of rifling, breach loading and the “build up” method of construction using wrought iron hoops. These produced a lighter more accurate artillery piece and Armstrong’s weapons were tested and adopted in the period 1855-58. 

The original weapons were smaller pieces such as 40 pounders but despite some misgivings about the forces involved Armstrong was persuaded to make 110 pounders for the Royal Navy without trials.    

During the bombardment of these fortifications at Kagoshima in 1862 some of the Royal Navy’s Armstrong guns suffered from the breach mechanism failing.

By this time some improvements were made in shells which facilitated the muzzle loading of rifled guns and Palliser developed a method for inserting wrought iron rifled barrels into old cast iron cannon converting them into rifled muzzle loaders so the Armstrong breach loader was discontinued and Armstrong produced RML weapons from his factory at Elserwick. He produced some very large weapons indeed probably reaching the limits of what was practical using gunpowder and wrought iron.

Here is one of the Williamstown guns in all its glory.

But lacking any real context.

It is easy for the “Battlefield Archaeologist” when the manufacturer puts so much information on the weapon.

The Armstrong guns mounted on the H-P mountings were a generation on from the RML’s they had a new improved breach mechanism and were made from steel.

Steel? Well in the 1850’s steel making on a large scale only had just been developed with the development of the Bessemer converter but a decade or more was needed to develop a steel that would take the stresses in artillery tubes so the original Armstrong guns were wrought iron.   

More Taiaroa Head

The breach of the Disappearing Gun was working so I borrowed Janes camera and took some video of the guide (and I think Neville Ritchie) operating the breech.

Closing the breech

Locking

The development of a successful breech mechanism was the key to development of modern artillery. Armstrong’s original breech-loaders exploded at the Battle of Kagoshima in 1862 (part of my Japanese work) setting back development several decades. I thought showing the breech on a later gun might be of interest.

The Disappearing Gun - Taiaroa Head, Otago Peninsula, New Zealand

The Disappearing gun is a familiar and intriguing weapon mounted in major fortifications in Australia and New Zealand. It was the outcome of mid-19^th century technological advances in weaponry such as the increasing size and power of marine and coastal artillery, the development of armoured steam ships negating the defensive power of tides and wind and the development of operational research analysing the impact of Civil War bombardments of coastal forts and the results of the famous battle of Alexandria (in 1882). All this work lead to the conclusion that coastal artillery needed to be better protected if only to preserve the crews serving the weapons. This conclusion resulted in a variety of new fortification and gun mounting designs which were developed from the mid-1860s.

A disappearing gun is one where a rifled, breach loading, gun is mounted on a hydro-pneumatic carriage in which the recoil is checked by cylinders containing liquid and air, the air when compressed furnishing the power for restoring the gun to the firing position. The gun was swung above the parapet of the mounting and pointed and elevated from below and then fired. The recoil swung the gun below the parapet where it was reloaded. A metal (armoured) shield covered most of the gun pit in British designs. The crew was protected below the parapet and the gun itself would have been a difficult target to hit.

The British design used throughout the colonies was by Armstrong a company with expertise in hydraulics and of course pioneering the breach loading design. The “Disappearing Gun” was sold to the colonies in the mid 1880’s as well as to China and Thailand. A similar design the Buffington–Crozier Disappearing Carriage was adopted by the United States for coastal artillery from the mid-1890s and some saw service against the Japanese.

The gun in its loading position. The gun can be trained using the wheel visible in the photo. The band around the mounting gives the angle.

I was involved in looking at the fortifications in Victoria in the 1980s when hydro-pneumatic mountings were discovered and there were plans for reconstructing South Channel fort. I had also seen batteries in Sydney and Queensland where disappearing guns were mounted. I knew of the batteries at North Head at Auckland which I had briefly visited and that there were other batteries at Canterbury. Curiously each State claims their battery was the first or prototype mounting!

During the 2011 Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology Conference the pre-conference tour visited the Otago Peninsula. At Taiaroa Head, which dominates the narrow entrance to Otago Harbour, extensive fortifications were constructed following the usual fears of a Russian invasion. In 1885 the New Zealand Government bought 10 8” and 13 6” disappearing guns from Armstrong’s Elswick 0rdnance Company. The gun at Taiaroa Head is a 6” with a range of about 6600 ft. The propellant used was initially gunpowder and the shells were the typical range of shells using gunpowder. Later Cordite MD was used as a propellant and presumably more advanced shell were used.

Although obsolete by 1900 in New Zealand they were manned during World War 1 but abandoned about 1925. However unlike other guns the gun was not cut up for scrap metal and was recommissioned during World War 2, and later completely restored by the Otago Antique Arms Association. The mounting site is amid an Albatross colony.

  Detail of the shield protecting the crew from shrapnel.

The breach in its closed position.

The breach open showing the screw mechanism.