Gunner's equipment was numerous. There were the tompion (a lid that
fitted over the muzzle of the gun to keep wind and weather out of the
bore) and the lead cover for the vent; water buckets for the sponges
and passing boxes for the powder; scrapers and tools for "searching"
the bore to find dangerous cracks or holes; chocks for the wheels;
blocks and rollers, lifting jacks, and gins for moving guns; and
drills and augers for clearing the vent (figs. 17, 44). But among the
most important tools for everyday firing were the following:
_The sponge_ was a wooden cylinder about a foot long, the same
diameter as the shot, and covered with lambskin. Like all bore tools,
it was mounted on a long staff; after being dampened with water, it
was used for cleaning the bore of the piece after firing. Essentially,
sponging made sure there were no sparks in the bore when the new
charge was put in. Often the sponge was on the opposite end of the
rammer, and sometimes, instead of being lambskin-covered, the sponge
was a bristle brush.
_The wormer_ was a double screw, something like a pair of intertwined
corkscrews, fixed to a long handle. Inserted in the gun bore and
twisted, it seized and drew out wads or the remains of cartridge bags
stuck in the gun after firing. Worm screws were sometimes mounted in
the head of the sponge, so that the piece could be sponged and wormed
at the same time.
_The ladle_ was the most important of all the gunner's tools in the
early years, since it was not only the measure for the powder but the
only way to dump the powder in the bore at the proper place. It was
generally made of copper, the same gauge as the windage of the gun;
that is, the copper was just thick enough to fit between ball and
bore.
Essentially, the ladle is merely a scoop, a metal cylinder secured to
a wooden disk on a long staff. But before the introduction of the
powder cartridge, cutting a ladle to the right size was one of the
most important accomplishments a gunner had to learn. Collado, that
Spanish mathematician of the sixteenth century, used the culverin
ladle as the master pattern (fig. 45). It was 4-1/2 calibers long and
would carry exactly the weight of the ball in powder. Ladles for
lesser guns could be proportioned (that is, shortened) from the master
pattern.
[Illustration: Figure 44--EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GUNNER'S EQUIPMENT. (Not
to scale.)]
The ladle full of powder was pushed home in the bore. Turning the
handle dumped the charge, which then had to be packed with the rammer.
As powder charges were lessened in later years, the ladle was
shortened; by 1750, it was only three shot diameters long. With
cartridges, the ladle was no longer needed for loading the gun, but it
was still handy for withdrawing the round.
_The rammer_ was a wooden cylinder about the same diameter and length
as the shot. It pushed home the powder charge, the wad, and the shot.
As a precaution against faulty or double loading, marks on the rammer
handle showed the loaders when the different parts of the charge were
properly seated.
_The gunner's pick or priming wire_ was a sharp pointed tool
resembling a common ice pick blade. It was used to clear the vent of
the gun and to pierce the powder bag so that flame from the primer
could ignite the charge.
[Illustration: Figure 45--SIXTEENTH CENTURY PATTERN FOR GUNNER'S
LADLE.]
_Handspikes_ were big pinch bars to manhandle cannon. They were used
to move the carriage and to lift the breech of the gun so that the
elevating quoin or screw might be adjusted. They were of different
types (figs. 33a, 44), but were essentially 6-foot-long wooden poles,
shod with iron. Some of them, like the Marsilly handspike (fig. 11),
had rollers at the toe so that the wheelless rear of the carriage
could be lifted with the handspike and rolled with comparative ease.
_The gunner's quadrant_ (fig. 46), invented by Tartaglia about 1545,
was an aiming device so basic that its principle is still in use
today. The instrument looked like a carpenter's square, with a
quarter-circle connecting the two arms. From the angle of the square
dangled a plumb bob. The gunner laid the long arm of the quadrant in
the bore of the gun, and the line of the bob against the graduated
quarter-circle showed the gun's angle of elevation.
The addition of the quadrant to the art of artillery opened a whole
new field for the mathematicians, who set about compiling long,
complicated, and jealously guarded tables for the gunner's guidance.
But the theory was simple: since a cannon at 45° elevation would fire
_ten_ times farther than it would when the barrel was level (at zero°
elevation), the quadrant should be marked into _ten_ equal parts; the
range of the gun would therefore increase by _one-tenth_ each time the
gun was elevated to the next mark on the quadrant. In other words, the
gunner could get the range he wanted simply by raising his piece to
the proper mark on the instrument.
[Illustration: Figure 46--SEVENTEENTH CENTURY GUNNER'S QUADRANT. The
long end of the quadrant was laid in the bore of the cannon. The plumb
bob indicated the degree of elevation on the scale.]
Collado explained how it worked in the 1590's. "We experimented with a
culverin that fired a 20-pound iron ball. At point-blank the first
shot ranged 200 paces. At 45-degree elevation it shot ten times
farther, or 2,000 paces.... If the point-blank range is 200 paces,
then elevating to the _first_ position, or a tenth part of the
quadrant, will gain 180 paces more, and advancing another point will
gain so much again. It is the same with the other points up to the
elevation of 45 degrees; each one gains the same 180 paces." Collado
admitted that results were not always consistent with theory, but it
was many years before the physicists understood the effect of air
resistance on the trajectory of the projectile.
_Sights_ on cannon were usually conspicuous by their absence in the
early days. A dispart sight (an instrument similar to the modern
infantry rifle sight), which compensated for the difference in
diameter between the breech and the muzzle, was used in 1610, but the
average artilleryman still aimed by sighting over the barrel. The
Spanish gunner, however, performed an operation that put the bore
parallel to the gunner's line of sight, and called it "killing the
_vivo_" (_matar el vivo_). How _vivo_ affected aiming is easily seen:
with its bore level, a 4-pounder falconet ranged 250 paces. But when
the _top of the gun_ was level, the bore was slightly elevated and the
range almost doubled to 440 paces.
To "kill the _vivo_," you first had to find it. The gunner stuck his
pick into the vent down to the bottom of the bore and marked the pick
to show the depth. Next he took the pick to the muzzle, stood it up in
the bore, and marked the height of the muzzle. The difference between
the two marks, with an adjustment for the base ring (which was higher
than the vent), was the _vivo_. A little wedge of the proper size,
placed under the breech, would then eliminate the troublesome _vivo_.
During the first half of the 1700's Spanish cannon of the "new
invention" were made with a notch at the top of the base ring and a
sighting button on the muzzle, and these features were also adopted by
the French. But they soon went out of use. There was some argument, as
late as the 1750's, about the desirability of casting the muzzle the
same size as the base ring, so that the sighting line over the gun
would always be parallel to the bore; but, since the gun usually had
to be aimed higher than the objective, gunners claimed that a fat
muzzle hid their target!
[Illustration: Figure 47--SEVENTEENTH CENTURY GUNNER'S LEVEL. This
tool was useful in many ways, but principally for finding the line of
sight on the barrel of the gun.]
Common practice for sighting, as late as the 1850's, was to find the
center line at the top of the piece, mark it with chalk or filed
notches, and use it as a sighting line. To find this center line, the
gunner laid his level (fig. 47) first on the base ring, then on the
muzzle. When the instrument was level atop these rings, the plumb bob
was theoretically over the center line of the cannon. But guns were
crudely made, and such a line on the outside of the piece was not
likely to coincide exactly with the center line of the bore, so there
was still ample opportunity for the gunner to exercise his "art."
Nonetheless the marked lines did help, for the gunner learned by
experiment how to compensate for errors.
Fixed rear sights came into use early in the 1800's, and tangent
sights (graduated rear sights) were in use during the War Between the
States. The trunnion sight, a graduated sight attached to the
trunnion, could be used when the muzzle had to be elevated so high
that it blocked the gunner's view of the target.
Naval gunnery officers would occasionally order all their guns trained
at the same angle and elevated to the same degree. The gunner might
not even see his target. While with the crude traversing mechanism of
the early 1800's the gunners may not have laid their pieces too
accurately, at least it was a step toward the indirect firing
technique of later years which was to take full advantage of the
longer ranges possible with modern cannon. Use of tangent and trunnion
sights brought gunnery further into the realm of mathematical science;
the telescopic sight came about the middle of the nineteenth century;
gunners were developing into technicians whose job was merely to load
the piece and set the instruments as instructed by officers in fire
control posts some distance away from the gun.