Carronades

The main armament of a Georgian Navy man-of-war was the long gun or cannon. These fired cannon balls from 3lbs up to 42lbs over considerable ranges. These cannon needed large, heavy barrels to contain the explosion and propel the cannon balls. This in turn meant that a large crew was required to man each gun and re-loading took a significant amount of time and effort. This was one advantage we had over the French and Spanish. Through better training and more practice, the British Navy could reload faster than their opponents.

The carronade was designed to have a much shorter barrel and fire a relatively large ball over shorter ranges. Instead of mounting them on a gun carriage running on wooden trucks(wheels) they were usually mounted on a sliding carriage such as can be seen on HMS Victory, although some were mounted later in the 19th century on all metal, wheeled carriages. The result was a smaller gun crew and increased rate of fire.

When deployed at short range against the side of an enemy ship their destructive power was far greater than could be expected from a long gun.

For this reason they acquired the nickname of 'Smashers'

Mike T