32pdr Royal Navy Carronade

The Carronade is a weapon requiring little introduction. This renowed piece of ordnance earned it's nickname "The Smasher", through it's unrivalled close range destructive power.
The carronade design was first adopted by the British Royal navy in the 1770's. following the efforts of Falkirk's Carron Iron company to push their innivotive design into trilled use. The carronade was designed to adopt a short barrel, of limited wall thickness, coupled with a reduced diameter, concave breech chamber. This allowed a smaller powder charge to be used, however this disadvantage was somewhat overcome by the reduction in windage between the ball and bore, owing to the Carron company's accurate machining operation - replacing the previously core cast bores, whereby windage had to be generous. 
Despite it's short barrel design, the carronade packed a destructive punch akin to it's larger long gun counterparts. In an era where naval gunnery was still very much a close range affair, it was becoming evermore advantagious to replace a vessel's smaller caliber top deck long guns, with a heavier caliber of carronade gun - often with no adverse weight affects to the vessel.
A further advantage of this type of gun, owes to it's underslung mounting loop, which offered the ability for mounting on a very narrow design of traversing carriage. This allowed greater lateral movement of the gun, whilst also offering inreased longtitudinal elevation opportunities, often complimented with a ball screw type adjustment bar, mounted through the rear cascabel loop. 
 
The Carronade's finest hour came on October 21st 1805, with HMS Victory's preperation for an opening salvo at the Battle of Trafalgar. 
Whilst loading one of Victory's 68lb forecastle Carronade's, a Sergeant of Marines followed the solid shot with a keg of 500 musket balls. Upon reaching the stern windows of the French vessel Bucentare, Victory let loose with a thunderous duluge from her double shooted Carronade, sending a hail of shot and ball raching along the gun decks of the enermy vessel. This shot alone killed or maimed half of those who stood in it's path.
By the 1830's, the Royal Navy began to focus more on gunnery accuracy, alongside rate of fire. The learning from this began to put an end to the closely fought hull to hull battles of the golden age, and by the 1850's, Carronade's were all but consigned to the history books.
A brief reinissance occured in the American Civil war, as the barrels were pressed into garrison use, and once more for a final time during the first Boer war, where it saw use lashed to a cart axle, but a desperate Boer army.
 
 
The 32pdr Carronade before us here has secrets of it's own to tell. In the mid 1970's, a Northampton based diving club successfuly located the wreck site of HMS Primrose. During a stormy night on the 22nd Jausary 1809, Primrose sailed in convoy for Spain, to fight in the Peninsula wars. At around 5am, Primrose was blown into a treturous rock outcrop known as the Manacles, on the Cornish Lizard Peninsula. Despite the local's valliant efforts, 120 lives were lost hat night, with a seventeen year old drummer boy proving the only survivor. 
The wreck lay undisurbed until it's redicovery in the 1970's, whereby a small handful of Primrose's 32pdr Carronades were succesfully raised and underwent marine preservation to remove the salt, and stabalise the iron. Another of these guns can be atop the churchyard in St Keverne, which stands as a monument to those lost in the Primrose wreckage. 
Following research with the aid of some of the original divers who dived the wreck in the 1970's, the markings of this gun were traced back by serial number, and production date, to match those also salvaged from the Wreck. The barrel was cast in 1801, on the river Clyde, which likely means it will have been put into use on a vessel prior to the construction of HMS Primrose, which was not built until 1807. Along with the gun, it's original 32pd solid shot, and a quantity of wadding and linen powder bag were painstakingly removed from the barrel, which still survive thanks to careful presevation, and gentle removal. 
 
Today, the gun sits atop of a newly made oak garrison carriage, the design of which has been taken from the land based Georgian gun carriages which supported these Carronade barrels originally.
The wheels of the carriage are original Georgian garrison carriage cast iron wheels, which underwent a great deal of repair and restoration work, and are mated snugly to a hand carved oak axle, with all of the correct contemporasry hand forged metal work. 
To the rear of the carriage sits a brass commemorative plaque, telling the story of the the gun. 
 
Needless to say, this is a fantastically rare opportunity to own a piece with such Naval Provinence, the likes of which may not be seen again. 
 
 
N.B: All items sold by Antiquities Arms are done so strictly for the purpose of collection and curiosity only under Section 58/2 of the UK firearms law. Prior to purchasing, it is the buyer's responsibility to ensure that they are over the age of 18, and not prohibited from owning Section 58/2 firearms under Section 21 of the 1968 firearms act & the violent crime act of 2006. 
New customers will be requested to present a form of photo identification prior to the sale of any section 58/2 piece, a brief phone call may also be requested.
Here at Antiquities Arms we work closely with the authorities to ensure and uphold the legal status of honest collectors. 
Please familiarise yourself with the currently UK firearms laws which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/firearms-law-guidance-to-the-police-2012