curiousers under way

Part 12 - Broadside

We were mustered around a starboard (right hand side) gun for firing practice.

'Now remember, this gun fires a nine-pound shot,' Mr. Parsons shouted. 'So don't drop the shot on your toes. Heh, heh, heh. The gun is six feet long and it weighs six-hundred weight. Which is very 'eavy. So don't stand behind it when it is fired because it recoils. It rolls on these little truck wheels and it will roll right over your toes.' (1.8 m long and 672 pound or 300 kg)

Three of the experience gunners demonstrated how to pull the gun away from the side of the ship, as far as two ropes on each side of the gun would allow, using the train tackles. 'We sha'n't have to do that again,' Mr Parsons said. 'The recoil will do it for us.' He pulled out the tompion, which plugged the end of the gun barrel, and demonstrated how to clean out burning fragments from the gun barrel, with a sort of corkscrew on the end of a broom handle, and then shoving a wet mop down the barrel to make sure there were no burning embers.

Midshipman Dyer sent Licia, Miguel and me to the powder magazine in the bottom of the ship (the hold) with Alfie. I almost got lost in the dark on the way but a grinning marine shoved me toward a doorway covered by a wet blanket. The gunner met us at the entrance to the magazine, gave us felt slippers in exchange for our shoes and collected Alfie's knife. 'To prevent an accidental spark igniting the gunpowder.'

Alfie showed us how to tie our neck cloths around our ears while the gunner passed ten leather boxes, each containing a cylindrical bag of gunpowder, through a wet cloth flap in the door of the powder magazine. 'Now, you lads be very careful with those cartridges,' he told us. 'I've seen some horrible burns.'

We ran back to Mr Parsons who grabbed one of the cartridges and explained loudly, 'These cartridges contain three pounds of gun power which gives a maximum range of twenty six-hundred yards, but the guns are most accurate at three hundred yards.' He placed it carefully in a long handled scoop and slipped it into the gun barrel. As soon as he removed the scoop, his assistant stuffed a wad into the muzzle and rammed one of the black iron balls into place with a rope handled ramrod.

'Awesome,' I said to Miguel. 'I just cleaned that ball.'

Two men hauled on each of the two side tackles to pull the gun up to the gun port and Mr Parsons stuck a spike into a hole on top of the gun. He replaced the spike with loose powder from a powder horn and got the crew to aim the gun by levering it around with long, hand spikes. The elevation was controlled with wooden wedges shoved under the back end of the gun. He shouted, 'Number one gun ready!' and, as we waited for the order to fire, the gunner's mate stuck his head out of the gun port to see where the strange ship was.

Alfie showed Licia, Miguel and me where to stand, in the middle of the ship, as Mr Parsons organized the waisters into four man gun crews and got them to demonstrate what they had just learned without loading the guns. They managed to get just about everything wrong and there was much laughter until Mr Parsons warned them that the next time wouldn't be a practice. They all tried again and this time the gunners mate closely supervised the loading of each gun. Eventually, all ten guns were ready to fire and the gun captains ran around making sure everyone was standing clear of the guns. We were ready to fire our first broadside.

Mr Parsons blew on the glowing end of a cotton wick wound around a short rod called a linstock and, when the senior lieutenant shouted, 'Fire,' ten linstocks were applied to ten touch holes. I saw a jet of fire flash straight up out of the touch hole of the nearest gun and heard a crash far louder than the noisiest clap of thunder, echoed instantly by ten equally loud crashes. I felt as if my head had been squeezed suddenly in a vice. The nearest gun leaped violently toward me and would have crushed me but it stopped with a violent jolt as it reached the limits of the preventer tackle. The recoil of ten guns was transmitted to the sides of the ship and the deck lurched in a sickening fashion as the ship rolled. I fell over.