Poohshoes wrote:
Do carronaides do anything except add to the total number of cannons being fired????
Thanks,
Pooh
The carronade was designed as a short-range naval weapon with a low muzzle velocity, and is said to have been invented by Lieutenant General Robert Melville in 1759 and developed by Charles Gascoigne, manager of the Carron Company from 1769 to 1779. It was adopted by the Royal Navy in 1779, and its early years was also known as a "gasconade" or "melvillade". The lower muzzle velocity of a carronade's round shot was intended to create many more of the deadly wooden splinters when hitting the structure of an enemy vessel, leading to its nickname, the smasher. However, the small powder charge of the carronade was only able to project a heavy cannonball over a relatively limited distance. The short barrel, low muzzle velocity and short range also increased the risk that a carronade would eject burning wadding onto nearby combustible materials, increasing the risk of fire.
A carronade was much shorter and a third to a quarter of the weight of an equivalent long gun: for example, a 32 pounder carronade weighed less than a ton, but a 32 pounder long gun weighed over 3 tons. Carronades were manufactured in the usual naval gun calibres (12, 18, 24, 32 and 42 pounders, but 6 pdr and 68 pdr versions are known), but they were not counted in a ship of the line's rated number of guns. As a result, the classification of Royal Navy vessels in this period can mislead, since they would often be carrying more pieces of ordnance than they were described as carrying.
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