Primed and Loaded | Wrought Iron Swivel Gun
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- Опубліковано 18 січ 2022
- Brian, Kelly, and Aaron all board the Discovery, our smallest vessel, today to show off one of our wrought iron swivel guns. These were seen as essential to the defense of James Fort and definitely pack a punch. We hope you don't mind loud noises!
I'm from Japan, and these were some of the first cannons to ever be imported into the country. When the Portuguese brought them, the local warlords were so impressed that they dubbed them "Kuni Kuzushi", or "Destroyers of Nations", and quickly got to reverse-engineering them. One such cannon is still preserved in good quality at the Yushukan war museum. Very impressive demonstration, all my thanks!
Oda Nobunaga probably had some swivel guns.
I've been researching Vietnamese firearms recently and the Le dynasty imported and designed their own breach loaders. The earliest cannons were likewise a mix of Portuguese, seized Dutch, and Chinese cannons.
The breach is essentially a self contained cartridge for this piece. That is quite fascinating.
Thats correct!
@@JYFMuseums Great Work , how many hours does it take a Smith to make a Swivel Gun?
That's going to depend entirely on the smith, to be honest @@samparkerSAM
@guypierson5754 I always liked the Film from the 1970's showing the creation of a Long Rifle. I rebuild Civil War Musket and rifles down here in New Orleans
And probably dangerous
I am a firearms enthusiast, former active duty Marine Corps Vietnam Veteran. I never knew that any swivel gun could be breech loaded. This was very informative and I'm certainly glad to have found this video. Thank you for enlightening this old Jarhead Field Artillery Batteryman, 105 mm howitzers.
Like the swivel gun featured in the video, the earlist artillery to appear in Europe, generally known as bombards, were also forge built iron breech loading guns that fired stone shot. These early breech loaders suffered from gas loss at the point that the breech chamber and barrel's breech mated together.
To prevent gas loss and maintain the increasing energy of the burning gunpowder, one of the first real technological advances in artillery was the transition from forged iron breech loaded guns to cast bronze muzzle loaded. And it will not be until the mid-19th century that artillery begins the return to breech loading, once a breech can be locked and gas loss prevented.
Mind-boggling to know that artllery transitions from breech loaded, to muzzle loaded back to breech loaded.
Ian on forgotten weapons has shown a Wheelock rifle from I believe the 1600s that actually has a remarkably similar "cartridge" system. Very interesting as well.
looking to this utube chan --- morecannonfab
bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2008/06/cannon-fodder.html you might like this blog showing images from a artillery book of emperor maximilian I of the HRE |the images are from a manscript called Zeugbuch Kaiser Maximilians I which can be found, fully digitised online if you google the name www.loc.gov/item/2021667793/
I think this gun had modern tolerances in construction and back in the day a whole lot more flash would escape at the breech/ barrel. Still fantastic! I love cannons and still have never seen this rapid fire with pre loaded breeches. Great content
I was recently in Jamestown and saw that gun and was puzzled how that system worked.Re- enactors are very helpful and knowledgeable.
There is very little footage of crews operating pieces at any sort of speed (understandable modern safety concerns because of the mentioned cleaning), so this is really nice to see
As a kid I used to fantasize about mounting one of these in the bow of my rowboat. Many doodles in school notebooks.
Seen these in books but I've never seen one in use before. The sound is incredible. Thank you for an interesting video.
All that is missing is the chaos of battle, a rocking ship, waves splashing (sometimes on the cannon), screaming and shouting and swashbuckling between a foes ship. Thanks for sharing, as someone with gunsmithing experience I thoroughly enjoyed your video.
The missing are some approaching small boats of primitive inhabitants of distant lands.
or another warship getting ready to board@@user-un7zh4kc1u
Missing the load too, I don't think the rail could handle a loaded gun.
Most of it is only on films
Oh my God, that sound of metal every time you reload a cannon... even in that old age, it feels like music to me ears
I didn't know they load it like this. Pretty smart, and it makes sense.
Kelly is one of my dear friends! Very cool to see her doing her thing here.
She also makes a stellar appearance in our video "Going to the Source | John Smith's Equipment List (Part 1)" and we are hoping to feature her in more content going forward.
This explains the speed issue. Women should never be gunners, as their reduced physical strength makes them ungainly with these tasks.
@@mrfarts5176 Makes sense
@mrfarts5176 Seemed like she did just fine to me. Get over yourself tool 😂
I’m a retired hydraulic mechanic,(pumps,motors and cylinders as well as machinist and welder. I turned a 1.5” bore swivel gun from a piece of 4” dia. Chrome rod in about 1996.
It really makes the noise and smoke! Total weight for mine is right at 49 lbs.
The Mary Rose (early 1500's) had 'stave built' breach loading cannons up to 8 inch(20cm) bore as well as bronze muzzle loading pieces. Known contemporaneously as 'Slings', they fired - stone - shot, which shattered when it hit a hard object - say, like the side of a ship - releasing numerous jagged pieces to the discomfort of the recipients. The inner sleeve of the barrel was made from a single sheet of iron, rolled into a cylinder then 'forge welded' along the seam (like pretty much all barrels for muzzle loading shoulder arms until the 1800's), the wrought iron rings were made separately then hammered over the inner tube while yellow to red hot. This was a considerable improvement over the earlier construction where the inner tube was made of multiple iron bars which they tried with variable success to fusion weld together before fitting the rings. I was lucky enough to be able to attend a lecture by Margaret Rule on the Mary Rose at the Australian Maritime Museum, and there were some fiberglass casts of the slings on their carriages in an exhibition - they were much longer than later cast iron cannon of similar calibre but also thinner, the advantage of using ductile wrought iron rather than brittle cast iron, malleable castings would not be discovered in the West until the late 19th and early 20th century.
One of our staff just returned from a trip to England and a visit to the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, where he had the opportunity to handle one of the stone shot recovered in the archaeology of the ship. What an amazing museum!
what replaced the forge welded seam in the 1800s, if you dont mind me asking?
They were still using 'forge welding' for the outside of huge cannons right up until the early 1900's - see Armstrong and Whitworth cannons. The shift started to come in when they developed better steel refineries and big steam hammers and hydraulic presses that could forge a single billet of steel into the liner - they started with a homogenous block of steel, drove a rod through the middle, then used shaped striking surfaces to draw the billet out into a long tube - every so often they had to drive a 'drift' through the center hole to help keep everything in the desired shape. Once it was long enough it would then be lathe turned to shape .
Then the outer layers were shrunk on - the liner was cold and each reinforcing layer was heated well up towards yellow then forced over the previous layers until there were 2-3 layers of forge welded coils built up. That was then cooled, machined and the next layer forced on. Again, eventually metallurgy advanced enough that they could make and forge the huge billets in one piece, but up until quite late in the 1800's the outer layers were made from long strips of wrought iron (negligible carbon high iron silicate inclusion) coiled up around a former then forge welded into a cylinder before being machined and 'shrunk' onto the core. Guns were still in service through WW1 that were made with partly forge welded barrels. The change from black & brown/cocoa powder to nitro cellulose powder was another driving force in improved design - nitro powders could reach much higher sustained pressures so the barrels needed to be stronger much further from the breech, so gun founders developed wire wound barrels with layers of high tensile wire between the liner and the outer casing to make stronger and lighter barrels.
I’m Russian, I didn’t understand anything. But it was damn interesting. Good luck and good health to you and success to your project! 👍👏👏👏
Thank you!
Basically, Malen'kaya pushka na lodke, strelyayte v lyudey, rabota sdelana khorosho.
I've seen illustrations of this weapon and read of them in use but had no idea they could cycle so quickly. Very interesting to view the gun crew work their station.
Several swivel guns along a rail could lay down an effective volume of deadly close range fire.
Having multiple breech cans preloaded is a game changer for speed, I never knew a swivel gun could be operated this way. In battle I expect another one or two gun crew members would be loading the cans in rotation.
The gas seal actually appears pretty good compared to modern revolvers. A high speed vdeo might more reveal the amount of gas leaking from this design. The cone shape being wedged in the barrel is like the unique action of the Russian Nagant revolver.
With a load of shot considerably raising the chamber pressure you could expect a greater amount of gas blow by.
There is a similar method used in the earlier Dreyse needle gun
@@pauldavidson6321 Was going to post this. Probably some designs and units made had near perfect seal if wedged hard enough even with actual projectiles being fired, not that it really matters all that much for the terminal performance of the weapon, just consider how well recoilless rifles work and they are basically totally open at both ends, all that matters is that pressure being generated in the deflagration is mostly used to drive the projectile, average pressure is more important than peak anyways.
@@charlesc.9012 As well as in kammerlader firearms. Look them up on youtube. Very interesting action.
This is so cool, thought it was muzzle loaded. Something else I need to defend the homestead.
I really appreciate the demonstration of loading and firing several shots. It's clear that it could be done faster if there was a need, and the crew was well-drilled, but not *enormously* faster.
First used by the Ming Dynasty, and the concept was brought to Europe by the Portuguese, whereby Europeans perfected them. I love everything about these guns.
Back in the 1970's my brother, a Machinist was building these out of Stainless Steel for folks heading from south Florida where we lived to the Bahamas for defense against Pirates. He sold a bunch of them for that purpose and the ones he made had a bore of 1.75 and 2'. Using black powder and lead or steel shot they were devastating.
wait, what do you mean by pirates in 1970's?
@@karlez7664 What I mean is, Pirates ... being attacked at sea or at anchorage by a hostile vessel with criminal intent.
The drug smuggling was in full swing back then and many parts of the Bahamas in the 70's were not safe.
@@karlez7664 fun fact, pirates are still a problem in 2023!
@@FishyBoi1337 On the US shores?
@@karlez7664 No, not in the US. The problem was in the Bahamas. It was and is a popular place for Yachting from the USA... in the 70's and 80's it was a popular place for drug smugglers too.
I thank you for your time and your accurate explanaitions. Sincerely!
You are very welcome!
I love swivel guns in the game of Blood & Plunder! Always fun to see one in use. Thanks for the content!
Thanks for the demo. I've always been fascinated by those old iron breach loaders since I first saw an illustration of one in elementary school.
So cool, love the black powder content.
We do, too! 😍
First: I really enjoyed that. I learnt some things, got some questions answered and saw the process from end to end. Excellent.
Second: I was intrigued by the division of tasks. Brian, the gun captain did the presentation (which was clear and informative), ran through the commands and then we did not hear from him again until the wrap-up at the end. Erin hung on to the gun, pointed it and operated the mallet to close, lock, open and unlock the piece. Kelly got to remove the wedge, remove the breech, insert the charged breech, insert the wedge, prick the charge, apply the priming charge and apply the match to the primer. I am not sure but I suspect that being the one to actually fire the piece would be my preference. Plus, moving around would make you a more difficult target to hit with a 16th century musket.
Full marks for the venue, the props, the costumes. And the weather.
I have to admit, when you first showed the breech chamber, I thought it was a thunder mug. I had no idea this existed!
love the breach loading and wrought iron design and those swivel guns dont get the credit they deserve.
Classic 'Lombard' gun design at it's most useful
Wow? To order three dozen of these for the colony shows just how new ' the colony was and not just how much perceived native threat there was, but also shows that they were,being an early english colony securing it from other interested european nations as they too were at this time literally in an exploration and settlement race with each other. These are so eye opening to watch a big cheers. 👍👍
Your channel came up in my feed today. I subscribed. I enjoyed the Wheel-lock pistol video too - those are the coolest. Thanks for such fun and informative content on ancient arms and artillery.
This is very cool! It is rare to see a drill performed with such a gun. Cheers from Italy
Great video. Thanks for covering topics interesting but not found elsewhere. I especially appreciate them as I live in Arizona, have a love of military history and am wheelchair bound and don’t travel. Thank you!
You're welcome and we're very happy that you are enjoying the channel and liking our videos!
Very informative! Great 👍 job. You searched it thoroughly! A friend from Greece
Ευχαριστώ! Thank you!
😎 Looks like great fun for the whole family!
I'm an old Army artillery officer, and I built and fired guns like this myself when I was a kid. I think I was born too late!
Thank you for this awesome history lesson, and demonstration!
Any time! You're welcome.
When we stay in Williamsburg, I often go fishing in the river just off the Parkway about a quarter mile from there.
I often heard the bang, and now I know what it is.
What do you catch?I'm from UK
The swivel mounting on a rail and its anti-personnel and anti small craft purpose remind me exactly of the .50 caliber M2 machine guns mounted on the rails of large and small US Navy ships.
Patereros were another name for theses guns if mounted on ships I believe. Great video!
I think I found my new favorite channel.
I remember reading a National Geographic article about the "Mary Rose", many years ago when I was a kid. Interesting to see a gun similar to the ones found on the wreck (albeit in replica form) actually being fired!
During medieval time, this is a genius invention. Lovely to watch
Wonderful!
This is totally the Browning M-2 of its time. A weapon that’s just big enough it has to be mounted, is just small enough to be quickly aimed at different targets by hand, can be rapid fired for a period of time, is monstrously powerful compared to a rifle, but unlikely to sink a ship by itself, it all kinda matches up.
Brilliant video. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Greetings from Germany, I love your channel. Dunno how I've found it, I think someone shared a clip somewhere. But the vids are so good! Keep up the good work!
Hello! We hope that we will see you at our museum one day!
@@JYFMuseums hell yeah!!
Fantastic! Was not aware of the breach method so early. Well done
Thank you, and we're happy that you liked it!
THANKS ! 😎👍
That was Very, Very Nice !
Very interesting and quite exciting!
We like to keep people on their toes around here. 😎
I imagine a dedicated crew of 3 to 5 people who drilled well could probably keep up an accurate fire rate of 6 rounds a minute from one of these, with half the crew making safe and reloading breaches while one or two are operating the gun itself. Maybe faster with a few extra tools such as a powder flask with a pre-measure release. A few dozen such guns along a wall, well, it would be pretty scary.
check "Battle of Goa" and see how efective those were 3 Caravels to 150 galleys and various small boats
If they'd make those breaches prefused it would be even faster
Well dang. I have not been up to Jamestown since I was a kid in school, and now I think i should drive up.
Please do, we would love to have you come for a visit.
I absolutely need one!!
Well, I'm definitely subscribing. This is awesome.
Welcome aboard!
Very nice video.
This is so cool, keep up!
Thank you!
i love a fire arm that requires a big man with a mallet on the crew as a crucial part of its operation
I do want to build a breech loading cannon sometime, a gun similar to this (but as a field gun) was used during the siege of my hometown in the 30 years war by the townspeople to repell the attackers initially when they did a sortie. The attackers (imperials) came back with more men and the town fell shortly after they got over the city walls and the defenders, who then hid in the castle, had to give up after threats of burning the city down and after noticing that there were not enough food supplies in the castle.
this is a quite brilliant design. with the self contained charges in the breech block itself, you can essentially have multiple loads staged and ready to go, greatly increasing the volume of fire. the breech locking mechanism is very simple yet robust and effective, really not much gas escapes from the rear. I can see why these were appealing, especially at lower cost.
one thing to account for, the Guns operators are quite exposed, and i can imagine they would be prime targets for anyone returning fire. just imagine trying to load and fire that thing while the ship is at sea and moving, while being shot at from another ship or the coastal battery. not a fun time!
Long ago and far away, we had a reproduction 4-lbs breech-loader at our local ren-faire, mounted on a field carriage...Unfortunately, we had to drag it all over the place by hand to get it to shows, as no one would ever let us use any of the horses to pull it....But it was still fun 😆
When we use ours, my Sargent can get to about 3-4 shots per minute
Wow, that’s Brian’s Arquebus reload time. 😳
@@JYFMuseums it has been a while but we use to drill and a two man team lead by sarge was quick
Pretty cool!
Very interesting vid.
My friend had a character in our tabletop rpg who used an artifact version of one of these as a weapon. It rapid-fired magical shot full-auto :D
Interesting.
Never seen a detailed story about this.
Great you have a working reproduction.
Yes, thanks!
Wrought iron is basically raw iron folded over and over(like folding a bed sheet) and hammered together to weld it. It is then formed into the desired form. I would be very scared to be around one of these when fired, due to the possibility of leaving an imperfection in the metal during the welding process. I'm guessing this is an undersized powder charge and no projectiles.
wrought iron is made by smelting iron ore with carbon monoxide gas, in that form it is pure iron, mixed up with the ashes of the fire.
cast iron typically contains various other elements that alter its physical properties.
the folding and hammering - fire welding in fact- drove out the ashes leaving puer iron in malleable form, a very fine material
Cast iron is generally infamous for having way more voids in it than forged things do. Even in WWII, rolled homogenous steel armor was preferred whenever practicable to cast armor (i.e. if the shape needed allowed it), because rolling (type of forging, basically) helped squeeze out voids, but casting would have those voids more often and be less reliable. hammering on an anvil does roughly the same thing, much more laboriously. A modern gun is probably usually made of rolled steel which is then machined in fancy ways for both the consistency and the shapes at the same time.
The last barrel welders are on movie from the 1920s on youtube
Excellent video. It actually appears that the breech seals very well with minimal gas escape.
We cheat with ours ( a bit larger than this one) and slip an O ring in there as well (mostly for safety's sake to prevent powder burns). That completely eliminates any blow-by and is good for a dozen or so shots before needing replacing.
Hey Brian, you got an amazing voice! wow
Hey, thanks!
Good demonstration.
Thank you!
You guys have some fun toys
Thanks!
Great weapon of the age. Breech loading bronze guns were widespread up to the end of 17th century. But al of them were small pieces. Russian army used some of them during war with Ottoman Empire. They were the pieces of regimental artililery.
Very cool
amazing
Apparently I unknowingly made one of these in high school. Two pieces of iron pipe that screwed together and a cap screwed onto the back of the "breech." Cut a slot into the top of the breech piece for a fuse, load up the breech, screw on the barrel, and touch off the fuse. It eventually succumbed to metal fatigue. Luckily we had anticipated this would happen and had some distance from it
That's known as a "screw barrel". The system was used in everything from Turkish siege cannons firing huge stone balls to slender "pocket" pistols.
Royal Navy practice was to prime a swivel gun using powder filled quills in the touchholes which speeded up loading when in action
Do check out our video on quick primers -- ua-cam.com/video/_ruInfl1yxk/v-deo.html&t
Lovely video. Fun side note: if you played Total war: Shogun 2, and ever had the displeasure of using cannons in that game, those are also iron breach loaders just like this, just a bit bigger. And i think those use wooden wedges.
One of the other reasons muzzle loading becomes preferable is that you can double shot put down the barrel two balls, (bascially standard practice for cannons) or put different types of ammunition down such as caseshot, or caseshot and cannon ball. Sometimes when Crews were really worried about boarding attempts they may even full a cannon full to the brim with all manner of shot.
Imagine trying to board a boat and one of these being aimed at your little boat and combatants as it approaches. Maybe they've fired it once already. And you watch them frantically reloading as the seconds slide by. A lot can happen in a few seconds. They may be under fire as well and reloading takes longer. If they are lucky they get one last shot at point blank range. Maybe you get close enough and fire your own swivel gun first and board with a musket volley and hand weapons
Groovy video
Thank you!
Very good
Wish i had one or two swivels for my balcony...ahh the dream
when society regresses we will go back to these guns.
Breech loading swivel gun. What a wonderful modern world we live in.
I got to crew the breech loader falconet at St. Augustine during one of the "Drake's Raid" events. Lots of fun :)
And we hope that you were in the service of Sir Francis Drake and not King Philip. We hear that a young Lieutenant Thomas Gates was one of Drake's officers, and we hear that he is going places. :-)
@@JYFMuseums ¡Viva España! ;)
@Sgt Brendan Oh no! we are heart broken :-(
@@JYFMuseums If we ever meet, we can drown our mutual sorrows in some ale ( or sangria)
I had at one time a later wall gun rifle that was loaded with separate chambers. Was 80 cal and percussion ( not converted)
I only had one chamber but it was numbered 6
I think it was Danish
I’ve shot it a few times after getting a mold from Dixie
Was surprisingly accurate
Wall gun were the long range high precision rifle of the day
Pretty neat seeing the cabin in action! I just bought one this week..it is said too be about 4 or 5 hundred years old,. Made of bronze and very ornate. I'd like to know more about it and it's true value
Interesting to see the procedure for operating these guns. I imagine everything could be chaotic in a battle and other actions would be going on while a crew was operating this gun, so constant drilling would be necessary for the successful use of this gun.
Good video and info. Would be interesting to know more of this gun's manufacture. Where was it made, process, etc.
Surprised to find a breech loaded swivel gun. Very clever.
Thanks for video. :)
Our pleasure!
Pretty impressive
Thank you!
I like it, and suscribed. Great demonstration. Any details on the range and shot dispertion of the most common anti personell charges?. Like 5' spread at 25 yds. Maximum effective range?
That is actually a very good design.
The magazine may only hold one round but its still proof-of-concept for magazine loaded firearms.
Its very interesting how cannons like this, and pre-packaged paper cartridges for black powder pistols, really laid down the foundations for modern firearms.
Loved!!!!)))))))))))🤩👌
fascinating
Thanks. We think so too.
We paly Blood and Plunder and it is cool to see how the swivel guns were used.
A very different question; Do you have any "Loggerheads", being a most important tool on a wooden ship? They were used to heat tar in a bucket for sealing joints on wooden ships. Generally tar may have been used with oakem, which was fibrous, and tar provided the the glue to make the seal watertight. The reason for the Loggerhead was that it was a lump (this the real question, exactly what it looked like) of iron with a handle, that was heated in the galley fire, then put in the tar bucket to melt the tar, so no fire outside the galley.
They did have a use off the ship as well, they were the equivalent of a microwave to heat liquids in Taverns. But I suspect they were not the same shape.
To me this is a fascinating device, once ubiquitous, that has completely disappeared.
Another fact is that they are a saying in the English language, "At loggerheads", as they were used by the sailors as weapons.
At this timeframe loggerhead was a slang term for a stubborn or hardheaded man. Neither John Smith in "A Sea Grammar" or Sir Henry Manwayring in "The Sea-Man's Dictionary" uses the term loggerhead to name or describe tools.
@@JYFMuseums I had come across the word before but Patrick O'Brian explained it in one of his books, which is how I heard the explanation of "at Loggerheads". I suspect from the name Loggerhead turtle that the shape was like the head of the turtle. Here is an explanation, that says nothing about using a loggerhead, of how drinks were heated in Taverns. ua-cam.com/video/VrJCUOr2UI8/v-deo.htmlsi=wHulqVx2-NbCn9sb
loggerhead, n.
An iron instrument with a long handle and a ball or bulb at the end used, when heated in the fire, for melting pitch and for heating liquids.
This above from the Oxford dictionary
Для меня являетесь открытием такой способ зарядки орудия. Думал, что они всегда заряжались только с дула. Видимо это специфика только корабельной артиллерии из-за ограничения возможностей. Мы явно недооцениваем уровень знаний и умений наших предков.
Да. Мы слишком часто недооцениваем навыки и знания наших предков.
This type of gun also used in China's Ming dynasity (1368~1644)，
It's named "佛朗機炮"，
In Ming dynasity's record ,this type of gun was first introduced in 1517, form Portugal .
I have a reproduction swivel gun that will launch a golf ball about 700+ yards. Good stuff!
Let's fire a swivel gun! Why, that sounds like a crazy afternoon's doins!!! Let's proceed...