Hi guys, thanks for tuning into another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. Today we are looking at the largest
muzzle-loading firearm ever built. It's not actually Fort Rinella, it's actually
the Rinella Batteries, let's go take a look. So what you're looking at here is a 100-ton, actually
150-ton if you count the mounting and the shell itself, muzzle-loading, rifled, naval fortification gun. The origin of this thing goes back to
1866 when the newly formed Italian Navy (Italy having just recently been formed into a
single nation from a conglomeration of states), they decided to flex their military muscle and
get in a fight with the Austro-Hungarian empire. They outnumbered the Austro-Hungarian
Navy something like 4 to 1 and they got into a big naval battle,
and got completely obliterated. It was a really embarrassing experience for the Italian Navy,
and in fact it took them almost a decade really to get over it. When they did, what they decided to do
was kind of make a military naval comeback with the biggest, most powerful ships
that could possibly be built at the time. And they actually sort of designed these on the idea of the Merrimack,
or ... I'm sorry, the Monitor, the ironclad ships from the US Civil War. A heavily armoured ship with guns in rotating turrets. A
significant departure from naval vessels of centuries past. Well, ... of course the Italians have a big presence in the Mediterranean,
the British also had a major presence in the Mediterranean. They were trying to protect their trade route from the Suez Canal
and beyond it India, through the Mediterranean up to England. And so they ... were paying attention to developments in
the Italian Navy, and when they saw the Italians developing these super-battleships they decided, "Yeah, you know
we need to come up with something to counter that." So the British started developing their own armoured
super-battleship, and the Woolwich Arsenal came up with an 80-ton muzzle-loading
cannon to arm ... these British battleships with. 80 tons being basically the
biggest gun in existence at the time. The Italians played back the other way
by actually requesting from Armstrong, one of the major armaments producers in the
world at that time, a design for an even bigger gun. And Armstrong, despite being British,
designed a 100-ton gun for the Italian Navy. There was no state of war between Britain and Italy
at the time, ... it was allowed to do something like this. It was just that the British government was
keeping a watchful eye on the activities of Italy, and anyone else who might be operating
a naval presence in the Mediterranean. So, the Italians outfit a couple
battleships with four 100-ton guns. These things have an effective
range of something like five miles. They ... massively out-class anything else that exists at that
point in time. We're talking approximately 1880 at this point. Now, ... these Italian battleships exist and the British are
now concerned, in addition to their own naval ... vessels, what about their fortifications on places like Gibraltar
and Malta, major naval stations in the Mediterranean? And so they do an assessment, and what they come
to realise is that the guns that are being used to defend places like Malta are seriously underpowered.
These Italian battleships ... could show up and just bombard the British fortifications while being
completely safe and out of range of the British guns. So the British decide that they need to outfit
Malta and Gibraltar with larger field pieces. And they actually turn to Armstrong to get those guns, and
they order four of the exact same guns that the Italians have. And they outfit two of them here on Malta,
one on either side of the Grand Harbour in Malta. And they outfit two of them on Gibraltar. And eventually two of these would
be destroyed, they would be scrapped. And today we only have one surviving example
on Malta, which is this one, the Rinella Battery. And there's one surviving example on Gibraltar. Alright, so a 100-ton gun sounds pretty impressive, but,
you know, a lot of these old cannons look pretty heavy. So a few of the other statistics that I think will really drive
home just ... the magnitude of this thing a little bit better. It fired a 2,000 pound shell, a literal 1-ton shell, and
perhaps even more impressively the black powder charge used in this gun was 450 pounds, that's like 200 kg of
black powder. It was an immense amount of powder. There was actually danger of shattering windows in the city
alongside here when they fired this thing with a full charge. Perhaps, let's see, equally impressively, the barrel
life of this thing was 120 rounds. After that many, the throat erosion and the rifling erosion was sufficient that
its range and its accuracy would be significantly impaired. At that point, in theory, the gun could be
... re-bored, but that would have to be done in England. Which would mean taking this thing out and
shipping it back to England, which is no mean feat. To put this in perspective, it was
shipped here to Malta one gun in one ship. They had two here, and they
were both shipped independently. Once they got it ... off-loaded
from the ship and in the harbour, to get it from the harbour up here
to its mounting point took 87 days. ... The scale of everything
surrounding this gun was incredible. It would penetrate 15 inches of steel armour, which is enough to take out one of those
Italian super-battleships out to about 3 miles. And it had a maximum range of about 8 miles. So... For a gun made in the 1880s, not trivial. Now, when we think about muzzle-loading 450 pounds of powder and a 2,000 pound shell,
there are some real logistical issues that come up. Think about that, how do you actually get a
2,000 pound shell into the barrel of that thing? You kind of can't. Well, Armstrong was
known in England not just for arms production, but also for a lot of really impressive
large-scale industrial works. Hydraulic ... cranes, bridges. ... One of his other particularly
influential constructions was a rotating bridge in England, you know, huge engineering works.
And he applied that to this gun. So not only was this the largest gun in existence at the
time, and in fact the largest muzzle-loading gun ever made, it was also the first fully automated gun, because this
was set up with a steam engine and loading system to get a rate of fire of one round every
6 minutes with a crew of only 35 men. There's a whole system built underground in this fort to load
this thing, and that to me is the coolest part of the entire system. Alright, so this sort of perspective may give you a little
better idea of just how difficult this thing is to reload. So what Armstrong came up
with was this really cool system. And we're gonna start from the very beginning with
the steam system that provided the power to run it. However, I want to start by showing
you this perspective along with this right here. And this turret in the wall alongside
the gun is one of two, basically, reloading stations. So after the gun was fired it would be swivelled around
to this point, so basically 90 degrees into the fort. The barrel would be dropped down and the
barrel would actually be placed in this hole (that centre support beam is modern there
and wouldn't have originally been in place), then the reloading process can commence. And we have a second matching
one here on the other side. So what we have inside here where we are standing now is
basically the machine room, the beating heart of the fortification. So here you have a hydraulic
system powered by a steam engine, so you will be able to move the machinery around. It's the world's
largest cannon, you wouldn't be able to move it by brute force - Right, it's 150 tons of steel and iron.
- Exactly, exactly. So instead you have the machinery here,
so what we have here is a steam boiler. This would basically use the pressure of steam
to power two machines, two steam engines. They both have the same purpose, that
was to pump water into two accumulators. So we have the smaller one of these here, this one
was used for the cleaning-out process of the cannon. Because when you are firing a muzzle-loading cannon you've
got a lot of gunpowder flying everywhere, embers everywhere. If you load it again, the gunpower, it would fire the
cannon into the fortification. [Note: this would be bad] - That's true, you want to get the whole barrel nice and
... all the sparks put out before you dump powder down. - Yeah, exactly - Also a good thing with
hand-held muzzle-loaders of course. - Yes, exactly. Right, so this would basically power
the pump which we have on the wall over there, That would pump water inside of a small
accumulator that was in this hole over here. - You say small? That's like 20 feet deep. - Yes, well this small one would
obviously be mounted on the wall here. Then you'd have a big one for the main machinery. So this one was just for the cleaning-out process. And that would be the engine
for the cannon and the machinery. So this would be the engine itself.
So this would be able to pump water from outside the fortification
down into the accumulator over here. And the accumulator is basically a big metallic cylinder, with a piston up on top and a weight that pushes
the water down and kept it under constant pressure. About 950 psi. If you want a comparison,
the Tower Bridge over in London is about 750. - So the idea was this steam engine just
lifts this weight on a ... column of water. - Yes.
- And then gravity actually does the work of
compressing the water, or pressurising it into a series of pipes that provide power for the
whole Armstrong mechanism that runs the gun. - Yes, exactly. So the accumulator here would have
been powering the cannon, the rammer, and the lifts. - OK, ... we should go take a look at that.
However, it's kind of amazing to me how this little tiny engine and even this little tiny boiler power a gun that is so incredibly massive. There is an interesting
contextual thing going on here, so. Alright, so this gives us our actual power to run the
equipment. Let's go take a look at what that equipment is.
- Right. - Alright, so we are in the gallery
... just underneath the right side of the gun. So the gun is like up there, right?
- Yes. Exactly. [?] - So, what is this? - Well, this is the loading chamber, this is where all
the ammunition would be prepared for the cannon. That's why we have these set of tracks which would
have carts running back and forth to the cannon itself. And on the left hand side you have the
cartridge [powder] store and the shell store. Now the shell store would hold up to 100 one-ton shells
being prepared for proceeding to be loaded into the cannon. Two different kinds of shell, depending
on what sort of target you have, you have high explosives which would be fixed with percussion
caps in the front, so basically they explode on impact. Or armour-piercing ones which would basically
have pointed fronts and a time fuse in the back. So they would penetrate through the
enemy's armour and explode on the inside. And hopefully hitting the enemy's gunpowder
store inside the ship, or something like that. - Makes sense, OK.
- So that was the idea. Depending on which kind of shell you have, you load it onto the
cart and then you push it back to the cartridge [powder] store. And from there you would be issued with 450
pounds of black powder. Or 200 kg if you like. - That's still just a mind-numbing
amount of black powder. - Yes. So they had to be very careful down here
because of the safety procedures, you know. You can't carry around any kind of flames
inside here, you can't have any metal. For example, right now if I were to walk inside here with
this uniform on, then most likely I would get a flogging. - And you've got hob-nailed boots on. - Yes, so this could set off a spark
which could ignite the gunpowder. So basically before I enter the loading chamber
here I have to change into a fatigue uniform. It's basically a cotton uniform with wooden
buttons and leather shoes without any kind of metal. [?] - OK, and even these windows,
these are like spark-proof windows. - Yes, exactly. Since you can't bring in
any kind of lights or flames inside here, instead, behind the walls here you
have a corridor with the window panes so you can put lights inside of them
so they will shine through into here. In this part of the 19th century as well they
started experimenting with electricity as well, but light bulbs at this time
had a tendency to explode. So...
- Not good. - They kept the more simple
forms of lighting up this area. - Alright, so we have a cart running on these rails,
which unfortunately were scrapped in the 1950s, But you bring your cart back to here,
... so you go past the powder room. And you'd get the shell from the store here. And there's your answer as to
how you move a 2,000lb shell - Yes, exactly. You have a pulley
system, and they would lift everything up, and so they would be lifted up to here and carried over to the cart and
then lowered down into its place. - OK, and then you would actually push
the cart backwards to the Issue Hatch. So, once you've got the shell, then it comes back to here and you're going to get powder
through this little door. - Yes, exactly, the Issue Hatch here. 450 pounds, or 200kg,
separated into four separate satchels, which would be 50kg in each, so you can easily - more easily put it onto the cart itself.
- Makes sense. - And then once the gunpowder was onto the cart, you would
then make sure that you has a gas seal on the back of shell itself. - And that provides your rifling as well. - Yes exactly, the gas seal would be
perfectly fitted for the rifling inside of the gun. And that would also ensure there
are no gasses leaking out the side which gives you even further
range and more accuracy. - OK. So once we've got all of our ammunition components,
we're going to run it down to the end, to the lift. - Yes exactly, to the lift. So, inside here, in this shaft
you would find the hydraulic lift powered by the hydraulic system in the machine room. - So this is where our steam
power actually first comes into play? Well, that's the thing, this wasn't powered by
steam any more, as soon as the pressure was up the steam was turned off. It was
just hydraulic pressure from the water. So you don't have to have the steam
engine running to have the machinery to work. - OK, that's actually pretty cool. - So the high pressurised water would go into pipes
underneath the lift here and then push the whole lift up. And align the cart to the hole
on the left-hand side on top here. - Alright, ... and that's the hole where
the barrel would be sticking through. - Yes, exactly. And then from the hole on
the other side, on the right-hand side here the rammer would then come out. And that would then push the gunpowder and the shell
in one piece all the way back to the breech of the cannon. -OK, that's a long barrel, that's got to be a long ramrod. - Yes, it is. [18m /60 ft] - And that again is hydraulically ... powered, with the
hydraulic power coming from the original steam power. - Yes, exactly. - And so that's all controlled by a soldier up
there with a set of really cool steampunk levers? - Yes, most likely yes. Yeah you would be standing
up there with these levers to operate everything. So, they basically had some
communication with the guy on top there. That would actually be done with
these tubes they had on the wall here, ... they are like pipes, so they had a
communication system like on a ship. - And that's like the old school speak into the thing. - Yeah, exactly, exactly.
- Nice. - So you can be down here and have
a conversation with the one up on top. - OK, this is literal steampunk, like
when it was high-tech, and not just retro. - For the people back in those days, this would be sci-fi. - Yeah. Alright. And now there
are two entire galleries like this. - Yes, you have this loading chamber here, and you
have another one on the other side of the wall here, on the other side of the shell store.
Exactly like this one, just mirrored. So we basically had 4 carts running
back and forth with ammunition. - So this was actually the slow part of the process.
The gun could fire fast enough that you had to have 4 separate carts cycling through this
loading process to keep the gun going. Now apparently on the Italian battleships
that were outfitted with these guns the rate of fire wasn't 1 round in 6 minutes,
it was more like 1 round in 20 minutes. Because they didn't have space for a 60 foot long rammer on the ship, and they had to go through some sort of hijinks to... - Yes, exactly, and also their
accumulator would be smaller as well, and the ram they would use
would basically be foldable, so. It was a very long process. But they
would have 4 cannons on the ship, so. - Get them all loaded to start with.
- Yeah, exactly. - Alright, and you said the water pressure in the accumulator
would be enough to cycle this whole mechanism four times. - That's the information that I have, yes. - And then you'd have to fire up the boiler
again and rebuild your steam pressure. - Yes, exactly. While you are going through
these 4 rounds you start the machinery up. While that was working the
machinery would be prepared. - OK, so this could be a continuous rate of fire. - Yes. As long as the machine works as it should,
guaranteed rate of fire of 1 shot every 6 minutes. - And how many times was
this actually fired in combat? - Never. It was never fired in anger. This was used as a deterrent in the 19th century,
they would test fire the cannon 4 times a year, and they would take these test results
and send them to the enemies of the Empire. So especially the Italians, because if you have this
shotgun in the garden, no-one dares to trespass. - That makes sense. So the ramming chamber itself is located up here. This was 60 feet or 18 metres long. It was a wooden ramrod.
Goes all the way down there and then up here out into daylight. So, the bright light there is the end of the ramming chamber,
which then goes through the loading turret, and into the gun barrel. So the ramrod would come through this hole, we have in the centre of the loading
turret here this would be the hydraulic lift, so you would have a carriage that
would come up, or a cradle I suppose, it would come up with your projectile and powder. You
have a soldier standing over on that platform, right there, operating some cool levers
to make the whole thing work. And then the gun barrel comes through that hole on the
opposite side of the wall for the shell to be rammed into. So that's a pretty cool system, but it is kind
of dependent on that steam engine right there. So if someone managed to get a lucky shot on the
steam engine does this whole battery go out of service? No, in the case that would happen, or the
steam engine broke down, or you ran out of coal you need a reserve system. And that would be
the chamber that we're standing in here right now. And that would be a pump
room with two manual pumps. So you would have 40 soldiers sent from
[Fort] Ricasoli to start pumping away on these to build up pressure inside the accumulator.
- That sounds like a fun detail. - Yeah, well I wouldn't like to be one of those soldiers. They would be working down here for 4 hours
to build up the pressure inside the accumulator. Imagine doing that here on Malta in 40
degrees heat [104F], it would be very heavy. With the steam engine it would only take 4 minutes, so we wanted to make sure it was up and running
or else you might have a mutiny down here. Alright, so just to give you a final
overview here. ... The gun would fire (and by the way, it fires with a friction lanyard. So
there's one guy standing like right out here with a string, he pulls the string and the gun fires. That's
got to be the best-paid guy in the entire garrison. He probably wasn't, but he should have been), at any rate, once the gun fires it's then going to
rotate 90 degrees over towards this loading turret. The barrel will initially be up above the
loading turret, where the small accumulator has built up a bunch of hydraulic pressure. You open a vent, and a hose, a pipe on top is going to flood
the barrel with water. That will douse any live embers in it. Then they can actually bring the barrel straight down. So there was originally a hatch and
counterweight over this loading opening, so as the barrel came down the
loading port would be covered, the water would rush out of the barrel
as soon as it went past ... horizontal, and then ... as you were lowering it by the time you got down to the point where you were getting
into the loading port, the water would all be out. The barrel itself would actually pull the
hatch down and lift the counterweight up. You'd lower the barrel until it was in line
with this hole, then you have the whole hydraulic loading apparatus that is going to
ram a powder charge and a shell into the barrel. You then rotate the gun 90 degrees
back or wherever your target is, and ... I should say, the rotation and the elevation of the
gun are also operated on the same hydraulic system. So you then have a gunner with levers to
control the elevation and the traverse of the gun, he'll bring it on to target, fire again,
and then the process repeats, loading from the opposite side, back and forth. Because it takes more time to actually get a shell and
powder charge up here and functional and ready to load, than it does to actually fire the gun. So the gun ultimately went into service in 1886,
and I think we know what happened in 1886, smokeless powder gets invented. And this gun is
basically obsolete the very day that it's introduced. Now that doesn't mean it stops working. The gun
would continue to actually stay in service until 1906, when it was formally taken out of service. At that point, new modern powders and artillery
pieces would have rendered this, in fact, obsolete. It stayed in British military hands until the 1950s, changed
hands a couple of times between the different services. In the 1950s the British military actually had a program to scrap
all of the obsolete old guns that were in fortifications in Malta. Unfortunately this led to the destruction, the
scrapping, of a lot of antique cool cannons. ... And it led to the the torch cutting and
scrapping of the other 100-ton gun here on Malta. However, it was the Army that did that, and at that time this battery was actually in the
possession of the Navy, for some bureaucratic reason. And the Navy, for whatever reason, didn't scrap
this gun, and so this ended up remaining in place. In 1991 it was given to the ... Malta Heritage Trust. They turned it into a museum and opened it up a few years
later having restored the whole battery as you've seen. The gun remains of course, a lot of the hydraulic equipment
was scrapped, you know, for use as scrap metal, after the place became obsolete. This was used a bit as a
bomb shelter during World War Two. It was used for storing equipment and supplies for the military. It saw
various uses, but nothing significant after 1906. Well hopefully you guys enjoyed the video, I know
I thought it would be cool to come out here and see the biggest black powder cannon ever built. But ... to me what really makes this a
cool installation and a cool piece of history is the entire automated loading
mechanism that went along with it. This truly was steampunk before steampunk existed,
this was cutting-edge technology at the time. And the rate of fire, and just the sheer
magnitude of this gun, remains impressive today. So I'd like to give a big thanks to the Malta Tourism Authority
for helping to arrange this and make this possible, great folks. There is an immense amount of history here on Malta,
everything from 5, 6, 7,000 year old ancient temples to the war rooms from World War Two. So if you ever happen to find yourself in the middle of
the Mediterranean and don't mind a bit of wind and sun, definitely stop by Malta and check out some of their
very cool historical artifacts, like the 100-ton gun. Thanks for watching.
Yes a bit but I think it's just because of the hat and this video https://youtu.be/iPQcCEgAf-c
I once did a shit that looked like a frazzle, should I post that here as well?
If you squint your eyes a bit maybe
Be honest, how many people do you think clicked that video, but were too fucking lazy to read that you didn't mean the guy with the beard and glasses? I bet some did.