How to Fire a Civil War Era Naval Gun

hi i'm ryan smansky curator for battleship new jersey museum at memorial today we're on board the swoop of war uss constellation which was the first museum ship i worked on all the way back in 2006. we're going to see how much i remember about the gun drill for one of these eight inch chambered shell guns these are early predecessors to the 16-inch rifles on new jersey and they the drone i'm going to put our collections manager elena nolan and our store manager ken newman through is basically identical to the gun drill that would have been done on ships throughout the entire age of sale uh normally an 8 inch gun like this would have a 14 man gun crew plus a ship's boy or powder monkey running ammunition from the magazines to the gun the guns on board constellation today are not made out of iron like they would have been all of those guns were melted down during world war one as scrap metal for that war effort so all the ones on board are fiberglass replicas which were funded by donors like you guys so the first command in a gun drill is silence man the starboard number nine gun on a super board-like constellation there would be ten guns lined up on each side so i am saying silence there are 14 guys around each of these 10 guns there is a lot of noise you need to be able to hear my commands so i'm quieting everyone so that they can hear me uh and i'm telling the man the starboard side number nine guy so each gun has its own crew i'm telling the number nine crew to come to me and i'm telling them to come to the starboard side because broadside ships would only tend to fight in one direction there was a single gun crew that man boat the starboard and the port number nine guns we would only be engaged on one side at a time if the captain knew what he was doing if something goes verbally wrong then i have to take half of my gun through and put them on the other side a ship like this may have 319 crew members assigned but it takes up to 150 to maneuver sales up above so realistically we've got less than half of them manning the guns down here the next command is going to be to run in the gun typically when we fire the gun it would recoil back in but the first time we load it we've got to bring it in so we can actually access the muzzle and load it battleship new jersey's guns are loaded from the breach but civil war era artillery like constellations tends to always be loaded from the muzzle like earlier guys so we have rigged up a block and tackle to the back of the gun and this is a two-part command action tells you guys to lean forward and get ready to grab the line and then on the command hall you're just going to lean back and hold you are not going to walk backwards with it or you run into all the guys behind you now obviously with this tackle as the gun comes back in you might have to step back a little bit to get out of the way but in general and when we use this these same commands on other actions keeping your feet quiet all right action paul action falls action hall action paul action hall action fall action hall action hall action hall action hall action hall action hall we want a two blocker here action poll and one more time action hall all right so at this point we've got the muzzle of the gun accessible so my next command is to serve vent and sponge can i get one of you guys on each side [Music] so the first time firing this wouldn't really be an issue but if we had just fired the gun there could be embers in there from the last time we shot so we're going to swab it out with the giant q-tip the sponge typically this would be dunked in a bucket of water and then run down the barrel on older guns you might do this once every shot by the civil war they tend to only do this once every three shots so i'm going to hand this to you and each of you should have one hand on it while it's in front of the muzzle the gun they're only having one hand in front of it because these guns tend to explode one time on uss princeton the explosion killed the secretary of the navy so by only having one hand in front of it you only stand to lose one hand while they are doing this the gun captain would be back here with a leather thumb stall on covering the vent at the back of the gun this is where the explosion initially starts uh and this is so that none of the gases and embers are going to blow out the back of the gut all right you can pull that sponge back out and put it up here all right and next you want to take the rammer down because our next command is load cartridge so while the 16 inch guns on battleship new jersey use 660 pounds of powder in six bags constellation is using a nine pound powder charge which would be in a silk bag same material as new jersey uses uh the nine pounds of black powder would come in a wooden box and would be brought by one of the ship's boys the powder monkeys it's still light enough that one of them can carry it the bag is made out of silk or in some cases heavily treated flannel because it will burn up almost entirely on firing and that's why new jersey still uses itself in her powder bags after we've loaded the powder the next command is to load the shell so the powder monkey would bring another wooden box with the eight-inch exploding shell and the fuse would be cut to the right size uh it would already be fitted on its round wooden sabo base and then given to the loader load it in the gun and then push back using the rubber the fuse on the shell will be lit when the powder goes off and it is set based on the gun captain's judgment for the range that he's expecting to engage these guns have a range of up to a mile and a half uh realistically closer to a mile for any sort of accuracy my nearest target is the world war ii submarine tourist less than a quarter mile away so we've got a real short view set today the next command is to run out the gun so in this case i'm going to need one of you on each of the side tackles [Music] the breaching tackle is removed and now you guys are going to pull and it's the same action hall you should be standing on the outside of the lines only the gun can't be on the inside of the lines here all right so action hall action ball action hall it's very important that the two sides move together or else the gun will start to swing one way or the other and that causes more work for me later action hall action hall action paul almost there we want to take it all the way to the bulkhead action hole action whole action hall and one more time in action hall all right so now we have run the gun out this way when we fire we're not going to burn the side of our own vessel right the next command is to aim the gun so right now we are pointing at the stern of torsk she's close enough that we can pretty accurately aim and i think i would rather hit the sail where she's commanded from so take hand spikes like this one put them in these little staples in the back of the gun [Music] and then move the gun into position while european ships tended to train to fire into the rigging to disable enemy ship and capture it american gunners were trained to fire into the holes of enemy ships ricocheting off the water and even firing while their own ship was on a down roll of a wave an enemy ship was on an up roll to hold the enemy below the water line so now the gun is loaded and aimed the next step is to prime the gun so first you would take a long brass needle we're using brass because it doesn't spark when it hits iron and we're going to punch it into the vent hole and that's going to open a hole in the powder bag directly below then we're taking a primer which in this case is a goose quill part of a goose feather that's stuffed with fulminate of mercury that again burns up entirely that goes into the vent hole that's what will set it off and the fulminative mercury tends to explode when it is percussed in this case cocking this hammer will create the percussion to set off that goose quill up on deck with the parrot rifles we use a brass primer the army tends to use brass primers when the gun fires that brass primer here's one this one's been spent it would have a ring that comes out the back that you tie your lanyard to when that is spent it explodes out on top of the gun that's fine upper and deck but down here on the enclosed gun deck with 14 guys around and uh a brass primer hitting off of the low overhead they're likely to take out a sailor's eye and my only way of aiming this gun is the very complex fire control system the mark one human eyeball look down the barrel if there's a target there i can hit it uh obviously if i damage that fire control system with a brass primer i become a much less effective gun captain so now we're ready to go so the next command is ready and that is basically telling everybody drop the lines you're holding you don't want to be holding those when the gun recoils back in will be yanked out of your hand you'll get rope burn uh and step away from the back of the gun i am standing in a very bad place if this was a loaded gun because when this recoils uh it's basically uh a ton and a half the weight of a car and it comes back into the ship at about 30 miles per hour so i've never been hit by a car going at 30 miles per hour but i can imagine i wouldn't want to be so on the command ready i'm going to stand back notice that the wheels project out the side of the gun and i want to make sure that i'm not going to be run over by them uh the gun captain takes the lanyard and everybody's covering their ears and opening their mouth we're in such an enclosed space that the percussion of nine pounds of powder going off which is roughly 36 times the powder inside of a firework when that goes off it's not so much a sound that you hear as a shockwave that goes out that you feel in your chest so i'm going to bend my knees get on the balls of my feet so that that shockwave isn't going to drive me into the overhead i'm going to open my mouth uh so that i'm not going to bite my tongue or drive my my teeth together and it's going to keep my ears from popping too badly and i'm covering my ears so i can't hear it and the final command of course is fire yeah make ready if you would like to participate in a gun drill like this this is one of the hands-on activities done on constellation it's done during the overnight program and it's done during daytime tours of the vessel if you would like to see one of constellations guns fire these are fiberglass but there are real guns on board that do fire be sure to check out the storage ships in baltimore's website to see when they reopen as we're filming this video they're closed for the pandemic but they will reopen soon also if you would like to support the uh museum historic ships in baltimore while constellation while kaney is going into drydock we'll put a link down below for a way you can support them if you'd like to support battlefield new jersey and our youtube channel like our content uh we've also got a link down there for our gofundme campaign have you ever participated in a gun drill on a ship like this one let us know in the comment section down below also let us know if you have any questions about what we've just done today and um remember we're trying to produce new content almost every day of the week like share and subscribe so you're notified when we're releasing it and i'll see you next time

Channel: Battleship New Jersey

Views: 4,868

Rating: 4.9310346 out of 5

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Id: O0r0axHk7SE

Length: 15min 3sec (903 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020