A magnificent pair of English bronze, mid-19th century, three pound ‘FALCON’ naval cannons by ‘FRED C BARNES, TOWER HILL, LONDON’ on original bronze mounted, four wheeled wooden carriages.
The firm of Frederick Barnes was established in 1825 as a “wholesale gunmaker, percussion cap and accouterment maker”. Their initial location was at 109 Fenchurch Street in London and by 1847 they had added additional locations at 3 Union Row and Tower Hill. In 1850, they became Frederick Barnes & Company and dispensed with the Tower Hill location.
The carriages are made of Honduran Mahogany with later additions of English Oak and have hide bound axels to help reduce friction on the wooden wheels. They are mounted with rope rings on the side and back of the carriage (as well as at the end of the cannon itself) which would have been used to hold the breeching lines. These would have stopped the recoil of the gun when it was fired, preventing it from crashing about the deck.
The cannons have their original bronze tampions (muzzle plugs) and wedge-shaped quoins with knob handles. A quoin is a wedge used in aiming a cannon and was used at the breech end to raise or lower the cannon balls trajectory. These cannons fired balls with a weight of approximately 3 pounds or the equivalent in canister shot and are known as smooth bore muzzleloaders into which the projectile and the propellant charge is loaded from the front.
They would have had a maximum range of approximately 1,500 m (5,000 feet). They were always swabbed between shots to prevent accidents caused by live sparks igniting the fresh charge of powder, as it was being loaded. The gunpowder used was black powder and a piece of wadding was used to hold the powder in place after which the projectile was placed in the barrel and a ramrod used to push it down to the end. To fire it, a touch hole also called a vent at the rear (breech) portion of the barrel, was primed and lit.
Dimensions:
Barrels- 93 cm long by 14 cm wide across the breech by 22 cm across the trunnions.
Carriage- 66 cm long by 45 cm wide by 36 cm high.
Total height and width- 98 cm long by 45 cm wide by 46 cm high.
The barrel diameter is 5.1 cm.