Hello, the 'Tall Ships' are in Halifax Harbour for the week, I only managed to see the sailing ship 'Royaliste' (hails out of San Francisco as far as I could tell); and a few other yachts, really, on the Dartmouth side by the Ferry Terminal earlier this evening, *it's been really foggy today. I took note of the little cannons she had on her, there was from what I could tell, 4 cannons with trucks and one little bronze swivel cannon, the swivel cannon had a bore I don't know about 1-1/2 inch bore and the ones that had the trucks were probably something like 2-1/2 to 3 inch bore. The bigger ones had little percussion firing mechanisms, at first I thought there were parts missing, but all it has is a percussion nipple threaded in to the breech end of the barrel, and 2 pieces of what looked just like angle iron perhaps held there with screws drilled and tapped into the barrel, in between the 2 angle iron pieces was a little rectangular or square piece of steel that had a pivot point with a screw through at some point, presumably you could hinge this piece back insert the cap, replace the rectangular piece, and * I am guessing to touch the thing off you come down on the little rectangular piece with something heavy, like a hammer or maybe a heavy wooden club. This brings to mind how you would prime it, usually they insert a 'pick' through the touch hole to rip open the charge bag and ensure reliable initiation
The swivel cannon was about maybe 20+- inches long in all, the touch hole on it was really big, I would estimate it about 3/16 inch diameter hole!
Best regards FT
