early usage of the term "Gunnade"

[A.Roads]

This may have been covered here before, I apologise if that is the case, but I don't recall having seen it in the relatively short time that I've been perusing this most interesting forum. My question is to do with useage of the term "Gunnade" - I understand that it is used to describe a Carronade with trunnions. While I am not suggesting that this is a relatively modern term it does have me curious as I must admit to being ignorant of its contemporary usage in the late 18th & early to mid 19th centuries. I don't have many such early references & those I do have copies of are almost entirely only of British ordnance, so I have not had much opportunity to encounter the term used contemporaneously.
Can anyone please shed some light here?   
Adrian

[cannonmn]

Adrian, the best coverage of the gunade is in Spencer Tucker's ARMING THE FLEET, Naval Institute Press,  Annapolis MD 1989.   Pages 128-130 discuss the gunade and contain two figures.

He reproduces a published drawing of one on a highly unusual naval mounting supposedly provided by the Carron company in 1798. 

Tucker's fig. 61 contains Tucker's drawings of five extant gunades to show a variety of outer forms.

Some excerpts from his book:

"first extant US Navy reference to a gunade occurs in the 1821 inventory...some in the inventory of 1833...eighty gunades...of English manufacture...gunades were phased out of service at the same time as the carronades."

"The position of the trunnions varies...little is known about these guns but it is safe to assume they were made to arm merchantmen...the carronade-derivative pieces were known variously as gunades, gunnades, and insurance guns."

It seems to me that I have seen more gunades than any other kind of cannon, if I exclude the government museums with their many Civil War field guns.  In the US, they seem to occur most frequently in private collections and in small museums or on monuments.  I usually see them in bore sizes from two to six-pounder.  The three marked ones I have include two by Bailey and Pegg of London, and one marked "Falkirk" from Scotland.

[Nasty Jack]

This might be more arcane information than you're interested in knowing --

"ade" is a French suffix amended to nouns and verbs to form some sort of derivative noun. Generally the new "ade" noun is diminuative, but the concept of "diminuative" is more about "a lesser form" than a "smaller form."

But, as with any linguistic rule, it gets broken through usage. A "fusil" is a "gun" but a "fusilade" is not a "lesser gun" but rather a volly of shot from guns. "Rouler" means "to roll" and a "roulade" is a flattened cut of meat, stuffed and rolled up. "Barrier" . . . "barricade" . . . a "lesser" barrier.

Carronade were produced by the Carron Iron works, Falkirk Scotland. They were also called "Gasconade" or "Melvillade" after their designers, Lieutenant General Robert Melville in 1759 and Charles Gascoigne, manager of the Carron Company from 1769 to 1779 -- again, the "French" lexical back-formation using "ade."

Carron oil is a mix of linseed oil and limewater used for burns or scalds in the Carron Iron Works. It sounds like the iron works was large enough to generate terms which enter into the lexicon. 

Many military terms are borrowed from French: Rendez-vous, reconoiter, esprit de corps, bivouac, latrine, artillery (artillerie), cannon, trunnion . . .

Makes perfect sense that "gunnade" would be coined for some sort of derivative "gun."

My Webbie's Unabridged doesn't list "gunnade."

Google offers some discussion of Carronade and gunnade:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carronade

Towards the end of the period of use, some carronades were fitted with trunnions to lower their centre of gravity, to create a variant known as the gunnade.

As a result of irregularities in the size of cannon balls and the difficulty of boring out gun barrels, there was usually a considerable gap (known as the windage) between the ball and the inside of the gun barrel. The windage of a cannon was often as much as a quarter of an inch and caused a considerable loss of projectile power. The manufacturing practices introduced by the Carron Company reduced the windage considerably. Despite the reduced windage, carronades had a much shorter range, typically a third to a half, than the equivalent long gun because they used a much smaller propellant charge (the chamber for the powder was smaller than the bore for the ball). However, typical naval tactics in the late 18th Century emphasised short-range broadsides, so the short range was not thought to be a problem: indeed, their much lighter weight allowed a ship to carry more carronades, or carronades of a larger calibre, than long guns, and carronades could be mounted on the upper decks, where heavy long guns could cause the ship to be top-heavy and unstable. Carronades also required a smaller gun crew, were faster to reload, and were easier to aim.

[thelionspaw]

Erudite! I like it. Now there is a good read. I'm going to go back and read it again. My wife does the NY Times crossword puzzle every evening. I hope she gets stumped where I can use my newly gained knowledge to shine.

rc

[Nasty Jack]

Erudite! I like it. Now there is a good read. I'm going to go back and read it again. My wife does the NY Times crossword puzzle every evening. I hope she gets stumped where I can use my newly gained knowledge to shine.

rc

Chic alors!

Up until I found this site and this forum my "cannon" endeavors were pretty much about seamless DOM tubing, bolted to John Deere pallets with fence hardware -- and noise makers for Fourth of July picnics.

I'm in Astoria Oregon . . . just down the street from Ft. Stevens  which has some 10" Rodmans and the remains of WW II concrete gun emplacements.

Ahhhhhhhh, but south of here some 25 miles is "Cannon Beach" and I've discovered that the "cannon" at Cannon Beach is a Carronade.

Some 12 yr. old girl and her dad just discovered the elevation screw and breech to a second Carronade from this wreck:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_Beach

In 1846, a cannon from the US Navy schooner Shark washed ashore just north of Arch Cape, a few miles to the south of Elk Creek, the current Cannon Beach. The schooner was wrecked while attempting to cross the Columbia Bar, also known as the "Graveyard of the Pacific" because of the danger of the bar. The townspeople of Elk Creek renamed their town after the cannon.[7] The cannon is in the town's museum and a replica of it can be seen alongside U.S. Route 101.[8] Two more cannons, also believed to have been from the Shark, were discovered on Arch Cape over the weekend of February 16, 2008.[9]

--------------------------------

http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_021808_news_ancient_cannons_beach_uss_shark.70c94c4.html

By ANTONIA GIEDWOYN, kgw.com Staff

From a distance, the two cannons look like odd-shaped rocks in the salt water.

In fact, that's what Mike Petrone took them to be. However, his 12-year-old daughter Miranda noticed something unusual.

"We were looking at stumps and we saw this cool rock and ... she said, 'No, there's rust on it,' " Petrone told KGW.

Heavy surf washed up the two cannons on the Oregon coast last Saturday near Arch Cape, just south of Cannon Beach, and the discovery is garnering wide-spread attention.

Officials believe the twin cannons could be from the U.S.S. Shark, a survey schooner that sank in the Columbia River Bar in 1846.

When one of the cannons washed ashore shortly after the schooner sank, coastal residents named the area Cannon Beach.

"It's tremendously exciting to see Oregon's past pay us a visit ... It's important for people to visit the shore and see the artifacts, but in a way that protects your safety and preserves the integrity of the artifacts," said Chris Havel, spokesman for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department.

The cannons are visible at low tide.

"This could very well be an important historic site. Moving, touching, or taking parts of the cannon instantly destroys historical information that could help us understand where the cannons are from and what they mean to Oregon history," Havel said.

Historians and archaeologists are devising a plan to protect the important artifacts and study the broader area. They hope to move the cannons to a safer place later this week.

The U.S.S. Shark was the first U.S. war vessel to pass through the Straits of Magellan from east to west.

If the cannons are from the Shark, they'll likely go on display in a town museum.

--------------------------

I'm getting far afield from the original thread . . . I realize that. But these Carronades are just down the road from me. I'm an historian (and a linguist in case you missed it). 

Here's the cannon on the beach. I can't find pix of the "repros" at the roadside.


   

[shooter2]

So, a cunning linguist has joined the ranks.

Shooter 2

[A.Roads]

Hi Cannonmn,
Thank you for the gunnade quotes & reference, very interesting.
I agree that gunnades are very commonly encountered these days, their relative light weight for their projectile size & small size & small gun crew requirement would have made them the obvious choice for commercial shipping who wanted a defensive/deterrent weapon. They certainly must have been a commercial success for the foundries. I also have one, I purchased it a year ago, but mine is unmarked, the bore (beyond the flash rim) denotes it as a 9 pr but I have to investigate further as its external size leads me to think that it is a 6pr, it was a sea recovered piece & corrosion, though not severe, may have enlarged the bore - it sits in the garage under wraps as I am not allowed to touch it until I do a complete makeover of our backyard, my wifes condition placed on its purchase, smart woman! I've been working on the backyard now every spare weekend this year, I am still only about half way through it, such a tiny back yard yet so much work....... though of course the overall design had to be centered around a crenulated bluestone cannon emplacement!
Adrian