Yesterday I made a survey of the bronze cannons displayed outdoors at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis MD. including taking many photos of each piece. I plan to let the USNA officials know I've done it, and see if they are interested in my findings. They should be happy since their artifacts haven't deteriorated as much as those at the Washington Navy Yard and Ft. McNair, but I'd like to show them what's going on with some of their pieces.
Meanwhile, I thought a brief commentary I'll call "The Tale of Two Cannons" might be interesting and would demonstrate something at the same time.
Statistics: The Naval Academy now has, by my count, 23 fine bronze trophy cannons displayed outside. There are a number of historic iron and steel cannons around the Yard also but those are beyond the scope of this article.The Spanish weapons include three large mortars and fourteen field or siege guns from 4=pounder to 24-pounder size. French weapons include six 24=pounder siege/seacoast guns. Roughly one-third of the weapons were cast during the 17th. Century, and two-thirds during the 18th C. Most of the weapons have been at the Academy since 1925, when many were transferred from the Washington Navy Yard. Some probably arrived earlier. The Academy's trophy cannons are a priceless collection of National war trophies and at the same time, a very important grouping of monumental works of art.
As far as I know, none of the bronze weapons currently displayed outside have ever been painted, with one exception. That one exception is why I'm writing this. The two cannons of this tale are displayed in the Yard only a few meters apart, on concrete pads on the lawn in front of Ward Hall, an academic building. They are both Spanish 4-pounder bronze guns, but of two very different designs and weights. The longer and heavier weapon named "San Telesforo" was probably intended as a typical field gun of the late 18th. C. The other shorter, lighter gun must have been intended as a battalion or mountain gun. For ease of reference here, I'll refer to "San Telesforo" as the "The Painted Gun" and the other weapon, which has no paint, as "The Naked Gun" since its given name, which would have been engraved on the chase in a Spanish gun of this period, is no longer visible due to corrosion.
The painted gun has been in its present location much longer than has the naked gun. I know that because the painted gun was there when I first arrived at the Academy in 1967, and it was painted at that time. Why was a bronze gun painted a dark green color? The reason is simple. At that time a great many trophy weapons, mostly steel, were displayed in the park area in front of adjacent Dahlgren and Ward Halls. For asthetic reasons, a decision had been made to paint all of the weapons, including torpedoes, a WWII pack howitzer captured from the Germans, Civil War Dahlgren rifles, Spanish-American War Hotchkiss and Nordenfelt multi-barrel weapons, etc., the same shade, a dark green. The green paint on the "Painted Gun" is now dried and beginning to flake off in spots, but as you will soon see, it has done its job. Hopefully the gun will be stripped and repainted soon, or just repainting would be fine with me. However, one of the recommendations I'd make to the Naval Academy is that they dismount this cannon and conduct a scientific study of it while carefully removing the paint, taking close-up photos of it at each stage of the process. That way they'll have reliable information on how well (or not) the cannon has been protected during its many years encased in the paint.
The Naked Gun is a more recent arrival, due to very unusual circumstances. The location it now occupies was once the home of a small but famous iron cannon, known as the "International Gun." Its history during the Boxer Rebellion is beyond the scope of this article but the gun was portrayed (inaccurately by a much later weapon) in the 1960's movie "55 Days at Peking." At some point, I'm guessing around 1980, the small iron gun was stolen by a student at nearby St. John's college. After the International Gun "went missing" the Academy moved the Naked Gun from storage to fill the empty spot. The stolen gun was not recovered until years later when a landlady was cleaning out a closet in a room that had once been occupied by students, and found the small weapon.
Both guns have engraved metal signs either screwed to the gun or mounted nearby giving the provenance as "Spanish gun captured by the US Navy from the Mexicans in California 1847."
I made an inspection and took photographs of both weapons in October 1986. I repeated this on 1 August 2008. Unfortunately I had taken only a few pictures of each piece during the initial inspection, but I took many more during the 2008 visit.
I guess I should mention why I'm so interested in these two weapons. To the best of my knowledge, these are the only surviving specimens of their exact types in the world. I'm 95% certain there are no other examples of either model on public display in the United States. I'm less certain about whether or not there are examples in either the Museo Navale or the Museo del Ejercito in Spain, but I've been through their catalogs and don't remember seeing anything similar. I should make it clear that I'm aware of many other Spanish bronze 4-pounder field and mountain guns both at the Naval Academy and in other public collections, and I think I have photgraphed most of them, but none I've seen were cast in exactly the same pattern as either of these guns.
Photo: The Painted Gun
The Painted Gun: From what I can see through the layer of paint, this weapon seems to retain all of the markings it would have had at the time it was first issued to the troops. The areas which normally are "hard hit" by atmospheric corrosion include particularly the relatively shallow, engraved markings on the chase and basering of a bronze gun. The chase of Spanish bronze cannon almost always bears a "given name" such as in this case, "San Telesforo." The basering (largest diameter of the gun near the breech) contains the identification of the foundry, usually by town name, sometimes the founder's name, often a heat number (similar to a lot number,) and the day, month, and year of casting. Although the paint has filled in some of the engraving (and preserved it as well) I can tell that most if not all of the original engraving would be legible if the paint were removed. Even fine details such as the "feathers" on either end of the name banner on the gun's chase, normally quick to fade due to corrosion, appear fully intact and sharply-defined under the paint. The ends of the trunnions contain information on the source of the copper, and the gun's weight. These marks are only partially visible due to immersion in concrete, but should be fully legible otherwise. The important basering marks on this gun, I'm fairly certain, read "_______ MANILA ?? (day) ENERO DE 1787." The first part of the inscription, now covered by paint, may be a Spanish word for "made" or "manufactured."
Photo: The Naked Gun
The Naked Gun: The porton of the trunnion markings which are above the concrete is quite legible. However the important marks on the basering are all but gone. I can make out what looks like "TRA??" on the basering and parts of other characters scattered along where the inscription would be. On the chase, the extreme right-hand end of the name banner, with some of the feathers, is still visible but I cannot make out any part of the gun's given name. Maybe about a foot toward the breech from the name banner, you can read the word "REGIS" at the end of a banner. It is quite possible that all of the markings could be read using forensic techniques, but this is all I could read using the zoom feature on the computer to enlarge the photographs. The particular Spanish Royal Coat of Arms cast in relief between the dolphins of the gun is similar in design and size to those I've seen on other smaller Spanish bronze cannons that had been cast in the Philippines. When I compared my photographs of the arms from 1986 and 2008, I could see that some bronze had been removed by corrosion, but the results were not dramatic, fortunately. The lines in the "castles" intended to mimic the appearance of stone blocks are much more faint than before, and the center element of the shield is much less prominent now. The overall style of the Naked Gun is similar to that of two much larger Spanish guns in the Yard, which were made by Phillip Alonso at the Spanish Cannon Foundry in Manila. Since that's the only clue I have as to the maker of this gun, I'll tentatively attribute it to Phillip Alonso.
Conclusion: A bronze cannon that is painted should not deteriorate as long as the coating of paint remains intact. This presumes all corrosion products are removed by some accepted process, such as blasting with walnut shell media, prior to painting, and that there are no corrosion-causing chemicals embedded in the surface of the bronze. Naked bronze will gradually be etched, removed and pitted by atmospheric elements, and the shallow engraving which bears vital information about the weapon will become illegible over time. I have reason to believe the atmospheric corrosion of exposed bronze is a progressive rather than a constant process.
My preference for painting the bronze flies in the face of the currently-preferred final treatment, namely application of
microcrystalline wax to a hot surface. The reason I recommend paint is simple. Properly-applied paint can last for decades,
whereas the wax will only protect the bronze for a year to 18 mos., from what I've read. I don't know enough to be in a position to recommend a particular type of paint, but I suspect the "Painted Gun" was painted with some very common oil-based paint. I would recommend using some type of paint that is fairly easy to remove in case such is requried at some point in the future. It goes without saying that before a cannon is painted, all reasonable efforts should be made to reveal and record any and all markings anywhere on the cannon. This includes forensic techniques such as those used to reveal the totally invisible "polished off" marks on the two Dahlgren boat howitzers at the Naval War College in Newport, RI. I'd avoid any exotic coatings such as epoxy paint, since those can be extremely difficult to remove. The military museums I have in mind while making this recommendation simply do not have the funding to repeat applications of wax year after year, that is out of the question. However, if funds could be obtained to clean and paint their valuable bronze weapons even once every 20 years, that would probably be sufficient to halt the ongoing destruction of these priceless National war trophies and works of art.
Slideshow, both guns
http://s17.photobucket.com/albums/b62/cannonmn/miscforumsetc/forums17/?action=view¤t=1aa626c8.pbw
