Author Topic: Mortars in Nafplion, Greece (Read 1280 times)

Webleys · « **on:** January 03, 2010, 11:31:21 AM »

There were 4 of these just sitting in the city park...

About 10 inch bore, there were balls for them sitting all over town (not to mention the cool castle on the hill)!

If you right click the pictures and select "view image" they should come up full size, I've got more detailed pictures too.

BoomLover · « **Reply #1 on:** January 03, 2010, 12:28:25 PM »

Nice old Mortars! Thanks for posting them!

dan610324 · « **Reply #2 on:** January 03, 2010, 02:37:42 PM »

very beautiful
this can be interesting , anyone who got an idea of how they was fastened to the bed as the trunnions aint circular ??

webleys , are you there in Greece now ??
if you dont have any pictures of the trunnions , could you please take some

RocklockI · « **Reply #3 on:** January 03, 2010, 02:43:18 PM »

Maybe a semicircle ,a kind of horseshoe I'm sure they wanted to show the talons or .....no cap squares .

Just the weight of the thing to hold it .

KABAR2 · « **Reply #4 on:** January 03, 2010, 05:13:15 PM »

Very interesting, both are cast by the same foundy in 1670,

the winged lion associated with Saint Mark I believe is Venice Italy......

http://www.travelmuse.com/articles/venice/counting-lions

Are the other mortars the same date and founder?

KABAR2 · « **Reply #5 on:** January 03, 2010, 05:22:14 PM »

Francesco Mazzaroli 1670

The wallace collection has one of his cannon,

# Cannon
# Francesco Mazzaroli (active between: 1660 - 1710), (barrel)
# Venice and Florence, Italy
# 1688 and 1853 - 1854 (cannon barrel)
1853 - 1854 (gun-carriage)
# Bronze, steel, walnut and gold, carved and gilded
# Length: 139 cm, cannon barrel
Length: 3.8 cm, calibre, cannon barrel
Weight: 83.003 kg, cannon barrel
Length: 183 cm, gun-carriage
# Inscription: '10. MAZZAROLI . F . 1688'
Inscription: 'G. CIANI FERRO, QUESTO CARRO L 1854'
Inscription: 'F. QUESTO CARRO A. BARBETTI. IN. FL. L'. 1853'
# A1245
# European Armoury III

http://wallacelive.wallacecollection.org:8080/eMuseumPlus?service=RedirectService&sp=Scollection&sp=SfieldValue&sp=0&sp=3&sp=2&sp=Slightbox_3x4&sp=0&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=F

Another in Austria

http://books.google.com/books?id=0xYu9dtfsq8C&pg=PA387&lpg=PA387&dq=Francesco+Mazzaroli+1670&source=bl&ots=gDXrjdLn5G&sig=Qkk75N-U20hnmtzdeGJome8IpGE&hl=en&ei=EWtBS5mLGouuswOFi725BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CB4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Francesco%20Mazzaroli%201670&f=false

And if someone could translate German this looks like an interesting read...

http://books.google.com/books?id=Hdthed16BlIC&pg=PA131&lpg=PA131&dq=Francesco+Mazzaroli+1670&source=bl&ots=4J4OEDn-83&sig=Kha0rg5tqMV6ZImc2x9Fb5L941w&hl=en&ei=EWtBS5mLGouuswOFi725BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCkQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=Francesco%20Mazzaroli%201670&f=false

Webleys · « **Reply #6 on:** January 03, 2010, 07:54:09 PM »

Two of them are 1670 Mazzaroli, one is a 1669 Mazzaroli and one is, I think, Turkish 1669, I think that that's the Sultan's mark...

Two of them have round trunnions and two have the "claw leg" trunnions...

cannonmn · « **Reply #7 on:** January 03, 2010, 08:09:06 PM »

webleys, I can't view any of you photos except the last one, the claw-footed mortar. None in your initial post either, wonder why that is? All I get is a small horizontal sliver of each image. I usually see this stuff and someone else has trouble seeing it. Are you doing anything unusiual in posting those pix?

Even when I extract the bare url and send browser to that (such as http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/9351/img1375r.jpg) the same thing happens. All pop-ups are unblocked, and I try right-clicking "show picture" and it has no effect.

Webleys · « **Reply #8 on:** January 03, 2010, 08:48:18 PM »

I'm not doing anything strange with them, they're just posted to my account at ImageShack. I'd try again in the morning and maybe try rebooting the computer; and that's about the limit of my knowledge.

Is anyone else having trouble with the pictures.

We took a cruise in October starting in Istanbul and hit several of the Greek islands, Crete and Cairo, Egypt and ended up in Athens for a couple of days. A great trip, if somewhat pricey; but worth every penny!

Istanbul is great and the Turks are very helpful and friendly. Egypt was a filthy hellhole. The Greek Islands were, well, the Greek Islands; beautiful, covered in ancient ruins and full of friendly people and great food and wine.

Cannons that are rare here are pretty common there, these were in a museum fort in Crete, I think...

Rusty cannon need rusty balls (also Crete)...

I remember in 1985, walking around the harbor in Valletta, Malta and noticing that all the bollards that they were tying ships up to were cannons buried muzzle down about halfway in the concrete of the pier. Not to mention another pile of them behind a building in Fort St. Elmo (where they filmed "Midnight Express") on the harbor.

Makes me want to go over with a forklift and a freight container or two!

cannonmn · « **Reply #9 on:** January 04, 2010, 12:11:58 AM »

Strange, my computer will load the top 1/4 inch of the photo, then no more. I still try extracting the url of the photo and sending browser to it direct and same thing happens. This never happened to me before, I make sure popup blocker is off and I click on "show picture." No luck. Maybe I'll google imageshack and see if others have such a problem. Wonder if imageshack limits the account holder on bandwidth?

Bob Smith · « **Reply #10 on:** January 04, 2010, 02:01:18 AM »

I can see all the pictures. And very fine they are too. And very cheery to see in an ice-bound Yorkshire.

More guns and mortars by the same founder in the Tojhusmuseet in Copenhagen and in the naval Museum in Venice.

There is a link here to a short article in Italian on the Danish items:
http://www.armigeridelpiave.it/SELEZIONI/Copenaghen.pdf

Bob Smith

Double D · « **Reply #11 on:** January 04, 2010, 03:08:07 AM »

I'll bet the dial up guys are screaming right now.

The problem with the pictures is that they need resized. They are 36 in by 27 inch and 3.5 MB. The forum software is auto resizing these pictures every time they are displayed. That is why there is sluggishness. With your photo software resize the photo to 8 inches wide, height should auto resize. When I do this with my photo's I give the photo a suffix so I can tell full size picture for pictures for posting on line. Big Cannon.jpg becomes Big CannonBBS.jpg

The photo's also contained code that makes the pictures larger when the picture is clicked on. That code takes a lot of bandwidth and slows the page load even more. I edited that feature out of your post to help. It's still slow, just not as slow.

Webleys go into one of the post I have modified and see how the code should look for posting here. Also if you can go back and resize and repost your pictures

You have some great pictures by the way!

Those of you having problem seeing these pictures, either right click the red x's and choose show pictures or hit the refresh button. If you computer time out before the picture fully loads, there is not much I can do short of pulling the pictures down, to help you. I suppose I could pull them down and resize them myself and repost, but I haven't even had first cup of coffee yet.

Webleys · « **Reply #12 on:** January 04, 2010, 05:35:08 AM »

Double D

Thanks for resizing those, I'm always torn between detail and file size. I'm still able to get the full size picture by right clicking and selecting "view image" (Firefox).

I sometimes use the "Thumbnail" feature but a lot of people won't click on them.

Greg

Double D · « **Reply #13 on:** January 04, 2010, 06:03:15 AM »

I didn't resize those pictures, they still are 36 inches wide and 3.5 MB. I just took the bandwidth eating widgets out. Just resize with your photo software to no more than 8 inches wide for post in the board and they will be just fine. Right now they are still slow to load.

Posting large pictures on the net doesn't get much more detail it just bogs the system down. If there is some feature in your picture you want to show, it's better to just crop the feature and post it.

Cannoneer · « **Reply #14 on:** January 04, 2010, 06:56:23 AM »

Thanks for these posts, Webleys; viewing Venetian mortars is always a pleasure, and these are some beauties.

cannonmn · « **Reply #15 on:** January 04, 2010, 08:44:56 AM »

Quote

I sometimes use the "Thumbnail" feature but a lot of people won't click on them.

At least those folks get to see what the thing looks like, I still can't get anything. I'm on DSL and have never had that trouble before. Don't know what it is.

Double D · « **Reply #16 on:** January 04, 2010, 10:01:09 AM »

Okay its fixed now!

I also reoriented the sideways one!

Only thing I did was to resize all of the pictures to 8 inches wide

cannonmn · « **Reply #17 on:** January 04, 2010, 04:31:01 PM »

Thanks DD, I can see 'em now! Eureka!

cannonmn · « **Reply #18 on:** January 04, 2010, 04:33:36 PM »

Quote

Turkish 1669, I think that that's the Sultan's mark...

It's called a Tughra.

Webleys · « **Reply #19 on:** January 04, 2010, 11:35:22 PM »

Quote from: Double D on January 04, 2010, 10:01:09 AM

Okay its fixed now!

I also reoriented the sideways one!

Only thing I did was to resize all of the pictures to 8 inches wide

Thanks!

If anyone wants the full size pictures just PM me and I'll email them to you.

I've made all these pictures public at ImageShack, you should be able to get there by clicking on this one...

cannonmn · « **Reply #20 on:** January 05, 2010, 03:01:02 AM »

Quote

I've made all these pictures public at ImageShack, you should be able to get there by clicking on this one...

Thanks, I expect a number of other folks will have same luck with yr Imageshack as me, simply too large to show up. I have a new fast computer and DSL connection and the pix simply wont' show up no matter what. The shrunk versions DD provided do come thru however, from the board.

BoomLover · « **Reply #21 on:** January 05, 2010, 07:46:02 PM »

Went to your ImageShack, took a couple of seconds to load each one, but once loaded, first time every time...great photos, next trip, bring a few back! Nice workshop projects for a few wet winter nights...BoomLover

Cannoneer · « **Reply #22 on:** January 05, 2010, 09:24:46 PM »

Ditto, BoomLover!
Was able to view fine details, like the human/mythical head on one of the Mazzaroli mortars, where the mouth was formed around the touch hole. I also found it interesting that the Ottoman mortar seems to have thicker walls than the Venice made mortars.

A few of the older photos helped refresh my memory; you're the same Webleys that has been on this board for quite some time, and also the same Webleys that likes to discharge fire breathing mortars that expel meteoric bowling balls. Thanks for the photos.

Webleys · « **Reply #23 on:** January 06, 2010, 09:07:12 AM »

Quote from: Boom J on January 05, 2010, 09:24:46 PM

Ditto, BoomLover!
Was able to view fine details, like the human/mythical head on one of the Mazzaroli mortars, where the mouth was formed around the touch hole. I also found it interesting that the Ottoman mortar seems to have thicker walls than the Venice made mortars.

A few of the older photos helped refresh my memory; you're the same Webleys that has been on this board for quite some time, and also the same Webleys that likes to discharge fire breathing mortars that expel meteoric bowling balls. Thanks for the photos.

That's me, but I'm trying to be good about that here!

We'd like to get back to Athens and Nafplion is only about 75 miles away by road; we didn't get up to the castle this time but if you look at in Google Earth it's pretty extensive. I can see the park the mortars are in but the resolution isn't good enough to actually see see the mortars.

Here's the Google fix... "Kolokotronis statue in Nafplio" lat=37.565862, lon=22.80236