At the time of the original posting of this thread I contacted a Mr. Peter Winterbottom, who was at that time the Honorable Secretary of the Society for Nautical Research, which is an organization that raises money to care for the HMS Victory among other things. He responded to my questions like a very gracious English gentleman, and although he didn't have specific knowledge of the Victory's current armament, or how the salute was carried out, he did supply me with the name and email address of the "Keeper and Curator of the HMS Victory," whom he informed me, would be certain to have the information I was looking for. I sent four or five different emails to Mr. Peter Goodwin, the curator of the Victory at the time, and also a widely acknowledged author of books on the history of sailing warships, but he was evidently too involved with these other endeavors, to take the time to respond.
The other day I was looking for information about the age of sail, and came across a website that contained this listing of the iron cannon still on board the HMS Victory while on display in dry dock.
"Victory's existing iron guns
There are 12 iron Napoleonic guns remaining on board the Victory today: 9 x 32 pounders on the lower gun deck, and 3 x 24 pounders on the middle gun deck. Each are of the Blomefield pattern, designed by Sir Thomas Blomefield, the Inspector Governor of Ordnance.
It is very unlikely that any of these guns were in the ship at Trafalgar as all were removed in 1806 when the ship was repaired. From the records the existing iron guns were put into the ship on 5 April 1808 when the ship was re-arming for deployment in the Baltic, and inspected by the Inspector of Ordnance two days later.
When guns were put into a ship, a record was made of the manufacturers name and the gun's individual number.
Manufacturers names, in the abbreviated form, were generally marked on the left trunnion. The 12 iron guns have the following marks:
W.Co. - Walker & Company, of Rotheram, Yorkshire.
H.Co. - James Henckle & Company, Wandsworth, London
ACB. - Alexander Brodie, on the River Severn
Ten of the eleven iron guns, cast by Walker & Company, are fitted with copper vent bushes, an innovation that was intoduced after Trafalgar. Guns fitted with copper vent bushes are stamped 'CVC' on top of the cascable. The twelfth gun, the 24 pounder sited near the entrance of the Victory Gallery, Royal Navy Museum, cast by Alexander Brodie has an iron vent bush.
The dockside guns
The 21 guns sited on the dockside around the Victory are short barrelled 32 pounders made during the reign of George III, but were not issued until after his death. These guns, dated either 1847 or 1848, most were manufactured by Henckle & Co. were used as the saluting battery on board the Victory when she was moored in Portsmouth harbour. These guns fired the salute to Queen Victoria on the occasion of her Coronation and also fired when her funeral Cortege passed HMS Victory on its way from the Isle of Wight for her burial. All these guns were removed from the ship in 1922."
All the other guns that are displayed on the HMS Victory's decks are replicas.