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The carronade is a short smoothbore, cast iron cannon, which was used by the Royal Navy and first produced by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, UK. It was used from the 1770s to the 1850s. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range anti-ship and anti-crew weapon. While considered very successful early on, carronades eventually disappeared as rifled naval artillery changed the shape of the shell and led to fewer and fewer close-range engagements. == History == The carronade was designed as a short-range naval weapon with a low muzzle velocity for merchant ships, but also found a niche role on warships. It was produced by the Carron ironworks and at first sold as a system with the gun, mounting and shot all together. The standard package of shot per gun was 25 roundshot, 15 barshot, 15 double-headed shot, 10 "single" grapeshot and 10 "single" canister shot. "Single" meant the shot weighed the same as the roundshot, while some other canister and grapeshot were also included which weighed one and a half times the roundshot. The advantages for merchant ships are described in an advertising pamphlet of 1779.〔. An Attempt to improve the Method of Arming Trading Vessels. With a description of the carronade, and some hints concerning shot. The third edition Falkirk, 1779.〕 Production of both shot and gun by the same firm immediately allowed a reduction in the windage, the gap between the bore of the gun and the diameter of the ball. The mounting, attached to the side of the ship on a pivot, took the recoil on a slider. The reduced recoil did not alter the alignment of the gun. The smaller gunpowder charge reduced the guns' heating in action. The pamphlet advocated the use of woollen cartridges, which, although more expensive, eliminated the need for wadding and worming. Simplifying gunnery for comparatively untrained merchant seamen in both aim and reloading was part of the rationale for the gun. The replacement of trunnions by a bolt underneath, to connect the gun to the mounting, reduced the width of the carriage enhancing the wide angle of fire. A merchant ship would almost always be running away from its target, so a wide angle of fire was much more important than on a warship. A carronade weighed a quarter as much and used a quarter to a third of the gunpowder charge for a long gun firing the same cannonball.〔p 84 J. Guillmartin "Ballistics in the Black Powder era" p 73-98 in ROYAL ARMOURIES CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS.; British naval armament 1600-1900; London, 1987; Nov, 1989,〕 Its invention is variously ascribed to Lieutenant General Robert Melville in 1759, or to Charles Gascoigne, manager of the Carron Company from 1769 to 1779. In its early years the weapon was sometimes called a "mellvinade" or alternatively, a "gasconade".〔Kincaid (2007), 116.〕 The carronade can be seen as the culmination of an evolutionary process of naval guns reducing the barrel length and gunpowder charge. The Carron Company was already selling a "new light-constructed" gun, two-thirds of the weight of the standard naval gun and charged with one sixth of the weight of ball in powder before it introduced the carronade, which further halved the gunpowder charge.〔 The reduced charge allowed carronades to have a shorter length and much lighter weight than long guns. Inside the gun barrel, increasing the size of the bore, and ball, reduces the required length of barrel. The force acting on the ball is proportional to the square of the diameter while the mass of the ball rises by the cube, acceleration is slower; the barrel can be shorter and therefore lighter. Long guns were also excessively heavy in comparison to a carronade because they were over-specified, being capable of being double shotted whereas to do this in a carronade was dangerous. A ship could carry more carronades, or carronades of a larger caliber, 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, which was very important for merchant ships, and they were faster to reload. Carronades initially became popular on British merchant ships during the American Revolutionary War. A lightweight gun that needed only a small gun crew and was devastating at short range was a weapon well suited to defending merchant ships against French and American privateers. The French came in possession of their first carronades in December 1779 with the capture of the brig ''Finkastre'' by the frigate ''Précieuse'', but the weapon was judged ineffective and was not adopted at the time.〔()〕 However, in the Action of 4 September 1782, the impact of a single carronade broadside fired at close range by the frigate HMS ''Rainbow'' under Henry Trollope caused a wounded French captain to capitulate and surrender the ''Hébé'' after a short fight.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://ageofsail.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/introducing-the-carronade-all-carronades-all-the-time/ )〕 The Royal Navy was initially reluctant to adopt the guns, mainly due to mistrust of the Carron Company, which had developed a reputation for incompetence and commercial sharp practice.〔Rodger (2004), p.420〕 Carronades were not even counted in numbering the guns of a ship. It was Lord Sandwich who eventually started mounting them in place of the light guns on the forecastle and quarterdeck of ships. They soon proved their effectiveness in battle. French gun foundries were unable to produce equivalents for twenty years,〔 so carronades gave British warships a significant tactical advantage during the latter part of the 18th century — though French ships mounted another type of weapon in the same role, the ''obusier de vaisseau''. HMS ''Victory'' used the two 68-pounder carronades which she carried on her forecastle to great effect at the Battle of Trafalgar, clearing the gun deck of the ''Bucentaure'' by firing a round shot and a keg of 500 musket balls through the ''Bucentaures stern windows. The carronade was initially very successful and widely adopted, and a few experimental ships (for example, HMS ''Glatton'' and HMS ''Rainbow''〔) were fitted with a carronade-only armament. ''Glatton'', a fourth-rate ship with 56 guns, had a more destructive broadside than HMS ''Victory'', a first-rate ship with 100 guns. Although ''Glatton'' and ''Rainbow'' were both successful in battle, the carronade's lack of range against an opponent who could keep well clear and still use his long guns was an arguable tactical disadvantage of this arrangement. In the 1810s and 1820s, tactics started to place a greater emphasis on the accuracy of long-range gunfire, and less on the weight of a broadside. Indeed, Captain David Porter of USS ''Essex'' complained when the navy replaced his 12-pounder long guns with 32-pounder carronades. The carronade disappeared from the Royal Navy from the 1850s after the development of steel-jacketed cannon by William George Armstrong and Joseph Whitworth. Carronades were nevertheless still used in the American Civil War in the 1860s. The last known use of a carronade in conflict was during the First Boer War. In the siege of Potchefstroom the Boers used 'Ou Griet', an antique carronade mounted on a wagon axle, against the British fort.〔() Major D.D. Hall: The Artillery of the First Anglo-Boer War 1880 - 1881〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Carronade」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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