The ArchivesThemesWeapons and Gunnery
Weapons and Gunnery
The apparatus of armed force carried in a ship between about 1690 and 1725: great guns, swivels, powder and shot, muskets, pistols, cutlasses, axes and grenadoes. Pirate companies armed for the boarding fight and were broken by the artillery duel.
Also writtenPirate armament; Great guns and small arms; Shipboard ordnance; Naval gunnery in the golden age
Weapons and gunnery is the apparatus of armed force carried in a ship between about 1690 and 1725: the great guns on their carriages, the swivel pieces on the rails, the muskets, pistols, cutlasses and axes, and the grenadoes thrown by hand. Two ways of using it competed, the artillery duel and the boarding fight. Pirate companies were armed for the second and broken by the first. The campaign that broke them is set out under naval suppression.
The excavated battery
Shipwreck 31CR314 in Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, is identified by the excavating agency as Queen Anne's Revenge. Twenty-four cast-iron pieces had been located there as of 2005, five of them cleaned and analysed for the excavator's report of 2009: two six-pounders, a four-pounder, a one-pounder and a half-pounder, the longest 7.5 feet and the shortest 3.5 feet, English metal beside a Swedish piece cast in 1713. Nothing of eight pounds shot or heavier is reported among them, and on the excavator's reading the vessel is at minimum a twenty-gun ship. Four of the five came up loaded, one six-pounder holding cartridge, wads and ball, the one-pounder holding powder, a ball and three wrought-iron bolts bundled in as langrage. Of forty iron shot analysed, nearly sixty per cent are of six-pounder size, and one is a twenty-four pounder with no matching gun on the site. No grapeshot and no canister are reported.1
Swivels
The General History counts swivels separately from carriage guns when it gives the armament of Lowther's and Low's small craft: a hundred ton sloop mounted with eight carriage and ten swivel guns, the sloop Ranger with ten guns and eight swivels. A company with more swivels than carriage guns expected to fight men rather than ships.
Boarding against gunnery
Three named officers of HMS Swallow, deposing at the Cape Coast trial, described the pirate Ranger on 5 February 1722 firing four chase guns, hoisting a black flag at the mizen peak and getting her spritsail yard under the bowsprit for boarding, the observable preparation for laying alongside. On 10 February, off Cape Lopez, the same men recorded that their fire slackened because the pirate lay so far ahead on the weather bow that few of their guns could point to her. John Atkins, the Swallow's surgeon, wrote in 1735 that the pirates "neither killed nor wounded us a man in taking them."2
On the deponents' account it was relative position, rather than any total of guns, that governed how many pieces could be brought to bear. Broadside guns in fixed ports had a narrow arc.
The two forty-gun counts
Gun counts in this period are what somebody said, and the two famous figures stand on different ground. The Royal Fortune's forty guns are recited in the Cape Coast indictment and sworn to by the Swallow's officers. The forty guns of the Queen Anne's Revenge come from later writers, no period gun count for her having been found; in the available transcription the 1724 text reads that Thache mounted no guns aboard the captured Guineaman, which sits badly with the same narrative's action against a thirty-gun man of war.3
Slings, grenadoes and the fatal shot
The most reproduced images of pirate armament come from one book. Thache wore three brace of pistols in action and Bartholomew Roberts two pair on a silk sling; its commentary on article V of Roberts's articles adds the thirty pound pistols and the coloured ribbons, and the case bottles of powder and scrap thrown at Ocracoke in 1718 come from it as well. Roberts died in the action of 10 February 1722. That grapeshot took him in the throat is Johnson's, and neither the deposition printed a few pages later in the same volume nor the eyewitness surgeon's narrative mentions it.4
No period gunner's manual was read, so nothing said about serving a gun is verified from drill, and no naval log or ordnance return was seen. The Whydah's ordnance has no technical literature at all, no corroboration of the pistol sling outside the 1724 book has been found, and the stinkpot, a fixture of popular accounts, does not occur in the 1724 General History searched in full, and no golden-age Atlantic instance of it has been found elsewhere.
What the evidence does not settle
Bartholomew Roberts's death
- Roberts was reportedly killed by grapeshot to the throatPossible
Pistol slings
- The pistol slings worn by Teach and Roberts are uncorroboratedPossible
The stinkpot
- Whether stinkpots appear in any Golden Age primary account
Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.
Sources for this record
Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.
- The best excavated golden-age pirate armament is shipwreck 31CR314 in Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, which the excavating agency identifies as Queen Anne's Revenge: twenty-four cast-iron pieces had been located there as of 2005, of which five were cleaned and analysed, two six-pounders, a four-pounder, a one-pounder and a half-pounder ranging from 7.5 feet down to 3.5 feet in length and of English and Swedish origin, one Swedish piece cast in 1713; four of the five were recovered loaded, one six-pounder with cartridge, wads and ball and the one-pounder with powder, a ball and three wrought-iron bolts bundled as langrage; of forty iron shot analysed nearly sixty per cent are of six-pounder size and one is a twenty-four pounder for which the site holds no matching gun; no grapeshot and no canister are reported; and on the excavator's reading the vessel would be considered at minimum a twenty-gun ship. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Modern archaeology: Nathan C. Henry, Analysis of Armament from Shipwreck 31CR314, Queen Anne's Revenge Site, North Carolina Underwater Archaeology Branch, QAR Technical Series, June 2009, for the pieces located and analysed as of 2005, their calibres, lengths and founders, the loaded contents, the langrage and the minimum twenty-gun reading; Nathan C. Henry, Iron Shot from Shipwreck 31CR314, Queen Anne's Revenge Site, January 2011, for the forty analysed shot, the poundage distribution, the anomalous twenty-four pounder and the absence of grapeshot and canister
- The sworn evidence of three named officers of HMS Swallow, printed in the record of the Cape Coast trial, records the pirate Ranger on 5 February 1722 firing four chase guns, hoisting a black flag at the mizen peak and getting her spritsail yard under the bowsprit for boarding, and records that in the action of 10 February the Swallow's own fire slackened because the pirate was shot so far ahead on the weather bow that few of her guns could point to her; John Atkins, surgeon of the Swallow, wrote in his printed narrative of 1735 that the pirates "neither killed nor wounded us a man in taking them". Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Trial pamphlet and period narrative: A General History of the Pyrates, 2nd edn, London, printed for T. Warner, 1724, in the printed Cape Coast proceedings it carries, the deposition of Isaac Sun, Ralph Baldrick and Daniel Maclaughlin; John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil and the West Indies, in His Majesty's Ships, the Swallow and Weymouth, London, 1735; A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies
- The archive's two best known pirate gun counts rest on evidence of quite different weight: the Royal Fortune's forty guns are recited in the sworn Cape Coast indictment and deposed to by the officers of HMS Swallow; the forty guns of the Queen Anne's Revenge come from later writers, no period gun count for her having been found, the available transcription of the 1724 narrative reading instead that Teach mounted no guns aboard the captured Guineaman, a reading in tension with the same narrative's account of an action against a thirty-gun man of war and unresolved until an original page is inspected. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Trial pamphlet and period narrative: A General History of the Pyrates, 1724, for the Cape Coast indictment and the officers' deposition on the Royal Fortune of forty guns, and for the "mounted no Guns" reading
- The most reproduced images of pirate armament come from the 1724 General History alone and no corroboration of them has been found: the slings of pistols worn in action, three brace for Edward Teach and two pair on a silk sling for Bartholomew Roberts, appear four times in that book and no independent corroboration has been found; the pistols sold for thirty or forty pounds a pair and the coloured ribbons are the compiler's commentary on article V of Roberts's articles rather than the text of the article; the case bottles filled with powder, small shot and pieces of lead thrown at Ocracoke in November 1718 are that book's description; and the grapeshot that struck Roberts in the throat on 10 February 1722 is one sentence in the same book, unmentioned in the sworn deposition printed a few pages later in the same volume and absent from John Atkins's eyewitness narrative of 1735, though that Roberts died in the action is not in doubt. Possible Consistent with the evidence, not established. Period narrative of contested reliability: A General History of the Pyrates, 2nd edn, London, printed for T. Warner, 1724, for the four sling passages, the commentary on article V, the case bottle grenadoes at Ocracoke and the grape-shot sentence; the deposition of Isaac Sun, Ralph Baldrick and Daniel Maclaughlin printed in the same volume, and John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, 1735, for the absence of the wound and of grapeshot