"Heavy and Light gun carriages" Topic

So I often read about the term heavy and light gun carriages during the F&I and Rev war periods, but am not cleat what that exactly means.

I get that bronze tubes weighed more than iron ones.

That longer tubes have more range, and more weight.

But I am not as clear as to what makes a 12lbs (or 6, or whatever) carriage light or heavy? Further, what is the benefit of one over the other?

Thoughts?

A mess. Then you get same calibers with longer heavier tubes, such as the heavy French 4lb used as battery guns during the 7yw. So for range and use knowing if light or heavy carriage might matter.

What difference does the weight of the carriage make to the effectiveness of the gun?
Except perhaps a heavier carriage might absorb more of the recoil and allow easier gun laying for subsequent shots.

Heavy carriage = heavier barrel= longer or bigger gun.

I'm not sure there is a correlation between length of barrel and carriage type.

During the Waterloo Campaign, the French 1st Corps had twelve 24 lb howitzers, and 6 spare 24 lb howitzer carriages.

Source: Dawson, "Napoleon's Waterloo Army"

A 2:1 ratio like that makes you think the carriages were prone to breakage. The ratio of the lighter 6 lb guns to spare carriages was about 4:1.

BTW bronze barrels are lighter than iron.

"the gun carriages and ammunition carriages should be lightened as much as is consistent with their necessary strength, both in reference to the shock of firing, and jolting of travelling."

Recommended improvements in-
'Remarks on the Organization of the Corps of Artillery in the British Service'

Sir Augustus Simon FRAZER

There were basically two types of artillery for land service: light artillery and heavy artillery.

Light artillery and field artillery are synonymous and the largest piece for field service would be a 12-pounder.

Howitzers for field service would usually be no larger than 5.5-inch or 6-inch pieces.

The gun carriage size and weight would correspond to the weight of the piece.

Light, or field, artillery would be composed of foot artillery, horse artillery, and mountain artillery.

Iron is a lighter metal than bronze, but because of its brittleness and tendency to rupture/explode when firing, more iron had to be used in the construction of iron pieces than for bronze. Iron was useful in heavy artillery and naval artillery, but for field artillery bronze was the preferred metal.

The shock of firing howitzers was hard on the gun carriages and their repair and replacement was done more often than for long guns.

Field artillery came into use in the 1740s with the Prussian innovations, and then in the 1750s with the Austrian equivalent. The French did not have field artillery until the Gribeauval reforms of the 1760s. The British 6-pounder battalion gun of the 1770s was an excellent piece of field artillery and was used throughout the War of the Revolution.

Heavy artillery was composed of siege artillery, fortress artillery, and garrison artillery.

Jcfrog said:

"Heavy carriage = heavier barrel= longer or bigger gun."

I'm going to circle back on this as there might indeed by something to this idea. I hope to find out more when I contact some of the people who actually make gun carriages and fittings.

For an answer, you might want to go to the period artillery manuals for that is where the answer lies. The tables for the various pieces of equipment is where you need to look.

I can only vouch for the British side of things but they seem to be actually different artillery pieces? In his list of requirements for the attack on Menorca, Stuart specifically asks for light 6pdrs and medium 12pdrs.

They are two different field pieces and would have two different gun carriages.

Heavy carriage = heavier barrel= longer or bigger gun.

The gun tubes of the same or similar calibers might have different weights. That would depend on the standard of how the gun tubes were constructed and then cast. For example, the Austrian 6-pounder and the Prussian 6-pounder were constructed with different standard weights, which was usually expressed as how many pounds of metal were used per pound of round.

The new French Gribeauval field pieces, ca 1763, were shorter and lighter than the older Valliere pieces that they replaced. And that was for the 'three calibers'-4-, 8-, and 12-pounders.

And the new gun carriages of the Gribeauval system were also lighter than those of the Valliere system and they were uniformly constructed, where the Valliere gun carriages were not. The Gribeauval gun carriages had interchangeable parts, and were built to strict standards in the armories and foundries-the Valliere gun carriages did/were not.

@historygamer,

You may want to have a look at my Blogs' article on British SYW ordnance.
crogges7ywarmies.blogspot.com
I illustrated the 2 types of carriages for the field artillery.
A) The heavy "travelling carriages" for the old heavy range of cannon which was design-wise inspired by the French Vallière system and in use well into the napoleonic period. After the SYW almost exlusively as siege artillery, not so much as field arty.
B) The light field carriages for the light brass range of cannons. I present only the 6 & 12 pounder, as these were the only models fielded in Germany, but the entire range from 3 to 24 pdr was fielded in America, as I only recently learned. In America, the guns fielded were often also taken from the armament of ships. These would then have been cast iron guns. Braddocks' army of 1754 or 1755 (cannot spell the name of the campaign) had several 12-pdr ship guns (iron) mounted on heavy traveling carriages for their mobilization.

Cheers,
Christian

Good stuff there. I have some more to add from one of the gentlemen who helped reproduce the artillery train at Fort Ligonier.

Monongahela- Say it loud, it's like music playing. Say it soft….

Those of us from Pittsburgh just call in the Mon.

Here is the response I got from a gentleman that (in part) makes his living helping to make recreated period artillery:

"The carriages don't change, just the barrel. Muller lists light, medium, and heavy guns. Muller all lists field carriages to have 50" diameter wheels regardless of the barrel size. What changes is the thickness of the fellows, spokes and hubs and the carriage wood. Same for Traveling carriages, 58 inch diameter wheels for all, size of gun determines the thickness of the wood, for the carriage as well as the wheels. If I remember correctly, there is no difference for light, medium & heavy variations of all the guns. Then there's Congreve and his experimental carriages. His light 6 "battalion gun" carriage was a hybrid between Muller's field and traveling carriages, wheel size at 54", a bit longer carriage do accommodate the wheels, no shot lockers but planks to keep the side boxes and the limber is a lot different.

Also, I have not seen documentation for galloper carriages having been built or used in North America. It is an idea Muller proposed. Other artillerists I have spoken to have not seen concrete documentation for its use either.

The light 6's that I am dealing with are bronze. I am uncertain of the name variations in regard to iron. I think they were doing light heavy and medium both iron and bronze, trying to faze out iron for field use. Keeping the iron guns for garrison and ship use. The newer bronze barrels were shorter than the older iron barrels. How much, I don't know. Muller recommended the ships guns be switched to bronze as well. I think the guys at Woolwich were slow to make any changes. Also if the gun was still usable, it was used. Also, if I remember correctly, the 2 guns taken up Mt. Defiance were listed as medium 12's."

Also, I have not seen documentation for galloper carriages having been built or used in North America. It is an idea Muller proposed. Other artillerists I have spoken to have not seen concrete documentation for its use either.

Contemporary references to ‘gallopers' are elusive. In Stephen Strach's 1986 survey of Verbruggen guns used in North America the term does not appear once. David McConnell in his 1988 survey of British smoothbore artillery, observed that it is not clear how extensively galloper carriages were used in America.

The drawing in Congreve's 1783 MSS folio, of a Townshend 3-pounder rigged up to travel "as a galloper" has caused particular confusion. Not only do we have little evidence of the system actually being employed, it is not a galloper gun as commonly understood, and is obviously not intended to operate on the battlefield.

There is evidence of 'gallopers' in British use during the 1740s, in Flanders and during the '45 in Scotland. These were very light pieces able to follow the infantry at a walking pace but which, it was concluded, did not deliver sufficient firepower to merit the diversion of man, horse or powder and they fell out of use. Clearly, however, the concept of a light gun without limber remained of sufficient interest for Johan Muller to discuss it in 1757 and the term 'galloper' was still sufficiently current for Congreve to use it in the 1770s.

Monongahela (written myself—no copy paste here!). Thats what I meant. Thanks 42flanker. Admitted, not more of a tongue twister as the Susquehanna.

The following sources might be helpful:

-The Book of the Continental Soldier by Harold Peterson, Chapter 5.

-A Treatise of Artillery 1780 by John Muller, Part IV: Construction of Ship and Travelling Carriages. The dimensions of field carriages are in a table on page 112.

On page 115, Muller comments on galloper gun carriages:

'There is one gun carriage more, which is called Galloper; it serves for a pound and a half gun. This carriage has shafts so as to be drawn without a limber, and is thought by some artillerists to be more convenient and preferable to other field carriages: and as it may likewise serve for our light three and six pounders, we shall give the following' The following being a table of dimensions of the galloper gun carriage. Plate XIII is on the previous page which illustrates the side and top views of the gun carriage.

There are two other useful sources for the period:

-Grasshoppers and Butterflies: The light 3-pounders of Pattison and Townsend by Adrian Caruana.

-The Light 6-pounder Battalion Gun of 1776 by Adrian Caruana.

@crogge1757- Christian,I finally had the wit to look at the 31st January post in your blog that you linked above, I enjoy your elegant illustrations very much.

You mentioned the possibiity that the 14 3-pounder battalion guns listed as attached to 14 British infantry regiments in the 1747 OB for the Imperial & Allied Army might have been mounted on ‘Galloper' carriages.

This is a subject I have been looking into with reference to later in the C18th and my knowledge with relation to the WoAS and 7YW period is sketchy, so I would appreciate your insight.

The Muller drawing from 1757 of a Galloper carriage is for 'a pound and a half gun' as he puts it, and I suppose it's a fair assumption that the sketch was made using one of the carriages remaining in store from their use in the 1740s.

In his text, Muller goes on to sa "it may likewise serve for our light three and six pounders.' That suggested to me that at the time he was writing, ten years later, the suitablity of the ''galloper' carriage (whether extant or scaled up) for the heavier, more powerful guns had yet to be examined.

It seemed to me the reason he included a drawing of the carriage used previously with 1 1/2 pdrs was simply because some artillerists (perhaps himself included) still believed that, despite the marginal impact of the 1 1/2 pdr gallopers in Flanders, the usefulness of a gun drawn without a limber, to which horses could be harnessed directly, had not been explored fully.

I suppose an important question would be, were there no existing light carriages on which the 3 pdr battalion guns might have been mounted for use with the infantry in 1747?

There are some very good write ups about 18th century artillery here: link

@42flanker,
I should do an update to my article. My speculating galloper carriages may have served to mount the 3-prs in 1747 was based on my assuming light 3-pdrs were in use by this time. Further below in my article I have illustrated the heavy 3-pdr which should be the piece fielded as battalion gun during this campaign & also before. In Muller's 1768 edition p. 179 table has an entry of 26 pieces with a draught of 4 horses each with the army in Flandres 1747. I'm most certain it was the 6 foot barrel piece here. Dimension and weight wise not so different from the French Vallière 4-pdr.

Cheers,
Christian