Volunteers at Explosion! the Museum of Naval Firepower, at Priddy’s Hard in Gosport, have recently completed another restoration project, an 18th Century Carronade.
The Carronade was a powerful, close range, smasher weapon which proved devastatingly successful during ‘broad side’ sea battles such as Trafalgar. Often loaded with canvas bags containing hundreds of musket balls, the carronade would effectively clear the decks of enemy ships leading to the French naming them the ‘devil gun’.
This superb example took the conservation team two months to restore using materials recycled from previous projects.
