Revolutionary / War of 1812 Shot Bar Double Cannon Ball Chain Shot Sailing Ships

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About the Item

This is a 18th century circa 1776 heavy iron metal bar shot double cannon ball connected by a metal bar. It weighs a heavy 50 pounds (22.6796 kilos), measures 16 inches long (40.64 cm), each ball 5 inches (12.7 cm) in diameter. Bar Shot/Chain Shot In artillery, chain shot is a type of cannon projectile formed of two sub-calibre balls, or half-balls, chained together. Bar shot is similar, but joined by a solid bar. They were used in the age of sailing ships and black powder cannon to shoot masts, or to cut the shrouds and any other rigging of a target ship. When fired, after leaving the muzzle, the shot's components tumble in the air, and the connecting chain fully extends. In past use, as much as 1.8 m (6 ft) of chain would sweep through the target. However, the tumbling made both bar and chain shot less accurate, so they were used at shorter ranges. Chain shot was sometimes used on land as an anti-personnel load. It was used by the defenders of Magdeburg in May 1631 as an anti-personnel load, which, according to counselor Otto von Guericke, was one reason for the extreme violence of the victorious attackers. It was also used against Parliamentarians in the first English Civil War, and against Cromwell in Ireland at the siege of Clonmel in 1650, against the 76th Highlanders in India in 1803, by the French against the Dutch at the Battle of Waterloo,[6] and by Union troops at the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War. Naval warfare was a particularly bloody affair when it came down to trading blows, and pirate crews used every form of projectile they could get their hands on to get their point across. A favorite type of theirs was what is referred to as dismantling shot, or more commonly bar shot, and is thought to have been used to de-mast and disable the rigging of ships to slow them down and ultimately make a prize of them. This type of shot is the oldest and most common shot used with cannon other than your standard cannon ball. The weighted ends would cause the shot to travel through the air in an irregular pattern, tearing through spars, sails, rigging, or the unfortunate sailor in its path. After all, what’s a ship worth to a pirate if it sinks? Bar shot appears in a Castillo inventory of 1706, and like chain shot, was for specialized work like cutting a ship's rigging. Bar shot consisted of two spherical balls of shot joined together with a bar. The principle of these types of shot was that they could be fired at the masts and rigging of ships and their whirling action would mangle and ruin a ship's sails and rigging, or to destroy her masts and yards. A demoralizing weapon of sailing ships was chain shot, which was designed specifically to damage rigging. Fired from close range, chain shot featured two subcaliber iron balls (or half-balls) joined by a chain, sometimes as long as 1.8 meters (6 feet). A similar weapon, bar shot, consisted of two balls joined by a metal bar. Although highly inaccurate in aim, these projectiles could sweep across a ship’s deck to wreak havoc on anything in their path, including human limbs. Chain shot and bar shot lost their utility as ships became steam-powered. The 1743 edition of Ephraim Chambers “Cyclopaedia” describes bar shot as “…two bullets, or rather half bullets, joined together by an iron bar; serving to cut down masts, sails, etc…” This expands upon its definition from the earlier edition in 1728 which simply says, “Round shot, with a long spike of iron cast in it, as if it went through the middle of it.” Bar shot was a form of “battering projectile” in the 18th century and was created in a wide variety of different forms. Of those forms, only four distinct bar shot types have come to light thus far from Queen Anne’s Revenge. The first type has two whole cannon balls joined by a length of square bar in the middle. The next is half-round (hemi-spherical) shot, defined by two halves of a cannon ball with a square bar in between. The third type is hammer shot, which has two iron cylinders joined by a round or square bar. The final type found on QAR is one example of expanding bar shot, which has two hammer-headed ends joined by two lengths of round bar linked in the center, allowing the shot to be compressed for firing, but expanding out to almost three feet upon leaving the muzzle of the cannon. Within these four types, over 35 whole and broken bar shot have been recovered to date. The military usefulness of chain shot died out as wooden sail-powered ships were replaced with armored steamships - first among navies, and then among commercial fleets—which do not have rigging to serve as proper targets for chain-shot. Additionally, the conversion of naval armament from smoothbore, muzzle loaded, black powder cannon to rifled, breech-loaded guns further slowed the production of new chain shot ammunition; the chain would damage barrels (degrading maximum range, and further degrading effective range by degrading accuracy), and the new breech loading guns and their ammunition were meant to be effective against armored vessels as well as wooden sailing vessels.

Dimensions:
Height: 5 in (12.7 cm)Width: 16 in (40.64 cm)Depth: 5 in (12.7 cm)
Style:
American Colonial (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Metal
Place of Origin:
United States
Period:
Late 18th Century
Date of Manufacture:
circa 1776
Condition:
Wear consistent with age and use.
Seller Location:
Hamilton, CA
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU1355220769492

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