Читать книгу Men-of-War - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 7

The early guns had beautiful names like cannon-royal, cannon-serpentine, demi-culverin and falconet, but they had a bewildering variety of shot and charge; and since these weapons, together with basilisks, sakers and murdering-pieces might all be mounted on the same deck, it led to sad confusion in time of battle.

By the eighteenth century there were many fewer kinds, and they were called by the weight of the shot they fired: a first-rate, for example, carried 30 32-pounders on her lower deck, 28 24-pounders on her middle deck, 30 18-pounders on her upper deck, 10 12-pounders on her quarterdeck and 2 on her forecastle, thus firing a broadside of 1,158 lb. Everything was plain and straightforward: each deck had guns, shot, cartridges and wads of the same size; the guns could be supplied from the magazines as fast as the powder-boys could run; and all that remained was to fire them as quickly and accurately as possible.