Bronze cannon for possible ID
 

I wonder if the guys within this area are around ...
This cannon was found some thirty years ago at 3 Kilometers from my hometown (Portugal Northern coast), a couple hundred meters from the shore.
A couple young divers, maybe for reasons due to its large dimensions (some 3 meters) decided to give it to the local Naval club; not without resistance from the next city and even Lisbon Museums.
It has been placed at the inland historical club entrance for some thirty years and later moved to the club's marina restaurant entrance, a much more recent construction.
For reasons connected with lack of investigation interest, neither the divers nor the club management (a rather small institution) ever cared to identify this cannon which, in my humble opinion, belonged in a foreigner ship. All i managed to know so far is that there are more where this one came from, although of cast iron, reason why the young divers had no interest in bringing them up, aware that special equipment and immediate treatment were required.
I have taken a couple poor pictures with the intention to post them here in the forum, with the remote hope that its details would sufficient to identify its possible age and provenance.


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So ... no gunners around ? :o .
Here is the poorest atempt in dechipering those letters, which meaning ... has no meaning to me :shrug:

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If it wasnt for the inconvenient couple of letters in the middle it would be 'IRA DEI ' ..wrath of God , which seems a great name for a cannon !

To my untrained eye, it looks like the ending is an 'EU' vs 'EI". The last identified letter seems to curve that way. Perhaps ending in '-eus', like 'Perseus' or "Maritaneus'. The construction of the gun itself, being bronze and relatively plain compared to most Spanish and Portuguese pieces makes me think another nation. As most nations highly decorated their pieces, could this perhaps be from one of Portugal's colonies? I keep thinking that it looks rather like many of the early petraroes I've seen. Not as decorative as the lantakas, more plain, but some were undecorated I believe. The Portuguese and Dutch were throughout Indonesia and Borneo. Could it have been made in Brunei or being shipped to such places? Very much thinking aloud, so don't mind me!

Just noticed that the trunnions are not centered on the sides of the barrel. We see this on smaller swivel guns and cannons meant to be angled sharply downwards on a ship. Perhaps this detail may help in identifying nation?

Thank you for the nice suggestion :cool: , although assuming the extra letters impede such composition. Even probable Latin subsidiaries, like Castillian (LA IRA DE DIOS) and Portuguese (IRA DE DEUS) don't do it :shrug: .

Ah, Captain ... i though you'd never come :D
Not that my eyes are sharper than yours (much older than you ;) ) but i don't see in the faded letters the kind of composition you are aiming at :o .
I agree that Portuguese (and Spanish) guns would have more decoration, Royal insignias and all. But when you think about great conflicts requiring gun casting under emergency needs, i don't know.
One non solid possibility is that this cannon was equiping a ship of the Invencible Armada which, after all odds, ended up wrecking all over. The basic fleet departure was Lisbon and the return of the surviving ships was in Galicia, not far from my hometown.
... And it is assumed that a great number of the Spanish cannons were made in a hurry and assumedly of low quality.
Yes, we had foundries in Asia (Goa and so), but i don't see them cannons coming all the way to wreck in my shore; and those would be also decorated all the same ... or again, not.
One detail that would put some light into this is the lower short inscription; not being the casting date, as the figures look more like letters than numbers, it could be the foundry place.
Not sure whether the trunions are not centered, or passive of optical ilusion in the pictures; will go around the place where it stays (close from my habitat), to check it at naked eye.
I thank you anyway for your input; it keeps the thing warm :cool: ;)

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Yes, I just had to comment on it, as I am the Captain! Your points are all solid and much better than my meager guesswork.
Every time I look at those letters, especially on the end, I think I see something else! Hope someone might be able to get the foundry. That would definitely help.

C'mon Mark,
Having you in the thread, is already a satisfaction :cool:
Besides, i am also being a guesser; maybe not a so 'meager' one, as i am a food devourer and carry a 'fat' belly... oops, sounds more like a joke in my language :o :shrug: .
I have had a local suggestion that it could be Dutch ... later captured by Portuguese, during these endless wars in the XVII century; i don't know.
One sure thing though is that, it was common practice in the period nations equiping their ships with foreign cannons ... captured and acquired.
You were right in that the trunions are placed well below the barrel center; but i have checked cannons from various origins, in a catalogue of the Lisbon Nany Museum (and not only), and i don't find this to be a pattern of a determined country.
The person who suggested Dutch origin also suggested the word ADMIRAL for the upper inscription left half; something i have already considered but, don't know why, have abandoned. But i reckon it is a heavy weight possibility.


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Is the word 'Admiral' spelled the same in Dutch? Very interesting possibility! My last comment I can even think to ask is, what is the bore of the gun and if it tells us anything? I know certain eras didn't have certain sizes and likewise, certain countries didn't use certain sizes. An example of what I'm saying (as I'm not doing so good a job!) were the 2-pounders used by colonial Americans, but the Brits and French smallest bore size was 4-pounder. An era-related cannon bore example were 6-pounders, which were later 18th/early 19th c. affairs, I believe. Just more guesses on how to approach this mystery gun- :shrug:

in the last years of the 16th century , five different Dutch admiralty colleges were established, In 1795, in the Netherlands and Belgium the designation is Admiralty (admiraliteit) replaced by navy (marine):

the five admiralty colleges were:
1.Amsterdam
2.Rotterdam
3.Friesland
4.Zeeland
5 Hoorn and Enkhuizen


if you read embossing, one can read indeed ADMIRAITEIT and below the letters

ESL


So the conclusion is that the cannon may have belonged to the Dutch Admiralty friesland

ADMIRALITEIT
FRIESLAND

for an early one please see

http://www.friesscheepvaartmuseum.nl...n/Admiraliteit

best,
Jasper

Thank you ever so much for the exelent shot, Jasper.
I took this long to react as i have been tying to absorve the most possible in this Admiraliteit issue. I have managed to contact a researcher of Dutch Navy history and a Dutch cannon enthusiast (Nico Brinck). The Friesland Admiralty origin appears to be consistent.
However, my doubts on a 'mispell' are not vanished, as i have transmitted them to those contacts and now i also put them to you. There are two letters, if i well discern, an apparent D in Admiraliteit and an apparent O in Friesland, that don't fit in the suggested word composition. This is rather an important detail, once there are no coat of arms or other legends to support this cannon origin.

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Ah Mark, you are perfectly right ... but this thing of determining a gun calibre is a bone hard to chew :shrug: You have the concept of the pound weight along time, the gun windage (gap between ball and bore) varying per country criteria, type of gun, founder techniques and so, the wearing of the gun after several shots ... you name it.
This could be a 14 pounder, as hardly a 12 and more hardly a 15 :o

Hi Fernando,
admiraliDeit???
a D and o does not make any sense, the D and O embossing are also very unclear I think that the oxidation did make those characters look totally different.

best,
jasper

Yes Jasper,
Forget my uncertainties; your assessment is more within reality; and fits perfectly into the considerations of Dutch ordnance researcher Nico Brinck, with whom by pure accident i was contacted, due to my query on this subject to a third party i found in the Internet:

There are only a handfull of guns known to me from Friesian gunfounders. And the guns I have seen were all cast by different founders and in different periods in the Leeuwarden foundry. So I really cannot recognize the founders by their products.
But many of them were only semi litterate, and the spelling of the words had not been established. So there may be odd letters in the cartouche, but the piece is also very worn, so some letters may have a different shape now.

Let me tell you i am very much obliged for your help, Jasper :)
After all, it was your input that opened the path for a more objective query, which provided the solution of this riddle.
Whereas this cannon was equiping a Dutch ship or another vessel and whether its wrecking was caused by accident (storm, misroute) or battle, is another riddle, apparently much harder to solve.

I thought i should quote Nico Brinck's words in the caliber issue; let me reconsider my previous estimate ... now appointing to a 12 pounder.

A bore of 123mm means a calibre of 13 Amsterdam pounds. Friesland used Amsterdam pounds of 494 grams.
But there was standardization which demanded that the guns should be 6, 8, 12, 18, 24 or 36 pounders. The 12pdr had a bore diametre of about 120mm and an 18pdr had about 14 mm. And there would be plenty windage so the diametre of the shot would be around 110-115mm
So this is most likely a cannon with a worn bore, perhaps by multiple firing or by erosion from the sea.

Spectacular work, gentlemen, in narrowing this piece down and perhaps concluding its origins! I was hoping that Jasper would come through and he did! A worn bore is, as you pointed out Fernando, absolutely expected and being that the 'next size up from 12 pounder was 18, I think this one definitely falls on it being a 12-er! As far as crude, mis-spelled writing, makes total sense again. Good work!

IF YOU HAVE ACESS TO THIS CANNON PERHAPS YOU COULD TRY TO MAKE A TRACEING OF THE OVERALL DESIGN AND THE WORDS. THIS IS OFTEN DONE ON GRAVE STONES AND STONE CARVINGS AND SOMETIMES REVEALS MORE OF THE DESIGN THAN IS EASILY SEEN BY THE EYE. A SOFT LEAD PENCIL (THE BIGGER ONES ARE BEST) AND SOME APPROPRIATE PAPER MAY REVEAL THE UNSEEN OR NOT. :shrug: THE DESIGN SURROUNDING THE LETTERS MIGHT REVEAL SOMETHING AS WELL.

Thank you for my little slice of it, Captain :cool:
Say, wouldn't you like to have it in the house ... i mean, in the yard ;)

Thabnk you for the encouragement, Barry.
This would however be an impossible task.
We are talking about so deep erosion that has carved lots of metal. In the area where any coat of arms could/should have been, the bronze that is missing forms an authentic crater; no longer any traces may be revealed, even with the more sophisticated technology, i would say. The issue here was indeed to try and guess what this cannon is about, based on the experience of those who know what should be there, judging by what there only is.
On the other hand, the design surrounding the existing letters is not strange to what is seen in other cannons of the presently discussed foundry.
I am uploading here the arms of the Friesland Admiralty, a motif that might have been in this cannon.
(designs provided by Nico Brinck)

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