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Guns & Gunnery, Old Ironsides-Il. Historical Research on the Oldest Ship of the Navy —Interesting Facts on Her Cannons and Equipment BY ELLIOT SNOW Rear Admiral (C. C.) U. S. N., Retired U. S. S. ConstitutTiIoN—spar deck looking aft : PART from the insurmountable A obstacle of funds, the yard authorities were unable to lo- eate a single one of the COoONSTITU- TION’S old guns. In fact, this one point was by far the most difficult to solve even with a modicum of satisfaction. The statement therefore that “when the CONSTITUTION was reconditioned in 1906, the govern- ment found one of her old 24- pounders and for convenience they cast 54 guns from that pat- tern” needs correction. The reasons really were lack of funds and lack of information. A short account of the efforts made to locate information as to this bat- tery is worthy of record here. The material bureaus of the navy depart- ment were unable to throw any light on the whereabouts of the battery or whence correct and accurate informa- tion could be obtained. The files of the public library of Boston were This is part II of the article on the Guns and Gunnery of Old Ironsides. Part I appeared in the October issue of MARINE Revyirw. Part III will appear in an early issue. consulted and there a book was found published in French during the Reign of Terror. This gave considerable information as to the artillery designs near the end of the eighteenth cen- tury; this was consulted because it was conceived that we had borrowed ideas of guns from France as well as England. This book had been ac- quired by that library some thirty- five years earlier and its first issue for public use was in connection with the restoration of the CONSTITUTION. The Naval War of 1812 by Theo- dore Roosevelt was also consulted, and on pages 17 to 19 of the in- troduction sketches of a long gun and a carronade were found, also a cross section showing in a general way their mounting, but none of these gave any dimensions or details. At the bottom of page 19, a reference was found to the American Artillerists Companion by Louis de Toussard, Philadelphia, 1811. A copy of this was located finally, as I now believe, in the library of congress. This cou- pled with Roosevelt’s work, and the French publication, were the main 20 showing the sixteen 32-pounders on the after part of the spar deck, called the quarter deck sources from which the data were drawn. Knowing the weight of the ball fired, and allowing for the wind- age, the draftsman assigned to the work, was finally able to establish an approximate scale from which to produce the plans for the guns and their carriages. The present guns of the CoNSTITU- TION are not as heavy as might be thought, upon casual surface in- spection. As a_ safety precaution against the use of these guns for saluting purposes by enthusiastic but uninformed laymen should the bat- tery ever be lost in the long years to come, a diaphragm was cast across the bore about one foot back from the muzzle. To save weight and ex- pense, the remaining part of the guns have a very thin wall. As a further precaution the vent from the powder pan (where the priming powder was touched by the glowing slow match), was left undrilled into the inner thin- walled powder chamber. These devices had to be adopted to keep the expen- ditures within the appropriation and yet in the end have a fairly finished