A couple of interesting British canon

[Claven2]

Last week I visited the Fort Beusejour national historic site in New Brunswick and got a look at their Napoleonic and Victorian era canon collection. Of particular note was the presence of near-identical canon, one a smoothbore and the other en early rifled muzzle loader. IT took some pics in case anyone would be interested in the first British attempt to introduce rifling to heavy artillery.

Both of these canon would have been fitted to either fortress emplacements or large ships. Fort Beusejour became Fort Cumberland when it was captured in 1755 and saw action again in 1776. During the war of 1812 it was re-occupied and upgraded until the garriso nwas finally withdrawn in the 1850's. The rifle muzzle loader depicted in from 1877, so I am unsure where Parks Canada got it.

I am NOT an artillery expert, but I believe the Rifled Muzzle Loader (RML) canon to be an 80 pounder. Unusually, this one looks to perhaps not have been converted from a 68 pounder smoothbore as I've never seen a 68 with forged-in sight mounts. This example was forged at the Royal Gun Factory in 1877 under Queen Victoria and is a MkI.











Next is the 80 pounder's forebear, the 68 pounder smoothbore. This was, I believe, the 80's immediate forebear. Externally it is almost identical, but the elevation measurement was cruder (the 80 had a flat for an inclinometer and integral sight mounts) and was done by elevation hash-marks on the carriage. On this example, the touch hole cover is still present to keep water out of a loaded fuse hole. It's also a King George ciphered-gun, so either George the 2nd or George the 3rd.










If anyone knows more about these than I do, pls correct me if I got anything wrong! The canon collection at the fort is not labelled and none of the staff seemed to know anything about them. Probably just summer students.

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