forged iron built in strips secured by iron rings. They
were loaded by movable chambers which fitted into the breech, and they
were known as "crakys of war." We find them on English ships at the end
of the fourteenth century, in two kinds, the one a cannon proper, the
other an early version of the harquebus-a-croc. The cannon was a mere
iron tube, of immense strength, bound with heavy iron rings. The rings
were shrunken on to the tube in the ordinary way. The tube, when ready,
was bolted down to a heavy squared beam of timber on the ship's deck. It
was loaded by the insertion of the "gonne-chambre," an iron pan,
containing the charge, which fitted into, and closed the breech. This
gonne-chambre was wedged in firmly by a chock of elm wood beaten in with
a mallet. Another block of wood, fixed in the deck behind it, kept it
from flying out with any violence when the shot was fired. Cannon of
this sort formed the main armament of ships until after the reign of
Henry the Eighth. They fired stone cannon-balls, "pellettes of lead, and
dyce of iron." Each gun had some half-dozen chambers, so that the
firing from them may have been rapid, perhaps three rounds a minute. The
powder was not kept loose in tubs, near the guns, but neatly folded in
conical cartridges, made of canvas or paper (or flannel) which practice
prevailed for many years. All ships of war carried "pycks for hewing
stone-shott," though after 1490, "the iron shott callyd bowletts," and
their leaden brothers, came into general use. The guns we have
described, were generally two or four pounders, using from half-a-pound,
to a pound and a quarter, of powder, at each discharge. The carriage, or
bed, on which they lay, was usually fitted with wheels at the rear end
only.

The other early sea-cannon, which we have mentioned, were also
breech-loading. They were mounted on a sort of iron wheel, at the summit
of a stout wooden staff, fixed in the deck, or in the rails of the poop
and forecastle. They were of small size, and revolved in strong iron
pivot rings, so that the man firing them might turn them in any
direction he wished. They were of especial service in sweeping the
waist, the open spar-deck, between the breaks of poop and forecastle,
when boarders were on board. They threw "base and bar-shot to murder
near at hand"; but their usual ball was of stone, and for this reason
they were called petrieroes, and petrieroes-a-braga. The
harquebus-a-croc, a weapon almost ex