Talk:Action of 20 October 1778

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36-pound shot

Hello,

I have removed [1] a mention of the calibre of Triton's shots weighting 36 pounds, which I find doubtful. I recognise that the affirmation is sourced from The Naval Chronicle: Volume 13, but that is a 200-year old source.

64-gun ships of the line are characterised as two-deckers armed with a 26-gun lower gundeck carrying 24-pounders, and a 28-gun upper deck carrying 12-pounders. You would not find 36-pounders on ships smaller than a 74-gun (this is one of the factors that make 74-guns so important). From the reference sources on French ships, Roche does not describe the armament, and Demerliac' 1715 - 1774 does mention 24- and 12-pounders as excepted (1774-1792 also describes the armament but there is a typo and he writes "xxxiv" (34-pounder), which is not a thing and ambiguous as to whether he means to write 24 or 36. This being said, I have seen no source stating that Triton was special or experimental and would have carried an unusual armament.) Winfield & Roberts, 2017 (p.238) also explicitly mention 26 24-pounders and 28 12-pounders.

I believe it is safe to assume that the mention of a 36-pound cannonball in Naval Chronicle is an exageration, and certainly doubt enough to remove the statement from the article. Rama (talk) 06:26, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]