Fun with Cannons!

by Justin Tierney

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I love watching Antiques Roadshow. I love everything about it. It’s the American Dream!¹  Where else can you go to a non-descript convention center and have highly caffeinated blonde twins² tell you the “cat pee” chair underneath your beanie baby collection is worth more then you make in three years?  Nowhere.

During the Roadshow, they take field trips to see what kind of old stuff is outside of the convention center.  In Rhode Island, Mark Wahlberg³ and some noted local old guy were on an old, wooden war ship discussing a cord of rope, when the camera shot right down the barrel of the deck cannon next to it.  Instead of peering into blackness, blackness was interrupted by a plug, much like you would find in a pop gun.  I thought to myself what reason do they have to plug cannons up? Are they scared?  Who really has any idea how to fire these things?  Besides five Civil War reenactors and twenty-seven "Race War" militiamen, of course.  But It’s not like just any ol’ vandal can walk off the street, up the plank and shoot off a few joy rounds.  He has to be a man of ambition and historical acumen. Right?

Not if you have a cable modem!

It turns out, the internet is a great place to get to know your cannon.  It takes one trip to wikipedia to find out that all you really need is three things: fuses, black powder and, of course, cannonballs.  

Fuses were not hard to come by. If you are going for authenticity with your Revolutionary lark and want the Mission: Impossible slow, sparking-burn type, there are several sites to accommodate you.  My favorite is cannon-mania.com, which can get them in several different colors and styles including red white and blue.

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Black powder is an ancient art developed in the 9th century and known as one of the five great Chinese inventions⁴, but it’s a little harder to come by, especially in the large quantities that you’re gonna need to fire a cannonball.  But the good news is that you can make some in large quanities at home!  All you need is sulfur, carbon and potassium nitrate (or saltpeter) and it’s all a Google entry away.  Don’t forget the more saltpeter you buy the more you save per pound.  Once you have your ingredients you’ll need a ball mill, which can be found at any scientific supply store for as little as seventy bucks.  Then you grind your shootin’ dust down properly in a ¾ saltpeter, 3/20 charcoal and 1/10 sulfur ratio. I also found that I could also buy pure caffeine by the pound (labeled "for experimental purposes only" and pictured here).  Sleep is, of course, a waste of time when you’re prepping for a good cannon firing.

OK, so we have fuses. Check. Black powder? Check. Next up cannonballs...
 
Don’t be fooled by the pyramids of cannonballs you will find on those old ships.  They're for show and are usually welded together.  Still, it’s no problem.  One route to go is vintage. This option may cost you upwards of $200 for one ball, and you won’t find anything Revolutionary. But you can get several wonderful Civil War varieties!  For more immediate options, there are munitions shows coming to your area every weekend!  The problem is getting ones that actually fit in your cannon.  If you are sneaking on to a Revolutionary ship with Civil War balls you may just be fucked.  So the cheaper and more “in touch with your prank” route is smelting your own balls. Yes, smelting.

Some of my old art school sculpture colleagues assure me that they have seen far more dangerous things come out of the school's furnace, but that would mean you would actually have to waste your money going to art school.⁶ The best answer is to go industrial and get a special order.  Tom at Mitsui Mining and Smelting right here in Manhattan has this to say about my inquiry, “I’m sure we could make cannonballs, but I don’t really see the point.  Can I ask how many you would need and what the purpose for this would be?”  Hardworking and curious are the boys at Mitsui Mining and Smelting.

Need practice? That too can be had for a mere $100 again at cannon-mania.com. There you can get yourself a miniature Old Ironsides deck gun kit that supposedly really fires! Ooooooooooo.

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So you have the materials, you practiced on your back porch, and you read all the literature that you can find so you won’t blow your face off.⁷  Even with all of this, you still have to find a 250-year-old warship to get on in the dead of night. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the Park Rangers for somewhere like the U.S.S. Constitution just hanging a sign on the side of the boat that says: “Go For It, Pussies!”

Simone is not a Park Ranger but works at Public Affairs for the U.S.S. Constitution.  When I asked her if they even thought of people running up on to the Constitution at night and firing off a couple of “joy rounds,” her tone was not one of someone who liked bullshitting about cannon play.

“Sir, this a military facility and it is very secure. There is no way such an occurrence would take place.”  So I guess the answer is no, and it was all very officially in my face. I immediately canceled my order of fifty pounds of saltpeter.

And what about the plugs you ask?  The ones in the cannon that started this great intellectual cyberspace journey.  What I will tell you is that they are made of redwood.   But what I won’t tell you what purpose they serve.  The answer turned out to be so boring that I actually sighed on the phone with Simone. And she even took joy in discussing its historical significance.⁸  I’d rather talk about the Roadshow field trip to Tuscon.

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¹As conceived and brought to us by the British.

²The Kenos Brothers are the twin blond furniture appraisers who have one of those creepy telepathic abilities to finish each others sentences and look but not sound British.  According to PBS.org, they’ve been “appraising” since they were 12. It’s their actual fucking dream job.  I wanted to the Ultimate Warrior when I was 12.

³Not big dick MW, but Paradise Island MW.

⁴Another being Asian porn.

⁵The ownership of which once caused a war in Bolivia but no one cared.

⁶Tell your dead beat kids to study restaurant management at the same time.  Uh Oh, Bitter Alert!

⁷And spent like two grand on your Mom’s new Discover card. Cash back baby.

⁸OK, fine.  It’s to keep out salt water. Rust proofing. Yawn.

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Illustration

Justin Tierney

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