July 26, 2026

There’s still one important cannon missing from Vic, and that’s the 68-pounder carronade. There are two of these guns on The Forecastle, which means I need to make one to complete Vic. I’m deliberately making two because I have a display model of every gun in a glass case. So one carronade will go in our living room next to the other guns.

For those who want to know what a carronade is: it’s one of the most devastating short-barreled weapons in sailing history. These had a short range but maximum impact. Weighing about 1,750 kg, it is much lighter than the 32-pounder gun, which weighs over 2,700 kg. This allowed it to be mounted high on the ship without compromising the ship’s stability.

Some research revealed that this cannon played a decisive role in the early stages of the Battle of Trafalgar. The Victory sailed directly behind the French flagship Bucentaure and fired a 68-pound cannonball—preceded by a bag containing 500 musket balls—through the stern. The cannonball and shot raged across the entire length of the gun deck. With a single shot, over 200 French crew members were killed or wounded.

This cannon was nicknamed “The Devil Gun,” and another name for it was “The Smasher”...

Anyway, enough about this cannon for now—on to the production>
First, I figured out how this cannon is mounted on the deck and what kind of tackles it has. After that, it was a matter of scaling up the drawings to the correct scale, creating separate drawings for all the parts, drawing up a project plan, etc.

It was a fun distraction alongside building the Sterns, so we’re now ready for production.

To be continued

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Henk