# 19th Century Artillery, Continuous Fire



## johnsonjoshuak (Mar 18, 2013)

How long could a civil war artillery piece (something large but portable) fire continuously before it would stop working?

I'm writing a siege in which the attackers need to shell a fortress and their leader is impatient. What could he realistically expect before needing to stop and how long would the gun need to cool down?


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## TheokinsJ (Mar 18, 2013)

Back in the early 1800s in the war against Napoleon, the British besieged many fortresses in spain where their tactic was to literally 'blast the walls down'. It was a painfully slow process, a dozen or so cannons would be lined up and fire at the same spot in the wall, continuously for weeks. Usually 3 weeks later the wall would be sufficiently damaged to launch an attack, and the cannons were fired all day and all night. To stop the cannons overheating, men would pour buckets of cold water over them every few minutes after it was fired. Realistically, the cannon can fire for weeks on end without a break so long as it is cooled. If it isn't cooled by one means or another (water for example)... well then... BOOM!
Of coarse the cannons would need perhaps a couple of hours break every day if the siege was ongoing (for example, weeks/months), but if need be, they could be fired 24/7 for days and perhaps weeks on end, so long as they were cooled.
I'd suggest if you want to see some example of this, watch Sharpe's Company, an episode from a series about a soldier in the 19th century who fought in Spain against the french. In this particular episode the british besiege the fortress of Badahoz, and they use artillery to blast down the walls, hope this helped and good luck.


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## The Unseemly (Mar 18, 2013)

Well, historically speaking, there was quite a lot of variables which decided on how long an artillery piece "stopped working" as of such. The first, big, variable was how it was made. Sometimes, like was the case occasionally in the 19th century, steel/coal wasn't available in large proportions, meaning they used cheaper substitutes such as copper or bronze to reinforce the gun, which looked okay at first... before the blasted thing exploded in your face.

Another variable was the climate. On ships, the metal corroded much faster than it did on land. Peculiarly enough, there are actually 19th century antique artillery guns which work to this day. Others simply disformed with time or were misused, in most cases there was a massive boom, and then the gentle plonk of a cannon ball landing right in front of the gun (or, if you were unlucky, the whole thing went boom, like above).

On a battlefield, the more "realistical" way of an artillery gun stopping to work was usually because of malfunction of the fuse etc. (which were off the battlefield causes) or simply because the gun crew ran out of gunpowder. (By the 19th century there were much less artillery guns which exploded, in case you're wondering).

The gun usually didn't need to "cool down" as of such, unless it was constantly being fired for two to three days straight. It would certainly become warm, and perhaps be a bit unstable.
As for the impatient commander... usually, guns stopped firing when there was an order to stop, or when crews needed to take a break (lunch break, toilet break, sleep break), and unless the army was HUGE, you didn't have shifts of gunners between day and night time.

EDIT: Dammnit. Got Ninja'd.


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## johnsonjoshuak (Mar 18, 2013)

Assuming that it wasn't possible to get cold water to the guns, and it was a rather hot part of the year, what could be realistically expected? And I mean continuous as in just keeps firing until it goes boom.

I read an article somewhere a while back about guns used the civil war that fired continuously for 24 hours before they started having issues.

I'm working with dozens of guns, so it shouldn't be terribly slow to wear down a fortress.


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## TheokinsJ (Mar 19, 2013)

johnsonjoshuak said:


> Assuming that it wasn't possible to get cold water to the guns, and it was a rather hot part of the year, what could be realistically expected? And I mean continuous as in just keeps firing until it goes boom.
> 
> I read an article somewhere a while back about guns used the civil war that fired continuously for 24 hours before they started having issues.
> 
> I'm working with dozens of guns, so it shouldn't be terribly slow to wear down a fortress.



It depends on the thickness and material of the wall, a wall of stone perhaps three to four meters thick would take weeks to blast through, even with a dozen cannons. A wall of wooden palisades would be shot down within a couple of minutes... it all depends on the wall you have in mind.


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## Kahle (Mar 19, 2013)

The trick with sieges isn't to knock down a section of wall, but to damage the inside of the fortress. If there's a significant amount of earthworks, then field guns probably won't have as much effect. One tactic was to keep a bombardment going on the wall so that engineers could either tunnel under the wall and collapse it or bring heavy mortars close enough to send exploding shells into the main compound.

What size guns are you thinking of having? It seems the heaviest was a 24 lb.


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## psychotick (Mar 22, 2013)

Hi,

Cannon are surprisingly robust, or perhaps not so surprising given their thick cast walls. They can keep firing for a long time without the need for cool down periods. Six hundred pounds of cast metal can absorb a lot of heat. Where the problem becomes acute is with smaller hand held pieces. I.e. rifles and muskets.

These did become hot, but before the invention of cartridges and breach loading etc it was manageable simply because it took so long to reload the weapons. That gave them the time they needed to cool between firings. However when these things were invented, the weapons had to change simply because of the overheating. Barrels would actually glow red hot if they were fired too much.

As a result the first machine guns were multi-barrel affairs, gatling guns, where having seven barrels with only one firing allowed the others to cool between shots.

By the way, the main danger that posed a risk to cannon wasn't over heating. It was blockages. Anything that could impede the movement of the cannon ball through the barrel could cause it to jam in mid firing and explode. It was for that reason that part of the method of firing a cannon involves swabbing out the barrel after each shot. Clean the barrel, remove any traces of half burnt gunpowder and then start reloading.

Also, if you want to take down heavy castle walls, the cannon were often there only for effect. The cannon fired and kept the defenders busy, while secretely during long sieges teams of engineers would be digging out underneath the castle walls, weakening them from beneath. It's called sapping.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Rjames112 (Apr 16, 2013)

During the 19th century weapons like rifles and muskets were known to overheat. Cannons less so but still might overheat but keep in mind that they would take more time to reload and would have breaks in the firing based on assaults in sieges, charges, etc.


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