Cannon, shot and the meaning of a pounder

The QAR project’s November 2015 inventory describes weapons ranging from half- to six-pounders and explains the rating in relation to the cannon ball. Those are reported findings at that time, not a complete modern tally or the original ship’s full armament. ^[1]

Keep three numbers separate: the gun’s own mass, the weight used to describe its ordinary round shot, and the count of guns reported or recovered. They answer different questions. A six-pounder is not a six-pound metal tube.

The barrel, bore and carriage perform different jobs; the explanation below separates them rather than treating a cannon as a single undifferentiated object. It has no scale, charge specification or construction dimensions. Its purpose is vocabulary, not operation.

A barrel alone does not explain a working gun position. A historical reconstruction also needs evidence about support, space and the surrounding equipment. The silhouette on a ship drawing can make these relationships disappear.

Johnson’s accounts repeatedly treat powder, guns and stores as things crews acquire, lose or sacrifice. In his Roberts narrative, heavy equipment is thrown overboard during an escape. Such an episode explains why armament is not a fixed decorative feature of a vessel. ^[2]

It also warns against describing every gun recovered from a wreck as a perfectly working weapon at the ship’s final moment. A physical find, a written count and a performance claim require different support.

The bar-shot explanation comes from the project’s artifact entry. Its intended attack on sails and rigging differs from treating every shot as a solid ball meant to pierce a hull. ^[3]

The langrage entry is particularly useful because it connects an interpretation to context: iron bolts were removed from the bore of cannon C19. That is stronger than finding unrelated metal nearby and assuming its purpose. It is still evidence of one load, not a universal recipe. ^[4]

Archaeology proceeds through discovery, lifting, conservation and interpretation. An inventory can count objects at one stage while another report counts them at a different stage. A discrepancy is a reason to check definitions and dates before deciding one source is wrong.

The November 2015 cannon page distinguishes identified, recovered and conserved/displayed objects. We preserve that distinction instead of repeating one count as “the number Blackbeard had.” The historical and archaeological questions are not identical. ^[1]

This same habit applies beyond pirate history: check what a quantity measures before comparing it with another quantity that looks similar.

To compare two vessels responsibly, define the date, source and purpose of the comparison. Gun count alone cannot establish which vessel would win a hypothetical encounter. Sources about intimidation, crew and condition may tell a more useful story than an invented league table.

Continue with the broader weapons guide for personal arms and fragments, or return to ship types to see why a rig name is not an armament specification. These are connections the evidence can support without pretending we can replay an unrecorded battle.