This is provided
by Peter H Scholes.
Extract from 'John
Schoales of Hatfield, Gunner, R.N.'
The Ship's Gunner
The gunner was one
of five standing officers on board ship: the
others were
the boatswain, purser, carpenter and cook. In The
Wooden World,
N.A.M.Rodger explains that these officers
were
permanently attached
to the vessel normally for the lifetime of the
ship. At the end
of a `Commission', when ships paid off the crew
and were
placed in `Ordinary' and lay at their moorings,
the
standing officers
stayed on board, with a force of 'shopkeepers'
under their orders
to maintain the vessel. This meant that standing
officers had a fairly
secure job until retirement from the Navy.
The gunner
was responsible for the ship's guns and ammunition,
for which he was
accountable to the Navy's Ordnance Board. Gunners
were assisted by,
and usually recruited from, gunners' mates, and
their subordinates
also included the armourer, the yeoman of the
powder room, and
one quarter gunner, or seaman layer, for each
group of four great
guns.
The
ship' gunner was a warranted `sea officer'
directly
responsible
to the captain for gunnery and to the Board
for
keeping accounts
and drawing stores. Before qualifying as
a
warrant officer,
John Schoales would have risen to become
a
gunner's mate or
an armourer, and have been rated by his captain
as a petty officer
for a period of some years. But we have not yet
found any records
of John's career on the lower deck.
The gunner
was the one man whose carelessness could destroy the
ship. According to
Dudley Pope in Life in Nelson's Navy, this was
well recognized by
the Admiralty in Regulations and Instructions.
'No person shall
be warranted as a gunner before he has passed an
examination before
a mathematical master, and three able gunners
of the
Navy, and from them procure a certificate
of his
qualification'.
There were, in fact, 33 instructions for
the
ship's gunner: they
ranged from swabbing a gun with water `when it
grows hot, for fear
of splitting' to coating guns with a mixture
of tar and warm tallow
if they had to be carried in the hold. The
boxes of gunshot
and hand-grenades had to be kept in dry place,
and he `was not
to load the guns with `unfit mixtures (of gun
powder), which greatly
endanger their splitting'.
The gunner
`had to keep good order in the gunroom and suffer
none to lie there
but such had a right or whom the captain shall
direct'. He presided
over the senior warrant officers - boatswain
and carpenter - and
petty officers such as sail makers, armourer
and master's mates,
as well as the the captain's servants, young
gentlemen not yet
rated as midshipmen. His pay at the time of
Nelson ranged from
about £3 to £5 per month depending on the size
of the ship. By comparison
an ordinary seaman received about £1
and a lieutenant £5 to £7 per month. Pay might
well be
supplemented by prize
money from the capture of an enemy
ship
with warrant
officers sharing one eighth of the total value of the
prize. In addition,
there was `head and gun money' based on the
number of men
aboard the captured vessel.
Promotion
for a gunner meant being transferred to a bigger ship
for which he received
more pay. But once having obtained a warrant
from the Ordnance
Board the gunner would always remain a warrant
officer.
Guns and gunnery
on sailing warships have been described in many
publications. The
following is taken from The Frigates by James
Henderson and The
Line of Battle edited by R Gardiner.
The standard
armament of a frigate was the 18 pounder (Pdr) gun,
nine feet long,
weighing about two tons, requiring ten men to
handle it. On firing
the force of the recoil sent the gun running
inboard on its carriage
to the full length of its breeching tackle
which secured it
to the ship's side; it was then sponged out with
a swab to remove
any smouldering remains of the previous round;
the powder in its
cloth cartridge rammed down with a wad on top,
followed by the shot
and another wad. The cloth of the cartridge
was pierced
and a little priming powder poured
into the
touch-hole. The gun
crew then ran the gun out by heaving on the
breeching tackle,
after which the gun captain adjusted his aim.
The gun was fired
by flintlock and lanyard.
Elevation
of the gun was a relatively easy matter but any degree
of traverse needed
much effort to lever the carriage around. There
were no sights and
aiming was, to say the least, very approximate;
the motion of the
ship had an obvious effect, so battles had to be
fought at close range
to have any chance of frequent hits. The
management of the
gun was heavy work, especially in rough weather.
Under good conditions,
with a well trained crew, a shot every two
minutes was a very
good rate of fire.