Tag: Artillery

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The Delcastle Cannonball

Several years ago, I set out to understand the movements of the British army through Delaware and into Pennsylvania in early September 1777. It was a small piece of the Philadelphia campaign of Gen, Sir William Howe, who led a combined army of about 16,000 that landed on Elk Neck on August 25 and captured […]

by Walter A. Chiquoine
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The Thunderer, British Floating Gun-Battery on Lake Champlain

The radeau (French, singular for “raft”) was co-opted for eighteenth century warfare on and along Lake George and Lake Champlain, to deal with the challenges of wilderness, inland waterways. The radeau’s design was unique, incorporating a pragmatic approach to the problem of transportation and concentration of ship-mounted artillery in a self-contained transport in shallow water. The […]

by Michael Gadue
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Captain Septimus Noel: Ordnance Fleet Commodore

History occasionally provides a pleasant surprise by revealing the record of an ordinary person who, thrust into a unique role, performed extraordinary services for his country. In researching the movement of American ordinance from the Hudson River and Philadelphia to Yorktown in 1781, this author discovered that the commodore appointed to lead the ordnance fleet, […]

by William W. Reynolds
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The American Gunners at Yorktown

The Siege of Yorktown began subsequent to the movement of about fifty thousand American and French soldiers and sailors to eastern Virginia, twenty-eight thousand sailors and marines in the French blockade fleet and twenty-two thousand American and French soldiers surrounding the British Army on land.  By October 9, 1781 tens of thousands of manhours had […]

by William W. Reynolds