Cannon Failure at Fort McHenry on September 16

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Regardless of all that.

If the guy in photo #1 was standing were he was at 11:01 in the first photo after 11:02 happened?

How in heavens name did he miss being center-punched in the left hip by the whizzing cascabel when it went by where he was standing almost directly behind it??

Also hard to imagine there wasn't a large crowd in the peanut gallery directly behind it.

rc
 
RC the guy is really fast. I thought about the peanut gallery myself, that's another story. Usually to the rear is supposed to be a safe spot, but not in this case
 
Even with no cannon ball, I am wondering if they were using smokeless powder. If they had a paper wad or cloth over smokeless powder, that would easily blow the breech off.

I thought of this video
 
There is no commonly available smokeless powder that can dissemble a cannon without a ball in front of it.

In fact, it would be almost impossible to get a loud boom for a salute cannon shot with smokeless powder, short of plugging the bore with an immovable object of some sort.

That cannon was defective from the get go.
Any kind of massive overload would have blown the barrel, not the back off the breech.

Black powder revolvers Can be blown up with an equal by volume measure of fast pistol powder.
But not without a ball rammed in the chamber in front of it.

In any case, a wet rag or paper wad sure wouldn't do it!

rc
 
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A couple things I find unbelievable relative to this story are that no other pictures or videos have surfaced of the failure, and that with so many people in elected office Gung Ho for gun control and terrified of anything that fires a projectile that we still have so many cannons laying around in the open. People like to stare down the barrels and climb on them and other such foolishness as if it were not more-so a weapon of war than many guns that are on the list to be banned. These things were not built for any purpose other than mass destruction yet they are acceptable to treat as though they are not a gun? How many civil war collectors have died from unexploded shells unexpectedly going off? How many cannon have been found still loaded? It's unbelievable the fear of a modern gun coupled with carelessness by the masses yet never once has any of these evil weapons of war gotten up on its own and killed anybody, and we leave them unsupervised and out in the open...political wisdom says that these cannons should be running amuck, but I guess it's only ARs and pistols that do that.
 
Obvious trouble

ALWAYS work up your charge! Never start with a maximum load even with black powder!
 
Wow!

My first thought was the barrel was built wrong from the beginning. I think the bore shouldn't come all the way back to the cascabel, it should stop far enough forward that it has as much solid barrel material in the rear as it does on the sides at the thickest point in the rear end.

Maybe I just don't understand cannons. Looks like a poorly designed/made one to me.
 
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