| The 2nd Regiment U.S. Artillery is a
for-profit LLC dedicated to the reenactment of an early 19th
century artillery battery. We are in the process of building a 3#
Verbruggen Cannon similar to the one pictured
here.
Cannon Club stock shares can be purchased at $25 each. For more
information, contact Bob Cocks, Treasurer by
email.
Our monthly meetings are held on the 3rd Tuesday of each month,
except December. They begin at 7:00 pm and are held at the
St.
Stanislaus Historical Museum,
3030 Charbonier Rd., Florissant, MO 63031.
Map It
Photo Gallery
The Making of a
Cannon (photo diary)
Interesting Links
The Art and
Mysterie of the Gun-Founder - When, and where was the
cannon invented and who was responsible?
The Cannon
Project by Colonial Williamsburg - Colonial
Williamsburg’s Historic Trades department proposes to build a precisely
accurate and fully equipped reproduction of a Revolutionary War light
3-pounder cannon. It will be the highest quality, most accurate
reproduction of an eighteenth-century cannon in the Historic Area and,
quite possibly, in England or America.
The
Three-Pound "Grasshopper" - Light guns like the 3 pounder
were not new in the Revolution.
Verbruggen
House - Although the Schalchs had a house in the
facility, it was small and had become run down by 1770, so this house
was built in 1772 and 1773 at government expense for the Verbruggens,
Jan and his son Pieter who along with two daughters immigrated from the
Netherlands in 1770. Jan had been the Dutch Master Gunfounder but had
lost favor due to questions of quality - which in all likelihood were
actually problems with one or two people that became part of a larger
political struggle. He therefore accepted the job at Woolwich heading
the foundry along with his son, and they vastly improved the neglected
facility. They increasing quality and improved the technology of
British cannon manufacture. Specifically, they introduced horizontal
cannon boring machines similar to those used in Continental Europe.
Jan Verbruggen (1712 - 81) - Jan
Verbruggen was a foundryman through whom
important machine tool techniques were
transmitted from continental Europe to England
where they profoundly influenced the development
of the steam engine.
Weapons of the American Revolution - Artillery
- By the late 18th century, artillerymen
were considered elite troops. In an age of
widespread illiteracy, soldiers who could do the
geometric calculations necessary to place a
cannonball on target must have seemed almost as
wizards. Indeed, even though for centuries it
was known that the flight path of spears and
arrows was parabolic, the fellow who
demonstrated it mathematically, Galileo, came
close to being burned by the Inquisition for his
heretical ideas. But mathematical calculations
were only a part of the science of artillery,
which is worth a web page all to itself, so
let's begin.
|
