Were pivot guns employed on any sailing vessels during the American Revolution? Disregard lightweight swivel guns, only centerline mounted heavy weapons please.
The earliest documented pivot gun I have found was on the brig Oneida (1808) built on Lake Ontario. Google, CG Davis, H.Capelle, and these forums so far have not yielded any earlier reference. Fredrik Chapman is famous for his light gunboat with a removable infantry cannon, but I’m assuming this mounting was not a true pivot gun. Is the pivot gun a little-documented European or Arab invention?
Notice the obvious patent infringement of the ball-bearing principle just recently patented by Englishman (actually Welshman) Phillip Vaughn in 1794. Hopefully, Leonardo da Vinci forgives, or even admires, the end result.
I do not know for sure who invented the pivot gun, but the earliest example I have seen is Oneida. I have never seen a deck mounted pivot gun rigged on a Revolutionary War vessel. Certainly none of them American ships that have been documented had them.
They were quite prevalent in US built privateers and revenue cutters in the early 19th century, primarily in the War of 1812 and afterwards. Aside from that, I have not seen them used any earlier.
In TheHistory of the American Sailing Ships, Chapelle shows and 1830 era mount for a pivot gun on US Navy ships. It is for a sliding carriage mounted gun.
I found this post while trying to find any information about the earliest pivot guns.
We have the remains of two pivot guns at the East Fort, just a short walk off Chapman’s Peak Drive on the Cape Peninsula.
The battery was built by the French Pondicherry Regiment for the Dutch to protect Hout Bay in 1782 and was armed with a total of 20 Swedish made 18 pounder muzzle loading cannon. Seven of these cannon remain there to this day, restored and proof fired, with six of them on replica fortress carriages (a seventh having been burned by vandals).
The parapet walls and the foundations of the one pivot gun are still in fairly recognizable shape and are possibly the oldest surviving example of one of these gun mounts.
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I think of the class of ship/boat called the gunboat. This was a small, shallow depth craft capable of sailing into shore as close as possible to bombard shore installations. I know the US had them eventually, but as a class I am not sure when. But they had plenty of examples to copy- they were well developed by the British and a few other European countries. One big main Gun, often a mortor. This was usually on a swivel carriaige.