Palmerston Forts – Part 4 – The Royal Armouries Museum
It’s not just guns that can be found here, displays showing the development and construction or artillery pieces give an informative guide to gthe methods used to build some of these enormous cannon and the difficulties that weapons designers had to overcome.
As new materials became available, gun manufacturers moved away from bronze to more lightweight and durable materials.
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The conventional and the plain strange, this Indian Field Gun circa 1800 fired a 9-Pound charge and was captured during the Second Sikh War in 1849. Next to it, a Burmese bronze cannon in the shape of a fire-breathing dragon benignly waits to strike.
Here’s an intriguing object, what appears to be a bronze Mortar shaped like a sitting Tiger. Weird. Next up, some pistols from the collection – note the animal horn that has been converted for use as an ornate gunpowder container.
Anyway, in Part Three of this series I promised some more glimpses inside Fort Nelson, and here we are, with a view of the Officers dining room and kitchen area.
To round of this section two very interesting pieces, firstly a fascinating triple-barrelled cannon on the left, and to the right an incredibly ornate casting on the gun in the right-hand picture really proves that it’s possible for something to be both beautiful and deadly at the same time.
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