Cannon salvaged from HMS Victory 1744 on show
IT WAS salvaged from the wreckage of one of the Royal Navy’s worst disasters, costing the lives of 1,100 crew, so the latest exhibit at its national museum evoked mixed feelings at yesterday’s unveiling.
The 42-pound bronze cannon was on board HMS Victory 1744, which went down in a storm off Plymouth and whose wreck was discovered only 10 years ago.
The three-decked ship had lain undisturbed for 260 years, 246ft below a busy shipping lane.
The cannon, bearing the crest of King George I – a mark which helped identify the shipwreck – will go display in Portsmouth, a few yards from its ship’s successor, Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory.
Prof Dominic Tweddle, the naval museum’s director general, said: “The 42-pounder is an exceptional example of Georgian firepower and it adds to the mythology surrounding HMS
Victory 1744 as an incomparable warship, one of the most technologically advanced of her time.”
The manufacture of the cannon was overseen by Andrew Schalch, whose name appears on the exterior. When found, it was fully loaded with hemp rope wadding, gunpowder and a cannonball.
It was among up to 110 cannons on Victory 1744, the largest, fastest ship of her era and the pride of the Royal Navy.
She sank in a storm after successfully liberating a Mediterranean convoy which had been blocked at the River Tagus in Lisbon by the French during the War of Austrian Succession.
“It is considered of national and international importance. Our collection is so much richer for this,” Prof Tweddle said.