DetectingWales.com

Out on a new permission today, with TheLoveDoc and another mate.

Not much came up, the usual worn copper's and a few buttons, each of us had a modernish type pendant, but the find of the day went to TheLoveDoc ( well done butty ), a first for him and us, a lovely lead cannon ball.

Take a look at this little beauty  ;)

Nice find.  Bet that made your ears rattle. :o


Val

It gave a cracking signal Val at depth too ....... Good pic Paul im well chuffed with it.  ;D

Very nice, i found one a few weeks ago but had impacted on one side, yours looks great  ;)

CANNONBALL.....
Nice find wouldn't one of them fired your way..... :o

Talking of canon balls, Geoff might know the answer to this.  John put 'The Patriot' on the other night and in one of the battle scenes they showed a cannon ball taking a mans head off.  Would that really have happened ? and what size would it need to be.?



Val

yes val thats very possible , be a tad messy also .

Val even the exit wound of a bullet would get the job half done :-\

Yes Val and there are many documented accounts of "bits" being taken off by not only cannon balls but early musket shot as well, there are writings by a surgeon with the Royalist army during the English civil war where he describes how many injuries are caused not by shot but by flying bone fragments from people around them :-\

All I can say is URGH sounds disgusting.   I can't imagine what it must have been like for those in the front lines knowing they were just sacrificial.   Seems like they just lined them up to blast hell out of each other till no one was left and last man standing was the winner.
A lot to be said for todays drones and laser technology. 

Val

Great find......just wondering was it found up your neck off the woods ???

No Nobby..... nowhere near where I live ......unfortunately .

Congratulations on cannon ball find.I also found one the same not far from Pembroke Castle,I would like to show my finds but don't understand how to do it,I am one of the old school and just can't get the hang of it!!!😟!!!

Hi Chef Geoff,very interesting comments regarding the damage a cannon ball/large musket ball can do and the catastrophic damage they can do   .On a personal basis I am very interested in the English civil war,and was wonndering where I could get a copy of theRoyalist factual accounts of battles.I am not a ghoul but as I live quite near to Pembroke Castle an have found such a cannon ball the more I read about these conflicts the more I realise just how horrific it all must have been,any information would be very much appreciated.

Not sure if you could buy a copy but I used to read it in Bristol reference library it was "The collected letters of Dr William Harvey" and if your venturing to a library then the different volumes of books "The English Civil War: : A Contemporary Account" by Edward Razzell make interesting reading as does "Memoirs Of The Life Of Colonel Hutchinson" by Lucy Hutchinson
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=W2ILAAAAYAAJ&rdid=book-W2ILAAAAYAAJ&rdot=1

 ;)

Many thanks chef Geoff for your prompt reply,I shall get down the library,many thanks once again,DW is a great forum!!

Hi ace(Paul)what is the weight of that cannon ball,the one that I found was exactly 7ozs,it looks identical to the one you found,many thanks.

Hi mate, I will have to get back to you, as I don't have it here with me, Lovedoc has it.
I'll get in touch with him, so he can add it to the post for you.
Cheers Paul  ;)

hi dingdong, its just over 16 ounces ............just over a pound fella.

Alright lovedoc
reason im asking is that ive done a little detecting around llan and we had a load of musket balls from the mountain........was wondering if there was a civil war battle up there ???

Hi nobby, I too have had a few musket balls but not as many that I would say there was a battle in the area they were found. Ive never heard of any battle where they showed up mate but there was one on another farm which the farmer has already declined permission due to detectorists going there in the past and then not showing him what they had found so he put a stop to it im afraid..... fair enough I guess.

I was told though that the actual battle was between some Romans and Celts and there is a burial mound but its a no go.

One reason that recording of these groups of musket balls and cannon shot is very important is that the fighting part of the civil war lasted for five years with hundreds of thousands of men on the move right across the country not only armies but baggage and supply trains along with patrols and scouting parties, the likelihood of a chance encounter was very high and the number of unrecorded skirmishes must be in the thousands and these finds can help to map them.
If that shot has been fired then it's not that surprising that there are no musket balls in the same area as a matchlock musket had an effective range of around 50 to 75 yard whereas a cannon of that bore (Falconet?) could fire up to a mile so you could easily be on the next farm to the one holding the musket balls? ;)

Hi to all,I have a question with regards to any regulation size regarding the size of musket and cannon balls.just recently ace Paul posted a photograph of lead shot,it weighs in at just over one pound,I also recently found a lead shot of 7ozs,when you consider also the enormous variation in sizes of musket balls,were the barrels of these weapons roughly cast and bored out?how many sizes were made,was there any standards at all,also,why were there so many variants in cannon barrell diameters?

if your talking about the civil war period then the musket ball diameters don't fluctuate a great deal but enough to stop you using someone else's but you could use wadding if to small, the reason at least at the beginning is that the different groups of men were still being mustered and armed in the age old way of by the lord of the manor and so locally made arms in Newcastle were bound to be different to those from Cornwall.
Artillery was still somewhat in its infancy and as the years had gone on different size shot had been found to do different jobs your's and Paul's are anti personnel shot which would have been fired against troops at a low trajectory to skim along very much like a stone on water with the hope of taking as many soldiers with it as you can, obviously a 1lb shot isn't going to do much to a stone wall and so a larger cannon was required and for very thick walls siege mortars were needed to reach those inside with the largest, Roaring Meg, having a shot diameter of 15.5 inches :o Also the greater the distance then the more powder you needed but this meant that a larger and stronger barrel was required. ;)

Cheers Chef Geoff,thanks for a very interesting and informative answer to my questions regarding bore sizes of musket and cannon.and yes my interest was regarding the civil war.By the way,do you have any information,or where I can get it regarding a colonel BRERETON,one of Oliver Cromwell's staunch supporters,be grateful if you do,again, many thanks.

I know of Colonel Brereton as he was made the scapegoat during the Bristol riots but I think you mean Major General Brereton and though it depends what information you actually want you couldn't do better than his letters published as "A Journal of the English Civil War: The Letter Book of Sir William Brereton" ;)

Big thanks Chef Geoff,yes that's the guy,Sir William Brereton,that's my weekend reading,ah well its a bit to cold for detecting,well it is for me!!!
Thanks again.