Page:Royalnavyhistory01clow.djvu/453

 The weights of guns of the same denomination, and of the shot for them, nay, even the calibres, seem to have varied considerably, and the windage was greater than was ever allowed in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. In the cannon royal it must have amounted to a full half-inch at least, and if, as some authorities say, the cannon royal threw only a sixty-six pound shot, the windage must have been in some cases as much as three-quarters of an inch. In his preface to the 'Defeat of the Spanish Armada,' Professor Laughton speaks loosely of the shot being "a good inch and a half less in diameter than the bore of the gun." This is surely an exaggeration. Had the proportions been so, the iron shot for an 8-in. gun would have weighed less than 40 lbs.; that for a 7-in. gun less than 24 lbs.; that for a 6-in. gun about 13 lbs.; and that for a 5-in. gun only about 6 lbs. The relatively large charges of powder may be explainued by this great windage, and the excessive badness and weakness of the explosive. In the eighteenth century, twenty-five pounds was a proof charge for a 42-pounder, and the heaviest sea-service charge for it was only seventeen pounds, while the proof