Page 61 - Loss of the VOC Retourschip Batavia, Western Australia, 1629

"I
THE IRON GUNS
The design of the iron guns underlines the complexity
of the style of early 17th-century guns. There are few par- allels for these guns, either in the literature or in existence, mainly because iron guns from the sea rarely survive, and there is almost no published material that is useful for identification purposes. For example, the Tower of Lon- don has one example of a late 16th-century, English cast- iron gun, but no 17th-century iron guns and only a gradu- ally increasing number o f examples from the 18th century; by far the greatest number of guns in the Tower collection are bronze (Blaclcmore, 1976). Likewise, the Rotunda has 82 English bronze guns and 34 English cast-iron guns (Kaesllin, 1963).
Two of the guns (Nos 5 and 8) found on the site are of the type commonly called a findbanker (or finbanker) which were produced by the Finspong and other Swedish gun foundries for the Dutch in the 17th century. The issue of the import of iron guns into the Netherlands in the early 17th century is a complex matter. The Netherlands tradi- tionally did not cast iron guns or, at least, in no great number. In the early 17th century, the English produced iron guns in the Weald and they were imported into the Netherlands in large numbers. The main importers were the family of Trip. Elias Trip was the principal importer having, for a time, a virtual monopoly o f the trade. Inter- estingly, he was a bewindhebber of the V.O.C. By the 1620s, difficulties with the English had reduced the trade and it was not to recover until later that decade. As a resul~ Elias and Pieter Trip negotiated and secured the Swedish crown monopoly for gunfounding in 1628. I t is not certain, therefore, whether the make of the Balavia guns would have been English, Swedish, German (the Trips had foun- dries in Waldek and Westphalia), French or Netherlan- dish. The French guns of this period were of inferior quality, since of300 to 400 gOlelingen imported into the Netherlands in about 1626, 63 failed proof. In a single proofing of 11 French guns in 1627, only four passed (KIein, 1965).
Fig. 31 shows a number o f iron guns in a drawing from a D a n i s h m a n u s c r i p t c a l l e d theS~I~jh u s b o g e l l ( b o o k o f t h e Naval Arsenal), entitled Tegllinger afSo-Elalens SfcylS i Aarel1771 (drawings of naval guns in the year 1771). It has been suggesled lhatthis hook was made by the T ~jrnesler (chiefofnavalordnance)andwaspublishedin1779rather than 1771. It is obvious that these guns resemble 17th centuryguns.However,thereisalotofconfusionoverthe termfindbanJcer; here it is used to describe guns that would notcommonlybeconsideredfindbankerstoday.TheDanish word findbonker was a special type of gun used in the Danish navy and the word was frrst used in a Danish manuscript about naval guns in 1722; it was possibly so- named because o f the connection with the Swedish town o f Finspong where these iron guns were made (see Frantzen,
1988, and Eriksen and Frantzen, 1988). Later the term be- came synonomous with 17th-century, non-Danish cast iron guns. Other illustrations of iron guns in the S~t~jhus­ bogen indicate a complex classification, which includes many types offindbanJcers as well as guns described as
f/adblunder and hulblwuler. I am very grateful to Mr Ole Louis Frantzen of the Tii\jhusmusee~ Kii\benhavn, for in-
formation on findbankers and the S~I~jhusbogell. In his opinion, all the Batavia guns could be calledfllldbonkers, but Nos 5 and 8 are typicalfindbankers; additionally, he tentatively considers Nos 4 and 8 Dutch, Nos 5 and 20 English and Nos 1,2 and 13 Swedish. Thus it is possible that the guns from the Batavia came from a number of sources, but until more is known o f types o f guns produced by foundries, their country o f origin will remain uncertain.
Most extant examples of iron guns of this type date from the mid-17th century (Vergulde Draeck 1656, Green (1977) GT 1454 No. 12 and GT 1456 No. 13, Kennemer- land 1664, Price & Muckelroy (1974), EllighLden 1679, Christensen (1971)). Boudriot(1968) illustrates some iron guns of the period 1680to 1690andis the only really useful workforlbeperiod Therecentpublicationby zuMondfeld, Beyerlein and Klingebrunn (1988) is regrettable for both its inaccuracy and its unreferenced sources, Ibus, for ex- ample, an illustration of the composite gun from Ibe Batav(a has been taken unciled from Stanbury (1974) and Ibe aulbors have mistaken Ibe weight 1602 stamped on Ibe vent ring for Ibe date!
A total o f nine iron guns have been recovered from Ibe site, and all have been drawn. The majority o f Ibe iron guns are very badly degraded. In many cases, the cascabels or trunnions are damaged or missing. A lot of Ibe ornate mOUldings are obscure or difficult to see. In most cases, Ibe guns are highly graphitized and Ibe surface is quite s o f t Whilst every precaution was taken to preserve Ibe guns during raising, transportation and deconcretion,lbeir basic condition is poor. The drawings are, Iberefore, in many cases an interpretation.
To date, no decorative mouldings, trunnion marks or inscriptions have been noted. The existing mOUldings have been described in Ibe table shown in Fig. 30 and the follow- ing abbreviations have been adopted to simplify Ibe de- scription of the mOUldings: (0 = ogee; F = fillet; A = astragal; Sp = space).
An attempt was made to estimate Ibe weight o f the guns in Amsterdam pant, using Ibe formula:
Wt=1tLpk[(Ri -Ri) -R~] Where:
45
.
L
p
k
R,
RI R"
is Ibelenglb of the gun from the muzzle to Ibe base ring
is Ibe density of cast iron (7.03 g/cm')
is Ibe conversion factor 493.73 g = I Amsterdam pont
is the radius of Ibe gun at Ibe vent field is the radius atlbe muzzle rings
is Ibe radius of Ibe bore of the gun
It should be noled Ibatlbe formula is only an approxi- mation and takes no account o f Ibe mOUldings, trunnions or cascabel. The weight and Ibe lenglh of the guns are plotted in a scaled format in Fig. 30. The Y-axis is in metres forIbevalueofthelenglhandinAmsterdampantxHt'for the weight of Ibe gun.
In Ibe table and Ibe chart, some clear groupings of the iron guns are evident The most obvious pairs are Nos 20 and 23 which are small-bore, short guns. Unfortunately, because Ibe mOUldings on No. 23 have not survived, it