AWIART-04
John Jenkins Designs
Not yet released - expected in mid-March.
The Continental Army’s growing pains through the first years of the war caused Washington considerable irritation. Professional armies cannot be developed overnight, and the fits and starts of the Continental Army’s creation is illustrated most clearly in the establishment of the artillery. The United States had to build its artillery from scratch, but impressively by 1778 this branch of service was well regulated and effective.
Although the Continental Army’s artillery units were not affected by the uniform regulations as much as the infantry had been, there were still several different uniforms pre the 1778 regulations.
The change imposed on the artillery by the regulations was to make all four of the Continental regiments uniform in appearance as a branch of service and do away with distinctions between the regiments. This happened in October 1779. Prior to this, the artillery arm of the Continental army had been noted as mainly wearing dark blue coats, usually faced red.
On the battlefield itself, a crew of eight to ten cannoneers manned drag ropes and trail spikes to manoeuvre the guns into position, accomplished the intricate dance of loading gunpowder (mostly in bags of cloth or paper, but sometimes ladled loose down the barrel) and projectile down the muzzle of the piece, and set it in position to fire at the target. All artillery was muzzleloading and smooth-bore. Aiming was an art, accomplished by peering down the length of the tube and quickly making a rough calculation that combined distance to the target, weather conditions, quality of powder, and weight of projectile. Traverse was accomplished by manually shifting the entire carriage; changes in elevation were done by inserting a triangular wooden block, called a quoin, under the rear of the barrel. The piece had to be re-aimed after each shot, since there were no recoil mechanisms to return it to its original position after firing. The maximum effective range of artillery— even large-caliber guns firing solid shot—was about 1,200 yards (a mile and a half), and with untrained gunners using imperfect weapons and ammunition the range was about 400 yards. Because aiming was so imprecise, gunners invariably tried to minimize range before opening fire. Rates of fire varied with the pace of operations and, of course, the skill of the gun crew. The maximum rate of about eight rounds an hour could not be long sustained, both because of crew fatigue and overheating of the barrel.
A matross was literally a gunner’s assistant and was the neophyte in the artillery enlisted hierarchy. As there was no American artillery school at this time, artillerymen were trained by their officers and NCO’s in the gun companies or “on the job” in combat. That the American artillery arm gained the high level of skill and reputation it did during the war is a testament to the dedication of the gunners that manned it.