Resumo de The Halifax Noon Day Gun (part 3)

The area outside the Citadel's main gate was known as the 'saluting battery'. For a while, the saluting battery was the position from which the gun was fired on ceremonial occasions to mark the arrival and departure of naval vessels. Today, the gun is positioned on the ramparts above the main gate.
Halifax is not the only city to maintain the tradition of firing noon day signals. The same traditions are maintained at Edinburgh Castle, Fort Henry in Kingston, Signal Hill in South Africa and Vancouver in British Columbia.
Vancouver has its gun firing at nine o'clock in the evening, but uses a steam whistle to sound the noon-day signal. This means provides a jet of steam as well as the whistle. The steam serves the same purposes as smoke from a cannon: it can be seen in distant parts of the harbour by ships wanting to set their chronometers.
The tradition of gunnery, so large a part of Halifax history, means that a replica cannon is an important feature of city life, but not even replicas last forever. Loading and firing the cannon each day might not seem to wear heavily, but time takes its toll on the metal, no matter well residue is removed. Hairline cracks and fissures on the inside surface of the barrel weakened the gun. The 12-pounder replica in use had been cast using much the same method of manufacture as that used for the gun it replaced.

At the time a decision was made to fit a steel liner, the gun was actually fairly clean. What debris that could not be removed with a bucket and bore brush was blasted out with pressurized water. The primary problem was that the interior metal of the bore was those small cracks and fissures. A steel liner was therefore required to strengthen the barrel, maintain its integrity and not crack after repeated firing. This work required the services of a gun fitter.

The question was where to find the skill and knowledge needed to restore the 12-pounder to good working order with a sleeve insert. Enter Tony Walsh who runs a business in Watson's Corners, Ontario, specializing in the manufacture of replica weapons for military re-enactment groups in the United States and Canada. His helper in this work, Derek Holbeche, an armourer, had served his apprenticeship in the British Army. The Canadian Army had its own apprentice training scheme from 1942 until 1965 when the program was discontinued under Minister of Defence Hellyer of the federal government. Although thousands of first-rate artisans, fitters, electricians and radar specialists came out of the Canadian apprentice-training program, gun fitter or armourer were trades not taught. An armourer is skilled in small arms, a gun fitter in large guns. With some training and experience, the skills of the two trades are inter-changeable.

Apprentice training in the British Army all but ceased by 2002. Junior soldiers, for infantry, trades and logistical support, attend a single military training college. Those considered suitable to follow technical trades follow the same basic course of studies as their non-trades oriented fellow soldiers: 42 weeks of basic training, educational studies and fitness training.

In the Canadian Army, between 1942 and 1945, an estimated 5,000 tradesmen went through the apprentice training program of the Canadian Technical Training Corps. It is a sad reflection the program in which young soldiers were taught a trade that would serve them well in civilian life ended in the Canadian Army and now, largely, the British Army has ceased providing apprentice training.

That Derek Holbeche, who served his apprenticeship in the British Army, was able to use his armourer's skills on the Halifax gun was as fortuitous as an unexpected bonus to the work done. The gun barrel, seven feet long and weighing two tons, was loaded on to a transport truck in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and delivered to a lumber yard in Lanark, Ontario, about 1500 miles distance. There, it was lifted on to a lumber truck equipped withydraulic lifting arm and taken to the contractor's machine shop in the hamlet of Watson Corners.
Cont..(Part 4)

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