Resumo de The Halifax Noon Day Gun (part 1)

How d'you weigh a whale, asks the deep-sea fisherman. Take it to a whaleway station. How d'you fix a cannon? Put a sock in it might be the smart answer, but it's not the correct one. Better to bore it out with modern machine tools and sleeve it with a steel liner.
When muzzle-loading cannons of old were loaded and fired, again and again and again, the repeated explosion of gun powder in the barrel built up a residue of hard carbon. As the battle went on, the residue got hot and became a danger to the loader whose job it was to use a wooden rod to push the charge to the back of the barrel. A hot barrel of clinker could ignite the charge, but it was not so much the carbon residue that posed the danger because, between firings, every muzzle-loading gun was swabbed with a damp sponge. This was because smouldering debris was often left over from the cartridge itself or from the wadding used to prevent gas leakage around the shot (guns were loaded with cartridge, wad, and shot). After a gun was fired, debris was first removed with a wad hook or worm, then the gun was sponged and loaded again.
In times of peace, a variety of bugles, trumpets, drums, guns and, in the case of highland regiments, bagpipes marked important intervals in the daily routine of garrisons. In the British Army, bugle and drum calls had been practice since the mid-17th Century with the creation of Cromwell's New Model Army.
In port garrisons such as Halifax, Nova Scotia, a gun marked the daily routine. The soldier's day was strictly ordered from reveille to the sounding of the 'last post' at night. Some garrisons fired signal guns three times a day, morning, noon and evening. In others - Vancouver, British Columbia, for example, the signal was, and still is, given twice a day.
The noon day gun in Halifax has been a feature of city life since it was first garrisoned by the British Army in 1749. The gun in use today is a replica of an 19th Century 12-pounder muzzle-loading cannon of the Blomefield design, which has been in use since it replaced an earlier muzzle-loader in the 1870s. The replica is reputed to have been cast in Collingwood, Ontario, but there is no certainty about this.
For those interested in cannon design, the Blomefield pattern was a system of scales and proportions developed by a Colonel Thomas Blomefield in the late 1700s (c 1790). Blomefield's system, based on the calibre of the weapon, specified the length, wall thickness and other dimensions of the muzzle-loader cannon. These specifications replaced the Armstrong cannon in use up to the 1780s and 90s, which continued to be used throughout the French Wars (1793-1815). As a weapon of war, a muzzle-loader was capable of firing ball, shell, grape, and chain shot.
Throughout the Victorian era, two daily signal guns were sounded in Halifax, one at noon the other in the evening. The noon day firing was timed for vessels in the harbour to set their chronometers by sight of the puff of smoke rather than the noise of the report, which took time to carry. The evening signal was sounded at eight o'clock during the winter season and nine o'clock in the summer. It told off-duty soldiers they had half an hour to return to barracks.
Although the Halifax gun is no longer fired in the morning or at night, the tradition of a noon-day signal has been a regular feature of city life. In the past, ships checked their global positions at noon by observing the solar transit, the passage of the sun across the meridian. The Citadel gun gave ships an accurate time reference. At one period in the city's history, the 'noon gun' was fired at one o'clock, which seems contradictory. Some experts in naval history believe this was to allow ships time to concentrate on the noon solar observation and to set their chronometers an hour later. A tradition of observing a silence on Christmas day continues to this day.
The practice of firing a gun to mark the noon day hour was widespread in European garrisons, rly port garrisons. At one time, the signal was fired from a man o'war and only later taken over by the military garrison. According to written records, the Halifax gun was fired from the ramparts of the third citadel. The present citadel was declared complete in 1856 and it was from this year that tradition holds the noon day signal came from the Garrison artillery.
From the founding of Halifax in 1749, the Royal Regiment of Artillery was responsible for the garrison ordnance and that remained until the departure of Imperial troops in 1906. Today, the 3rd Brigade, RA, is the unit portrayed by members of the Military Interpretation program. The year chosen for the style of uniform and equipment of the 3rd Brigade was 1860 when it was known to have been stationed in Halifax.
The Royal Corps of Commissionaires responsible for site security took over the duties of firing the citadel gun once the British Army took its departure. Later, the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site of Canada organisation assumed the duties previously performed by the Corps of Commissionaires. Parks Canada introduced its 'interpretation program'.
Cont.. Part 2

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