Light anti-personnel swivel Carronade, maker unknown. From an unidentified shipwreck on Wishbone Reef Cape York, Australia.

This lightweight carronade was raised from an unidentified shipwreck on Wishbone Reef on the northern Great Barrier Reef. It was designed to be mounted on a slide rather than a gun carriage and would have been on the deck unlike traditional cannon which were usually kept below deck and were fired through a gun port. It would have been used at close range against boarding parties of pirates or native attackers and the slide was designed to give the gun the greatest possible arc of fire.

Carronades were short smoothbore, cast iron cannons used by the Royal Navy and merchantmen from the 1770s to the 1850s. Their main function was to serve as powerful, short-range anti-ship and anti-crew weapons and could cause immense damage to ships and personnel at distances up to a few hundred yards.

Some swivel carronades were mounted on a pin which was fixed to a rail or top of the ship’s bulwark creating a wide arc of fire whereas this design was fixed to a slight allowing the gun to be moved about the deck.