6 pounder carronade, Bailey Pegg & Co., Ironfounders. From the wreck of CHARLES EATON, Great Detached Reef, Torres Strait.

Carronades were short smoothbore, case iron cannons used by the British 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. While considered very successful early on, naval carronades eventually disappeared as more accurate, long range cannon led to fewer close-range engagements.

However, carronades of this size were very popular with commercial ships who needed guns as required by their insurance companies and to defend themselves from pirates and native attacks.

This 6 pounder carronade was raised from the wreck of CHARLES EATON, an East Indianman carrying Charles D’Oyly, a captain in the Bengal artillery, and his family from Sydney to Canton. The ship was wrecked on the Great Detached Reef in Torres Strait, in July 1834, and all the passengers and crew were massacred by aboriginals except for two-year-old William D’Oyly and a cabin boy, John Ireland, who witnessed the others being murdered and then eaten by the cannibal islanders.