Safety first, lads

[Tom Scoufalos]

Kind of reminds you, in an indirect way, to keep your hand away from that muzzle!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8_Gf...eature=channel

[sbl]

I'll bet they blamed the gay sailor.

[Pvt. Sweetey]

Even the little ones are dangerous!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWq6rYftX5w

[GaWildcat]

Talk about wanting to die quick, fast, and in a hurry...

How NOT to load artillery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aes7tKAgRVw&NR=1

[sbl]

[sbl]

Keep chicks away to!

[Marc]

Talk about wanting to die quick, fast, and in a hurry...

How NOT to load artillery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aes7tKAgRVw&NR=1

I could not even watch the end of the video as I knew what was going to happen. I started out in artillery over 20 years ago and any unit I was with safety was the primary concern. I encourage anyone with an interest in muzzleloading artillery at a minimum subscribe to "The Artilleryman" at

http://www.artillerymanmagazine.com/
They also have a booklet available on cannon safety etc. It is the same people who do "Civil War News".

[Craig L Barry]

"Artilleryman" is a great magazine.

[Spinster]

You know, its just hardwired into the genetic code:

From Pickett's History of Alabama, Chapter IX
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.c...rk4/pktfm.html
(Fort Toulouse-Jackson State Historic Site is located in Wetumpka, Alabama, at the confluence of two rivers, just northeast of Montgomery)

Returning to Coosawda, Bienville now advanced his fleet from thence to the junction, where, entering the Coosa, he arrived at Tuskegee, where the voayge terminated. The crew left the boats, ascended the bluff, formed themselves in religious order, and surrounded a cross which had been hastily constructed. Two priests, who accompanied the expedition, chanted praises to the Most High, and went through other solemn ceremonies, in prresence of a number of the natives, who contemplated the scene with camness and respect, and who preserved the most profound silence. With the assistance of the natives, Bienville began the erection of a wooden fort with four bastions, in each one of which he mounted two of the cannon.

As the history of these cannon is rather singular, and may interest some of our readers, we must be allowed to digress from the main narrative., by a brief refernce to it. These cannon remained upon the entrenchments of Fort Toulouse from 1714 to 1763. Then the French commandant spiked them, broke off the trunions, evacuated the fort, and left the cannon there in that situation. The English, who, in 1763, succeeded to the possession of this country, threw a garrisons into Fort Toulouse, but in a very short time also evacuated it and it fell into rapid decay; but still the French cannon remained there. A few years after Col. Hawkins had been stationed among the Creeks, as their agent, he induced the government, as a means of encouraging agriculture, to send some blacksmiths to the nation. One of these men succeeded in filing away the spikes from the rest of the cannon. These the Indians used to fire with powder for amusement. Afterwards, the army of Jackson occupied the site of the old fort. In due time they marched away, and still these a French piece remained there.

Finally, the town of Montgonmery, now our capital, began to be settled, and the inhabitants went up to old Fort Toulouse, then Fort Jackson, and brought down two of these cannon, which they fired at 4th of July festivals, and upon other extraordianry occasions. When it was known that John Quincey Adams had been elected President of the United States, his warm friends in Montgomery determined to make the forests resound with the noise of powder. One of the cannon was over-charged, and when touched off by Ebenezer Pond, burst into pieces and mangled that gentleman in such a horrid manner, that he was a long time recovering. The breech of the other cannon was, some years afterwards, burst off by heavy charges, and the portion which remains now stands at Pollard's corner in Montgomery, being there planted in the ground, the muzzle up, for the purpose of protecting the corner of the sidewalk. About the same year 1820, another of these cannon was carried to the town of Washington, then county seat of Autauga, where the inhabitants used to fire it upon the celebration of the 4th of July, and whenever a steamboat arrived, but at length it was also burst, by a party rejoicing one night at the result of a county election. Another of these old French pieces was carried to Wetumpka when that town was first established, and was fired upon like occasions. It is now at Rockford, in Coosa county, in the possession of the same Ebenezer Pond who was so badly wounded at Montgomery by the explosion of one of its mates. What became of the other four cannon we not know, but have understood that they, together with a fine brass piece, are in the river opposite Fort Jackson.

[Rob Weaver]

Kind of reminds you, in an indirect way, to keep your hand away from that muzzle!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8_Gf...eature=channel

There's an expression among the brothers of St Catherine "he don't know which end the joe goes in." It wasn't the muzzle that got him, friend, it was the breech. The end the joe goes in.
He should get down on his knees and thank God Almighty he wasn't loading a tank cannon. The recoil of a tank gun will kill you if you stand behind it. Not can kill. Will.
Did he sign the waiver? They really need to invent a safe breechloader.