The 32-pounder 56 cwt cannon was an artillery piece designed and used by the British Armed Forces in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was by far the most common 32-pounder used by the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, with 1961 guns being recorded as in use and 1733 being in storage at the end of March 1857. The cannon was a

smoothbore A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars. History Early firearms had smoothly bored barrels that fired projectiles without signi ...

muzzle-loading A muzzleloader is any firearm into which the projectile and the propellant charge is loaded from the muzzle of the gun (i.e., from the forward, open end of the gun's barrel). This is distinct from the modern (higher tech and harder to make) design ...

gun, being , and firing projectiles of . Sir Thomas Blomefield designed the cannon in the late 1780s and early 1790s as part of his system of gun construction. It was the heaviest cannon used by ships of the Royal Navy from the 1790s to the late 1830s, and it was used on the lower decks of

ships of the line A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed during the Age of Sail from the 17th century to the mid-19th century. The ship of the line was designed for the naval tactic known as the line of battle, which depended on the two colum ...

such as HMS ''Victory''.

References

{{reflist Cannon Naval guns of the United Kingdom