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The Compression Carriage or Hardy CarriageAldo Antonicelli aa Torino , ItalyPublished online: 29 Jul 2013.

To cite this article: Aldo Antonicelli (2013) The Compression Carriage or Hardy Carriage, The Mariner'sMirror, 99:3, 323-324, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.2013.815994

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2013.815994

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The Compression Carriage or Hardy Carriage

I have just read John Harland’s note ‘The Transition from Hemp to Chain Cable’ published in the February issue of Mariner’s Mirror (99:1) and would like to correct an assertion made by the author. On page 84, he states that Admiral Hardy was the inventor of the ‘compression carriage’ for carronades shown in his figure. 30. He was relying on a statement made on p. 285 of James Peake’s Elementary Principles of Naval Architecture (London, 1867), and a very crude sketch on p. 286 that mistakenly labels the piece of ordnance mounted on the carriage as a carronade rather than an ordinary 32-pounder gun of the lighter pattern. The ‘compressor carriage’, better known as ‘Sir Thomas Hardy’s compressor carriage’ or ‘Hardy’s compressor carriage’, was widely used by the Royal Navy, from about 1830 to at least 1850, as a broadside mounting for the lighter 32-pounder guns as well as for carronades. In fact it  was designed by

General William Millar, whose 8- and 10-inch shell guns formed a large part of the British naval ordnance from 1832 to 1864, but whose influence on British naval carriages has passed almost unnoticed.

The success of the compression carriage was primarily due to the patronage of the former captain of HMS Victory, and with passage of time, and because it was tested by the Royal Navy rather than the Royal Artillery, Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy was often credited with its introduction rather than the true inventor General Millar. For example in the ‘New scale of armament of Her Majesty’s Ships and Vessels-of-war’ as reported by the Nautical Standard on 11 May 1847, all the 32-pounder/17-cwt carronades and the 32-pounder/32-cwt guns carried by ships of all rates, as well as the 18-pounder/10 cwt carronades, are said to be mounted on ‘Sir Thos. Hardy’s compressor carriages’. The true situation was better understood by two senior French naval officers Zeni and Deshays, who were sent to Great Britain in 1835 to make

Figure 1 Three views and a transverse section of Sir Thomas Hardy’s compressor carriage (redrawn from Zeni and Deshays, Renseignements sur le materiel de l’artillerie navale de la Grande-Bretagne en 1835)

Notes

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themselves acquainted with this nation’s latest improvement on naval ordnance. Their report, published as a book and atlas in Paris in 1840, by permission of the French Navy Ministry, was entitled Renseignements sur le materiel de l’artillerie navale de la Grande-Bretagne en 1835. On page 56 they wrote (freely translated):

Apart from the old truck carriage and the carriage which we will describe later, the Royal Navy uses . . . a carriage of a different pattern, which the English call a Compression carriage or Hardy Carriage, the name referring to Admiral Hardy who had promoted its testing. This carriage is in fact the invention of General Millar.

This is confirmed by a passage in James H. Ward’s Elementary instruction in naval ordnance and gunnery:

A British general officer, a soldier, altered the light 32-pdr sea carriage for trunnion guns . . . But the General christened his carriage the ‘Hardy Carriage’ after Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy, who had nothing else to do with it than to stand its godfather. Hence it took people’s fancy for a while, but was soon discarded on account of its weight, complication, liability to become deranged, or be rendered useless by swelling, shrinking and warping of the wood, rust of the iron,

&c., and because requiring more nice attention and care in the adjustment than is compatible with the confusion and hurry of battle, or with the intelligence of seamen.

Ward went on to complain of the ‘wasted years of time and quantities of money tinkering away at this ‘Hardy carriage’ by soldiers and mechanics who knew nothing of the sea and called for its abandonment.

ReferencesJ. Harland, ‘The transition from Hemp to

Chain Cable’, Mariner’s Mirror 99:1 (2013), 72–85

J. Peake, Elementary Principles of Naval Architecture (London, 1867)

J. H. Ward, Elementary instruction in naval ordnance and gunnery (New York & London, 1862)

Zeni and Deshays, Renseignements sur le materiel de l’artillerie navale de la Grande-Bretagne en 1835 (Paris, 1840)

aldo antonicellitorino, italy

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2013.815994© The Society for Nautical Research

Figure 2 3-D view of Hardy’s compressor carriage (left) and a detail of the compressor with the carriage’s brackets sectioned (right)

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