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Photographs of
Blockhouse Hill
Cannon

1848

Cast iron

Town of Lunenburg
Lunenburg County
Nova Scotia

Located at the top of Blockhouse Hill

GPS location:   44°22'41"N   64°18'16"W

Photographed on 14 June 2005

Photographed on 20 March 2003

Looking past the cannon on Blockhouse Hill toward the Montbeliard Monument

Photographed on 17 May 2003

Cannon manufactured for Victoria Regina
(Queen Victoria reigned 1837-1901)

Photographed on 17 May 2003

Photographed on 17 May 2003

Photographed on 14 June 2005

This cannon weighs 2337 kg.

The foundry marked this cannon's weight as 46 - 0 - 0, meaning 46 hundredweight plus zero quarters plus zero pounds. One hundredweight equalled 112 pounds, and one quarterweight equalled 28 pounds. Thus this cannon weighs 5152 pounds. One kilogram equals 2.205 pounds. This cannon's weight works out to 2337 kilograms (at the time of manufacture, not much changed now).

Photographed on 17 May 2003

Photographed on 17 May 2003

Photographed on 17 May 2003

Photographed on 17 May 2003

---

Mistakes in the Interpretative Panel Parks Canada got it wrong. This interpretative panel contains a significant historical error. <<hundredweight>> (unité équivalant à environ 100 livres) That is false. A hundredweight was equivalent to 112 pounds, not 100. This cannon was manufactured in England for the British government. The British government paid for it.  Its weight was stated in the Imperial system of measures, including the legal definition of the "hundredweight." The hundredweight was part of a system of measures of weight that was in commercial use throughout the British Empire, including Nova Scotia, from ancient times – as legally defined in 1340 by King Edward III, the hundredweight was equal to eight stones of 14 pounds each – through the 1960s and into the 1970s. For example, through the first half of the twentieth century and into the 1970s, coal for heating (homes, schools, offices, etc.) in Nova Scotia was bought and sold at retail by the short ton of 2000 pounds, but wholesale transactions (the sale of coal from the mine to the local fuel dealer) were measured by the long ton of 2240 pounds. The long ton was defined as twenty hundredweight. Twenty times 112 is where the 2240 pounds comes from. There is a spelling error in the English text. "Hundredweight" is one word, not two.

Nowadays, cannon and other forms of artillery from the 1700s and 1800s are nothing more than quaint noise-makers.  We see them only in the movies and on TV, or at occasional demonstrations at historic sites.  In their day, cannons were the most powerful, far-reaching and fearsome weapons available...

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"-" means data are not available

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