Adding Rigging to the Cannons

 I’ve spent much of this building feeling as though the cannons are a bit bare.  Most cannon rigging had three major elements:
    –  The breech tackle – a heavy rope threaded through the rings on the breech and fastened to the ship’s side on either side of the gun to limit its recoil. (Letter D in the diagram below)
    – The gun tackle – one rig on each side, used to haul the gun into its firing position after loading. (Letter C in the diagram below)
    – The train tackle – one rig that held the gun back and clear of the ship’s side while it was being loaded. (Letter B in the diagram below)

The kit instructions call for the gun tackles, although does provide for them as an option. Augie chose not to include them, which I fully understand.  They require carefully rigging over a hundred single blocks complete with hooks and lines. Then, they become a challenge to mount to the eyebolts on the cannons and the bulwarks.

That said – I had second thoughts and started to go down that road.  I rigged enough blocks and hooks for one side of cannons.

It was then that I realized, rigging the gun tackles for THESE guys – the cannon that you could see through the open deck, but couldn’t really get to – was going to be impossible. I made a few aggravating attempts, then after much profanity – bailed on the idea.

The alternative, if I still wanted to rig gun tackles, was to only rig the gun tackles on the accessible cannons on the open lower deck and open upper deck and leave the rest unadorned.  I really didn’t like the idea of that kind of consistency.

So instead, I settled on just rigging the train tackles. It gave the cannons a bit more rigging, which is what I wanted, and also incorporated the eyebolts mounted behind each cannon, which up until this point seemed to be begging the question “what am I here for?”

It was still challenging of course to rig the cannons that were on the second deck beneath the openings, but it wasn’t impossible.  While it would be inaccurate for cannon’s to have train tackle (which is only used when the cannons are in operation) and not gun tackles – overall, I’m pleased with the look.