How to Spike a Cannon (1 Viewer)

[Peter Reuss]

I'm halfway through Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy (only 2 years of reading to go!), and I have a quick question. Whenever an army couldn't remove their cannon, they spiked them. How was this done? I'm no cannon expert. I assume it rendered them useless.

Can someone explain the spiking process?

Thanks!

Pete

 

[binder001]

I'm not an expert either, but didn't "spiking" originally come from driving a spike into the touch hole of a cannon? I've heard of trying to ruin the touch hole, or to filling the bore. Most anything to keep the enemy from making immediate use of it. On modern guns, the crews would remove and discard the breech block, or blow up the barrel. One US Army Ranger spoke about using thermite grenades to ruin the elevating and/or traverse gears on the guns behind Pt. DuHoc on DDay.

 

[Mr Man]

Yes, spiking a gun was the practice of driving a spike into the touch hole. It later became a term that was universally used to mean the rendering useless of any gun.

 

[jazzeum]

How do you spike a cannon? C-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y!

 

[fishead19690]

A tapered steel spike was hamered into the vent at the rear of the barrel but they could be drilled out and used again but this would take to munch time on the battle field. At waterloo the british took off a wheel from the axel on a few of the cannons and hid in the squares so the french could not ride off with them and after the cavalry left they replaced the wheel and were back in action. The french didn,t spike any of the cannons even though the british had spikes right in the boxes on the cannons them selfs, hammer and all(if only they knew). Some of the crews didn,t run to the squares but hid under their cannons. Thats what captain mercer did. They also had a trick back then of loading the cannon a certain way that would blow the spike out like a cork that i read about but i can,t remember what they did to do this. I heard stories of breaking the wheels and lighting guns on fire to distort the barrels also.

 

[Peter Reuss]

So spiking didn't permanently disable the cannon? Was it just a means to keep the enemy from using it in that particular battle?

 

[fishead19690]

Yes they could be used again but i,d hate to have the job of having to drill one out. Its not like they had any cordless drills in those days.