Cutaway Composite Cannon

This unusual cannon is a rare example of 17th-century weapons experimentation. Composite guns aimed to combine the strength of bronze with the lower cost of iron, resulting in a gun about one third lighter than a full bronze equivalent. But they had a fatal flaw: they couldn’t handle the force of a full cannonball blast.

Instead, these guns were loaded with anti-personnel shot, bundles of musket balls, nails, and stones designed to tear through crews, not hulls.

This cutaway shows its complex construction: a copper tube at the core, iron bars for strength, thick bands for reinforcement, and molten lead poured in to bind it all together. Clever but flawed, composite cannons were soon abandoned in favour of more reliable designs.