NTEENTH CENTURY GUNNER'S LEVEL. This
tool was useful in many ways, but principally for finding the line of
sight on the barrel of the gun.]

Common practice for sighting, as late as the 1850's, was to find the
center line at the top of the piece, mark it with chalk or filed
notches, and use it as a sighting line. To find this center line, the
gunner laid his level (fig. 47) first on the base ring, then on the
muzzle. When the instrument was level atop these rings, the plumb bob
was theoretically over the center line of the cannon. But guns were
crudely made, and such a line on the outside of the piece was not
likely to coincide exactly with the center line of the bore, so there
was still ample opportunity for the gunner to exercise his "art."
Nonetheless the marked lines did help, for the gunner learned by
experiment how to compensate for errors.

Fixed rear sights came into use early in the 1800's, and tangent
sights (graduated rear sights) were in use during the War Between the
States. The trunnion sight, a graduated sight attached to the
trunnion, could be used when the muzzle had to be elevated so high
that it blocked the gunner's view of the target.

Naval gunnery officers would occasionally order all their guns trained
at the same angle and elevated to the same degree. The gunner might
not even see his target. While with the crude traversing mechanism of
the early 1800's the gunners may not have laid their pieces too
accurately, at least it was a step toward the indirect firing
technique of later years which was to take full advantage of the
longer ranges possible with modern cannon. Use of tangent and trunnion
sights brought gunnery further into the realm of mathematical science;
the telescopic sight came about the middle of the nineteenth century;
gunners were developing into technicians whose job was merely to load
the piece and set the instruments as instructed by officers in fire
control posts some distance away from the gun.

THE PRACTICE OF GUNNERY

The old-time gunner was not only an artist, vastly superior to the
average soldier, but, when circumstances permitted, he performed his
wizardry with all due ceremony. Diego Ufano, Governor of Antwerp,
watched a gun crew at work about 1500:

"The piece having arrived at the battery and being provided with all
needful materials, the gunner and his assistants take their places,
and the drummer is to beat a roll. The gunner cleans the piece
carefull