General Discussion on Sea Defense, Part IV

Seven

Of the remaining pieces, roughly one-third are foreign cannons 夷礮 (yi-pao): heavy artillery pieces purchased from Western powers bought in recent years. It is deeply infuriating that these have essentially been surrendered, arming the enemy and providing for the bandits original: "藉寇資盜" (jie kou zi dao). An idiom meaning to inadvertently provide the enemy with the tools to defeat you.. If we are to engage in battle now, it is absolutely essential to first prepare our artillery. However, whether those cannons will be effective or not cannot be known without first conducting practice firing.

Investigation shows that there are fourteen newly cast heavy cannons 火礮 (huo-pao): literally "fire-engines," referring here to large-caliber smoothbore guns from Foshan A major center for metalworking and porcelain in Guangdong province, each weighing 8,000 jin approximately 10,600 lbs or 4.8 metric tons. Everyone claims there is no place wide enough to test-fire them. They do not realize that practicing with artillery does not require an extremely vast area. One only needs to prepare a sturdy ship on the water, mount the cannon, and fire toward a mountain.

Barriers should be set up at both ends of the mountainside to block access, which will surely ensure that no people are injured. Furthermore, large sandbags must be piled up. Each bag should be approximately four to five zhang about 45–55 feet long and over two chi about 2.2 feet wide. These should be stacked into a block one zhang 11 feet in both length and width, and seven to eight chi 8–9 feet high, to serve as an artillery target 礮靶 (pao-ba). By firing at this target, we can establish accuracy. Furthermore, by observing how many inches deep the cannonball penetrates the sand, we will have solid proof of whether or not sand can effectively block a cannon strike. These ten...