Carronade

A shell from a short cannon known as a carronade landed close behind Joyful. ❋ Beverly Swerling (2007)

The carronade was a pot of a gun, not a long, elegant and accurate cannon, but a squat cauldron to be charged with powder and metal scraps that flayed out like buckshot. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard (1992)

A carronade is a short cannon of large calibre, but of very short range. ❋ Willis J. Abbot (1898)

And the challenges arrived: Stories with titles like “She Killed Me Twice”, “The Brain That Exploded”, “The Pachyderm Wore Pink” and “Single White Fee Male” with words like ranunculus, vaginate and carronade. 300 stories later, here for the first time in print are 180 of the best. ❋ Unknown (2009)

He slews all out of gear, like a carronade with rotten lashings. ❋ Richard Doddridge (2004)

He was stuffing another cask of musket balls into the carronade, though by now the Pucelle had gone beyond the Redoutable and the Frenchman was out of Clouter's range. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

A ball clanged off Clouter's empty carronade and struck a man in the thigh. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

Chase had gone left, jumping into a space cleared by the carronade, though it was still cluttered with twitching bodies and the deck was slick with new blood. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

The Frenchmen had been snatching boarding pikes from their racks about the mainmast, while others held axes or cutlasses, but one carronade forward and one aft provided a tangling crossfire that destroyed the boarding party. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

Clouter, his black torso streaked and spattered by other men's blood, had taken command of the starboard carronade after half its crew was killed by a grenade thrown from the Revenant's foremast. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

Her forecastle was crowded with men armed with cutlasses and boarding pikes, but the remaining starboard carronade on Chase's quarterdeck ripped them away. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

Lord William frowned at the sound of the carronade, then flinched as the Pucelle's larboard broadside began to fire, the sound rolling down the ship to fill the lady hole with thunder. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

Montmorin knew what was coming, but just then the forward carronade sent a shattering cask of musket balls into the Revenant's belly and belched a pall of smoke above the ship. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

Two of them took hold of the decapitated body and carried it to the rail beside the carronade, but before they could heave it overboard Armstrong told them to take the man's ammunition. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

A fountain spewed up on the starboard side, spattering one of the carronade crews. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

Thirty or forty Frenchmen were in the ship's waist now, and more were streaming along the mast, but just then a carronade blasted from the quarterdeck and emptied the makeshift bridge. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

Chase did not know it, but his presence on the deck was directly useful, for the French marksmen in the fighting tops were obsessed by his death and so ignored the carronade crews which, seeing French seamen gather in the Revenant's waist, fired down into the mass. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)

Captain Chase's barge crew had followed him aft, fighting their own battle toward the quarterdeck steps, but Clouter had come late to the fight, for he had been the man who fired the Pucelle's forward starboard carronade down into the mass of defenders just as Chase had led the charge across the mast. ❋ Cornwell, Bernard, 1944- (2000)