MINUTES OE PROCEEDINGS OF 
£04 
tc There are fourteen large brass cannon without carriages on the sea 
shore ; they are always loaded with stone ball, ready to sink any ship that 
would offer to pass without coming to anchor, in order to be searched; they 
fire likewise with ball in answer to any ship that salutes the castle, as this 
does much damage where they fall, so the lands directly opposite commonly 
pay no rent. There are eight other cannon towards the south ; I saw 
among them two very fine ones, one is twenty-five feet long, and adorned 
with fleur-de-luces which they say was a decoration anciently used by the 
Emperors of the East before the French took those arms, and I have seen 
them in many parts; the other cannon is of brass, twenty feet long, but in 
two parts, after the old way of making cannon of iron of several pieces; the 
bore of this is about £ feet, so that a man may very well sit in it, two 
quintals and a half of powder are required to load it, and it carries a ball 
of stone of 14 quintals.* 
" The other castle called Rumeli Eskihissar (the old castle of Romelia) has 
in it twenty large brass cannon, one of which is of great size, but not so 
large as that on the other side.” 
A more recent Prussian traveller, Major von Molke (1829), says that there 
are “ 63 kamerlicks or guns which throw stone balls, some of which weigh 
1570 lbs. weight.” “These gigantic guns,” he adds, “are some of them 
£8 inches in diameter, and a man may creep into them up to the breech. 
They lie on ground on sleepers of oak, instead of gun carriages, and their 
butts against strong walls, so as to prevent recoil, as it would be impossible 
to run them forward in action. Some of them are loaded with as much as 
1 cwt. of powder.”t 
1570 Turkish chekies are equivalent to about 1050 lbs. avoirdupois, a stone 
shot of this weight would have ajliameter of 31*7 inches; as the largest calibre 
mentioned by this officer, £8 Prussian inches, is equivalent to only £8*8 
English inches, it is possible that the stone shot of 1570 (Turkish) lbs. 
were intended for a gun not seen by him, but the discrepancy is not greater 
than may arise from the vagueness of the original unit, the kantar, when 
applied to stone shot; of the primitive mode of mounting which he 
describes, we have many examples. 
At the present time there are but 18 of these guns left, including the 
one recently presented to Her Majesty, and I am indebted to Mr Wrench, 
H.M. Yice Consul at the Dardanelles, for being enabled to give a list of 
them; it includes three that have been recently broken up. 
N, signifies that the gun was, in January, 1868, in the Fort Kilit Eahar on the 
European side of the Dardanelles Straits. 
S that it was in the Sultanieh Fort of Chanak Callessi, on the Asiatic side of the 
Dardanelles Straits. 
Many of the guns have the weight of shot marked in kantars only, I 
have reduced these to okes, at 44 okes = 1 kantar. In others it is marked 
in okes, not in kantars. 
* A quintal is 110 rotoli of 144 drams, or 1*00 lbs. avoirdupois according to some authorities. 
Tate makes the Rotolo 180 drams or T27 lb. (Modern«Cambist). 
f Mallet, von Hammer says (II. p. 514), Moi memefen ai vu un aux Dardanelles: sa louche 
ete si vaste, quepeu de temps avant mon arrivSe , un tailleur poursuivi pour dettes, s'y etait blotti 
et y reste cache pendent plusieurs jours! 
