Ships and Guns brings together experts from the field of historic
artillery and underwater archaeologists to present a series of papers
which focus on the development of naval ordnance in Europe and,
especially, Venice, in the 15th-17th centuries, as exemplified by the
maritime archaeological resource. Subjects include Venetian ordnance in
shipwrecks of the Mediterranean and Atlantic, the race to develop big
calibres in the first war of Morea, Genoese ordnance aboard galleys in
the 16th century, the strategic logistics of guns at sea during the
Spanish armada of 1588 and ships and guns of the Tudor navy. Often
specialists in ordnance study artefacts recovered from wrecks without a
complete knowledge of the archaeological context from which they have
been recovered. Archaeologists investigating the context of the objects
on the other hand, often do so with only a superficial knowledge of
historic artillery. This volumes hopes to redress the balance, and also
to present a large amount of information, often concerning little-known
wrecks, on this important but under-published subject area.