What is inside Fort Nelson? 5 giant guns and their stories
The oldest dated cannon, a bombard fired for fun, a mortar that never fired in anger and a supergun that never left Teesside.
Fort Nelson in Hampshire displays part of the Royal Armouries' big-gun collection, including the Dardanelles Gun (cast 1464), the Boxted Bombard, Mallet's Mortar, a Boche Buster howitzer barrel and sections of the Iraqi supergun seized in 1990.
Fort Nelson in Hampshire houses part of the Royal Armouries' collection of big guns. Its oldest piece, the Dardanelles Gun, was cast in 1464 and has been at Fort Nelson since 1989. Here are five of the stories inside, drawn from Wikipedia and the Royal Armouries.
The Dardanelles Gun
This Ottoman bronze bombard was cast in 1464 by Munir Ali. Wikipedia's Dardanelles Gun entry says Turkish forces fired it at a Royal Navy force during the Dardanelles operation of 1807. Sultan Abdulaziz gave it to Queen Victoria in 1866, it was at the Tower of London, and it has been at Fort Nelson since 1989. Guinness World Records lists it as the oldest dated cannon. We have left out a casualty figure, because we couldn't confirm it.
The Boxted Bombard
This is a mid-15th-century wrought-iron bombard. The Royal Armouries record gives around 1450. Wikipedia says an engraving of 1792, published in Archaeologia, records it being fired at Eridge Green in Sussex for public amusement. It later sat at Boxted Hall in Suffolk until the Royal Armouries took it to the Tower in 1979. The firing story rests on that one source.
Mallet's Mortar
Robert Mallet's mortar had a 36-inch calibre. Two were built in 1857 for the Crimean War, and Wikipedia says it was never used in combat. The unfired one is displayed at Fort Nelson, while a test gun is on loan at Woolwich.
The Boche Buster
"Boche Buster" was the crews' nickname for the BL 18-inch railway howitzer. Wikipedia gives an 18-inch bore, a high-explosive shell weighing 2,500 lb and a range of 22,300 yards, around 12.7 miles. Barrel number one was returned to Royal Armouries at Fort Nelson in September 2013. A caution: the nickname began with a First World War mount, so those specifications describe the gun class rather than proving what that exact barrel did. The Royal Armouries' own page lists a 200-tonne railway howitzer.
The supergun that was seized
Project Babylon was an Iraqi supergun scheme linked to Saddam Hussein and the engineer Gerald Bull. In early April 1990, UK customs seized barrel pieces at Teesport that were labelled as "petrochemical pressure vessels". Wikipedia's Project Babylon article says some of the seized sections are displayed at Fort Nelson, and the Royal Armouries site lists the Iraqi supergun.
What we left out
We haven't covered how the fort itself was built, and we haven't given the price it was bought for in 1979, since we could find that on a single page only. If you plan to visit from Waterlooville, check the Royal Armouries site for opening times first.
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