For more than four centuries the guns of Mahomet II. protected the Dardanelles--the gate of the Eastern Empire; and, as an old traveller relates, that as they were shotted when fired on holidays, land was usually to be had very cheap on the opposite side of the straits.
Though practically these great pieces of artillery have given place to Krupp and other guns, they still remain on their old sites; but cannon of this description can only be discharged with effect when the object passes their line of fire, as they are not mounted on carriages but built into a wall. Some of those at the Dardanelles carry balls 26½ inches in diameter, and lie flat on a paved terrace near the level of the water, where they opened on our fleet in 1808, when Admiral Sir John Duckworth forced the passage of the Straits.
By a granite shot from one of these, when the fleet returned, _H.M.S. Royal George_ had her whole cutwater carried away; by another, the mainmast of the Windsor Castle was cut in two like a fishing-rod; another carried away the wheel of the _Repulse_, at the same moment killing and wounding twenty-four men, and rendering the ship so unmanageable, that but for the noble seamanship of her crew, she must have gone on shore.
A granite ball burst through the bows of the _Active_, and rolling aft destroyed all in its career, till it was brought up abreast of the main hatchway; a second tore away the whole barricade of her forecastle and fell into the sea to starboard; a third lodged in the bends abreast of the main-chains, and then tumbled overboard. ("Duckworth's Dispatches," &c.)
Baron de Tott tells us that he had seen one of these guns, which had been cast in the reign of Amurath, fired. Its ball weighed eleven hundredweight, and required a charge of powder amounting to 330 pounds. At the distance of 800 fathoms he saw this enormous globe divide into three pieces, which crossed the strait and rebounded from the rocks opposite.
One of these guns was sent to Woolwich, in exchange for an Armstrong breech-loader, and bears the inscription--
"_Help o Allah! Mahomet Khan, the son of Murad!_"
Louis XII. of France had a bombarde cast which is said to have thrown a ball of 500 lbs. from the Bastile to Charenton; but the guns of these times were destitute of trunnions, dolphin-rings, or breech-buttons.