Help needed to identify this found today…

Nov 15, 2024
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Upvote 4
Now that's a cool looking cannon.
Maybe @ARC will give some insight on what you found.

Approximate measurements would really help.
 

Almost looks like a ship gun carriage under the tube.
 

French i think... at first glance anyway... try doing some searches using that lens thingy or the likes.
 

Welcome to Tnet.

You need to help people to help you rather than just providing zero information beyond a few pictures. It would be a remarkable find if that's truly the 'in situ' context.

Where was it found... geographically, and whether from a coastal area, inland and near any kind of fortification or other structure, near a navigable river or whatever? And what are the dimensions?

I'm no cannon expert and the numbers will likely mean something to someone who is, but the crowned 'P' as an ordnance mark is generally regarded as a proof mark used by the Woolwich Arsenal in London, beginning in the Georgian era. There doesn't seem to be a Royal cypher or a broad arrow mark which would indicate it to be Crown property (ie not British military) and cannons without that indication mostly saw use on merchant ships for protection.

However, the mark was not protected, and other foundries used it in imitation of the Woolwich mark as a pretence that they offered the same quality. Those with just the crowned P proof mark turn up all over the place (notably in British Colonial countries) but mostly seem to be of British manufacture and may or may not have a maker mark.

Presumably this monogram is a maker mark with the last letter a little unclear, but it looks like it might be 'SHL', which doesn't mean anything to me:

Cannon.jpeg
 

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8-0-8 is a designation of weight in hundredweights, quarters and pounds. Each hundredweight weighs 112 pounds; or 896 plus 8 pounds equals 904 pounds.
The hundredweight was part of a system of measures of weight that was in commercial use throughout the British Empire from ancient times (as legally defined in 1340 by King Edward III, the hundredweight was equal to eight stones of 14 pounds each)--- into the 1970s.
Does the piece weigh that much?
The crown and P go together to assure the purchaser that the gun had been proved (tested to a standard).
Don in SoCal
 

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