37mm Hotchkiss Revolving Gun - Lewistown, IL
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 40° 23.816 W 090° 09.318
15T E 741426 N 4475700
The first prototypes were made in 1871, but were too late to be used in the war.
Waymark Code: WMZHN8
Location: Illinois, United States
Date Posted: 11/15/2018
Views: 2
County of display: Fulton County
Location of display: N. main St., courtyard plaza, Lewistown
37 mm Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon for Naval use
"The Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon was built in four calibres, but all used the same mechanism, so for the purposes of this web presentation I will describe the naval version of 37 mm calibre. Much of the text has been taken from documents published between 1874 and 1885 (see references). Inevitably these texts extoll the benefits of the Hotchkiss in comparison with the competitors. On this page I have included a Quicktime movie to show how the Revolving Cannon works, together with images from the movie and text describing the mechanisms.
Construction
"The Hotchkiss revolving cannon consists of five barrels, mounted parallel to each other, around a common axis, and carried between two gun-metal disks, as in the Gatling gun. This group of barrels, bearing at their front end in a gun-metal frame carrying the trunnions, is rotated in front of a fixed breech-block, which contains the mechanism for loading, firing and extracting the spent cartridges. There is only one set of mechanism for all the barrels, each barrel being brought successively before the loader, striker and extractor. The barrels do not rotate continuously as in the Gatling gun, but make only one-fifth a turn at a time, thus bringing, at each movement, the following barrel into the place occupied by the one before it. The continuous turning of the hand crank imparts this intermittent rotary motion to the barrels, and they are at rest during the period of loading, firing and extraction. In this manner each turn of the hand-crank loads one barrel, fires another, whilst the spent cartridge is being extracted from a third.
"This arrangement gives a very simple mechanism, consisting of only few parts, and these can be made large and strong, and, therefore, makes this gun better able to support the rough usage of regular service than other machine-guns which have an independent set of mechanism for each barrel, which, of course, multiplies the number of parts and requires them to be made smaller and lighter." ~ Anti-Torpedo Boat and Machine-Guns of the Victorian Era