Hi Martin,

Fascinating essay. Thanks for posting the link!

I'm curious as to whether there are any cannon ship mooring bollards here. I'll have to ask one of my acquaintances who worked for the Harbors department. They certainly have more character than the modern ones.

Looks like a cannon mooring bollard?


Port de Monaco, avril 1905 by Bibliothèque de Toulouse, on Flickr

I found another old photograph of the local cannon bollard:

Merchant street looking toward Waikiki.

Clicking on the image enlarges it. The guy in the white shirt by the horse and buggy is leaning on the bollard.

Nice old photo. It looks as though the gun was placed there to protect the curbstones on the corner. I suppose that by 1885 that was as good a use as any for an obsolete muzzle-loader.

I'm sorry to say that I have not found any new ones in the UK lately.

Martin

Good Evening,
This is my first post to this forum; I am quite happy to see that such a forum now exists! Many thanks to Susan for providing it.
If I may interject, as I understand cannon in the course of long use become "shot out", which is to say, the bore is worn larger to the point of being both greatly inaccurate and likely more dangerous to friend than foe. In the case of brass guns, the worn out tube is customarily melted down and re-cast into a new gun. This is less common for iron guns. Many of these "shot out" guns or obsolete ones as well find their way into being "recycled" into either display pieces, or as bollards or hitching posts, depending on the caliber of the tube in question.
Regards...