The BackgroundHistory Part One of this series begins with a very brief look at the history of a typical naval gun in use with the Royal Navy of the 18th- and 19th-centuries. The story of such cannon, however, begins in 12th-century China where gunpowder, the first explosive, was discovered [1]. Gunpowder was employed in Chinese warfare to some effect from at least the 10th-century in weapons such as fire arrows, bombs, and the fire lance before the appearance of the gun. The earliest European r
