HMS Glatton was a 56-gun fourth rate of the Royal Navy. Wells & Co. of Blackwell launched her on 29 November 1792 for the British East India Company (EIC) as the East Indiaman Glatton. The Royal Navy bought her in 1795 and converted her into a warship. Glatton was unusual in that for a time she was the only ship-of-the-line that the Royal Navy had armed exclusively with carronades. She served in the North Sea and the Baltic, and as a transport for convicts to Australia. She then returned to naval service in the Mediterranean. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars the Admiralty converted her to a water depot at Sheerness. In 1830 the Admiralty converted Glatton to a breakwater and sank her at Harwich.
Captain Henry Trollope with the mortally wounded Marine Captain Henry Ludlow Strangeways on the deck of HMS Glatton
Captain Sir Henry Trollope
Glatton at Copenhagen, 1801
Captain Nathaniel Portlock
A carronade is a short smoothbore cast-iron cannon which was used by the Royal Navy. It was first produced by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, and was used from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range, anti-ship and anti-crew weapon. The technology behind the carronade was greater dimensional precision, with the shot fitting more closely in the barrel thus transmitting more of the propellant charge's energy to the projectile, allowing a lighter gun using less gunpowder to be effective.
Carronade
68-pounder British naval carronade, with slider carriage, on HMS Victory
Admiralty carriage mount for an 18-pounder carronade, 1808
Diagram of a carronade mounting. The lack of a nozzle or muzzle cup suggests this carronade pre-dates ca. 1790, and it must date to 1785 or earlier as a copy of this drawing in the Dutch archives bears that date.