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The 100-ton gun (also known as the Armstrong 100-ton gun) [6] was a British coastal defense gun and is the world's largest black powder cannon. It was a 17.72-inch (450 mm) rifled muzzle-loading (RML) gun made by Elswick Ordnance Company , the armaments division of the British manufacturing company Armstrong Whitworth , owned by William Armstrong .
In 1883 the British Government installed a single 100-ton gun: a 450 mm rifled muzzle-loading (RML) gun made by Armstrong Whitworth, at the battery by Rosia Bay that they named Napier of Magdala Battery after Field Marshal Robert Napier, 1st Baron Napier of Magdala, who had served as Governor of Gibraltar from 1876 to 1883.
An aerial view of modern Gibraltar, looking north-west. The nature and position of Gibraltar's defences have been dictated by the territory's topography.It is a long, narrow peninsula measuring 5.1 kilometres (3.2 miles) by 1.6 kilometres (1 mile) wide at maximum, with a land area of about six square kilometres (2.3 square miles).
The crew at Napier managed to fire a shot every 2.5 minutes, but this ended up cracking the barrel. The wrecked gun was not repairable so the British moved the gun from Victoria to Napier, which was a higher site. The 100-ton guns were the heaviest built and the last gun was considered obsolete sixteen years after the guns' first operations. [6]
The British installed a second pair of 100-ton guns to defend Gibraltar, mounting one each in Victoria Battery (1879) and Napier of Magdala Battery (1883), which did not have Cambridge or Rinella's self-defence capabilities. The gun at Cambridge was eventually scrapped, and today only two 100-ton guns survive, at Rinella and Napier of Magdala.
Rather, access is arranged through the Gibraltar Tourist Board. At the turn of the twenty-first century, it was proposed that the area be developed as a tourist attraction. While improvements were made to the area, ultimately opposition to the suggestion put the plans on hold. The guns have recently been refurbished.
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Rock Gun Battery is in Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory at the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula. [1] [2] The artillery battery is located 411.5 metres (1,350 ft) up the North Face of the Rock of Gibraltar, at the northern end of the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, above Green's Lodge Battery.