Erasmus’s cannons

Erasmus’s cannons are the surviving firepower of Blackthorne’s wrecked ship and the material discovery that makes his plan to build a replacement more ambitious. Fished from the sea in remarkably good condition, they connect the ruined Erasmus to The Lady: the old ship cannot be moved, but its guns can help give a new vessel both purpose and fighting strength.

Recovery and Condition

When Blackthorne recognizes that the cannons lie among the wreckage, he breaks off his conversation with Toranaga and urges that they be retrieved quickly. Toranaga explains that his samurai have already brought everything recovered from the ship to camp, including items fished from the shallow water at low tide. Blackthorne’s urgency therefore meets an existing salvage effort: the guns are not merely visible in the wreck, but have been gathered with the rest of its recoverable contents.

The later account clarifies the scale and quality of the recovery. By then, all the cannons have been fished out of the sea, and Blackthorne finds them almost as perfect as when they left the foundry near Chatham in Kent. The contrast is striking: the Erasmus has been destroyed, yet its principal weapons have survived the catastrophe with little apparent loss of usefulness. Their survival gives the wreck a future beyond remembrance or scrap; it still contains equipment capable of serving aboard another ship.

The guns are not the only recovered material. Nearly a thousand cannonballs have also been retrieved, including grape and chain shot, along with many other metal objects. The distinction matters: Blackthorne has not found a collection of isolated weapons, but a substantial artillery reserve accompanied by ammunition and useful metal. Most of the other objects are twisted and scored, while the cannons are described as nearly intact. The wreck thus yields materials in uneven states of preservation, and the guns stand out as the clearest bridge between loss and renewed capability.

From Wreck to The Lady

At first, Blackthorne imagines a vessel of roughly ninety to a hundred tons, smaller than the Erasmus, and considers whether it could carry twenty cannons. He has never overseen or designed a complete ship by himself, though Alban Caradoc trained him as both shipwright and pilot. The recovered artillery gives practical shape to that tentative design. Blackthorne asks whether Toranaga can provide gunpowder, linking the cannons’ physical survival to the supplies needed to make them useful in battle.

The discovery changes the dimensions he can contemplate for The Lady. Blackthorne concludes that the new vessel can be a little longer and broader than he had expected, while retaining the swift, narrow appearance he wants. This is not a return to the Erasmus in miniature: the replacement takes shape around what can be salvaged and what its builder hopes it can do. The guns expand the possibilities of the design, while the ship’s desired speed and form continue to set limits on it.

Blackthorne’s initial appeal to Toranaga is also practical rather than purely technical. He asks for shipbuilding men and then names the work and supplies he will need: forty carpenters, blacksmiths, oak for the timbers, iron, steel, a forge, and a master smith. He momentarily slips back into English as he tries to assemble the full plan, then offers to write it down carefully. The cannons are therefore one essential part of a larger undertaking, not a shipbuilding solution by themselves. Toranaga’s willingness to ask what is needed, and Blackthorne’s request for gunpowder, place the recovered weapons inside a prospective alliance of material, labor, and military purpose.

Salvage and Unfinished Work

The cannons’ recovery does not mean that the wreck itself has been brought ashore. In a later effort, Blackthorne sets a hundred samurai to hauling on three hawsers attached to a keel plate, hoping at low tide to shift the hull and drag it ashore for further salvage. He has adapted his first plan after discovering how much equipment has already been recovered; the cannons and ammunition mean that the wreck’s contents are more valuable than he had expected, even as the hull remains a separate obstacle.

The pull fails. The hawsers jerk under the strain, but the wreck does not budge. That failure gives the guns a distinct status in the salvage: they have already been brought out of the water, while the ship that carried them still resists recovery. The new vessel can advance in conception without the old one being hauled free. The cannons are thus both remnants of a disaster and usable resources detached from it, their condition making a future possible even while the wreck remains lodged beyond Blackthorne’s immediate efforts.

Military and Narrative Significance

Blackthorne sees the artillery in terms of the threat a new ship could pose. When he explains his idea to Toranaga, he says that with the big guns he could fight an enemy, and asks for gunpowder. The claim gives the recovered cannons a strategic function: they are not simply valuable cargo, but the armament around which Blackthorne imagines a fighting ship. The almost thousand accompanying cannonballs make that imagined capacity more concrete, though the evidence does not establish that the guns have yet been mounted or fired aboard The Lady.

Their importance also rests on a contrast between destruction and continuity. The Erasmus has been lost, but its weapons remain close to their original condition; the old hull cannot yet be moved, but its artillery has already altered the replacement’s proposed size. Blackthorne’s plan depends on human labor and Toranaga’s provision of resources, yet the salvaged metal sets the project’s possibilities in advance. The cannons make the wreck more than a grave of the former ship: they are the most consequential inheritance from it, carrying its firepower into the design of a new one.