“Mortars are a kind of short cannon of a large bore, with chambers. Their use is to throw hollow balls filled with powder, called shells ; which falling upon any building , or into the works of a fortification, burst, and their fragments destroy every thing within reach.”
John Muller, A Treatise on Artillery, 1768
Bombs from Mortars could be fired at high angles in order to send them over the enemy defenses. Once inside the city they would cause fear, disorder, and damage in places that the enemy might have thought were safe. Targets would include enemy tents, powder storehouses, officer’s quarters, and more. The basic goal was to ruin the enemy’s men and materiel which would also break their spirits in the process.
In other cases the bombs could be fired directly into the earthworks where they would explode. This was done to assist the heavy siege guns in breaking through the enemy defenses by gouging holes in their earthworks where infantry could then assault the enemy.
In order to assist in this process, some mortars were mounted onto carriages and were called Hobits. General Knox, commander of the American artillery at the siege, ordered several mortars to be converted into Hobits for the siege in order to throw bombs into the enemy earthworks.
Here at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, we have a recreated version of a 4 ½“ Coehorn Mortar that fires a roughly 9 lb bomb. Our mortar is relatively small in comparison to some of the artillery at the Siege of Yorktown. Some of the Mortars used here were 10” or 12” in diameter and fired 100 to 200 lb bombs. However, these pieces give us much more opportunity to demonstrate how they are used.
Citations:
Döhla, Johann C. A Hessian Diary of the American Revolution. Translated by Bruce E. Burgoyne. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Greene, Jerome A. The Guns of Independence: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781. Savas Beatie, 2013.
Muller, John. Treatise of Artillery: Containing ... to which is Prefixed, an Introduction with a Theory of Powder Applied to Fire-arms. United Kingdom: John Millan, 1768.
Popp, Stephen. Popp’s Journal 1777-1783 Translated by Joseph G. Rosengarten. Reprinted from the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, April and July, 1902
Prechtel, Johann Ernst. A Hessian Officer’s Diary of the American Revolution Translated by Bruce E. Burgoyne. Westminster, MD: Heritage Books. 2008
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