Note 92 — Chapter VI · THE TRUCK CARRIAGE
Reading edition
It was evidently a practice at this period to vary the diameter of the trucks to suit the ship’s structure and the height of the gun-ports. “Be careful,” says Bourne in 1587, “that the trucks be not too high, for if the trucks be too high, then it will keep the carriage that it will not go close against the ship’s side.... And the truck being very high, it is not a small thing under a truck that will stay it, etc. etc. And also, if that the truck be too high, it will cause the piece to have the greater reverse or recoil. Therefore, the lower that the trucks be, it is the better.”
Bourne also mentions, in the same book, the Art of Shooting in Great Ordnance, as a curious invention of a “high Dutchman” a gun mounting so devised as to allow the piece to rotate through 180° about its trunnions for loading.