Ships and Guns  brings together experts from the field of historic artillery and underwater archaeologists to present a series of papers which focus on the development of naval ordnance  in Europe and, especially, Venice, in the 15th17th centuries, as  exemplified by the maritime archaeological resource. Subjects  include Venetian ordnance in shipwrecks of the Mediterranean and  Atlantic, the race to develop big calibres in the first war of  Morea, Genoese ordnance aboard galleys in the 16th century, the  strategic logistics of guns at sea during the Spanish armada of  1588 and ships and guns of the Tudor navy.

     Often specialists in ordnance study artefacts recovered from  wrecks without a complete knowledge of the archaeological context  from which they have been recovered. Archaeologists investigating  the context of the objects on the other hand, often do so with  only a superficial knowledge of historic artillery. This volume hopes to redress the balance, and also to present a large amount  of information, often concerning little-known wrecks, on this important but under-published subject area.