The incredibly ornate yet *very* mysterious dragon gun, with Assistant Curator Thomas Davies 

Incredibly interesting, clearly enthusiastic, infectious attitude. More of Thomas!

Yay Jonathan found someone willing to talk about an awesome item in the collection. Great presentation from Thomas. Hope Thomas finds the cannon maker and finishes his quest.

I really like this presenter, he got good energy and obviously passionate about the subject. Hope i see him again❤

I saw this in person last year. I was in Fort Nelson during the Falklands War exhibition. This cannon is one of many that really stops you in your tracks and has you staring. Such fine craftsmanship. I should add that Thomas is brilliant behind the camera, a natural.

Thomas has great presence in front of the camera. Hope we see more of him. Edit: sneaky, inconspicuous alteration.

Unrelated to the gun, the cafe at Fort Nelson is very good.

Is this Tom Scott's little brother?! 😂 Bloody practiced TV voice, sounds like I'm watching a BBC history show. Great enthusiasm.

I’ve been asking and asking for this video! Thank you everyone, I always make sure I drop by to look at it (and the matching musket) when I visit Fort Nelson I feel like all that volunteer work in the ACF cleaning up the fort has paid off. (I also had a very minor role in recovering one of the cannons being restored)

"It looks a little bit ornate." Master of understatement :D

Very cool piece! Leave it to the Asian sphere to create such an ornate yet functional piece of kit. What I really enjoyed was Thomas. While I like Johnathan's presentations, it was refreshing to witness Thomas' presentation of this cannon. He speaks clearly at a good volume, imparting all the information he has access to while querying the audience for their involvement for further information as there is as lack of historical account. That's good use of informational access now that we have the internet. I like Thomas. Use him in videos more often, please.

So there was a Burmese military campaign into the then-Lanna kingdom of what's now northern thailand, and a number of major cities were captured for a generation or two, and then recaptured by the Thai/Siamese people later. The city walls in this region have a particular set of features- they're usually initially mud brick, updated later with fired ceramic stoneware brick, they're all solar aligned- if not perfect polar alignment, there is at least a coherent square city structure, generally about a mile on a side, with a wall inside and a moat outside, and a more-or-less freely unplanned city inside the walled curtain area with some central administrative functions, government and religious buildings, at the exact center. The walls themselves vary in construction, but the are noteworthy for including ramparts for infantry and emplacements for artillery, not having arched gateways that allow traversal of the wall across gates (in other words, you go down off the wall, cross the street, and go up the other wall on the other side of the gate, at every gate, in theory), and the cities almost always have an internal fresh water source within this curtain wall. It seems likely to me that this gun could originate in northern Siam/ in the Lanna kingdom, maybe at one of the smaller cities like Luang Prabang, and possibly from the larger cities like Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai- all three examples of which have some variety of this city wall format I've described, usually with additional less-documented outer curtain walls as part of a historical previous extended defensive wall network.

Great video. That guy knows what he is talking about and is passionate about it, great energy.

There are similar looking guns to be found in Indonesia. Some 17th century Indonesian dragon cannons have been found on the Great Barrier Reef, indicating that this area was known to Indonesian sailors of the period before Cook.

This gun may belong to Nguyen or Tay Son dynasty from Vietnam. My theory is this gun was captured between 1785 - 1834 from Tay son or 1841 -1845 from Nguyen dynasty.Thailand (Siam) and Vietnam were in a series of armed conflicts between the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom and Rattanakosin Kingdom and the various dynasties of Vietnam mainly during the 18th and 19th centuries. Several of the wars took place in modern-day Cambodia ( Wikipedia ). Tay Son dynasty were especially famous for thier cannon battle against Qing and Siam force

I liked the "whoosh". That's the first thing you notice when you're close to a black powder cannon, then the shock wave goes right through you and gives every atom in your body a good shake. It's quite exhilarating once you realise that everything's still attached. 😊

I was going to ask those same questions about if it had been a show piece etc. Imagine being a levy up against the British and being given this along with "Good luck, don't break it, it's worth more than your village. "

Fantastic Casting skills. Wonderful metal work.

very informative. and as a side note: as a not native speaker I really enjoyed the clear and good proconation, made it really easy to follow.

What a wonderful piece. Thanks for such a clear presentation and one delivered with understandable enthusiasm. 👍🏼

Excellent job Tom. Love the 10-15 min format. Keep them coming!

Excellent presenter, when I heard that "Whoosh" reference regarding the cannons firing, I couldn't help get Lord Flasheart from Blackadder out of my mind :)

I like this guy , real passion for what he describes .

this gun is pretty underpowered in tf2

excellent job Tom truly fascinating bit of kit best of luck with finding out more

What a lovely instance of serendipity. I am watching this history of the dragon gun and England have just beaten Wales in the rugby. Sorry my Cambrian neighbours but dragons don't always win. Nos Dah.

So cool! Have you done a material analysis to figure out where the bronze came from, or a pattern analysis to find out where in the world such cannons had been made? I'm quite certain it contains identifying marks, just not marks we are fluent in reading anymore, like the pattern and number of claws, the shape of the dragon, the number and shape of specific features- that sort of thing. Maybe the artillery capabilities could be an answer too.

Looks insane, would love to see more weapons like this.

Now that is a beautiful piece, good luck on your research, really hope you can find out more. Very well done video aswell, you definetly are good at conveying the information…which is good when that is the point of interpreters at a museum.

Marvelous cannon. Taken straight from the legends!

Just love these vids, and a good narrator !

Would this have originally been painted? I know a lot of (generally European) artifacts that are now bare metal/stone are thought to have been when they were new and wonder if this would have been such a case.

Wow, what a piece! Thanks for the video Thomas and Armouries

This is…not Jonathan Ferguson. It’s Thomas Davies who has made pretty good video himself.

Absolutely fascinating, what a beautiful piece of art and weaponry. Wish you all luck with finding out more about it's history and origin!

Coolest cannon I've ever seen anyway.

The first thing I thought was how the hell did they make that it's beautiful

Good to see something from Fort Nelson. And what a fascinating piece.

Bravo. Well presented. Full points.

What a magnificent piece of casting/metalwork. If a weapon of war can be classed 'beautiful' then this is it! Every day's a learning day, thank you Thomas.

Yep that dragon would've breathed some serious fire!

Nice one Thomas, well done :)

Amazing! Most beautiful cannon I have ever seen!

Turns out it's secretly some sort of Chaos Warp/Laser Gun from the Warhammer 40k universe.

Amazing 😮

This curator/presenter is fantastic. Can we have a lot more of him? =)

Fort Nelson is awesome 👍⭐️

Always enjoy visiting Fort Nelson.

This is the cannon you stick on the castle walls to show every one.

Fascinating

Beautiful weapon and nice storytelling!

Beautiful piece.

Nice timing. Happy new year!

Why did we stop making cool looking cannons? This looks dope

Wow, that is truly a work of art. Great video!

Thank you

Excellent job with this video. Imagine there was some pressure filling Jonathan’s shoes but he did a great job while doing their own thing

Enthusiasm goes far with first impressions. This is an extremely attractive cannon 👍

Thanks for the interesting story, Thomas. You've clearly done a lot of research on this cannon. You have a great TV presence and your enthusiasm is infectious! I hope to see you in more of these videos.

Excellent job Thomas! Loved the video.

His enthusiasm infectious. Great presenter, this guy.

Great video, thanks Thomas and team. That cannon is amazing.

OMG, they made the cannon from Kung-Fu Panda!

hell yeah thomas, excellent presentation and super charismatic delivery!! crazy history and craftsmanship

Fantastic piece of history!

Thunder and Meteorite by Dong Nguyan and Kaovjets Ngujens on Vietnamese firearms may have gunpowder info from that region

Looks straight out of Cathay in Warhammer

I like the dragon part

The young lad is a very good story teller 👍

Done a training course in here years ago, was a fascinating look around at lunch. I was staring at Henry the EIghths war outfit. Was a good day. Great place to hire rooms for training.

what an amazing and beautiful piece

"whoosh!" Goes the dragon!😂 Great video!👍

Great video.

Golden AK, 16th Century Edition.

Some well heeled warlord no doubt.

Just in time for the Lunar New Year of the Dragon, fascinating

Cool and interesting, obvious bling! :-)

It isn't a Lantaka? I have seen similar cannon from Malaysia, with the dragon head and tail.

amazing cannon

This was alot of fun to watch and learn, thanks! I think I'd still want a plain cannon haha

Facepunch added this as a skin for the rocket launcher on Thursday :)

Hoping for another update on its provenance soon - good luck!

Tom did great job as a host on this video! I don't know whenever that was his first time being one or if I just have never seen him before but I really enjoyed listening to him. Hope to see him more often on the channel :)

If the bronze cannon still Rings like a Bell , it could still work. If it doesn’t ring there is a crack in it. I would love to see it fire again and be recorded in slow motion Etc.

If I ever come back to the UK I'm definitely going to check out all the RA locations

With the paper trail drying out in Siam I guess the only other way is a) studying historical documents , books , writings etc if they ever mention these guns at all somewhere b) archeological and material science methods of looking at the material composition, trying to date and geo-locate that, and the so called handprint of the craftsmanship itself if it appears on other works somewhere in SE of the time ; good luck with that endeavor ! :)

According to my belief, 4-claws "dragons" are for higher officials in Ming Dynasty. In Qing Dynasty the restriction was lifted off a bit, wealthy civilian would be able to acquire fabric in similar pattern. Terminologically dragon with 4 claws are not so-to-speak "real dragon" or "loong", but "mang". For one second I perceive this gun as a returning award for the Siam regime's tribute. However this is kinda a long shot for it being without proper marking (both practical and ceremonial) of Chinese official armory. The rear "knob" design, however, gives me a vibe of Southeast Asia origin though.

Dragon cannons are the ultimate cannon-based drip…unless you have a GOLD dragon cannon.

Maybe it eas used in some ceremony when the Buddhist equivalent of a Saint was "canonized"?

Interesting presentation of this ornate piece. I'm assuming the curator has a vision problem with one of his eyes? Or is it just the camera angle that makes it appear so?

Asking RU-vid commenters for reliable information is a bold strategy

Is this the same gun that stood in Napier barracks, Dortmund for years? (36 Regiment, R.A. Dragon battery)

Is it likely this was used for shooting solid shot, or could this have been used more as a flame projector or salute?

It has a trunnion 4:20 I wonder if the mount was as decorated

I'm pretty sure that's Tibetan War Cannon from Clive Barker's Undying

Such s beautiful cannon. I wonder how menny owners it's been stolen from as a war trophy??

Good presentation!

Excellent

It came from a now defunct store chain called Dragons R Us. Lol

Thank s for this and more on items in Fort Nelson please.

Hell yeah 👍