What is "caliver"

Usage examples of "caliver".

All over the verandah and the full length of the corridor, the black soldiers were squatting or sitting on the floor, loading breech cups for swivel guns and horn or wooden load tubes for calivers and arquebuses, cleaning weapons, reaming touchholes, and checking the actions of wheel-locks.

Abdullah, have your calivers try to drop those men carrying the notched logs.

The tops of the walls were platforms for both long and short lighter piecessakers, minions, falcons, falconets, and even a few robinetsplus at least one swivel gun every ten running feet of wall-toppatareros, portingal-bases, bases, drakes, port-pieces, stock-fowlers, sling-pieces, and murderers, as well as a few very-large-caliber calivers that had been swivel-mounted.

Those who had circled around to the starboard side, however, were too widely spaced to make certain targets for the hard-to-traverse main-battery pieces, so swivels and calivers were used against them, while other calivermen and swivels blasted away at those who had survived the broadside and the one barge that lay close under the stern.

Despite all manner of enhanced security precautions and procedures, doubled and redoubled layers of guards and the like, the maddeningly impossible thefts had continued unabatedmore powder of both sorts, of course, but also garrison guns, sling guns, and long calivers off the very sentry-patrolled walls, and food stores, along with an assortment of hardware for the servicing and laying of cannon and round shot for cannon, pigs of lead, and a brass gang-mold for the casting of caliver balls.

But when the defenders left their positions and their now-useless six-pounders, dropped their calivers, and fled toward the city, only to be almost all cut down by the fire from the ship, the humbler besiegersand not a few not so humblescreamed, shouted, cheered, and hugged each other in an excess of unbridled glee.

Now, counterbattery fire from the walls had become desultory, the dwindling number of losses from gun crews mostly being the result of long-range sniping with big bore wall-mounted matchlock calivers, but there seemed a dearth of notable marksmen within the city, for hits were rare, though the inch-or-more-in-diameter balls were almost certain to be the death of anyone so unfortunate as to be caught in the path of one.

He was trailed closely by two men armed with calivers and, a few paces behind them, three of his native irregulars with nocked arrows ready on their short bows.

If you have to fire or feel you have to at a suspicious something, then please do it with a swivel gun, a small-bored one, or better yet, with a caliver loaded with ball and shot.

The murderous crossfire of cunningly concealed light cannon decimated the attack while still it was far from the now-firm lines, his arquebusiersemploying the new, multi-shot weapons developed in England during the calamitous attempts to subdue that land by the late and unlamented Pope Abdulpoured fourteen volleys of thumb-thick leaden balls into the attackers, and then, when they had retired behind the ranks of pikemen, ranks parted all along the battle line to reveal the grinning mouths of larger field guns, all loaded to almost the muzzle-bands with grape and langrage and carcasses filled with arquebus and caliver balls.

Bass, with an eight-bore caliver and at a range of under forty feet, and before you ask, yes, the weapon was fully charged.

There was a puff of white smoke from the bow chaser and a screaming shell struck and exploded, dismounting one of the six-pounders, the flying shards of iron casing killing or maiming every member of that gun crew and several caliver men besides.

Don Eshmael, protected with iron or steel plate, and he seemed vastly impressed that big caliver balls had no effect on it, but then he is still a young man and never has fought armies armed with anything more sophisticated than bow and arrow or darts.

When they rush this section, Abdullah, have your calivers try to drop those men carrying the notched logs.

They had held it, fought it, fought it well and hard for weeks, not only bloodily repelling the barbarians' every assault, but with their bombards, cannon, engines, calivers, and crossbows making it deadly dangerous for the savage victors to mass anywhere within range of the walls of that castle.