Tangent Sight

...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1889

ObjectNumber: NG-MC-1889-24-A

Tangent sight, to be mounted to the rear of the vent patch of a gun, the support gripping in a square indentation in the vent patch and secured with a bolt at the rear. The sight itself is a short iron bar that can be moved up and down; the top has the shape of a pyramid with grooves across. This sight for a N° 1 gun has a scale on two opposite sides, one measuring from 0 to 5, the other from 0 to 4.5.

This tangent sight was for 30-pounder guns. ‘M.K.’ means ‘Middelbaar Kanon’ (medium sized gun), of which there were two types, N° 1 and N° 2. ‘K’ means ‘Kogel’ (ball), ‘G’ means ‘Granaat’ (shell).

This tangent sight was found, together with a second one for a N° 2 gun (NG-MC-1889-24-B), without a catalogue number. Both were identified through a process of elimination.

H. van Goens, Handleiding tot de kennis van de zee-artillerie, Rotterdam 1861-65, pp. 1131, 1143, pl. XXXVIII, fig. 278

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'anonymous, Tangent Sight, Netherlands, 1845 - 1865', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.245260