There cannot be many Capetonians who have never set their watches by the noon day gun, That resounding boom marks the days of our lives; and in this atomic age the old muzzle-loader has become as much a part of Cape Town’s background as Table Mountain itself. It is detonated every day, except Sundays and public holidays, by electricity from the Royal Cape Observatory, well before noon a soldier removes the wooden stopper, or “tampion”, from the muzzle, cleans and dries the barrel and rams in the three-pound bag of gunpowder. He clears the touch-hole and stabs the gunpowder bag with a wooden pin. For this, I am told, he received
Noon Day Gun
It is clear that in the eighteenth century guns were fired from the Castle at sunrise and sunset. The only important date in the history of the gun is 1798, when a careless gunner left some guncotton in the barrel. When the gun was fired, the blazing wad fell on the thatched roof of the dragoon stables. More than a hundred horses were burnt to death, and all the naval and military rations in the store were destroyed. In 1833 the astronomers decided to provide ships in Table Bay with a time signal for setting their chronometers. Albrass, bell-mouthed pistol was used, and at night the flash from the observatory roof was watched eagerly through telescopes by marines several miles away. The pistol system was not a success, however, and for the rest of last century the noon gun boomed out the Imhoff Battery in front of the Castle.
When standard time was introduced into South Africa in 1903, the noon gun was fired for the first time from Signal ill, misfires are rare nowadays, though they have occurred in winter. Once a careless old soldier left a ramrod an the barrel. It shot out over the city, landed in Riebeeck Square and knocked a horse silly. On another occasion a dreamy soldier sat too long astride the barrel and earned the fright of his life when the explosion shattered his reverie. By the way, you are not expected to take the time from the sound of the gun. The report reaches the observatory eighteen and a half seconds after the flash, and even in the main streets of the city the sound is received nearly five seconds late.
