We simply wanted our script for the film to be a series of voice overs that come from the perspective of a master gunner of the castle. He would talk about his everyday life, and express little anecdotes of things that happened while he was at the castle. It makes our film more of a documentary but using stories of the past that are filmed/recorded to add a bit more ‘life’ to the final outcome.

Script

I am Master Gunner Jonathan Shipley, and I am garrisoned out at his majesty’s fortress, Elizabeth Castle. 

Not much really happened out at the castle really, well not when I was out there. I moved to the garrison in 1785, so the French invasion four years earlier didn’t really affect me. I didn’t know anyone. I was training in England as a redcoat and then they saw that I could read and write, so they decided to give me a blue coat, double my pay and name me a gunner. But my favourite part is that everyone had to call me sergeant even though the only difference was that I had a new coat and hat. 

I guess the typical day for me was wake up and get dressed, report to the parade ground for drill and then they send me to the Grand Battery, and I joined the crew for number 1 gun. I started off as just a vents man, holding my finger over the vent when it was being swabbed, then as the week progressed my role changed so that I knew every job that needed doing before we fired the gun. Doing the worming, the swabbing, the ramming, the priming and only once I had done all that, I was given a linstock. 

Oh, what you saw there was me having to use my bayonet ‘cause I lost the linstock. I got 30 lashings for that, spent three days in bad with bandages on my back. I remember the sergeant got the cat ‘o’ nine tails out the bag and after about 10 lashings, the surgeon would come along with his bucket of sea water and throw it on my back, try and stop infection. I think I would’ve preferred the infection to be honest. 

I know what you’re thinking, why has he got a musket. Yes, I mainly use the cannons but every man in the British Army got a musket for guard duty. I’d only carry nine rounds because that’s all that it was used for. If I see a sail on the horizon and I can’t tell if its English or otherwise, I would fire the musket into the air and the sound would warn everyone on the castle that there’s a ship – then everyone would get to their cannons, load and wait for orders. There was this one time, I had been moved to gun number 5 cause they had no one to aim the gun, and three or four ships sailed into the bay, and on the second or third volley, number 1 gun blew up killing 4 men and injuring about 8 others, I was a good 20 feet away and I still can’t hear anything out my left ear. I was on leave and just walked around the castle at low tide and the end of the barrel was just sticking out the sand.  

I left the castle in 1805 and shipped off to Europe to fight against Napoleon. Returned in 1812 after I was blinded in one eye, I couldn’t easily move around at the speed I needed to on campaign, but the army kept me on and sent me back to the castle as an invalid to train the new recruits. I’m now the Master Gunner of the garrison – making sure everyone is safe, there’s enough food, the powders dry – all of that. I love my job. I’m one of the lucky ones that made it passed 25 and I will be here till the day I die.