"Bob Engelhardt" wrote in message
...
On 9/18/2014 4:43 PM, Richard wrote:
...
was capable of around 30 shots it
took nearly 1500 strokes of a hand pump ...

1500 strokes!! Well, OK, that's 50 strokes per shot. Oh, my aching arm.

I wonder what the pressure was.

Lots of modern PCP guns run at pressures upto 3000PSI, but the pneumatic
cannons on the USS Vesuvius only ran at about 1000PSI. It would depend on
the exact design of the gun and the adjustments of the dump valve and dump
valve "hammer". There are guys tuning their PCP rifles today to get nearly
the same velocity out of 1800 to 1300 that out of the box guns are getting
at 3000.