Nope, I mean a real cannon fired within the proximity of your personal space.
For whatever reason, yesterday afternoon The Pride of Baltimore II was cruising back and forth on the Inner Harbor, firing volley after volley of her 19th century replica cannons just a couple of hundred yards from my slip.
The first shot lifted me from my seat; the second brought me back down and the third made me wonder if the Second Coming had arrived in Charm City. Each successive shot literally made Calypso's deck shake and her hatches rattle.
Thunder might be the loudest sound most folks will ever experience (unless they've pressed the side of their head against a jet engine spooling-up for takeoff), but a cannon shot is different: a cannon isn't necessarily louder (I wasn't standing beside it, after all) ... but the cannon's resonance gives its voice a hard-to-describe Presence and Authority.
No kidding. A cannon shot is like an earthquake, a thunder clap and a slap on the back of the head all rolled up into three quarters of a second.
In other words, until I'd heard it, I couldn't imagine such a thing. And just because I couldn't imagine what a cannon shot sounded like doesn't mean that cannon shots aren't real.
So far we've only talked about what a cannon sounds like: what do you think being on the receiving end of an all-night cannon barrage must've been like?
I can't imagine.
