The 32-pounder guns (and the French 30-pounders) were sets of heavy-caliber pieces of artillery mounted on warships in the last century of the Age of sail, during the 18th and early 19th centuries. It was usually the most powerful armament on a warship. The British version fired a 14.4 kilogram projectile at about 487 meters per second, for a muzzle energy of over 1.7 million joules.[2] They were most famous being mounted on HMS Victory of the Royal Navy. Such a powerful gun with a large weight of shot posed serious damage to enemy ships.

32-pounders: many different guns
Traditionally the caliber of a cannon was a good indication of the effectiveness of a gun. This was not quite true for the 32-pounders of the 1830s and later. The ship of the line Sans Pareil had 64 32-pounders, the screw sloop Rattler had 8 32-pounders. To the casual observer these ships seem to be armed with the same guns, but this was not at all the case. The main armament of Sans Pareil consisted of dozens of heavy 32-pounders. These outranged and outpunched the much lighter 32-pounders of Rattler.

The Royal Navy kept its 32-pounders apart by noting the weight of the piece in hundredweight (cwt). A 32-pounder 56 cwt was a heavy gun for ships of the line. It had a long range, a high chance to hit the target and had a high power of penetration. A 32-pounder 25 cwt fired the same shot, but with less gunpowder. It led to a lower muzzle velocity, lower range and less power of penetration. Because of the lower weight of the piece, the recoil was worse and tended to shake the gun, lowering the chances of hitting the target.