Despite being an artillery tower with a flat roof to carry heavy guns, the tower was not initially supplied with any artillery and was therefore unable to protect Rye against the hostile naval expeditions which attacked the coast in the 1520s. After many letters from Guldeford to the Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, some guns finally arrived around 1536 in the form of wrought iron serpentines. Prescient concerns began to be raised in the mid-1530s about whether the Camber might silt up further and ultimately become unusable as an anchorage.