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So did cannonballs actually explode like we see in the movies, or just plow through troops?

Yes!

Love that story about the USS Princeton, and especially how the explosion of the Peacemaker had so many unanticipated consequences!
It’s rather amazing what a few pounds of Black Powder can do!
7mm

Can you explain the mechanism?

I found a 10 inch mortar ball some years back.

Solid shot and impact fuses for starters. And then the whole gamut of shells 7mm has already discussed.

I think the cheapest impact fuse was designed around the Splingard (sic) fuse which was encased in plaster of paris.

Sorry I had to go pee. I am in a west Texas bar. Those fuses were basically a percussion mechanism in a powder filled tube similar to a grenade fuse leading down to the main charge. This was all upset upon impact ergo, boom!

I have read Southern cannon shells were especially unreliable, sometimes exploding right after leaving the cannon’s mouth and injuring the crew.

Authors Schultz and Mingus ( the book The Second Day at Gettysburg) have it that the problem of premature detonation was so prevalent that Southern Artillerists avoided firing over heads of their own men, limiting their effectiveness as a close support arm.

One of the interesting points Cole makes in his book is the Union Army command's obsession with preserving a suitable stock of artillery rounds, to the point of putting restrictions on the allowable rate of fire which proved rather fantastic at times. One rather hilarious instances of the command mindset occurred Pickett's charge where a fuddy duddy told a young officer in the midst of combat "Young man, don't you know that each of those rounds costs $2.67?"

I am really grateful artist James C. Groves’ site is still up since I first found it 20 or so years ago, pertaining to the Devil’s Den Sharpshooter and the account of one Captain of the Union V Corps Artillery August P Martin and his crew making a 600 yard shot with percussion shell out of a Parrott rifle on Little Round Top. I have seen the impact scar on the boulder at Gettysburg.

http://www.jamescgroves.com/henry/hcp1a.htm

Captain Martin was also present the previous year at Antietam. There is an excellent book Antietam: The Soldiers’ Battle told entirely by quoting accounts, letters and memoirs of the soldiers on the ground. At one point the book intertwines the accounts of that same Captain Martin with that of James Longstreet.

Longstreet and AP Hill go forward to look for the Union line, Longstreet on foot in his carpet slippers, AP Hill mounted. At that point, possibly the same Parrott crew, seeing these distant figures fully a mile away and guessing they are Confederate Officers turn the field piece, load a solid shot and take careful aim. In jest, they invite Captain Martin to pull the lanyard, which he does. A Hail Mary shot.

Seeing the distant cloud of smoke, Longstreet suggests to AP Hill that shot is probably aimed at them and that it might be advisable for Hill to dismount, Hill declines to do so. Moments later the shot arrives and takes out both forelegs of Hill’s horse, Hill stepping coolly off as the horse collapses underneath him.

Denver city park has a 100 pound parrot ( weight of bolt, 6.4 inch bore), 11 inch Dahlgren, mortar.
I look at the rifling in the parrot and am amazed. I am an old machinist and getting a wide cutter down the bore and started would be quite a deal. I have never found a good picture or description. Same for the tapered rifling in some muskets. At least a rifle musket wasnt a blind hole.

If you do a search for Tice fuze, you’ll see an an ingenious impact design for field rifle shells. I’ve read that these are some of the worst shells that EOD units have to neutralize when found nowadays.

Smooth bore shells were loaded fuze forward and usually had a fuzes that were ignited by the blow-by flash of the main powder charge. They were cut to detonate the shell at the desired time of flight.

Gunners of the time could really shoot. There are some good videos of cannon matches on YT. Really impressive accuracy.

Some of the stuff they could do with their limited machinery of that day amazes me.

The spring and fall shoots for the NSSA at Winchester Va. feature live firing of original artillery ,you will be astonished at the accuracy of these old guns. They shoot live solid shot at targets in the shape of opposing artillery, I have seen 3 shots that all touched at 200 yds. They also shoot mortar's. The noise of 6 guns on a firing line going off in rapid succession is absolutely thrilling.

Seeing that NSSA shoot has always been on my radar.
We see the re-enactors shooting the guns nearly every time we go to Gettysburg, but they’re all blanks, with I believe a 1/2 lb charge.
It’s impressive, and I love to here those old Napoleons ring as the concussion fades away!
But I would really get off on seeing full power loads fired at real targets.
Hopefully sometime Penny and I will get down there. She’s Kinda got fascinated with this since I first took her to Gettysburg.
That place can do that to a person. As Shelby Foote said “The ground talks to you”!
7mm