Artillery - some questions

Hi, yesterday we had a game of Smooth&Rifled to test artillery pieces and some questions about artillery occurred. We came up with solutions but don't know if we played it as intended.

1. Artillery loading.
An officer was dispatched to the light artillery piece to give the crew of 4 men commands. For each group command we took 1 action away from the reloading process. Is this right or should it have been 4 actions as it were 4 men.

2. Artillery hitting a special figure
At one point the artillery had to fire at a drummer. We let him have his saving throw as described in 6.2.8 Saving Throw for Leaders, Heroes and particular figures. He succeeded and instead of landing in tightly packed ranks the shot was allocated 5cm to the left and only hit on man.
At which point is the saving throw rolled? At point b) of the shooting process or at point c). Naturally the gunner, I, argued it should be point c) pointing out, that you could make artillery useless with a chessy placement of miniatures (which my mate didn't do, I only pointed out the possibilities), while he argued that you check after the point of hitting and that "If they are hit,
roll 1d6 before checking for damage" should apply to cannons too.

3. Men who pass their test for damage
Miniatures who are not killed by a cannon shot are not shaken, you remove the miniatures or nothing happens. This seemed fine to us as it represents a unit marching stoically marching through fire, but did we play it right?

thank for the feedback, it helps to keep uo to date the rules on artrillery. In this stage I'm also considerto simplify these reles as done with Lords&Servants. Not sure about that, so any opinion is welcomed.

1. Artillery crew doesn't need a leader. It is independent assuming that one of the artilleryman is the chief gunner (don't know the proper name in English)
With 4 crew you can have 4 actions by using one action each (assuming to have the APs), but you can generate up to 12 actions with an higher APs cost.

2. You have to targe a figure not a point. The figure can also be a special figure, like a drummer. If you hit then you calculate the surface affected and then all figures inside make the test. The special figure can use the saving throw and get killed another figure at 5cm instead (even if that figure is nithe in the affected area)

3. It was supposed that any figure that pass a damage test is anyway shaken, though was not clearly reported in the artillery rules section. Shaken doesn't mean wounded, just they loose some initiative.