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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of Naval Armament, by 
+Frederick Leslie Robertson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: The Evolution of Naval Armament
+
+Author: Frederick Leslie Robertson
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2018 [EBook #56777]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF NAVAL ARMAMENT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by deaurider, Charlie Howard, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  THE EVOLUTION OF
+  NAVAL ARMAMENT
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A SIXTY-GUN SHIP OF LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
+
+From John Smith’s _Sea-Man’s Grammar_ (1694 edition)
+
+            _Frontispiece_
+]
+
+
+
+
+  THE EVOLUTION OF
+  NAVAL ARMAMENT
+
+
+  BY
+  FREDERICK LESLIE ROBERTSON
+  ENGINEER COMMANDER, ROYAL NAVY
+
+
+  WITH EIGHT HALF-TONE PLATES AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  LONDON
+  CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD
+  10 ORANGE STREET LEICESTER SQUARE WC
+  1921
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The notes on which these essays are based were collected in the course
+of two commissions spent under the lee of the Admiralty library, close
+to the Royal United Service Institution, and in touch with the Reading
+Room of the British Museum and other public sources of information.
+
+The lack of a book describing in popular language the materialistic
+side of naval history is, I think, generally admitted. Historians
+as a rule have devoted small space to consideration of material; in
+particular, the story of the revolutionary changes in naval material
+which took place during the nineteenth century has never been placed
+before the public in convenient form. In the attempt to supply such a
+description I have taken the liberty, as an engineer, of treating of
+naval material as a whole; tracing, as well as my technical knowledge
+permits, the progress of all the three principal elements--ship, gun,
+engine--and their interdependence. The result, faulty and incomplete
+as it is, may nevertheless be of considerable service, it is hoped,
+in clarifying the work of the historians and bridging the gap which
+divides the classic histories from our modern text-books.
+
+I have considered our modern navy to begin with the “Admiral” class of
+battleship, about the year 1880.
+
+My respectful thanks are due to the heads of three Admiralty
+departments: Captain R. H. Crooke, C.B., lately Director of Naval
+Ordnance; Engineer Vice-Admiral Sir George Goodwin, K.C.B., LL.D.,
+Engineer-in-Chief of the Fleet; and Sir Eustace T. D’Eyncourt, K.C.B.,
+Director of Naval Construction; for their unofficial approval. I wish
+to acknowledge my indebtedness to the officials of the Admiralty
+and the R.U.S.I. libraries, for their invariable kindness; to the
+Directors of the British and S. Kensington Museums, for permission to
+reproduce pictures in their possession; to Mr. A. W. Johns, C.B.E.,
+Assistant Director of Naval Construction, Engineer Commander E. C.
+Smith, O.B.E., R.N., Mr. H. W. Dickinson, of the S. Kensington Museum,
+Mr. Edward Fraser, and Sir George Hadcock, F.R.S., R.A., of Elswick,
+for various help and criticism; and especially to Mr. L. G. Carr
+Laughton, of the Admiralty library, of whose advice and knowledge I
+have often availed myself, and to whose encouragement the completion of
+the work has been largely due.
+
+It only remains to state that the whole of the book is written and
+published on my own responsibility, and that it is in no manner or
+degree an official publication.
+
+            F. L. R.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
+     I. THE SAILING SHIP                                               1
+
+    II. THE SMOOTH-BORE GUN                                           61
+
+   III. THE STEAM ENGINE                                              93
+
+    IV. “NEW PRINCIPLES OF GUNNERY”                                  112
+
+     V. THE CARRONADE                                                125
+
+    VI. THE TRUCK CARRIAGE                                           140
+
+   VII. THE SHELL GUN                                                160
+
+  VIII. THE RIFLED GUN                                               181
+
+    IX. PROPELLING MACHINERY                                         210
+
+     X. THE IRONCLAD                                                 246
+
+        INDEX                                                        303
+
+
+
+
+PLATES
+
+
+  A Sixty-gun Ship of late Seventeenth Century            _Frontispiece_
+                                                          _To face page_
+  A Tudor Ship of Period 1540-50                                      60
+
+  Tudor Ships under Sail                                             124
+
+  The _Speaker_, a Second-rate of the Commonwealth                   180
+
+  The _Comet_ of 1812                                                224
+
+  _Rattler_ versus _Alecto_                                          240
+
+  The _Warrior_                                                      260
+
+  The _Monarch_                                                      280
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
+
+                                                                  _Page_
+  Diagram illustrating Distortion of Frames under Load                52
+
+  Diagram representing a Ship with Trussed Frames                     53
+
+  Typical Sections of “Symondite” and contemporary Ships              59
+
+  Turkish Bronze Cannon                                               68
+
+  French Twenty-four Pounder, with Spherical Chamber                  84
+
+  Savery’s Engine                                                    101
+
+  Newcomen’s Engine                                                  104
+
+  Connecting-rod                                                     111
+
+  A Carronade                                                        133
+
+  A Truck Gun                                                        147
+
+  Method of Gun-Exercise in H.M.S. _Shannon_                         155
+
+  A Paixhans Gun                                                     173
+
+  Bullet Mould                                                       187
+
+  Rifleman Presenting                                                189
+
+  “Carabine à Tige”                                                  195
+
+  Minié Bullet                                                       195
+
+  Whitworth Rifle Bullet                                             198
+
+  Ship and Galley                                                    211
+
+  The _Charlotte Dundas_                                             219
+
+  Pettit Smith’s Propeller                                           235
+
+
+
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF NAVAL ARMAMENT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE SAILING SHIP
+
+
+To attempt to trace in any detail the evolution of the sailing warship
+is a task, it must be at once admitted, far beyond the scope and
+intention of the present essay.
+
+The history of naval architecture is, of course, a vast and many-sided
+subject. Few are the writers who have dealt with it, and, for
+reasons which will appear, few of those have written in the English
+language. Such books as treat of it are too cumbrous and technical
+for easy reading; they are not written in the modern style; by the
+frequent digressions of their authors on matters of general history,
+high politics, battles, economics, commerce, and even sport, they
+bear witness to the difficulties of the task and the complexity of
+the subject. The history of naval architecture still remains to be
+written. In the meantime the student will find the monumental _Marine
+Architecture_, of Charnock, and the smaller _Naval Architecture_, of
+Fincham, invaluable fields of inquiry; among the historians the works
+of Nicolas, Laughton, Corbett and Oppenheim, will furnish him with the
+materials for the complete story of the evolution up to the end of the
+eighteenth century.
+
+The following pages give a sketch, drawn chiefly from these authors,
+of the progress of the timber-built sailing ship and of the principal
+influences which guided the evolution. Lessons may still be drawn from
+this history, it is suggested, which even in the altered circumstances
+of to-day may be of value in some other application. One lesson,
+long unlearnt, the great blunder of two centuries, lies clearly on
+the surface. The evidence will show how, by our long neglect of the
+science of naval architecture, the British navy fought frequently at
+an unnecessary disadvantage; but it will also show how, masters of the
+art of shipbuilding, we gave our fleets such a superiority in strength
+and seaworthiness as almost to neutralize the defects inherent in their
+general design.
+
+
+§
+
+Before the fourteenth century the sailing ship, i.e. the ship in which
+sails were used as the chief motive power, could not compete in battle
+on equal terms with the oar-driven vessel; both in the Mediterranean
+and in Northern waters the oar-driven galley possessed advantages of
+speed and handiness which relegated the heavy, high-built and capacious
+sailing ship to the position of a mere transport or victualler. The
+fighting ships were the galleys: long speedy vessels with fine lines
+and low freeboard, propelled by rowers and fought by soldiers clad in
+mail and armed with swords and lances. Sails were carried, but only as
+secondary power, for use when the galleys ran before the wind.
+
+Sea tactics consisted in ramming and boarding; the vessels were
+designed accordingly. The royal galleys of King Henry III, which formed
+the fighting fleet of Hubert de Burgh, are described as having each
+two tiers of oars, with platforms along each side over the heads of
+the rowers, on which the soldiers stood. Hung on the bulwarks in front
+of them were their shields. From the gaudily painted mast pennons and
+banners floated on the wind; a large square cotton sail, embroidered
+with the royal arms, was triced to the yard. The masthead was crowned
+with a circular “top,” a repository for bricks and iron bars wherewith
+to bilge an enemy vessel. At both ends of the galley were raised
+platforms or “castles” filled with picked soldiery, who during the
+approach to action would pour brass-winged arrows into the enemy and
+who, when the enemy had been grappled, leaped aboard. From mechanical
+engines low down in the waist large stones would be projected, and, if
+on the windy side, quicklime would be thrown, and other “instruments
+of annoyance.” The galleys were lightly built, and carried no pumps.
+It was no uncommon sight, we are told, to see half the knights baling,
+while the others fought hand-to-hand with the enemy.
+
+By the year 1300 the size and utility of ships had made considerable
+advance. Two masts were given them, each supported by a few shrouds
+and carrying a single large square sail; neither masts nor sails were
+yet subdivided, but the sails could be enlarged by having one or more
+“bonnets” laced to their lower part. Of the two masts the taller, the
+foremast, raked considerably over the bows, and both were surmounted by
+tops, with flagstaff and streamers. A central rudder appeared in this
+century, in place of the paddle fixed to the quarter, and a rudimentary
+bowsprit. The largest _cogs_, as they were now called, were of 250 tons
+burthen. When hired of merchants for war service, they were converted
+by the addition of fore-, aft-, and top-castles, built high so as to
+overtop, if possible, the enemy. The war vessels were at this time
+lavishly decorated; the sails were silk, dyed red or embroidered with
+armorial designs, the tops and stages were aflame with banners and
+pennons, the masts and yards were gilt. Large sums of money were spent
+by the knights in beautifying their ships.
+
+But in this century two great inventions brought to a close an epoch
+in warship construction. Gunpowder and the mariner’s compass were
+discovered. Cannon were adapted to ships in place of the mechanical
+engines which had formerly been carried, and by aid of the compass,
+housed in its wood-pegged bittacle in the steerage, vessels began
+to venture out of touch with land and sail with a new security the
+uncharted ocean.
+
+The effect of each of these two discoveries was the same: a growth in
+the size, strength, and capacity of ships, a decline in the use of
+oars and a greater reliance on sails. High sides were required against
+the waves, stouter timbers to support the weight of ordnance, more
+capacious holds for the stowage of the ballast, food, and cordage which
+would be needed for a long sea voyage. The galley, with its low flush
+deck and outward-sloping sides was ill adapted for the new conditions;
+a new construction was seen to be needed. Two new types were evolved,
+one in the Mediterranean and one, more gradually, in Atlantic waters.
+
+Even before the Christian era there had been a distinct differentiation
+between the ships of the Mediterranean and those of the Atlantic
+seaboard. The latter, as shown by Nicolas’ quotation from Cæsar, were
+more strongly built than the Roman galleys, with flatter bottoms, to
+“adapt them to the shallows and to sustain without danger the ebbing
+of the tide,” and with prows and sterns “very high and erect, to
+bear the hugeness of the waves”: properties which, even before the
+advent of fire artillery, conferred on them important advantages.[1]
+Nevertheless, complete differentiation did not obtain until after the
+discovery of gunpowder and the mariner’s needle. Before that time the
+vessels used by the Northern nations in war were of the galley type,
+built by themselves or, after the Crusades had revealed the superiority
+of the Mediterranean powers in warship design, hired not infrequently
+from Venetians or from Genoese. The Genoese were the chief naval
+mercenaries of Europe at this age: “Genoese were vice-admirals to the
+English king, and Genoese galleys fought for the French at Sluys.”
+
+The new type evolved in the Mediterranean was the _galleasse_. For
+centuries, as we have seen, large sailing ships had been used for
+commerce, both in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. With the
+inevitable increase in size brought about by the adoption of cannon,
+and by the desire for greater sea-keeping qualities, resort was now
+had by the Genoese and Venetians to sails in war vessels as a means
+of propulsion of equal importance with oars. Thus an uncomfortable
+compromise was effected between oars and sails; both were provided. The
+galleasse was originally a large decked galley, with three pole masts
+for its lateen sails, and with cannon spaced at intervals along its
+sides above the rowers. In form it differed little from the galley,
+but in the disposition of its armament it was entirely different; it
+represented the first stage in the evolution of the broadside fighting
+ship.
+
+But the galleasse, though it might meet the requirements of
+Mediterranean warfare, was almost as unsuited as the galley to
+Atlantic conditions. Accordingly the warship underwent a separate and
+independent development at the hands of the Atlantic nations. Forsaking
+the galley, they took the lofty, strong and capacious sailing merchant
+ship as the basis of a new type, and from the lumbering carrack and
+caravel and dromon they evolved the vessel which eventually became
+known as the _galleon_. A distinctive naval architecture, Gothic rather
+than Byzantine in character, was thus founded on the Atlantic seaboard.
+The oar was entirely superseded by the sail. The ships were high, and
+their sides, instead of falling out like those of galleys, were curved
+inwards so as to “tumble home” above the water-line: an arrangement
+which protected the ordnance, added to the strength of the vessels,
+and tended to render them steadier gun-platforms. The top-castles were
+retained on the masts, but the end-castles disappeared, or rather,
+were incorporated into the structure of the lofty bow and stern, to
+provide accommodation for officers, and cover for the crew. The _voile
+latine_ gave way to the _voile quarrée_. In place of the large lateen
+sails carried by galley and galleasse, were smaller sails and courses,
+square, more easily manipulated and allowing of greater variation in
+disposition and effective area, to suit the conditions of weather and
+the trim of the ship.
+
+Throughout the fifteenth century the sailing ship developed. “While
+in the first quarter,” writes Mr. Oppenheim of English shipping, “we
+find that men-of-war possess, at the most, two masts and two sails,
+carry three or four guns, and one or two rudimentary bowsprits, at
+the close of the same century they are three- or four-masters, with
+topmasts and topsails, bowsprit and spritsail, and conforming to the
+characteristics of the type which remained generally constant for more
+than two centuries.” The English mariner had by this time acquired his
+honourable reputation. In merchant ships he carried Bordeaux wine,
+the casks of which became the unit for measurement of their tunnage;
+even in winter months, we are told, he braved the Bay with pilgrims on
+tour to the shrine of St. James of Compostella. Large royal ships of
+over 1000 tons burthen were built, in the early part of the century,
+in English yards. As builders the Normans seem at this time to have
+excelled.[2] But the most wonderful development of the science of
+seamanship in all its branches took place in the Peninsula. Largely
+through the inspiration of one man the greatest efforts of Spain and
+Portugal were directed to the cult of navigation and geography, the
+improvement of shipbuilding, and the discovery of new and distant
+lands and oceans. A brilliant impetus was given to the study of ship
+construction by the voyages of Columbus, the Cabots, Vasco di Gama, and
+other intrepid spirits who, by aid of the compass, braved the moral and
+physical terrors of far-distant voyages--“fighting immensity with a
+needle.”
+
+
+§
+
+With the development of artillery the value of the sailing ship for
+sea warfare came gradually to view. Naval tactics suffered a complete
+change.
+
+Until the early days of the sixteenth century sea-fights had been
+land-fights in character; ships came as quickly as possible to close
+quarters, grappled or charged one another, cut rigging, and essayed to
+board. The sailor was subservient to the soldier. The gun, represented
+in the main by serpentines, periers, murderers, and other quick-firing
+pieces, was primarily a defensive armament, for the defence, firstly,
+of the entire ship, or, in the event of the waist being captured, of
+the fortified end citadels or castles. “These castles, which in vessels
+especially constructed for war came to take the form of a forecastle
+and a half-deck, were made musket-proof; and being closed athwartship
+with similarly protected bulkheads, known as ‘cubbridge-heads,’ were
+impenetrable to boarders; while at the same time, by means of loopholes
+and quick-firing pieces in-board, they could enfilade the waist with
+musketry and murdering shot. Thus a ship of the English pattern, at any
+rate, could rarely be held even if boarders entered, until her ‘cage
+works’ or protected castles were destroyed by gunfire.”[3] The ship
+itself, being deep-waisted and built with an exaggerated sheer upwards
+toward bow and stem, had no continuous deck: the decks were laid on
+various levels, rising from the waist by steps to the two citadels,
+an arrangement which did not contribute, as a flush-deck would have
+done, to the longitudinal strength of the vessel, and which was found
+inconvenient for the working and transport of ordnance of the heavier
+sort.
+
+King Henry VIII, in his efforts to possess fighting ships superior
+to those of Spain, France and Scotland, raised not only artillery
+but ships themselves to a different rôle. As he personally urged the
+manufacture of ordnance in this country by the subsidizing of foreign
+talent, so he sought to improve the design of his ships by inviting
+Italian shipwrights to come to England and apply their knowledge to
+the royal vessels. Dockyards were founded at Woolwich, Deptford, and
+Portsmouth. Large ships were laid down, several were rebuilt, with many
+improvements embodied in them: chief of these being a new artillery
+armament. The king had seized the advantages of the sailing ship with
+broadside fire. “The development of broadside fire,” says Sir Julian
+Corbett, “was a question of gunnery, of naval architecture, and of
+seamanship. With Henry’s introduction of heavy guns on board his larger
+vessels, however, the true note had been struck, and by the end of his
+reign the first two arts had made great strides. Guns of all patterns
+and sizes were being cast in England, both in bronze and iron, which
+were little inferior to those Nelson fought with.” The result of the
+king’s efforts was seen in the ships laid down in the last years
+of his reign. The frontispiece of Mr. Oppenheim’s _History of the
+Administration of the Royal Navy_ is a picture of one of these, the
+_Tiger_, a four-masted flush-decked vessel, with no sheer, little top
+hamper, a long tier of ordnance on the gun deck, and with a beak-head
+ending in a spur: one of a class “which shows a very great advance on
+anything before afloat and indicates a steady progression towards the
+modern type.”
+
+In short, a reversion to a smaller and seaworthier type took place. The
+large, unstable and unwieldy “great ship,” such as the _Henry Grace
+á Dieu_, built on the Spanish model, with lofty ends overweighted
+with small ordnance, was not effective. A new invention, attributed
+to Descharges of Brest in 1501, viz. the adaptation of portholes to
+ordnance along the sides of a ship, perhaps suggested a better form.
+As the century advanced, as new and far-distant countries appeared on
+the map, the arts of seamanship and gunnery continuously improved;
+naval architecture made a corresponding progress. For sea fighting the
+high-charged and imposing “great ship” gave place to a more perfected
+type--the galleon. “It was the development of the galleon,” insists the
+historian, “which changed the naval art from its medieval to its modern
+state.” The galley, eminently suited to the Mediterranean, where winds
+were light and slave labour abundant, was found to be increasingly
+unsuitable for Atlantic warfare; the galley was in danger of being
+rammed, in any wind, by a strong, quick-turning sailing ship, and
+suffered from having nearly all its artillery in the bows; moreover,
+“the galley service was always repugnant to our national temperament.”
+The galleasse, the hybrid between the oar-driven galley and the sailing
+ship, suffered from all the disadvantages of the compromise. The
+great ship had now proved to be cumbrous and expensive, crank and
+unseaworthy, leewardly and unmanageable in even a moderate breeze.
+
+The galleon therefore became the type favoured by the English navy.
+Whereas the merchant ship was short in proportion to its beam, the
+galleon was built long, with a length equal to three times its breadth.
+It had also a long flat floor like a galley, and was of lower freeboard
+than a round-ship. “It was also like a galley flush-decked, and would
+seem always to have had the half-deck carried across the waist so as to
+make one flush-deck with the old forecastle. In the larger types the
+quarter-deck was also carried flush from stem to stem, so that latterly
+at any rate a true galleon had at least two decks and sometimes three.
+On the upper deck in the earlier types were erected both fore and aft
+high-castles as in a galleasse, but usually on curved lines, which
+gave the hull of the old-fashioned galleons the appearance of a half
+moon.”[4] The depth of hold at the waist was only about two-fifths the
+beam. Its artillery was light but effective, being composed of light
+muzzle loaders, a mean between the man-killers and the heavy bombards
+of an earlier day. Its masts and spars were made heavy and large sail
+area was given it, for speed and quick manœuvring were the essential
+qualities which it was hoped to oppose to the lumbering, high-charged
+ships of Spain. Victory was to be sought by a skilful combination of
+seamanship and gunnery, rapid fire being poured into an enemy at a
+convenient range and bearing. “Plenty of room and a stand-off fight”
+sufficiently defines the sea tactics of the new era.
+
+Throughout the reign of Elizabeth the galleon still remained the
+favourite type, though opinion differed, and continued to differ
+through the two following centuries, as to the degree to which it
+was desirable to “build lofty.” The Hawkins family of Plymouth
+shipowners carried a great influence in the councils of the navy.
+Sir John Hawkins, whose experience of shipbuilding and seamanship
+rendered him a man of importance, was the author of improvements in
+this respect, as in so many others; “the first Elizabethan men-of-war,
+the fastest sailers and best sea-boats then afloat, were built to his
+plans; and from the time of his appointment as Treasurer of the Navy
+dates the change to the relatively low and long type that made the
+English ships so much more handy than their Spanish antagonists.”[5]
+His kinsman, Sir Richard, on the other hand, preferred large and
+high-charged ships, “not only for their moral effect on the enemy, but
+for their superiority in boarding and the heavier ordnance and larger
+crews they would carry. Two decks and a half he considers to be the
+least a great ship should have, and was of opinion that the fashion
+for galleasse-built ships--or, as he calls them, ‘race’ ships--in
+preference to those ‘lofty-built’ had been pushed too far.”[6] Ships
+with large cage-works had an advantage, he maintained, in affording
+cover for the crew and positions for quick-firing batteries; his
+opponents argued that the weight of top-hamper saved by their abolition
+could be put with better advantage into a heavy artillery.
+
+The advocates of the fast, low-lying ships carried the day. War came
+with Spain, and there was soon work to show what the English ships
+could do. The _Armada Papers_[7] light up for us, by the fitful glare
+of the cressets of Hawkins and Co., the preparation of the fleet at
+Plymouth, and show us what state of efficiency the royal ships were
+in. “The _Hope_ and _Nonpariel_ are both graved, tallowed, and this
+tide into the road again,” writes William Hawkins to his brother. “We
+trim one side of every ship by night and the other side by day, so
+that we end the three great-ships in three days this spring. The ships
+sit aground so strongly, and are so staunch as if they were made of a
+whole tree. The doing of it is very chargeable, for that it is done by
+torchlight and cressets, and in an extreme gale of wind, which consumes
+pitch, tallow, and firs abundantly.” Not only the few royal ships, but
+the whole of the force which lies in the Sound is tuned for the fight.
+“For Mr. Hawkins’ bargain,” writes the Commander-in-Chief to Lord
+Burghley, “this much I will say: I have been aboard of every ship that
+goeth out with me, and in every place where any may creep, and there is
+never a one of them that knows what a leak means. I do thank God that
+they be in the estate they be in.” The Spanish ships prove to be in a
+very different condition. High-charged and leewardly, poorly rigged
+and lightly gunned, they are so hammered and raked by Lord Howard’s
+well-found fleet that, when bad weather ultimately comes, they are in
+no condition to combat the elements. With masts and rigging shattered,
+water-casks smashed, no anchors; short-handed and leaking like sieves,
+they are hounded northwards to a disaster unparalleled in naval history.
+
+And now, before tracing its evolution through the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries, let us glance at the warship as it existed at the
+end of the Elizabethan era, and note its chief constructive features.
+
+
+§
+
+Athwart a keel of large squared timbers, scarphed together and forming
+with a massive inner keelson the principal member or backbone, were
+laid the curved frames or ribs which, bolted to each other and to
+the keel with iron bolts washered and clinched, gave to the hull its
+transverse strength and form. These frames were held together, as they
+curved upward from the ground or floor level, by thick longitudinal
+wales, worked externally along the frames at convenient heights, and
+curved so as to suit the degree of sheer desired.
+
+At the fore end the wales and frames converged to the centre-line and
+the keel was prolonged upward to meet them in a curve or compassing
+timber, forming the bow or stem: to the beauty and shapeliness of
+which, with its projecting beak-head, the builder devoted much of his
+attention and skill. At the other end the frames and wales converged
+to a square and lofty stern. The stern post was a massive timber
+fastened to the keel and sloping somewhat aft from the vertical, and
+from it rose two fashion-pieces “like a pair of great horns,” which
+formed, with the horizontal arch and transom timbers, the framework of
+the stern. When the frames had been built up to the requisite height
+the upper ends of each opposite pair were joined across by horizontal
+beams, which were secured to them by means of brackets or knees; such
+beams were worked at the level of the main and other decks, and served
+to support them when laid. Joined by its beams, each pair of frames
+thus formed a closed structure: a combination of members which was to
+resist crushing and deformation, the blows of the sea, the stresses
+of gunfire, the forces due to the weight of the guns and the vessel
+itself, and especially the forces thrown on it when the vessel was
+aground or on a careen. The rigidity of this combination was enhanced
+by the fitting of pillars which were placed vertically over the keelson
+to support each beam at its middle. And sometimes the lower pillars
+were supplemented by sloping struts, worked from the curve of the
+frames up to the middle of each beam above.
+
+The skeleton of a ship thus formed, built with well-seasoned timber,
+was left standing on the stocks “in frame” for a considerable period,
+sometimes for years, exposed to the open weather. On it eventually
+a skin of planks was fastened, secured by wood trenails split and
+expanded by soft-wood wedges, both internally and externally; and
+inside the ship, to reinforce the frames and in line with them, timbers
+known as “riders” were worked. On the beams the decks were laid: the
+orlop below the water-line level, and above it, at a height suitable
+for the ordnance, the main or gun deck; above that the upper deck,
+on the ends of which were reared the poop (sometimes a half-deck,
+extending from the stern to the mainmast, sometimes on that a
+quarter-deck, over the steerage) and the forecastle.
+
+Such, very briefly, was the mode of ship construction. The resulting
+structure, when caulked and swelled by sea-water, presented a
+water-tight and serviceable vessel. Timber provided, for ships up to a
+certain size, a suitable material. It afforded strength and buoyancy,
+and elasticity sufficient to obviate local strains and to spread the
+stresses due to lading, grounding, careening, or the actions of the
+wind and sea. The different parts of the ship’s frame gave mutual
+support, and the pressure of the fluid on the exterior of the hull
+tended, by constraining the component parts, to preserve the vessel.[8]
+
+But the timber-built ship possessed an inherent weakness. Metal plates
+or girders can be bolted or riveted together so efficiently as to
+leave the joints between them almost as strong as the sections of the
+plates or girders themselves. Not so wood beams. However skilfully
+they might be joined, their joints were necessarily weaker than all
+other sections: “it was then, and still is, impracticable to develop
+the full strength in end connections between wooden members.”[9]
+The softness of the wood was an additional source of weakness. Two
+beams fastened together by iron bolts might form initially a close
+and rigid joint; but if, under the action of alternating or racking
+stresses, they became loosened even in a minute degree, the tendency
+to become still looser increased: the wood gradually yielded under
+the bolt washers, the bolts no longer held rigidly, “the very fact
+that wood and iron were dissimilar materials tended to hasten the
+disintegration of the structure.” With planking a similar effect
+obtained. Trenails, expanded by wedges and planed off flush with the
+planks which they held together, had only shearing strength; if once
+they were loosened they had little power to prevent the planks from
+opening further. These weaknesses were recognised. To minimize their
+effects the butts of frames, decks, and side planking, were arranged
+so that no two neighbouring butts lay in the same line. But in spite
+of the most painstaking craftsmanship, the size of the wooden ship
+was limited by its inability to withstand a high degree of stress.
+As sizes increased extraordinary endeavours were made to meet the
+hogging and sagging strains, to prevent cambering of the hull, and to
+stiffen it longitudinally and circumferentially. Enormous masses of
+timber were worked into the internal structure in the form of riders,
+pillars, standards, and shores, “the whole of which had an appearance
+of great strength, but which in fact, from its weight and injudicious
+combinations, was useless, if not injurious.”[10] Which did, in fact,
+clog the ship and usurp the space required for stowage.
+
+As for the masts, experience fixed their number, size and position.
+In the earlier ships, as we have seen, four and sometimes five masts
+were fitted, after the Mediterranean style. But later this number was
+reduced to three. Of these the foremast was the most important, and it
+was stepped directly over the fore-foot of the vessel, the main and
+mizzen being pitched to suit. Their height varied with the service and
+type of ship. Taunt masts, like those carried by the Flemish ships,
+were best for sailing on a wind, for with them narrow sails could be
+used which could be set at a sharp angle with the keel; but short masts
+and broad yards were favoured by English mariners, as bringing less
+strain on a vessel’s sides and rigging and as being less likely to
+produce a state of dangerous instability. The masts were short, very
+thick, and heavily shrouded; the standing rigging was led to channels
+and deadeyes on the outside of the bulwarks. The bowsprits were large
+and “steved” upward at a large angle with the horizontal; spritsails
+and spritsail topsails were set on them, of use mainly when sailing
+before a wind, yet retaining their place in our navy till, half-way
+through the eighteenth century, the introduction of the fore-and-aft
+jib brought about an improvement and in so doing affected the whole
+disposition of mastage.
+
+One feature of the masting of the old ships is notable: the manner in
+which the various masts were raked. In the _Sea-Man’s Dictionary_[11]
+the _trim_ of a ship was defined as, “the condition, as to draught,
+staying of masts, slackness of shrouds, etc., in which a ship goes
+best.” For a given set of conditions there was a certain rake of
+masts, a certain position of the centre of wind-pressure against the
+sails, which, when discovered, gave to the vessel its finest sailing
+qualities. The knowledge of this adjustment constituted no small part
+of the great art of seamanship. In the king’s ships a high proficiency
+was attained in it; merchantmen sailed under more diverse conditions
+and showed, it appears, a lower level of scientific inquiry. “Next to
+men of war (whose daily practice it is) the Scotch men are the best
+in the world to find out the trym of a ship, for they will never be
+quiet, but try her all ways, and if there be any goodness in her, they
+can make her go.” Generally, the effect of raking the masts aft was to
+make the vessel fly up into the wind, and vice versa; in ships with
+high-built sterns, especially, it was necessary to have the head-sails
+set well forward, to keep them out of the wind. To allow the masts to
+be raked as desired their heels were pared away, and wedges of suitable
+thickness were driven between them and the “partners.”
+
+Many other factors contributed to affect, in a manner always subtle
+and frequently inexplicable, the sailing qualities of a ship. The form
+of the body, the position of masts and the setting up of the rigging,
+the disposition of weights, the angle of the yards, the conditions of
+stability, all had their effect on the vessel’s motion, and therefore
+on her speed through the water. Free water in a ship’s bilge, for
+example, had an effect on her degree of stiffness, and from this cause
+her speed was not easily predictable. Charnock relates how, in the
+colonial wars of the late eighteenth century, an American vessel, the
+_Hancock_, was captured after an unprecedented chase, solely because
+her commander, injudiciously supposing that by lightening his ship he
+would enhance her swiftness, pumped water out of her. It was noticed,
+again, that in certain circumstances the speed of a ship increased when
+the crew turned into their hammocks.
+
+The lines of the ship were drawn without reference to any science
+of naval architecture, and merely by instinct and the accumulated
+experience of the builder; the laws of stability and of fluid
+resistance were at this time unknown. Experience indicated the
+desirability of a short keel, to make the ship turn quickly; of an
+ample rake forward from keel to beak-head--“more than a third the
+length of the keel, commonly,” says Sir Henry Manwayring, for, “a great
+rake forward gives a ship good way and makes her keep a good wind, but
+if she have not a full bow it will make her pitch mightily into a head
+sea.... The longer a ship’s rake is, the fuller must be the bow”; of
+a fine run aft, so as to let the water flow strongly and swiftly to
+the rudder and make the ship steer and sail well; of a narrow rudder,
+so as not to hold much dead water when the helm was over,--yet, “if a
+ship have a fat quarter, she will require a broad rudder.” The correct
+formation of the bow was recognised as of the greatest importance,
+and the most difficult compromise in the design of a ship. A bow too
+bluff offered much resistance to motion through the water; on the other
+hand, too sharp a bow lacked buoyancy, and, from the great weight of
+mastage, headsails, anchors, etc., which it had to support, caused a
+vessel to pitch badly in a head sea. “If the bow be too broad,” wrote
+Captain John Smith, in his _Sea Man’s Grammar_, “she will seldom carry
+a bone in her mouth, or cut a feather, that is, to make a foam before
+her: where a well-bowed ship so swiftly presseth the water as that it
+foameth, and in the dark night sparkleth like fire.”
+
+Generally, a vessel built with fine lines lacked end support,
+and tended to become arched or camber-keeled, while its stowage
+capacity was inconveniently small. The ship’s sides were made with a
+considerable degree of tumble-home above the water-line; though this,
+again, was a point of compromise and much argument. For while a reduced
+breadth of deck tended to give the hull more girder strength and to
+diminish the racking effect on it of heavy ordnance, yet this feature
+at the same time, by reducing the angle at which the shrouds could be
+set, augmented the stresses which were thrown on shrouds and bulwarks.
+
+
+§
+
+With the seventeenth century a new age of scientific speculation
+opened, and, under the personal encouragement of the Stuart kings, the
+art and mystery of shipbuilding received an illumination which was of
+great value to the royal armaments.
+
+The early interest of James I in his navy is signalized by his grant
+of a charter to the corporation of shipwrights: a corporation whose
+short-lived story is told by the editor of _The Autobiography of
+Phineas Pett_, recently published.[12] Before the sixteenth century, he
+tells us, no special trade was recognized for the building of warships,
+as distinct from traders. But in the early Tudor days, when, owing to
+the introduction of the new artillery the war vessel began to diverge
+in general design from the merchant ship, certain master shipwrights
+had been subsidized by the king for the building and repair of the
+royal vessels. The position of these officials was one of importance,
+their duties and privileges were extensive. The office was often
+hereditary. Thus, the royal patent granted to one James Baker in 1538
+descended, with the accumulated lore and secrets of his profession, to
+his son Mathew Baker in 1572. And that granted to Peter Pett in 1558
+descended to Joseph Pett in 1590. But as shipping grew and shipbuilding
+became more complex and widely distributed, the need for some central
+authority, which could regulate practice and standardize procedure,
+became increasingly felt. Accordingly a petition was presented. In 1605
+the king granted a charter incorporating the master shipwrights of
+England as one body corporate and politic, for the good regulation of
+shipbuilding of all descriptions. In 1612 another charter was sealed,
+giving increased power to the confraternity: with instruction that
+it was to examine each new ship to see that it was properly built,
+“with two orlops at convenient distances, strong to carry ordnance
+aloft and alow, with her forecastle and half-deck close for fight.”
+Shipwrights’ Hall, as the corporation was called, surveyed and reported
+on tonnage and workmanship, and gave advice, when sought, to the
+lord high admiral. In the course of time its prestige declined. With
+the Commonwealth it grew into disuse, and by 1690 it was altogether
+extinct. For nearly a century the guild had struggled in vain to fulfil
+the intentions of its founders.
+
+The most distinguished of the master shipwrights of this period was
+Phineas Pett, sometime master of arts at Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
+who in 1612 succeeded old Mathew Baker as Master of the guild.
+Pett, who to a practical knowledge of design and construction added
+considerable sea experience, rose far above his contemporaries, most
+of whom were little more than mere carpenters, ignorant of many of
+the principles which are now accepted as governing ship design, and
+themselves governed almost entirely by tradition and blind precedent.
+Science was still in its veriest infancy. The progress of ship design
+was still by the tentative and costly method of full-scale experience;
+not till the beginning of the nineteenth century, when new forces and
+materials had been discovered which in the end spelt the decline and
+supersession of the sailing ship, did science sufficiently direct the
+lines on which large sailing ships should be built.
+
+By his bold deviation from established usage, says Fincham, Mr. Pett
+established his fame and advanced the interest and power of the British
+navy. Before reviewing his handiwork, however, it will be convenient to
+note the main directions in which improvement was at this period sought.
+
+Sir Henry Manwayring, an acquaintance for whom Pett designed and
+built a pinnace in the year 1616, wrote at this time _The Sea-Man’s
+Dictionary_. In the early years of the century were also written two
+treatises which, though not printed till a later date, had great
+effect in creating an interest in naval matters: Sir Walter Raleigh’s
+_Observations on the Navy_ and _Invention of Shipping_. In the former
+paper Sir Walter laid down the six requisites of a good ship: viz.
+that she should be strongly built, swift, stout-sided, carry out her
+guns in all weathers, lie-to in a gale easily, and stay well. For the
+attainment of these qualities he specified certain structural features:
+a long run forward, to make her sail well; a long bearing floor and
+a “tumble home” above water from the lower edge of the ports, for
+stoutness and for stiffness sufficient to enable her to carry her lower
+ordnance (which must lie four feet clear above water) in all weathers.
+“It is a special observation,” he wrote, “that all ships sharp before,
+that want a long floor, will fall roughly into the sea and take in
+water over head and ears. So will all narrow quartered ships sink
+after the tail. The high charging of ships it is that brings them all
+ill qualities.” In the latter paper he recapitulated the various
+improvements in material of which he had himself been witness; from
+which for its interest we quote the following extract. “The striking
+of the topmast (a wonderful great ease to great ships both at sea and
+in harbour) hath been devised, together with the chain pump ... the
+bonnet and the drabler. We have fallen into consideration of the length
+of cables, and by it we resist the malice of the greatest winds that
+can blow, witness our small Milbrook men of Cornwall, that ride it out
+at anchor, half seas over between England and Ireland, all the winter
+quarter.... For true it is, that the length of the cable is the life of
+the ship in all extremities. We carry our ordnance better than we were
+wont, because our nether overloops are raised commonly from the water,
+to wit, between the lower part of the port and the sea. We have also
+raised our second decks and given more vent thereby to our ordnance,
+tying on our nether overloop. We have added cross pillars in our royal
+ships to strengthen them, which be fastened from the kelson to the
+beams of the second deck. We have given longer floors to our ships than
+in elder times, and better bearing under water, whereby they never fall
+into the sea after the head and shake the whole body, nor sink stern,
+nor stoop upon a wind, by which the breaking loose of our ordnance or
+the not use of them, with many other discommodities are avoided....
+And to say the truth a miserable shame and dishonour it were for our
+shipwrights, if they did not exceed all other in the setting up of our
+royal ships, the errors of other nations being far more excusable than
+ours.” Sir Walter was inaccurate in attributing all the improvements
+enumerated to his own generation; bonnets, for instance, were in use
+long before his day. Nevertheless his paper constitutes one of the most
+important contributions to the history of naval architecture in this
+country.
+
+In the early years of the century, too, evidence as to the shortcomings
+of contemporary naval construction was furnished by a fierce critic,
+Captain Waymouth. He proclaimed that English shipwrights built only
+by uncertain traditional precepts and observations; that none of them
+could build two ships alike or predict with accuracy their draught
+of water; that all their ships were crank, leewardly--“a great
+disadvantage in a fight”--difficult to steer and sail, too deep in
+the water, of less capacity than the Hollanders, and so badly built
+and designed as frequently to require “furring,” or reinforcing by
+extra planking. He advocated building ships longer, broader, with
+longer floors so as to reduce their draught, and snugger in respect of
+upper works. And though he failed on trial to translate his ideas into
+successful performance, his criticisms are accepted by historians as
+being probably well-founded.
+
+The opinions expressed by the above writers[13] indicate for us
+in general terms the chief particulars in which the ships of this
+period fell short of naval requirements. They were designed without
+knowledge of the laws governing the strength of materials, stability,
+and the motion of bodies through water; they were built without
+adequate supervision, frequently of green timber badly scarphed or cut
+across the grain, and were overburdened with ordnance. Their holds
+were cumbered with large quantities of shingle ballast which tended
+to clog the limber-holes of the bilge and rot the frames and floor
+timbers; while the stowage space amidships was further usurped by the
+cook-rooms, which were placed on the shingle, and which, by the heat
+radiated from their brick sides, did damage to the timbers and seams
+in their vicinity. Vessels were rarely sheathed. Though John Hawkins
+had devised a system of sheathing by a veneer of planking nailed over
+a layer of hair and tar, it was only to ships going on special service
+in seas where the worm was active that sheathing was applied. Sheathing
+possessed, then, some significance. In 1620, for instance, the Venetian
+ambassador reported to his government the discovery that some of our
+ships were being sheathed, and from this fact deduced an impending
+expedition to the Mediterranean.
+
+With the navy in the depths of neglect and with shipbuilding in the
+state described, Phineas Pett began to impose his permanent mark on
+design and construction. The mechanism by which he secured his results,
+the calculations and methods and rules used by him, were veiled in
+profound secrecy, in accordance with the traditions of his profession.
+He began by new-building old ships of the Elizabethan time, giving
+them an improved form so far as practicable. His friend and patron
+was the young Prince Henry, for whom in 1607 he made a model which
+the king greatly admired. And shortly after this, in the face of much
+jealousy on the part of his rivals, he laid down by command a new
+great ship--the _Prince Royal_, of 1187 tons, with a breadth of 43 feet
+and a keel length of 115 feet, double-built and sumptuously adorned, in
+all respects the finest ship that had ever been built in England. She
+carried no less than fifty-five guns, her general proportions were of a
+unity, and her strength was of a superiority, far in advance of current
+practice. In strength especially she marked an advance which yielded
+benefit later, in the wars with Holland. She was double planked, “a
+charge which was not formerly thought upon, and all the butt-heads were
+double-bolted with iron bolts.”
+
+But how difficult a matter it was for a builder to depart from
+tradition, is shown from Pett’s account of the inquisition to which he
+was subjected in connection with the building of this famous ship. His
+rivals took advantage of the “Commission of Enquiry into the abuses of
+the navy,” of 1608, to indict him for bad design, bad building, and
+peculation. So much hard swearing took place on both sides that at last
+King James himself decided to act as judge, and at Woolwich, with the
+wretched Phineas on his knees before him, opened his court of inquiry.
+“Much time,” says the diarist, “was spent in dispute of proportions,
+comparing my present frame with former precedents and dimensions of the
+best ships, for length, breadth, depth, floor, and other circumstances.
+One point of proportion was mainly insisted upon and with much violence
+and eagerness urged on both sides, which was the square of the ship’s
+flat in the midships, they affirming constantly upon their oath it was
+full thirteen feet, we as constantly insisting that it was but eleven
+foot eight inches.” In the end the king called in a mathematician and
+had the controversy settled by actual measurement. None of the charges
+brought against him being sustained, Phineas was acquitted and restored
+once more to royal favour, to his own delight and to that of his
+youthful patron, Prince Henry.
+
+The _Prince Royal_ marks a new epoch in ship design. She was such a
+departure from all previous forms that she made the fame of Phineas
+Pett secure. She became, indeed, the parent or type of all future
+warships down to the beginning of the nineteenth century; for (says
+Charnock), were the profuse ornaments removed, her contour, or general
+appearance, would not so materially differ from that of the modern
+vessel of the same size as to render her an uncommon sight, or a ship
+in which mariners would hesitate to take the sea. In her a final
+departure was made from the archaic form imposed on fighting ships by
+tradition. The picture Charnock gives of her is of a highly ornamented
+but low and flush-decked vessel armed to the ends with two tiers of
+heavy guns. The projecting beak-head, a relic from the galley days
+which had been so prominent a feature of Tudor construction, has
+almost disappeared: the bow curves gracefully upward to a lion close
+under the bowsprit. The wales have little sheer; the stern is compact
+and well supported, with beautiful lines. The quarter galleries are
+long, and are incorporated in the structure in a curious manner:
+in the form of indented, tower-like projections, with ornamented
+interspaces. The whole picture gives evidence of stout scantlings and
+invaluable solidity. Although in many respects the _Prince Royal_
+was a masterpiece she was primitive in the variety of her armament.
+On the lower deck she carried two cannon-petro, six demi-cannon,
+twelve culverins; on her upper deck eighteen demi-culverins; and
+on quarter-deck and poop a number of sakers and port-pieces. Also,
+unfortunately, she was built of green timber, so her life was short.
+
+In building a ship of unprecedented burthen Pett had the support of
+a large public opinion. The advantages attaching to large size were
+by this time generally appreciated: in the case of fighting ships, in
+respect of strength, artillery force, and sea endurance, in the case
+of merchant ships, in respect of carrying capacity and economy of
+crew. The growth in the size of merchant shipping during the reign was
+indeed remarkable. Trade followed the flag, and the Jacobean merchant
+made haste to profit by the conquests of the Elizabethan adventurer.
+For a short while after the war with Spain our mercantile marine was
+stagnant; at the accession of James I only small vessels of less than
+a hundred tons were being built, and English merchants were having
+strange recourse to the hiring of foreigners. But this state of
+things did not last for long. The story of the success of the Earl of
+Cumberland and his 800-ton _Scourge of Malice_, and the sight of the
+great Portuguese carrack captured in 1592, are said to have stimulated
+the merchants of London to possess themselves of vessels fit for the
+Eastern trade. It is said, again, that the appearance of two large
+Dutch ships in the Thames supplied the sudden impulse to build big.
+Be that as it may, “the idea spread like wild-fire.” Larger ships
+were laid down, and by the end of the reign the country possessed a
+considerable fleet of ships of 500 tons and above. In one instance,
+at least, the pendulum swung too far, and experience soon exposed the
+disadvantages of excessive dimensions: the reduction in strength, the
+unhandiness in shallow waters, the almost impossibility of graving and
+breaming, the risking in a single bottom of too great a venture. The
+_Trades Increase_, built for the new East India Company in 1605 by
+William Burrell and launched by the king at Deptford, was of no less
+than 1,100 tons burthen. On her first voyage to Java she was lost by
+fire, and no more ships of her size were ordered by the Company.
+
+With the expansion of merchant shipping and with the recognition of
+artillery as the main instrument of naval warfare fighting ships made
+a corresponding advance in size. The Commission of Reform of 1618,
+on whose report the subsequent reorganization of the Navy was based,
+held that the primacy of the big gun had at last been established.
+“Experience teacheth,” the Commissioners recorded, “how sea-fights
+in these days come seldom to boarding, or to great execution of
+bows, arrows, small shot and the sword, but are chiefly performed
+by the great artillery breaking down masts, yards, tearing, raking,
+and bilging the ships, wherein the great advantage of His Majesty’s
+navy must carefully be maintained by appointing such a proportion of
+ordnance to each ship as the vessel will bear.” They recognized the
+extravagance of small ships, and advised that in future the royal
+navy should consist of a nucleus of about thirty large ships, which
+with the merchant fleet should form one complete service; royal ships
+of over 800 tons; great ships of over 600 tons; middling ships of
+about 450 tons. They also formulated the chief requirements of naval
+construction in considerable detail. This pontifical pronouncement
+on ship dimensions was doubtless of value in connection with the
+contemporary project to which their work had reference; nevertheless it
+formed a dangerous precedent for future administrations. It shackled
+the genius of the shipbuilder. It degraded design. The ship, especially
+the timber-built sailing warship, was essentially a compromise between
+a number of conflicting elements. To obtain full value from his skill
+the designer required as free as possible a choice of means to his end;
+and any over-drawing of the specification, or surplusage of data beyond
+the barest requirements, tended to tie his hands and render impossible
+a satisfactory design. It was this over-specifying of dimensions in
+the interests of standardization which, as we shall presently see,
+stultified shipbuilding in England not only in the seventeenth but
+throughout the whole of the eighteenth century.
+
+But the report of 1618 was doubtless of great value as a guidance for
+the building of the new Stuart navy. “The manner of building, which
+in ships of war is of greatest importance, because therein consists
+both their sailing and force. The ships that can sail best can take or
+leave (as they say), and use all advantages the winds and seas afford;
+and their mould, in the judgment of men of best skill, both dead and
+alive, should have the length treble the breadth, and the breadth in
+like proportion to the depth, but not to draw above 16 foot of water
+because deeper ships are seldom good sailers.... They must be somewhat
+snug built, without double galleries and too lofty upper works, which
+overcharge many ships and make them loom fair, but not work well at
+sea.” As for the strengthening of the royal ships the Commissioners
+subscribed to the manner of building approved by “our late worthy
+prince”: “first, in making three orlops, whereof the lowest being two
+feet under water, both strengtheneth the ship, and though her sides be
+shot through, keepeth it from bilging by shot and giveth easier means
+to find and stop the leaks. Second, in carrying their orlops whole
+floored throughout from end to end. Third, in laying the second orlop
+at such convenient height that the ports may bear out the whole fire of
+ordnance in all seas and weathers. Fourth, in placing the cook-rooms
+in the forecastle, as other ships of war do, because being in the
+midships, and in the hold, the smoke and heat so search every corner
+and seam, that they make the oakum spew out, and the ships leaky,
+and some decay; besides, the best room for stowage of victualling is
+thereby so taken up, that transporters must be hired for every voyage
+of any time; and, which is worst, when all the weight must be cast
+before and abaft, and the ships are left empty and light in the midst,
+it makes them apt to sway in the back, as the _Guardland_ and divers
+others have done.”
+
+The ships built under the regulations of the Commissioners were
+certainly an improvement on earlier ships in many respects, but in
+one element of power they proved to be deficient, namely, in speed.
+The stoutly built, full-bodied, lumbering English two-deckers were
+out-sailed and out-manœuvred, it was noticed, by the relatively light
+and fine-lined Hollanders. Moreover our smaller ships were known to
+be no match in speed for the Dunkirk privateers which at this time
+infested the seas. A new type was seen to be necessary. The existing
+differentiation of warships into rates or classes was insufficient. For
+the line of battle there must be ships in which force of artillery was
+the predominant quality; but for other duties there must also be ships
+in which speed, and not force, was the distinguishing note. From this
+necessity was evolved the _frigate_.
+
+Soon after the accession of Charles I an attempt was made to establish
+the new type by building small vessels on the model of the largest,
+miniatures which it was hoped would prove good sailors and capable,
+although square-sailed, of sailing near a wind. The Ten Whelps were
+laid down: flush-decked three-masted vessels of 200 tons, 62 feet long
+on the keel and 25 feet in breadth. They were not a success. It was
+left for Dunkirk, “the smartest dockyard in Europe,” to found the new
+model. In imitation of a captured Dunkirk privateer our first frigate
+was built in 1646 by Peter, son of Phineas Pett, and her success was
+such that he had the achievement recorded on his tomb. The _Constant
+Warwick_ was 85 feet in keel-length, 26 feet 5 inches in breadth,
+of 315 tons burden and 32 guns. She was “an incomparable sailer.”
+Before the first Dutch war was over she had taken as much money from
+privateers as would have completely laden her.
+
+It seems probable that the prestige of his name was sufficient to give
+Peter Pett a freedom from interference in his design which was not
+accorded less distinguished shipbuilders. In ’45 Andrews Burrell, in
+a remonstance addressed to Parliament, protested, “For the love of
+heaven let not the shipwrights that are to build them [three frigates
+for special service] be misled by those that would, but cannot, direct
+them, which error hath been very hurtful to the navy heretofore.” By
+the interference of Sir John Pennington, he asserted, the builders
+of the Ten Whelps were so misled that they proved sluggish and
+unserviceable. “Let no rules be given the shipwrights more than their
+tonnage, with the number and weight of their ordnance, and that the
+number and weight of their ordnance may be suitable to the burden of
+each frigate.”
+
+King Charles, whose personal interest in the royal navy equalled that
+of his father, favoured the tendency to enlarge the tonnage and the
+individual power of his fighting ships. The _Prince Royal_ displayed
+the advantages of size. The Dutch people, jealous of the interference
+with their eastern trade, were known to be building large ships. Across
+the channel an ambitious and all-powerful minister was envisaging
+the possession of a navy in which an inferiority in numbers might be
+neutralized by the superiority of the unit. In France a vessel of 1400
+tons had been laid down. Charles determined to take up the challenge,
+obtaining the money by hook or by crook wherewith to build a greater.
+In the year 1634 the decision was made. A model of a great three-decker
+mounting a hundred and four guns was presented to him by Phineas Pett,
+and shortly afterwards the master of the shipwrights received the royal
+command to build a ship, and to proceed in person to the forests of
+Durham to select the thickstuff, knee timber, and planking requisite
+for the task.
+
+Opposition to the building of such a prodigious vessel appeared from
+different quarters. Great ships, in the opinion of Sir Walter Raleigh,
+were “of marvellous charge and fearful cumber.” The cost of so large a
+ship must needs be great, for not only the whole cost, but the cost per
+ton, increased with the size of the vessel; so wasteful a process was
+the building of a great ship, indeed, that it was not unusual to build
+a small ship simultaneously, out of the timber discarded: a practice
+known as “building a small ship out of a great one’s chips.” Ships
+of the greatest size, again, were “of little service, less nimble,
+less mainable, and very seldom employed.” Nor was it believed that so
+large a vessel as that projected could be built. Trinity House, when
+they heard of the design, uttered a formal protest. Such a ship, they
+argued, would be too big for service, and unsafe from her enormous
+size. To carry such a number of pieces she must be a three-decker, and
+to build a serviceable three-decker was beyond the art or wit of man;
+if the lower tier were too low they would be useless in a sea, if at 5
+or 5½ feet above the water-line then the third tier would be so high
+as to endanger the ship. In spite of this protest the new ship was
+laid down, and nearly two years later, in the autumn of ’37, she was
+launched at Woolwich, “the pride and glory of the Caroline navy.”
+
+The _Sovereign of the Seas_, the _Sovereign_, or the _Royal Sovereign_,
+as she was called by successive governments, was another great advance
+in size and solidity on all preceding construction, and was the
+masterpiece of Phineas Pett. Her length by the keel was 128 feet,
+her main breadth 48 feet, her overall length 232 feet. She had three
+flush decks and a forecastle, a half-deck, a quarter-deck, and a
+roundhouse. Her armament showed an approach to symmetry; the lower
+tier consisted of cannon and demi-cannon, the middle tier of culverins
+and demi-culverins. In one respect she was less advanced than Pett’s
+earlier effort, the _Prince Royal_, in that she had an old-fashioned
+beakhead, low hawses and a low and exposed forecastle. In general
+form she was extolled by all, and bore witness to the genius of her
+designer. No better form, said a later critic and constructor[14] after
+making an analysis of her lines--no better form could have been devised
+for a ship built (according to the prevailing customs of the times)
+so high out of water and so overloaded with ornaments. The king took
+a personal pride in her, and during her construction visited Woolwich
+and “seriously perused all the ship within board.” For him an elaborate
+description was written which, quoted at length by various writers,
+serves to show the extent to which mere decoration contributed to the
+cost of a royal ship. Two pictures of the vessel are reproduced by
+Charnock, of such obvious disparity that they serve to show (as the
+author observes) to what a degree artists may differ in the presentment
+of the same vessel. They confirm, besides, the profuseness of the
+ornamentation which was massed on her--the trophies, angels, emblems,
+mouldings--which made her the occasion of loud complaints against
+ship-money, and “a miracle of black and gold.”
+
+The _Sovereign of the Seas_ had a distinguished career. When cut down
+a deck she proved to be an exceptionally serviceable unit, taking part
+in all the great actions of the Dutch wars and crowning her work at La
+Hogue, where she engaged, crippled, and forced to fly for shallow water
+the great _Soleil Royal_, 104, the French flagship. At length, when
+laid up at Chatham in 1696 in order to be rebuilt, she was set on fire
+by negligence and destroyed.
+
+
+§
+
+By the outbreak of the first Dutch war the modern ideas introduced
+by Phineas Pett had received a general embodiment in the navy. Blake
+found to his hand ships well suited to the intended warfare, nor was
+he much concerned to add either to their number or their magnitude.
+Only in one feature did the new vessels built show any difference from
+older construction: their depth in hold was reduced, probably to render
+them more suitable for work among the shallow waters of the coast of
+Holland.[15] In other important respects improvement had preceded the
+opening of hostilities.
+
+The lofty stern with which it had been the custom to endow the sailing
+ship was a feature which had survived from ancient times. In the
+galley, whose armament was concentrated in the bows, the after part
+was not devoted to military fittings, but was appropriated chiefly to
+the accommodation of the officers. So it was in the galleon or sailing
+ship. With the desire and need for increased accommodation the extra
+space was obtained by prolonging aft the broad horizontal lines of the
+vessel and terminating them in a square frame. To give more space,
+quarter galleries were then added, outside the vessel. Then extra tiers
+of cabins were added, also with quarter galleries, each storey, as in
+the case of domestic architecture, projecting over that beneath it,
+and the whole forming, with its surmounting taffrails, lanterns and
+ornaments, an excessively weighty and top-heavy structure. Similarly,
+at the fore end of the ship there remained the survival of the ancient
+forecastle.
+
+With the acceptance of artillery as the medium for battle, with the
+decay of boarding tactics and the decline in value of small man-killing
+firearms, close-fights and end-castles, the lofty forecastles and
+sterns ceased to possess much of their special value. The arguments
+of Sir Richard Hawkins’ day in favour of large cage-works no longer
+held; nor could the preference of some shipbuilders for high sterns, as
+allowing a quick sheer and thereby contributing to the girder strength
+of the hull, be considered sufficient to justify their retention. The
+stern galleries held a great deal of wind and tended to rot the decks
+in their vicinity; their weight put a strain upon the supporting keel;
+but, chiefly, the danger of their taking fire in action induced the
+authorities to cut them down. For similar reasons the forecastles were
+attacked. But there was strong opposition to their elimination, because
+of the cover which they afforded in a fight. In 1652 the _Phœnix_,
+one of the finest frigates in the service, was taken by a Dutch ship,
+“having no forecastle for her men to retire to.” In the second Dutch
+war experience confirmed their usefulness. “All the world,” wrote Mr.
+Secretary Pepys in his diary for the 4th July, 1666, “now sees the use
+of forecastles for the shelter of men.”
+
+No general increase in the size of our ships took place till toward the
+end of the third Dutch war. Until that time the navy of France was a
+negligible quantity; in 1664, it is said, the only war-vessel at Brest
+was one old fireship. The Dutch, our only strong opponents, fought in
+ships not unlike our own, stout, buoyant vessels mounting from 24 to
+60 guns, and of from 300 to 1200 tons burden. Geography had a curious
+influence on their construction. Owing to the shallowness of their
+coasts the Hollanders built their ships with less draught and flatter
+floors than those of other countries; from which policy they derived
+advantages of a greater carrying capacity and, in pursuit, an ability
+to retreat among the shallows; but on account of which they suffered a
+serious handicap in the hour of action, when, faced by English ships
+built of superior material and with finer bottoms which enabled them to
+hold a better wind, they were weathered and out-fought.[16]
+
+There was no apparent advantage, therefore, in augmenting the size of
+our ships. Improvement was sought, rather, from a further unification
+of the calibres of the guns, and from an increase in the number
+carried. Their characteristics of shortness and large bore were such as
+to make them well-suited to the form of battle now favoured by English
+leaders--the close-quarter action.
+
+In solidity of construction the English ships compared favourably with
+those of the Dutch. The thick scantlings introduced by Phineas Pett
+now proved of great value; the wood itself, tough English oak, was
+unequalled by any other timber. English oak was the best, as Fuller
+noted. Even the Dutch had built some of their ships of it; while other
+countries frequently built of inferior fir, the splinters of which
+killed more than were hit by hostile cannon balls. To what was the
+superiority of the English timber due? To the soil and climate of
+this favoured country. Under the influence of successions of warmth
+and cold, of rain and sunshine, frost and wind, all in a degree most
+favourable for alternate growth and consolidation, the English oak
+attained an unrivalled strength and durability. Trees planted in
+forests, where mutual protection was afforded from wind and cold,
+grew rapidly, but were inferior in quality to trees planted in small
+parcels or along the hedgerows; these latter, slow-growing and tough,
+felled “at the wane of the moon and in the deep of winter,” supplied
+the thickstuff, knees, and planking for generations of our royal ships.
+Their endurance was frequently remarkable. The bottom timbers would
+last for fifty or sixty years, but the upper works, which were subject
+to alternations of heat and cold, dryness and moisture, decayed in a
+much shorter space of time. The _Royal William_ is quoted by Charnock
+as a case in point. This first rate ship was launched in the year
+1719, and never received any material repair until 1757. A few years
+later she was cut down to a third rate of 80 guns. Participating in
+all the sea wars of the time, she was surveyed in 1785 and converted
+into a guardship, which post she filled till early in the nineteenth
+century.[17]
+
+Much attention, as we have noted, was given in this scientifically
+minded Stuart age to the form of body best suited to motion through
+water, but the efforts to improve design were largely misdirected.
+Many of our ships were unsatisfactory, not only from their slowness
+but because they were crank or tender-sided, and unable to bear out
+their lower guns or even to carry a stout sail. They were so clogged
+with timbers internally that they could not carry the victuals and
+stores necessary for long voyages; and vessels built by contract were
+often found to be carelessly put together, of green, unseasoned, and
+unsuitable timber.
+
+After the Restoration the mantle of the Petts descended on a master
+shipwright of Portsmouth, who became an authoritative exponent of ship
+design, and to whose ability several improvements were due. “Another
+great step and improvement to our navy,” recorded Mr. Pepys in 1665,
+“put in practice by Sir Anthony Deane, was effected in the _Warspight_
+and _Defiance_, which were to carry six months’ provisions, and their
+guns four and a half feet from the water.” In the same diary for 19th
+May of the following year occurs the following characteristic note:
+“Mr. Deane did discourse about his ship the _Rupert_, which succeeds
+so well, as he has got great honour by it; and I some, by recommending
+him. The king, duke, and every body, say it is the best ship that was
+ever built. And then he fell to explain to me the manner of casting
+the draught of water which a ship will draw, beforehand, which is a
+secret the king and all admire in him; and he is the first that hath
+come to any certainty beforehand of foretelling the draught of water
+of a ship, before she is launched.” The calculations used by Sir
+Anthony Deane to forecast the draught of a projected ship might win him
+applause among the philosophers; but the scoffer at theory was able to
+point to considerable achievements wrought by men who made no pretence
+of any knowledge of science. In 1668 the _Royal Charles_, 110, was
+launched at Deptford. “She was built,” wrote Evelyn, “by old Shish, a
+plain, honest carpenter, master builder of this dock, but one who can
+give little account of his art by discourse, and is hardly capable of
+reading.”
+
+The interest of Charles II in naval architecture may be gathered from
+a letter written by him in 1673: “I am very glad that the _Charles_
+does so well; a girdling this winter, when she comes in, will make her
+the best ship in England: the next summer, if you try the two sloops
+that were built at Woolwich that have my invention in them, they will
+outsail any of the French sloops. Sir Samuel Morland has now another
+fancy about weighing anchors; and the resident of Venice has made a
+model also to the same purpose.”
+
+To girdle a ship, was to fasten planks along her sides some two or
+three strakes above and below the water-line; this had the effect
+of adding to her beam and thereby rendering her stiffer under sail.
+Incessant girdling seems to have been necessary at this period,
+to counter the defective conditions in which English ships were
+designed, built, and sent to sea. Ships were consistently restricted
+in beam, in compliance with the faulty “establishments,” and under a
+mistaken notion that narrowness, in itself, directly contributed to
+speed. “Length,” says Charnock, “was the only dimension regarded as
+indispensably necessary, by the ancients for their galleys and by the
+moderns for galleons. Breadth was not considered, or if considered was
+accepted as a necessary evil.” Pepys remarked, “that the builders of
+England, before 1673, had not well considered that breadth only will
+make a stiff ship.” It was an inquiry ordered by Sir Richard Haddock
+in 1684 which brought to light the fulness of the fallacy; ships were
+subsequently made broader, and experience showed that a good breadth
+was beneficial, not only for stability but for speed and sea-keeping
+qualities.
+
+But even if a ship were built initially broad enough, the continual
+addition of armament and top-hamper to which she was often subjected
+had the effect eventually of impairing her stability. In such a case
+there were two remedies: to ballast or to girdle. The former expedient
+was objectionable, as it involved an increase both of displacement and
+of draught. Girdling was therefore generally practised. By this means
+the vessel was made stiffer, her buoyancy was improved, and her sides
+were also rendered less penetrable between wind and water. Even if,
+when thus girdled, she proved to be less stiff than the enemy this was
+not altogether a disadvantage: she formed a steadier gun-platform, her
+sides were less strained by the sea and, because her rolling was less
+violent, her topmasts were less liable to be sprung. But sufficient
+stiffness was necessary to allow of her lowest and heaviest tier of
+guns being fought in moderate weather; and for this reason alone,
+girdling was preferable to ballasting, in that the former tended to
+keep the guns high out of water while the latter brought them nearer
+the water-line.
+
+Although rigidly restricted in dimensions, ships put to sea in these
+days under such varying conditions that it was difficult indeed to
+foretell whether a vessel were seaworthy or not. A commissioner of
+James the Second’s reign complained bitterly of the injudicious
+management whereby “many a fast sailing ship have come to lose that
+property, by being over-masted, over-rigged, over-gunned (as the
+_Constant Warwick_, from 26 guns and an incomparable sailer, to 46
+guns and a slug), over-manned (_vide_ all the old ships built in
+the parliament time now left), over-built (_vide_ the _Ruby_ and
+_Assurance_), and having great taffrails and galleries, etc., to the
+making many formerly a stiff, now a tender-sided ship, bringing thereby
+their head and tuck to lie too low in the water.”
+
+In spite of these strictures it must be remembered that our ships
+had qualities which, brought into action by brave crews and resolute
+leaders, served the nation well in the day of battle. In no naval
+war, perhaps, did superiority of material exert such a consistent and
+preponderating effect as in the seventeenth century wars between this
+country and Holland.
+
+The tactics of the English leaders involved close-quarter fighting. The
+material, both guns and ships, certainly favoured these tactics; though
+to what extent tactics dictated the form of the material, or material
+reacted on tactics, it may be difficult to decide. In one respect
+tactics undoubtedly directed the evolution of the material: while
+the Dutch employed a “gregarious system” of mutual support of their
+vessels by others of various force, fighting in groups and throwing in
+fireships as opportunity offered, the English always sought to match
+individual ships.[18] Forming in line ahead--a formation, said to
+have been first used by Tromp, which enabled our vessels to avoid the
+fireships--they came to close quarters in a series of duels in which
+the strength and prowess of each individual ship was its only means of
+victory. The success of this plan caused the Dutch to imitate it. The
+size of their ships rapidly grew; their weakest units were discarded.
+Three-deckers were laid down, at first carrying only 76 guns, but
+later, after the peace of 1674, as large as the British first rates.
+But by that time the critical battles had been lost and won. And the
+success of the British is ascribed, in Derrick’s memoirs, chiefly to
+the superior size of our ships, “an advantage which all the skill of
+the Dutch could not compensate.”
+
+With the institution of the line of battle a need arose for a symmetry
+between ships which had never before existed. From this arose, not only
+that more complete differentiation of force[19] which lasted through
+the following century, but a still more stringent ruling of dimensions
+according to “establishments,” which ruling, injudiciously applied,
+was henceforth to exercise so harmful an effect on English naval
+construction.
+
+After the peace of 1674 the navy sank into inefficiency. The French
+navy, on the other hand, ascended in power with an extraordinary
+rapidity. By 1681 it had expanded so much under the fostering care of
+M. Colbert that it comprised no fewer than one hundred and fifteen
+ships of the line. In design, as apart from construction, French ships
+were superior to ours. In size especially they had an advantage, being
+universally larger than British ships of the same artillery force: an
+advantage based on the law, known to our own shipbuilders but never
+applied, that _the greater the dimensions of a ship, relatively to
+the weight she has to carry, the better she will sail_. So superior
+were some French ships which visited Spithead seen to be, that in
+imitation of them Sir Anthony Deane was ordered to design and build the
+_Harwich_; and from the plans of this ship nine others were ordered
+by parliament, the class constituting the greatest advance in naval
+architecture of that time. But this departure from precedent had
+little effect. In dimensions as compared with tonnage we continued
+parsimonious. In the face of French experience we cramped our ships to
+the requirements of the faulty “establishments”; and until the end of
+the century no increase in size took place except in the case of some
+ships laid down in the year 1682, when the threat of a war with Louis
+XIV not improbably caused them to be constructed on a more extensive
+scale than had ever before been in practice.
+
+In another respect our ships were inferior in design to those of our
+chief rivals: in the extreme degree of “tumble home” given to their
+sides. Adhering to ancient practice in this particular, in order to
+obtain advantages which have already been mentioned, we suffered
+increasingly serious disadvantages. The sides of our ships were so
+convex that, when sailing on a wind, every wave was guided upward to
+the upper deck, thereby keeping the crew continually wet. The deck
+space required for the efficient working of the sails was contracted.
+Moreover, ships having this high degree of convexity were more easily
+overset than were wall-sided ships. This exaggerated convexity had a
+striking effect on one feature of our construction, viz. the manner in
+which we affixed the chain-plates, to which the shrouds were secured,
+in a low position on the curve of the hull; while Holland and France
+raised them to a more convenient height--over the upper tier of guns,
+in their two-decked ships.
+
+On the other hand the horizontal lines of our ships were (in the
+absence of science) cleverly moulded. The after lines in particular
+were well suited for supporting the stern and at the same time allowing
+a free run of water to the rudder; other nations, overlooking the
+importance of this part of the vessel, adhered to the old-fashioned
+square tuck and stern which was a chief but unappreciated factor of the
+resistance to the passage of the vessel through water.
+
+When war actually broke out in 1689 the balance of material between
+English and French was much the same in character as it had been
+between English and Dutch. Our fleet was once more in a seaworthy and
+efficient condition. Our guns were generally shorter and of larger bore
+than those of the French; our ships were narrower and less able to bear
+out their ordnance, but their sides were thicker, and better able to
+withstand the racket of gun fire. Once more, at La Hogue, the British
+squadrons showed that they possessed the offensive and defensive
+qualities which favoured victory in close-quarter fighting; and the end
+of the century found the prestige of the navy at a level as high as
+that to which Cromwell and Blake had brought it.
+
+In the decade which ended in 1689 the navy had passed, on its
+administrative side, “from the lowest state of impotence to the most
+advanced step towards a lasting and solid prosperity.” In Pepys’ rare
+little _Memoirs_ the story of this dramatic change is told. We read
+how, after five years’ governance by the commission charged by the
+king with the whole office of the Lord High Admiral, the navy found
+itself rotten to the core; how in ’85 the king resolved to take up its
+management again, helped by his royal brother; how he sent for Mr.
+Pepys; how at his instigation new, honest, and energetic Commissioners
+were appointed, including among them the reluctant Sir Anthony Deane;
+how Mr. Pepys himself strove to reorganize, how new regulations were
+introduced, sea stores established, finances checked, malpractices
+exposed, the navy restored both in spirit and material.
+
+Mr. Pepys claimed to prove that integrity and general knowledge were
+insufficient, if unaccompanied by vigour, assiduity, affection,
+strictness of discipline and method, for the successful conduct of a
+navy; and that by the strenuous conjunction of zeal, honesty, good
+husbandry and method, and not least by the employment of technical
+knowledge, the Royal Navy had been rendered efficient once again.
+
+The following extract from an Essay on the Navy, printed in 1702, is
+here quoted for its general significance:
+
+    “The cannon (nearly 10,000 brass and iron) are for nature and
+    make according to the former disposition and manner of our
+    mariners’ fighting (whose custom was to fight board and board,
+    yard-arm and yard-arm, through and through, as they termed it,
+    and not at a distance in the line, and a like, which practice
+    till of late our seniors say they were strangers to), they are
+    therefore much shorter and of larger bore than the French,
+    with whom to fight at a distance is very disadvantageous, as
+    has been observed in several fights of late, their balls or
+    bullets flying over our ships before ours could reach them by a
+    mile....” etc., etc.
+
+
+§
+
+In Laputa, early in the eighteenth century, the people were so
+engrossed in the mathematics that the constant study of abstruse
+problems had a strange and distorting effect on the whole life of the
+island. Their houses were built according to such refined instructions
+as caused their workmen to make perpetual mistakes; their clothes were
+cut (and often incorrectly) by mathematical calculation; the very
+viands on their tables were carved into rhomboids, cycloids, cones,
+parallelograms, and other mathematical figures!
+
+To most Englishmen of that time any attempt to apply science to
+shipbuilding must have appeared as far-fetched and grotesque as these
+practices of the Laputans. Ship design was still an art, veiled in
+mystery, its votaries guided only by blind lore and groping along
+an increasingly difficult path by processes of trial and error. The
+methods of applied science were as yet unknown. The builder was often a
+mere carpenter, ignorant of mathematics and even of the use of simple
+plans; the savant in his quiet study and the seaman on the perilous
+seas lived in worlds apart from each other and from him, and could not
+collaborate. Such speculative principles as the shipbuilder possessed
+were almost wholly erroneous; no single curve or dimension of a ship,
+it is said, was founded on a rational principle. Everything was by
+tradition or authority. Knowledge had not yet coalesced in books.
+Men kept such secrets as they had in manuscript, and their want of
+knowledge was covered by silence and mystery. Preposterous theories
+were maintained by the most able men and facts were denied or perverted
+so as to square with them. “Forgetful of the road pointed out by Lord
+Bacon, who opposed a legitimate induction from well-established facts
+to hypothesis founded on specious conjectures, and too hastily giving
+up as hopeless the attainment of a theory combining experiment with
+established scientific principles, they have contented themselves with
+ingeniously inventing _mechanical methods_ of forming the designs
+of ships’ bodies of arcs of circles, others of ellipses, parabolas,
+catenaries--which they thought to possess some peculiar virtue and
+which they investigated with the minutest mathematical accuracy. So
+they became possessed of a System. And, armed with this, they despised
+all rivals without one; and, trusting to it, rejected all the benefits
+of experiment and of sea experience.”[20]
+
+The intervention of the philosophers had not had any appreciable
+effect. Sir William Petty had indeed projected a great work on the
+theory of shipbuilding; he had carried out model experiments in tanks,
+and had invented a double-keeled vessel which, by its performances on
+passage between Holyhead and Dublin, had drawn public attention to his
+theories.[21] In his discourse before the Royal Society on Duplicate
+Proportions, he had opened out new and complex considerations for the
+shipbuilder; inviting him to forsake his golden rule, or Rule of Three,
+and apply the law _x varies as y²_ to numerous problems in connection
+with his craft. But it could soon be shown, by a reference to current
+practice, that this new law could not be rigidly applied. And the
+shipbuilder, realizing his own limitations and jealous of sharing
+his professional mysteries with mathematicians and philosophers, was
+willing to laugh the new theories out of court.
+
+Again, of what practical use had been the discovery of the “solid
+of least resistance” or of that “cono-cuneus” which Dr. Wallis had
+investigated with a view to its application to the bows of a ship? A
+final blow to the scientists was given when the _Royal Katherine_,
+a three-decker of 80 guns, designed by the council of the Royal
+Society, was found so deficient in stability that it was deemed
+necessary to girdle her. Old Shish had beaten Sir Isaac Newton and
+all the professors! The impossibility of applying abstract scientific
+principles to so complex a machine as a sailing ship, moving in
+elements so variable as air and water, was patent to everyone. The
+attitude of the professional may be judged from the resigned language
+of William Sutherland, a shipwright of Portsmouth and Deptford Yards,
+who in 1711 published his _Ship-builder’s Assistant_:
+
+“Though some of our preceding Master Builders have proposed length as
+expedient to increase motion, yet it has seldom answered; much extra
+timber is required to make them equally strong. Besides, if the solid
+of least resistance be a blunt-headed solid, extreme length will be
+useless to make cutting bodies.”
+
+Again, in connection with the dimensions of masts:
+
+“Though several writers say, that the velocities are the square roots
+of the power that drives or draws the body; from which it should be a
+quadruple sail to cause double swiftness. Hence, unless the fashion is
+adapted to the magnitude of the ship, all our Art can only be allowed
+notional, and the safest way of building and equipping will be to go
+to precedent, if there be any to be found. But this is a superfluous
+caution, since ’tis very customary, that let a ship be fitted never so
+well by one hand, it will not suit the temper of another. Besides, the
+proper business of a shipwright is counted an very vulgar imploy, and
+which a man of very indifferent qualifications may be master of.”
+
+Science was, in short, discredited. The corporation of shipwrights had
+disappeared, not long surviving the fall of the house of Stuart. No
+master-builder had succeeded the Petts and the Deanes having sufficient
+influence and erudition to expose the faulty system under which
+warships were now built, English shipbuilding had once more become a
+craft governed entirely by precedent and the regulations. The professor
+was routed, and the practical man said in his heart, There is no
+knowing what salt water likes.
+
+Yet the science of naval architecture was at the dawn. Not in this
+country, but in France, in the early part of the eighteenth century,
+research and inquiry received such encouragement from the State that it
+conferred on their fleets a superiority of design which they retained
+for long: a superiority which enabled them, in the _guerre de course_
+which was developed after La Hogue under the intrepid leadership of men
+like Jean Bart, Forbin, and Duguay-Trouin, to strike us some shrewd
+blows.
+
+We propose to summarize as briefly as possible the principal events
+which mark the evolution of the scientific side of naval architecture.
+
+A mere enumeration of the names and works of the men who chiefly
+contributed to the discovery of the true natural principles underlying
+the performance of sailing ships would suffice to show the debt owed
+by the world to French effort, and the tardiness with which this
+country faced the intellectual problems involved. In the year 1681 a
+series of conferences was held at Paris on the question of placing the
+operations of naval architecture on a stable scientific basis; but
+before that date, in 1673, Father Pardies, a Jesuit, had published the
+results of his attempts to calculate the resistance of bodies moving
+in fluids with varying velocities. In ’93 the Chevalier Renaud and
+Christian Huyghens were engaged in public controversy on the merits
+and deficiencies of Pardies’ laws. In ’96 James Bernouilli entered
+the lists on Huyghen’s side, and in the following year a remarkable
+work appeared from the pen of another Jesuit, Paul Hoste, professor of
+mathematics at Toulon. Father Hoste, having noticed the frequency with
+which vessels of that time required girdling, had put the question,
+why they should not be built initially with the form which they had
+when ultimately girdled. The replies given him being unsatisfactory,
+the professor investigated a whole series of problems: the relation
+between speed and resistance, the effect of form on resistance,
+stability, stowage, the properties affecting pitching, and the best
+form of bow. Though incorrect in much of his theory, he had admittedly
+a great influence on later research. He was followed, in 1714, by
+John Bernouilli, professor at Basle, whose investigations were purely
+theoretical. And then, a few years later, M. Bouguer made his great
+discovery of the _metacentre_, that all-important point in space whose
+position in a ship, relatively to its centre of gravity, marks with
+precision the nature of the vessel’s stability.
+
+A treatise by Euler, entitled _Scientia Navalis_, was published
+in 1749, and a little later, stimulated by prizes offered by the
+Société Royale des Sciences, Don G. Juan in Spain, Euler in Russia,
+and Daniel Bernouilli in Germany, all published the results of their
+investigations into the forces acting on a rolling ship. Euler’s
+contribution was especially valuable. Treating the ship as a pendulum
+he laid down two definite rules for the guidance of shipbuilders, (1),
+not to remove the parts of a ship too far from the longitudinal axis,
+(2), to make the most distant parts as light as possible.
+
+Up to this time the discoveries of the mathematicians had had little
+practical effect on shipping. The abstruse form in which new truths
+were published, and the lack of education of the shipbuilders,
+prevented that mutual collaboration which was necessary if the art of
+shipbuilding was to benefit by the advances of science. Soon after
+1750, however, a succession of able men, possessed of imagination and
+initiative, led inquiry into practical channels, and by actual trial
+proved, incidentally, that much of the accepted theory was faulty. The
+Chevalier de Borda, a naval captain and a member of the Academy of
+Sciences, investigated with models the resistance of fluids to motion
+through them, and enunciated laws which shook confidence in current
+beliefs. The result was a commission from the government to three
+eminent men, M. D’Alembert, the Marquis Condorcet and the Abbé Bossut,
+to report on and continue de Borda’s investigations. The report, read
+by the Abbé before the Academy in 1776, confirmed generally de Borda’s
+theories, and revealed new problems--in particular, the alteration in
+shape of the free water surface and the effect of wave resistance,
+the latter of which was ultimately to be solved in this country by
+Mr. W. Froude--that required investigation. The circumstances of this
+commission illustrate the enlightened interest of the State in the
+advancement of knowledge, significant testimony to which was paid
+by Abbé Bossut. “M. Turgot,” he said of the Comptroller-General of
+Finances, who took responsibility for it, “who is not only an admirer
+of the sciences, but has pursued the study of them himself amidst his
+numerous important official functions, approved of our intentions, and
+granted every requisite for prosecuting them.”
+
+In the same year curious and important discoveries were made by M.
+Romme, professor of navigation at La Rochelle. In an endeavour to find
+the form of ship body which would give good stability in conjunction
+with small resistance, he ascertained the importance of the “run” or
+after part. Hitherto the form of bow had absorbed attention to the
+almost entire exclusion of the form of run, except in so far as it
+had been shaped to allow water to flow freely to the rudder. M. Romme
+called in aid methods which are now approved as scientific, but which
+were then conspicuously novel: he experimented by comparative trials
+between models in which all variable features except one had been
+carefully eliminated. He was rewarded by some new discoveries. By
+fixing the length and successively varying the curvature of different
+parts of his models he laid bare an important paradox. While at
+low speeds the resistance was least when a sharp end was in front
+and a blunt end in rear, at higher speeds the opposite obtained.
+This accounted for a great deal of the contradictions of previous
+investigators. M. Romme went further: the curves by which the bow
+of a ship was connected with her middle body, hitherto looked on as
+all-important, were shown to be relatively immaterial. He astonished
+the world of science by proving that, given certain conditions, the
+resistance upon an arc of a curve is the same as that upon the chord of
+this arc. His deductions were proved by commissions to be well founded.
+Experience confirmed that the form of the bow curve did not much
+influence the resistance experienced in passing through water; on the
+other hand the form of the run was shown to have a far greater effect
+than had hitherto been suspected.
+
+In the year before M. Romme published the results of his experiments a
+treatise appeared, full of empirical rules and shrewd reasoning, by one
+of the greatest naval architects, Henry de Chapman, chief constructor
+of the Swedish navy, an Anglo-Swede who came of an old shipbuilding
+family of Deptford. Chapman was a most gifted shipbuilder. Though his
+formulæ were empirical, they were founded on careful observation and
+induction, and his name ranks with those of Phineas Pett and Anthony
+Deane in the history of naval architecture.
+
+Nothing, so far, had come from English writers. “The only English
+treatise on shipbuilding that can lay any claim to a scientific
+character was published by Mungo Murray in 1754; and he, though his
+conduct was irreproachable, lived and died a working shipwright in
+Deptford dockyard.”[22] But indifference was at last giving place to
+interest. Inspired by the formation of the Society of Arts in 1753
+(which Society was itself inspired by the recognition, on the part of
+the founder, of the value of prizes and rewards in improving our breed
+of racehorses) a London bookseller named Sewell succeeded in 1791 in
+forming a Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture. “Impressed
+with the many grave complaints which reached him as to the inferiority
+of our warships as compared with those of France and Spain,” he gained
+the interest of Lord Barham and other influential men. A meeting was
+held at which it was decided, as something of a novelty, that the
+theory and art of shipbuilding were subjects of national importance;
+that a radical deficiency in knowledge of the same existed; and that
+the most effective remedy was a focussing of the wisdom of the country
+on this matter by the institution of the above Society.[23]
+
+For a time the society flourished. A learned paper by Atwood before the
+Royal Society, on the stability of a rolling ship, proved that this
+country was not wholly destitute of mathematical talent. An interesting
+series of experiments was carried out for it by Colonel Beaufoy, a
+devoted student who had made his first experiments on water resistance
+before he was fifteen years old. It appears that his attention was
+first drawn to the subject by hearing an eminent mathematician state
+one evening that a cone drawn through water base foremost experienced
+less resistance than with its apex foremost; and it was said that
+sailors always took a mast in tow by the heel. The paradox excited
+young Beaufoy’s curiosity. Before bedtime, with the assistance of a
+neighbouring turner, he was making experiments in one of the coolers in
+his father’s brew-house, a large bunch of counting-house keys being put
+into requisition as a motive power. Though the society was dissolved in
+1799 Beaufoy continued to pursue this subject with unabated zeal until
+his death. In one direction, especially, he did good work. Attracted by
+the frequency with which North Sea fishing vessels, fitted with wells
+for carrying the fish, foundered at sea, he showed experimentally the
+loss of stability involved in carrying open tanks of water. He also
+demonstrated to English builders by means of models that Bouguer’s
+diagram of metacentric stability was of great practical value, even for
+large angles of heel. “His experiments,” says Mr. Johns, “should take
+an important place in the history of stability of ships.”
+
+
+§
+
+We now revert to the beginning of the eighteenth century. In the
+desultory warfare which was carried on during the reign of Queen
+Anne events occurred to demonstrate the superiority in design of the
+French warship over its English opponent of the same nominal force.
+One in particular, an expedition under Count Forbin which was intended
+to cover a descent on the Scotch coast in favour of the Pretender,
+“showed, even in failure, that in material France held a lead on us.”
+Chased back to its ports from the latitude of Edinburgh by larger
+English forces, Forbin’s squadron proved a superiority over all our
+ships, both in speed and seaworthiness. In weather which disabled many
+of our vessels the French squadron arrived home with the loss of only
+three--and these all English built.
+
+At about the same time the capture by us of a 60-gun ship, the _Maure_,
+of extraordinarily large dimensions for her rate, showed the direction
+in which French design differed from our own. The recapture, not long
+afterwards, of the _Pembroke_, which was now found to carry only fifty,
+instead of her original number of sixty-four guns, corroborated (says
+Charnock) the direction in which improvement was sought and found.
+
+But for some time the lesson remained unlearnt. For a number of years
+the inferiority of our design was an accepted fact; “every action won
+by British valour was a stigma to British science.” Throughout the
+whole of this century we set no value on scientific principles as
+applied to naval architecture, and were content to remain copyists.
+Although before the advent of the Napoleonic wars we had thus
+endeavoured to reduce their balance of advantage, yet even so the
+French still maintained an absolute superiority in design. In the
+first half of the century this superiority was especially conspicuous;
+and, in conjunction with an inferiority of seamanship and workmanship
+which in the end more than neutralized all its advantages, it was the
+cause of the disreputable incongruities which Charnock has depicted
+in his well-known epigram: _Very few ships captured by the enemy from
+the British have ever continued long the property of their possessors.
+If it has so happened, that one of them, being in company with others
+of French construction, has ever fallen in with any English squadron,
+that ship, almost without exception, has been among those captured,
+and most frequently the first which has fallen. On the other hand, the
+recapture of any ship from the British, which was originally French, is
+a circumstance extremely uncommon. Captured French ships were sought
+for as the best commands, which not infrequently were the means of
+recapturing captured English vessels._
+
+Very seldom was our failure to overhaul the speedy Frenchman attributed
+to inferiority of design; nearly always to the fortuitous circumstance
+that we were foul-bottomed and the enemy clean; which may have been
+sometimes true, but which was evidently a partial and inaccurate
+explanation.
+
+We have already made mention of the periodic “establishments” of
+dimensions to which ships built for the royal navy were made to
+conform. The first of these, after the rules laid down by the
+commissioners of James I, was decreed in 1655, when Blake was
+organizing a new standard navy. In 1677 dimensions were established for
+ships of 100, 90, and 70 guns, but were exceeded in the case of those
+ships which were actually built; and in ’91 a revised establishment for
+all classes, very similar to those which previously governed practice,
+appeared. In 1706 a new establishment was decreed, a compromise between
+the ideas of the Surveyor and the master shipwrights, in which the
+dimensions of each class were slightly increased. The dimensions still
+remained small compared with those of all foreign ships, however, and
+still “all superior faculties of sailing were attributed to the mere
+length of the vessel itself, without any but trivial regard to shape or
+form of bottom.” Assuming that the ships built under this establishment
+derived some slight advantage over earlier construction on account of
+their augmented tonnage, yet this was nullified when, in 1716, the
+force of their armament was raised. As the work of a committee presided
+over by Admiral Byng, a new establishment of guns was ordered, a change
+being made in calibres but not in numbers:--
+
+First and second rates, instead of carrying 32-pounders on the lower,
+18-pounders on the main, and 9-pounders on the upper deck, were ordered
+to carry, 42-pounders (or 32-pounders) on the lower, 24-pounders
+on the main, and 12-pounders on the upper deck. Eighty-gun ships,
+instead of carrying 24-pounders on the lower, 12-pounders on the main,
+and 6-pounders on the upper deck, were ordered to carry 32-pounders
+on the lower, 12-pounders on the main, and 6-pounders on the upper
+deck. Seventy-gun ships, which in the previous century had carried
+18-pounders on their main, and 9-pounders on their upper deck, and
+which during the reign of Queen Anne had carried 24-pounders and
+9-pounders, were now ordered to carry 24-pounders and 12-pounders. And
+so on with the smaller rates.
+
+In 1719 a new establishment for ships was decreed, the dimensions
+slightly exceeding those of 1706, but being totally insufficient
+for satisfactory construction. In ’32 and ’41 attempts were made to
+formulate new rules; but the master shipwrights seem to have been loth
+to accept the lesson which the French enemy was teaching them, and
+hesitated to recommend any radical departure from traditional practice.
+
+At length, in 1745, general complaint of the inferiority of our
+ships in size and scantlings forced improvement on the authorities.
+Spain, who had joined France in war against us, possessed ships which
+exceeded in size even French ships of the same rate. The capture in
+1740 of a Spanish 70-gun ship, the _Princessa_, by three of our ships,
+nominally of equal force with herself but of far inferior dimensions
+and scantlings, is said to have been the chief cause of the new reform.
+Their lordships of the Admiralty, surveying naval construction in
+this country, noted that our royal ships were weak and crank, while
+those of other nations went upright. There was no uniform standard
+of size, ships of the same class were of different dimensions, the
+existing establishment was not adhered to. They therefore decided on a
+new establishment, based on the latest armament of guns; which should
+result in ships which would carry their lower tier six feet above the
+water, and four months’ provisions.
+
+The new standard was of little avail, for the same error made some
+thirty years previously was now repeated: with the augmentation of the
+ship dimensions the armament was also raised in calibre. The first
+rates were ordered to carry the 42-pounder (which had before been
+optional) on their lower deck; the 90-gun ships, 12-pounders on their
+upper decks; the eighties, 18-pounders and 9-pounders instead of 12’s
+and 6’s; the seventies, which were only two hundred tons in excess of
+the former establishment, 32-pounders and 18-pounders, instead of 24’s
+and 12’s. “The ships, therefore, built by this establishment proved, in
+general, very crank and bad sea-boats.”[24]
+
+This establishment was, in point of fact, little adhered to. The war
+with France during the years 1744-8 repeatedly revealed the defective
+nature of our ship design. Experience pointed to the necessity either
+of reduced gun-weights or of larger ships. Able administrators were
+now willing, under the inspiration of such names as Hawke and Anson,
+to initiate improvements. Our naval architecture at last took benefit,
+though still by slow and cautious degrees, from foreign experience.
+Some time was necessary for results to show themselves; not only were
+new decisions slowly formed, but the rate of building was deliberately
+slow. The _Royal George_, for instance, described as “the first
+attempt towards emancipation from the former servitude,” was ten years
+building. But, when war broke out again in 1756, the improvements
+already embodied in the newest construction proved of considerable
+benefit. The establishment of ’45 was given the credit. “The ships
+built by the establishment of 1745,” says Derrick in his Memoirs, “were
+found to carry their guns well, and were stiff ships, but they were
+formed too full in their after part; and in the war which took place
+in 1756, or a little before, some further improvements in the draughts
+were therefore adopted, and the dimensions of the ships were also
+further increased.”
+
+To meet the advances in French construction a new classification
+of rates took place, with French captured ships as models. The
+capture of the _Foudroyant_, for instance, in 1758, provided us with
+the form and dimensions of a splendid two-decked 84-gun ship. Our
+80-gun three-deckers were thereupon abolished, and no three-decker
+was thenceforth built with fewer than 90 guns. The capture of the
+_Invincible_, in 1757, gave us a valuable model for a 74-gun ship, a
+rate highly esteemed, which bore the brunt of most of this century’s
+warfare.[25] From her was copied the _Triumph_, and other experimental
+74’s, with dimensions varying from those of the _Invincible_, were
+at this time laid down. All 50-gun ships had already dropped out of
+the line of battle; they were now followed by the 60’s. No more 60
+or 70-gun ships were built; their places were taken by 64’s and 74’s
+respectively, of relatively large size and displacement.
+
+Nor was improvement confined to form and dimensions. Attention was now
+paid to material. New rules were made for the cutting and seasoning
+of timber, and for its economical use. Sheathing was tried; in 1761
+the frigate _Alarm_ was sheathed in copper for service in the West
+Indies, where the worm was active. The copper was found to keep clean
+the hull, but at the expense of the iron fastenings; so when, in ’83,
+copper sheathing became general, an order was issued for all new royal
+ships to be copper fastened up to the water-line: an order beneficial
+on another count, since even without the presence of copper sheathing,
+iron bolts had always been liable to corrosion from the acids contained
+in the oak timbers. Ventilation was also studied, more for its effects
+on the hull timbers than on the health of the crews. The scantlings
+of all ships were strengthened. Taffrails and quarter-pieces were
+reduced in size, and the weight thus saved was devoted to strengthening
+the sterns and reinforcing the deck supports; additional knees and
+fastenings were provided throughout the structure. Moreover, towards
+the middle of the century the formation of the sails was gradually
+altered, first in the smaller rates and afterwards in the larger ships.
+The old-fashioned spritsail, which had been of greatest effect when
+going free, but which had also been used with the wind abeam by the
+awkward expedient of topping up its yard, gave place in our navy to the
+fore and aft jib, which could be used with the wind before the beam.
+Later the lateen sail on the mizzen gave place to a spanker hung from a
+gaff or half-yard. These alterations had a general effect on the size
+and position of masts and sails.
+
+The order of 1745 was virtually the last of those rule-of-thumb
+establishments which had imposed rigorous maximum limits of length,
+beam and draught in conjunction with an equally rigorous minimum of
+armament weight, and which had been a glaring example of the evil
+effects of standardization when unscientifically and unsuitably
+applied. The East India service, the contract-built ships of which
+were designed by architects untrammelled by the rules which cramped
+and distorted the official architecture, provided the clearest proof
+that the King’s ships were, as a whole, of poor design. Naval opinion
+confirmed it.[26]
+
+For further evidence that it was the system and not the men at fault,
+we may note Charnock’s statement that, given a free hand, Englishmen
+proved themselves better shipbuilders than foreigners. “It stamps
+no inconsiderable degree of splendour on the opinion which even the
+arrogance of Spain felt itself compelled to hold in regard to the
+superior practical knowledge possessed by the British shipwrights in
+the construction and art of putting a vessel together, when brought in
+comparison with that of their own people. The builders in all the royal
+dockyards and arsenals, the Havanna excepted, were Britons.”
+
+How many, we may wonder, of the ships shattered by Lord Nelson at
+Trafalgar were constructed by our countrymen? The _Victory_, which was
+to bear his flag, was laid down (we may note in passing) in the year
+1759: she was 186 feet in length on the gun-deck, 52 feet broad, and of
+2,162 tons burthen.
+
+In 1774 the American war broke out. The colonists, who possessed a
+small but efficient frigate navy, were joined soon afterwards by
+France, and then by Spain, and Holland. Lord Rodney acknowledged the
+superiority of the French in speed, who, though his ships were equally
+clean with theirs, yet had the power daily to bring on an action. The
+war proved a rough test for our honest but unscientific construction.
+“In 1778, assailed by numerous enemies, England put forth all her
+naval strength. Powerful fleets had to be found simultaneously for the
+Channel, the North Sea, the East Indies, America, and the West Indies.
+Five years of such warfare proved exhausting, the ships on paying off
+in 1783 were in a terrible state of decay. Several foundered returning
+home, owing to their ill-construction and rickety condition; their
+iron bolts broke with the working, and the ships were mere bundles of
+boards. All this was owing to want of a better system of building, such
+as has since been brought to such perfection by Sir R. Seppings.”[27]
+
+After the peace the size of the French ships continued to increase, and
+every effort was made to improve their design; but they were weak both
+in construction and material. Large three-deckers were once more built;
+the _Commerce de Marseille_, 120, was of such extraordinary dimensions
+that English critics thought that “size had now reached its ultimatum.”
+In 1786 the French abolished the use of shingle as ballast; it created
+a damp vapour between decks and gave a high centre of gravity. Iron
+ballast had been tried in the frigate _Iphigène_ with great success.
+“She was very easy in a sea when under her courses; her extremities
+were not overloaded with cannon; she mounted only 13 guns a side,
+whereas she had room for 15. She was the best sea boat, and fastest
+sailing ship, perhaps, ever built. Her length was more than four times
+her breadth.”[28]
+
+In England, as witnessed by the formation of the Society for the
+Improvement of Naval Architecture, feeling was widespread at this time
+that something was lacking in our methods of ship construction. The
+navy was in process of reorganization by a great administrator. In
+1784 Sir Charles Middleton created an establishment of naval stores.
+He took under consideration shortly afterwards the growing scarcity of
+timber and its more economical use. And in the course of his inquiry
+views were expressed on naval shipbuilding which had an influence on
+subsequent practice.
+
+The conditions under which ships were built for the East India Company
+were far more scientific than those obtaining in the royal dockyards.
+The timber was more carefully picked, and better seasoned. The hulls
+were laid up under cover and well aired; they stood in frame for six
+months, and then, when the planks had been tacked on, they stood again,
+and no tree-nails were driven till all moisture had been dried out of
+the timber. In design they were in many ways superior; in fact, they
+were reputed the best and safest vessels in Europe.
+
+Mr. Gabriel Snodgrass, the Company’s surveyor, under whose supervision,
+it was claimed, 989 ships had been built and repaired between the
+years 1757 and 1794, only one of which had been lost at sea, gave
+illuminating evidence. “I am of opinion,” he said, “that all the ships
+of the navy are too short, from ten to thirty feet according to their
+rates, And if ships in future were to be built so much larger as to
+admit of an additional timber between every port, and also if the
+foremost and aftermost gun-ports were placed a greater distance from
+the extremities, they would be stronger and safer, have more room for
+fighting their guns, and, I am persuaded, would be found to answer
+every other purpose much better than the present ships. The foremasts
+of all ships are placed too far forward; the ships are too lofty abaft,
+and too low in midships; they would be much better and safer, if their
+forecastles and quarter-decks were joined together; for if they carry
+two, three, or four tiers of guns, forward and abaft, they certainly
+ought to carry the same in midships, as it is an absurdity to load the
+extremities with more weight of metal than the midships. No ships,
+however small, that have forecastles and quarter-decks, should go to
+sea with deep waists: they certainly ought to have flush upper decks.”
+
+Ships of the navy, he considered, were too weak; they had plenty of
+timber, but were deficient in iron fastenings, brackets, and standards.
+Knees should be of iron, which was lighter, cheaper, and stronger
+than wood. The bottoms of all navy ships were too thin; the wales and
+inside stuff too thick. He particularly recommended diagonal braces
+from keelson to gun-deck clamps: six or eight pairs of these, secured
+with iron knees or straps, should prevent ships from straining as
+they did. He would reduce the tumble-home given to the topsides, and
+thus add to the strength both of hulls and masts; he would abolish
+quarter-galleries and give less rake to the sterns. Finally, he would
+design ships so as to require a minimum of compass timber; make no
+use of oak where he could substitute fir or elm with propriety; and
+have all timbers cut as nearly to the square as possible, to conserve
+strength.
+
+His evidence, ending in a recommendation to the government to improve
+the status of the naval shipwrights, has been handed down as a
+remarkable exposition of sound knowledge and good sense. The proposals
+were beneficial, so far as they went, but they did not go far enough:
+the whole system on which the hull timbers were disposed was wrong. The
+continuous increase in the size of ships was gradually exposing their
+weakness. And though in the next century a more scientific disposition
+was to be adopted, for some years yet construction continued on the
+ancient lines.[29]
+
+The great wars with France, which broke out in the year 1792, found
+us adding both to the length and to the scantlings of our new ships.
+Three years before, the Admiralty had ordered two 110-gun ships to
+be built, of 2332 tons burthen. One of them, the _Hibernia_, not
+finished till the year 1805, was made more than eleven feet longer
+than originally intended. Both of these ships were established with
+32-pounder guns for their main deck.[30] The unwieldy 42-pounder, used
+on the lower decks of first and second-rate ships, was now displaced,
+in most ships, by the more rapidly worked 32-pounder. Lord Keppel
+had tried, also, to substitute 32-pounders for 24-pounders on the
+main deck of the _Victory_ and other ships in commission, so as to
+establish them generally; but they were found too heavy on trial. He
+replaced 6-pounders by 12-pounders, however, on the quarter-decks and
+forecastles. Carronades were now making their appearance. In excellence
+of material and honesty of workmanship our fleets were pre-eminent.
+
+The value of large dimensions was by this time discerned; where
+possible extra length was given to ships building and those under
+repair. Size still increased. The great _Commerce de Marseille_,
+brought home a prize by Lord Hood in ’94, was forthwith matched by the
+_Caledonia_, which, ordered in this year but not completed until 1810,
+was the greatest ship which had ever been built in this country. Still,
+side by side with news of world-shaking victories, came evidence of
+our ships’ inferiority in design. Not only the French, but the Spanish
+dockyards, produced vessels which could often outsail ours. Four large
+prizes taken at the battle off Cape St. Vincent surprised their new
+owners: “under their jury-masts, and poorly manned as they necessarily
+were, they beat all the English ships working into the Tagus.”[31]
+
+As the great wars went on, Britain deployed a constantly increasing
+naval force. Prizes went to swell the number of ships put in
+commission. “Mr. Pitt was foremost in getting every possible ship
+to sea; and under this pressure rotten old ships were doubled and
+cross-braced and otherwise strengthened and rendered fully adequate to
+temporary service. Trafalgar followed, and the efforts of the civil
+departments were rewarded.”[32]
+
+We have made little mention, in the foregoing pages, of the actual
+tonnage or dimensions of ships, for the reason that the figures
+would be for the most part unreliable or misleading in import.
+The basis on which tonnage was measured was constantly changing.
+It was difficult to obtain accurate measurements of the principal
+dimensions; length, especially, was an indeterminate dimension, and,
+in the days when a large fore and aft rake was given, the length
+of keel gave no indication of the over-all length. Even if the
+over-all dimensions could be accurately measured, they gave small
+information as to the form of the hull: the fullness or fineness of
+the lines, the form of the bow-curves and tuck, the position of the
+section of maximum breadth, both longitudinally and relatively to
+the water-line--proportions on which the sailing qualities of a ship
+largely depended. In the seventeenth century the tonnage figures
+were generally untrustworthy; the _Sovereign_ was quoted by three
+different authorities as being of 1141, 1637, and 1556 tons burthen.
+In the eighteenth century tonnage and dimensions possessed greater
+comparative value. We confine ourselves to quoting the following
+table of typical dimensions, taken from Charnock, showing the gradual
+expansion which took place in the hundred years which have just been
+reviewed.
+
+  ---------------------+----------+-------+-------+------+-------
+      Establishment    |  Length  |  Keel |Breadth| Depth|Tonnage
+                       |(gun-deck)|       |       |      |
+  ---------------------+----------+-------+-------+------+-------
+  1706 }               |  171′ 9″ |139′ 7″| 49′ 3″|19′ 6″| 1809
+  1719 } 100-gun ships |  175′ 0″ |140′ 7″| 50′ 3″|20′ 1″| 1883
+  1745 }               |  178′ 0″ |145′ 2″| 52′ 0″|21′ 6″| 2091
+  _Commerce de         |          |       |       |      |
+    Marseille_ (120)   |  208′ 4″ |172′ 0″| 54′ 9″|25′ ½″| 2747
+  _Caledonia_ (120)    |  205′ 0″ |170′ 9″| 53′ 8″|23′ 2″| 2616
+  ---------------------+----------+-------+-------+------+-------
+
+
+§
+
+The slow progress of naval architecture up to the end of the eighteenth
+century, an advance the rate of which may be gauged from the fact that,
+except for sheathing and pumps, no important improvement was patented
+between the years 1618 and 1800, has been characterized as consisting
+mainly of approximations to the successive forms and arrangements
+of Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and French ships, all of which had
+been in their turn superior to ours. Until the end of the eighteenth
+century the “bigotry of old practice” had effectually opposed any
+radical improvement, even though such improvement had been operating
+for years in foreign navies and were brought continually before the
+eyes of our professionals, embodied in captured prizes. In his _Naval
+Development of the Century_ Sir Nathaniel Barnaby has drawn attention
+to the remarkable similarity which existed between the _Caledonia_
+of the early nineteenth, and the old _Sovereign_ of the seventeenth
+century: “Almost the only things of note were the reduction in height
+above water, forward and aft, and a slight increase in dimensions. The
+proportion between length and breadth had undergone but little change.
+There was almost the same arrangement of decks and ports; the same
+thin boarding in front of the forecastle; the same mode of framing
+the stern, the same disposition of the outside planking in lines
+crossing the sheer of the ports; nearly the same rig; the same external
+rudder-head, with a hole in the stern to admit the tiller; and probably
+the same mode of framing the hull. For the ships of 1810 had no
+diagonal framing of wood or iron, but the old massive vertical riders;
+no shelf or waterway to connect the beams with the sides; no fillings
+above the floor-head; and no dowels in the frames. Ships were still
+moored by hempen cables, and still carried immense stores of water in
+wooden casks.”
+
+To Sir Robert Seppings was due the series of innovations in
+constructional method which placed shipbuilding on a relatively
+scientific basis and thereby rendered it capable of meeting the
+increasing demands involved in the growing size and force of warships.
+His scheme, some elements of which had already been tested in H.M.
+ships, was described in a paper read before the Royal Society in 1814.
+In the briefest language we will attempt to explain it.
+
+In the theory of structures, a jointed figure formed of four straight
+sides is known as a _deficient_ frame, since it has not a sufficient
+number of members to keep it in stable equilibrium under any system of
+loading. A triangle, on the other hand, is a _perfect_ frame, since it
+has enough, and not more than enough, members to keep it in equilibrium
+however it may be loaded.
+
+The hull of a timber-built ship consisted of a number of rigidly
+jointed frames or cells, some lying in horizontal, some in vertical,
+and some in intermediate planes: the unit cell being a quadrilateral,
+whose sides were formed by the frames and vertical riders and by the
+planks, wales, and horizontal riders. Practically all the materials
+composing the fabric of a ship were disposed either in planes parallel
+to the plane of the keel or in planes at right angles to it. And up
+to the end of the Napoleonic wars our ships, without appreciable
+exception, were built on this primitive quadrilateral system. The
+system was essentially weak. All warships showed a tendency to
+arch or hog--to become convex upwards, in the direction of their
+length--owing to the fact that the support which they derived from
+the water was relatively greater amidships than in the neighbourhood
+of their extremities. In the old days when ships were short in length
+this tendency was small, or, if appreciable, a remedy was found in
+working into the structures additional longitudinal and transverse
+riders, until the holds were not infrequently clogged with timber.
+But as ships increased in length, the forces tending to “break the
+sheer” of a ship and arch its keel increased in greater ratio than
+the ship’s power of resistance to the distortion; and by the end of
+the eighteenth century, in spite of the aid of iron knees, stronger
+fastenings, and improved material generally, the essential weakness
+of our mode of construction had been gradually exposed. The _Victory_
+herself suffered from arching. The extremities of a 74-gun ship dropped
+six inches, sometimes, when she entered the water from the stocks. A
+similar tendency to hog took place also across the breadth of a ship,
+occasioned by the dead weight of her guns. When rolling in heavy
+weather the momentum of her top weights caused large racking stresses
+to be thrown on the joints between the frames and the deck-beams. The
+biographer of Admiral Symonds quotes Captain Brenton as follows: “I
+remember very well, when I was a midshipman in a 64-gun ship coming
+home from India, cracking nuts by the working of the ship. We put them
+in under the knees, as she rolled one way, and snatched them out as she
+rolled back again.”
+
+[Illustration: DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING DISTORTION OF FRAMES UNDER LOAD]
+
+From these remarks it will be clear that a new method of construction
+which, by substituting the triangle for the rectangle, prevented the
+distortion of a ship’s hull under the stresses of hogging and sagging,
+would constitute an important innovation: even more important if, in
+addition, the new method resulted in a large economy of material. Such
+a system Sir Robert Seppings introduced. Treating the hull as a girder
+liable to bend, he disposed the timbers to the best advantage to resist
+deformation. The rectangular system, wherein frames and riders formed
+rectangular cells with no other power of resisting distortion into
+rhomboids than that derived from the rigidity of the joints, had been
+proved inefficient; just as a common field gate would be inefficient,
+and would easily distort, if built up solely of vertical and horizontal
+timbers without any diagonal brace to make it a rigid figure. He solved
+the problem with the triangle. By bracing each quadrilateral cell with
+a diagonal timber he thereby divided it into two rigid and immovable
+triangles, and thus made the whole ship rigid. The quadrilateral, when
+braced, was known as a _trussed frame_. All the chief frames in the
+ships he trussed; and since all bending took place from the centre of
+the ship downwards to its ends, he made the trussed frames symmetrical
+about the centre: the diagonals sloped forward in the after body, and
+aft in the fore body, so as to resist the arching by extension. The
+truss frame was embodied, not only in the lower part of the vessel
+(where its effect in resisting longitudinal bending was comparatively
+small), but in the more nearly vertical planes, and even in the
+topsides between the gun-ports (where it was most effective). Its use
+was estimated to result in the saving of nearly two hundred oak trees
+in the building of a 74-gun ship.
+
+[Illustration: DIAGRAM REPRESENTING A SHIP WITH TRUSSED FRAMES]
+
+This was one element of Seppings’ system. The others were: the
+filling in of the spaces between the ground frames of the ship, so
+as to oppose with a continuous mass of timber the tendency of the
+lower parts to compress longitudinally, and to form a thick and solid
+bottom; the omission of the interior planking below the orlop clamps;
+the connection of the beams with the frames by means of shelf-pieces,
+waterways, and side binding-strakes to the deck; and the laying of the
+decks diagonally.
+
+In two other important respects Seppings improved on previous
+construction.
+
+At Trafalgar the _Victory_, during her end-on approach to the enemy
+line, was raked, and her old-fashioned forecastle, with its thin
+flat-fronted bulkhead rising above the low head, was riddled and
+splintered. This and similar experiences led to the introduction by the
+Surveyor of an improved bow, formed by prolonging the topsides to meet
+in a high curved stem, which not only deflected raking shot, but also
+consolidated the bow into a strong wedge-shaped structure supporting a
+lofty bowsprit, and capable of being armed to give ahead fire from a
+number of guns.
+
+Similarly the weakness of ships’ sterns was remedied. The broad flat
+overhanging stern which had been given to our ships throughout the
+eighteenth century was not only structurally, but defensively weak.
+In many actions, but notably in Admiral Cornwallis’ fighting retreat
+from the French in 1795, the weakness of our stern fire had been
+severely felt; and, especially in view of the possible adaptation of
+steam to ship propulsion, at this time foreshadowed, the desirability
+of an improvement was evident. Seppings abolished the flat stern in
+all new two- and three-deckers, substituting sterns circular (as seen
+from above), more compactly embodied, and having ports and embrasures
+in them for guns capable of fire along divergent radii. The circular
+stern gave place, after a few years, to an elliptical stern, which
+presented a more graceful appearance and afforded increased protection
+to the rudder-head. “The principal curves visible in it,” it was said,
+“harmonize so well with the sheer lines of the ship, that she appears
+to float lightly and easily upon the water.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In the opening years of the new century important advances were made,
+too, in the organization of the royal dockyards. The interests of naval
+architecture were served notably by Sir Samuel Bentham, brother of the
+famous jurist and an ex-shipwright, who acquired honours in Russia and
+returned to England to be Civil Architect and Engineer to the navy.
+Bentham became a courageous Commissioner, and did much to stamp out
+abuses and to encourage efficiency; he was instrumental in checking
+the sale of stores, in abolishing “chips,” in introducing steam pumps,
+block machinery, and dry dock caissons, in improving the methods of
+building ships and of mounting carronades.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But still naval architecture, considered either as an art or as a
+science, was stagnant. As a class the Surveyors were men of very
+restricted education--“there is scarcely a name on the list of any
+eminence as a designer or a writer.” Those who ordered ships at
+the Board were “busy politicians, or amateurs without a knowledge
+of science, or sailors too impatient of innovation to regard
+improvements.” In no other profession, perhaps, were theory and
+practice so out of sympathy with each other. The native art of the
+builder was numbed and shackled, by the restrictions imposed upon him
+as to tonnage and dimensions; the study of ship form, with a view to
+analysing the forces under which sailing ships moved by wind through
+water and to discovering the laws which those forces obeyed, was
+still mainly an academic pastime of the Society for Improving Naval
+Architecture, and outside the province of the naval authorities. Our
+ships were still formed on no rational principle. Captured French ships
+served as models to be copied. Often our builders would make fanciful
+variations from the originals--a little more sheer, a little more
+beam, etc. etc.--and as often they spoiled their copies. Whenever they
+followed closely the forms and features of the originals they succeeded
+in producing vessels which were pronounced to be among the best ships
+in the navy.
+
+With this state of affairs, it is no matter for surprise that much of
+the new construction of the period was of small value. “Sir Joseph
+Yorke produced a set of corvettes, longer and narrower than brigs, none
+of which answered; and they were sold out of the service. Then came the
+‘Forty Thieves,’ a small class of 74’s; but in justice to the designer,
+Sir H. Peake (who copied them from a French ship), it must be added
+that his lines were altered by the Navy Board, and the vessels were
+contract-built. Lord Melville built half a dozen ‘fir frigates,’ which
+neither sailed nor stood under canvas. The 22-gun and 28-gun donkey
+frigates ‘could neither fight nor run away’; it was dangerous to be on
+board them; and the bad sailing of such vessels was the chief cause of
+our ill success in the American War. The old 10-gun brigs, or ‘floating
+coffins,’ as they were significantly styled, were equally dangerous and
+unsightly. They had no room to fight their guns; no air between decks,
+which were only five feet high; extra provisions and stores were piled
+above hatches; and the fastest of them sailed no more than eight or
+nine knots.”[33]
+
+The merchant service was in even worse plight. The tonnage rules had
+had a deplorable effect upon merchant shipping. The ancient method
+of assessing a ship’s burthen was by measuring the product of its
+length and breadth and depth, and dividing this by a constant number,
+which varied, at different periods, from 100 to 94. Early in the
+eighteenth century, however, a simplification was innocently made:
+the depth of the average ship being half the beam, a new formula was
+approved--length multiplied by half the square of the beam, divided by
+94.[34] The result might have been anticipated. Dues being paid only on
+the length and breadth, vessels were given great depth of hold, full
+lines, and narrow beam. Absolved by the convoy system from trusting to
+their own speed for self-protection, English merchantmen became slugs:
+flat-bottomed, wall-sided boxes, monstrosities of marine architecture
+of which it was said that they were ‘built by the mile and served out
+by the yard.’
+
+To raise the skill and status of our builders, the Committee of Naval
+Revision of 1806 presided over by Lord Barham advised the establishment
+of an official school, in which the more highly gifted apprentices
+might study the science involved in naval architecture. In 1811 the
+school was opened at Portsmouth, with Dr. Inman, a senior wrangler, as
+president. Ships were designed by Dr. Inman and his pupils excellent in
+many respects, and generally on an equality with those of the Surveyor
+and the master shipwrights. Yet still they were very imperfect. The
+official designs were hampered, not only by the hereditary prejudices
+and dogmas and by the cautious timidity of the builders themselves, but
+by the restrictions still imposed by the Navy Board, who insisted on
+a certain specified armament in combination with a totally inadequate
+specified tonnage: who laid down incompatible conditions, in short,
+under which genius itself must fail of producing a satisfactory result.
+
+The chains were broken in 1832.
+
+In that year, when the whole administration of the navy was in process
+of reorganization, the office of Surveyor was offered to and accepted
+by a naval officer, Captain W. Symonds, R.N.: accepted by him on the
+condition that he should be given a free hand in design and allowed to
+decide himself of what tonnage and dimensions every ship should be. Sir
+Robert Seppings was superannuated. The school of naval architecture
+was abolished. The sensation produced was powerful. “Except on matters
+of religion,” said Sir James Graham, when the appointment was being
+debated in the House of Commons some years afterwards, “I do not
+know any difference of opinion which has been attended with so much
+bitterness--so much anger--so much resentment, as the merits of Sir W.
+Symonds and the virtues of his ships.”
+
+These violent differences and resentments have long since been
+composed, and Sir William Symonds has been accorded the position due
+to him in the history of naval architecture. His opponents, those who
+had resented his appointment as against the best interests of the
+service, rejoiced that he had freed ship design from the traditional
+restrictions under which it had stagnated; his chief admirers were
+led in the course of time to agree in the desirability of having
+as Surveyor a man thoroughly grounded in the scientific principles
+underlying the motion of bodies through water, their stability in
+water, and all the forces acting on a ship at sea.
+
+In the year 1821 Lieutenant Symonds, while holding an appointment at
+Malta, had designed and built for himself a yacht which he called
+_Nancy Dawson_. Yachting had at this date become a national sport, and
+the interest of influential patrons in sailing matches was already
+acting as a stimulus to the study of ship form. The chief cause of
+the beneficial reaction from the indifference of former generations,
+says his biographer, was the establishment of the Yacht Club, after
+the peace of 1815, and the interest which men of rank and fortune
+henceforth took in shipbuilding, and in procuring the best native
+models.[35] So great was the success of the _Nancy Dawson_, that (in
+his own words) he was led to believe that he had hit upon a secret in
+naval architecture; while experiments on other sailing boats seemed to
+confirm him in his principles. Great breadth of beam and extraordinary
+sharpness--in fact, what was described as “a peg-top section”--were
+the characteristic features of his system, with a careful attention to
+stowage, the stand of the masts, and the cut and setting of the sails.
+
+“Upon this most slender basis was the whole fabric of Sir William’s
+subsequent career built. The yacht gained him the notice of noblemen
+and others, then followed a pamphlet on naval architecture (in which
+the defects of existing ships were pointed out, and great breadth of
+beam and rise of floor advocated); then came a promise from the First
+Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Melville, that he should build a sloop of
+war on his plans, which he did, the vessel being called the _Columbine_
+(promotion intervening); then further patronage from the Duke of
+Portland and the Duke of Clarence, the latter of whom, when he became
+Lord High Admiral, ordered him to lay down a 40-gun frigate (promotion
+again intervening); then the building of the _Pantaloon_, 10-gun brig,
+for the Duke of Portland, from whom the Admiralty purchased her; then
+the patronage of that most mischievous civilian First Lord, Sir J.
+Graham; then the order for the _Vernon_, 50-gun frigate; and then, in
+’32, the Surveyorship of the Navy.”[36]
+
+To Sir Edward Reed and other shipbuilding officers the appointment of
+this brilliant amateur to the supreme control of the department seemed
+an act of war, not only on professional architects, but upon naval
+architecture itself. They admitted the success of the Symondite ships
+in speed and certain sailing qualities, but denied the correctness
+of his principles and strenuously resisted his innovations. A great
+breadth of beam was particularly objectionable to the scientific
+builder; not only did it imply a large resistance to the passage of
+the ship through water, but it contributed to an excess in metacentric
+height, abnormal stiffness, and an uneasy motion. “For a time his
+opinions triumphed; but after a while the principles expounded by his
+subordinates (Creuze, Chatfield, and Read) were accepted as correct,
+while not a single feature of Sir William’s system of construction
+is retained, except certain practical improvements which he
+introduced.”[37]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  ‘Victoria’
+  Breadth = 59′ 2″
+  Length = 204′
+
+  ‘Caledonia’
+  Breadth = 53′ 6″
+  Length = 205′
+
+Fig: 1.
+
+  ‘Vernon’
+  Breadth = 52′
+  Length = 176′
+
+  ‘Barham’
+  Breadth = 47′ 10″
+  Length = 173′ 8″
+
+Fig: 2.
+
+TYPICAL SECTIONS OF “SYMONDITE” AND CONTEMPORARY SHIPS]
+
+Nevertheless his opponents, as before remarked, freely acknowledged
+the value of his services to the country, especially in breaking down
+the restrictions which had hitherto been imposed on constructors in
+respect of dimensions. His biographer pays tribute to the intuitive
+genius which enabled him to tell at a glance the trim required for
+a sailing ship, and to sketch out, as a brilliant impromptu, the
+best form of hull. But were these efforts entirely spontaneous? Were
+they not the reward of hidden and persistent work, observation, and
+calculation, carried out for years by the young officer who never
+let a sailing ship come near him without contriving to board her and
+ascertain her principal properties and dimensions? Here, surely, is
+the undramatic but praiseworthy method by which he attained success: a
+method, essentially scientific, which enabled its user, even without
+knowledge of other important principles governing ship design, to
+perform a national service in revolutionizing our methods of naval
+architecture.
+
+Under the control of Sir William Symonds the improvement in the form
+and qualities of our ships, begun under the surveyorship of Sir
+Robert Seppings, continued to progress. Ship dimensions increased,
+and now bore a more correct relation to the dead-weight of armament,
+stores, and crew, which they had to carry. All classes from cutters
+to first-rates carried a more generous beam, and gained by the
+novel feature. Sounder rules were devised, partly as the result of
+a succession of sailing trials, for the pitching of masts and the
+methods of stowing. In short, naval architecture entered upon a new and
+promising era. Foreign observers recorded the progress made. Instead of
+being servile imitations of the products of French and Spanish models
+the vessels which flew the English flag became objects of admiration to
+all the world.
+
+[Illustration: A TUDOR SHIP OF PERIOD 1540-50
+
+From a Cottonian MS. in the British Museum]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE SMOOTH-BORE GUN
+
+
+On the question of the date at which the discovery of gunpowder took
+place writers have held the most divergent views. The opinion of the
+majority has been that its properties were known in the remote ages
+of antiquity, and this opinion has been formed and confirmed by the
+accounts given of its origin by most of the medieval writers. The
+Chinese claim to have known it long before the Christian era. And from
+hints in classical literature, and on the broad ground of probability,
+it has been inferred by some authorities that the explosive properties
+of gunpowder were known to the ancients. The wonderful property of
+saltpetre, they argue, must certainly have been known to the wise
+men of old: its extraordinary combustive power when mixed with other
+substances. Melted alone over a hot fire saltpetre does not burn; but
+if a pinch of some other substance is added, a violent flame results.
+In many fortuitous circumstances, they say, saltpetre must have been
+found in contact with that other essential ingredient of gunpowder,
+charcoal. And such a circumstance has been pictured by one writer as
+occurring when camp fires, lit upon soil impregnated with nitre (like
+that in parts of India), were rekindled; the charred wood converted
+into charcoal forming with the nitre a slightly explosive mixture.
+
+Other investigators maintain that gunpowder, which claims a spurious
+antiquity, is really an invention of the Middle Ages. Incendiary
+compositions--Greek fire, and other substances based on the properties
+of quicklime, naphtha, phosphorus, etc.--were undoubtedly known to
+the ancient world. But explosive compositions, based on saltpetre
+as the principal ingredient, were certainly not known in all their
+fearful power. The silence of history on the subject of the projection
+of missiles by explosive material, says a recent authority,[38] is
+eloquent; the absence of its terminology from such languages as Chinese
+and Arabic, conclusive.
+
+Whichever of the two views may be correct it is certain that a
+knowledge of gunpowder was possessed by the great alchemist, Roger
+Bacon, who in A.D. 1249 committed to paper an account of its
+properties.[39] To Berthold the Black Friar is given the credit for
+its application to military ends; whom legend, in an impish mood, has
+hoisted with his own discovery.
+
+In a learned work on the early days of artillery an English writer has
+described the difficulties encountered in tracing the first stages
+of the evolution of guns and gunpowder. Confusion was caused by the
+fact that, after gunpowder had been introduced, military engines were
+still known by the same generic names as those borne in pre-gunpowder
+days. No contemporary pictures of guns could be discovered. The loose
+statements of historians, the license of poets, and the anachronisms
+of the illuminators of the medieval MSS., all tended to lead the
+investigator astray and to make his task more difficult. The statements
+of the historians are indeed whole hemispheres and centuries apart;
+as for poets, our own Milton assigned the invention of artillery to
+the devil himself; and “from the illuminators we should gain such
+information as, that Gideon used field pieces on wheeled carriages
+with shafts, when he fought against the Midianites, as in a MS. in the
+British Museum.”[40]
+
+Of all the clues which throw light on the origin of artillery the most
+important yet discovered lies in some MSS. belonging to the city of
+Ghent. After a list of municipal officers for the year 1313 occurs the
+entry: “Item, in this year the use of bussen was first discovered in
+Germany by a monk.” And there is evidence that in the following year
+“guns” were manufactured in Ghent and exported to England.[41] The same
+century was to witness a wonderful development of the new-found power.
+
+It was but natural that the first application of gunpowder to warlike
+purposes should have been, not only to strike terror by violent
+explosion and thus obtain an important moral effect, but to project
+the missiles already in military use: arrows and ponderous stones. Two
+distinct types of artillery were thus foreshadowed. The first took the
+form of a dart-throwing pot or vase, a narrow-necked vessel from which,
+in imitation of the cross-bow, stout metal-winged arrows were fired;
+while, for projecting stones of great size and weight in imitation of
+the ancient siege-machines, large clumsy pieces made of several strips
+of iron fitted together lengthways and then hooped with iron rings were
+eventually developed.
+
+In the first half of the fourteenth century the guns manufactured were
+of the former type. In _The Origin of Artillery_ a reproduction is
+given of an illuminated MS. belonging to Christ Church, Oxford, dated
+1326, showing an arrow-throwing vase: the earliest picture of a gun
+which is known. And, from a French document quoted by Brackenbury, it
+appears that in 1338 there was in the marine arsenal at Rouen an iron
+fire-arm--_pot de fer_--which was provided with bolts (“carreaux,” or
+quarrels) made of iron and feathered.
+
+But the unsuitability of the arrow for use in conjunction with
+gunpowder as a propellant was, even at this date, realized. There was
+obvious difficulty in preventing the powder gases from escaping through
+the windage space between the arrow-shafts and the neck of the vase,
+even with the aid of leather collars. So the arrow almost immediately
+evolved into a stone or metal sphere; the narrow neck of the vase
+increased to the full diameter of the vessel. And as early as 1326,
+the date of the picture of the arrow-throwing vase, cannon of brass,
+with iron balls, were being made at Florence for the defence of the
+commune. The use of the new weapons quickly spread. By 1344 the cannon
+is mentioned by Petrach as “an infernal instrument of wood, which
+some think invented by Archimedes,” yet “only lately so rare as to be
+looked on as a great miracle; now, ... it has become as common as any
+other kind of weapon.” By 1412, according to unquestionable testimony
+supplied by public documents, cannon were employed in English ships:
+breech-loading guns with removable chambers.[42]
+
+In 1346 Edward III fought Cressy. Whether or no cannon were used in
+this decisive battle has been a matter of considerable controversy.
+According to Villani, an old Florentine chronicler who gave an account
+of the campaign, they were; but no mention of them was made by
+Froissart, who wrote some years later. The silence of Froissart has
+been attributed, however, to a desire to avoid offending our court by
+implying that the victory was due to other than the prowess of the
+Prince of Wales; or tainting our success with any mention of “devilish
+machines which were universally regarded as destructive to valour
+and honour and the whole institution of chivalry.” Though English
+chronicles contain no mention of gunpowder till some years after
+Cressy, yet evidence exists that artillery--“gunnis cum sagittis et
+pellotis”--was extensively used in this campaign. “But the powder was
+of so feeble a nature and the cannon so small, that the effect of a few
+of them, fired only a few times, could not have been very noticeable
+compared with the flights of arrows.”[43]
+
+Cannon in the first half of the fourteenth century were indeed feeble
+weapons compared with the huge mechanical engines of the period;
+yet their moral effect was very great and their physical effect by
+no means negligible. They were destructive of chivalry, in a quite
+literal sense. The value of cavalry as an arm was greatly reduced by
+their adoption in the field. They took from the horseman cased in
+complete armour all the advantage he possessed over other troops.
+Instead of forming the nucleus of the fighting strength of an army,
+the armour-clad nobles and their mounted retinues became somewhat of
+an encumbrance, and a change in the composition and strength of armies
+from this time ensued. Tournaments went out of fashion, chivalry
+declined.
+
+Against material, cannon proved even more effective. As the
+arrow-throwing gun gradually disappeared, giving place to small
+cylindrical cannon firing lead and iron balls, other ordnance, designed
+for projecting large stones against the gates and walls of forts and
+castles, grew rapidly to an enormous size. Made usually of forged
+iron bars welded and strengthened circumferentially by coils of iron
+ribbon or rope, and using a weak gunpowder, these giant “bombards”
+began to play an important part in land warfare, especially in those
+internecine wars which were constantly being waged in Flanders and
+in Northern Italy. Two peoples were conspicuous at this period for
+their wealth, culture, and energy: the Lombards and the Flemings. The
+former, by their contact with the East, had drawn into their hands
+most of the commerce of Europe; the latter, welded together in the
+Hanseatic League, were in the van of northern civilization. It was in
+Italy, probably, that cannon were first employed, and in Italy where
+they developed most rapidly. Their use had an immediate effect on land
+warfare; the defensive value of masonry was suddenly depreciated, and
+town-gate, fort, and campanile, which had for centuries defied the old
+mechanical engines, could no longer be considered impregnable.[44]
+
+In the following century the development of the bombard continued. The
+Lombards cast them in bronze, adorned them with elaborate mouldings
+and furnished their ends with swellings like capstan-heads, of equal
+diameter, to facilitate rolling and parbuckling. In the hands of the
+Flemish artisans this type reached a remarkable degree of perfection in
+a famous bombard called “Dulle Griete,” which was made at Ghent about
+A.D. 1430. The bombard of Ghent consists of two parts, a larger part to
+form the barrel for the stone sphere of 25 inches diameter, a smaller
+part, of much thicker metal, to form the chamber in which the powder
+charge is placed. These two parts are screwed together, screw threads
+being formed on a boss on the front end of the chamber and in a hole in
+the rear end of the barrel. This is thought to be the piece described
+by Froissart as “une bombarde merveilleusement grande, laquelle avoit
+cinquante trois pouces de bec, et jetoit carreaux merveilleusement
+grands et gros et pesants; et quand cette bombarde descliquoit, on
+l’ouoit par jour bien de cinq lieues loin, et par nuit de dix; et
+menoit si grand’ noise au descliquer, que il sembloit que tous les
+diables d’enfer fussent au chemin.”
+
+A fine example of the built-up bombard is “Mons Meg,” the piece which
+now lies at Edinburgh Castle, and which was made at Mons about A.D.
+1460: formed of longitudinal wrought-iron bars welded and hooped
+circumferentially, of 20 inches in the bore, and designed to fire a
+stone ball of over three hundred pounds’ weight.
+
+It was in the hands of the Turks, then at the zenith of their power,
+that medieval ordnance achieved its greatest development, and it is
+thought probable that Flemish pieces served as the model on which the
+Ottoman artillery was based. The siege of Constantinople, in the year
+1453, was notable for “the reunion which it presented of ancient and
+modern artillery--catapults, cannon, bullets, battering rams, gunpowder
+and Greek fire.” And it was especially notable from the power of the
+modern artillery there assembled, an artillery which represented
+a climax of size and military value. Gibbon has given us a vivid
+description of the Ottoman ordnance and its capabilities. “Mahomet
+studied with peculiar care the recent and tremendous discovery of the
+Latins; and his artillery surpassed whatever had yet appeared in the
+world. A founder of cannon, a Hungarian, a deserter from the Greek
+service, was liberally entertained by the Sultan. On his assurance a
+foundry was established at Adrianople; the metal was prepared; and at
+the end of three months Urban produced a piece of brass ordnance of
+stupendous and almost incredible magnitude; a measure of twelve palms
+is assigned to the bore; and the stone bullet weighs above six hundred
+pounds. A trial was held, a proclamation having warned the populace.
+The explosion was enormous and was heard one hundred furlongs off, and
+the ball, by the force of the gunpowder, was hurled above a mile.”
+
+“A stranger as I am to the art of destruction,” continues the
+historian--who, we may note in passing, had been through his courses
+at Hilsea and was a major in the Hants Militia--“I can discern that
+the modern improvements of artillery prefer the number of pieces to
+the weight of metal; the quickness of fire to the sound, or even
+the consequence, of a single explosion. Yet I dare not reject the
+positive and unanimous evidence of contemporary writers; nor can it
+seem improbable that the first artists, in their rude and ambitious
+efforts, should have transgressed the standard of moderation.... The
+great cannon, flanked by two fellows of almost equal size, was set up.
+Fourteen batteries thundered at once against the walls, one of which
+contained 130 guns! Under a master who counted the minutes, firing
+could take place seven times in a day.”
+
+Interesting corroboration of Gibbon’s account has since been
+discovered in a MS. by a contemporary Greek writer, found at
+Constantinople in the year 1870.[45] According to this chronicler the
+cannon are actually cast on the field of action. Mahomet summons the
+gunmakers and discourses with them on the kind of ordnance required
+to beat down the walls of the city. They reply that larger cannon are
+necessary than any they possess; and they suggest melting down the
+pieces available to form others of sufficient size and power. The
+Sultan commands the thing to be done. Quantities of plastic clay are
+kneaded, linen and hemp and threads being mixed with it to stiffen it
+for forming gigantic moulds. Furnaces are erected, and charged with
+copper and tin. Bellows are worked for three days and three nights, and
+then, the metal being ready, the molten mass is poured. Within sight
+of the beleaguered city huge cannon are cast which, placed on wooden
+sleepers on the ground with their butts supported to prevent recoil
+discharge stones weighing nearly 700 pounds against the walls.
+
+But there is no need of documentary evidence to attest the power of
+the Ottoman artillery of this period; cannon built on the above model
+have guarded the Dardanelles for centuries, and, what is more, have
+proved sufficiently effective in modern engagements. In 1807 Sir John
+Duckworth’s squadron was struck repeatedly by stones of enormous
+weight, discharged from these cannon in an attempt to prevent its
+passage. And it is known that some of them were made shortly after
+the taking of Constantinople. These cannon, says General Lefroy, were
+cast on their faces, “the dead-head being left at the breech-end and
+hewn off with axes, probably while the metal was hot.” In one of them
+brought home to England “the axe marks are plain; similar marks may be
+observed on other early guns which have the breech cut off square.” The
+similarity of design between this Turkish gun and the Flemish bombards
+is too close to be accidental; their construction is of peculiar
+interest and has the main features in common. “The external form of the
+gun is a cylinder, the muzzle being as large as the breech; but either
+half is relieved by a boldly projecting moulding at each end, which
+is divided transversely by sixteen cross-bars into as many recesses:
+thus serving to give a purchase to the levers used in screwing the two
+parts together.” How the screw threads were cut is not known, but “we
+can suppose that moulding pieces were first cut in wood and nicely
+fitted and then applied to the clay moulds.” The charge of powder used
+with this type of piece was as much as a hundredweight. In spite of the
+weakness of the squib-like powder its physical and moral effect was
+undoubtedly important. “Thus inconceivable and incredible,” writes the
+chronicler of 1467, “is the nature of this machine. The ancient princes
+and generals did not possess and had no knowledge of such a thing....
+It is a new invention of the Germans or of the Kelts made about one
+hundred and fifty years ago, or a little more. It is an ingenious and
+happy discovery, especially the powder, which is a composition made
+of saltpetre, of sulphur, of charcoals, and of herbs, from the which
+composition is generated a dry hot gas....”
+
+[Illustration: TURKISH BRONZE CANNON
+
+From Lloyd and Hadcock’s _Artillery_]
+
+The founding of these enormous cannon on the field of action is in
+itself a tribute to the energy and resourcefulness of the nation who
+have been described as being, at that time, the finest engineers in the
+world. Of the effectiveness of the Ottoman artillery there is evidence
+in the results achieved. Constantinople fell to the giant bombards. And
+in the early part of the following century Rhodes, the last outpost
+of the Knights, fell to the same great power. The invention of the
+Christians[46] was, in fact, the weapon which gave supremacy to the
+Infidel in the eastern part of Europe.
+
+In the meantime the evolution of artillery was taking a new direction.
+The large and relatively feeble ordnance of the Turks was, in the
+circumstances, not entirely unsuitable for the purpose for which it
+was intended: the smashing of masonry and the breaching of gates and
+walls. The maximum of effect was obtained from a missile of enormous
+mass projected with a low velocity. Nevertheless its disadvantages were
+obvious. Large cannon cast in bronze were necessarily of great expense
+and weight, their discharges were few and far between, they wore
+rapidly and were thus short-lived, and they possessed the dangerous
+property of becoming brittle when heated. An increase in power and a
+reduction in weight were required for the achievement of a portable
+artillery, and the progress of mechanical science pointed to wrought
+iron as the material of which such an artillery might be made.
+
+The extraction of iron in small quantities from ferruginous ore was
+a comparatively simple operation, even in primitive times. With the
+aid of bellows and a plentiful supply of wood charcoal the smith was
+able to make his furnace yield small masses of metallic iron of the
+purest quality. This iron, wrought on an anvil, could be drawn out
+into plate or bar as desired, the resulting metal being, by reason of
+the purity of the charcoal used in its extraction, of great toughness,
+homogeneity, and strength. In Spain and Italy were mines which had
+long been famed for their iron. In England the Roman had made good use
+of the metal found in the Sussex mines, and all through the middle
+ages the wealds of Kent and Sussex were the centres of the English
+iron trade. In the fourteenth century improved methods came into use;
+the adoption of water-power for driving the bellows, for crushing the
+charcoal, and for operating the tilt-hammers, had its effect on the
+development of the iron-smelting industry; higher temperatures obtained
+and larger masses of ore could now be treated; the iron, produced in
+larger quantities by improved methods, was perhaps purer and stronger
+than before.
+
+In wrought iron, then, a material was available which almost alone
+was suitable for the manufacture of the more portable sorts of gun.
+By its use guns could be made strong enough, without being of an
+excessive weight, to withstand the increasing stresses thrown on them,
+first, by the use of iron bullets instead of stone, and secondly, by
+the discovery of an improved gunpowder. Artillery underwent a dual
+development. On the one hand, for use with the weak cannon powder,
+was the large stone-throwing ordnance, made of cast bronze or of
+hooped bars of iron; on the other, for use with iron shot and a
+stronger propellant, were various denominations of small portable and
+semi-portable wrought-iron guns. These two distinct types developed
+side by side until the middle of the sixteenth century.
+
+The use of iron and lead balls, the superiority of which over balls of
+stone had doubtless been manifested in former centuries in connection
+with the projection of Greek fire, was practised by the Florentines
+soon after the invention of guns themselves. The discovery of “corned”
+gunpowder took place a century later.
+
+In its original form gunpowder possessed many disadvantages as a
+propellant. Ground into a fine powder, and composed in the first
+instance of almost equal proportions of saltpetre, sulphur, and
+charcoal, it was peculiarly liable to accidental explosion, so that
+frequently the charcoal was kept separate from the other ingredients
+and mixed just prior to use. If kept mixed it easily disintegrated,
+in the shaking of transport, into three strata, the charcoal coming
+to the top and the sulphur sinking to the bottom. It was intensely
+hygroscopic, and quickly fouled the barrels of the pieces in which it
+was used. But, most important of all, the efficiency of its combustion
+depended to an inconvenient degree upon the density with which, after
+being ladled into the gun, it was rammed home. The greatest care had
+to be exercised in ramming. If pressed into too dense a mass the
+powder largely lost its explosive character; the flame which ignited
+the portion nearest the vent could not spread through the mass with
+sufficient speed; it quietly petered out. If rammed too loosely, on the
+other hand, the explosive effect was also lost. A great gain ensued
+therefore when, in place of the fine or “serpentine” powder, corned
+powder came to be used, about the middle of the fifteenth century. In
+this form the powder was damped and worked into grains, crushed to the
+requisite size and sieved for uniformity. These grains were finally
+glazed to prevent deterioration from the effects of damp; and the
+resulting powder proved stronger and more efficient in every way than
+the same mixture in its more primitive form.
+
+Some time was to elapse before guns could be cast of sufficient
+strength to withstand the force of corned powder. “Chemistry had outrun
+metallurgy.” The larger species of ordnance were restricted to the
+use of serpentine powder until the middle of the sixteenth century.
+Nevertheless, cast ordnance as well as the lighter forged iron guns
+were developed continuously for service in the field. Named after
+birds and reptiles and clumsily cast of such shapes and weights as
+pleased the founders’ fancy, they were of use chiefly in demolishing
+by attrition the gates and walls of forts and cities. From the battle
+of Cressy onward, first in huge carts and then on their own wheeled
+carriages, they rumble across the pages of European history.
+
+
+§
+
+At sea the evolution of ordnance had to conform, of course, to the
+progress of naval architecture and the changing nature of the warfare.
+In the Mediterranean, where the oar-propelled galley remained for
+centuries the typical fighting ship, the bombard was planted in the
+bows, shackled to a deck-carriage upon the centre line, to give ahead
+fire and to supplement the effects of a powerful ram. As the galley
+developed, the main central gun became flanked by other bow-chasers;
+while on the beams and poop light wrought-iron breech-loading swivel
+guns formed a secondary armament whose double function was to repel
+boarders and to overawe its own slave-crew. In the Atlantic, where
+the typical fighting vessel was the lofty sailing ship, the same
+two different types of armament had vogue. But in this case their
+distribution was different; the sailing ship, with no recourse to oars
+for manœuvring, could not always ensure an end-on attack or defence,
+and had to arm herself against an enemy from any quarter. Her freedom
+from oars, her height, and the invention of the porthole, enabled
+the early “great ship” to mount a sufficiently distributed all-round
+armament. While her sides were pierced for ponderous bombards, her
+poop and forecastle bristled with the same light secondary armament
+as figured in the Mediterranean galley. This artillery was almost
+entirely for defence. Before Elizabethan days (as we have already
+noted) sea battles were nothing more than hand-to-hand fights; the
+attacking vessel was laid alongside its enemy, sails were furled, and
+boarding took place. If, after being swept by spherical shot from
+the bombards and showers of stones and dice from the mortars and
+periers, the boarders could carry the waist of the defending ship,
+they still had to capture the barricaded forecastle and poop, from
+whose rails a multitude of the smaller ordnance--port-pieces, fowlers,
+serpentines--were trained upon them and behind whose bulkheads crossbow
+and harquebuss were plied against them in concealment.
+
+The sixteenth century witnessed the greatest strides in the evolution
+of sea ordnance. In the Mediterranean the decisive effect of gunfire,
+proved in the sea fight off Prevesa in the year 1538, was confirmed
+by the victory of the Christians over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571.
+In the Atlantic England began her long preparation for securing a sea
+supremacy and, under the masterful eye of King Henry VIII, adapted
+more and more powerful guns for service in the royal ships. Of the
+professional interest which the King took in the development of
+ordnance there is ample evidence. At the royal word French and Flemish
+gunfounders were induced to come to England to teach the technique of
+their craft, and to this puissant prince the Italian savant, Tartaglia,
+dedicated his classic treatise on the Art of Shooting. England now
+learnt to found, not only bronze, but _cast-iron_ cannon. “Although,”
+says Grose, “artillery was used from the time of King Edward III and
+purchased from abroad by all our successive Kings, it seems extremely
+strange, that none of our workmen attempted to cast them, till the
+reign of King Henry VIII, when in 1521, according to Stowe, or 1535
+(Camden says), great brass ordnance, as canons and culverins, were
+first cast in England by one John Owen, they formerly having been
+made in other countries.” And from Stowe’s Chronicle he quotes the
+following: “The King minding wars with France, made great preparations
+and provision, as well of munitions and artillery as also of brass
+ordnance; amongst which at that time one Peter Bawd, a Frenchman born,
+a gun-founder or maker of great ordnance, and one other alien, called
+Peter Van Collen, a gunsmith, both the King’s feedmen, conferred
+together, devised and caused to be made, certain mortar pieces, being
+at the mouth from 11 inches, unto 19 inches wide; for the use whereof,
+the said Peter and Peter caused to be made certain hollow shot of
+cast yron, stuffed with fire-works, or wild-fire; whereof the bigger
+sort for the same had screws of yron to receive a match to carry fire
+kindled, that the fire-work might be set on fire to break in small
+pieces the same hollow shot, whereof the smallest piece hitting any
+man, would kill or spoil him. And after the King’s return from Bullen,
+the said Peter Bawd by himself in the first year of Edward VI did also
+make certain ordnance of cast yron of diverse sorts and forms, as
+fawconets, falcons, minions, sakers and other pieces.”[47] The casting
+of iron guns in Germany has been traced back as far as the fourteenth
+century.
+
+According to another account the first English cast-iron guns were
+made at Buxted, in Sussex, by one Ralph Hogge in 1543. Peter Bawd,
+the French founder, was an assistant who had come to this country to
+teach him the method. But it seems that his connection with Hogge was
+not of long duration; for, “John Johnson, covenant servant to the said
+P. Bawd, succeeded and exceeded his master in this his art of casting
+ordnance, making them cleaner and to better proportion. And his son,
+Thomas Johnson, a special workman, in and before the year 1595 made
+42 cast pieces of great ordnance of iron, for the Earl of Cumberland,
+weighing 6000 pounds, or three tons a-piece.”[48]
+
+The advance made in the power of King Henry’s sea ordnance is
+unmistakably shown from trustworthy documents. There is a continuous
+progress during the reign, and ships which were rebuilt subsequently
+carried an armament entirely different from that which they
+originally had. The _Sovereign_, for instance, built about the
+year 1488, originally carried one hundred and eighty guns, mostly
+small serpentines. As rebuilt in A.D. 1509 she carried an armament
+which included four curtalls, three demi-curtalls, three culverins,
+two falcons, and eleven heavy iron guns. From an inventory of the
+armament of the _Henry Grace à Dieu_, of 1514, it appears[49] that
+that historic ship was then armed with a miscellaneous collection of
+pieces, comprising 122 iron serpentines, 12 “grete yron gonnes of oone
+makyng and bygnes,” 12 ditto “that come owt of fflaunders,” all with
+separate chambers; 2 “grete Spanish peces of yron of oone sorte,”
+with chambers; 18 “stone gonnes apon Trotill wheles,” with chambers;
+“ffawcons of Brasse apon Trotill wheles”; one “grete bumberde of Brasse
+apon iiij trotill wheles”; two “grete culverynes of Brasse apon unshodd
+wheles”; as well as a “grete curtalle of Brasse upon iiij wheles,” a
+sling, vice pieces, and serpentines of brass on wheels shod with iron.
+Rebuilt at a later date the _Henry_ carried a different armament,
+which included brass cannons, demi-cannons, culverins, demi-culverins,
+sakers, and cannon-periers.
+
+The transition of armament is plainly marked for us in the case of
+the _Mary Rose_, rebuilt in 1536, which nine years later came to an
+untimely end off Brading. At the time of her oversetting she carried,
+in fact, both types of ordnance. In the Rotunda at Woolwich are to be
+seen some of the guns recovered from her wreck: a built-up wrought-iron
+breech-loading stone-throwing gun on its baulk-of-timber carriage,
+identical in character with a serpentine illustrated in Napoleon III’s
+_Études sur l’Artillerie_ as having been taken by the Swiss from
+Charles the Bold in A.D. 1476; and a bronze cannon royal (with John
+Owen’s name on it), demi-cannon, culverin, and culverin-bastard, all
+of them finished specimens of the founder’s art, and of an offensive,
+instead of a merely defensive, value. “The system,” says Mr. Oppenheim
+of this growth of artillery armament, “was extended as the reign
+progressed, and in 1546 we find comparatively small ships like the
+_Grand Mistress_ carrying two demi-cannon and five culverins, the
+_Swallow_ one demi-cannon and two demi-culverins, out of a total of
+eight heavy guns; the _Anne Galant_ four culverins, one curtall, and
+two demi-culverins,” etc. etc.
+
+What were the dimensions of the various pieces? It is difficult to
+give an exact answer. Owing to the continuous development of ordnance
+throughout the century the pieces increased in size while they retained
+their class-names, and there is a wide variation between the table of
+ordnance of Tartaglia, for instance, compiled in 1537, and those drawn
+up by English authors at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
+Briefly, we may note that pieces could be grouped in four classes:
+viz. cannons, culverins, periers, and mortars. The cannons were large
+in calibre and of medium length; the culverins were of great length,
+to give them high ranging power; the periers, or stone-throwers,
+were a sort of howitzer; and the mortars, named probably from the
+apothecary’s utensil to which they bore a resemblance, were squat
+pieces used for projecting stones or iron balls at a high elevation.
+The old stone-throwing serpentine was a gun weighing about 260 pounds,
+which fired a stone “as big as a swan’s egg.” The curtall, or curtlow
+was (according to Mr. Oppenheim) a heavy gun of some 3000 pounds,
+hitherto only used as a siege-piece on land; “courtaulx” are mentioned
+by Napoleon III as having been, in A.D. 1498, fifty-pounders weighing
+5500 livres. The slings were large breech-loaders, probably of the
+perier class.
+
+With the adoption of a more powerful armament not only did the old
+pieces disappear, but a simplification of calibres ensued. France led
+the way in the standardizing of calibres; about the year 1550 the
+French king Henri II introduced his six “calibres of France.” In the
+English navy at this period several types were discarded, and a limit
+was set to the size of the largest ship gun. “The report drawn up
+in 1559 tells us that there were 264 brass and 48 iron guns, all of
+calibres down to falconets, on board the ships, and 48 brass and 8 iron
+in store.... The heaviest piece used on shipboard was the culverin of
+4500 lbs.; throwing a 17⅓ lb. ball with an extreme range of 2500 paces;
+the next the demi-cannon weighing 4000 lbs. with a 30⅓ lb. ball and
+range of 1700 paces; then the demi-culverin of 3400 lbs., a 9⅓ lb. ball
+and 2500 paces; and the cannon petroe, or perier, of 3000 lbs., 24¼-lb.
+ball and 1600 paces. There were also sakers, minions, and falconets,
+but culverins and demi-culverins were the most useful and became the
+favourite ship guns. A contemporary wrote, ‘the founders never cast
+them so exactly but that they differ two or three cwt. in a piece,’ and
+in a paper of 1564 the average weights of culverins, demi-culverins,
+and cannon periers are respectively 3300 lbs., 2500 lbs., and 2000
+lbs.”[50]
+
+So far, cast iron had not come into general use. The large iron guns
+were built up like the early Flemish bombards; the demi-cannons and
+culverins were all of brass. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign
+there seems to have been an attempt to replace the expensive brass by
+the cheaper cast iron, but later there was a reversion to brass, and
+it was not until the following century that cast iron was generally
+recognized as a material for heavy ordnance, and then only for the
+heaviest types. Some technical considerations may help to indicate the
+chief factors which determined the material and the dimensions of the
+Elizabethan ordnance.
+
+Writing in 1628, Robert Norton, in his book _The Gunner_, refers as
+follows to the early Tudor ordnance. “Gun-founders about 100 or 150
+years past,” he says, “did use to cast ordnance more poor, weak, and
+much slenderer fortified than now, both here and in foreign parts:
+also the rather because saltpetre being either ill or not refined,
+their sulphur unclarified, their coals not of good wood, or else ill
+burnt, making therewith also their powder evilly receipted, slenderly
+wrought, and altogether uncorned, made it prove to be but weak (in
+respect of the corned powder used now-a-days), wherefore they also
+made their ordnance then accordingly (that is much weaker than now).
+For the powder now being double or treble more than it was in force of
+rarification and quickness, requireth likewise to encrease the metal
+twice or thrice more than before for each piece.” And, in fact, the
+weight of cannon increased in the period mentioned from eighty to two
+hundred times, the weight of culverins from a hundred to three hundred
+times, the weight of their shot. The slender large-bore built-up guns
+of the _Henry Grace à Dieu_ could only be used with a weak slow-burning
+powder. At the same time this slow-burning powder required, for its
+complete combustion, a great length of gun. These guns, such of them as
+were breech-loaders, must have suffered from the leakage of gas at the
+joints of their primitive chambers; in the case of the smaller pieces a
+serious inefficiency was the excessive windage allowed between shot and
+gun. Until the end of the sixteenth century the windage bore no direct
+relation to the diameter of the shot or bore of the gun: it was a fixed
+amount, one quarter of an inch. The effect, therefore, of the leakage
+of powder gases past the shot, the loss in efficiency of discharge, was
+greatest in the smallest guns.
+
+The lines along which improvement lay were those which were taken.
+First, an elimination of the smallest guns. Second, a return to muzzle
+loading. Third, a strengthening of the powder by corning. Fourth, a
+further fortifying and a general augmenting of the weight of the cast
+pieces, which had the double effect of giving the necessary strength
+to meet the stronger powders coming into use,[51] and of giving the
+extra mass required to minimize the violence of their recoil. Cast
+iron could not yet compete with well-found brass for the guns required.
+Demi-cannon proved too unwieldy, and as Elizabeth’s reign progressed,
+gave place more and more to the long-ranging culverins, demi-culverins,
+and sakers, “which strained a ship less, were served more quickly
+and by fewer men, and permitted a heavier broadside in the same deck
+space.”[52] As powder grew stronger the conditions improved; smaller
+charges were necessary, windage had less effect, and, owing to the
+quicker combustion, it was possible to shorten the pieces without
+detracting seriously from their ranging power; and this was done in
+the Queen’s Navy, the guns being thereby made lighter and more easily
+manipulated, while at the same time their projecting muzzles were less
+liable to entangle and interfere with the tackles of the sails.[53]
+
+The substitution of the powerful, safe, and easily manipulated
+demi-cannon and the long-ranging culverin and demi-culverin in place
+of the old chambered ordnance of the first half of the century made
+possible a new form of naval warfare. The cannon at last became,
+in the hands of the Elizabethan seaman, the chief instrument of
+battle. Off-fighting was now feasible: a mode of action which largely
+neutralized the effects of an enemy’s superiority in size of ship or
+number of men, and which gave full scope and advantage to superior
+seamanship. Though no high standard of gunnery efficiency was then
+possible, yet it was the great superiority of the English gunfire,
+principally from the demi-culverins, the sakers, and the minions,
+over that of Spain, which conduced more than any other factor to the
+dispersal and subsequent flight of the Invincible Armada. The gun was
+the weapon on which the English seaman had learnt to rely. It was the
+gun, plied with rapidity just out of pistol-shot of his lofty ships,
+which in the year 1588 harassed and put to confusion the Spaniard, the
+haughty fighter who still maintained a quixotic contempt for the use of
+cannon and esteemed artillery “an ignoble arm.”[54] What a volume of
+fire was poured against him may be seen from a letter written by the
+admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham: “All the world,” he writes, “never
+saw such a force as theirs was; and some Spaniards that we have taken,
+that were in the fight at Lepanto, do say that the worst of our four
+fights that we have had with them did exceed far the fight they had
+there; and they say that at some of our fights we had twenty times as
+much great shot plied as they had there.”
+
+By this time the founding of guns in cast iron had made progress. Cast
+iron was cheap, and of a greater hardness and endurance than bronze,
+but more like to crack and fly and endanger the crew, and requiring an
+enormous expenditure of wood-charcoal for its production. The use of
+mineral coal for iron smelting was not discovered until the following
+century, and even then, because of the opposition of the vested
+interests, it was long before it displaced the use of timber. In the
+Tudor times the iron and brass foundries were nearly all in the wooded
+south of England. The rivers of Sussex and Kent had for centuries
+been dammed to form hammer-ponds, and the sound of the tilt-hammers
+was heard throughout these counties. To such an extent were the
+forests depleted of wood to form fuel for the Wealden foundries, that
+serious inroads were made on the available supplies of shipbuilding
+timber; legislation was required in Elizabeth’s reign to prevent the
+charcoal-burner from robbing the shipwright of his raw material.
+
+Gun-founding, even in bronze, was still a somewhat primitive art.
+But, once taught, the English founders soon excelled their teachers;
+and Norton’s eulogy, and the records of foreign efforts to obtain
+possession of English pieces, bear witness to the superiority of our
+workmen. The products of the most famous founders of that time in
+Europe were very imperfect. “Some of their pieces (and not a few)
+are bored awry, their soul not lying in the midst of the body of
+metal; some are crooked in their chase, others of unequal bores, some
+too light towards the breech turn their mouths downwards in their
+discharge, and so endanger their own vawmures and defences; others
+are too heavy also in their breach, by placing the trunnions too much
+afterwards, that coynes can hardly be drawn.... Some are come forth
+of the furnace spongey, or full of honeycombs and flaws, by reason
+that the metal runneth not fine, or that the moulds are not thoroughly
+dryed, or well nealed.... Yet thus much I dare say to the due
+commendations of our English gunfounders, that the ordnance which they
+of late years have cast, as well for neatness, as also for reasonable
+bestowing and disposing of the metal, they have far excelled all the
+former and foreign aforementioned founders.” Norton, a land gunner, was
+here referring to brass ordnance, alone used on shore.
+
+Perhaps the most interesting witness to the success of the English
+gunfounders is Sir Walter Raleigh, who in his _Discourses_ rebuked the
+detestable covetousness of those licensed to sell ordnance abroad. So
+great was the number of pieces exported, that all other nations were
+equipped with good English artillery for ships and forts and coast
+defence. “Without which,” he remarks, “the Spanish King durst not have
+dismounted so many pieces of brass in Naples and elsewhere, therewith
+to arm his great fleet in ’88. But it was directly proved in the lower
+house of parliament of Queen Elizabeth, that there were landed in
+Naples above 140 culverins English.... It is lamentable that so many
+have been transported into Spain.”
+
+In 1589 Lord Buckhurst wrote to the justices of Lewes Rape, complaining
+of their neglect in permitting the surreptitious export of ordnance.
+“Their lordships do see the little regard the owners of furnaces and
+the makers of these pieces have of their bonds, and how it importeth
+the state that the enemy of her Majesty should not be furnished out of
+the land with ordnance to annoy us.”
+
+It is not improbable, in short, that some of the Armada’s cannon had
+been moulded and poured on English soil.
+
+The imperfection of the sixteenth-century foundry products may
+be gauged from Bourne’s evidence that the use of cartridges was
+inconvenient because, on account of honeycombs and flaws, “you shall
+scant get the cartridge home unto the bottom of the piece.” On the
+other hand loading by ladle was still considered dangerous. In his
+_Art of Gunnery_, of 1627, Thos. Smith, soldier, of Berwick-on-Tweed,
+warns the gunner always to stand to one side of the mouth of the piece
+when thrusting home the ladle; otherwise, the charge being ignited by
+smouldering débris in the cavities of the metal, it takes fire and
+kills the loader--“as happened in Anno 1573 at the siege of Edinborough
+Castle, to two experienced gunners.”[55] At about the same date
+as Smith’s book was written, Sir H. Manwayring, in _The Sea-Man’s
+Dictionary_, described the “arming” of cross-bar shot: i.e. the binding
+them with oakum, yarn, or cloth, to prevent their ends from catching
+hold in any flaws during their passage through the gun, which might
+break it.
+
+
+§
+
+Under the Stuart kings a continuous development of ship armament took
+place.
+
+This development was not always in the right direction. The Commission
+of Reform of the year 1618 recorded, as we have already seen, the
+importance of artillery in naval warfare, but owing to the absence
+of all system it was long before the principle found effective
+application. Owing to divided authority, or to a lack of unity in the
+conception of the fighting ship, a tendency to excess in the number and
+weight of guns continued to be noticeable, an excess which was to react
+unfavourably on the performances of our ships both in the seventeenth
+and eighteenth centuries.
+
+Progress was made in the classification of pieces and in the reduction
+of the number of different types carried; a change was also made in
+the forms of the guns, in order to enhance the fighting value of the
+gun armament in certain circumstances. The great guns were made still
+shorter than before; the quicker-burning powders now in use allowed
+this to be done. By which expedient the ratio between gun-weight
+and weight-of-metal-thrown was reduced; more guns could be carried
+for a given weight of metal; they could be more easily manipulated;
+and if they were of small ranging power they yet possessed a power
+of penetration sufficient for close-quarter fighting. Moreover, the
+reduction in length enabled an increase in calibre to be made; and this
+was one of the factors which led to the reintroduction of larger types
+than had formerly been considered suitable: the cannon-serpentine, the
+cannon, and even the cannon-royal, with its sixty-six pound shot and
+its eight thousand pounds of metal.[56]
+
+In the Dutch Wars the preponderance in the size and weight of the
+unit shot lay with the English ships, and was in itself undoubtedly
+a great advantage in their favour; though complaints were made of
+the great weight and clumsiness of the pieces, “which caused much of
+the straining and rolling at sea.” Writing of naval ordnance in the
+year 1690, Sir Cloudesley Shovell recorded that, “our lower-deck guns
+are too big and the tackles ill fitted with blocks, which makes them
+work heavy; the Dutch who have light guns have lignum vitæ sheaves.
+The Dutch guns are seldom larger than twenty-four pounders.” By this
+time, it will be noted, the more scientific nomenclature had come into
+vogue; the cannon-petro was now known as the 24-pounder, and the heavy
+lower-deck guns referred to were the old bastard-cannons, known since
+the reorganization of the Commonwealth navy as 42-pounders.
+
+The founding of guns continued to be, throughout the seventeenth
+century, an affair of private enterprise. Proof was carried out under
+the supervision of the Board of Ordnance.
+
+In 1619 a decree was issued that gun-founding was to be confined
+to Kent and Sussex, that guns were to be landed at or shipped from
+the Tower Wharf only, and that East Smithfield was to be the one
+market-place for their sale or purchase. Guns could be proved only
+in Ratcliff fields, and all pieces were to have on them at least two
+letters of the founder’s name, with the year and the weight of the gun.
+Exportation was illegal; nevertheless the illicit traffic went on just
+as in Elizabeth’s time. The royal forts themselves were turned into
+marts for these and other unlawful transactions, and Upnor Castle is
+described as having been “a staple of stolen goods, a den of thieves, a
+vent for the transport of ordnance.”[57]
+
+In later years proof took place at other government grounds, all
+within the London area. In Moorfields, according to Stowe, was the
+Artillery Yard, “whereunto the gunners of the Tower do weekly repair;
+and there, levelling certain brass pieces of great artillery against
+a butt of earth made for that purpose, they discharge them for their
+exercise.”[58] Spitalfields also had its artillery butts. “Where
+Liverpool-street Station now stands the Tower gunners of Elizabeth’s
+day had their yard, and there discharged great pieces of artillery for
+exercise, while throughout the seventeenth century guns were both cast
+and tested in the vicinity, as Gun-street, Fort-street, and Artillery
+Lane hard by serve to remind us. Finsbury Field, levelled for an
+archery ground in 1498, passed from the London archers to the London
+gunners, and, as the Honourable Artillery Company’s Ground, survives to
+carry on the long traditions of the spot.”[59]
+
+Under the Commonwealth progress was made in the quality of gunpowder,
+and improved methods were introduced of testing it for strength
+and uniformity. This advance had its effect on the guns. Failures
+were frequent, and, in spite of improved founding, pieces had to be
+made heavier than before; cast iron in particular was found unequal
+to withstanding the stresses caused by the improved powders, and
+this metal came into such disfavour that a whole century elapsed
+before it was again accepted as suitable by both naval and military
+artillerists. Founding in bronze had undergone improvement. Malthus, an
+Englishman who had risen in the French service to be Director of their
+Artillery,[60] mentions in his _Pratique de la Guerre_, as evidence of
+this improvement, the fact that in breaking up old pieces lumps of free
+tin and copper were frequently discovered, whereas in the case of new
+guns the metal was invariably found well-mixed.
+
+Somewhere between the years 1665 and 1680--presumably later than
+1667--the proof of ordnance was transferred from Moorfields to the
+naval depôt at Woolwich, and the nerves of the metropolis were no
+longer shaken by the roar of pieces loaded with powder charges equal,
+for proof, to one-and-a-half times the weight of the shots themselves.
+A proof-master and “his Majesty’s founder of brass and iron ordnance”
+were instituted to supervise and advise the various contractors. The
+State did not at first take over the work of casting its own guns. But
+in 1716 an event occurred which brought about the formation of the
+Royal Gun Factory, and the manufacture of both land and sea ordnance
+by the state. A disastrous accident occurred in the City of London. It
+happened that, after the peace of Utrecht in 1713, the guns captured by
+Marlborough from the French had been exhibited outside the Moorfields
+foundry. Three years later they were still there, and, the national
+ordnance being much depleted by the late wars, it was resolved to
+recast these pieces and so utilise their metal. On the appointed date a
+large concourse of the public attended to witness the operation. Late
+at night the metal was poured. A big explosion ensued, owing to the use
+of damp moulds, and a number of people were killed and injured.
+
+To avoid a recurrence of such an accident it was decided that the
+government should possess a brass foundry of their own. The services of
+an able foreigner, Andrew Schalk of Douai, were sought, and the Royal
+Foundry at Woolwich was established with Schalk as master founder. The
+change was a complete success, and Schalk held the position for the
+next sixty years. Some of his guns, cast in the year 1742, were raised
+from the “Royal George” in 1840.[61]
+
+By the middle of the eighteenth century the processes of gunnery had
+been placed for the first time on a scientific foundation; by whom, and
+in what manner, we shall describe in a later chapter.
+
+The design of guns had by this time become subject to more scientific
+consideration than had hitherto been bestowed, and their manufacture
+had been improved by the Swiss invention of the boring machine, which
+enabled them to be cast solid instead of being cast hollow on a core.
+Iron guns came more and more into favour as the century progressed,
+especially for naval use. The cost of iron was only one-eighth that of
+brass. The art of casting iron in homogeneous masses had by this time
+made progress, and though hitherto it had been the custom to make iron
+ordnance of great thickness and weight, repeated trial proved that they
+could be made lighter, if required, without undue loss of strength, and
+that in action they outlasted brass ordnance, which cracked, bent at
+the muzzle, and wore out at the vent. A well-made iron gun was almost
+indestructible. At the siege of Belleisle, in the Seven Years’ War, the
+brass guns soon wore out, and had to be replaced by iron ship guns;
+and it was long, indeed, before a suitable brass was discovered, which
+would withstand the repeated fire of large charges without losing its
+tin-element and degenerating into a spongy and craterous material.
+Muller, in his _Treatise of Artillery_, of 1768, described how he had
+seen cast iron at the Carron works so tough that “it would flatten
+and tear like brass”; and advocated iron guns of a new and light
+construction to replace Schalk’s brass guns forming the armament of the
+_Royal George_, and give a saving in weight of over a hundred and sixty
+tons.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH TWENTY-FOUR-POUNDER WITH SPHERICAL CHAMBER
+
+From St. Remy’s _Mémoires_]
+
+In respect of design, the newly acquired knowledge of the true
+principles governing internal ballistics began gradually, in the
+latter part of the century, to show its effect. Hitherto, ever since
+gunpowder had been in military use, pieces had been cast in masses
+of varying size and shape and ornamented to please the fancy of the
+founder. Cannon had been made with double or triple reinforces of
+metal, so that their exterior surface was stepped longitudinally from
+muzzle to breech. Experience probably pointed out on many occasions
+the bad design of a piece whose sections showed sudden alterations in
+shape; but it was not till after the middle of the eighteenth century
+that this consideration was discussed by a professional. “Since powder
+acts uniformly and not by starts it is hard to judge from whence this
+ridiculous custom has arisen.... There should be no breakings in the
+metal.” The piece, continues Muller, should be of cylindrical bore, and
+its outer contour should be a curve slightly concave, corresponding
+presumably to the curve of the powder pressure. But as this curve would
+be difficult to find, he recommends a sloping straight line from breech
+to muzzle as sufficiently exact for practical purposes.
+
+Innumerable experiments were made in the first half of this century
+with a view to improving the efficiency of combustion in guns, and
+much argument centred round such subjects as the shape of the chamber
+and the position of the vent. In France pieces were adopted having
+spherical chambers: it being proved that, with the charge concentrated
+in a spherical cavity, as much power could be obtained as from a larger
+and heavier flush-chambered gun. But such pieces were dangerous. Not
+only was their recoil so violent as to break their carriages, but
+many good gunners lost their arms while charging chambers in which
+smouldering debris lay hidden. The spherical chamber was abandoned.[62]
+
+It may be said that the design and manufacture of guns has now entered
+the scientific stage. Art there still is, but it lies below the
+surface. The old “vain ornaments” preserved by tradition are thrown
+away: the scrolls, mouldings, and excrescences which broke the surface
+of the metal; the ogees, fillets, and astragals which ran riot over the
+products of some foundries; the muzzle swells which by their weight
+caused the chase to droop; the grotesque cascabels. All mouldings, said
+Muller, should be as plain and simple as possible; the trunnions should
+be on the axis of the piece; the windage of all types of guns should be
+smaller, and there should be more moderation in the charges used.
+
+In time all these improvements came. The smooth-bore gun, strengthened
+and simplified, preserved its establishment in the navy far into the
+nineteenth century, as will later appear. For the present we must
+confine ourselves to noting that, in the final stages of its evolution
+it received improvement in form from two distinguished artillerists
+whose influence was progressive in the whole realm of gunnery: Generals
+Congreve[63] and Blomefield.[64] There is yet another eminent officer
+of this period to whom the navy owes a debt incalculable: Who can
+assess the value of the work done by General Sir Howard Douglas in his
+classic treatise on Naval Gunnery?
+
+To the foregoing survey of the evolution of heavy ordnance we now
+append a few notes on the evolution of the material of purely land
+artillery: from which it will be seen that, while the intensive
+competition of great armies resulted in much of this latter evolution
+originating among the continental powers, the share of this country in
+initiating improvement was, in the latter years, by no means negligible.
+
+
+§
+
+It will be noted by the student of European history as significant,
+that superiority of artillery material has almost invariably marched
+with national power. Thus in the past the evolution of artillery has
+been the monopoly of no one nation; it has been progressed by each in
+turn; each in turn has attained superiority, and each has contributed
+something of importance to it, in the day of its greatness.
+
+Two ancient and preventable practices seem to have operated in chief
+measure to retard the progressive development of a mobile land
+artillery: first, the custom of setting the trunnions of a gun at
+an appreciable distance below the horizontal plane of the gun-axis;
+second, the custom of making small pieces relatively longer than those
+of larger calibre.
+
+[Illustration: From Binning’s _A Light to the Art of Gunnery_, A.D.
+1689]
+
+The first guns had no trunnions. To obtain the requisite angle of
+elevation the piece was laid in a dug-out trunk or carriage and this
+carriage was set on trestles; in which manner, it appears, the English
+at the siege of Orleans in A.D. 1428 “threw into the town from their
+bombards large numbers of stones which, flying over the walls, smashed
+in the roofs of houses.”[65] During the fifteenth century trunnions
+came into use, and the carriages were mounted on wheels. In his
+_Introduction of Artillery into Switzerland_ a French writer, Colonel
+Massé, has given an account of the early evolution of an artillery
+of position, as used by the Swiss and their enemies in the fifteenth
+century. The huge siege bombards, possessed by most of the great
+cities at the end of the fourteenth century, were too cumbrous for
+transport. Built up of welded and coiled iron, and therefore without
+trunnions, they were replaced, toward A.D. 1443, by lighter pieces
+on wheeled carriages. And before the Burgundian War “coulevrines de
+campagne” were being cast in Switzerland, of bronze, with trunnions
+to give each piece an elevation independently of its carriage. Relics
+are still preserved which show the gun-trunnion in its early stages,
+as embodied in the Burgundian artillery of Charles the Bold. The
+first method of obtaining elevation for the gun was by hinges or
+trunnions on the front of the carriage or trunk, in combination with
+a curved rack erected on the trail for supporting the rear end. Then
+the trunk disappeared; the trunnions were cast on the gun, whose
+cascabel was supported by a cross-pin between the flanks of the trail;
+and then the cross-pin was made removable, and a series of holes was
+provided for its reception, to give the elevation desired. At first
+these trunnions were cast level with the gun axis; in Napoleon III’s
+treatise on artillery is a picture of a trunnion gun taken by the
+Swiss from Charles the Bold in 1476, and another of a cannon of Louis
+XI, cast in 1478, and in both cases the trunnions are level with the
+gun axis. But pieces cast later almost invariably had their trunnions
+set on a level with the bottom of the bore; partly, perhaps, for the
+insignificant reason given by Norton--that “lying somewhat under the
+concave cylinder of the bore they will the better support the great
+weight”--but primarily to ensure a downward pressure on the quoin or
+trail when discharge took place. The effect of this trivial alteration
+was enormous. The impulse of the recoil was given a moment about the
+trunnion axis which, as the force of powders increased, produced an
+increasingly great downward pressure on the trail. Carriages, though
+made of massive scantlings, frequently broke; nor was it till the
+latter half of the eighteenth century that the cause was removed, the
+trunnions being raised nearer the axes of the guns and the carriages
+being thereby relieved of the excessive cross-strains which they had
+borne for nearly three hundred years. Muller, in his Artillery, refers
+to the “absurd method” of placing the trunnions so low and, in the year
+1768, points out the advantages to be gained by raising them. “Writers
+do not appear to have had any idea,” says Favé, “of the effect which
+the position of the trunnions had on the stressing of the carriage.”
+Scharnhorst the Prussian gives as an important advantage to be gained
+by raising the trunnions, the larger wheels which could be employed
+without adding to the height of the gun above the ground.
+
+Progress was also checked by the great length given to the smaller
+varieties of cannon. With the fine powder of the Middle Ages a great
+length of barrel was necessary to ensure complete combustion, and such
+primitive observations as were made all seemed to prove that, the
+longer the barrel the greater the range. But with the introduction of
+corned powder a reduction in length should have been possible. No such
+change was made. Tradition had consecrated long guns, and official
+standardization of types afterwards helped to oppose any innovation in
+this respect until the eighteenth century, with few exceptions.
+
+To Charles V of Spain belongs the credit for the first systematic
+classification of guns. In his hands artillery had, for the first time,
+become an efficient instrument of battle in land campaigns, and all
+Europe saw that, in his batteries of bronze trunnion-guns, on wheeled
+carriages, firing cast-iron balls against foe or crumbling masonry, a
+new power had arisen.[66] The emperor, experiencing the inconvenience
+of a multiplicity of types and calibres, sought to simplify his
+material. Accordingly, in the year 1544 or shortly before, he approved
+seven models to which all pieces in use throughout the vast possessions
+of the Spanish monarchy were thenceforth to conform. These seven types
+comprised a cannon (a 40-pounder), a cannon-moyen (24-pounder), two
+12-pounder culverins, two 6-pounder culverins, and a 3-pounder falcon.
+
+The French soon improved on Charles’ example. The oldest patterns
+of their cannon, according to a table given by St. Remy in his
+_Mémoires_, were of a uniform length of ten feet. In A.D. 1550 Henri II
+issued an edict restricting the number of different calibres to six,
+named as follows:--
+
+    Canon, a 33-pounder, 10½ feet long, weighing 5200 livres, drawn by
+        21 horses.
+
+    Grande coulevrine, a 15-pounder, 11 feet long, weighing 4000
+        livres, drawn by 17 horses.
+
+    Coulevrine bâtarde, a 7-pounder, 9 feet long, weighing 2500 livres,
+        drawn by 11 horses.
+
+    Coulevrine moyenne, a 2-pounder, 8½ feet long, weighing 1200
+        livres, drawn by 4 horses.
+
+    Faucon, a 1-pounder, 7½ feet long, weighing 700 livres, drawn by 3
+        horses.
+
+    Fauconneau, a ¾-pounder, 7 feet long, weighing 410 livres, drawn by
+        2 horses.
+
+These dimensions are only a rough approximation. In the year 1584 two
+other types, found useful by the Spaniards in the Low Countries, were
+included--a 12- and a 24-pounder.
+
+The relatively greater lengths of the small pieces will be noted. As
+it was with the French, so it was with other nations, and the list of
+Italian ordnance given in Tartaglia’s _Art of Shooting_ shows a general
+resemblance to that of Henri II. The desire for a maximum of ranging
+power, and the necessity of making the smaller pieces long enough to
+enter the embrasures of fortifications, and strong enough to fire
+many more rounds than those of the largest size, tended to cause an
+augmentation in their size and weight; difficulties of transport had an
+effect in imposing a limit of weight on the largest guns which in the
+case of the smaller pieces did not operate to the same degree.
+
+Nevertheless, the French possessed, from 1550 onwards, an organized
+artillery suitable for transport on campaigns. The six calibres were
+mounted on wheeled carriages, horse-drawn, from which they could be
+fired; they were moved, muzzles foremost, with their ponderous trails
+dragging on the ground in rear.
+
+At that point French artillery remained, or with little advance beyond
+it, until the middle of the eighteenth century. In the Germanic states,
+on the other hand, important progress was made: by the end of the
+sixteenth century shorter pieces, shell-fire from mortars, and the use
+of elevated fire for varying ranges, had been adopted. But the chief
+centre of artillery progress at the end of the sixteenth century was
+the Low Countries, then in the thick of their warfare with Spain. “In
+their glorious struggle for independence their artillery contrived to
+avail itself of the latest and best theory and practice, to employ
+cannons and carriages of simplicity and uniformity; and it has endowed
+the art of war with two inventions of the first order--the hand-grenade
+and the bomb.”[67]
+
+In the first half of the seventeenth century the genius of Gustavus
+Adolphus gave a new value to land ordnance. He made it mobile. He
+divided his artillery into two categories, Siege and Field, and for the
+latter devised the famous light “leather guns” which, operating in mass
+on certain points, had an important effect on the issue of battles.
+But after his death at Lützen in 1632 the effort to attain mobility
+relaxed; an increase in the strength of powders at this time rendered
+the possibility still more remote; and it was not until the following
+century that the Prussians, under Frederick the Great, evolved a
+satisfactory light artillery. Both in Prussia and in Austria great
+efforts were made, in the middle of the eighteenth century, to evolve
+a mobile and efficient ordnance. The Seven Years’ War found the former
+state experimenting with pieces varying in weight between eighty and a
+hundred and fifty times the weight of their ball; and in 1762 a certain
+French observer, who was destined to become famous as one of the great
+artillery reformers of all time, wrote letters from Vienna describing
+the fine qualities of the Austrian service: with its pieces all sixteen
+calibres in length, all 115 times their balls in weight, all bored to
+their true nominal dimensions, and firing accurately spherical balls
+of correct size, with a small windage and a powder-charge of less than
+one-third the weight of the shot.
+
+In the years immediately following the close of the Seven Years’
+War the lessons learned at Vienna were translated into practice in
+France. By 1765 Gribeauval had begun his reorganization of the French
+material. In order to obtain mobility he made new models of 12, 8, and
+4-pounders, very plain, unchambered pieces, each eighteen calibres
+in length, 150 times its own shot in weight, and firing well-fitting
+balls with unprecedented precision, with powder-charges of one-third
+the weight of the balls. Limbers, in the form of small-trucked bogies,
+had been in occasional use ever since the sixteenth century. Gribeauval
+introduced large-wheeled limbers, and dragged his 12-pounders by six,
+his 8- and 4-pounders by four horses. From the number of horses, as
+compared with that of the edict of Henri II, one can measure the
+progress made in two centuries. The whole of Gribeauval’s material
+was designed to afford rapid transport and rapid and accurate fire;
+interchangeability of wheels and other parts formed a novel and
+important element of the standardization which he accomplished. Iron
+axle-trees, cartridges (used with effect by Gustavus in the preceding
+century), elevating screws, tangent scales, and other improvements were
+adopted under his authority. But, “Gribeauval could not force on France
+the two great inventions of the century--the limber-box and the Horse
+Artillery.”[68]
+
+The horse, or flying, artillery, designed to be attached to, and
+supported by, cavalry, as field or foot artillery was attached to
+infantry, was a Prussian invention. It was adopted by France after the
+outbreak of the Revolution, and almost simultaneously it appeared in
+the British army.[69]
+
+By the end of the century all the great Powers had adopted Gribeauval’s
+system in most of its important parts: notably in the grouping of
+artillery into the three categories--siege, field, and coast defence.
+Progress continued. In the opening years of the next century a
+new competitor among the Powers began to attract attention by its
+proficiency. “In the first campaigns of the Revolution the English
+artillery showed itself less advanced than that of several other
+powers. But so well did it succeed in ameliorating its condition that
+when it reappeared on the Continent to take an active part in the
+Peninsular War it was seen to be itself worthy in its turn to serve as
+a model.”
+
+This is the tribute paid by Colonel Favé.
+
+It is evident from his further remarks that the English artillery
+surprised its adversaries, not only by its superior mobility, but
+by the effectiveness of its innovations, two of which, especially,
+proved to be inventions of the first order--Shrapnel’s projectiles and
+Congreve’s war-rockets. France recognized the high efficiency of its
+opponent artillery, and some years later adopted a material embodying
+some of its most important features. Experiments were made, and
+comparative trials carried out, with modified English and modified
+Gribeauval equipments. The former were preferred, and a new series of
+designs was introduced and approved: this becoming known as “the system
+of 1827.”
+
+Three years later war experience led to investigations in France
+which caused a revolution in artillery material. In a few years’ time
+smooth-bore cannon were being converted to rifles, for use both on land
+and sea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE STEAM ENGINE
+
+
+The greatest of the world’s inventions appear to have had a very casual
+birth. So much an affair of chance has been their first manifestation,
+that science has not been called in aid; no law can be discerned which
+might govern the time and sequence of their coming; they seem to have
+been stumbled on, unpedigreed offspring of accident and time. A monk of
+Metz discovers gunpowder. “Surely,” says Fuller, “ingenuity may seem
+transposed, and to have crossed her hands, when about the same time
+a soldier found out printing.” “It should seem,” writes Lord Bacon,
+“that hitherto men are rather beholden to a wild goat for surgery, or
+to a nightingale for music, or to the ibis for some part of physic, or
+to the pot-lid that flew open for artillery, or generally to chance,
+or anything else, than to logic for the invention of the Arts and
+Sciences.” So it seemed. And in due time the legend of the pot-lid
+was woven round the unfortunate Marquis of Worcester, who, tradition
+had it, made the discovery of the steam engine by observation of the
+stew-pot in which, when confined a prisoner in the Tower, he was
+engaged in cooking his dinner. At a later date and in another form the
+story was connected with James Watt.
+
+In reality, the story of the discovery of the steam engine is far more
+inspiring. The history of the application of steam to human use is
+almost the history of science itself; the stages of its development are
+clearly marked for us; and the large succession of these stages, and
+the calibre of the minds which contributed to the achievement of the
+perfected steam engine, are some measure of the essential complexity
+of what is to-day regarded as a comparatively simple machine. For the
+steam engine was not the gift of any particular genius or generation;
+it did not leap from any one man’s brain. Some of the greatest names
+in the history of human knowledge can claim a share in its discovery.
+From philosopher to scientist, from scientist to engineer the grand
+idea was carried on, gradually taking more and more concrete form,
+until finally, in an age when by the diffusion of knowledge the labours
+of all three were for the first time co-ordinated, it was brought
+to maturity. A new force of nature was harnessed which wrought a
+revolution in the civilized world.
+
+An attempt is made in this chapter to chronicle the circumstances under
+which the successive developments of the steam engine took place. The
+progress of the scientific ideas which led up to the discovery of the
+power of steam is traced. The claims of the various inventors chiefly
+associated with the steam engine are set forth in some detail, not for
+the difficult and invidious task of assessing their relative merits,
+but because by the light of these claims and altercations it may be
+possible to discern, in each case, where the merit lay and to what
+stage each novelty of idea or detail properly belonged. From this point
+of view, it is thought, the recital of circumstances which hitherto
+have been thought so trivial as to be scarcely worthy of record, may be
+of some suggestive value. The result of the investigation is to make
+clear the scientific importance of the steam engine: the steam engine
+regarded, not as the familiar drudge and commonplace servant of to-day,
+but in all its dignity of a thermodynamic machine, that scientific
+device which embodied so much of the natural philosophy of the age
+which first unveiled it--the seventeenth century.
+
+
+§
+
+Before the Christian era steam had been used to do mechanical work.
+In a treatise, _Pneumatica_, written by Hero of Alexandria about 130
+B.C., mention is made of a primitive reaction turbine, which functioned
+by the reactionary force of steam jets thrown off tangentially from
+the periphery of a wheel. In the same work another form of heat-engine
+is described: an apparatus in which, by the expansion from heating of
+air contained in a spherical vessel, water was expelled from the same
+vessel to a bucket, where by its weight it gave motion mysteriously
+to the doors of temples. And evidence exists that in these two forms
+heat engines were used in later centuries for such trivial purposes as
+the blowing of organs and the turning of spits. But except in these
+two primitive forms no progress is recorded for seventeen centuries
+after the date of Hero’s book. The story of the evolution of steam as a
+motive force really begins, with the story of modern science itself, at
+the end of the Middle Ages.
+
+With the great revival of learning which took place in Southern Europe
+in the latter part of the fifteenth century new light came to be thrown
+on the classical philosophies which still ruled men’s minds, and modern
+science was born. New views on natural phenomena began to irradiate,
+and, sweeping aside the myths and traditions which surrounded and
+stifled them, the votaries of the “new science” began to formulate
+opinions of the boldest and most unorthodox description.[70] The true
+laws of the equilibrium of fluids, discovered originally by Archimedes,
+were rediscovered by Stevinus. By the end of the sixteenth century the
+nature of the physical universe was become a pursuit of the wisest men.
+To Galileo himself was due, perhaps, the first distinct conception of
+the power of steam or any other gas to do mechanical work; for “he,
+the Archimedes of his age, first clearly grasped the idea of force as
+a mechanical agent, and extended to the external world the conception
+of the invariability of the relation between cause and effect.”[71]
+To his brilliant pupil Torricelli the questioning world was indebted
+for the experiments which showed the true nature of the atmosphere,
+and for the theory he proclaimed that the atmosphere by its own weight
+exerted its fluid pressure--a theory which Pascal soon confirmed by the
+famous ascent of his barometer up the Puy-de-Dôme, which demonstrated
+that the pressure supporting his column of mercury grew less as the
+ascent proceeded. Giovanni della Porta, in a treatise on pneumatics
+published in the year 1601, had already made two suggestions of the
+first importance. Discussing Hero’s door-opening apparatus, della
+Porta showed that steam might be substituted for air as the expanding
+medium, and that, by condensing steam in a closed vessel, water might
+be sucked up from a lower level by virtue of the vacuum so formed. And
+a few years later, in 1615, Solomon de Caus, a French engineer, had
+come to England with a scheme almost identical with della Porta’s, and
+actually constructed a plant which forced up water to a height by means
+of steam. Shortly afterwards the “new science” received an accession of
+interest from the invention, by Otto von Guericke of Magdeburg, of a
+suction pump by which the atmospheric air could be abstracted from a
+closed vessel.
+
+By the middle of this century the learned of all European countries had
+been attracted by the knowledge gained of the material universe. In
+England the secrets of science were attacked with enthusiasm under the
+new strategy of Lord Bacon, enunciated in his _Novum Organum_. The new
+philosophy was patronised by royalty itself, and studied by a company
+of brilliant men of whom the leading physicist was Robert Boyle, soon
+famous for his law connecting the volumes and the pressures of gases.
+In France, too, a great enthusiasm for science took birth. A group of
+men, of whom the most eminent was Christian Huyghens, banded themselves
+together to further scientific inquiry into the phenomena of nature
+and to demolish the reigning myths and fallacies: they also working
+admittedly by the experimental method of Bacon.
+
+The time was ripe, however, for wider recognition of these scientists
+and the grand object of their labours. Within a short time the two
+groups were both given the charter of their respective countries;
+in France they were enrolled as the Royal Academy of Sciences; in
+England, as the Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge. In
+other countries societies of a similar kind were formed, but their
+influence was not comparable with that exerted by the societies of
+London and Paris. Between these two a correspondence was started which
+afterwards developed into one of the most famous of publications:
+the _Philosophical Transactions_. In England, especially, the Royal
+Society served from its inception as a focus for all the great minds
+of the day, and in time brought together such men as Newton, Wren,
+Hooke, Wallis, Boyle--not to mention his majesty King Charles himself;
+who, with the best intentions, could not always take seriously the
+speculations of the savants. “Gresham College he mightily laughed at,”
+noted Mr. Pepys in his diary for the first of February, 1663, “for
+spending time only in weighing of ayre, and doing nothing else since
+they sat.” A year later Pepys was himself admitted a member of the
+distinguished company, and found it “a most acceptable thing to hear
+their discourse, and see their experiments, which were this day on
+fire, and how it goes out in a place where the air is not free, and
+sooner out in a place where the ayre is exhausted, which they showed by
+an engine on purpose.”
+
+
+§
+
+In the year 1663, just after the formation of the Royal Society, a
+small book was published by the Marquis of Worcester, _A Century of the
+Names and Scantlings of such Inventions as he had tried and perfected_.
+
+Of these inventions one, the sixty-eighth, is thus described:
+
+“An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire, not by
+drawing or sucking it upwards, for that must be as the Philosopher
+calleth it, _Intra sphæram activitatis_, which is but at such a
+distance. But this way hath no bounder, if the vessels be strong
+enough; for I have taken a piece of a whole cannon, whereof the end
+was burst, and filled it three-quarters full of water, stopping and
+screwing up the broken end, as also the touch-hole; and making a
+constant fire under it, within twenty-four hours it burst and made a
+great crack. So that having a way to make my vessels, so that they are
+strengthened by the force within them, and the one to fill after the
+other; I have seen the water run like a constant fountain-stream forty
+foot high; one vessel of water rarified by fire driveth up forty of
+cold water. And a man that tends the work is but to turn two cocks,
+that one vessel of water being consumed, another begins to force and
+refill with cold water, and so successfully, the fire being tended
+and kept constant, which the selfsame person may likewise abundantly
+perform in the interim between the necessity of turning the said cocks.”
+
+On this evidence the claim is made that the marquis was the original
+inventor of the steam engine. Is he at all entitled to the honour? The
+whole affair is still surrounded with mystery. It is known that he was
+an enthusiastic student of physical science, and that for years he had
+working for him a Dutch mechanic, Caspar Kaltoff; it seems certain
+that he actually made a water-pumping engine worked by steam, of whose
+value he was so impressed that he promised to leave the drawings of
+it to Gresham College and intended to have a model of it buried with
+him.[72] But neither model nor drawings has ever yet been traced. And,
+considering the social influence of the inventor and the importance
+of the invention, the silence of his contemporaries on the discovery
+is strange and inexplicable. He received a patent for some form of
+water-pumping engine. Distinguished visitors came to Vauxhall to see
+his engine at work. He numbered among his acquaintances Sir Jonas
+Moore, Sir Samuel Morland, Flamstead and Evelyn: probably Mr. Pepys,
+Sir W. Petty, and others of the group of eminent men of his time who
+were interested in natural science. Yet no trace of his inventions has
+come down to us. His _Century_ was admittedly compiled from memory--“my
+former notes being lost”--and perhaps it was designedly obscure;
+science was at that time a hobby of the cultured few, and scientific
+men loved to mystify each other by the exhibition, without explanation,
+of paradoxes and toys of their own construction. The marquis, it will
+be agreed, left valuable hints to later investigators. Whether his
+claim to have invented the steam engine is sufficiently substantiated,
+we leave to the opinion of the interested reader, who will find most
+of the evidence on this subject in Dirck’s _Life of the Marquis of
+Worcester_.
+
+The power of steam to drive water from a lower to a higher level had
+been shown by Solomon de Caus,[73] who, in his work, _Les Raisons des
+Forces Mouvantes_, published in A.D. 1615, had described a hot-water
+fountain operated by heating water in a globe. In Van Etten’s
+_Récreation Mathematique_ of 1629 was an experiment, described fifty
+years later by Nathaniel Nye in his _Art of Gunnery_ as a “merry
+conceit,” showing how the force of steam could be used to discharge a
+cannon. As the century advanced the ornamental was gradually superseded
+by the utilitarian; the usefulness of steam for draining fens, pumping
+out mines, was realized; and applications for patents to cover the use
+of new and carefully guarded inventions began to appear.
+
+Gunpowder as a medium was a strong competitor of steam. In 1661 King
+Charles granted to Sir Samuel Morland, his master of mechanics, “for
+the space of fourteen years, to have the sole making and use of a new
+invention of a certain engine lately found out and devised by him, for
+the raising of water out of any mines, pits, or other places, to any
+reasonable height, and by the force of air and powder conjointly.”
+What form the engine took is not known; whether the gunpowder was
+used to produce a gaseous pressure by which the work was done, or
+whether its function was to displace air and thus cause a vacuum as
+its gases cooled. In France, too, efforts were made at this time to
+produce a gunpowder engine. In 1678 a Jean de Hautefeuille raised
+water by gunpowder, but authorities differ as to whether he employed
+a piston--which were then in use as applied to pumps--or whether he
+burned the powder so that the gases came in actual contact with the
+water. In the following year an important advance was made. Huyghens
+constructed an engine having a piston and cylinder, in which gunpowder
+was used to form a vacuum, the atmospheric pressure providing the
+positive force to produce motion; and in 1680 he communicated to the
+Academy of Sciences a paper entitled, “A new motive power by means of
+gunpowder and air.”
+
+But it was to his brilliant pupil, Denis Papin, that we are indebted
+for a further step in the materialization of the steam engine. Papin
+suggested the use of steam for gunpowder.
+
+In 1680 Papin, who like Solomon de Caus had brought his scientific
+conceptions to England in the hope of their furtherance, was admitted
+on the recommendation of Boyle to a fellowship of the Royal Society.
+After a short absence he returned to London in ’84 and filled for a
+time the post of curator to the society, meeting, doubtless, in that
+capacity the leading scientists of the day and coming in touch with all
+the practical efforts of English inventors. During his stay here he
+worked with enthusiasm at the production of a prime mover, and when he
+left in ’87 for a mathematical professorship in Germany he continued
+there his researches and experienced repeated failures. In a paper
+published in ’88 he showed a clear conception of a reciprocating engine
+actuated by atmospheric pressure, and in ’90 he suggested for the first
+time the use of steam for forming the vacuum required. As water, he
+wrote, has elasticity when fire has changed it into vapour, and as
+cold will condense it again, it should be possible to make engines
+in which, by the use of heat, water would provide the vacuum which
+gunpowder had failed to give. This memorable announcement gave a clear
+direction to the future development of the heat engine. Steam was the
+medium best suited for utilizing the expansive power of heat generated
+by the combustion of fuel; steam was the medium which, by its expansive
+and contractile properties, could be made to impart a movement _de va
+et vient_ to a piston. Though Papin did not succeed in putting his idea
+into practical form his conception was of great value, and he must be
+counted as one of the principal contributors to the early development
+of the steam engine. His life was an accumulation of apparent failures
+ending in abject poverty. To-day he is honoured by France as the
+inventor of the steam engine, and at Blois a statue has been erected
+and a street named to his memory.
+
+Before the end of the century an effective engine had been produced, in
+England.
+
+In 1698 Thomas Savery, a Devonshire man, obtained a patent for “a new
+invention for raising of water and occasioning motion to all sorts of
+millwork by the impellent force of fire.” Before the king at Hampton
+Court a model of this invention was displayed, and the importance of
+the new discovery was soon realized by the landed classes; for in the
+following year an act of parliament was passed for the encouragement
+of the inventor and for his protection in the development of what, it
+was recognized, was likely to prove of great use to the public. In the
+same year Savery published a pamphlet called _The Miner’s Friend_, and
+republished it, with additions, in 1702. This pamphlet contained a full
+and clear description of his engine; but significance has been attached
+to the omission from it of any claim that it embodied a new idea. The
+omission may be accidental.
+
+The steam engine, shown in the accompanying illustration, was simply
+a pump, whose cycle of operations was as follows. Steam, admitted
+into the top of a closed vessel containing water and acting directly
+against the water, forced it through a pipe to a level higher than
+the vessel itself. Then, the vessel being chilled and the steam in it
+thereby condensed, more water was sucked into the vessel from a lower
+level to fill the vacuum thus formed; this water was expelled by steam
+in the same way as before, cocks being manipulated, and, eventually,
+self-acting valves being placed, so as to prevent the water from
+returning by the way it came. Two chambers were used, operating
+alternately.
+
+For this achievement Savery is by many regarded as the first and
+true inventor. He certainly was the first to make the steam engine a
+commercial success, and up and down the country it was extensively used
+for pumping water and for draining mines. By others Savery was regarded
+as a copyist; and indeed it is difficult to say how far originality
+should be assigned him. The marquis too had claimed to raise water; his
+engine had evidently acted with a pair of displacement-chambers, from
+each of which alternately water was forced by steam while the other
+vessel was filling. And if he did not specify or appreciate the effect
+of the contractile force of the steam when condensed, yet in this
+respect both inventors had been anticipated by Giovanni della Porta.
+
+[Illustration: Steam from Boiler.
+
+SAVERY’S ENGINE]
+
+The marquis had a violent champion in Dr. Desaguliers, who in his
+_Experimental Philosophy_, published in 1743, imputed disreputable
+conduct to the later inventor. “Captain Savery,” said the doctor,
+“having read the Marquis of Worcester’s book, was the first who put
+into practice the raising of water by fire. His engine will easily
+appear to have been taken from the Marquis of Worcester; though Captain
+Savery denied it, and the better to conceal the matter, bought all the
+Marquis of Worcester’s books that he could purchase in Pater-Noster
+Row and elsewhere, and burned them in the presence of the gentleman
+his friend, who told me this. He said that he found out the power of
+steam by chance, and invented the following story to persuade people to
+believe it, viz. that having drunk a flask of Florence at a tavern, and
+thrown the empty flask upon the fire, he called for a bason of water to
+wash his hands, and perceiving that the little wine left in the flask
+had filled the flask with steam, he took the flask by the neck and
+plunged the mouth of it under the surface of the water in the bason,
+and the water in the bason was immediately driven up into the flask by
+the pressure of the air. Now, he never made such an experiment then,
+nor designedly afterwards, which I shall thus prove,” etc. etc.
+
+Other writers saw no good reason for depriving the captain of the title
+of inventor. With reference to the book-burning allegation, the only
+evidence tending to substantiate it lay in the fact that the book “on
+a sudden became very scarce, and but few copies of it were afterwards
+seen, and then only in the libraries of the curious.”[74] It has been
+remarked, also, that Desaguliers was himself to some extent a rival
+claimant, several improvements, such as the substitution of jet for the
+original surface condensation being due to him; and that this fact gave
+a palpable bias to his testimony on the work of others.
+
+In recent years the claims of Savery have been upheld, as against
+those of the marquis, by a writer who argued, not only that the engine
+of the marquis had never passed the experimental stage, but that no
+counter-claim was made by his successors at the time Savery produced
+his engine and obtained his patent. “Although a patent for ninety-nine
+years (from 1663 to 1762) was granted the marquis, yet Captain Savery
+and his successors under his patents which extended for thirty-five
+years (from 1698 to 1733) compelled every user of Newcomen’s and other
+steam engines to submit to the most grinding terms and no one attempted
+to plead that Savery’s patents were invalidated by the Marquis of
+Worcester’s prior patents.”[75]
+
+By the admirers of Papin it has been claimed that it was from him that
+Savery received his idea. “After having minutely compared Savery’s
+machine,” says a biographer of Papin, “one arrives at the conviction
+that _Savery discovered nothing_. He had borrowed from Solomon de Caus
+the use of steam as a motive force, perfected by the addition of a
+second chamber; from Papin, the condensation of the steam.... And as
+for the piston, borrowed ten years later by Newcomen, that was wholly
+Papin’s.”[76]
+
+Suppose it true; even so, his countrymen would always think great
+credit attaches to Savery for his achievement.
+
+His engine, though used extensively for lifting water through small
+distances, was exceedingly wasteful of fuel, nor could it be used
+conveniently for pumping out mines or for other purposes in which a
+large lift was required. The lift or “head” was directly proportional
+to the steam pressure. Efforts to improve the lift by augmenting the
+steam pressure resulted in endless accidents and discouragement; the
+solder of the engine melted when steam of a higher pressure was used,
+the joints blew open and the chambers burst.
+
+Living at Dartmouth, within some fifteen miles of Savery’s home, were
+two men, Newcomen, an ironmonger, and Cawley, a glazier. These two had,
+doubtless, every opportunity of seeing Savery’s engine at work. They
+appreciated its limitations and defects, and, undertaking the task of
+improving it, they so transformed the steam engine that within a short
+time their design had almost entirely superseded the more primitive
+form. Here, too, it might be said that they invented nothing. The merit
+of their new machine consisted in the achievement in practical form
+of ideas which hitherto had had scarcely more than an academic value.
+The labours of others gave them valuable aid. Newcomen, it is certain,
+could claim considerable knowledge of science, and though little is
+known of his personality there is evidence that he had pursued for
+years the object which he now achieved. He knew of the previous forms
+of piston engine which had been invented. He had probably read a
+translation, published in the _Philosophical Transactions_, of Papin’s
+proposal for an atmospheric engine with a vacuum produced by the
+condensation of steam. He obtained from Savery the idea of a separate
+boiler, and other details. And where Papin had failed, Newcomen and
+his partner succeeded. Their Atmospheric Steam Engine, as it was
+aptly called, was produced in the year 1705, and at once proved its
+superiority over the old “Miner’s Friend.” It had assumed an entirely
+new form. In a large-bore vertical cylinder a brass piston was fitted,
+with a leather flap round its edge and a layer of water standing on
+it to form a seal against the passage of steam or air. The top of the
+cylinder was open to the atmosphere, the bottom was connected by a pipe
+with a spherical boiler. The piston was suspended by a chain to one end
+of an overhanging timber beam, which was mounted on a brick structure
+so as to be capable of oscillating on a gudgeon or axis at its middle.
+One end of this beam was vertically over the piston; at the other
+end was the bucket of a water-pump, also attached to a crosspiece or
+“horse-head,” by means of a chain or rod. The whole machine formed a
+huge structure like a pair of scales, one of which (the water-pump) was
+loaded with weights so as to be slightly heavier than the other (the
+steam engine).
+
+[Illustration: NEWCOMEN’S ENGINE]
+
+To work it, steam was generated in the boiler at a pressure slightly
+greater than atmospheric. By the opening of a cock steam was admitted
+to the cylinder, below the piston, which was initially at rest in its
+highest position. The steam having filled the cylinder and expelled
+nearly all the air, the cock was shut and the cylinder was chilled by
+an external spray of cold water. Whereupon, as soon as the steam in
+the cylinder began to condense, the piston, forced down by the now
+unbalanced atmospheric pressure above it, began to descend. As soon as
+it had completed its downward stroke steam was again admitted beneath
+the piston, and, the pressure on the two sides of the piston becoming
+equal, the piston began to move up again to its original position. And
+so on.
+
+This was the original Newcomen engine. Even in this primitive form it
+far surpassed Savery’s in economy of fuel and in safety. It had, too,
+far greater flexibility in the manner in which its power could be
+applied; it could be used not only to lift a certain volume of water
+through a relatively small height, but a smaller volume through a
+greater height: which was a desideratum in the case of deep mines like
+those of Cornwall. In 1720 an engine was erected at Wheal Fortune mine
+having a cylinder nearly four feet in diameter and drawing water, at
+fifteen strokes a minute, from a depth of 180 feet.
+
+Yet it was apparent that the engine was in many respects inefficient.
+The cocks, for instance, which controlled the motion of the piston
+had to be opened and shut by a man. Sometimes he let the piston rise
+too far, in fact, right out of the cylinder; sometimes he let it down
+too fast, so as to damage the engine. Again, the external spraying
+of the cylinder at every stroke to induce condensation of the steam
+within was an obviously clumsy and primitive operation. It was not long
+before external spraying gave place to internal cooling of the steam
+by the injection of water; this method being discovered, it is said,
+as the result of a leaky piston allowing its sealing water to pass,
+yet giving unaccountably good results. The difficulties with the cocks
+were overcome by the laziness or initiative of a youth named Humphrey
+Potter, who attached some strings and catches to the cocks of an engine
+which he was employed to work at Wolverhampton.[77]
+
+With these improvements the engine remained practically without
+alteration for the next forty years. Its greatest sphere of usefulness
+was in the northern coalfields, where cheap and abundant fuel was close
+at hand. In Cornwall, until by special legislation the duty on seaborne
+coal was remitted when used for Newcomen’s engine, the cost of fuel
+proved a great obstacle to its use.
+
+
+§
+
+In 1764 James Watt, an instrument maker employed on work for Glasgow
+College, was given the task of repairing a working model of a Newcomen
+engine.
+
+A man of serious and philosophical mind, an intimate friend of
+Professor Robison, the physicist, and acquainted with the famous
+Dr. Black of Edinburgh, then in the thick of his researches on
+the phenomena of latent heat, Watt often discussed with these two
+scientists the possibility of improving the steam engine; which
+apparatus was still only employed for the purpose of pumping water,
+and which was so clumsy and so wasteful of fuel as to be comparatively
+little used. To this end he was induced to try some experiments on
+the production and condensation of steam. The results of these, and
+a knowledge of the newly discovered phenomenon of latent heat,[78]
+convinced him that the existing cycle of operations in the engine was
+fundamentally inefficient, and that improvement was to be sought in the
+engine itself rather than in the boiler, which was the element which
+was receiving most attention from contemporary investigators.
+
+In particular, he clearly discerned the thermal inefficiency of the
+Newcomen engine: the waste of heat involved in alternately heating
+and cooling the large metal cylinder, which absorbed such immense
+quantities of fuel. Watt’s first idea was, to lag the cylinder in wood
+so as to prevent all outward radiation. But the result of a trial of
+a lagged cylinder was disappointing. A gain was certainly obtained
+in that the steam, when admitted to the cylinder, did not require to
+raise by partial condensation the temperature of the walls; it exerted
+its expansive force at once and the piston rose. But on the other hand
+much greater difficulty was experienced in condensing it when a vacuum
+was required, for the down stroke. Moreover it was observed that an
+increase in the amount of injection water only made matters worse.
+
+Watt was faced with a dilemma, and he overcame it by a series of
+studies in the properties of steam which constitute, perhaps, the
+highest achievement of this workman-philosopher.
+
+Out of all his experiments two conclusions were drawn by him; first,
+that the lower the temperature of condensation of steam the more
+perfect the vacuum thereby formed; second, that the temperature of
+the cylinder should be as nearly as possible equal to that of the
+steam admitted to it. In Newcomen’s engine these two conditions
+were obviously incompatible, and the problem was,--how could they
+be reconciled? Early in 1765, while walking one Sunday afternoon in
+Glasgow Green the idea flashed upon him of condensing the steam in a
+separate vessel. The steam was generated in a separate vessel, why not
+produce the vacuum separately? With a view to trying this effect he
+placed a hollow air-tight chest beneath the steam cylinder, connected
+with it by a pipe having a stop-cock in it. This new or lower vessel
+was immersed in a cistern of cold water. Upon trial being made, it
+was found that by this simple contrivance as perfect a vacuum as
+desired was produced; the speed of the engine was greatly increased,
+the expenditure of fuel radically reduced, the walls of the steam
+cylinder were maintained at a high and constant temperature, and the
+whole arrangement promised great success. The new vessel Watt called a
+Condenser.
+
+Fresh difficulties now arose. As the engine worked, the condenser
+gradually filled with the condensed steam and had to be emptied
+periodically. The water in which it was immersed became so hot, by
+absorbing the heat of the steam, that it frequently required changing.
+Watt promptly called in aid two new auxiliaries, two organs whose
+motion was derived from the main beam of the engine: the Air Pump
+and the Circulating Pump. By these expedients the action of the
+condenser was rendered satisfactory, and an engine resulted which had a
+fuel-consumption less than half that of Newcomen’s engine.
+
+Much, he saw, yet remained to be done to obtain economical expenditure
+of steam. In particular the open-topped cylinder, whose walls were
+chilled at every descent of the piston by contact with atmospheric air,
+was an obvious source of inefficiency. He therefore determined not
+to expose the walls to the atmosphere at all, but to enclose all the
+space above the piston; and, thinking thus, he conceived the idea of
+replacing the air above the piston by steam, an equally powerful agent.
+The cylinder he proposed to maintain at a constant high temperature by
+means of a layer of hot steam with which he encased it, which he called
+a steam jacket. And so the atmospheric engine as left by Newcomen
+evolved into the _single-acting steam engine_ of Watt;--an engine in
+which steam was still used below the piston, only to displace air
+and provide a vacuized space for the downward motion of the piston;
+but in which steam now acted positively above the piston, in lieu
+of atmospheric air, to drive it down. It was still a sufficiently
+primitive form of prime mover. The piston was still lifted by the
+counterweight at the other end of the timber cross-beam; the engine had
+not yet developed the organs necessary for producing a satisfactory
+rotary motion. This step was shortly to follow.
+
+In 1769 Watt obtained his patent for the “double impulse,” as it
+was called; and by this step, by the transition from a single- to a
+double-acting engine, the possibilities of such machines for every
+variety of application first came into general view. This stage of
+the development showed to the full the ingenuity of Watt’s mechanical
+mind. By the invention of the slide-valve he distributed steam to
+the top and to the bottom of the cylinder, and in appropriate phase
+with these actions opened the two ends to the condenser; so that the
+piston was actuated positively and by an equal force on both up and
+down strokes. The chain by which the piston had been suspended was no
+longer adequate; it was replaced by a rod. A straight-line motion was
+required for the top end of the rod; so he formed a rack, to gear with
+the circular end or horse-head of the beam. But this noisy mechanism
+was soon superseded by another contrivance, the beautifully simple
+“parallel motion,” in which two circular motions are combined to
+produce one which is rectilinear. This was patented in ’84.
+
+Four years before this, that ancient mechanism the crank and connecting
+rod had been applied, together with a flywheel, to transform the
+reciprocating motion of a steam engine into a rotary motion; and the
+non-possession of this invention of James Pickard’s proved for a time a
+stumbling-block to Watt in his further development of his engine. Watt
+would have nothing to do with it. By now he had joined his fortunes
+with those of Mr. Boulton, of Soho, Birmingham, a man of great business
+ability, in conjunction with whom he was engaged in constructing
+engines in large numbers to suit the varying conditions of the mines in
+Cornwall and the North. Considerable ingenuity was expended by him in
+trying to circumvent the troublesome crank of Pickard, and many devices
+were produced, the most noteworthy being the “sun-and-planet wheels,”
+which enabled him with some sacrifice of simplicity to obtain the
+rotary motion desired.
+
+Watt seemed to be borne along by the momentum of his own discoveries;
+every inquiry yielded him valuable reward. For some time he had studied
+the possibility of reducing the violence with which the piston, now
+positively steam-driven on both sides, came to the end of its stroke.
+This problem led him to the discovery of the advantage of using steam
+expansively: of cutting off the inflow of steam before the piston had
+travelled more than a fraction of its stroke, and letting its inherent
+elastic force impel it through the remainder of its journey, the
+steam meanwhile expanding and thus exerting a continuously decreasing
+force. Later came the throttle valve, and the centrifugal governor for
+controlling the speed of rotating engines; there was no end to his
+ingenuity. And so complete was his inquiry into the possible sources
+of improvement of the steam engine, that he even considered means of
+regulating the force which the piston exerted on the crank throughout
+its working stroke, a force which was compounded of the steam pressure
+itself and of the mass-acceleration of the piston and other moving
+parts.
+
+Another cardinal invention followed: the Indicator. The principle of
+the indicator is now applied to every form and kind of piston engine.
+It is a reproduction on a small scale of the essential part of the
+engine itself; a small piston, held by a spring and moving in a
+cylinder connected by a pipe with the cylinder of the engine itself,
+shows by the degree of compression imparted to the spring the gaseous
+pressure actually present at any moment in the engine cylinder. By
+recording the position of the indicator piston on a paper wrapped round
+a rotating drum whose motion represents the motion of the engine’s
+piston, a diagram is obtained which by its area measures the work done
+by the steam during the stroke of the engine.
+
+This instrument was designed by Watt to give his firm some standard
+of work which would serve as a basis for the power of each engine,
+on which to charge their customers; their engines being sold by the
+horse-power. But its usefulness far exceeded the immediate purpose
+for which it was produced. Its diagram, to the eye of an expert,
+gave valuable information in respect of the setting of the valves,
+the tightness of the piston, the dryness of the steam, the degree of
+vacuum in the condenser, and, generally, of the state of efficiency of
+the engine. “It would be difficult to exaggerate the part which this
+little instrument has played in the evolution of the steam engine. The
+eminently philosophic notion of an indicator diagram is fundamental
+in the theory of thermodynamics; the instrument itself is to the steam
+engineer what the stethoscope is to the physician, and more, for with
+it he not only diagnoses the ailments of a faulty machine, whether in
+one or another of its organs, but gauges its power in health.”[79]
+
+
+§
+
+We have now traced the evolution of the steam engine up to the time
+when it was first adapted to the propulsion of war-vessels. There we
+must leave it. In a later chapter we shall consider the evolution of
+the propelling machinery in its relation, especially, to the military
+qualities of ships. A few observations will be sufficient to illustrate
+the conditions, as to design, practice, and material, under which the
+steam engine made its appearance in the royal navy.
+
+After the death of Watt all improvement of steam machinery was
+strenuously opposed by the combined force of prejudice and vested
+interest. The great Watt himself had set his face against the use
+of high-pressure steam, and, such was the lingering force of his
+authority, years passed before the general public gave assent to the
+advances made by his talented successors--Hornblower, Woolf, Evans,
+and Trevithick. Before the end of the eighteenth century the first
+steps had been made to use the force of steam for driving ships.
+Before Trafalgar was fought steam engines had made their appearance
+in the royal dockyards. Then there was a pause; and many years passed
+by before steam propulsion was admitted to be a necessity for certain
+classes of war-vessels.
+
+An interesting account of the state of design and practice as it
+existed on ship-board in the year of Queen Victoria’s accession is
+given by Commander Robert Otway, R.N., in his treatise on _Steam
+Navigation_. Low-pressure principles are still in vogue; steam is
+generated still, at a pressure not exceeding three pounds per square
+inch, in rectangular boilers of various forms according to the fancy
+of the maker, scarcely two being alike. The engines are also of
+varying forms, every size, variety, and power being deemed suitable
+for similar vessels. They are amazingly ponderous: weigh about twelve
+hundredweight, and the boilers eight hundredweight, to the horsepower.
+The engines of all makers exhibit the greatest variations in the
+relative dimensions of their various parts: one firm embodies a massive
+frame and light moving rods and shafts, another adopts massive rods and
+shafts, and supports them within the lightest framework. The author
+advocates a correct design and a “total dispensation of all superfluous
+ornament.”
+
+[Illustration: CONNECTING ROD
+
+From Otway]
+
+Already, however, following the example of the Cornish mines, the
+builders of steam vessels were at this time beginning to adopt
+high-pressure steam, generated at a pressure of ten to fifteen pounds
+per square inch in cylindrical boilers, and working expansively--“doing
+work in the cylinder by its elasticity alone”--before returning to
+the jet condenser. This improvement, strenuously opposed by orthodox
+engineers as being unsafe for ship practice, was introduced first
+into the Packet Establishment at Falmouth, and then, tardily, into
+Government steamers. It gave a gain in economy measured by the saving
+of “thousands of bushels of coal per month.” Steam engines working
+on the low-pressure system used from nine to twelve pounds of coal
+per hour, for each horse-power. These engines were carried in vessels
+“built on the scantling of 10-ton brigs,” of great draught and of
+such small coal capacity--about 35 tons, on an average--that when
+proceeding out of home waters “they were burthened with, at the least,
+four days’ more fuel, _on their decks_ (top hamper), in addition to
+that which already filled up their coal-boxes below.” Boilers emitted
+black clouds of smoke at sea. In harbour the paddle-wheels had to be
+turned daily, if but a few float-boards only, by the united force of
+the crew. “Coaling ship” was carried out with the help of convicts from
+the hulks:--“pampered delinquents,” observes the author, “whose very
+movements are characteristic of their moral dispositions--being thieves
+of time; for their whole day’s duty is not worth an hour’s purchase.”
+
+In these unattractive circumstances the steam engine, most wonderful
+contrivance of the brain and hand of man, presented itself for
+embodiment in the navy, by the personnel of which it was regarded, not
+without reason, as an unmitigated evil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+“NEW PRINCIPLES OF GUNNERY”
+
+
+We have traced the smooth-bore cannon through the successive stages
+of its evolution. It is now proposed to give, in the form of a
+biographical sketch, an account of the inception of scientific methods
+as applied to its use, and at the same time to pay some tribute to the
+memory of the man who laid the foundations deep and true of the science
+of modern gunnery. One man was destined to develop, almost unaided, the
+principles of gunnery as they are known to-day. This man was a young
+Quaker of the eighteenth century, Benjamin Robins.
+
+For a variety of reasons his fame and services seem never to have been
+sufficiently recognized or acknowledged by his own countrymen. To many
+his name is altogether unknown. To some it is associated solely with
+the discovery of the ballistic pendulum: the ingenious instrument
+by which, until the advent of electrical apparatus, the velocities
+of bullets and cannon balls could be measured with a high degree of
+accuracy. But the ballistic pendulum was, as we shall see, only one
+manifestation of his great originating power. The following notes will
+show to what a high place Robins attained among contemporary thinkers;
+and demonstrate the extent to which, by happy combination of pure
+reason and experiment, he influenced the development of artillery
+and fire-arms. His _New Principles of Gunnery_ constituted a great
+discovery, simple and surprisingly complete. In this work he had not
+merely to extend or improve upon the inventive work of others; his
+first task was to expose age-long absurdities and demolish all existing
+theories; and only then could he replace them by true principles
+founded on correct mathematical reasoning and confirmed by unwearying
+experiment with a borrowed cannon or a “good Tower musquet.”
+
+Down to the time of Robins, gunnery was still held to be an art
+and a mystery. The gunner, that honest and godly man,[80] learned
+in arithmetic and astronomy, was master of a terrible craft;--his
+saltpetre gathered, it was said, from within vaults, tombs, and other
+desolate places;--his touchwood made from old toadstools dried over a
+smoky fire;--himself working unscathed only by grace of St. Barbara,
+the protectress of all artillerymen. The efficiency of his practice
+depended overwhelmingly on his own knowledge and on the skill with
+which he mixed and adjusted his materials. No item in his system was of
+sealed pattern; every element varied between the widest limits. There
+were no range-tables. His shots varied in size according to the time
+they happened to have been in service, to the degree of rusting and
+flaking which they had suffered, and to their initial variations in
+manufacture. His piece might be bored taper; if so, and if smaller at
+the breech end than at the muzzle, there was a good chance of some shot
+being rammed short of the powder, leaving an air space, so that the
+gun might burst on discharge; if smaller at the muzzle end the initial
+windage would be too great, perhaps, to allow of efficient discharge
+of any shot which could be entered. There was always danger to be
+apprehended from cracks and flaws.
+
+But the greatest of mysteries was that in which the flight of
+projectiles was shrouded. At this point gunnery touched one of the
+oldest and one of the main aspects of natural philosophy.
+
+The Greek philosophers failed, we are told, in spite of their great
+mental subtlety, to arrive at any true conception of the laws governing
+the motion of bodies. It was left to the period of the revival of
+learning which followed the Middle Ages to produce ideas which were
+in partial conformity with the truth. Galileo and his contemporaries
+evolved the theory of the parabolic motion of falling bodies and
+confirmed this brilliant discovery by experiment. Tartaglia sought
+to apply it to the motion of balls projected from cannon, but was
+held up by the opposing facts: the initial part of the trajectory was
+seen to be a straight line in actual practice, and even, perhaps,
+to have an upward curvature. So new hypotheses were called in aid,
+and the path of projectiles was assumed to consist of three separate
+motions: the _motus violentus_, the _motus mixtus_, and the _motus
+naturalis_. During the _motus violentus_ the path of the spherical
+projectile was assumed to be straight--and this fallacy, we may note in
+passing, gave rise to the erroneous term “point blank,” to designate
+the distance to which the shot would travel before gravity began to
+operate; during the _motus naturalis_ the ball was assumed to fall
+along a steep parabola; and during the _motus mixtus_, the path of the
+trajectory near its summit, the motion was assumed to be a blend of
+the other two. This theory, though entirely wrong, fitted in well with
+practical observation; the trajectory of a spherical shot was actually
+of this form described. But in many respects it had far-reaching
+and undesirable consequences. Not only did it give rise to the
+misconception of the _point en blanc_; it tended to emphasize the value
+of heavy charges and high muzzle velocities while at the same time
+obscuring other important considerations affecting range.
+
+So the gunner was primed with a false theory of the trajectory.
+But even this could not be relied on as constant in operation. The
+ranging of his shot was supposed to be affected by the nature of
+the intervening ground; shot were thought to range short, for some
+mysterious reason, when fired over water or across valleys, and the
+gunner had to correct, as best he could, for the extra-gravitational
+attraction which water and valleys possessed. In addition to all these
+bewilderments there was the error produced by the fact that the gun
+itself was thicker at the breech than at the muzzle, so that the “line
+of metal” sight was not parallel with the bore: a discrepancy which
+to the lay mind, and not infrequently to the gunner himself, was a
+perpetual stumbling-block.
+
+It is not surprising that, in these conditions, the cannon remained a
+singularly inefficient weapon. Imperfectly bored; discharging a ball of
+iron or lead whose diameter was so much less than its own bore that the
+projectile bounded along it and issued from the muzzle in a direction
+often wildly divergent from that in which the piece had been laid;
+on land it attained its effects by virtue of the size of the target
+attacked, or by use of the _ricochet_; at sea it seldom flung its shot
+at a distant ship, except for the purpose of dismasting, but, aided by
+tactics, dealt its powerful blows at close quarters, double-shotted and
+charged lavishly, with terrible effect. It was then that it was most
+efficient.
+
+Nor is it surprising that, in an atmosphere of ignorance as to the true
+principles governing the combustion of gunpowder and the motion of
+projectiles, false “systems” flourished. The records of actual firing
+results were almost non-existent. Practitioners and mathematicians,
+searching for the law which would give the true trajectories of cannon
+balls, found that the results of their own experience would not square
+with any tried combination of mathematical curves. They either gave up
+the search for a solution, or pretended a knowledge which they were
+unwilling to reveal.
+
+
+§
+
+In the year 1707 Robins was born at Bath. Studious and delicate in
+childhood, he gave early proof of an unusual mathematical ability, and
+the advice of influential friends who had seen a display of his talents
+soon confirmed his careful parents in the choice of a profession for
+him: the teaching of mathematics. Little, indeed, did the devout Quaker
+couple dream, when the young Benjamin took coach for London with this
+object in view, that their son was destined soon to be the first
+artillerist in Europe.
+
+That the choice of a profession was a wise one soon became evident.
+He was persuaded to study the great scientific writers of all
+ages--Archimedes, Huyghens, Slusius, Sir James Gregory and Sir Isaac
+Newton; and these, says his biographer, he readily understood without
+any assistance. His advance was extraordinarily rapid. When only
+fifteen years old he aimed so high as to confute the redoubtable John
+Bernouilli on the collision of bodies. His friends were already the
+leading mathematicians of the day, and there were many who took a
+strong interest in the brilliant and attractive lad. He certainly was
+gifted with qualities making for success; for, we are told, “besides
+his acquaintance with divers parts of learning, there was in him, to an
+ingenuous aspect, joined an activity of temper, together with a great
+facility in expressing his thoughts with clearness, brevity, strength,
+and elegance.”
+
+Robins’ mind was of too practical a bent, however, to allow him to stay
+faithful to pure mathematics; his restless energy required another
+outlet. Hence he was led to consider those “mechanic arts” that
+depended on mathematical principles: bridge building, the construction
+of mills, the draining of fens and the making of harbours. After a
+while, taking up the controversial pen again, he wrote and published
+papers by which a great reputation gradually accrued. In 1735 he
+blew to pieces, with a _Discourse on Sir Isaac Newton’s Method of
+Fluxions_, a treatise written against the mathematicians by the
+Bishop of Cloyne. And shortly after followed further abstruse and
+controversial studies: on M. Euler’s Treatise on Motion, on Dr. Smith’s
+System of Optics, and on Dr. Jurin’s Distinct and Indistinct Vision.
+
+His command of language now attracted the attention of certain
+influential gentlemen who, deploring the waste of such talent on
+mathematical subjects, persuaded their young acquaintance to try his
+hand at the writing of political pamphlets: party politics being at
+that time the absorbing occupation of the population of these islands.
+His success was great; his writings were much admired. And--significant
+of the country and the age--friendships and acquaintances were formed
+by the pamphleteer which were later to be of great value to the rising
+scientist.
+
+This phase of his activities, fortunately, did not last long. Kindling
+the lamp of science once more, he now started on the quest which was to
+make him famous.
+
+For thoughtful men of all ages, as we have already noted, the flight
+of bodies through air had had an absorbing interest. The subject was
+one of perennial disputation. The vagaries of projectiles, the laws
+governing the discharge of balls from cannon, could not fail to arouse
+the curiosity of an enthusiast like Robins, and he now set himself
+in earnest to discover them by an examination of existing data, by
+pure reason, and by actual experiment. Perusal of such books as had
+been written on the subject soon convinced him of the shallowness of
+existing theories. Of the English authors scarcely any two agreed
+with one another, and all of them carped at Tartaglia, the Italian
+scientist who in the classic book of the sixteenth century tried to
+uphold Galileo’s theory of parabolic motion as applied to military
+projectiles. But what struck Robins most forcibly about all their
+writings was the almost entire absence of trial and experiment by which
+to confirm their dogmatical assertions. This absence of any appeal to
+experiment was certainly not confined to treatises on gunnery; it was
+a conspicuous feature of most of the classical attempts to advance
+the knowledge of physical science. Yet the flight of projectiles was
+a problem which lent itself with ease to that inductive method of
+discovering its laws through a careful accumulation of facts. This work
+had not been done. Of all the native writers upon gunnery only four
+had ventured out of two dimensions; only four had troubled to measure
+definite ranges. All four asserted the general proposition that the
+motion of bodies was parabolic. Only one noticed that practice did
+not support this theory, and he, with misapplied ingenuity, called in
+aid the traditional hypothesis of a violent, a crooked, and a natural
+motion. Which wrong hypothesis enabled him, since he could choose for
+himself the point at which the straight motion ceased, to square all
+his results with his precious theory.
+
+Leaving the books of the practitioners, Robins had more to learn
+from the great circle of mathematicians who in the first part of
+the eighteenth century lent a lustre to European science. The
+old hypotheses were fast being discarded by them. Newton, in his
+_Principia_, had investigated the laws of resistance of bodies to
+motion through the air under gravity, by dropping balls from the
+cupola of St. Paul’s Cathedral; and he believed that the trajectory of
+a cannon ball differed from the parabola by but a small extent. The
+problem was at this time under general discussion on the Continent; and
+led to a collision between the English and the German mathematicians,
+Newton and Leibnitz being the two protagonists.[81] But, whatever the
+merits or outcome of the controversy, one thing seems certain. None
+of the great men of the day understood the very great accession of
+resistance which a fast-travelling body encountered in cleaving the
+air, or realized the extent to which the trajectory was affected by
+this opposing force. It was in fact universally believed and stated,
+that “_in the case of large shot of metal, whose weight many times
+surpasses that of air, and whose force is very great, the resistance
+of air is scarcely discernible, and as such may, in all computations
+concerning the ranges of great and weighty bombs, be very safely
+neglected_.”[82]
+
+In 1743 Robins’ _New Principles of Gunnery_ was read before the Royal
+Society.
+
+In a short but comprehensive paper which dealt with both internal and
+external ballistics, with the operation of the propellant in the gun
+and with the subsequent flight of the projectile, the author enunciated
+a series of propositions which, founded on known laws of physics and
+sustained by actual experiment, reduced to simple and calculable
+phenomena the mysteries and anomalies of the art of shooting with great
+guns. He showed the nature of the combustion of gunpowder, and how to
+measure the force of the elastic fluid derived from it. He showed, by a
+curve drawn with the gun axis as a base, the variation of pressure in
+the gun as the fluid expanded, and the work done on the ball thereby.
+Producing his ballistic pendulum he showed how, by firing a bullet of
+known weight into a pendulum of known weight, the velocity of impact
+could be directly ascertained. This was obviously a very important
+discovery. For an accurate measurement of the “muzzle velocity” of the
+bullet discharged from any given piece of ordnance was, and still is,
+the solution and key to many another problem in connection with it:
+for instance, the effect of such variable factors as the charge, the
+windage or the length of gun. In fact, as the author claimed, there
+followed from the theory thus set out a whole host of deductions of
+the greatest consequence to the world’s knowledge of gunnery. Then,
+following the projected bullet in its flight, he proceeded to tell of
+the continuous retardation to which it was subject owing to the air’s
+resistance. He found, he said, that this resistance was vastly greater
+than had been anticipated. It certainly was not a negligible quantity.
+The resistance of the air to a twenty-four pound cannon ball, fired
+with its battering charge of sixteen pounds of powder, was no less
+than twenty-four times the weight of the ball when it first issued
+from the piece: a force which sufficiently confuted the theory that
+the trajectory was a parabola, as it would have been if the shot were
+fired in vacuo. It was neither a parabola, nor nearly a parabola. In
+truth it was not a plane curve at all. For under the great force of
+the air’s resistance, added to that of gravity, a ball (he explained)
+has frequently a double curvature. Instead of travelling in one
+vertical plane it actually takes an incurvated line sometimes to right,
+sometimes to left, of the original plane of departure. And the cause of
+this departure he ascribed to a whirling motion acquired by the ball
+about an axis during its passage through the gun.
+
+The reading of the paper provoked considerable discussion among the
+learned Fellows, who found themselves presented with a series of the
+most novel and unorthodox assertions, not in the form of speculations,
+but as exact solutions to problems which had been hitherto unsolved;
+and these were presented in the clearest language and were fortified
+by experiments so careful and so consistent in their results as to
+leave small room for doubt as to the certainty of the author’s theory.
+Of special interest both to savants and artillerists must have been
+his account of “a most extraordinary and astonishing increase in the
+resistance of the air which occurs when the velocity comes to be that
+of between eleven and twelve hundred feet in one second of time”: a
+velocity, as he observed, which is equal to that at which sounds are
+propagated in air. He suggested that perhaps the air, not making its
+vibrations with sufficient speed to return immediately to the space
+left in the rear of the ball, left a vacuum behind it which augmented
+the resistance to its flight. His statement on the deflection of balls,
+too, excited much comment. And, in order to convince his friends of the
+reality of this phenomenon, which, though Sir Isaac Newton had himself
+taken note of it in the case of tennis balls, had never been thoroughly
+investigated, Robins arranged an ocular demonstration.
+
+One summer afternoon the experiments took place in a shady grove in
+the Charterhouse garden. Screens--“of finest tissue paper”--were set
+up at intervals of fifty feet, and a common musket bored for an ounce
+ball was firmly fixed in a vice so as to fire through the screens. By
+repeated discharges the various deflections from the original plane of
+departure were clearly shown; some of the balls whirled to the right,
+some to the left of the vertical plane in which the musket lay. But not
+only was the fact of this deflection established to the satisfaction
+of the visitors. A simple but dramatic proof was afforded them of the
+correctness of Robins’ surmise that the cause was the whirling of the
+ball in flight. A musket-barrel was bent so that its last three or
+four inches pointed to the left of the original plane of flight. The
+ball when fired would then be expected to be thrown to the left of
+the original plane. But, said Robins, since in passing through the
+bent part the ball would be forced to roll upon the right-hand side
+of the barrel; and as thereby the left side of the ball would turn up
+against the air, and would increase the resistance on that side; then,
+notwithstanding the bend of the piece to the left, the bullet itself
+might incurvate towards the right. “And this, upon trial, did most
+remarkably happen.”[83]
+
+Robins by now had gained a European reputation. Mathematical
+controversy and experiments in gunnery continued to occupy his time
+and absorb his energies, and it was not long before he was again at
+the rostrum of the Royal Society, uttering his eloquent prediction as
+to the future of rifled guns. Speaking with all the emphasis at his
+command he urged on his hearers the importance of applying rifling
+not only to fire-arms but to heavy ordnance. That State, he said,
+which first comprehended the advantages of rifled pieces; which first
+facilitated their construction and armed its armies with them; would
+by them acquire a superiority which would perhaps fall little short
+of the wonderful effects formerly produced by the first appearance of
+fire-arms. His words had little or no effect. Mechanical science was
+not then equal to the task. A whole century was to elapse before rifled
+ordnance came into general use. The genius of Whitworth was required to
+enable the workshops of the world to cope with its refined construction.
+
+Another subject which attracted Robins’ attention at this time was
+fortification, the sister art of gunnery, which now had a vogue as a
+result of the great continental wars. He was evidently regarded as an
+authority on the subject, for we find him, in 1747, invited by the
+Prince of Orange to assist in the defence of Berghen-op-Zoom, then
+invested and shortly afterwards taken by the French.
+
+Now befell an incident which, besides being a testimony to the
+versatility of his genius, proved to be of great consequence to him in
+his study of artillery. In 1740 Mr. Anson (by this time Lord Anson,
+and at the head of the Admiralty) had set out on his famous voyage to
+circumnavigate the world. For some time after his return the public
+had looked forward to an authentic account, on the writing of which
+the chaplain of the _Centurion_, Mr. Richard Walter, was known to be
+engaged. Mr. Walter had collected, in the form of a journal, a mass
+of material in connection with the incidents of the voyage. But on
+a review of this it was decided that the whole should be rewritten
+in narrative form by a writer of repute. Robins was approached, and
+accepted the commission. The material of the chaplain’s journal was
+worked up by him into a narrative, and the book was published in 1748.
+“It was an immediate success; four large editions were sold in less
+than a year; and it was translated, with its stirring accounts of
+perils and successes, into nearly all the languages in Europe.” Robins’
+name did not appear in it, and his share in the authorship is to this
+day a subject of literary discussion.
+
+The acquaintance with Lord Anson thus formed was of great benefit to
+him, not only in securing for him the means of varied experiment with
+all types of guns in use in the royal navy, but by the encouragement
+which his lordship gave him to publish his opinions even when they
+were in conflict with the orthodox professional opinion of the day.
+To this encouragement was due the publication in 1747 of a pamphlet
+entitled, _A Proposal for increasing the strength of the British
+Navy, by changing all guns from 18-pounders downwards into others of
+equal weight but of a greater bore_; a paper which, indirectly, had
+considerable influence on the development of sea ordnance. In the
+introduction to this paper the author explains that its subject-matter
+is the result of the speculations and experiments of earlier years;
+and he describes the incident which at the later date induced its
+publication. It appears that at the capture of the _Mars_, man-of-war,
+a manuscript was discovered on board which contained the results and
+conclusions of some important gunnery trials which the French had been
+carrying out. This manuscript, being shown to Robins by Lord Anson,
+was found to contain strong confirmation of his own views both as to
+the best proportions of guns and the most efficient powder-charges
+for the same. He had not published these before, he plaintively
+explains, because, “not being regularly initiated into the profession
+of artillery, he would be considered a visionary speculatist.” But
+fortified by the French MS. he no longer hesitated to submit his
+proposal to the public.
+
+Briefly, the paper is an argument for a more efficient disposition
+of metal in ordnance. Robins states his case in language simple and
+concise. Large shot, he says, have naturally great advantages in
+ranging power over small shot; in sea fighting the size of the hole
+they make and their increased power of penetration gives them a greatly
+enhanced value. Hence the endeavour made in all cases to arm a vessel
+with the largest cannon she can with safety bear. And hence the
+necessity for so disposing the weight of metal in a ship’s ordnance to
+the best advantage; all metal not usefully employed in contributing to
+the strength of the pieces being not only useless but prejudicial to
+efficiency.
+
+He then proceeds to prove (not very convincingly, it must be admitted)
+that there is a law of comparison to which the dimensions of all guns
+should conform, and by which their weights could be calculated. For
+every pound of bullet there should be allowed a certain weight of metal
+for the gun. So, taking the service 32-pounder as having the correct
+proportions, the weight and size of every other piece can be found
+from this standard. He observes, however, that in actual practice the
+smaller the gun, the greater its relative weight; the 6-pounder, for
+example, weighs at least eighteen hundredweight, when by the rule it
+should weigh ten. The proposal is therefore to utilize the redundant
+weight of metal by increasing the calibre of the smaller guns. At the
+same time it is proposed to limit the stress imposed on all guns by
+reducing the powder-charge to one-third the weight of the bullet, for
+all calibres; this smaller charge being almost as efficient for ranging
+as the larger charges used, and infinitely less dangerous to the gun.
+
+The publication of the pamphlet came at an opportune moment. A new
+spirit was dawning in the navy, a new enthusiasm and search for
+efficiency were abroad, which in the next half-century were to be
+rewarded by a succession of well-earned and decisive victories.
+Interest in the proposed change in armament was widespread, both in and
+outside the royal service. And a significant commentary on the proposed
+regulation of powder-charges was supplied, this very year, by Admiral
+Hawke, who reported that in the fight off Ushant all the breechings
+of his lower-deck guns broke with the repeated violence of recoil,
+obliging him to shoot ahead of his opponent while new breechings were
+being seized.
+
+Some time was to elapse before the arguments of Robins gave signs of
+bearing fruit. Experiments carried out at Woolwich in the seventies
+by Dr. Hutton with all the facilities ensured by the patronage of a
+ducal master-general of ordnance merely extended and confirmed Robins’
+own results. In ’79 the carronade made its appearance, to attest in
+dramatic fashion the value, at any rate for defensive work, of a large
+ball, a small charge, and an unusually small windage. As offensive
+armament it represented, of course, the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the
+principles enunciated by Robins; its dominant feature of a ball of
+maximum volume projected with a minimum velocity was, in the words of
+an American authority, “manifestly as great an error as the minima
+masses and the maxima velocities of the long gun system, to which the
+carronade was thus directly opposed.” Nevertheless, the carronade
+(whose history we deal with in a later chapter) did excellent work.
+Mounted upon the upper decks and forecastles of merchantmen and the
+smaller classes of warships, it emphasized, by the powerful and often
+unexpected blows which it planted in the ribs of such adversaries
+as ventured within its range, the comparative inefficiency of the
+smaller types of long gun with which our ships of war were armed.
+To the clearest-sighted of our naval captains the relative merits
+and defects of the carronade and the small long gun were evidently
+clear. In the year 1780 we find Kempenfelt advocating, in a letter
+to Sir Charles Middleton, a weapon with a little more length and
+weight than a carronade: something between it and a long gun. Robins’
+arguments against the still prevalent types of small pieces have proved
+convincing to him, and he transcribes the whole of the _Proposal_ for
+the consideration of his superior. “Here you have, sir,” he writes,
+“the opinion of the ablest artillery officer in England at that time,
+and perhaps in Europe.”
+
+Once more the versatile and gifted pen was called in aid of politics.
+In 1749 he was persuaded to write what his biographer describes as a
+masterpiece of its kind: _An apology for the unfortunate affair at
+Preston-Pans in Scotland_.[84] But soon an opening worthier of his
+talents presented itself. The East India Company, whose forts in India
+were as yet ill-adapted for defence, required the services of an expert
+in military fortification. An offer was made, and, as Engineer-General
+to the Company, Robins left England for the East at the end of ’49,
+to the great sorrow of all his acquaintance. They were not to see him
+again. In the summer of the following year he died of a fever, pen in
+hand, at work upon his plans in the service of the Company.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So ended a short, a brilliant, and a very honourable career. Benjamin
+Robins possessed in an exceptional degree the power, inherent in so
+many of his countrymen, of applying the truths of science to practical
+ends. An individualist deriving inspiration from the great masters of
+the past, he followed the bent of his enthusiasms in whatever direction
+it might lead him, till ultimately his talents found expression in a
+field undreamed of by himself or by his early friends. In the realm of
+gunnery he was an amateur of genius. Partly for that reason, perhaps,
+his views do not appear to have been considered as authoritative by
+our own professionals; the prophet had more honour in Berlin, Paris
+and Washington. Speaking of the rifle, the true principle of which was
+admittedly established by him, the American artillerist Dahlgren wrote
+in 1856: “The surprizing neglect which seemed to attend his labours was
+in nothing more conspicuous than in the history of this weapon. Now
+that whole armies are to wield the rifled musket with its conical shot,
+one is surprized at the time which was permitted to elapse since that
+able experimenter so memorably expressed his convictions before the
+Royal Society, in 1746.”
+
+Of the value of his work to the nation there is now no doubt. Of
+the man himself an entertaining picture is given in his biography,
+published, together with his principal papers, by Dr. Hutton, from
+which many of the foregoing notes have been taken. Among other eminent
+men who have given their life and labours to the public service, and
+whose efforts in building up the past greatness of England have been
+generously acknowledged, let us not forget to honour that distinguished
+civilian, Benjamin Robins.
+
+[Illustration: TUDOR SHIPS UNDER SAIL
+
+From the same MS. as plate facing page 60]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE CARRONADE
+
+
+AT the monthly meeting of the Carron Company, a Scotch iron-founding
+and shipping firm, which was held in December, 1778, the manager
+informed the board that, in order to provide armament for some of the
+Company’s sailing packets, he had constructed a very light species
+of gun, resembling a cohorn, which was much approved by many people
+who had come on purpose to inspect it. So favourable, indeed, was
+the impression given by the inspection of this weapon that, with the
+company’s permission, he could receive a great many orders for them.
+Whereon it was resolved to authorize the manufacture of the new species
+in quantity; and to call all such guns as should be made by them of
+this nature, Carronades.
+
+Such were the circumstances in which the carronade first came into
+use. And the following advertisement, appearing in Edinburgh shortly
+afterwards, sufficiently explains the incentive for exploiting the new
+type of ordnance, and the reason of its popularity among shipowners,
+passengers and crews. “To sail March 5, 1779, the _Glasgow_,
+Robert Paterson master, mounting fourteen twelve-pounders, and men
+answerable.... N.B.--The Carron vessels are fitted out in the most
+complete manner for defence at a very considerable expense, and are
+well provided with small arms. All mariners, recruiting parties,
+soldiers upon furlow, and all other steerage passengers who have been
+accustomed to the use of fire-arms, and who will engage in defending
+themselves, will be accommodated with their passage to and from London,
+upon satisfying the masters for their provisions, which in no instance
+shall exceed 10s. 6d. sterling. The Carron vessels sail regularly as
+usual, without waiting for the convoy.”
+
+The carronade was a very short, light, carriage gun of relatively
+large bore, made to take a standard size of long-gun shot and project
+it, by means of a small charge of powder, against an enemy at close
+range. Its proprietors soon found a market for the produce of their
+foundry, not only for merchant ships but for men-of-war. The reputation
+of the new ordnance quickly spread; carronades found a place almost
+immediately among the orthodox armament of the greater number of our
+fighting ships; and kept their place till, after a chequered career of
+half a century, during which they contributed both to victory and to
+defeat, they were finally discarded from the sea service.
+
+The story of the carronade begins some little time before the meeting
+of the Carron board in the year 1778. It will be remembered that in
+1747 Mr. Benjamin Robins had advocated, in a much-talked-of paper,
+an increase in the calibre of warships’ guns at the expense of their
+ranging power, and that in support of his argument he had drawn
+attention to two features of ship actions--first, that the great
+majority of duels were fought at close quarters; secondly, that the
+destructive effect of a cannon-ball against an enemy’s hull depended
+largely on the external dimensions of the ball, the larger of two balls
+producing an effect altogether out of proportion to the mere difference
+in size.
+
+However invalid may have been the arguments founded on these
+assertions--and that there was a serious flaw in them time was to
+show--there could be no doubt that, so far as considerations of defence
+were concerned, the conclusions reached were of important value. In
+the case of a merchant packet defending herself from boarding by a
+privateer, for example, a light, short-ranging gun throwing a large
+ball would give far more effective protection than a small-calibre
+long gun. And if, moreover, the former involved a dead weight less
+than a quarter, and a personnel less than half, of that involved
+by the latter, the consideration of its superiority in action was
+strongly reinforced, in the opinion of shipowners and masters, by
+less advertised considerations of weight, space, and equipment--very
+important in their relation to the speed and convenience of the vessel,
+and hence to all concerned.
+
+So the arguments of Robins, though propounded solely with reference to
+warships, yet applied with special force to the defensive armament of
+merchant ships. A conception of this fact led a very able artillerist,
+General Robert Melville, to propose, in 1774, a short eight-inch gun
+weighing only thirty-one hundredweight yet firing a nicely fitting
+sixty-eight pound ball with a charge of only five and a half pounds of
+powder. This piece he induced the Carron company to cast, appropriately
+naming it a Smasher. Of all the carronades the Smasher was the
+prototype. It possessed the special attributes of the carronades in the
+superlative degree; the carronade was a reproduction, to a convenient
+scale, of the Smasher. That General Melville was the prime inventor
+of the new type, has been placed beyond doubt by the inscription on
+a model subsequently presented to him by the Carron Company. The
+inscription runs: “Gift of the Carron Company to Lieut.-General
+Melville, inventor of the Smashers and lesser carronades for solid,
+ship, shell, and carcass shot, etc. First used against French ships in
+1779.”[85]
+
+In almost every respect the Smasher was the antithesis of the long
+gun: the advantages of the one were founded on the shortcomings of
+the other. For instance, the smallness of the long gun’s ball was a
+feature which, as ships’ sides came to be made stronger and thicker,
+rendered the smaller calibres of long guns of a diminishing value as
+offensive armament. It was becoming increasingly difficult to sink a
+ship by gunfire. The round hole made near the enemy’s water-line was
+insufficient in size to have a decisive effect; the fibres of the
+timber closed round the entering shot and, swelled by sea-water, half
+closed the hole, leaving the carpenter an easy task to plug the inboard
+end of it. The large and irregular hole made by a Smasher, on the other
+hand, the ragged and splintered opening caused by the crashing of the
+large ball against the frames and timbers, was quite likely to be the
+cause of a foundering. Again, the high velocity of the long gun’s ball,
+while giving it range and considerable penetrative power, was actually
+a disadvantage when at close quarters with an enemy. The maximum effect
+was gained, as every gunner knew, when the ball had just sufficient
+momentum to enable it to penetrate an opponent’s timbers. The result of
+a high velocity was often to make a clean hole through a ship without
+making a splinter or causing her to heel at all. Hence the practice of
+double-shotting: a system of two units which, as we have just seen,
+was less likely to prove effective than a system of a larger single
+unit. On the other hand the Smasher vaunted its low muzzle velocity. As
+for the relative powder charges, that of the long gun was wastefully
+large and inefficient, while that of the Smasher was small and very
+effective. It was in this respect, perhaps, that the Smasher showed
+itself to the greatest advantage. And as this feature exerted from
+the first an important influence on all other types of ordnance, we
+will examine in some detail the means by which its high efficiency was
+attained.
+
+Apart from the inefficiency inherent in the small-ball-and-big-velocity
+system the long gun laboured under mechanical disadvantages from which
+its squat competitor was happily free. In the eighteenth century the
+state of workshop practice was so primitive as to render impossible any
+fine measurements of material. Until the time of Whitworth the true
+plane surface, the true cylinder and the true sphere were unattainable
+in practice. For this reason a considerable clearance had to be
+provided between round shot and the bores of the guns for which they
+were intended; in other words, the inaccuracies which existed in the
+dimensions of guns and shots necessitated the provision of a certain
+“windage.” But other considerations had also to be taken into account.
+The varying temperatures at which shot might require to be used; the
+fouling of gun-bores by burnt powder; the effect of wear and rust on
+both shot and bore, and especially the effect of rust on the shot
+carried in ships of war (at first enlarged by the rust and then, the
+rust flaking or being beaten off with hammers, reduced in size)--all
+these factors combined to exact such disproportionate windage that, in
+the best conditions, from one-quarter to one-third of the force of the
+powder was altogether lost, while, in the worst conditions, as much as
+one-half of the propulsive force of the powder escaped unused. Not only
+was a large charge required, therefore, but the range and aim of the
+loosely fitting shot was often incorrect and incalculable; the motion
+of the shot was detrimental to the surface of the bore and the life of
+the gun; while the recoil was so boisterous as sometimes to dismount
+and disable the gun, injure the crew, and even endanger the vessel.
+
+The inventor of the Smasher, by eliminating this obvious deficiency of
+the long gun, gave to his weapon not only a direct advantage due to the
+higher efficiency of the powder-charge, but also several collateral
+advantages arising from it, such as, economy of powder, ease of recoil,
+and small stresses upon the mounting and its supporting structure.
+
+It had been laid down by Dr. Hutton in 1775, as one of the chief
+results of the systematic experiments carried out by him at Woolwich
+in extension of the inquiries originated by Robins, that if only the
+windage of guns could be reduced very important advantages would
+accrue; among others, a saving of at least one-third of the standard
+charges of powder would result. General Melville determined to give the
+Smasher the very minimum of windage necessary to prevent accident. The
+shortness of the bore favoured such a reduction. The large diameter,
+though at first it might appear to render necessary a correspondingly
+large windage, was actually an advantage from this point of view.
+For, instead of adhering to the orthodox practice with long guns, of
+making the windage roughly proportional to the diameter of the bore, he
+gave the Smasher a windage less than that of a much smaller long gun,
+arguing that though a certain mechanical clearance was necessary, yet
+the amount of this clearance was in no way dependent on the diameter
+of the shot or piece. The large size of the Smasher acted therefore to
+its advantage. The windage space through which the powder gases could
+escape was very small in relation to the area of the large ball on
+which they did useful work.
+
+But this divergence from the standard practice would appear to
+necessitate the provision of special ammunition for use with the
+Smasher: the nicely fitting sixty-eight pound ball would require to
+be specially made for it? And this would surely militate against
+the general adoption of the Smasher in the public service? No such
+difficulty confronted the inventor. For, curiously enough, the
+principle on which the dimensions of gun-bores and shot were fixed
+was the reverse of the principle which obtains to-day. Instead of the
+diameter of the _gun_ being of the nominal dimension and the diameter
+of the shot being equal to that of the gun minus the windage, the
+diameter of the _shot_ was the datum from which the amount of the
+windage and the calibre of the gun were determined.
+
+So, the size of the shot being fixed, a reduction of windage was
+obtainable in a new design of gun by boring it to a smaller than the
+standard diameter. And this was what the inventor of the Smasher
+did. The large ball, in combination with the restricted windage and
+the small charge of powder, gave the Smasher ballistic results far
+superior, relatively, to those obtained with the long gun. Its lack of
+ranging power was admitted. But for close action it was claimed that it
+would prove an invaluable weapon, especially in the defence of merchant
+ships.[86] Not only would its large ball make such holes in the light
+hull of an enemy privateer as would break through his beams and frames
+and perhaps send all hands to the pumps; but, projected with just
+sufficient velocity to carry it through an opponent’s timbers, it would
+thereby produce a maximum of splintering effect and put out of action
+guns, their crews, and perhaps the vessel itself.
+
+
+§
+
+On the lines of the Smasher the “lesser carronades,” more convenient in
+size and more easily worked, were cast, and quickly made a reputation
+in merchant shipping. The Smasher itself was offered to the admiralty,
+but was never fitted in a royal ship; though trials were carried
+out with it later with hollow or cored shot, to ascertain how these
+lighter balls compared in action with the solid 68-pounders. Meanwhile
+the Carron Company found a large market for the lighter patterns of
+carronade; the 24, 18, and 12-pounders were sold in large numbers to
+private ships and letters-of-marque, and to some of the frigates and
+smaller ships of the royal navy. The progress of the new ordnance was
+watched with interest by the board of admiralty. In 1779 we have Sir
+Charles Douglas writing to Sir Charles Middleton in full accord with
+his views on the desirability of mounting Carron 12-pounders on the
+poop of the _Duke_, and suggesting 24-pounders, three a side, upon
+her quarter-deck. To the same distinguished correspondent Captain
+Kempenfelt writes, deploring that no trials have yet been made with
+carronades. Shortly afterwards the navy board discusses the 68-pound
+Smasher and desires the master-general of ordnance to make experiment
+with it. A scale is drawn up by the navy board, moreover, and
+sanctioned by the admiralty, for arming different rates with 18-and
+12-pounder carronades. The larger classes of ships, the first, second,
+and third rates, have their quarter-decks already filled with guns; but
+accommodation is found for a couple of carronades on the forecastles,
+and for half a dozen on the poop, which for nearly a century past has
+served chiefly as a roof for the captain’s cabin. This is now timbered
+up and given three pairs of ports, making a total of eight ports
+for the reception of carronades. In the case of smaller ships less
+difficulty is experienced. Ports are readily cut in their forecastles
+and quarter-decks, and in some cases their poops are barricaded, to
+give accommodation for from four to a dozen carronades.[87]
+
+The new weapon found its way into most of our smaller ships, not always
+and solely as an addition to the existing long-gun armament, for use
+in special circumstances, but in many cases in lieu of the long guns
+of the establishment. The saving in weight and space gained by this
+substitution made the carronade especially popular in the smaller
+classes of frigate, the sloops, and brigs; many of which became almost
+entirely armed with the type. The weak feature of the carronade, which
+in the end was to prove fatal to it--its feeble range and penetrating
+power--was generally overlooked, or accepted as being more than
+compensated for by its many obvious advantages. The carronade, it was
+said by many, was the weapon specially suited to the favourite tactics
+of the British navy--a yard-arm action.
+
+There were others, however, who were inclined to emphasize the
+disability under which the carronade would lie if the enemy could
+contrive to avoid closing and keep just out of range. And on this
+topic, the relative merits of long gun and carronade as armament
+for the smaller ships, discussion among naval men was frequent and
+emphatic. The king’s service was divided into two schools. The
+advocates of long guns could quote many a case where, especially in
+chase, the superior range of the long gun had helped to win the day.
+The advocates of the carronade replied with recent and conclusive
+examples of victories won by short-gun ships which had been able to
+get to grips and quickly neutralize the advantages of a superior enemy
+armed with long guns. When challenged with the argument that, since
+the advantages of the carronade entirely disappear at long ranges it
+is essential that ships armed with them should be exceptionally fast
+sailers, they replied, that the very lightness of a carronade armament
+would, other things being equal, give ships so armed the property
+required. As for out-ranging, they were even ready to back their
+carronades in that respect, if only they were well charged with powder.
+It was a matter of faith with many that, in spite of Dr. Hutton’s
+published proof to the contrary, a considerable increase of range could
+be obtained by the expedient of shortening the gun’s recoil; so that in
+chase it was a common procedure to lash the breechings of carronades to
+the ship’s timbers, to prevent recoil and to help the shot upon its way.
+
+At first mechanical difficulties occurred in the fitting of the new
+carronade mountings which, though not due to any defect inherent in
+the equipments, nevertheless placed them under suspicion in certain
+quarters. Though the prototype had trunnions like a gun, the carronades
+afterwards cast were attached by lugs to wooden slides which recoiled
+on slotted carriages pivoted to the ship’s side timbers, the slide
+being secured to the carriage by a vertical bolt which passed down
+through the slot. The recoil was limited by breechings; but as these
+stretched continuously the bolt eventually brought up with a blow
+against the end of the slot in the carriage: the bolt broke, and
+the carronade was disabled. This happened at Praya Bay, where the
+carronades broke their beds, owing to slack breechings, after a few
+rounds. Captains complained, too, that the fire of the carronades was a
+danger to the shrouds and rigging.
+
+[Illustration: A CARRONADE]
+
+In spite of these views the popularity of the new ordnance increased so
+rapidly that in January, 1781, there were, according to the historian
+James, 429 ships in the royal navy which mounted carronades. On the
+merits of these weapons opinion was still very much divided. The board
+of ordnance was against their adoption; the navy board gave them a mild
+approval. In practice considerable discretion appears to have been
+granted to the commanders of ships in deciding what armament they
+should actually carry.[88] But the uncertainty of official opinion
+gave rise to a surprising anomaly: _the carronade, although officially
+countenanced, was not recognized as part of the orthodox armament of a
+ship_. What was the cause of this is not now clear. It has been said
+in explanation, that the carronade formed too fluctuating a basis on
+which to rate a ship’s force; that a long-gun basis afforded a key to
+the stores and complement of a ship, whereas carronades had little
+effect on either complement or stores; or that it may have been merely
+inertia on the part of the navy board. Whatever the cause, the ignoring
+of the carronade, in all official quotations of ships’ armaments, led
+to great uncertainty and confusion in estimating the relative force of
+our own and other navies, to suggestions of deception on the part of
+antagonists, to the bickering of historians and the bewilderment of the
+respective peoples. This extraordinary circumstance, that carronades
+with all their alleged advantages were not thought worthy to be ranked
+among the long guns of a ship, is commented on at length by James.
+“Whether,” he says, “they equalled in calibre the heaviest of these
+guns, added to their number a full third, or to their power a full
+half, still they remained as mere a blank in the ship’s nominal, or
+rated force, as the muskets in the arm-chest. On the other hand, the
+addition of a single pair of guns of the old construction, to a ship’s
+armament, removed her at once to a higher class and gave her, how novel
+or inconvenient soever, a new denomination.”
+
+While the products of the Carron firm were gaining unexpected success
+in the defence of merchant shipping, their value in ships of the line
+was not to remain long in doubt. Some of the heavier carronades had
+been mounted in the _Formidable_, _Duke_, and other ships, and their
+presence had a material effect in Admiral Rodney’s action of April,
+1782. As had been generally recognized, the carronade was especially
+suited to the British aims and methods of attack--the destruction of
+the enemy by a yard-arm action. To the French, whose strategy and
+methods were fundamentally different, its value was less apparent. So
+that for long this country reaped alone the benefit of its invention;
+until in somewhat half-hearted way France gradually adopted it, and
+then mostly in the smaller sizes, and more apparently with a view to
+defence than for offensive purposes. In the action with de Grasse the
+carronades of the British fleet operated, in the opening stages, as an
+additional incentive to the enemy to avoid close quarters. And later,
+at the in-fighting, their weight of metal contributed in no small
+degree to the superiority of fire which finally forced him to surrender.
+
+It was later in this same year that the carronade won its most dramatic
+victory as armament of a small ship. In order to give a thorough trial
+to the system the navy board had ordered the _Rainbow_, an old 44, to
+be experimentally armed with large carronades, some of which were of
+as large a calibre as the original Smasher; by which her broadside
+weight of metal was almost quadrupled. Thus armed she put to sea and
+one day fell in with the French frigate _Hébé_, armed with 18-pounder
+long guns. Luring her enemy to a close-quarter combat, the _Rainbow_
+suddenly poured into the Frenchman the whole weight of her broadside.
+The resistance was short, the _Hébé_ surrendered, and proved to be a
+prize of exceptional value as a model for frigate design. The capture
+was quoted as convincing proof of the value of a carronade armament,
+and the type continued from this time to grow in popularity, until the
+termination of the war in 1783 put a stop to further experiments with
+it.
+
+
+§
+
+Throughout the long war which broke out ten years later the carronade
+played a considerable part in the succession of duels and actions which
+had their climax off Trafalgar. It was now generally adopted as a
+secondary form of armament, captains being permitted, upon application,
+to vary at discretion the proportion of long-gun to carronade armament
+which they wished to carry. In the smaller classes especially, a
+preponderance of carronades was frequently accepted; the accession
+of force caused by the substitution of small carronades for 6-and
+9-pounder long guns in brigs and sloops could hardly be disputed. In
+ships-of-the-line the larger sizes continued in favour. The French now
+benefited, too, by their adoption; on more than one occasion their
+poop and forecastle carronades, loaded with langrage, played havoc
+with our personnel. Spaniards and Dutchmen did not carry them. How far
+their absence contributed to their defeats it is not now to inquire;
+but how the tide of battle would have been affected by them--if the
+Dutch fleet, for instance, had carried them at Camperdown--may be a not
+unprofitable speculation.
+
+Early in the war the carronade system was to score its greatest
+defensive triumph, and this, by a happy coincidence, in the hands of
+the old _Rainbow’s_ commander.
+
+The _Glatton_, one of a few East Indiamen which had been bought by the
+admiralty, was fitted out in 1795 as a ship of war, and left Sheerness
+in the summer of the following year under the command of Captain Henry
+Trollope to join a squadron in the North Sea. At her commander’s
+request she was armed with carronades exclusively. She was without
+ahead or astern fire, without a single long bow or stern chaser; she
+carried 68-pounder carronades along her sides, whose muzzles were so
+large that they almost filled the small port-holes of the converted
+Indiaman and prevented more than a small traverse. Off the Flanders
+coast she fell in one night with six French frigates, a brig-corvette,
+and a cutter; and at ten o’clock a close action began. The _Glatton_
+was engaged by her antagonists on both sides, her yard-arms almost
+touching those of the enemy. She proved to be a very dangerous foe.
+Her carronades, skilfully pointed and served by supply parties who
+worked port and starboard pieces alternately, poured out their heavy
+missiles at point-blank range. So heavy was her fire that one by one
+the frigates had to haul off, severely damaged, and the _Glatton_ was
+left at last to spend the night repairing her rigging unmolested, but
+in the expectation that the French commodore would renew the attack in
+the morning. To her surprise no action was offered. The blows of the
+68-pounders had done their work. Followed by the _Glatton_ with a “brag
+countenance,” the enemy retired with his squadron in the direction of
+Flushing.
+
+The action had more than one lesson to teach, however, and no more
+ships, except small craft, were armed after this upon the model of the
+_Glatton_.
+
+We must at this point mention an experiment made in the year 1796,
+at the instance of Sir Samuel Bentham, in the mounting of carronades
+on a non-recoil system. Sir Samuel, who in the service of Russia had
+armed long-boats and other craft with ordnance thus mounted, produced
+arguments before the navy board for attaching carronades rigidly to
+ships’ timbers; so as to allow of no other recoil than that resulting
+from the elasticity of the carriage and the materials connecting it
+to the ship. The ordnance board reported against the new idea. Sir
+Samuel pointed out that the idea was not new. Both the largest and the
+smallest pieces used on board ship (viz. the mortar and the swivel)
+had always been mounted on the principle of non-recoil. He showed
+how bad was the principle of first allowing a gun and its slide or
+carriage to generate momentum in recoil and then of attempting to
+absorb that momentum in the small stretch of a breeching-rope. He
+argued that a rifle held at the shoulder is not allowed to recoil: if
+it is, the rifleman smarts for it. He instanced the lashing of guns
+fast to the ship, especially in chase, for the purpose of making them
+carry farther. No; the novelty consisted in preparing suitable and
+appropriate fastenings for intermediate sizes of guns between the
+mortar and the swivel. The adoption of his proposal, he contended,
+would result in smaller guns’ crews, quicker loading, and greater
+safety.
+
+As a result of these arguments certain sloops designed by him were
+armed on this principle; and in other cases, notably in the case
+of the boats used at the siege of Acre, the carronades and smaller
+types of long gun were successfully mounted and worked without recoil
+by attaching their carriages to vertical fir posts, built into the
+hull structures to serve as front pivots. But, generally, the system
+was found to be impracticable. The pivots successfully withstood
+the stresses of carronades fired with normal charges of powder; no
+permanent injury resulted to the elastic hull structures over which the
+blows were spread. But the factor of safety allowed by this arrangement
+was insufficient to cover the wild use of ordnance in emergencies.
+The regulation of charges and the prevention of double-shotting was
+difficult in action, and pieces were liable to be over-charged in the
+excitement of battle in a way which Sir Samuel Bentham had failed to
+realize. Pivots were broken, ships’ structures strained, and the whole
+system found ill-adapted for warship requirements.
+
+It was not till the war of 1812 that the fatal weakness of the
+carronade, as primary armament, was fully revealed. The Americans had
+not developed the carronade policy to the same extent as ourselves,
+for transatlantic opinion was never at this period enamoured of the
+short-range gun. Their well-built merchant ships, unhampered by tonnage
+rules or by the convoy system which had taken so much of the stamina
+from British shipping, were accustomed to trust to their speed and
+good seamanship to keep an enemy at a distance. Their frigates, built
+under less pedantic restrictions as to size and weight, were generally
+swifter, stouter and more heavily armed than ours. And, though they
+included carronades among their armament, these were not generally in
+so large a proportion as in our ships, and in part were represented
+by a superior type--the colombiad, a hybrid weapon of proportions
+intermediate between the carronade and the long gun. Our ships often
+depended heavily upon the carronade element of their armament.
+Experience was soon to confirm what foresight might, surely, have
+deduced: namely, that when pitted against an enemy who could choose his
+range and shoot with tolerable accuracy the carronade would find itself
+in certain circumstances reduced to absolute impotence.
+
+This was to be the fate and predicament of our ships on Lakes Erie and
+Ontario, in face of the Americans. “I found it impossible to bring
+them to close action,” the English commodore reported. “We remained in
+this mortifying situation five hours, having only six guns in all the
+squadron that would reach the enemy, not a carronade being fired.” The
+same lesson was to be enforced shortly afterwards on the Americans.
+One of their frigates, the _Essex_, armed almost exclusively with
+carronades, was fought by an English ship, the _Phœbe_, armed with
+long guns. The _Essex_, it should be noted, possessed the quality
+essential for a carronade armament, namely, superior speed. But the
+_Phœbe_ fell in with her in circumstances when, owing to damage, her
+superior speed could not be utilized. The captain of the _Phœbe_ was
+able to choose the range at which the action should be fought. He kept
+at a “respectful distance”: within range of his own long guns and out
+of range of his opponent’s carronades. Both sides fought well, but the
+result was a foregone conclusion. The _Essex_, disabled and on fire,
+had to surrender. From that time the carronade was discredited. For
+some years after the peace it found a place in the armament of all
+classes of British ships, but it was a fallen favourite. The French
+commission which visited this country in 1835 reported that, although
+still accounted part of the regular armament of older ships, the
+carronade was being replaced to a great extent by light long guns in
+newer construction. Opinion certainly hardened more and more against
+the type, and, gradually falling into disuse, it was at last altogether
+abandoned.
+
+There was a feature of the carronade, however, which if it had been
+exploited might have made the story of the carronade much longer:
+might, in fact, have made the carronade the starting-point of the
+great evolution which ordnance was to undergo in the second quarter
+of the nineteenth century. We refer to the large area of its bore, as
+rendering it specially suitable for the projection of hollow spheres
+charged with powder or combustibles: in short, for shells. Although,
+as shown by the inscription on the model presented to him, General
+Melville’s invention covered the use of shell and carcass shot, yet
+there was no general appreciation in this country, at the time of
+its invention, of the possibilities which the new weapon presented
+for throwing charges of explosive or combustible matter against the
+hulls of ships. Empty hollow shot were tried in the original Smasher
+for comparison against solid shot, in case the latter might prove
+too heavy;--and these, as was pointed out by an eminent writer on
+artillery,[89] possessed in an accentuated degree all the disadvantages
+of the carronade system, their adoption being tantamount to a reversion
+to the long-exploded granite shot of the medieval ordnance--but the
+use of _filled_ shell in connection with carronades does not appear
+to have been seriously considered. The disadvantages of filled shell
+as compared with solid shot were fairly obvious; their inferiority in
+range, in penetrative power, in accuracy of flight, their inability to
+stand double-shotting or battering charges--all these were capable of
+proof or demonstration. Their destructive effect, both explosive and
+incendiary, as compared with that of uncharged shot, was surprisingly
+under-estimated. Had it been otherwise, the carronade principle would
+have led naturally to the introduction of the shell gun. “The redeeming
+trait in the project of General Melville,” wrote Dahlgren, “the
+redeeming trait which, if properly appreciated and developed, might
+have anticipated the Paixhans system by half a century, was hardly
+thought of. The use of shells was, at best, little more than a vague
+conception; its formidable powers unrealized, unnoticed, were doomed to
+lie dormant for nearly half a century after the carronade was invented,
+despite the evidence of actual trial and service.”
+
+In other respects the carronade did good service in the development
+of naval gunnery. Its introduction raised (as we have seen) the whole
+question of windage and its effects, and was productive of general
+improvement in the reduction and regulation of the windage in all types
+of gun. By it the advantages of quick firing were clearly demonstrated.
+And by its adoption in the ship-of-the-line it contributed largely to
+bring about that approach to uniformity of calibre which was so marked
+a feature of the armament schemes of the first half of the nineteenth
+century.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE TRUCK CARRIAGE
+
+
+From the small truck, _trochos_, or wheel on which it ran, the
+four-wheeled carriage which served for centuries as a mounting for the
+long guns of fighting ships has come to be known as a truck carriage:
+the gun, with trunnions cast upon it, as a truck gun.
+
+Artillery being from the first an affair common, in almost all
+respects, to land and to sea service, and being applied to ships as
+the result of its prior development on land, it would be expected that
+naval practice should in its evolution follow in the wake of that on
+land. And so it has, in the main, until the time of the Crimean War;
+since when, completely revolutionizing and in turn revolutionized by
+the rapid development of naval architecture and material, it has by far
+surpassed land practice both in variety and power. But while the wooden
+ship imposed its limitations no branch of affairs, perhaps, appeared to
+be more conservative in its practice than naval gunnery. No material
+seemed less subject to change, no service less inclined to draw
+lessons from war experience. And in recent years the truck carriage
+has often been taken as typifying the great lack of progress in all
+naval material which existed between the sixteenth and the nineteenth
+centuries.
+
+Whether there was in fact so great a stagnation as is commonly
+supposed, and to what causes such as existed may have been due, we may
+discern from an examination of the truck carriage itself and of its
+development from the earliest known forms of naval gun mounting.
+
+
+§
+
+The first large ordnance to be used on land, having as its object
+the breaching of walls and gates and the reduction of fortresses,
+was mounted solidly in the ground in a way which would have been
+impracticable on board a ship at sea. In time, as the energy of
+discharge increased, this method of embedding the gun in soil grew
+dangerous: a certain recoil was necessary to absorb and carry off the
+large stresses which would otherwise have shattered the piece. In time,
+too, as the power of explosives and the strength of guns increased,
+their size diminished; cannon, as we have seen, became more portable.
+No longer embedded in earth or fixed on ponderous trestles, they were
+transported from place to place on wheeled carriages. And on these
+carriages, massive enough to stand the shock of discharge and well
+adapted to allow a certain measure of recoil, the land ordnance were
+fired with a tolerable degree of safety.
+
+Both of these methods were followed in principle when guns came to be
+used at sea.
+
+In the early Mediterranean galley the cannon was mounted in a wooden
+trough placed fore and aft on the deck in the bow of the vessel. The
+trough was secured to the deck. In rear of the cannon’s breech and in
+contact with it was a massive bitt of timber, worked vertically, which
+took the force of the recoil. Later, as force of powder increased, this
+non-recoil system of mounting ordnance failed. The cannon had to be
+given a certain length of free recoil in order that, by the generation
+of momentum, the energy which would otherwise be transmitted to the
+ship in the form of a powerful blow might be safely diverted and more
+gradually absorbed. Hence free recoil was allowed within certain
+limits, the cannon being secured with ropes or chains.
+
+But, as had doubtless been found already with land ordnance, the
+violence of recoil depended largely upon the mass of the recoiling
+piece; for any given conditions of discharge the heavier the gun, the
+less violent was its recoil. It was a natural expedient, then, to make
+the recoiling mass as large as possible. And this could be effected,
+without the addition of useless and undesirable extra deadweight, by
+making the wooden trough itself partake of the recoil. The cannon was
+therefore lashed solidly to the trough, and both gun and trough were
+left free to recoil in the desired direction. The primitive mounting
+helped, in short, by augmenting the weight of the recoiling mass, to
+give a quiet recoil and some degree of control over the piece.
+
+Later, this trough or baulk of timber performed an additional function
+when used as a mounting for a certain form of gun. When the piece was
+a breech-loader--like those recovered from the wreck of the _Mary
+Rose_--the trough had at its rear end a massive flange projecting
+upwards, forming the rear working face for the wedge which secured the
+removable breech chamber to the gun. “The shot and wadde being first
+put into the chase,” wrote Norton in 1628, “then is the chamber to be
+firmly wedged into the tayle of the chase and carriage.” The mounting
+was, in fact, an integral part of the gun. In the 8-inch breech-loading
+equipment of the _Mary Rose_ which lies in the museum of the Royal
+United Service Institution in Whitehall there is evidence of two small
+rear wheels. Most of these early ship carriages had two wheels, but
+for the more powerful muzzle-loaders introduced toward the middle of
+the sixteenth century, four came into favour. With four wheels our
+timber baulk has become a primitive form of the truck carriage of the
+succeeding centuries.[90]
+
+But perhaps the truck carriage may more properly be regarded as a
+derivative of the wheeled mounting on which, as we have seen, land
+ordnance came eventually to be worked. The ship being a floating
+fort, the mode of mounting the guns would be that in vogue in forts
+and garrisons ashore, and the land pieces and their massive carriages
+would be transferred, without modification, for use on shipboard. How
+different the conditions under which they worked! The great cannon,
+whose weight and high-wheeled carriages were positive advantages
+when firing from land emplacements, suitably inclined, were found to
+work at great disadvantage under sea conditions. Their great weight
+strained the decks that bore them, and their wheeled carriages proved
+difficult to control and even dangerous in any weather which caused
+a rolling or pitching of the gun platform. With the introduction of
+portholes their unfitness for ship work was doubtless emphasized;
+there was neither height nor deck-space enough to accommodate them
+between decks. Hence the necessity for a form of carriage suitable
+for the special conditions of sea service, as well as for a size of
+gun which would be within the capacity of a ship’s crew to work. In
+the early Tudor ships the forms of mounting were various: guns were
+mounted on two or four-wheeled carriages, or sometimes, especially the
+large bombards, upon “scaffolds” of timber.[91] By Elizabeth’s reign
+the limit had been set to the size of the gun; the demi-cannon had
+been found to be the heaviest piece which could be safely mounted,
+traversed, and discharged. This and the smaller guns which were plied
+with such effect against the Spanish Armada were mounted on low,
+wheeled, wooden carriages which were the crude models from which the
+truck carriage, the finished article of the nineteenth century, was
+subsequently evolved. Even then the carriages had parts which were
+similar and similarly named to those of the later truck carriage; they
+had trunnion-plates and sockets, capsquares, beds, quoins, axle-trees,
+and trucks.[92] On them the various pieces--the demi-cannons, the
+culverins, the basilisks and sakers--were worked by the nimble and
+iron-sinewed seamen; run out by tackles through their ports, and
+traversed by handspikes. Loaded and primed and laboriously fired by
+means of spluttering linstocks, the guns recoiled upon discharge to a
+length and in a direction which could not be accurately predicted. The
+smaller guns, at any rate, had no breechings to restrain them: these
+ropes being only used for the purpose of securing the guns at sea, and
+chiefly in foul weather.[93]
+
+On the whole these low sea carriages appear to have proved
+satisfactory, and their continued use is evidence that they were
+considered superior to those of the land service pattern. “The fashion
+of those carriages we use at sea,” wrote Sir Henry Manwayring in 1625,
+“are much better than those of the land; yet the Venetians and others
+use the other in their shipping.” In essentials the carriage remained
+the same from Elizabeth to Victoria. Surviving many attempts at its
+supercession in favour of mechanically complicated forms of mounting,
+it kept its place in naval favour for a surprising length of time;
+challenging with its primitive simplicity all the elaborate mechanisms
+which pitted themselves against it.
+
+An illuminating passage from Sir Jonas Moore’s treatise on artillery,
+written in 1689 and copied from the _Hydrographie_ of the Abbé
+Fournier, shows at a glance the manner in which the armament of small
+Mediterranean craft of that period was disposed, and the method on
+which the guns were mounted. “At sea the ordnance are mounted upon
+small carriages, and upon four and sometimes two low wheels without any
+iron work. Each galley carries ordinarily nine pieces of ordnance in
+its prow or chase, of which the greatest, and that which delivers his
+shot just over the very stem, and lies just in the middle, is called
+the Corsiere or ‘cannon of course’ or ‘chase cannon,’ which in time
+of fight doth the most effectual service. It carries generally a shot
+of thirty-three or forty pounds weight, and are generally very long
+pieces. It recoils all along the middle of the galley to the mast,
+where they place some soft substance to hinder its farther recoil, that
+it might not endamage the mast. Next to this Corsiere are placed two
+Minions on each side, which carries a five or six-pound ball; and next
+to these are the Petrieroes, which are loaded with stone-shot to shoot
+near at hand. Thirdly, there are some small pieces, which are open
+at the breech, and called Petrieroes a Braga, and are charged with a
+moveable chamber loaded with base and bar shot, to murder near at hand.
+And the furthest from the Corsiere are the Harquebuss a Croc, which are
+charged with small cross-bar shot, to cut sails and rigging. All these
+small pieces are mounted on strong pins of iron having rings, in which
+are placed the trunnions with a socket, so that they are easily turned
+to any quarter.
+
+“All the guns are mounted upon wheels and carriages; moreover the
+Petrieroes, which are planted in the forecastle and quarter to defend
+the prow and stern, are mounted upon strong pins of iron without any
+reverse; the greatest pieces of battery are planted the lowest, just
+above the surface of the water, the smallest in the waist and steerage,
+and with the Petrieroes in quarter-deck and forecastle. Upon the sea,
+to load great ordnance they never load with a ladle, but make use
+of cartridges, as well for expedition as security in not firing the
+powder, which in time of fight is in a continual motion.”
+
+Before passing to a consideration of the truck carriage in detail there
+is an important circumstance to be noted with regard to the conditions
+under which its design and supply to the naval service were regulated.
+It is a remarkable fact that, during almost the whole of what may be
+called the truck carriage era, the arming of ships with ordnance,
+the supply of the requisite guns and their carriages, the design of
+the guns and their mode of mounting, was no part of a naval officer’s
+affair. The Board of Ordnance had control both of land and of sea
+artillery. From the death of Sir William Wynter onwards the mastership
+of the ordnance by sea was absorbed into the mastership of the ordnance
+by land. From this arrangement, as may be imagined, many inconveniences
+arose, and many efforts were made at various times to disjoin the
+offices and to place the armament of ships under naval control. For,
+apart from the fact that at an early date the ordnance office acquired
+“an unenviable reputation for sloth and incapacity,”[94] the interests
+of the sea service were almost bound to suffer under such a system. And
+in fact the inconvenience suffered by the navy, through the delays and
+friction resulting from the system whereby all dealings with guns and
+their mountings and ammunition were the work of military officials,
+was notorious. The anomalous arrangement survived, in spite of the
+efforts of reformers, till far into the nineteenth century. Probably
+the Board of Ordnance argued honestly against reintroducing a dual
+control for land and sea artillery material. They had, at any rate,
+strong interests in favour of the status quo. For, writing in the
+year 1660, Sir William Slingsby noted regretfully that “the masters
+of the ordnance of England, having been ever since of great quality
+and interest, would never suffer such a collop to be cut out of their
+employment.”
+
+The arming of ships, therefore, apart from the original assignment of
+the armament, remained in the province of the military authorities.
+
+
+§
+
+An examination of the design of the perfected truck carriage and a
+glance at the records of its performances in action show that the
+advocates of rival gun mountings were not altogether incorrect in their
+contention that the manner in which the broadside armament of our ships
+was mounted was wrong in principle and unsatisfactory in actual detail.
+The many defects of the truck carriage were indeed only too obvious.
+
+In the first place, the breechings were so reeved that the force
+sustained by them in opposition to the recoil of the gun tended
+inevitably to cause the piece to jump. The reaction of the breeching
+acted along lines below the level of the gun-axis; the breeching
+therefore exerted a lifting force which, instead of pressing down
+all of the four trucks upon the deck and thus deadening the recoil,
+tended to raise the fore trucks in the air and reduce the friction
+of the carriage upon the deck. The larger the gun and the higher the
+gun-axis above the trucks, the greater was this tendency of the gun
+to lift and overturn. If the rear trucks, about which the gun and
+carriage tended to revolve, had been set at some distance in rear of
+the centre of gravity of the equipment, it would have been rendered
+thereby more stable. But space did not permit of this. And actually
+they were so placed that, when discharge was most violent, the weight
+of the equipment was scarcely sufficient to oppose effectively the
+tendency to jump. Again, the anchoring of the breeching to two points
+in the ship’s frames, one on either side of the gun, was wrong and
+liable to have serious consequences. For with this arrangement not only
+had the breeching to be continuously “middled” as the gun shifted its
+bearing, but even when accurately adjusted the “legs” of the breeching
+bore an unequal strain when the gun was fired off the beam. In other
+words, the horizontal angles subtended between the gun-axis, when off
+the beam, and the two lines of the breeching were unequal; one side of
+the breeching took more of the blow of gunfire than the other; and not
+infrequently the gun carriage was thrown round violently out of the
+line of recoil, with damage to the equipment and injury to the crew.
+
+The design of the carriage was in no way influenced, apparently, by a
+desire to obtain a minimum area of port opening in combination with a
+maximum traverse of the gun. For the broad span of the front part of
+the carriage soon caused the gun to be “wooded” when slewed off the
+beam. And a further disadvantage of this broad span was in the effect
+it had of automatically bringing the gun right abeam every time it was
+hauled out after loading: the front span of the carriage coming square
+with the timbers of the port-sill.
+
+As for the system of recoil, while the recoiling of the carriage with
+the gun had an advantage in reducing the stresses brought on the hull
+structure, yet this arrangement had the correlative disadvantage that
+the carriage as well as the gun had to be hauled out again. And, as
+regards safety, it is a matter for surprise that the system of chocking
+recoil by means of large ropes--of absorbing the momentum of a heavy
+gun and its carriage in a distance corresponding to the stretch of
+the breechings under their suddenly applied load--was not far more
+injurious than experience proved to be the case. Even so, the results
+obtained from it were far from satisfactory. “It is a lamentable
+truth”--we quote Sir William Congreve, writing in 1811--“that numbers
+of men are constantly maimed, one way or another, by the recoiling of
+the heavy ordnance used on board ships of war. Most of the damage is
+done by the random recoil of the carriage which, moving with the gun
+along no certain path, is much affected by the motion of the vessel and
+the inequalities of the deck. It is difficult to know, within a few
+feet, to where the carriage will come, and the greatest watchfulness
+is necessary on all hands to prevent accidents.” This refers, observe,
+to the truck gun under control. How terrible an uncontrolled gun could
+be, may be read in the pages of Victor Hugo’s _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_,
+of which romance the breaking loose of a piece on the gun-deck of a
+frigate forms a central incident. It was conjectured that the old
+_Victory_, Admiral Balchen’s flagship which went down off the Casquets
+in 1744, “mouse and man,” was lost through the breaking loose of her
+great guns in a gale.[95]
+
+[Illustration: A TRUCK GUN]
+
+The accessories of the truck carriage were a source of frequent
+accident. The attachment of breechings and tackles to the ship’s side
+often involved disablement in action, the numerous bolts being driven
+in as missiles among the crew, who were also in danger of having their
+limbs caught up in the maze of ropes and trappings with which the deck
+round the gun was encumbered. Considered as a mechanism the whole
+gun-equipment was a rude and primitive affair; the clumsy carriage
+run out to battery by laborious tackles, the cast-iron gun laid by
+a simple wedge, the whole equipment traversed by prising round with
+handspikes--by exactly the same process, it has been remarked, as that
+by which the savage moved a log in the beginning of the world.
+
+_Why, then, did the truck carriage maintain its long supremacy?_
+
+The answer is, that with all its acknowledged defects it had merits
+which universally recommended it, while its successive rivals exhibited
+defects or disadvantages sufficient to prevent their adoption to its
+own exclusion. It was a case, in fact, of the survival of the fittest.
+And if we examine its various features in the light of the records
+of its performances in action (the truck carriage appears in the
+background of most of our naval letters and biographies), we shall
+understand why it was not easily displaced from favour with generation
+after generation of our officers and seamen.
+
+In the first place the truck carriage, a simple structure of resilient
+elm, with bed, cheek-plates, and trunnions strongly fitted together and
+secured by iron bolts, was better adapted than any other form for the
+prevention of excessive stresses, resulting from the shock of recoil,
+on either gun or ship’s structure. By the expedient of allowing the
+whole gun equipment to recoil freely across the deck, by allowing the
+energy of recoil to assume the form of kinetic energy given to the
+gun and carriage, the violent reactionary stresses due to the sudden
+combustion of the gunpowder were safely diverted from the ship’s
+structure, which was thus relieved of nearly the whole of the firing
+stresses. Moreover, by allowing the gun to recoil readily under the
+influence of the powder-gases the gun itself was saved from excessive
+stresses which would otherwise have shattered it. From this point of
+view the weight of the carriage, relatively to that of the gun, was of
+considerable importance. If the carriage had been at all too heavy it
+would not have yielded sufficiently under the blow of the gun, and,
+howsoever strongly made, would eventually have been destroyed, if it
+had not by its inertia caused the gun to break; if too light, the
+violence of the recoil would have torn loose the breechings. Actually,
+and as the result of a process of trial-and-error continuously
+carried on, the weight of the finally evolved elm carriage was so
+nicely adapted to that of its gun that a recoil of the most suitable
+proportions was generally obtained, a free yet not too boisterous
+run back. This, of course, upon an even keel. Conditions varied when
+the guns were at sea upon a moving platform. With the ship heeled
+under a strong wind the weather guns were often fired with difficulty
+owing to the violence of the recoil. On the other hand the listing of
+the ship when attacking an enemy from windward favoured the lee guns
+by providing a natural ramp up which they smoothly recoiled and down
+which they ran by gravity to battery, as in a shore emplacement. Of
+which advantage, as we know, British sea tactics made full use at every
+opportunity.
+
+It was strong, simple, and self-contained. Metal carriages, whose
+claims were periodically under examination, proved brittle, too rigid,
+heavy, and dangerous from their liability to splinter. Gunslides,
+traverses, or structures laid on the deck to form a definite path for
+the recoil of the gun (such as the Swedish ships of Chapman’s time, for
+example, carried) were disliked on account of their complication, the
+deck-space occupied, and the difficulty which their use entailed of
+keeping the deck under the gun dry and free from rotting; though beds
+laid so as to raise the guns to the level of the ports were sometimes
+fitted, and were indeed a necessity in the earlier days owing to the
+large sheer and camber given to the decks. The use of compressors, or
+of adjustable friction devices, in any form, for limiting the recoil,
+was objected to on account of the possibilities which they presented
+for accident owing to the forgetfulness of an excited crew. The truck
+carriage, being self-contained and independent of external adjustment,
+was safe in this respect.
+
+The four wood trucks were of the correct form and size to give the
+results required. The resistance of a truck to rolling depends largely
+upon the relative diameters of itself and its axle. It was thus
+possible, by making gun-carriage trucks of small diameter and their
+axles relatively large, to obtain the following effect: on gunfire
+the carriage started from rest suddenly, the trucks skidding on the
+deck without rotating and thus checking by their friction the first
+violent motion of recoil; during the latter phase of the recoil the
+trucks rotated, and the carriage ran smoothly back until checked by the
+breechings.
+
+The friction of the trucks on the deck was also affected, however,
+by another feature of the design: the position of the trunnions
+relatively to the axis of the gun. How important was this position as
+influencing the history of land artillery, we have already seen. Truck
+guns were nearly always “quarter-hung,” or cast with their trunnions
+slightly below their axis, so as to cause the breech to exert a
+downward pressure on firing, and thus augment the friction of the rear
+trucks on the deck and check the recoil. The position of the trunnions
+was studied from yet another point of view: namely, to give the minimum
+of jump to the gun and ensure a smooth start to the recoil. With this
+object they were so placed that the two ends of the gun were not
+equally balanced about the trunnion axis, but a preponderance of about
+one-twentieth of the weight of the gun was given to the breech-end,
+thus bringing a slight pressure, due to deadweight alone, upon the
+quoin.
+
+As for this quoin or primitive wedge by which the gun was roughly laid,
+this had a great advantage over the screw (which gained a footing, as
+an alternative, when the carronade came into use) in that it allowed
+of rapid changes of elevation of the gun. Hence, though the quoin was
+liable to jump from its bed on gunfire and do injury to the crew, it
+kept its place as an accessory almost as long as the truck carriage
+itself survived.
+
+There was one advantage possessed by the truck carriage which was
+perhaps the most important of all: its superior transportability.
+The gun equipment was easily transferable, and what this meant to
+the seaman may be gathered from the accounts of the way in which, in
+sailing-ship days, ships’ armaments were continually being shifted.
+The armament, we have noted, was not embodied, as it is to-day, as an
+integral part of the design of the ship. The guns and their carriages
+were in the nature of stock articles, which could be changed in size,
+number and position according to the whim of the captain or the service
+of the ship. And there was every reason why all parties concerned, and
+especially the ordnance people, should tend to standardize the forms of
+guns and carriages, to keep them self-contained and as independent as
+possible of the special requirements of individual ships or positions.
+The shifting of guns was constantly going on in a commissioned ship.
+At sea they were lashed against the sides so as to leave as clear
+a deck as possible. In chase a shifting of guns, among other heavy
+weights, was resorted to in order that the vessel should not lose
+way by plunging heavily. If she set sail on a long voyage some of the
+guns were struck down into the hold, to stiffen her and give her an
+increased stability. And on her return to harbour the guns might be
+removed for examination and repair by the ordnance officials, the ship
+being laid alongside a sheer hulk for the purpose. In the days before
+the sheathing of ships’ bottoms was successfully practised, and in
+the absence of docks, it was constantly necessary to careen ships for
+the repair of their ground-timbers, for the cleaning of their sides
+and the caulking of their seams. This, again, necessitated a shifting
+or complete removal of most of their stores and ordnance. Great
+advantages were offered, therefore, from having gun-carriages compact,
+self-contained, and capable of being quickly removed from one place to
+another.
+
+
+§
+
+Having inspected the truck carriage in some detail, let us now briefly
+glance at the development of its use which took place in the last
+hundred years of its service, between the middle of the eighteenth and
+the middle of the nineteenth centuries.
+
+The stream of improvement in naval gunnery began to flow strongly under
+the administration of Lord Anson. New methods of firing, experiments
+with priming tubes to replace the primitive powder horns and trains
+of vent powder, and gun locks to replace the dangerous and unreliable
+slow match and linstock,[96] were under trial in the fleets commanded
+by Admiral Hawke, but with results not altogether satisfactory.
+The locks supplied were lacking in mechanical precision, and the
+tubes--“very pernicious things” they were voted--were apt to fly out
+and wound the men. But that the unsatisfactory results obtained were
+not due to defects inherent in the new devices was soon clearly proved.
+Twenty years later an eminent gunnery officer, Sir Charles Douglas,
+by perseverance and an enthusiastic attention to mechanical detail,
+succeeded in making both locks and priming tubes a practical success,
+greatly enhancing by their aid the rate and effectiveness of fire of
+the great guns. Flint-locks of his own design he bought and fitted
+to the guns of his ship at his private expense. Flannel-bottomed
+cartridges, to replace the parchment-covered cartridges which had
+caused so much fouling, and goose-quill priming tubes, were provided
+by him, and to him is certainly due the credit for initiating the
+series of improvements in material which, trivial as they may seem in
+detail, yet in the aggregate had the effect of placing our gunnery at a
+relatively high level in the ensuing wars.
+
+In addition to introducing improvements in methods of firing, Sir
+Charles Douglas did much to improve the efficiency of the truck
+carriages themselves. On his appointment to the _Duke_ in 1779 he at
+once began to put his schemes in hand. To ease the recoil of the guns
+and to save their breechings he devised and fitted steel springs in
+some way to the latter; with such surprising good effect (he reported)
+that even with a restricted length of recoil no breeching, not even
+that of a 32-pounder weather gun double-shotted and fired over a
+slippery deck, was ever known to break. The recoil he further eased by
+loading the truck carriage with shot, which he slung on it, thereby
+augmenting the recoiling mass. He also proposed and tried another
+apparatus having the same effect: suspended weights, secured to the
+carriage by ropes reeved through fairleads, which on recoil the gun was
+made to lift. Which weights also had an effect in helping to run the
+gun out again which he calculated to be equal to that of two extra men
+on the tackles.
+
+Perhaps the principal improvements due to Sir Charles Douglas were
+those which had as their object the firing of ships’ guns on other
+bearings than right abeam. He realized the importance of possessing a
+large arc of training for his guns; and with this object he cleared
+away all possible obstructions on the gun decks of the _Duke_, removing
+and modifying knees, standards and pillars to allow his guns to be
+pointed a full four points before and abaft the beam: a degree of
+obliquity hitherto unknown in the navy for broadside armament. To
+traverse the carriages quickly to the required line of bearing he had
+eyebolts fitted in line between the guns for attachment to the tackles;
+and to shorten and control the recoil and thus allow of firing on an
+extreme bearing in a confined space, and also to improve the rate of
+fire, he shod the carriage-trucks with wedges designed to act as drags.
+“We now dare to fire our guns without running them out,” he wrote to
+Lord Barham, “and so as to admit of the ports being shut, with certain
+impunity, even to the obliquity of three points before or abaft the
+beam. A wedge properly adapted is placed behind each truck, to make up
+for the reduction of space to recoil in, in firing to windward or in
+rolling weather. The gun first ascends the wedges by rotation, and when
+stopped, performs the remainder of her recoil as a sledge, so feebly
+as scarce to bring her breeching tight. The bottoms of the wedges, to
+augment their friction against the deck, are pinked, tarred, and rubbed
+with very rough sand or with coarse coal dust. This method has also, I
+hear, been adopted in the _Union_.”
+
+It was also adopted in the _Formidable_, in which ship Sir Charles
+fought as first captain to Admiral Rodney in the great fight which
+took place three years after the above was written. At the Battle
+of the Saints not a single goose-quill failed in the _Formidable_,
+nor did a gun require to be wormed so long as the flannel-bottomed
+cartridges held out. Of the hundred and twenty-six locks fitted in
+the _Duke_, only one failed; with this exception a single Kentish
+black flint served for each gun throughout the whole engagement. The
+oblique fire which our ships were enabled to employ so shattered the
+enemy by the unexpectedly rapid and concentrated fire poured into him,
+that victory was not left long in doubt; the toll of his killed and
+wounded was enormous. The _Duke_, it was reckoned, fired twice as many
+effective shots as would have been possible under the old system. The
+_Formidable_ reported that two, and sometimes three, broadsides were
+fired at every passing Frenchman before he could bring a gun to bear in
+reply.[97] If all the ships of the fleet, it was said, had been able to
+use their guns as they were used in these two, very few of the enemy
+would have escaped. The advantage accruing to the British fleets from
+the improvements initiated and developed by Sir Charles Douglas and
+other captains of his time was palpable and undisputed. It is possible,
+however, that the total effect produced by all these developments in
+gunnery material, both in this action and in those of the following
+war, may have been insufficiently emphasized by historians?
+
+It is to the war which broke out with the United States of America
+in 1812 that we must turn to see the truck equipment working at
+its highest point of efficiency. By this time the advantage of
+gun-sights[98] for giving accuracy of aim has been seized by a few
+individual officers, and sights of various patterns have been fitted
+by enthusiasts. No official encouragement is given, however, to
+experiments with sights and scales and disparting devices, and once
+again it is left to private initiative and expense to make a further
+advance toward efficiency. Applications for gun-sights are rejected
+during the war on the ground that these novelties are “not according to
+the regulation of the Service.”[99]
+
+These are the circumstances in which a certain vessel in the royal navy
+exhibits such a superiority in gunnery over her contemporaries as to
+render her conspicuous at the time and, for several decades afterwards,
+the accepted model by which all such as care may measure themselves.
+
+The _Shannon_, nominally a 38-gun frigate, carried twenty-eight
+18-pounder long guns on her gun deck and fourteen carronades,
+32-pounders, upon her quarter-deck and forecastle; in addition to four
+long 9-pounders. She was commanded by Captain Philip Broke, whose fame
+as a gallant commander is secure for all time but whose attainments in
+the realm of gunnery have been less widely appreciated. Captain Broke,
+possessing a keen insight into the possibilities of the _Shannon’s_
+armament, set himself to organize, from the first day of his ship’s
+memorable commission, her crew and material for the day of battle.
+No other ship of the time was so highly organized. For all the guns
+sighting arrangements were provided by him. To each gun-carriage
+side-scales of his own design were attached, marked with a scale of
+degrees and showing by means of a plumb-bob the actual heel of the
+ship; so that every gun could be laid by word of command at any desired
+angle of elevation. For giving all guns a correct bearing a circle was
+inscribed on the deck round every gun-port, degrees being represented
+by grooves cut in the planks and inlaid with white putty; by which
+device concentration of fire of a whole battery was rendered possible,
+the sheer of the ship being compensated for by cutting down the
+carriages and adjusting them with spirit-levels.
+
+[Illustration: METHOD OF GUN-EXERCISE IN H.M.S. “SHANNON”
+
+From a pamphlet by Captain S. J. Pechell, R.N.]
+
+Beside these improvements applied to his material--steps which seem
+simple and obvious to-day, but which were far-sighted strides in
+1812--the training of his personnel was a matter to which he paid
+unremitting attention. His gunners were carefully taught the mysteries
+of the dispart. Gun drill was made as realistic as possible and prizes
+were given out of his private purse for the winners of the various
+competitions. Often a beef cask, with a piece of canvas four feet
+square attached to it, was thrown overboard as a target, the ship
+being laid to some three hundred yards away from it. The captain’s log
+was full of such entries as: “Seamen at target,” “fixed and corrected
+nine-pounder sights,” “mids at target and carronade,” “swivels in
+maintop,” “practised with musket,” “exercised at the great guns,” etc.
+etc. Systematic instruction in working the guns, fixing sights and
+reading scales, was carried out. And a method of practising gun-laying,
+which later came to be used in other ships from the example set by the
+_Shannon_, is illustrated by the accompanying sketch. A gun was taken
+onto the quarter-deck and secured; a spar was placed in its muzzle with
+a handspike lashed across it; and then two men surged the gun by means
+of the handspike to imitate the rolling of the ship, while the captain
+of the gun, crouching behind it, looked along his line of sight for the
+target (a disc placed in the forepart of the ship) and threw in the
+quoin when he had taken aim.
+
+With such a training did the captain of the _Shannon_ prepare for the
+duel which fortune was to give him with the _Chesapeake_. The pick
+of the British fleets was to meet an American of average efficiency.
+Superiority of gunnery would have decided that famous action in favour
+of the former, it may safely be said, whatever the conditions in which
+it had been fought. At long range the deliberate and practised aim
+of the _Shannon’s_ 18-pounders would have overborne even the good
+individual shooting of an American crew. At night or in foggy weather
+or in a choppy sea the _Shannon’s_ arrangements for firing on a given
+bearing and at a given elevation would have given her the superiority.
+As it happened, the combined and correct fire at pistol range, of
+long gun and carronade--the long gun, double-shotted, searching the
+_Chesapeake’s_ decks with ball and grape, the carronade splintering her
+light fir-lined sides and spreading death and destruction among the
+crew--quickly secured a victory, and showed the naval world the value
+of high ideals in the technique of gunnery.
+
+In the _Shannon_ we have the high-water mark of smooth-bore gunnery.
+From that time onward, in spite of the precedents which her captain
+created, little appears to have been done in the way of extending his
+methods or of applying his improvements to the armament of the navy
+generally. As a consequence, relatively to the continuously improving
+defensive efficiency of the ships themselves there was an actual
+decline in the efficiency of the truck gun after the American War: a
+decline which culminated in Navarino. It was a time when “new-fangled
+notions,” developments of method and material, were viewed with strong
+suspicion, even with resentment, by many of the most influential of
+naval officers. In the case of the truck gun, strong prejudices reacted
+against the general introduction of such refinements as had admittedly
+been found effective in exceptional cases, and the demand still went
+up for everything in connection with gunnery to be “coarsely simple.”
+To many it doubtless seemed impolitic, to say the least, that anything
+should be done in the way of mechanical development which would have
+the effect of substituting pure skill for the physical force and
+endurance, in the exertion of which the British seaman so obviously
+excelled. The truck gun was merely the rough medium by which this
+physical superiority gained the desired end, and it had been proved
+well suited to the English genius. Nothing more was asked than a rough
+equality of weapons. The arguments used against such finesse in gunnery
+as that used by the commander of the _Shannon_ were much the same, it
+may be imagined, as those used at an earlier date (and with better
+reason) to prohibit the use of the mechanically worked crossbow in
+favour of the simple longbow, strung by the athletic arm of the English
+archer.
+
+That little was done for years to improve the truck gun equipment, is
+evident from a letter, written in 1825 by Captain S. J. Pechell and
+addressed to the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean squadron,
+deploring the defective equipment of ships’ guns. Even at this date,
+it appears, few of the guns were properly disparted, few had sights
+or scales fitted to them. No arrangements had yet been generally
+adapted for permitting horizontal, or what Captain Broke had called
+“blindfold” firing; or for laying all the guns together by word of
+command. The truck carriages still gave insufficient depression,
+preventing a ship from firing her weather guns at point-blank when
+listed more than four degrees. The quantity of powder and shot allowed
+for exercise only amounted to one shot for each captain of a gun in
+seven months. No instruction was given in sighting or fixing sights, no
+system of instruction in principles was followed. And once again, as
+in the seventeenth century, the disadvantage under which naval gunnery
+laboured by reason of the dual control in all matters pertaining to the
+ordnance was strongly felt. “It is singular,” wrote Captain Pechell,
+“that the arming of a ship is the only part of her equipment which has
+not the superintendence of a Naval Officer. We have no sea Officer at
+the Ordnance to arrange and decide upon the proper equipment of Ships
+of War; or to carry into effect any improvement which experience might
+suggest. It is in this way that everything relating to the Ordnance
+on board a Man of War has remained nearly in the same state for the
+last thirty years; and is the only department (I mean the naval part
+of it) that has not profited by experience or encouraged Officers
+to communicate information. Much might be done now that the Marine
+Artillery are stationed at Portsmouth. At present it is not even
+generally known that a manual exercise exists.... If some such system
+were adopted, we should no longer consider the length of an action at
+its principal merit; the _Chesapeake_ was beat in eleven minutes!”
+
+Captain Pechell was a firm believer in the desirability of developing
+to its utmost British material. He had an enthusiastic belief,
+moreover, in the possibilities of his personnel; and stated his
+conviction that officers were only too anxious to be given the chance
+of instruction, prophesying an emulation among them and as great a
+desire to be distinguished “in gunnery as in Seamanship.” His advocacy
+of a system of gunnery training bore fruit later in the establishment
+of the _Excellent_ at Portsmouth. The scheme for the development of a
+corps of scientific naval officers, which had been foreshadowed by Sir
+Howard Douglas in his classic treatise on Naval Gunnery and which was
+formulated later in detail by Captain Pechell, was one of the reforms
+brought to maturity by Sir James Graham in the year 1832.
+
+Through all the subsequent changes of armament up to the Crimean War,
+from solid shot to shell-fire, the truck carriage maintained its place
+of favour. In 1811 Colonel (afterwards Sir William) Congreve had
+published a treatise demonstrating the defects of the truck carriage
+and proposing in its place a far more scientific and ingenious form of
+mounting. It lacked, however, some of the characteristics which, as we
+have seen, gave value to the old truck carriage. Except where special
+conditions gave additional value to its rival, the truck carriage
+kept its place. In 1820 an iron carriage was tried officially, for
+24-pounders, but gave unsatisfactory results. In 1829 the Marshall
+carriage was tried, offering important advantages over the standard
+pattern. Its main feature was a narrow fore-carriage separate from the
+recoiling rear portion, this fore-carriage being pivoted to a socket in
+the centre of the gun-port. But still the truck carriage survived the
+very favourable reports given on its latest rival.
+
+As concentration of fire became developed new fittings such as
+directing bars, breast chocks and training racers made their appearance
+and were embodied in its design. As the power of guns and the energy
+requiring to be absorbed on recoil increased, the rear trucks
+disappeared and gave place, in the two-truck Marsilly carriage, to
+flat chocks which by the friction of their broad surfaces against the
+deck helped more than trucks to deaden the motion of the carriage.
+The quoin, perfected by the addition of a graduated scale marked
+to show the elevation corresponding to each of its positions, gave
+place at length to various mechanical forms of elevating gear. The
+elm body was replaced by iron plates bolted and riveted together. And
+then at length, with the continuous growth of gun-energy, the forces
+of recoil became so great that the ordinary carriage constrained by
+rope breechings could no longer cope with them. The friction of wood
+rear-chocks against the deck was replaced by the friction of vertical
+iron plates, attached to the carriage, against similar plates attached
+to a slide interposed between carriage and deck, and automatically
+compressed: the invention, it is said, of Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy. The
+truck carriage, as it had been known for centuries, had at last been
+left behind in the evolution of naval artillery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the advent of modern gun mountings the old anomaly of the divided
+responsibility of War Office and Admiralty became unbearable; the
+necessity for a close adaptation of each gun to its ship-position,
+for careful co-ordination of the work of artillerist, engineer and
+shipbuilder, produced a crisis which had important effects on future
+naval administration. A single paragraph will suffice to show the
+position as it presented itself in the early ’sixties. “There were a
+thousand points of possible collision,” wrote the biographer of Captain
+Cooper Key, the captain of the _Excellent_, “as it became more and more
+certain that gun carriages, instead of being loose movable structures
+capable of being used in any port, were henceforth to be fixed in the
+particular port which was adapted for them, with special pivoting bolts
+and deck racers--all part of the ship’s structure. Where the War Office
+work began and the Controller’s ended in these cases, no one knew, but
+the captain of the _Excellent_ came in as one interfering between a
+married pair, and was misunderstood and condemned on both sides.”
+
+In 1866 the solution was found. Captain Cooper Key was appointed to the
+Admiralty as Director-General of Naval Ordnance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE SHELL GUN
+
+
+The chief function of land artillery in its earlier days was the
+destruction of material. The huge engines of the ancients were of
+value in effecting from a safe distance what the tortoise and the
+battering-ram could only do at close quarters: the breaching of
+walls and the battering-in of gates, doors and bulwarks. After the
+invention of gunpowder the use of artillery remained, we have seen,
+substantially the same. Apart from the moral effect on horse and man of
+the “monstrous roare of noise” when in defence, the offensive object of
+ordnance was almost entirely the breaching of the enemy’s works. The
+guns were literally “pieces of battery,” doing their slow work by the
+momentum of their large projectiles.
+
+Thus considered, artillery was not a very effective instrument.
+And, just as in earlier times it had been sought to supplement mere
+impact by other effects--by the throwing into besieged fortresses of
+quicklime, for instance, “dead horses and other carrion,”--so, after
+the arrival of gunpowder, endeavour was made to substitute incendiarism
+or explosion for the relatively ineffective method of impact. The use
+of grenades, hand-thrown, was discovered. And then followed, as a
+matter of course, their adaptation to the mortars already in use for
+the projection of stones and other solid material. These mortars, as in
+the case of the early cannon, were at first made of an inconveniently
+large size; and, also as in the case of cannon, they came later to
+be cast of more moderate proportions to facilitate their transport
+and thus render them more serviceable for operations in the field.
+Artillery was now devoting its attention to the personnel. The result
+of this evolution was the howitzer, a weapon whose value to land armies
+was greatly enhanced by the discovery, by Marshal Vauban at the end
+of the seventeenth century, of the efficacy of the _ricochet_. Under
+this system the fuzed bomb or grenade, instead of being projected
+from a mortar set at a high elevation, to describe a lofty and almost
+parabolic trajectory, was discharged from a howitzer at a sufficiently
+low elevation to cause it to strike the ground some distance short of
+its objective, whence it proceeded, leaping and finally rolling along
+the ground till it came to its target, where it exploded.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+So far shell fire had developed on land. In sea warfare the solid
+cannon ball remained the orthodox missile; the use of explosive or
+incendiary shells was deemed so dangerous a practice as to forbid
+its acceptance by the great maritime powers, save in exceptional
+cases, until the nineteenth century. Toward the end of the eighteenth
+century serious consideration was given, by France especially, to the
+possibilities of shell fire. Frenchmen felt restless and dissatisfied
+with the conditions in which they were waging war with England. Sea
+ordnance, which in the past had wrought so much by the destruction
+of personnel, was becoming increasingly impotent, not only against
+personnel but against ships themselves. Trafalgar came as a proof
+of this, when not a single ship was sunk by gunfire. Sea fighting
+was again resolving itself into a straightforward physical struggle
+between the guns’ crews of the opposing fleets, in which struggle
+the victory went by attrition to the side which plied its guns with
+the greatest rapidity and perseverance. Élan, enthusiasm, science,
+the mental alertness of the individual, were bound to be overborne
+in such a case by superior endurance, physique, coolness, and sound
+workmanship. Both sides had a profound belief in the superiority of
+their personnel in hand-to-hand conflict. Where fighting was, as in
+the earliest days of the rival navies, “man to man, lance to lance,
+arrow to arrow, stone to stone,” success depended entirely upon
+courage and physical strength; and in such cases, says Nicolas, the
+English were almost always victorious. If, stated a French writer, sea
+actions could be decided by hand-to-hand combat the arms of France
+would triumph. But sea fights were in fact almost solely a matter of
+artillery. If only the conditions of battle could be altered; if only
+the forces of incendiarism or explosion could be summoned to put the
+enemy ships-of-the-line in jeopardy, a short cut to victory might be
+found or, at any rate, the superiority of England in material might be
+seriously depreciated.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Some time was to elapse, however, before France was to see even the
+partial consummation of this fervent desire.
+
+While the use of grenades, bombs, carcasses and other explosive
+and incendiary missiles had been recognized on land for centuries,
+an event occurred in the year 1788 which, coming to the ears of
+Europe, should have had considerable effect in turning the thoughts
+of artillerists to the possibilities of their use at sea. In that
+year, some sixty-five years before the action off Sinope, a Deptford
+shipwright who had risen to high service under the Russian government
+fitted out for his employers a flotilla of long-boats for an attack
+upon a Turkish squadron. These long-boats Sir Samuel Bentham--he was
+the ex-shipwright--armed with brass ordnance mounted on his favourite
+non-recoil system, and for them he requisitioned a large supply of
+shells, carcasses and solid shot. At the mouth of the Liman river in
+the Sea of Azov the Russians, with these insignificant war vessels,
+attacked a very superior force of Turkish ships, and gained a complete
+victory. The effect of the shells, fired at close range into the
+Turkish ships, was startling and impressive. Great holes were torn in
+the sides of the vessels, and fires were started which, in a favouring
+medium of dry timber and paint and pitch, rapidly spread and caused the
+squadron’s destruction.
+
+No evidence can be quoted, it must be admitted, to show that
+contemporary opinion realized how portentous was this sea action;
+no stress is laid on the event in histories relating to that time.
+Nor does another event which occurred at this period appear to have
+caused the notice it deserved: the firing, at the suggestion of a
+Captain Mercier, 35th Regiment, of mortar shells from the British
+long 24-pounders, from Gibraltar into the Spanish lines.[100] Nor
+was Lieutenant Shrapnel’s contemporaneous invention,[101] of a
+shell containing case shot explodable by a small bursting charge,
+developed or the possible adaptation of its use for sea warfare fully
+appreciated. Or, if authority did discern the eventual effect of these
+innovations, a wholesome dread of their extension and development
+in naval warfare appears to have dictated a policy of calculated
+conservatism in respect of them, a suppression of all ideas and
+experiments which had in view any intensifying or improvement of
+our artillery methods. “So long as foreign powers did not innovate
+by improving their guns, by extending the use of carronades and,
+above all, by projecting shells horizontally from shipping; so long
+it was our interest not to set the example of any improvement in
+naval ordnance--the value of our immense material might otherwise be
+depreciated. Many of the defects which were known to exist, so long
+as they were common to all navies, operated to the advantage of Great
+Britain.”[102]
+
+Apart from this consideration, however, it is remarkable how small a
+value was set by English opinion, even at a late date, upon explosive
+as compared with solid projectiles. The obvious disadvantages of
+hollow spherical shell--their smaller range, more devious flight and
+less penetrative power--were emphasized; their admittedly greater
+destructive effect (even taking into account the small bursting charges
+deemed suitable for use with them) was rated at a surprisingly low
+figure.
+
+The French, on the other hand, showed great eagerness to explore the
+possibilities of shell fire in fighting ships. Addicted to science,
+they searched unceasingly throughout the revolutionary wars for some
+development of naval material which would neutralize the obvious
+and ever-increasing superiority of the British navy under existing
+conditions, even if it might not actually incline the balance of
+power in their favour. To this end they courted the use of incendiary
+projectiles. Our own authorities, partly from a lively apprehension
+of the danger believed to be inherent in their carriage and use in
+wooden ships and partly from a feeling of moral revulsion against
+the employment of what they genuinely believed to be an unfair and
+unchivalrous agency, limited the use of fuzed shells, carcasses and
+other fireworks as much as possible to small bomb vessels of special
+construction--and inferior morals. But in ships-of-the-line the use
+of such missiles was strongly deprecated by naval opinion, and even
+the use of hand-grenades in the tops was forbidden by some captains.
+Time justified this cautious attitude. The French suffered for the
+precipitancy with which they adopted inflammatory agents; fires and
+explosions were frequent in their fleets; the history of their navy in
+these wars--“la longue et funeste guerre de la Révolution”--is lit up
+from time to time with the conflagrations of their finest ships, prey
+to the improperly controlled chemical forces of their own adoption. One
+example alone need be cited: the _Orient_ at the battle of the Nile.
+Even if the French flagship was not set on fire by their direct agency,
+small doubt exists that the spread of the fire which broke out in her
+was accelerated by the presence of the combustibles which, in common
+with most of the French ships, she carried. Throughout the wars fuzed
+shells, carcasses, stinkpots, port-fires, proved far more terrible to
+friend than foe. And the foe doubtless felt confirmed and fortified in
+his opinions that such substances were quite unsuitable for carriage
+in warships. As to the ethics of explosives even the French themselves
+seem to have been doubtful. For, shortly after the battle in Aboukir
+Bay, some of their officers accused an English captain of having been
+so “unfair” as to use shells: an audacious manœuvre on their part,
+for, on some of the shells in question being produced and the gunner
+questioned as to whence they came, “to the confusion of the accusers,
+he related that they were found on board the _Spartiate_, one of the
+ships captured on the first of August!”[103]
+
+Continuous trials were carried out in France with shells fired
+from guns. In 1798, following a series of successful experiments,
+trials were prosecuted at Meudon by a special commission, who caused
+24-and 36-pound shells to be fired at a target representing a
+ship-of-the-line, at ranges of 400 and 600 yards. The results were
+impressive, and the report rendered to Bonaparte such as to confirm
+his personal conviction in the value of shell fire. Less than a year
+later, we may note in passing, the Consul was himself the target of
+shell fire: being subjected, at the siege of Acre, to the unpleasant
+attentions of a 68-pounder carronade from the English fleet. In 1804,
+with the avowed object of keeping our cruisers at a distance, he had
+long howitzers cast and placed for the defence of Toulon and other
+ports. And hardly a year passed but some trial was made of horizontal
+fire of shells from guns and mortars.
+
+Of the two great maritime powers, Britain had contributed more,
+perhaps, towards the building up by actual practice of the system of
+artillery which was shortly to come into vogue. Shell fire from mortars
+had been used with far more effect by her forces than by those of her
+great enemy. The invention of the carronade was in itself almost a
+solution; and, though it did not lead directly to the shell gun, yet
+it undoubtedly induced the weapon which most strongly resembled it:
+the medium ship-gun, as designed by Congreve and Blomefield, which was
+something between the carronade and the long gun, and which for a time
+was mounted in our two-decked ships for the purpose of preserving unity
+of calibre.
+
+But the French, free from the bias against change of method and
+material which operated in this country, seized on the possibilities
+of existing elements, and combined them in such a way as to form a
+complete solution of the shell-fire problem. To General Paixhans,
+the eminent officer of artillery, the credit for this solution is
+undoubtedly due.
+
+
+§
+
+The experiments of M. Paixhans, carried out in order to confirm the
+theories on which his new system was founded, extended over several
+years and resulted in the publication of two books--the _Nouvelle Force
+Maritime et Artillerie_, 1822, and _Expériences faites sur une Arme
+Nouvelle_, 1825.
+
+In these works[104] the author developed in detail the scheme of ship
+armament which was to win adoption, in the course of time, in the
+French navy; whereby our own authorities were also gradually forced to
+abandon methods and standards of force by which the British navy had
+grown great. Two principles formed the basis of this scheme:--(1) unity
+of calibre, embodying the maximum simplification of means; (2) shell
+fire, embodying the maximum augmentation of effect.
+
+On these two principles M. Paixhans reared and elaborated in minutest
+detail the revolutionary system with which his name is associated.
+No new element or discovery was necessary for giving effect to his
+designs. Indeed he expressly disclaimed having introduced any novelty:
+“Nous n’avons donc rien inventé, rien innové, et presque rien changé;
+nous avons seulement réuni des élémens épars, auxquels il suffisait
+de donner, avec un peu d’attention, la grandeur et les proportions
+convenables, pour atteindre le but important que nous étions proposé.”
+It may be said, in fact, that unity of calibre had been an ideal sought
+for years before M. Paixhans’ time; while shell fire, the New Arm of
+1822, was almost the logical consequence of Robins’ discoveries in
+the principles of gunnery, extended as they were by the researches
+of Doctors Hutton and Gregory. In particular, mention is made by M.
+Paixhans himself of two of the results brought out by Dr. Hutton’s
+experiments: one, that the length of the bore of a gun has but a
+small effect upon the range of its projectile, the range varying as
+the fifth root of the length; two, that the muzzle velocity may be
+considered to be independent of the weight of the gun.
+
+As to the lack of novelty of shell fire on ship-board, M. Paixhans
+gives a significant extract from French naval annals. In 1690, it
+appears, a M. Deschiens had invented a means of firing bombs from long
+guns horizontally, instead of parabolically as from mortars. This
+secret was of great use to him; for, falling in with four English ships
+at sea, he so surprised them by this new invention that, fearful of
+being set on fire, they drew off and did not attempt to renew battle.
+This same French captain at a later date attacked two Dutch ships more
+than a match for him, and, by means of these horizontally fired bombs,
+sank one and disabled the other. But M. Deschiens died and his secret
+with him; though, as M. Paixhans remarks, this “secret” would have been
+easy to find if anyone had looked for it.
+
+A whole chapter of _The Genuine Use and Effects of the Gunne_, written
+by Robert Anderson and published at London in 1674, concerns “the
+shooting of Granados out of Long Gunnes.”
+
+Briefly, the grand idea of M. Paixhans consisted in the establishment
+of a fleet of steam vessels armed with guns designed to project
+charged shells horizontally at considerable velocities. But as this
+consummation could only be attained by degrees, he proposed that in
+the meantime the existing French fleet should be re-armed in such a
+way as to give to each ship a maximum of force combined with unity of
+calibre. This part of his scheme was applicable to solid shot (_boulets
+massifs_) as well as to shell (_boulets creux_). But the former he
+considered too ineffectual for use in future sea engagements. Although
+they might be the most suitable projectiles for the destruction of land
+works, the breaching of ramparts and the battering of stone walls,
+yet hollow shot, filled with powder and other combustible material,
+were far better adapted to rend and set fire to defences of wood,
+impregnated with tar, and, in time of action, replete with every
+species of inflammable substance, and crowded with combatants. No, M.
+Paixhans hoped to make solid shots entirely obsolete, by adopting,
+in combination with small steam vessels, or, for the present, in
+combination with the existing fleets of sailing ships, an ordnance
+specially dedicated to shell fire, and to shell fire alone. By its
+means the enormous superiority of Great Britain would be effectually
+eliminated, or transferred into the hands of France; her material
+would be rendered suddenly obsolete, her maritime power would shrivel;
+and the power of France would be augmented to such a degree that the
+defeat of these islands might at last be encompassed.
+
+Such was the amiable intention of M. Paixhans.
+
+The arguments which he employed in favour of his revolutionary
+proposals are of sufficient interest and importance, perhaps, to merit
+consideration. The past histories of the two navies showed, he argued,
+that the introduction of improvement or of innovation into either navy
+was shortly afterwards followed by its introduction into the other;
+so that there was never any important change in the relative naval
+strength of the two nations. It followed, therefore, that the only
+means by which power could be wrested from the possessor of it, must be
+such a change of system as would render useless the existing means by
+which that power was sustained. How could this be accomplished? Foreign
+nations had always felt the innate strength of England, residing in the
+race of splendid seamen (a highly specialized profession) who formed
+so great a part of her population. France especially had felt her own
+weakness in not possessing a reserve, a nursery of seamen, such as
+England had. If only seamanship could be discounted----! M. Paixhans
+proceeded to show that the coming of the steamer was itself an event
+which would go a long way to discount a superiority in seamanship. The
+accursed English “devil boat,”[105] which had begun to spread its pall
+of smoke over all the northern waters, might be, in truth, a potent
+friend to France. Steam vessels required only a small and unskilled
+personnel to man them, instead of prime seamen. Steam vessels could
+always outstrip sailing ships, and thus could choose their own range
+and accept or decline battle as occasion required. Moreover, the
+effect of shell fire would be to upset completely the balance of power
+existing between big ships and little ships, as such. Instead of size
+being a measure of power, it would be a measure of vulnerability. The
+larger the ship the more she would be endangered. Costly three-deckers
+would cease to exist, and in their place small steam vessels, fast
+and heavily armed, easily manœuvred and perhaps encased in armour,
+would hold power. Thus the great obstacle to the acquirement by France
+of a large naval force--the necessity for a numerous and experienced
+personnel--would be easily removed. In short, the adoption of his
+scheme would in any case be most favourable to France. Even if it were
+simultaneously adopted by Great Britain its adoption would at least
+ensure that in future the naval power of the two states would be in
+proportion to the strength of their _whole_ population, instead of only
+that part of it familiarized with maritime affairs.
+
+Considering first the conversion of the existing French navy, he
+examined and enlarged upon the various inefficiencies inherent in
+the usual disposition of ship armaments; in the manner in which the
+unit and the number of units of artillery force were selected for any
+individual design of ship; in the variety of the units, and in the
+lack of system observed in the various proportions between the gun,
+the charge and the projectile. He observed that the constant tendency
+of development, both in the French and in the English navy, was in
+the replacing of smaller by greater calibres, by which process the
+diversity of calibres was diminished and the effective force of the
+armament increased. Continuing this process, it appeared that the
+ideal armament would be reached, the maximum degree of force would
+be attained, when unity of calibre was achieved. When the calibre
+of the largest-sized cannon carried on the principal gun deck of
+ships-of-the-line was adopted as the sole calibre used, the maximum
+of force would be attained: the greatest possible destructive effect
+combined with the greatest possible simplification of means. These
+remarks applied equally to a solid shot and to a shell gun armament. If
+for some reason it were decided not to adopt shell fire, nevertheless
+it would be of advantage to re-arm the French sailing fleets on this
+principle, with guns of one calibre.
+
+M. Paixhans proposed as the unit the French 36-pounder. He explained
+the advantages to be derived from arming existing ships-of-the-line
+with 36-pounders all of the same calibre but of different weights on
+the respective decks. The guns on different decks would take different
+charges and would therefore project the shot with different muzzle
+velocities. They would be disposed, the heaviest on the lower deck;
+a lighter type (reamed out from 24-pounders) on the main deck; still
+lighter guns on the upper deck, and 36-pounder carronades on the
+quarter-deck and forecastle would complete the armament.
+
+The employment of solid shot was not favoured by him, however, and
+he claimed the results of various trials as showing the superior
+offensive value of shells, when compared with solid shot. Comparing a
+solid shot and a shell of the same external dimensions discharged with
+the same muzzle velocity, the former, he said, had only the advantage
+in superior range and penetrative power. The latter, while having a
+range greater than those at which sea actions were invariably fought
+and sufficient penetrative power to effect a lodgment in a ship’s
+timbers, required less powder to propel it, a lighter and therefore
+more rapidly worked gun from which to discharge it, and it had a
+destructive effect enormously greater than that of the solid ball.
+
+The complete proposal therefore involved the adoption of shell guns
+exclusively, new guns being made and old guns being reamed out as
+necessary to enable each ship to carry pieces of one calibre alone. The
+calibre proposed as unit was the long French 48-pounder. And, as an
+example of the way in which M. Paixhans would convert armaments, the
+case of the French 74-gun ship is here taken. This, with an existing
+armament of:--
+
+  28 36-pounders,
+  30 18-pounders,
+  14 6-pounders,
+  14 6-pounder carronades,
+
+a total of 86 pieces throwing 2250 pounds of solid shot, he would
+convert into a ship armed with:--
+
+  28 48-pounders (reamed from 36-pounders),
+  30 48-pounders (of same weight as 18-pounders),
+  28 48-pounder carronades;
+
+eighty-six pieces throwing 3010 pounds of charged shell weighing 35
+pounds each.
+
+For the new shell gun he proposed a design of iron howitzer in which
+the distribution of metal was so adjusted as to give a sufficient
+factor of safety at every section, while at the same time allowing
+the total weight of the piece to be reduced to a minimum. This
+_canon-à-bombe_ was to be mounted on a stable form of carriage, made
+without trucks but fitted with running-out rollers and directing bars
+to control the line of fire and the direction of recoil.
+
+To those who were inclined to regard with feelings of horror this new
+use of explosive missiles, this progress in the art of destruction,
+the inventor put the question, whether experience had not proved
+that the perfection of arms had not had the effect of making warfare
+actually less bloody; whether it was not a fact worth consideration,
+that, while in days of old the destruction and loss of life in battles
+was enormous, the loss of English seamen by gunfire in the numerous
+combats of three long and bitter wars of recent times amounted to
+less than five thousand killed. And would not, therefore, further
+development of arms be a positive benefit to humanity?[106]
+
+One other feature was put forward to complete this scheme of
+re-armament, the importance of which it is unnecessary to emphasize.
+M. Paixhans explored the possibility, by the sacrifice of a tier or
+more of guns, of rendering all classes of ships invulnerable by casing
+their sides with iron plates. Although rejected at the time, and as
+the result of trials which he himself carried out, this suggestion was
+destined to be carried into effect in startling fashion some thirty
+years later: with what consequences to naval architecture we shall
+presently see. In connection with the scheme of re-armament outlined
+by M. Paixhans in 1822 the suggestion was important in that there was
+implied in it an admission of one of the two weak features of the
+inventor’s system. The shell gun would lose its superiority over the
+shot gun, and might indeed be reduced to absolute impotence if, in
+imitation of France, the enemy also cased his ships of war with iron.
+The solid shot gun would once again have the advantage; in fact, that
+very equilibrium of relative values which M. Paixhans was endeavouring
+to destroy would once more obtain between the navies of the two rival
+powers.
+
+For this reason, presumably, and because the shell gun system
+contained, though in a less degree, the disability inherent in the
+carronade system--inferior ranging power, enabling a clever opponent
+armed with long solid shot guns to fight at a range which was too great
+for shell--the Paixhans scheme was not adopted in its entirety by the
+French government of the time. But the principle of unity of calibre
+was acclaimed and approved almost immediately, applied to solid shot
+guns. The French 30-pounder was chosen as the unit. In 1829 guns of
+this calibre, made on several different models to suit the various
+decks and classes of ship, were mounted in their fleets.[107]
+
+In the meantime M. Paixhans had made further progress toward perfecting
+the details of his shell gun system. A _canon-obusier_ of 80 pounds
+was made to his design, a chambered howitzer of the same weight
+(about 72 hundredweight) as the French 36-pounder truck gun and of 22
+centimetres calibre. This was designed to project a hollow shell of
+the same size as the French 80-pound solid shot, but weighing, when
+its cavity was filled with a charge of 4 pounds of powder, 56 pounds
+French (62½ pounds English). The shell gun itself was of a distinctive
+shape. The characteristics of short chase, large bore, a chamber, a
+small propelling charge, and a scientific elimination of all useless
+metal, resulted in a form of ordnance quite different from that of the
+long-accepted smooth-bore cannon. It was easily recognizable by its
+straight muzzle, smooth lines and the absence of the usual ornaments
+and reinforcing rings. When, eventually, the New Arm was adopted by
+other powers, their shell guns too, though independently evolved, were
+found to exhibit the same external features: the features of what came
+to be known universally as a “Paixhans gun.”
+
+The terrific effect of charged shell, fired from this form of gun
+with sufficient velocity to find a lodgment in a ship’s timbers, was
+demonstrated at Brest in 1821 and 1824; in the latter trials the target
+being a frigate, the _Pacificateur_, moored in the roadstead. High
+range and accurate shooting were obtained. The incendiary effect of
+the shell was prodigious: so impressive, indeed, that in spite of a
+strong opinion in the French navy against further carriage of bombs in
+ships-of-the-line, the Commission recommended “that _canons-à-bombe_ be
+adopted, even in ships-of-the-line, but in small numbers.”
+
+But though the principle of the shell gun was accepted by experts,
+public opinion was not yet ready for the change. The Commission had
+shown a sage circumspection in regard to the extent of the change
+proposed; but public opinion was not yet satisfied that the new arm
+was sufficiently safe. The scheme suffered a long postponement. In the
+meantime several further trials were held. The design of the piece
+was again modified; a larger chamber was arranged and a support was
+cast, at the commencement of the chase, for carrying a sight. Tests _à
+outrance_ were made to find what maximum charge such a shell gun would
+safely stand; and at last, in 1837, the principle of shell fire was
+accepted by the government, the Paixhans gun being assigned a place
+in the prescribed armament of the fleets of France. To the impairment
+of the unity-of-calibre principle, lately achieved, shell guns of 22
+centimetres were admitted as part-armament of ships the greater number
+of whose pieces were 30-pounders firing solid shot.
+
+[Illustration: A PAIXHANS GUN]
+
+
+§
+
+In England the arguments in favour of a new and more scientific
+adjustment of ship armament had not until this date been clearly
+formulated. Of the tendency to a single calibre there certainly had
+been many demonstrations in the last decades of the eighteenth century:
+a tendency favoured by the replacement of the smaller long guns of the
+fleet by carronades. Sir Howard Douglas, in his _Naval Gunnery_, the
+first edition of which was published in 1820, had demonstrated the
+advantages of large calibre, the inefficiency of random broadsides, and
+the high importance of the deliberate aim of single guns. And in 1825,
+before the French began to remodel their ordnance, Colonel Munro, of
+the Royal Artillery, submitted his project to the naval authorities
+of arming our ships solely with 32-pounders, of different classes and
+weights to suit the various circumstances. But no radical revision
+of armament was made in the British navy until some years after the
+French had made the great stride of 1829, already described.
+
+Unity of calibre, then, was no novel idea on the part of M. Paixhans.
+“No project,” says Dahlgren--“no project has proved more attractive to
+naval men than that of having a uniform calibre throughout the entire
+fleet. It has been proposed from time to time without success, until
+adopted for the French navy in 1829.
+
+“In the promptness with which the example was followed by England and
+the United States, may be recognized the general convictions of the
+profession in regard to the serious mischief inseparable from the chaos
+of calibres that prevailed, and the urgent necessity for some measure
+that would simplify the complex economy of naval ordnance.
+
+“In a three-decker might be witnessed the extreme phase of the evil:
+long 32-pounders, 18-pounders, and carronades, requiring three sizes of
+shot and four classes of full charge, with as many reduces as caprice
+might suggest. All this variety of supply was to be distinguished and
+selected in the magazines and shot-lockers--circulated with perfect
+exactness in the confusion and obscurity of the lower passages, to
+a particular hatchway, then up to the deck where was placed the
+gun for which each charge or shot was designed: and this was to be
+accomplished, not with the composure, deliberation, and attention
+that the nature of the operation itself demanded, but amid all the
+excitement and hot haste of battle.”[108]
+
+The plans of M. Paixhans, in particular those for the adoption of shell
+fire on a large scale, were viewed with much misgiving in this country.
+But, as already noted, Great Britain moved very cautiously in the
+counter-measures which she took in view of the policy then under review
+in France. It is probable that the publication, in 1828, of a memoir
+by Captain F. A. Hastings, R.N., commanding the Greek steam vessel
+of war _Karteria_, had great effect in encouraging the authorities
+to countenance shell fire. From this memoir it appears that Captain
+Hastings was led, by arguments similar to those which influenced M.
+Paixhans, to consider the possibilities of discharging at an enemy
+something more devastating in effect than the solid sphere of iron
+in general use. His navy was inferior in numbers to possible rivals;
+he expressed the opinion that this inferiority might be nullified by
+the use of shell, but he “got well laughed at for his pains.” Soon
+afterwards, however, he came across Paixhans’ work. Acting on his
+ideas, he applied shell fire with great success in action, and at once
+became an enthusiastic advocate of the new arm. One great objection
+to its adoption he almost laid to rest: the increased danger due to
+the carriage of shells. He denied that there was any increased danger.
+On the contrary, he considered charged shells less dangerous than
+powder in cartridges, if properly packed. They were less dangerous,
+he argued, because their use involved bigger and therefore fewer guns
+than an ordinary ship would carry. Therefore there was less confusion
+in action, less jostling, more working spaces, and fewer cartridges and
+projectiles to be handled. In support of his opinion he could point to
+an entire absence of accidents during his commission in the _Karteria_.
+
+In 1829 a general increase of calibre was obtained by the inexpensive
+expedient of boring out guns to their next larger calibre; in which
+operation the opportunity was taken to arrange for a reduced allowance
+of windage for the guns thus altered, and thus to secure a double gain,
+of increased calibre and improved discharge. Experiments were made
+with shell fire _à la Paixhans_. Tentative designs of shell gun were
+produced by the ordnance department, and guns of 8-inch, 10-inch and
+12-inch calibre were made; one of which, an 8-inch, mounted in H.M.S.
+_Phœnix_, made very effective shooting at San Sebastian in the year ’36
+and gave thereby an advertisement to shell fire.
+
+And then, in 1837, came the French decision to adopt a shell gun
+armament generally.
+
+The result was a complete and corresponding reorganization of British
+ship armament.[109] By 1839, the authorities being at last convinced
+of the necessity of meeting the French innovations with similar
+innovations on our part, Colonel Munro’s proposal of 1825 had been
+adopted, and various classes of ship were equipped with six different
+patterns of 32-pounder long gun. With these were associated, in small
+numbers, 8-inch shell guns of fifty-three and sixty-five hundredweight.
+Thus this country by a single move countered the two moves made
+by France in ’29 and ’37 respectively, and denied to M. Paixhans,
+for a while at any rate, any considerable change in the relative
+strength of the two navies. As in the French navy, shell fire was only
+introduced as an auxiliary to the solid shot. Thus the great ideal
+of unity-of-calibre, so long sought and at last almost attained, was
+found incompatible with the other ideal, shell fire; and was therefore
+sacrificed. No doubt was felt, at this time, as to the necessity for
+two types of gun. The superior power of shells was dreaded, suspected,
+half-acknowledged; but the superior range and penetration of solid shot
+fired from long guns made the latter indispensable to ships’ equipment.
+So shell and large-bore shot guns were mounted in ships side by side.
+Old guns and carronades were “scrapped” in large numbers to give
+place to the new ordnance; and an official announcement was made, in
+justification of the Admiralty policy, that “the changes were not made
+until they had been adopted by foreign powers.”
+
+
+§
+
+Shell fire was at last accepted. The perils associated with the
+carriage of shells in wooden ships were found to have been exaggerated;
+experience soon confirmed that, if special precautions were taken, no
+danger was inherent in their use.
+
+Even after its introduction into our fleets the shell gun was regarded
+by many as of doubtful value. For some years previously the opponents
+of shells had agitated the question of a compromise: viz. the use of
+hollow shot uncharged, instead of solid balls. And when M. Paixhans
+had published his great scheme they had held that more advantages
+would have been offered by it if he had stopped short at charging the
+shot with powder, and had advocated merely hollow shot, which by their
+larger size would give the advantages of heavier calibre. But the
+argument for hollow shot was finally demolished in 1837 by a writer
+whose views carried great influence. Incorrectly attributing to M.
+Paixhans himself the proposal to use them, Captain Simmons, R.A. proved
+clearly and conclusively their comparative uselessness. The adoption
+of hollow shot, he showed,[110] would be tantamount to a reversion
+to the use of stone or granite projectiles; it mattered little, for
+practical purposes, what the projectile be formed of, so that its
+density be what was desired: whether hollow iron or solid granite.
+Except the Turks, who still guarded the Dardanelles with granite-firing
+cannon, all nations had abandoned granite in favour of the heaviest
+metals, and no one questioned the vast improvement thereby obtained,
+“except the inventors of the carronade and the promoters of this same
+system, improved by M. Paixhans.” As a matter of fact the carronade was
+designed for the special circumstances in which hollow shot were not
+without value. And M. Paixhans, as we know, never intended to forego
+the use of a charge of powder in the cavity of his _boulet creux_.
+But the arguments of Simmons sufficed to kill the advocacy of hollow,
+uncharged shot.
+
+Doubt was cast, too, on the capacity of the shell gun to project its
+shells to a sufficient range and with sufficient striking velocity in
+action. In the case of the first shell guns cast, a strict limitation
+had to be placed on the powder-charges which could safely be used;
+and this involved a limitation of range, apart from the reduction
+due to the lower specific gravity of the projectile. Both French and
+English shell guns suffered in this respect. For this reason they had
+been deemed by the French specially suited for use in steam vessels,
+which could by their locomotive power attain the desired range. But,
+it was said, steam gives the power of avoiding, as well as of closing
+to action; and steam, it was foreseen, was a giant which would one day
+haul even ships-of-the-line into position for battle. Might not future
+actions be fought at considerable ranges? And for close-quarter work,
+could not our powerful long guns, double-shotted, be used with greater
+effect than shell guns?
+
+Then, again, the flight of shells was not nearly so certain as that of
+solid shot. The effects of eccentricity, which in the case of solid
+shot had always militated against accurate shooting, were in the case
+of shells considerably enhanced. The varying thickness of the shell,
+the lack of homogeneity of the metal, the presence of the protruding
+fuze, all tended to produce eccentricity and give a bias. The centre
+of gravity of a shell was seldom at its centre of figure; and this
+eccentricity was the cause of deviations in flight, in range and
+direction, which made the trajectory of a shell not easily predictable.
+Savants and artillerists, both here and in other countries, discussed
+for years these deviations, and on the relationship between range and
+eccentricity numbers of trials were made and theories were propounded.
+Which is the more strange, seeing that Robins had placed on record
+an almost complete solution. Briefly, the effect of eccentricity may
+be explained as follows. Just as a stick held vertically by a thread
+receives, when struck at a point in it other than the centre of
+percussion, a tendency to motion not only of translation but also of
+rotation round that centre of percussion; so a spherical shell whose
+centre of gravity lies away from its centre of figure receives, from
+the pressure of the powder gases acting at its centre of figure, a
+rotary motion about its centre of gravity in addition to a motion along
+the bore. If the centre of gravity lies below the centre of figure this
+rotary motion is in such a direction that, as the shell approaches the
+muzzle, points on its upper surface are moving towards the muzzle,
+points on the lower part are moving inwards. And this rotation,
+maintained during flight, has the effect--as was demonstrated by Robins
+with the musket ball--of giving the sphere a vertical deviation in a
+downward direction; i.e. of reducing its range.
+
+It follows, then, that an artificial increase of range could be
+obtained by placing the sphere with its centre of gravity _above_
+the centre of figure? This is precisely what was done; and by many a
+measured eccentricity was considered a desideratum, as giving a higher
+range than could be obtained without it. With such a system, however,
+the deviations still remained large and flights still more irregular.
+And the best opinion held that the most satisfactory solution lay
+in reducing the errors of flight as far as possible by the use of
+perfectly concentric shells. This ideal was difficult of attainment.
+Sir Howard Douglas has described at length experiments with shells
+the axis of whose eccentricity was found by floating them in mercury:
+experiments which revealed that not one shell in a hundred of those
+supplied was perfectly balanced. For this reason misgiving was felt as
+to the effectiveness of shell fire when carried out at considerable
+ranges against solid shot, and efforts were continuously made to
+correct all shell before issue.
+
+Nor were the Americans inclined to view the shell gun with much favour;
+remembering, doubtless, what they owed to their long and powerful guns
+when they were opposed to our light guns and carronades in the war of
+’12 and ’13. America was more cautious even than this country. But in
+’41 the 8-inch shell gun appeared in American ships as an auxiliary
+to the long guns: four or so on each gun deck. And four years later
+the types of guns in their ships were limited to 8-inch shell guns, in
+combination with 32-pounder long guns of various patterns; in fact,
+their system of armament was assimilated to that of the French and
+British.
+
+Whatever the relative value of shell and solid shot might be,
+experience showed that increase in size favoured the former. Though
+medium-sized solid shot might be more efficient than medium-sized
+shells, yet it was widely accepted that large solid shot would probably
+be of less value than large shell. Strong tendencies were at work,
+making for such increase in the size of artillery. It was in 1837 that
+a writer already quoted showed the direction in which the arguments of
+M. Paixhans were leading. Citing Sir Howard Douglas on the advantages
+of large calibre and the inefficiency of random broadsides, Captain
+Simmons put forward the argument that, if these statements were
+accepted, it followed that all ships of war should be armed with a
+few long guns of the maximum calibre and giving the maximum muzzle
+energy which the ship could safely carry, with other guns on other
+decks of the same calibre but of varying weight and range. “Instead of
+determining the armament of a ship from the length of her decks and
+crowding as many guns together as possible; determining the number
+by the extent of the battery, and subjecting their nature to their
+number--making, in fact, the weight and type of gun depend, not on the
+service demanded, but on the quotient arising from dividing the total
+deck-weight by the number, previously fixed on; it might be safer to
+place on board a few of the most powerful guns which her construction
+would admit, and then regulate the total number carried by their
+aggregate weight--making the _number_ and not the _nature_ of the guns
+depend on what is inevitably fixed: the capacity of the vessel?”
+
+The English writer went farther than M. Paixhans had gone. His argument
+foreshadowed the evolution which was so largely influenced by the
+coming of the steam vessel, with its large paddle-wheels and small
+crew, and with its deck space necessitating the concentration of its
+armament into a few guns of the largest calibre; it foreshadowed the
+supersession of the broadside by the pivot gun, and the enormous
+expansion in the size of ordnance which took place after the Crimean
+War.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The evolution of the shell gun was at this partial stage when the
+Crimean War broke out. In 1854 both types of projectiles were still
+struggling for ascendancy, though large shell guns were by this time
+acknowledged as the superior armament for steam vessels. Both friend
+and foe were now literally “stormed at by shot and shell”--of which
+the shell proved on the whole the more effective missile. No decisive
+superiority could be claimed, however, by one type over the other; and,
+as we shall see later in surveying the evolution of the ironclad, it
+was only gradually that the inherent superiority of the shell gun came
+to be recognized.
+
+Soon after the close of the war a new step in the evolution of armament
+made its supremacy decisive. The rifled cannon at last materialized.
+The cylinder superseded the sphere. The increase in volume gained by
+the adoption of this form of projectile, and the enhanced range and
+striking velocity which it was possible to impart to it, set all doubts
+at rest as to the military value of the _Arme Nouvelle_.
+
+[Illustration: THE _SPEAKER_, A SECOND-RATE OF THE COMMONWEALTH
+
+From Fincham’s _Naval Architecture_]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE RIFLED GUN
+
+
+While the evolution of smooth-bore ordnance owed little if anything to
+the prior development of small arms, the evolution of rifled ordnance
+which took place in the middle of the nineteenth century followed
+closely on that of rifling as applied to the musket. Experience
+with the rifled musket supplied the information necessary for the
+application of rifling on the larger scale. In tracing the development
+of rifled ordnance, therefore, the development of the rifled musket
+must first be considered: the two evolutions are historically linked
+together. In this chapter an endeavour is made to trace these two
+evolutions in their natural sequence, and to describe the circumstances
+in which each took place, the objects aimed at, the difficulties
+encountered and the results achieved. We shall see how the smooth-bore
+musket was replaced by the rifle firing a spherical ball; how the
+spherical ball gave place, in the course of time, to an elongated
+bullet; and how, when the elongated bullet had been evolved, the
+principle of the rifle was extended to field and to heavy ordnance. A
+complete survey of the whole process can be obtained only by stepping
+back, past the days of the primitive rifled fire-arm, to the age when
+the longbow was still “the surety, safeguard, and continual defence
+of this realm of England and an inestimable dread and terror to the
+enemies of the same.”
+
+
+§
+
+The might of England, avouches the historian, stood upon archers. The
+prowess of the archer, the dreadful precision of the longbow, and the
+athletic arm by which it was strung, form the constant and animated
+theme of ancient British story. In battle and the chase, we are told,
+the power of the archers always prevailed, and the attainment of that
+power was an object of incessant anxiety, in all ranks of people,
+from their earliest infancy. The longbow was thus, as described in
+the above-quoted act of Henry VIII, a continual defence of the realm.
+Over all other countries England had this advantage, that against the
+exigencies of war she had, not only her race of splendid seamen, but
+armies of the most skilful archers in the world. In peace she was thus
+well prepared. Good use was made by legislation to maintain the skill
+and stimulate the ardour of the bowmen, and the statute book bears
+witness, reign after reign, to the importance attached to archery from
+its military aspect. At one time every man between the ages of fifteen
+and sixty had to possess a bow equal in length to his own height. Every
+township had to maintain its butts, each saint’s day had its shooting
+competition. The churchyard yew gave its wood for staves, the geese on
+the green their best wing feathers; and a goose’s head was the orthodox
+and inconspicuous target. No man under the age of twenty-four was
+allowed to shoot at any standing mark, and none over that age at any
+mark of eleven score yards or under. Restraint was laid on the exercise
+of sports which might interfere with archery, and when the mechanically
+strung crossbow was introduced its use was forbidden except under
+special conditions.[111] Honours and prizes were awarded the best
+marksmen. The range and accuracy achieved by them was without doubt
+prodigious. Much of their power lay in their strength of arm; but one
+of the chief secrets of their craft lay in the way in which they set
+their arrow-feathers at the requisite angle to give the arrows a spin
+which would ensure a long, a true and a steady flight.
+
+With the advent of gunpowder the shooting competitions declined. An
+embargo was put on fire-arms; instead of being pressed to possess
+them the people were forbidden their use except under conditions. The
+military character became a separate order in society. Encouragement
+was no longer given to the individual to own and master the unwieldy
+fire-arm. The English peasant, enthusiasm evaporating as his skill
+declined, no longer gave the State the military value which his
+forefathers possessed. The clumsy mechanism of the English musket, the
+uncertainty of its action (especially in wet weather), its slow rate
+of fire, its gross inaccuracy, and its inability to penetrate armour
+under all conditions, were factors which kept fire-arms for long years
+in disfavour in this country.
+
+Abroad, on the other hand, the development of fire-arms was actually
+encouraged and skill in their use patronised. The rivalry which already
+existed with bow and arrow was extended to the new medium, and in
+Sweden and Switzerland, Germany and France, shooting competitions
+continued in vogue and proficiency with musket and arquebus was
+honoured and substantially rewarded. In Switzerland and Southern
+Germany especially, shooting was very popular. The character of the
+people, their skill in making delicate mechanisms, the nature of the
+country, all tended to promote an interest in musketry which did not
+exist among our own people. As a result England has little to claim in
+the early stages of the development of portable fire-arms.
+
+During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries smooth-bore weapons
+firing spherical lead balls were the only kind known and used. But in
+the early part of the sixteenth century a development took place which
+was to prove of the first importance to fire-arms; which was to make
+the primitive weapon in the course of time “the most beautiful, and at
+the same time the most deadly instrument of warfare ever devised by the
+ingenuity of man.” The value of rifling was discovered.
+
+How, when, or where this discovery was first made, appears to have
+defied the researches of investigators. As to the manner in which
+the development took place and the effects which it was intended to
+produce by its means there is an assortment of evidence; and this is so
+various and so interesting as bearing on the action of the rifle and
+its evolution, that we reproduce it in some detail. On one point there
+appears to be small doubt: _The earliest rifling had no twist in it_.
+
+“It seems to have been generally accepted by writers on the subject,”
+says the author of _The Book of the Rifle_, “that the earliest
+barrels had straight grooves, the object of which was to give a space
+into which the fouling of previous shots might stow itself without
+obstructing the process of loading with a well-fitting ball, and that
+spiral grooving was merely an accidental variation of this, afterwards
+found to possess special advantages.” Nevertheless, he himself inclines
+to the opinion that the straight groove was not necessarily a prior
+form of the spiral. The collections in museums contain examples of
+spiral grooving older than the oldest straight-grooved barrels. In any
+case, it is antecedently more probable, he considers, that the spiral
+grooving was not a variation of the straight groove, but that it was “a
+deliberate attempt to find a means of giving to the bullet the spiral
+spin which was well known as having a steadying effect on the javelin,
+or on the arrow or bolt discharged from the bow.”[112]
+
+But in this view he is in a minority. Whereas the invention of helical
+grooving is generally attributed to Augustin Kutter, a gunmaker of
+Nuremburg who died in A.D. 1630, straight grooving had been known
+since 1480, and is ascribed to one Gaspard Zöllner, a gunmaker of
+Vienna. “Smooth-bore guns,” says Schmidt,[113] “had the disadvantage of
+fouling, and with the poor powder could only be recharged by leaving a
+comparatively large space between the ball and the barrel. This windage
+prejudiced straight shooting. To overcome this deficiency the practice
+was adopted of cutting grooves, more or less numerous, in the barrel,
+and in wrapping the ball in a rag greased with suet. In this way the
+windage was reduced, and as the greased rag cleaned the barrel, the
+weapon could be recharged for a large number of rounds. At first these
+grooves were made straight.”
+
+A theory propounded in a well-known treatise published in the year
+1808, entitled _Scloppetaria_, was to the effect that grooving had its
+origin in the habit which the early huntsman had of gnawing or biting
+the balls before putting them into the piece, with a view to causing
+the wound inflicted by them to be rendered more severe. This habit gave
+rise to the idea that the barrel itself might be made to do the work
+of jagging or indenting the bullet. “These grooved or sulcated barrels
+appear to be of great antiquity, and are said to have existed in Russia
+long before their introduction among the civilized nations of the
+south.”
+
+According to Hans Busk, straight grooving was adopted for the reason
+given by Schmidt: i.e., purely for the purpose of facilitating loading,
+and for assisting to dislodge the products of combustion left in the
+bore. “No doubt the adoption of this plan was calculated to increase
+the efficiency and accuracy of the arm from the steadiness it imparted
+to the bullet in its passage through the barrel.”
+
+And that is a view which, it is suggested, might be expanded to give a
+motive or combination of motives which may well have operated to induce
+the early gunmakers to cut grooves in their musket-barrels. Thus: the
+variations in the flight of spherical lead balls fired from smooth-bore
+guns were chiefly due (though these causes were not clearly appreciated
+till a much later date) to the incalculable effect of windage and to
+the varying axis about which spin took place. If by any means windage
+could be reduced, and if the ball could be made to assume a central
+position in the bore and spin about a definite axis in its flight, a
+large increase in accuracy would be attained. Suppose, for instance, a
+single groove or gutter were filed along the barrel parallel with its
+axis. The effect surely would be, by creating a rush of powder-gases
+along this groove, to cause the ball, under the tangential impulse of
+the gases, to rotate always in the same plane as it passed through the
+bore. And thus by the cutting of this single groove a uniformity of
+flight of the ball would be attained which was unattainable without the
+groove. The same effect, in fact, was produced by Robins when he bent
+the musket barrel. He demonstrated that the result was to make the ball
+roll on a definite part of the barrel and thus to deviate during flight
+in a definite direction. He might have shewn, as another result of his
+experiment, that by giving the ball a uniform spin he had endowed it
+with a regularity of flight, or accuracy, many times greater than it
+before possessed.
+
+Or suppose that, instead of one groove, two or more grooves were filed
+in the same way. While the above advantage derived from the single
+groove would be less fully obtained, another would result. By providing
+a space on each side into which fouling might spread, and into which
+the plastic metal of the ball might be intruded by the pressure of the
+ramrod, their presence would certainly allow of a tight-fitting ball
+being used. The loss in efficiency of discharge due to friction between
+ball and barrel would be more than compensated for by the annihilation
+of windage.[114]
+
+Suppose, however, that the grooves were augmented in number until they
+became a series of triangular serrations all round the interior of
+the barrel. The value of this formation might lie, not so much in the
+grooves, as in the ends or points of the serrations which supported the
+ball and held it in a central position on the true axis of the gun. In
+short, the prime idea of the gunmaker may have been, not so much the
+provision of grooves, as the provision of internal ribs for holding the
+ball truly in the musket.
+
+Whatever the cause or motive which led to its adoption, the rifling
+of musket barrels became a common practice in the sixteenth century.
+Two significant quotations will suffice to show the period of the
+invention. The first is an edict issued by the Swiss Government in 1563:
+
+    “For the last few years the art of cutting grooves in the
+    chambers of the guns has been introduced with the object of
+    increasing the accuracy of fire; the disadvantage resulting
+    therefrom to the common marksmen has sown discord among them.
+    In ordinary shooting matches marksmen are therefore forbidden
+    under a penalty of £10 to provide themselves with rifled arms.
+    Everyone is nevertheless permitted to rifle his military weapon
+    and to compete with marksmen armed with similar weapons for
+    special prizes.”[115]
+
+The second is a recipe from a book by Sir Hugh Plat, written in 1594.
+
+    “How to make a pistol whose barrel is two feet in length to
+    deliver a bullet point blank at eight score. A pistol of the
+    aforesaid length and being of petronel bore, or a bore higher,
+    having eight gutters somewhat deep in the inside of the barrel,
+    and the bullet a thought bigger than the bore, and is rammed
+    in at the first three or four inches at the least, and after
+    driven down with the skowring-stick, will deliver his bullet at
+    such distance.”
+
+So at some date not long after that at which straight grooving was put
+into common practice, the evolution of the rifle made a further advance
+by the introduction of spiral grooving. This gave all the advantages
+of the straight grooving, and in addition, spin in a definite plane to
+a definite degree; so that it entirely superseded straight grooving
+in all countries where fire-arms were in common use. Experience
+amply confirmed the superiority of the twisted rifling. With the
+accession of accuracy the skill of the marksman naturally increased,
+enthusiasm grew, and the shooting competitions gained in popularity and
+importance. “Le goût de tir des armes rayées de précision est poussé
+jusqu’à la passion: passion qui excite l’amour-propre en ne laissant
+pas à la maladresse l’excuse si facile de l’imperfection inévitable de
+l’arme à canon lisse.”[116]
+
+[Illustration: BULLET MOULD]
+
+Yet in spite of improvements the rifled musket remained unrecognized
+as a military weapon for another two hundred years. Its use was
+confined to sporting purposes; though far less in common use than the
+smooth-bore it became, for its increased accuracy, the favourite weapon
+of the deer-stalker and the chamois hunter. In England it was little
+known before the nineteenth century; and when, in 1746, Robins made his
+famous prophecy, the possibilities inherent in rifled fire-arms, even
+such as were then in existence, were unrealized by the people of this
+country.
+
+It is to be noted that it was only in increased accuracy of flight that
+the rifled gun had a superiority over the smooth-bore; no increase in
+ranging power was possessed by it. And yet this claim is constantly
+made by old writers, that, probably (as they say) owing to the fact
+that increased resistance of the ball to initial motion gave time for
+all the charge to be thoroughly ignited, the rifled gun carried further
+than the smooth-bore. As a fact, the contrary was true; other things
+being equal, the range of the rifle was actually less than that of the
+smooth-bore. The explanation of the paradox was given by Robins. “It is
+not surprising,” he said, “that those habituated to the use of rifled
+pieces gave way to prepossessions like these; for they found that with
+them they could fire at a mark with tolerable success, though it were
+placed at three or four times the distance to which the ordinary pieces
+were supposed to reach: and therefore as they were ignorant of the true
+cause of this variation ... it was not unnatural for them to imagine,
+that the superiority in the effect of rifled pieces was owing either to
+a more violent impulse at first, or to a more easy passage through the
+air.” The true value of the spiral grooving resided, of course, in the
+spinning motion which it gave the ball. By making this spin uniform two
+variable factors determining the trajectory were thereby transformed
+into constants: first, the effect just mentioned, the influence of the
+varying resistance of the air on the parts of the ball which met it at
+different speeds, some parts moving forward relatively to its centre
+and some parts retreating; secondly, the effect of eccentricity of mass
+and irregularity of exterior surface, which were both almost nullified
+by the rotation. The importance of this second effect may not at first
+sight be apparent. It must be remembered, however, that the balls used
+in those days were of the roughest description; cast in hand moulds,
+“drawn” in cooling to such an extent that in a large proportion an
+actual cavity was left in their interior, which could be revealed only
+by cutting them open; their burrs removed with pincers, their surface
+rough and broken, their shape distorted by the ramrod’s blows.
+
+The superiority of the rifle in accuracy was generally admitted; and
+this advantage not only counterbalanced such deficiency in ranging
+power as may have accrued from the use of grooving, but actually led
+to a general but mistaken belief that the rifle carried farther than
+the smooth-bore. The reverse was the case. Moreover, it was not safe to
+use with a rifle the very large charges of powder which could be used
+with safety with a smooth-bore musket. On account of the resistance to
+motion of the ball which had been forced by ramrod, sometimes even by
+mallet, down the grooved barrel of the rifle, high chamber pressures
+resulted, and not infrequently the barrels burst. Hence in spite of the
+thicker metal of which they were generally made, rifles could only be
+used with moderate charges, and so could not compete on equal terms, in
+this respect, with the smooth-bores for superiority of range.
+
+Toward the end of the eighteenth century events occurred which drew
+attention to the utility of the rifle for military purposes. In spite
+of its slow rate of fire--to load it carefully took from one and a
+half to two minutes--it showed itself to be a very effective weapon
+in the hands of French tirailleurs, Swiss, Austrian, and Tyrolese
+_Jägers_, Hottentots and American Indians. In the War of Independence
+the superior accuracy of their rifles, and their capacity for hitting
+at ranges beyond the 200 yards which were about the limit of the
+smooth-bore musket, placed the American backwoodsmen at such an
+advantage over the British troops that riflemen were recruited on the
+Continent and sent across the Atlantic to counter them. New military
+tactics came into vogue at this time, their inception influenced by the
+gradual improvement in fire-arms and artillery. Bodies of riflemen,
+“a light erratic force concealing itself with facility and forming an
+ambuscade at will,” were formed in the continental armies to act in
+concert with the masses of infantry as skirmishers or sharp-shooters,
+their object being to surprise and demoralize the enemy by the accuracy
+of their long-range shooting. Rifles were now looked on, too, as the
+natural counterpart of the now flying or horse artillery, “which,
+from the rapidity of its motions, the execution of cannon-shot in all
+situations, appears to be the effects of little less than magic.”[117]
+
+[Illustration: RIFLEMAN PRESENTING
+
+(From Ezekiel Baker’s _Rifled Guns_, A.D. 1813.)]
+
+In 1800 a rifle corps was raised by the British government from the old
+95th Regiment. As the result of competitive trials the rifle made by
+Ezekiel Baker, a gunmaker of Whitechapel, was adopted: taking spherical
+balls of twenty to the pound, and having a barrel 30 inches long,
+rifled with two grooves twisted one-quarter of a turn. This degree of
+twist was certainly much less than that used in French, German and
+American rifles, which as a rule had three-quarters or a whole turn in
+them; but Baker found that so great a twist caused stripping of the
+balls; so, as the accuracy of the lower twist was as great as that of
+the higher up to a range of 300 yards, and as it required a relatively
+smaller charge, gave smaller chamber pressures and caused less fouling
+of the barrel than its competitors, it was accepted. There was a strong
+opinion at the time in favour of the larger twist as universally used
+by the more expert foreign marksmen; and this opinion was justified by
+experience.[118] The quarter-turn twist might give sufficient accuracy
+at low ranges, but as the skill of the riflemen increased longer ranges
+were attempted; and then it was found that sufficient accuracy was
+unattainable with the approved weapon. Rifles having a larger twist
+were therefore made by rival gunmakers and, the results of shooting
+matches giving incontestable evidence of their superiority, a demand
+arose for their supply to the army riflemen. Accordingly in 1839 the
+Brunswick rifle was adopted for the British army. The new weapon had
+two deep grooves twisted a whole turn in the length of the barrel,
+in which grooves studs, cast on the ball and designed to prevent
+stripping, were made to engage.
+
+This was the last stage of the evolution of the rifle firing a
+spherical ball. So long as the spherical ball was retained, spiral
+grooving offered relatively small advantages over straight grooving;
+straight grooving offered small advantages over the best smooth-bore
+muskets. The tedious loading of these rifles and the inefficiency of
+the system by which windage was eliminated by the force of ramming, are
+sufficiently set forth by the various writers on early fire arms; and
+there is small wonder that the value of rifles as military weapons was
+seriously questioned by the highest professional opinion of the time.
+The charge of powder had to be carefully varied according to the state
+of the weather and the foulness of the piece. Care had to be taken
+that all the grains of the charge poured into it went to the breech
+end and did not stick to the sides of the barrel. Patches of leather
+or fustian were carried, in which the ball was wrapped on loading, to
+absorb windage, lubricate the rifling, and prevent the “leading” of
+the barrel and the wear which would ensue if a naked ball were used.
+“Place the ball,” says Ezekiel Baker, “upon the greased patch with the
+neck or castable, where it is cut off from the moulds, downwards, as
+generally there is a small hole or cavity in it, which would gather
+the air in its flight.” The ball, a good tight fit, had to be rammed,
+in its surrounding patch, right down to the powder: for, if not rammed
+properly home, an air-space would be left and the barrel would perhaps
+burst on discharge; at the least, would give an inaccurate flight to
+the ball. If the barrel were at all worn, double or treble patches were
+necessary. To loosen the filth which collected in the barrel, and which
+sometimes prevented the ball from being either rammed or withdrawn,
+water had to be poured down; not infrequently urine was used.
+
+All sizes and shapes of groove were given to the early rifle, and
+their number depended largely upon caprice or superstition. Seven,
+for instance, was a number frequently chosen on account of its mystic
+properties; in _Scloppetaria_ an attempt is made to prove that an
+odd number has an advantage over an even. So, also, various degrees
+of twist were used. But in respect of this the evolution followed a
+definite course. The pitch of the twist necessarily bore a certain
+relationship to muzzle velocity. With the earliest rifles a fairly
+rapid twist was given, being rendered possible by the small muzzle
+velocities employed, and indeed being rendered necessary to ensure
+stability to the flight of the ball. Then, with the endeavours made, at
+the end of the eighteenth century, to use higher charges and thereby
+to extend their range, higher muzzle velocities came into use, and the
+danger of stripping was then only prevented by the use of low twists.
+Special devices enabled a return to be made, in the Brunswick and other
+patterns, to the more rapid twists originally used.
+
+Whatever devices were adopted to prevent stripping, however perfect
+the design and material of the equipment employed, two factors stood
+in the way of any further advance in the evolution of the rifle firing
+the spherical ball. First, the unsuitability of the sphere itself
+for projection through a resisting medium, by reason of the large
+surface which it offered to the air’s resistance and the relatively
+small mass by means of which it could maintain its flight. Second, the
+gyroscopic action of the spinning sphere, which limited its effective
+range in a manner which was probably unrealized until after it had
+been completely superseded. The sphere, unlike the elongated bullet,
+which always keeps its axis approximately tangential to its trajectory,
+maintained throughout flight its spin on its original axis. This did
+not matter much when ranges were short and trajectories flat; but as
+greater ranges and loftier trajectories came into use the effect on
+accuracy of aim became very important. During its descent through the
+latter part of the trajectory the rifle ball rotated in a plane no
+longer normal to its direction of flight; “it tended more and more to
+roll upon the air, and deviated considerably.”[119]
+
+
+§
+
+The old Brown Bess, the ¾-inch smooth-bore musket which our armies
+carried at Waterloo, in the Peninsula, and even at the Crimea,
+differed in no great respect from the muskets borne by British troops
+at Ramillies, whose inefficiency was such that it was seriously
+questioned whether, without the invention of the bayonet, they would
+have permanently superseded the crossbow of the Middle Ages. The
+inefficiency of Brown Bess was indeed remarkable. Its standard of
+accuracy was so low that a trained marksman could only depend on
+putting one shot in twenty into an eighteen-foot square target at two
+hundred yards, at which range it was supposed to be effective. Its
+windage was so great that bullets flew wild from the muzzle; and it
+is not very surprising that, armed with such a weapon, our infantry
+should often have been impelled “to resort to the strong and certain
+thrust of the bayonet, rather than rely for their safety on the chance
+performances of the clumsy and capricious Brown Bess.” Writers on
+fire-arms are able to give dozens of tragic and laughable instances
+of its erratic shooting. In the Kaffir war, for example, our troops
+had to expend no fewer than eighty thousand rounds to kill or cripple
+some twenty-five naked savages. After Waterloo a musket was sent down
+to Woolwich, to ascertain whether its ball would penetrate a French
+cuirass at two hundred yards’ range. The cuirass was mounted on a
+pole, the musket aligned and held firmly in a vice; but it was found
+impossible to secure a hit until, at last, a random shot fired by one
+of the officers present did take effect! Nevertheless, Brown Bess
+remained in favour for a number of years after Waterloo. It had a flat
+and raking trajectory, owing to the very high muzzle velocity imparted
+to it by the large charge of powder used; from its great windage it
+loaded easily; and, although rather too heavy for long marches, it was
+strong enough to bear any amount of hard usage.[120]
+
+So long as the rifle used a spherical ball it could not claim to rival
+Brown Bess for general service. As soon as the elongated projectile
+was developed the supersession of the smooth-bore was a matter of
+time alone. It is strange, however, in view of the enthusiasm of the
+Victorian rifleman and the ease with which the fire-arm lent itself
+to novel experiments, that the evolution of the elongated projectile
+covered so long a period as it did.
+
+Apart from the fact that cylindrical bars and shot had often been fired
+from ordnance, it was known that Benjamin Robins himself had tried the
+experiment of firing egg-shaped projectiles from a rifle with a certain
+amount of success. The inefficiency of the loose sphere, in the case
+of the smooth-bore, and of the tightly rammed sphere, in the case of
+the rifle, were both recognized in the early days of the century. And,
+while no solution could be found, the problem was generally agreed to
+be: how to drop the projectile loosely down the barrel, and tighten it
+so as to absorb the windage when already there.
+
+Two or three English inventors made proposals. In 1823 a Captain
+Norton, of the 34th Regiment, submitted an elongated projectile with
+a base hollowed out in such a way as to expand automatically when the
+pressure of the powder-gas came on it, and thus seal the bore. The
+idea came to him from an examination of the arrow used by the natives
+of Southern India with their blow-tube: an examination which revealed
+that the base of the arrow was formed of elastic lotus-pith, which by
+its expansion against the cylindrical surface of the tube prevented the
+escape of air past it. In 1836 Mr. Greener submitted a pointed bullet
+having a cylindrical cavity in its base in which a conical plug was
+fixed, expanding the base by a wedging action when under the pressure
+of the powder gases.[121] Had either of these ideas been considered
+with the attention which it deserved, the development of the rifle
+in this country might have been more rapid than it was. “By blindly
+rejecting both of these inventions the authorities deprived England of
+the honour of having initiated the greatest improvement in small arms.”
+
+It was in France that the elongated projectile waged an eventually
+successful struggle against the spherical ball, its ancient rival.
+The French, troubled by the superiority of their Arab enemies in
+shooting at long range, founded a School of Musketry at Vincennes. In
+1828 Captain Delvigne, a distinguished staff officer of that school,
+established the two main principles on which all succeeding inventors
+were obliged to rely: one, that in muzzle-loading rifles the projectile
+must slip down the barrel with a certain windage, so as to admit of
+easy loading; two, that only elongated projectiles were suited to
+modern rifles.
+
+Before coming to these two conclusions Delvigne had made important
+efforts to render the spherical ball as efficient as possible. He
+had, in particular, proposed to make that part of the barrel near the
+breech which formed the powder-chamber of slightly smaller diameter
+than the rest of the barrel; so that a spherical ball, rammed down
+on it, became indented against its ledge and flattened sufficiently
+to fill the rifling grooves. By this device quick loading was
+obtained and the accuracy of aim, it was found, was doubled. Certain
+practical disadvantages, however, were associated with it: the chamber
+fouled rapidly, and the ball was frequently distorted and jagged
+by over-ramming. So in ’33 the Delvigne system, as it was called,
+was modified by the wrapping of the ball in a greased patch and the
+attaching of the patch to a “sabot” or wad of wood which was interposed
+between the ball and the shoulders of the powder-chamber. Rifles thus
+loaded did good work in Algeria in ’38.
+
+In the meantime Delvigne, admittedly inspired by the writings of
+Robins, was urging on the authorities the superiority of the elongated
+ball. He was insistent on the advantages which would accrue from
+augmenting the mass of the projectile while at the same time making
+it present to the air during flight its smallest surface. The shape
+he proposed was that of the present-day rifle bullet, considerably
+shortened: a bullet with a flat base, cylindrical sides and ogival
+head, somewhat resembling the form which had been proposed by Sir
+Isaac Newton as a “solid of least resistance.” After a succession of
+disappointments and refusals, the inventor had the satisfaction of
+seeing his bullet accepted. Its advantages over the spherical ball
+had been made manifest on the proving-ground. It was accepted in
+combination with the _carabine à tige_, a rifle invented by a Colonel
+Thouvenin, in which the Delvigne shouldered chamber was replaced by a
+small central pillar or anvil, projecting from the breech-end of the
+bore, against which the bullet was rammed. The powder, when poured into
+the barrel, collected in the annular space around the pillar. By this
+arrangement the necessity for the sabot was obviated and the charge of
+powder, protected by the pillar, was not in danger of being crushed
+or mealed. In ’46 the new bullet proved its high accuracy and ranging
+power on active service in Algeria. But the pillar was found liable to
+bend and distort; and the difficulty in keeping the space round it free
+from fouling proved to be another of its inherent disadvantages.
+
+[Illustration: “CARABINE À TIGE”]
+
+[Illustration: MINIÉ BULLET]
+
+And then, in 49 the Minié compound bullet, self-expanding, of the same
+shape as the Delvigne and utilizing the same principle of an expansive
+bore as that embodied in Greener’s bullet, was produced. The full value
+of the rifle was at last obtained. By virtue of the elongated bullet
+the mass of the projectile could be increased to a large extent without
+any increase in the cross-sectional area exposed to air resistance.
+With such a projectile, impelled by a charge whose combustive effect
+could be accurately gauged owing to the absence of all windage losses,
+great speed and accuracy were possible. As to power, the only limit
+imposed was the strength of the barrel and the capacity of the marksman
+to withstand the reactionary blow due to the projectile’s momentum.
+But now, not only was rifling advantageous: with the elongated bullet
+rifling was an absolute necessity. “Rotation,” it was said, “is the
+soul of the bullet.” Rotation was necessary to impart stability, and to
+keep the projectile, by virtue of the initial spin acquired, true in
+its flight throughout the whole trajectory.
+
+In England, where the two-grooved Brunswick still marked the limit
+of development, the discovery of the Minié weapon and its powers
+occasioned misgiving and surprise.[122] In ’51 some Minié rifles were
+purchased and issued, as a temporary expedient, to our army. And,
+interest in the question now becoming general,[123] it was resolved
+to take under government control the future manufacture of military
+small arms. A commission of officers visited America for the purpose
+of inspecting the ingenious tools and appliances known to be employed
+there in the manufacture of rifles; and the features of the various
+European and American weapons were seriously studied. A government
+factory was established at Enfield, and with the products of this
+factory certain of our regiments were armed for service when the
+Crimean War broke out. The Enfield rifle, as it was called, combined
+the best features of the Minié with those of other types. It had a
+three-grooved barrel with a half-turn twist in its length of 39 inches.
+It was .577 inch in the bore, and fired a bullet whose recessed base
+was filled with a boxwood instead of an iron cup or plug.
+
+The nation soon obtained value from the new development. The efficiency
+of the Enfield rifle at the Alma and at Inkerman was attested by the
+correspondent of _The Times_, who reported that “it smote the enemy
+like a destroying angel.” Three years later the Indian Mutiny afforded
+a still more conclusive proof of the value of this weapon. Though,
+from the greased cartridges which were used, it served as one of the
+pretexts for the mutiny, it proved in the sequel a powerful military
+instrument, and demonstrated both to friend and foe its superiority
+over the smooth-bore musket with which the rebels were armed. In
+fact, with the adoption of the Enfield rifle, England found herself
+in advance even of France; the French, partly perhaps from motives
+of economy, partly from a desire for symmetry, had retained in their
+Minié rifle the same calibre as that of their old smooth-bore: indeed,
+the greater part of the French army rifles were merely converted
+smooth-bores. In the Enfield a wise reduction of calibre had been
+made; whereby, while the weight of the rifle was reduced, its strength
+and the size of the permissible charges, and therefore the range and
+penetrating power of the projectile were all considerably augmented.
+
+Having once gained the lead, England now took another rapid move
+forward in the development of the rifle. Though the new standards set
+by the Enfield were high, expert opinion aimed at something still
+higher; the Enfield gave variations in range and direction which could
+not be accounted for by errors in manufacture, nor did the range and
+penetrative power of the bullet come up to expectations. In these
+circumstances the government sought the advice of a man whose name was
+destined to loom large in the story of the subsequent development of
+ordnance: Mr. Whitworth. Mr. Whitworth was described as the greatest
+mechanical genius in Europe at that time. Certain it is that, although
+in the realm of ordnance his name may have been overshadowed to a
+certain extent by that of his great rival, yet on the broad ground of
+the influence his inventions exerted on the progress of mechanical
+science generally, his fame now grows with time. He it was who first
+swept away the medieval conception of measurement which hitherto had
+obtained in factories and workshops, and introduced a scientific
+precision into the manufacture of machines and mechanisms. The true
+plane surface, as we know it to-day, was unattained before his time;
+and his contemporaries marvelled at plates of metal prepared by him of
+so true a surface that, by their mere adhesion, one could be lifted by
+means of the other. The micrometer was a similar revelation. Men whose
+minimum of size had hitherto been the thickness of a chalk-line or a
+simple fraction of an inch, were taught by him to measure the inch
+to its ten-thousandth part, and even to gauge the expansion of a rod
+caused by the warmth imparted by the contact of a finger.
+
+Such was the man who made modern artillery possible. To Mr. Whitworth,
+who knew nothing himself of guns or of gun-making, the government went
+for advice on the shortcomings of the Enfield rifle. At their request
+he promptly began an analytical inquiry into the principles underlying
+the action of rifles and the flight of their projectiles, resolved
+and urged to discover the secret of the very partial success so far
+attained. The results of this inquiry, published in ’57, had a great
+influence on the future of rifled fire-arms and ordnance. Briefly, he
+discovered that the amount of twist hitherto given to the rifling of
+gun-barrels had been wholly insufficient to maintain the projectile
+in its true direction during flight; the weight of the projectile,
+relatively to its diameter, had been insufficient to give it the
+necessary momentum to sustain its velocity against the resistance
+of the air; lastly, the accuracy of manufacture of rifles had been
+inadequate to the ensuring of a good fit of the bullet in the bore. To
+prove the truth of these assertions a Whitworth rifle was produced by
+him which gave better results than any other hitherto made. The form
+of rifling which the inventor adopted was considered objectionable,
+and the rifle itself, with its polygonal barrel, was not approved by
+the authorities; but, instead, the valuable results of Whitworth’s
+experiments were embodied in the Enfield, to its obvious improvement.
+
+[Illustration: WHITWORTH RIFLE BULLET]
+
+The muzzle-loading rifle had now reached the limit of its development.
+The rifle was the accepted arm of all the great military powers. But
+in the case of one of them, Prussia, the principle of breech-loading
+was already in favour, and it was not long before the progress in
+mechanical science enabled this principle to prove its superiority
+over the ancient principle of muzzle-loading. Although in the Prussian
+needle-gun great difficulties were encountered; although in service its
+reputation suffered from such defects as the rusting of the needles
+which pierced the percussion cartridges, the failure of springs, the
+escape of gases at the breech; yet it was recognized that none of these
+defects was necessarily inherent in the breech-loading system, and its
+merits were admitted. With the breech-loader a greater rapidity of fire
+was always attainable, there was less difficulty in preventing fouling,
+and, above all, there was the certainty that the powder-charge would be
+fired to its last effective grain.
+
+In 1864 breech-loading rifles were recommended for the British army,
+and shortly afterwards they were introduced in the form of converted
+Enfields.
+
+
+§
+
+We have seen how the development of field ordnance stimulated the
+development of the rifle. In turn the attainment of superior range
+and accuracy by rifled small arms led directly to a corresponding
+development of field ordnance, designed to recover the loss of its
+ascendancy. In France, where the logical consequences of the progress
+in small arms were officially noted on several occasions, Napoleon
+III, himself an authority on artillery, took the initiative to restore
+field ordnance to its former relative position. It was in the Crimean
+War that the enhanced effects of rifle regiments were first seriously
+felt. Convinced by the protraction of the operations before Sebastopol
+of the inadequacy of smooth-bore guns, the Emperor caused bronze pieces
+to be rifled, and these, being sent to Algeria on active service, gave
+conclusive proof of their increased efficiency. On report of which, all
+the bronze field pieces in the French army were rifled in accordance
+with the plans which a M. Treuille de Beaulieu had submitted in 1842,
+viz. with six shallow rounded grooves in which engaged zinc studs
+carried on two bands formed on the cylindrical projectile. The gain in
+power obtained by rifling ordnance was greater even than that obtained
+from rifling as applied to small arms. For not only did rifling confer
+the advantages of a more massive projectile more suitably shaped for
+flight through a resisting medium, but it allowed a large increase
+in the number of balls which could be discharged in the form of case
+or shrapnel, and a large increase in the powder-charge which could
+be carried inside a common shell. An advantage was also gained in
+respect of that important detail, the fusee or fuze; the rotation of
+the projectile about a definite axis made it possible to use fuses
+whose action depended on one definite part of the projectile coming
+first in contact with the ground or target.[124] All these advantages
+were found to be present in the French field pieces when rifled on the
+above plan. “And thus,” said an English writer, “at slight expense
+but too late for use in the Crimean War, France was put in possession
+of an artillery which, consuming its usual powder and using either
+round ball or elongated projectiles, proved of immense value in the war
+against Austria in 1856, when, at Magenta and at Solferino, the case
+shot from their rifled field-pieces ploughed through the distant masses
+of opposing infantry and decimated the cavalry as they formed for the
+attack.”[125]
+
+In England an almost simultaneous development took place, but on
+entirely different lines. Let us tell it in the words of Sir Emerson
+Tennant:
+
+“The fate of the battle of Inkerman in November, 1854, was decided
+by two eighteen-pounder guns which by almost superhuman efforts were
+got up late into the field, and these, by their superior range, were
+effectual in silencing the Russian fire. Mr. William Armstrong was
+amongst those who perceived that another such emergency could only be
+met by imparting to field-guns the accuracy and range of the rifle; and
+that the impediment of weight must be removed by substituting forged
+instead of cast-iron guns. With his earliest design for the realization
+of this conception, he waited on the Secretary for War in December,
+1854, to propose the enlargement of the rifle musket to the standard of
+a field gun, and to substitute elongated projectiles of lead instead
+of balls of cast iron. Encouraged by the Duke of Newcastle, he put
+together his first wrought-iron gun in the spring of 1855.”[126]
+
+The manufacture of this gun marked a new era in ordnance. Repeated
+trials followed its completion; with the result that in 1858 the
+Armstrong gun was officially adopted for service in the field,--the
+epoch-making Armstrong gun: a tube made of wrought-iron bar coiled in
+a closed helix and welded at a white heat into a solid mass; turned
+to a true cylinder and reinforced by outer tubes shrunk on to it;
+rifled with a large number of grooves; breech-loading, a powerful screw
+holding a sliding vent-piece tightly against the face of the breech;
+firing a lead-coated projectile in whose plastic covering the rifling
+engaged as soon as it started its passage through the bore; and mounted
+on a field-carriage in such a way that the gun could recoil up an
+inclined slide and return by gravity, and in such a way that its motion
+both for elevating and for traversing was under the accurate control
+given by screw gearing.
+
+The coming of the Armstrong gun at once revolutionized artillery
+practice and material in this country. The sum of all the improvements
+embodied in it was so great that existing material scarcely bore
+comparison with it. Its accuracy as compared with that of the
+smooth-bore field piece which it displaced was stated in parliament to
+be in the ratio of fifty-seven to one. And the effect of its inventor’s
+achievement was, “that from being the rudest of weapons, artillery has
+been advanced to be nearly on a par mechanically with the steam engine
+or the power-loom; and it differs as essentially from the old cast-iron
+tube dignified with the name of a gun, as the railway train of the
+present day differs from the stagecoach of our forefathers.”[127] A
+revolutionary invention it certainly was. Yet, like most revolutionary
+inventions, it relied for its grand effect more on the aggregate
+effect of the small improvements in its various elements than on the
+materialization of some new-born idea. The building up of guns in coils
+was not a new discovery, polygroove rifling was already in use abroad,
+breech-loading, lead-coated projectiles, elevating screws--all had
+been known for years. Nor does this fact detract in the least from the
+fame of Mr. Armstrong in this connection. His greatness lay, surely,
+in the insight and initiative with which he made use of known forms
+and combinations, summoning to his aid the new powers placed at his
+disposal by Whitworth, Nasmyth, Bessemer and their contemporaries in
+order to evolve a system incomparably superior to anything hitherto
+achieved.
+
+In England, too, an independent development was at the same time taking
+place in yet another direction. Mr. Whitworth, having satisfactorily
+established the principles governing the design of rifles, felt
+confident of extending them to field and heavy ordnance. Adhering to
+the muzzle-loading principle and to his hexagonal form of rifling he
+manufactured, between the years 1854 and 1857, several guns which
+fired projectiles of from six to twenty-four pounds’ weight with
+great accuracy and to ranges greater than any yet attained. Events
+occurred which caused him to be given every encouragement by the
+government. The attitude of the French in these years was suspicious
+and unfriendly. Schemes of invasion were openly discussed in their
+press, and war vessels of various types equipped with armour plate
+were designed and actually built. Reports of their plans, following
+closely on the exposures of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny,
+rendered the country increasingly restless and apprehensive as to the
+value of our offensive and defensive armaments. And then, although the
+new Armstrong gun was acclaimed as eminently suited for service in the
+field, doubts had been cast as to whether the principles of its design
+could be applied satisfactorily to the heaviest ordnance. Other rifled
+artillery had certainly failed to give the results expected from it.
+The Lancaster rifled gun, a muzzle-loading gun with a twisted bore of
+a slightly oval section, had failed lamentably at the Crimea owing
+to the tendency, according to one account, of the oval projectile to
+wedge itself against the slightly larger oval of the bore; according to
+another account, owing to the flames from the powder gases penetrating
+the interior of the welded shells which had been supplied for it. The
+breech-loading ordnance of Cavalli had failed the Italians. In Sweden
+several accidents had occurred with Wahrendorf’s breech-loading pieces.
+The French system, which had been copied by the majority of the powers,
+was that which appeared to be giving the least unsatisfactory results.
+
+In these circumstances every encouragement was given Mr. Whitworth to
+develop ordnance on his own lines. In ’58 a committee on rifled guns
+was appointed by parliament to examine and report on the relative
+merits of the various systems in use. The committee quickly set to
+work. No difficulty was found in eliminating all but two, on which
+attention was soon concentrated: the Armstrong and the Whitworth.
+The result of the final investigation was a report in favour of the
+Armstrong gun, which, as we have already seen, was adopted in the same
+year for field service. Mr. Armstrong, who had handed over his rights
+in the gun for the benefit of the nation, was knighted and his services
+were subsidized for the improvement of rifled ordnance generally. The
+title of “Engineer to the War Department” was conferred on him, and
+later he received the further appointment of “Superintendent of the
+Royal Gun Factory” at Woolwich.
+
+
+§
+
+The revolution in field guns was closely followed by a corresponding
+revolution in heavy ordnance. The experience of the Crimean War proved
+two things: that the development of the shell gun necessitated the
+provision of armour to protect the flanks of warships; and that the
+development of armour necessitated a heavy ordnance of a greater power
+than existing smooth-bore cannon. The shell gun, in fact, induced a
+rifled ordnance.
+
+The French, who had already found a cheap and sufficiently effective
+rifled field artillery in the conversion of their smooth-bores on the
+de Beaulieu principle, merely had to extend this conversion to their
+heavier pieces. By 1860 they had converted their 30- and 50-pounder
+cannon in this way, thus enabling them to be used for the discharge of
+either spherical or elongated projectiles.
+
+Britain, on the other hand, found herself committed to an entirely
+new and experimental system which could not be applied to existing
+ordnance; a large outlay of money was thereby involved for new plant
+and guns; our vast establishment of smooth-bore cast-iron cannon was
+in danger of being reduced to scrap material. At the same time doubts
+were expressed whether this new system, whose success as applied to
+medium pieces was generally admitted, would be found satisfactory
+when applied to the largest size of ordnance. It was natural, then,
+that great interest should be centred in what was regarded as a less
+experimental alternative to the Armstrong system, in case the latter
+failed. The results obtained by Mr. Whitworth in the manufacture
+of solid cannon, rifled hexagonally, muzzle-loading and capable of
+firing hexagonal bolts or, in emergency, spherical balls, were such
+as to give promise of competing successfully with those obtained from
+the ordnance officially patronized. To the public the simplicity of
+his system strongly appealed. Mr. Whitworth himself, far from being
+deterred by the decision given in favour of his rival, was now an
+enthusiastic exponent of the constructive principles which he had
+made his own. Trial succeeded trial, piece after piece was made and
+tested to destruction. By 1860 a very successful ordnance was evolved
+at Manchester by him: guns made of homogeneous iron, forged in large
+masses, and formed of cylindrical tubes forced one over another by
+means of a known hydraulic pressure--not, as in the Armstrong system,
+by heating and shrinking. And on the sands at Southport a series of
+public trials were carried out with these guns, the results of which
+proved a great advertisement for the Whitworth system. The accuracy of
+flight of the projectiles was unprecedented, and all records in ranging
+power were broken by one of the pieces, a 3-pounder, which threw a shot
+to a distance of 9,688 yards![128]
+
+Even if the new Whitworth system were adopted, the utilization of the
+old smooth-bore cannon which formed the existing national armament
+of ships and fortresses was not secured. Neither the Armstrong nor
+the Whitworth system provided an expedient for converting to rifled
+ordnance the thousands of cast-iron guns in which the defence of the
+country was invested. Efforts were therefore made to reinforce the
+old pieces so that, when rifled, they would be sufficiently strong to
+withstand the greater stresses entailed. Greater stresses in the metal,
+due to higher chamber pressures of the powder gases, were almost a
+necessary concomitant of rifling. For, apart from the increase in the
+size and mass of the projectile and its greater initial resistance
+to motion, pressures tended to increase in a greater ratio than the
+size of the pieces themselves; the mass of the projectile increased
+as the cube, the propulsive force of the gases as the square, of the
+diameter of the bore; hence to attain a given velocity, the larger the
+bore the higher the pressure required to propel it with a given type
+of powder,--other things being equal. No limit, therefore, could be
+assigned to the strength and power required of heavy ordnance. Moreover
+a struggle had begun in ’59, with the building of the _Gloire_ and
+_Warrior_, which was already foreshadowing tremendous developments both
+of guns and of armour.
+
+The experiences of America in this connection were not encouraging.
+The civil war served as an incentive to the Americans to rifle all
+their large calibre guns as quickly as possible. In ’62 large numbers
+of cast-iron cannon were rifled and reinforced by external hoops of
+iron. The results were deplorable. A great number of pieces burst; and
+experience made it clear that “a gun made up of a single homogeneous
+casting soon reaches a limit of resistance to internal pressure beyond
+which the addition of extra metal has little or no effect.” Two
+improvements must be mentioned as having more than a passing effect on
+the progress of ordnance in America: first, the adoption of compressed
+and perforated powder which, by prolonging the combustion period,
+caused a more even distribution of stresses over all sections of the
+barrel; second, the casting of guns hollow and the chilling of their
+interiors, so as to form on the inside of the piece a hardened stratum
+on which the outer parts of the casting contracted as they slowly
+cooled, thus giving it support. But in spite of these inventions it
+became apparent that cast iron was in its nature unsuited as a material
+for rifled ordnance.
+
+In England a safer method of conversion was followed. Guns were bored
+out, on a scheme proposed in ’63 by Major Palliser, and accurately
+turned tubes of coiled wrought iron were fitted in them, which
+were afterwards rifled. The resulting pieces consisted, then, of a
+wrought-iron inner tube, supported by a surrounding cast-iron jacket
+against which, on firing, the inner tube expanded. Thus converted, the
+old smooth-bores were enabled to develop an energy far in excess of
+their original limit, and so to prolong for some years their period of
+usefulness.
+
+The conversion of the cast-iron guns was seen to be only a temporary
+expedient. Just as the smooth-bore cannon, after a last effort
+to overcome iron plates with spherical solid shot of the largest
+calibre, withdrew from the competition; so, as the thickness of
+armour increased, the converted cast-iron cannon, with its special
+armour-piercing shot of chilled iron, soon reached the limit of its
+power and gave place to the rifled artillery of wrought iron or steel.
+
+And now, rifled ordnance having definitely supplanted the smooth-bore,
+a new struggle arose between the various systems of gunmaking, and
+more especially between the two rival methods of loading: by the
+breech and by the muzzle. The prognostications of those who had
+doubted whether the latter method was suitable for large ordnance were
+seen to be partially justified. Other nations had already relapsed
+into muzzle-loading, impressed by the complexity and weakness of the
+breech-loading systems of Cavalli, Wahrendorf and other inventors.
+Besides ourselves only the Prussians, the originators of the
+breech-loading rifled musket in its modern form, continued to trust in
+breech-loading ordnance. The Italians, following the example of the
+French and Americans, abandoned the system. “Thus,” said an English
+authority in ’62, “while, after more than four centuries of trial,
+other nations were giving up the moveable breech, ... we are still
+going from plan to plan in the hope of effecting what will, even if
+successful in closing the breech, be scarcely safe with the heavy
+charges necessary for smashing armour plates.”[129]
+
+In the following year, ’63, the committee appointed to carry out the
+competitive trials between Whitworth and Armstrong guns, reported that
+the many-grooved system of rifling, with its lead-coated projectiles
+and complicated breech-loading arrangements, entailing the use of tin
+caps for obturation and lubricators for the rifling grooves, was far
+inferior for the general purposes of war to both of the muzzle-loading
+systems tried. This view received early and practical confirmation
+from a report sent to the Admiralty by Vice-Admiral Sir Augustus
+Kuper, after the bombardment of Kagosima. In that action several
+accidents occurred owing to the Armstrong guns being fired with their
+breech-blocks not properly screwed up. The guns were accordingly
+withdrawn from service and replaced by muzzle-loaders. In 1864 England
+reverted definitely to muzzle-loading ordnance, which, in the face of
+violent controversy and in spite of the gradual reconversion of her
+rivals to the breech-loading principle, she maintained for the next
+fifteen years. Whitworth’s system was adopted in the main, but the
+hexagonal form of bore and projectile was avoided. Studded projectiles
+were approved, the pieces being rifled with a few broad shallow grooves
+not unlike those used by the French. England at last possessed a
+muzzle-loading sea ordnance, characterized by ease and rapidity of
+loading, accuracy, cheapness, and capacity for firing, in emergency,
+spherical shot as well as rifled projectiles.
+
+What was the effect of this retrogression upon the status of our naval
+armaments?
+
+It seems frequently to have been held that, in view of the eventual
+victory of the breech-loading gun, the policy of reverting to
+muzzle-loading was wrong, and that this country was thereby placed at
+a serious disadvantage to her rivals. Several good reasons existed,
+however, for the preference given to muzzle-loading ordnance at that
+time. The accidents with removable breeches had been numerous and
+demoralizing. Muzzle-loading guns, besides the advantages which they
+possessed of strength, solidity and simplicity of construction, offered
+important advantages in ease and rapidity of loading--particularly
+in the case of turret or barbette guns, where “outside loading” was
+a great convenience. On the other hand the principal deficiency of
+the muzzle-loader, namely, the large windage required with studded
+projectiles, was now eliminated by the invention of the cupped “gas
+check,” a copper disc attached to the rear of the projectile which, on
+discharge, expanded automatically and sealed the bore.
+
+Expert opinion confirmed the wisdom of the government policy.
+Experience, in the Franco-Prussian war and elsewhere, confirmed the
+views of the experts. “Reviewing the action of the artillerists who
+decided to adopt muzzle-loaders, with the greater experience we now
+possess it seems that they were right in their decision at the time it
+was first made; but there was too much hesitation in coming back to
+breech-loaders when new discoveries and great progress in powder quite
+altered conditions.”[130] In fact, once having abandoned the disparaged
+system, the country was with difficulty persuaded by the professionals
+to retrace its steps. In the end, ordnance followed small arms; the
+researches of Captain Noble at Elswick proved conclusively to the world
+at large the necessity for a reversion to breech-loading; and in 1880
+the muzzle-loading gun was finally superseded by a greatly improved
+form of breech-loader.
+
+In 1880 the state of knowledge and the conditions under which ordnance
+was manufactured were certainly altered from those of ’64. The struggle
+between guns and armour begun with the _Gloire_ and _Warrior_ had
+continued. In the presence of the new powers of mechanical science,
+artillerists and shipbuilders had sought to plumb the possibilities of
+offensive and defensive elements in warship design. Guns influenced
+armour, armour reacted on guns; both revolutionized contemporary naval
+architecture. It was in the effort to aggrandize the power of guns
+that Noble discovered that, with the existing powders and with the
+short muzzle-loading gun, a natural limit of power was soon reached.
+Better results could only be obtained, he showed, by the adoption of
+slow-burning powder and a longer gun; by the avoidance of the sudden
+high chamber pressure which resulted from the small-grained powder,
+and the substitution for it of a chamber pressure which would rise
+gradually to a safe maximum and then suffer only a gradual reduction as
+the gases expanded behind the moving projectile. The work done by the
+gases on the projectile could by this means be enormously increased.
+But, for this result, larger powder-charges were required; and these
+larger charges of slow-burning powder were found to require much
+larger chambers than those embodied in existing guns; in short, the
+new conditions called for a new shape of gun. Long guns, having powder
+chambers of larger diameter than that of the bore, were necessary, and
+these could not conveniently be made muzzle-loading.
+
+So a return to the breech-loading ordnance became inevitable, and the
+change was made. The old Armstrong moveable vent-piece was avoided,
+however, in the new designs; of the two alternative breech-closing
+systems in use, viz. the wedge system of Krupp and the “interrupted
+screw” system of the French, the latter was adopted. A steel tube,
+rifled on the polygroove system, formed the body of the piece, and this
+was strengthened by hoops of iron or steel shrunk on its exterior. The
+new gun yielded a very great increase of power. Muzzle-loading guns
+were at once displaced, in the projected programme of new battleships,
+for the new type of ordnance, and a further series of revolutionary
+changes in ship armament at once took place. Other nations had already
+augmented the length and power of their guns. By the adoption of the
+improved breech-loading ordnance, Great Britain, who for the last few
+years had been falling behind her rivals, not only drew level with them
+but definitely took the lead in the power of her heavy ordnance: a lead
+which from that time to this she has successfully maintained.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+PROPELLING MACHINERY
+
+
+No aspect of old naval warfare is so difficult for the modern reader
+to visualize, perhaps, as that which displays the essential weakness
+of the sailing warship: its impotence in a calm. It was a creature
+requiring for its activities two elements, air and water. Ruffle the
+sea with a breeze, and the sailing ship had power of motion towards
+most of the points of the compass; withdraw the winds, and she lay
+glued to the smooth water or rolling dangerously in the heavy swell,
+without power either of turning or translation. For centuries this
+weakness told heavily against her and in favour of the oar-propelled
+vessel, particularly in certain latitudes. Through many years, indeed,
+the two types held ascendancy each in its own waters; in the smooth
+stretches of the Mediterranean the oar-driven galley, light, swift,
+and using its sharp ram or bow-cannon as chief means of offence or
+defence, was a deadly danger to the becalmed sailing ship; in the
+rougher north Atlantic the sailing ship, strong, heavy, capacious,
+and armed for attack and defence only along its sides, proved far
+too fast and powerful for the oar-driven rival. Progress--increase
+of size, improvement in artillery, the development of the science of
+navigation--favoured the sailing ship, so that there came at last the
+day when, even in the Mediterranean, she attained ascendancy over the
+galley. But always there was this inherent weakness: in a dead calm
+the sailing ship lay open to attack from a quarter where her defence
+lay bare. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, perhaps, she could move
+sufficiently to beat off her attacker by bringing her broadsides
+to bear. The hundredth, she lay at the mercy of her adversary, who
+could, by choosing his range and quarter of attack, make her temporary
+inferiority the occasion of defeat. For this military reason many
+attempts were made to supplement sails with oars. But oars and sails
+were incompatible. They were often, seen together in early times,
+but with progress the use of one became more and more irreconcilable
+with the use of the other. The Tudor galleasse, though possessing
+in our northern waters many advantages over the galley type, had
+the defects inherent in the compromise, and gave place in a short
+time to the high-charged “great ship” propelled by sails alone. The
+sailing ship was by that time strong and powerful enough to risk the
+one-in-a-hundred chance of being attacked by oared galleys in a stark
+calm. It was only when the first steam vessels plied English waters
+that the old weakness became apparent again. It was then seriously
+urged that the ship-of-the-line should carry oars once more, against
+the attack of small steamers converging on her from a weakly defended
+quarter.
+
+[Illustration: SHIP AND GALLEY
+
+(From Tartagliá’s _Arte of Shooting_, English Ed., A.D. 1588.)]
+
+
+§
+
+The oar was in many ways an objectionable form of power. It was very
+vulnerable, its presence made manœuvring at close quarters risky and
+difficult; and apart from the necessity, on which the galley service
+was based, of a large supply of slave-labour for working them, oars and
+the rowers absorbed a large proportion of the available inboard space,
+to the detriment both of artillery and merchandise.
+
+Many attempts were therefore made, not only to substitute animals for
+men, for the work of propulsion, but to apply power in a manner more
+suitable than by the primitive method of levers: oars or sweeps. The
+paddlewheel was thought of at a very early date; a Roman army is said
+to have been transported into Sicily by boats propelled by wheels moved
+by oxen, and in many old military treatises the substitution of wheels
+for oars is mentioned.[131] In 1588 Ramelli, engineer-in-ordinary to
+the French king, published a book in which was sketched an amphibious
+vehicle propelled by hand-worked paddlewheels: “une sorte de canot
+automobile blindé et percé de meurtrières pour les arquesbusiers.”
+In 1619 Torelli, Governor of Malta, fitted a ship with paddles, and
+in it passed through the Straits of Messina against the tide. But
+Richelieu, to whom he offered his invention, was not impressed with
+its value.[132] Before this, Blasco de Garoy, a Spanish captain, had
+exhibited to the Emperor Charles V, in 1543, an engine by which ships
+of the largest size could be propelled in a calm: an arrangement of
+hand-operated paddlewheels.
+
+In Bourne’s _Inventions and Devices_, published in 1578, is the first
+mention of paddlewheels (so far as we know) in any English book. By
+the placing of certain wheels on the outside of the boat, he says, and
+“so turning the wheels by some provision,” the boat may be made to go.
+And then he proceeds to mention the inversion of the paddlewheel, or
+the paddlewheel which is driven, as distinguished from the paddlewheel
+which drives. “They make a watermill in a boat, for when that it rideth
+at an anker, the tide or stream will turn the wheels with great force,
+and these mills are used in France,” etc. It is possible, indeed, that
+this was the prior form, and that the earliest paddlewheel was a mill
+and not primarily a means of propelling the vessel.
+
+Early in the seventeenth century the mechanical sciences began to
+develop rapidly and as the century advanced the flood of patents for
+the propulsion of ships increased. “To make boats, ships, and barges
+to go against the wind and tide”; “the drawing and working of barges
+and other vessels without the use of horses”; “for making vessels to
+navigate in a straight line with all winds though contrary”; these
+are some of the patents granted, the details of which are not known.
+At last the ingenious Marquis of Worcester, who in 1663 was granted a
+patent for his steam engine, also obtained a patent for an invention
+for propelling a vessel against wind and stream. It has sometimes been
+inferred that this invention was connected in some way with the steam
+engine, and the claim has been made that the Marquis was one of the
+first authors of steam propulsion. This is not so. Contained in the
+description of the ship-propelling invention are two statements which
+dispose completely of the theory that steam was the motive force;
+first, that the “force of the wind or stream causeth its (the engine’s)
+motion”; secondly, that “the more rapid the stream, the faster it (the
+vessel) advances against it.” From this it appears that the Marquis
+intended to utilize the watermill as described by Bourne. From a study
+of the description of the apparatus it has been concluded that “a
+rope fastened at one end up the stream, and at the other to the axis
+of waterwheels lying across the boat, and dipping into the water so
+as to be turned by the wheels, would fulfil the conditions proposed
+of advancing the boat faster, the more rapid the stream; and when at
+anchor such wheels might have been applied to other purposes.”[133] If
+this reconstruction is correct, the scope of the propelling device was
+very limited.
+
+In Bushnell’s _Compleat Shipwright_, published in 1678, a proposal
+was made for working oars by pivoting them at the vessel’s side and
+connecting their inboard ends by longitudinal rods operated by cranks
+geared to a centre-line capstan. But the disadvantages of oars so
+used must have been apparent, and there is no evidence that this
+invention was ever put into practice. The obvious alternative was
+the paddlewheel, and though that device had been known and used in a
+primitive form long before the seventeenth century, it was continually
+being reinvented (especially in the ’nineties) and tried by inventors
+in various countries. Denis Papin turned his original mind to the
+solution of this problem. A paper on the subject written by him in
+Germany in 1690 is of interest. Discussing the use of oars from ships’
+sides he notes that, “Common oars could not be conveniently used in
+this way, and it would be necessary to use for this purpose those of
+a rotary construction, such as I remember to have seen at London.
+They were affixed to a machine made by direction of Prince Rupert,
+and were set in motion by horses, so as to produce a much greater
+velocity than could be given by sixteen watermen to the Royal Barge.”
+Papin, who had suggested the atmospheric steam engine, also suggested
+the possible application of steam to propulsion. But it was left to
+others to achieve what he had to propose. His talent, it has been
+said, lay rather in speculations on ingenious combinations, than in
+the mechanical power of carrying them into execution on a great scale.
+In 1708 he laid before the Royal Society, accompanied by a letter of
+recommendation from Leibnitz, a definite proposal for a boat “to be
+moved with oars by heat ... by an engine after the manner that has
+been practised at Cassel.” What form this engine was to take, and how
+the power was to be transmitted to the oars, is still a matter of
+conjecture. Only this is known, that the proposal was considered in
+detail by the president, Sir Isaac Newton, and that on his advice no
+further action was taken.[134]
+
+In France it has been widely claimed that Papin actually engined a
+boat and propelled it over the waters of the Weser by the force of
+steam. His biographer states that on the 24th September, 1707, Papin
+“embarquait sur le premier bateau à vapeur toute sa fortune.”[135]
+But the statement is not correct. The misconception, like that which
+assigned to the Marquis of Worcester the invention of a steam-propelled
+vessel, was doubtless due to the fact that the inventor was known to
+be engaged in the study of the steam engine and of ship-propelling
+mechanism. The two things, though distinct in themselves, were readily
+combined in the minds of his admirers. It is generally agreed to-day,
+we think, even by his own countrymen, that Papin, though he may claim
+the honour of having first suggested the application of steam to ship
+propulsion, never himself achieved a practical success.
+
+In the meantime Savery in England had produced his successful engine.
+In his case, too, the claim has been made that he first proposed steam
+propulsion for ships. But in his _Miner’s Friend_ this able mechanician
+showed that he recognized the limited application of his steam engine.
+“I believe,” he says, “it may be made very _useful_ to ships, but I
+dare not meddle with that matter; and leave it to the judgment of those
+who are the best judges of maritime affairs.” But in propulsion by
+hand-operated paddlewheels Savery was an enthusiastic believer. In 1698
+he had published, in a book bearing the title, “_Navigation Improv’d:
+Or the Art of Rowing Ships of all Rates, in Calms, with a more easy,
+swift, and steady Motion than Oars can_,” a description of a mechanism
+consisting of paddlewheels formed of oars fitted radially to drumheads
+which were mounted on the two ends of an iron bar placed horizontally
+across the ship. This bar was geared by mortice wheels with another
+bar mounted vertically as the axis of a capstan; rotation of the
+capstan was thus transmitted to the paddlewheels. Savery fitted this
+mechanism to a wherry and carried out successful trials on the Thames
+before thousands of people. But the Navy Board would not consider it.
+They had incurred a loss, it appeared, on a horse tow-vessel which had
+been in use at Chatham a few years previously: a vessel which towed
+the greatest ships with the help of four, six, or eight horses, and
+which, incidentally, may have influenced Savery in adopting the term
+“horse power” as the unit of work for his steam engine. The sanguine
+inventor made great efforts to interest the authorities, but without
+avail; the Surveyor rejected the proposal. So in an angry mood Savery
+published his book, with a description of his mechanism and an account
+of his efforts to interest the authorities, to show how one man’s
+humour had obstructed his engine. “You see, Reader, what to trust to,”
+he concluded, “though you have found out an improvement as great to
+shipping as turning to windward, or the compass; unless you can sit
+round the green table in Crutched Friars, your invention is damned of
+course.”
+
+The first detailed scheme for applying steam-power to ship propulsion
+was contained in the patent of Jonathan Hulls, in 1736. Though great
+credit is generally given to this inventor (who has even been dubbed
+the father of steam navigation), it does not appear that in reality
+he contributed much to the advancement of the problem; which was,
+indeed, still waiting on the development of the steam engine. Hulls’
+notion, explained in a pamphlet which he published in 1737, was to
+connect the piston of a Newcomen engine by a rope gearing with some
+wheels mounted in the waist of the vessel, which wheels oscillated as
+the piston moved up and down. These wheels were in turn connected by
+rope gearing with a large fan-wheel mounted in a frame rigged out over
+the vessel’s stern, the fans in their lowest position dipping into
+the water. The oscillating motion of the inboard wheels was converted
+into a continuous ahead motion of the fan-wheel by means of a ratchet.
+With this machinery he designed to tow ships in harbours and rivers.
+It must, however, be remarked that the invention was never more than
+a paper project; and that if Hulls had tried to translate his ideas
+into three dimensions he would have encountered, in all probability,
+insuperable practical difficulties. One very original suggestion of
+his certainly deserves notice; as a special case he proposed that when
+the tow-boat was used in shallow rivers two cranks, fitted to the axis
+of his driving wheels, should operate two long poles of sufficient
+length to reach the bottom of the river; these trailing poles, moving
+alternately forward, would propel the vessel. Here is an early
+application of the crank. But in this case it will be noted that the
+crank is driven, and that it converts a rotary into a reciprocating
+motion; in short, it is an inversion of the driving crank which, as
+applied to the steam engine, was not invented till some years later.
+
+As before remarked, the whole problem of steam propulsion waited upon
+the development of the steam engine. In the meantime the application of
+convenient forms of man power received considerable study, especially
+in France. In Bouguer’s _Traité du Navire_ the problem was investigated
+of propulsion by blades or panels, hinged, and folding when not in
+use against the vessel’s sides; and in 1753 the prize offered by the
+Academy of Sciences for an essay on the subject was won by Daniel
+Bernouilli, for a plan on those lines. Euler proposed paddlewheels on a
+transverse shaft geared like Savery’s, by mortice wheels to a multiple
+capstan. Variations of this method were proposed by other writers and
+inventors, and some of the best intellects in France attacked the
+problem. But nothing definite resulted. The most valuable result of
+the discussion was the conclusion drawn by M. Gautier, a professor of
+mathematics at Nancy, that the strength of the crew was not sufficient
+to give any great velocity to a ship. He proposed, therefore, as the
+only means of attaining that object, the employment of a steam engine,
+and pointed out several ways in which it might be applied to produce a
+rotary motion.[136]
+
+In the course of time the problem marched forward to a solution. The
+first great improvement in the steam engine which rendered it adaptable
+to marine use was the invention by Watt of the “double impulse”;
+the second, Pickard’s invention of the crank and connecting-rod. By
+virtue of these two developments the steam engine was made capable of
+imparting to a shaft a continuous rotary motion without the medium of
+noisy, brittle or inefficient gearing. As soon as engines having this
+power were placed on the public market attempts were made to mount
+them in boats and larger vessels; steam navigation was discerned as a
+possibility.
+
+
+§
+
+Of the many efforts which were made at the end of the eighteenth
+century to apply steam power to the propulsion of ships a striking
+feature is their complete independence from each other and from the
+results of prior experience and research. Little information is
+available as to the results of various experiments which were known
+to be carried on in France at this time, and, with all respect, it is
+improbable that they contributed in any way to the subsequent evolution
+of the steam vessel. The Abbé Darnal in 1781, M. de Jouffroi in 1782,
+and M. Desblancs in 1802 and 1803, proposed or constructed steamboats.
+M. de Jouffroi is said to have made several successful attempts on the
+Saone at Lyons; but the intervention of the Revolution put an end to
+his undertakings.
+
+In Britain a successful attempt to apply the steam engine to the
+paddlewheel was made in 1788. In that year three men, combining
+initiative, financial resource, and a large measure of engineering
+ingenuity, proved the possibility of steam propulsion in an experiment
+singularly complete and of singularly little effect on subsequent
+progress. In the summer of ’87 a wealthy and inventive banker, Mr.
+Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, Edinburgh, had been making experiments
+in the Firth of Forth with a double vessel of his own invention, sixty
+feet long, which, when wind failed for sailing, was set in motion by
+two paddlewheels. These paddlewheels were fitted between the two hulls
+of the vessel and were worked by men, by means of a geared capstan.
+Miller believed that a boat furnished with paddlewheels and worked
+manually would be of great advantage for working in shallow rivers
+and canals. But the result of a sailing race between his boat and a
+custom-house wherry of Leith, in which his own sails were supplemented
+by the labours of four men at the wheels, convinced him that manpower
+was insufficient. His sons’ tutor, a Mr. Taylor, suggested the
+application of a steam engine. And being acquainted with an engineer
+named Symington, Taylor prevailed on his patron to engage him to mount
+a one-horse-power engine in a double pleasure boat, upon the lake
+at Dalswinton. The experiment was a complete success. “The vessel
+moved delightfully, and notwithstanding the smallness of the cylinder
+(4 inches diameter), at the rate of 5 miles an hour. After amusing
+ourselves a few days the engine was removed and carried into the house,
+where it remained as a piece of ornamental furniture for a number of
+years.”[137] Determined to pursue the experiment, Miller ordered a
+replica of the original engine on a larger scale, and this engine, with
+a cylinder of 18 inches diameter, was erected at Carron and fitted to
+a larger boat. This also was successful. But no further trials were
+made after ’89; for Patrick Miller, who had spent a large sum in order
+to establish the feasibility of the invention, decided to close his
+investigations, and to turn to other pursuits.
+
+No further attempt was made in Great Britain until 1801, when Lord
+Dundas engaged Symington to make a series of experiments on the
+substitution of steam power for horse towage of barges on the Forth and
+Clyde canal: experiments which resulted in the _Charlotte Dundas_. In
+this celebrated vessel a double-acting Watt engine, with its 22-inch
+diameter cylinder mounted horizontally on the deck, actuated, through
+a simple connecting-rod and a crank with a 4-foot throw, a paddlewheel
+which was carried in a centre-line recess at the stern. In March, ’03,
+Symington in the _Charlotte Dundas_ towed two 70-ton vessels nineteen
+miles against a strong head wind in six hours. Success seemed assured
+to him. His reputation was already high, and now an invitation came
+from the Duke of Bridgewater for eight similar tow-boats to ply on
+his canal. But the inventor’s hopes were disappointed. The Duke died
+suddenly, and the governing body of the Forth and Clyde canal vetoed
+the further use of steam vessels for fear of the damage the waves might
+cause the banks. Other bodies took the same view, and thus came to an
+end an important passage in the history of steam navigation. It is
+remarkable, considering the efforts which had been made by inventors
+from the sixteenth century onwards to improve on oar-propulsion for
+military purposes, that Miller, Symington, and their friends do not
+seem to have envisaged any use for steamboats other than as tugs on
+canals. It is remarkable that in the presence of this initial success
+neither the government nor the public showed any realization of the
+possibilities which it unfolded; that no attempt was made by commercial
+enterprise--even if, in the realm of naval strategy, such an innovation
+was regarded as impolitic or impracticable[138]--to develop its
+advantages and to secure an undisputed lead in the new application of
+steam power.
+
+[Illustration: THE “CHARLOTTE DUNDAS”
+
+(From Fincham.)]
+
+It was in America that the most persistent and continuous development
+took place, quite independently of efforts elsewhere and almost
+contemporaneously with those above described. America, whose
+geographical conditions made water transport relatively far more
+important than it was in Great Britain, lent a ready ear to the schemes
+of inventors. In 1784 James Rumsey, and shortly afterwards John Fitch,
+had already laid plans before General Washington for the propulsion of
+boats by steam.
+
+John Fitch, whose original idea was a steamboat propelled by means
+of an endless chain of flat boards, afterwards experimented with
+an arrangement, “borrowed no doubt from the action of Indians in a
+canoe,” of paddles held vertically in frames mounted along the sides
+of the boat and operated by cranks. In 1786 a boat thus equipped made
+a successful trial on the Delaware, and in the following year a larger
+boat, fitted with a horizontal double-acting engine with a 12-inch
+cylinder and a 3-foot stroke, giving motion to six paddles on each
+side, was publicly tried on the same river. The speed attained was
+very small. At last in 1790, still protected by a patent which granted
+him a temporary monopoly in steamboat building, Fitch succeeded in
+building a boat which was an undisputed mechanical success. Discarding
+the paddle-frame and adopting a beam engine to drive paddle-boards
+at the stern, he produced a steamboat which, after being tested and
+credited with eight knots’ speed on a measured mile in front of Water
+Street, Philadelphia, in the presence of the governor and council
+of Pennsylvania, ran two or three thousand miles as a passenger
+boat on the Delaware before being dismantled. It was a considerable
+achievement. But the excessive weight and space absorbed by the
+machinery prevented the boat from being a financial success; and, after
+a journey to France, then distracted by the Revolution, Fitch returned
+home to America and ended his days a disappointed and a broken man.
+Nevertheless, the work he did was of service to others. He proved that
+the ponderous nature of the machinery was the greatest obstacle to
+the propulsion of small craft by steam, and from his failure deduced
+the conclusion, on which later inventors were able to build, that the
+solution of the problem lay in the _scale_: that, “it would be much
+easier to carry a first-rate man-of-war by steam at an equal rate than
+a small boat.”[139]
+
+James Rumsey, a Virginian, carried out in 1775 the first practical
+trials of water-jet propulsion, a small boat of his plying the Potomac
+at a small speed by means of a steam pump which sucked in water at the
+bow and threw it out at the stern. But as he felt himself obstructed
+in further experiments by the patent rights which had been given his
+rival Fitch he came to England; where, financed by a wealthy compatriot
+and aided by James Watt himself, he produced in ’93 a boat which on the
+Thames attained a speed of over four knots. Unfortunately Rumsey died
+in the middle of his experiments.
+
+An individual of extraordinary qualities had now turned his attention
+to the problem of steam propulsion. In that same year a young American
+artist, Robert Fulton, who had come to England to work under the
+guidance of his countryman Benjamin West, wrote to Lord Stanhope
+informing him of a plan which he had formed for moving ships by steam.
+Lord Stanhope, well known as a scientific inventor, had recently been
+experimenting with a vessel fitted with a 12-horse-power engine of
+Boulton and Watt’s working a propeller which operated like the foot of
+an aquatic bird. A correspondence ensued. Fulton, whose self-confidence
+equalled his originality, illustrated by drawings and diagrams his
+ideas on the subject. At first, he said, he thought of applying the
+force of an engine to an oar or paddle which, hinged on the counter
+at the stern, by a reciprocating motion would urge the vessel ahead.
+But on experimenting with a clockwork model he found that, though the
+boat sprang forward, the return stroke of the paddle interfered with
+the continuity of the motion. “I then endeavoured,” he wrote, “to give
+it a circular motion, which I effected by applying two paddles on an
+axis. Then the boat moved by jerks; there was too great a space between
+the strokes. I then applied three paddles, forming an equilateral
+triangle to which I gave a circular motion.” These paddles he proposed
+to place in cast-iron wheels one on each side of the boat and mounted
+on the same shaft at some height over the waterline, so that each wheel
+would “answer as a fly and brace to the perpendicular oars.” And he
+stated that he found, from his experiments with models, that three or
+six oars gave better results than any other number. From which it is
+clear that the paddlewheel was evolved by Fulton from the simple paddle
+independently of suggestion received from previous inventors.
+
+Some time was to elapse before the results of his experiments were
+utilized. Attracted by the boom in canal construction then in vogue
+Fulton devoted his mind to that subject; though in this connection
+the idea of steam-propelled boats still occupied him, as is shown
+by a letter he wrote in ’94 to Messrs. Boulton and Watt, asking for
+an estimate of costs and dimensions of “an engine with a rotative
+movement of the purchase of 3 or 4 horses which is designed to be
+placed in a boat.” From England he went to Paris, to try his fortune at
+half a dozen projects. In ’98 he was experimenting on the Seine with a
+screw propeller--“a fly of four parts similar to that of a smoke-jack,”
+which gave promising results. This screw propeller, however, was as yet
+unrecognized as the propulsive medium of the future. It had already
+been patented in England by Bramah in 1785--“a wheel with inclined
+fans, or wings, similar to the fly of a smoke-jack or the vertical
+sails of a windmill”; and, hand-operated, it had actually been used
+in America in 1776 by Bushnell in connection with his submarine. But
+in 1802 Fulton had decided against the screw, and in favour of the
+paddlewheel.
+
+It was in this year that an introduction to an influential
+compatriot, himself an experimenter in steam propulsion, gave Fulton
+the opportunity to display his talents to their mutual advantage.
+Chancellor Livingston, U.S. Minister to France, was aware of the
+enormous advantages which would accrue to America (and to the happy
+inventor) if steam propulsion could be achieved economically. With
+Fulton’s aid he decided on building an experimental steam vessel
+in France, with a view to transferring to America for commercial
+enterprise the perfected results of their labour. A partnership was
+formed, the work proceeded; but the experimental steamboat, whose
+scantlings were unequal to supporting the weight of the 8-horsepower
+machinery placed on board, sank at her moorings in a storm. A second
+boat, stronger and bigger, attained complete success. Fulton promptly
+wrote to Messrs. Boulton and Watt asking them to export to America a
+24-horse-power engine complete with all accessories, in accordance
+with his sketches; and with a brass air-pump suitable for working in
+salt water. Then, going himself to England, he visited Messrs. Boulton
+and Watt and gleaned what information he could as to the properties
+of their machinery; studied the newly published results of Colonel
+Beaufoy’s experiments on ship form and fluid resistance; and journeyed
+to Scotland to visit Symington and see the famous _Charlotte Dundas_.
+
+Armed with this knowledge, with all the experience of Rumsey and Fitch,
+and with the data from his own trials, Fulton brought to a successful
+solution the problem of steam propulsion on a commercial scale. It
+has been remarked that there was no element in the _Clermont_ or her
+successors so original in conception that it would entitle Fulton to
+be regarded as the inventor of steam navigation. Nor did he himself
+claim to be such. He was successful in fitting together the elements,
+the inventions of others. Science is measurement, and Fulton applied
+his data and measured with great insight, adapting his elements in the
+right manner and proportion to form an efficient whole. “He was the
+first to treat the elementary factors in steamship design--dimensions,
+form, horse-power, speed, etc.--in a scientific spirit; to him belongs
+the credit of having coupled the boat and engine as a working unit.”
+From Fitch he had learned the economy of size, and the advantages of
+enlarging the scale of operations; from Beaufoy, the importance of a
+fair underwater form, with a sharp bow and stern. From Symington, who
+generously took him for a trip in the _Charlotte Dundas_, he could
+not fail to have gleaned much practical advice and information; it is
+remarkable, in this connection, that, after a sight of Symington’s
+horizontal cylinder with its simple connecting-rod drive to the
+stern wheel, he should have adhered to the vertical cylinder and the
+bell-crank or beam for the transmission of the force: an initial
+divergence which was perpetuated, and which became the hall-mark
+distinguishing American from English practice for some years to come.
+Most of his knowledge he gained by his activities in England, and many
+writers have contested a claim--which so far as is known was never
+made by him--to the invention of the steamship. His achievements were
+well defined and legitimately executed, and the remarkable insight and
+initiative which he displayed in adapting the labours of others to
+serve his own utilitarian ends cannot, surely, deserve the opprobrium
+cast on them by some of the nineteenth-century writers. Prometheus,
+it is said, stole fire from heaven. Fulton bought his in the open
+market; obtaining his engine in Soho and his boiler in Smithfield
+he transported them across the Atlantic, and in 1807 produced the
+_Clermont_.
+
+The _Clermont_, a flat-bottomed wall-sided craft 166 feet in length and
+only 18 feet in beam, steamed at a speed of five knots from New York
+to Albany, in August, 1807; to the surprise of thousands of spectators
+who knew her as “Fulton’s folly,” and whose shouts of derision gave
+place to silence, and then to a chorus of applause and congratulation.
+Many of the inhabitants of the banks of the Hudson had never heard
+even of an engine, much less of a steamboat. “A monster moving on the
+waters, defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames and smoke!
+The first steamboat used dry pine wood for fuel, which sends forth a
+column of ignited vapour many feet above the flue, and, whenever the
+fire is stirred, a galaxy of sparks fly off which, in the night, have
+a very brilliant and beautiful appearance.”[140] The _Clermont_ was
+followed by others, each an improvement on the last; until in 1816,
+so rapid was the process of evolution, the _Chancellor Livingston_
+was built, ship-shaped, with figure-head and fine bows, faired sides
+and tapering stern, with engines of 75-horse-power and with promenade
+decks and accommodation for 120 passengers. Certain characteristics
+now showed themselves in all American construction. The engines were
+mounted with cylinders vertical, their rods actuating large overhead
+beams which transmitted the force of the steam to the paddlewheels.
+The boats were made very broad to give the necessary stability, the
+machinery being carried high; and to reduce their underwater resistance
+as much as possible their bodies were made full near the water-line and
+lean below. For the same reason, and since the principal weights were
+concentrated amidships, fine forward and after bodies were given them;
+a rising floor, and a deep draught if necessary. The position of the
+paddlewheels was limited by that of the engine. Experience showed that
+where two paddles on each side were used their relative position had to
+be adjusted nicely, otherwise the rear paddles, acting on accelerated
+water, might actually be a disadvantage. Much difficulty was caused
+with accidents to paddles; on the Mississippi the wheels were generally
+mounted astern, where they were protected from floating logs of timber.
+In some cases double hulls were built, with the paddlewheels between
+them; but owing to the rush of water on which they acted these wheels
+were not very efficient.[141]
+
+[Illustration: THE _COMET_ OF 1812
+
+From an oil painting in the South Kensington Museum]
+
+Fulton had so far built steam vessels only for commercial traffic. He
+now came near to revolutionizing naval warfare with them. In 1813, in
+the middle of the war with this country, he presented to the President
+his plan for a steam-propelled armoured warship for coast defence, a
+design of an invulnerable vessel of thirty guns, twin-hulled, with a
+120-horse-power engine in one hull, a boiler in the other, and a single
+paddlewheel in a space between the two; double-ended, flat-bottomed,
+and protected by a belt of solid timber 58 inches thick. Her armament
+was to consist, in addition to thirty 32-pounders, of submarine guns
+or columbiads, carried at each end and firing 100-pound projectiles
+below the water-line. Named the _Demologos_, this monstrous vessel was
+nearly completed when the war came to an end. It was too late for use.
+The treaty of Ghent being signed, interest in armaments immediately
+evaporated. Nevertheless, in the following year a trial of the
+_Demologos_ was carried out, which showed that a speed of five and a
+half knots could be attained with her. The _Demologos_, now renamed the
+_Fulton_, served no useful purpose. She was laid up in Brooklyn Navy
+Yard, and many years elapsed before steam war vessels were built again
+in America.
+
+
+§
+
+In the meantime progress had been made on this side of the Atlantic.
+Stimulated by Fulton’s commercial successes, Thomas Bell of Helensburgh
+built in 1812 a vessel of thirty tons’ burden named the _Comet_,
+successfully propelled by a 3-horse-power engine which worked a
+paddlewheel on each beam. This “handsome vessel” was intended to ply
+between Glasgow and Greenock, to sail by the power of wind, air, and
+steam; and so it did, with fair financial success, with a square sail
+triced to the top of a tall smoke-stack: the first passenger steamer
+to ply in European waters. Shortly afterwards steam vessels were built
+which pushed out to the open sea. In 1815 the _Argyle_, built on the
+Clyde and renamed _Thames_ on being purchased by a London company, made
+a voyage from Greenock to London which was the subject of much comment.
+On making the Cornish coast after a stormy run south, boats were seen
+by those on board making towards her with all possible speed in the
+belief that she was on fire! All the rocks commanding St. Ives were
+covered with spectators as she entered the harbour, and the aspect of
+the vessel, we are told, “appeared to occasion as much surprise amongst
+the inhabitants, as the ships of Captain Cook must have produced on
+his first appearance among the islands of the South Seas.” Next day
+the _Thames_, her 9-foot paddlewheels driven by a 16-horse-power
+engine, reached Plymouth, where the crews of all the vessels in the
+Sound filled the rigging, and the harbour-master was “struck with
+astonishment.” From Plymouth she steamed to Portsmouth, making the
+passage in twenty-three hours. So great was the swarm of vessels that
+crowded round her, that the port admiral was asked to send a guard
+to preserve order. She steamed into harbour, with wind and tide, at
+from twelve to fourteen knots. A court-martial was sitting in the
+_Gladiator_ frigate, but the whole court except the president adjourned
+to inspect the strange visitor. Next day the port admiral sent off a
+guard and band; and soon afterwards he followed, accompanied by three
+admirals, eighteen post captains, and a large number of ladies.[142]
+
+The success of the _Thames_ led to the immediate building of other
+and larger steamers. In ’17 the son of James Watt purchased a 94-foot
+boat, the _Caledonia_, fitted her with 28-horse-power machinery
+driving 10-foot paddlewheels, and for a pleasure trip proceeded in
+her up the Rhine as far as Coblentz. From this time onwards steam
+navigation for commercial purposes progressed rapidly. In 1818 a
+steamboat made regular voyages at sea; the _Rob Roy_, 90 tons, built
+by Denny of Dumbarton, with engines of 30 horse-power made by Napier,
+plied regularly between Holyhead and Dublin. In the same year the
+_Savannah_, a ship of 350 tons’ burden built and fitted with auxiliary
+steam machinery at New York, crossed the Atlantic, partly under steam;
+her paddlewheels with their cast-iron frame and axletree successfully
+withstanding heavy weather. In ’21 the postmaster-general introduced a
+steam service for the mails at Dover and Holyhead; and in the following
+year there were steamboats running between London and Leith, and other
+seaports. The experience of the Holyhead packets was of special value,
+as it proved that steam vessels could go to sea in weather which would
+keep sailing vessels in harbour. Soon after this the question was
+raised of employing steam power to shorten the passage between England
+and the East, as well as of the navigation by steam of the great
+Indian rivers. Steam superseded sails in the government mail service
+between Falmouth, Malta and Corfu; everywhere commercial enterprise
+was planning new lines of steamships and new possibilities of ocean
+travel. In ’25 a barque belonging to Mr. Pelham, afterwards Earl of
+Yarborough, was fitted with steam machinery as an auxiliary and made
+the voyage to India. The plash of the paddlewheel was then heard for
+the first time in Oriental waters.
+
+By this time the great question of steam as applied to naval ends had
+arrived to agitate the Admiralty.
+
+In ’22 M. Paixhans discharged his revolutionary treatise at the
+French nation, advocating, with a wealth of argument, a navy of
+steam-propelled warships armed with a few shell guns. Six years later
+a warning echo reverberated through Whitehall. Captain Sir John Ross
+published a volume on “Steam Navigation, with a System of the Naval
+Tactics peculiar to it,” in which, though his name was not mentioned,
+the arguments of M. Paixhans were set forth from an opposite point
+of view. The two books, starting with the same arguments, arrived
+at diametrically opposite conclusions. While Paixhans claimed that
+steam power offered important advantages to France, the English
+writer reached the gratifying conclusion that the change which steam
+would effect in naval affairs might be rendered favourable to this
+country. For coast defence alone steam vessels would be invaluable. The
+colonies would be safer from piracy. Passages, at present difficult
+or dangerous, would be made with speed and safety. Incidentally, an
+entirely new system of tactics would be evolved by the coming of steam;
+each ship-of-the-line would be escorted by a steam vessel, to tow her
+into position, and concentration of force would be obtained by such
+means as, harnessing two steamers to one sailing ship, so as to tow one
+half of the fleet to a position of vantage over the enemy. After the
+main action the steamers would themselves attack each other; and so on.
+Both French and English writers agreed that there would be a reversion
+to the ancient warfare of the galleys; the steamer, whose paddlewheels
+lent themselves readily to a pivot gun armament and to great powers of
+manœuvring, would always attack like a bull, facing the enemy, its bows
+presenting one or more large and well-protected cannon. Sir John Ross
+regarded the steamer, however, essentially as an auxiliary. M. Paixhans
+took a more sanguine view. “At this moment,” he wrote in May, ’22,
+“the English admiralty are building two steam vessels, each of thirty
+horsepower, one at Portsmouth and one at Plymouth, for tugging sailing
+ships held up by contrary winds. They commence by being the servitors
+of the ships-of-the-line; but it is their destiny to become their
+masters.”[143]
+
+But the views of Sir John Ross did not find favour at the Admiralty.
+In the presence of the revolution the authorities continued to steer
+a policy of passive resistance to all changes and methods which might
+have the effect of depreciating existing naval material; and Lord
+Melville himself penned, as a reply to the Colonial Office to a request
+for a steam mail service between two Mediterranean ports, the principle
+which guided the Board. They felt it their bounden duty (he wrote in
+1828) to discourage, to the utmost of their ability, the employment
+of steam vessels, as they considered that the introduction of steam
+was calculated to strike a fatal blow at the naval supremacy of the
+Empire.[144][145]
+
+So far, then, new methods of propulsion had not been greeted with
+enthusiasm. Yet to the First Lord himself was due the utilization of
+steam for minor purposes in the navy. In spite of the non-success
+of Lord Stanhope’s experimental “ambi-navigator” ship in 1795, Lord
+Melville in 1815 caused the three-masted schooner _Congo_, designed
+for a surveying expedition to the river of that name, to be fitted
+with paddlewheels and machinery by Boulton and Watt, expressly to
+try it in a ship-of-war. This machinery was so large and ponderous
+that, not only did it usurp one-third of the space aboard the ship,
+but brought her down so deep as only to give four knots through the
+water. It was all removed again before she sailed, and sent to Chatham
+for use in the dockyard. In the following year we find Mr. Brunel in
+correspondence with his lordship on the question of steam navigation.
+Brunel wrote quoting evidence to the effect that paddlewheels could be
+made of sufficient strength and stiffness to withstand the violence of
+seas and gales; to which Lord Melville replied that the Board deemed
+it unnecessary to enter, at that time, into the question of steam
+navigation generally, but desired his views on the application of steam
+to the towing of ships-of-war out of harbour against contrary winds
+and tides: which would be a matter of great advantage to his Majesty’s
+service. Brunel answered recommending that the steamer _Regent_, plying
+between Margate and London, be chartered during the winter and employed
+on this work, as a particular experiment.
+
+“From this period may be dated the introduction of steam navigation
+into the English navy. Lord Melville was now so fully convinced of the
+great utility which the naval service would derive from it, that he
+ordered a small vessel to be built at Deptford, by Mr. Oliver Lang, to
+be called the _Comet_, of the burthen of 238 tons, and to have engines
+of 80 horse-power. She was built accordingly and ready for sea in
+1822.”[146] As a matter of fact, the first steamer actually brought
+into H.M. service was the _Monkey_, built at Rotherhithe in 1821; and
+she was followed by the more powerful _Sprightly_, built at Blackwall
+by Messrs. Wigram and Green in ’23. Gradually the use of these
+paddlewheel tugs extended, their tonnage and horse-power increased, and
+the Surveyor of the Navy and his master shipwrights began to divert
+their talents to a consideration of the small steamers.
+
+For the reason stated by Lord Melville, steamers were at this time
+tolerated only for towing and other subsidiary duties; authority poured
+cold water on the idea of utilizing them as ships-of-war; and if steam
+could have been dispensed with altogether, everyone would have been the
+better pleased.
+
+Even at this period the idea of using manual labour, applied in an
+effective manner, for towing and bringing into position sailing
+warships had not been altogether abandoned. In 1802 the transport
+_Doncaster_ had been propelled at a slow speed in Malta harbour by the
+invention of a Mr. Shorter: a screw propeller rigged over the stern.
+In 1820 experiments were made at Portsmouth with paddlewheels manually
+worked, and in ’29 Captain C. Napier took his ship _Galatea_ out of
+Portsmouth Harbour by use of paddlewheels geared to winches which
+were worked by the crew. One hundred and thirty men were able to give
+her a speed of 2½ knots, while the full crew of a hundred and ninety
+produced a speed of three. After this doubtful success another trial
+was held--a race between the _Galatea_, propelled by paddles, and
+the _Briton_, towed by boats--which _Galatea_ won. Captain Napier’s
+paddlewheels afterwards did good work for his ship in other quarters
+of the world.[147] Nothing resulted, however, from his initiative
+in this connection; only was emphasized the enormous superiority of
+steam-propelled vessels as tugs, in which capacity they had already
+made their appearance, and from which they were destined to evolve, in
+the next decade, into fighting vessels of considerable force.
+
+By 1830 steam navigation had made significant strides along the
+lines of commercial development. In that year a service of steam
+mail boats started to run at regular intervals between Falmouth and
+Corfu, covering the distance in about one-fourth of the time which
+had been taken by the sailing packets; a Dutch government steamer,
+the _Curaçoa_, built in England, had since ’27 been running between
+Holland and the East Indies; and already the Indian Government had
+built an armed steamer, designed as the forerunner of others which were
+to connect Bombay with Suez and thus to place India in more direct
+communication with England.
+
+The navy was still represented only by paddle-tugs. With a change
+of administration, however, came a change in Admiralty policy. The
+new Board took a distinctly progressive view. It was agreed that,
+if foreign powers initiated the building of steam war-vessels, this
+country must build as well, and not only as well but better: a policy
+tersely summed up by Admiral Sir T. M. Hardy in his saying, “Happen
+what will, England must take the lead.” Certain objections to steam
+vessels as naval units which had hitherto held a vogue were now seen
+to be ill-founded or baseless. In particular it was discovered, not
+without surprise to many, that steamers could be manœuvred without
+difficulty. A paddlewheel steamer, the _Medea_, gained her commander
+considerable credit from the skill with which she was navigated from
+the Thames into the basin at Woolwich dockyard, which proved that
+steamers could be steered and manœuvred better than sailing ships.
+In ’33 the construction of steamers was placed in the hands of the
+Surveyor.[148]
+
+But small progress was made. One reason alleged was that the shape of
+hull which the Surveyor had made peculiarly his own was ill-adapted for
+steam machinery. “Nothing more unpropitious,” observed a later writer,
+“for Sir William Symond’s mode of construction than the introduction of
+steam can be conceived. His sharp bottoms were the very worst possible
+for the reception of engines; his broad beam and short length the most
+unfavourable qualities that could be devised for steam propulsion. As
+much as he could, he adhered to his principles.... Rather than yield
+to the demands of the new power, he sacrificed the armaments of his
+vessels, kept down the size of their engines, and recklessly exposed
+the machinery to shot should they go into action.”[149] There doubtless
+was something in this criticism. And yet, as we have seen, experience
+in America led to a form of hull for paddle steamers in many respects
+approaching that condemned as being favoured by the Surveyor!
+
+Another and more valid reason for the slow progress made lay in the
+inherent unsuitability of the paddlewheel steamer as a substitute
+for the large sailing warship. Not only did the paddlewheels offer a
+large and vulnerable surface to destruction by enemy shot, but the
+wheels and their machinery could not be embodied in a ship design
+without interference with its sails and sailing qualities and, still
+more, without serious sacrifice of broadside armament. The machinery
+monopolized a large section of the midship space, the huge wheels
+covered the sides and interfered with the training of those guns for
+which room remained. The problem of arming steam-vessels was novel and
+difficult of solution. The guns must be few and therefore powerful.
+Hence it appeared that paddlewheel steamers, notwithstanding the
+advantages they possessed of speed and certainty of motion, could only
+sustain a small concentrated armament, consisting of the heaviest
+and most powerful ordnance: guns of large calibre, which possessed
+large power of offence at ranges where the broadside cannon would be
+deprived of much of their efficiency. Hence in ’31 a 10-inch shell gun
+of 84 hundredweight was expressly designed and cast for this purpose;
+and all the classes of steamers in early use in the navy were armed
+with it until, in ’41, it was displaced by the 68-pounder pivot gun,
+which then became the principal pivot gun of the service. Thus the
+development of paddlewheel machinery reacted on the development of
+artillery. The steamer was a stimulus to the development of large
+ordnance worked on the pivot system. And this form of armament in
+turn influenced the form of the ship. The main weights--those of the
+propelling machinery--were already concentrated in the waist of the
+vessel, and it was now possible so to place the few pivot guns that the
+ends of the vessel were left very lightly loaded. Thus it was possible
+to give unprecedentedly fine lines to the new steamers, a sharp and
+lengthened bow and a well-tapered run: an improved form of body by
+the use of which high speeds were obtained. In the case of commercial
+steamships the advantages of fine lines had already been recognized,
+and their designers had been free to give them a form which would allow
+of a high speed being attained; but in the case of war vessels designed
+to carry a broadside armament the limitations imposed by the heavily
+weighted ends had hitherto prevented other than bluff bows and sterns
+being given them. But now the subject of ship form came under general
+consideration, and the new conditions led to a more serious study of
+the laws governing the motion of bodies through water.
+
+Year after year the size of steamers grew.[150] And as with size the
+cost of construction and maintenance increased, the question pressed
+itself more and more clearly--what was the naval utility of such
+expensive and lightly armed vessels? Numerous attempts were made to
+produce a form of paddlewheel steamer which would carry a broadside
+armament comparable with that which a sailing vessel of the same
+burthen would bear. In 1843 the _Penelope_, 46 guns, was cut in
+halves at Chatham and lengthened by the addition of about 65 feet, in
+which space engines of 650 horse-power were installed. But the extra
+displacement failed to compensate for the weight of the machinery;
+the altered vessel drew more water than had been anticipated and,
+though various alterations were made to minimize the effects of this,
+the experiment was not a success and was not repeated. In ’45 a steam
+frigate called the _Odin_ was built by order of the Board. “The results
+aimed at in constructing this ship were--capability of carrying
+broadside armament; diminished rolling, in comparison with any war
+steamers then built; and less draught of water in relation to the size.
+These objects were accomplished; but as the position of the machinery
+and boilers is partially above the water-line, and the propellers
+are exposed to danger in broadside fighting, the ship is necessarily
+imperfect in these two conditions, as well as in the position of the
+sails; for in this case the proper place of the mainmast was occupied
+by the boilers, and consequently the centre of effort of the wind on
+the sails is in a wrong place.”[151] In the same year the _Sidon_ was
+laid down, the design being on the lines of the _Odin_ but modified in
+accordance with the ideas of Sir Charles Napier: with greater depth of
+hold and with machinery below the water-line. Iron tanks were placed in
+the hold for carrying the coals; by filling these with water when empty
+the steamer was kept at a more or less constant draught, a matter of
+considerable importance to the efficient working of the paddlewheels.
+In other respects, however, the _Sidon_ was unsatisfactory. She was so
+crank that the addition of ballast and a modification of her armament
+were necessary. Her engines were cramped, her boilers of insufficient
+power and of unsuitable design, and her coal capacity too small to give
+her a useful radius of action. For the attainment of all the properties
+specified it was subsequently calculated and shown that a much larger
+displacement was necessary. Just as Fitch had discovered and Fulton
+had discerned, increase in scale reduced many of the difficulties
+encountered in designing heavily weighted steam vessels. Hence the
+success of the _Terrible_. In the case of the _Terrible_, a large
+paddlewheel frigate of 1,850 tons and 800 horse-power built in 1845, it
+was clear that an increase of size had given a partial solution to the
+problem of designing a war-vessel with heavy and spacious propelling
+machinery, with adequate armament, and with full sail-power and all the
+properties of a sailing ship.
+
+Still the steam war-vessel was not satisfactory. Her machinery usurped
+the weight and space required for armament, her cumbrous paddlewheels
+were far too exposed to damage by shot or shell. And how to surmount
+these difficulties and reconcile the conflicting requirements of
+artillery and motive power, was a problem which cost the country years
+of unsuccessful experiments and millions of money. “It was,” said
+Dahlgren, “the riddle of the day.”
+
+
+§
+
+The problem was solved by the adoption of the screw propeller.
+
+Since Archimedes’ day the screw had been known in the form of a pump,
+and in two familiar objects--the smoke-jack and the windmill--the
+principle of the driven screw had been for centuries widely employed.
+In connection with ship propulsion the screw appears to have been tried
+at an early date, like the Marquis of Worcester’s water-wheel, in the
+form of a mill. Among the machines and inventions approved by the
+Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris between the years 1727 and 1731 is
+one described as a screw, suspended in a framework between two boats,
+which when acted upon by the current was intended to warp the vessels
+upstream, the motion of the screw being transmitted to a winch barrel
+on which a tow-rope was wound. But so far as is known no attempt had
+been made at this date to use the screw directly as a propeller. In
+1768 its use in this form was suggested in a work entitled _Théorie de
+la Vis d’Archimede_.[152] And shortly after, as we have already seen,
+Bramah in England and Bushnell in America had patented, and the latter
+had actually put into use, the screw as a means of propelling vessels
+through water. We have seen, too, that Fulton successfully adapted
+the screw propeller, on a small scale, in one of his experimental
+steamboats. Sporadic attempts were made in the early days of the
+nineteenth century both in this country and in America to drive ships
+by means of screws, both manually and by the medium of steam, some of
+which were attended with a certain measure of success.[153] Yet some
+time was to elapse before screw propulsion gained recognition. Doubt
+as to the efficiency of a screw’s action, ignorance as to the shape
+of the vessel required and as to the best position for the propeller,
+difficulty in accommodating the early long-stroke steam engine to drive
+direct an under-water propeller shaft; inertia, prejudice and vested
+interest, all seem to have played a part in delaying the adoption of
+what, when it did come, was acknowledged to be the only suitable form
+of steam propulsion for war vessels.
+
+[Illustration: PETTIT SMITH’S PROPELLER]
+
+In 1825 a premium was offered by the Admiralty for the best plan
+of propelling vessels without paddlewheels; and a plan proposed by
+Commander S. Brown, R.N., was deemed sufficiently promising for trial:
+a two-bladed screw propeller placed at the bow of a vessel and actuated
+by a 12-horsepower engine. But though exhibiting advantages this form
+of the invention did not survive.
+
+The history of the screw-propeller may be said to date from 1836. In
+that year two capable inventors obtained patents: Mr. Francis Pettit
+Smith and Captain Ericsson. So little attention had, up to that time,
+been given to the subject that the two proposals “were presented to the
+public in the character of novelties, and as such they were regarded
+by the few who had curiosity enough to look at them.” Smith’s patents
+were for the application of the screw to propel steam vessels by
+fixing it in a recess or open space formed in the deadwood; and, says
+Fincham, “the striking and peculiar merit of Mr. Smith’s plan appears
+to consist, _chiefly_, in his having chosen the right position for it
+to work in.” Trials were carried out with Smith’s propeller in a 6-ton
+boat on the City and Paddington canal, and then between Blackwall and
+Folkestone, with encouraging success; the boat, encountering heavy
+weather off the Foreland, demonstrated the advantage derived from
+the absence of paddlewheels, and showed the new form of propelling
+machinery to place no limitations on her qualities as a sailing vessel.
+She returned to Blackwall, having run over 400 miles at a mean speed of
+8 knots.
+
+Captain Ericsson, a Swedish army officer who had come to London and
+established himself as a civil engineer, had a contemporary success
+with a boat fitted with two large-bladed propellers each 5 feet 3
+inches in diameter. So successful was he, indeed, that he invited the
+Board of Admiralty to take a trip in tow of his novel craft; a trip
+which had important and unexpected results on the subsequent progress
+of steam navigation. One summer day in ’37 the Admiralty barge, in
+which were the Surveyor and three other members of the Board, was towed
+by Ericsson’s screw steamer from Somerset House to Limehouse and back
+at a speed of 10 knots. The demonstration was a complete success, and
+the inventor anticipated some further patronage of his invention. But
+to his chagrin nothing was asked of him, and to his amazement he was
+subsequently informed that the proposal to propel warships by means
+of a screw had been pronounced impracticable. Never, perhaps, in the
+whole history of mechanical progress has so signally wrong a decision
+been made, never has expert opinion been so mistaken. Engineers and
+shipbuilders all failed to realize the possibilities of the screw.
+The naval authorities who, in the face of their personal experience,
+dismissed the project as impracticable (owing to some anticipated
+difficulties in steering ships fitted with screws) merely expressed the
+unanimous opinion of the time. “The engineering corps of the empire
+were arrayed in opposition to it, alleging that it was constructed on
+erroneous principles, and full of practical defects, and regarding
+its failure as too certain to authorize any speculations even of
+its success. The plan was specially submitted to many distinguished
+engineers, and was publicly discussed in the scientific journals; and
+there was no one but the inventor who refused to acquiesce in the truth
+of the numerous demonstrations, proving the vast loss of mechanical
+power which must attend this proposed substitute for the old-fashioned
+paddlewheel.”[154] Yet in five years’ time steamers designed for
+paddlewheels were being converted to carry screws, and a great
+screw-propelled liner, the _Great Britain_, had been launched for the
+Atlantic traffic!
+
+It was in America, we have seen, that progress in steam navigation
+was of the greatest interest to the public, and it was by Americans
+that the disabilities of the paddlewheel were most keenly appreciated.
+Two witnesses of the trial of Ericsson’s boat saw and admitted the
+advantages of the new method: Mr. Ogden, an engineer who had been U.S.
+consul at Liverpool for some years, and Captain Stockton, U.S.N. The
+latter appreciated the military advantages of screw propulsion and was
+soon its enthusiastic advocate. Under his influence and encouragement
+Ericsson threw up his engagements in London and went to America. “We’ll
+make your name ring on the Delaware,” said Captain Stockton to him at a
+dinner in his honour given at Greenwich. The prediction was fulfilled.
+In the course of time Ericsson saw his propeller applied on a large
+scale, not only to mercantile craft but in the American navy. Early in
+’37 Captain Stockton had ordered an iron vessel to be built by Messrs.
+Laird, of Birkenhead, and fitted with a screw. In the following year
+she was launched, and in the spring of ’40, after giving demonstration
+on the Thames of the great towing power of her propeller, she left for
+America for service as a tug on the big rivers. On this work one of the
+great advantages of the screw was realized: the immunity with which the
+screw vessel could work in drift ice, when paddlewheel steamers were
+perforce laid up.
+
+In the meantime, fortunately, Pettit Smith’s successes had not been
+without their effect on opinion in this country. A company was formed
+to exploit the screw, and a vessel, the _Archimedes_, was built amid
+a strange chorus of detraction, opposition and ridicule. She made her
+trials in October, ’39. Her propeller was at first in the form of a
+complete convolution of a helical screw of 8-foot pitch and of 5 foot 9
+inches diameter; but subsequently this blade was replaced by two, each
+of which formed half a convolution, with the two halves set at right
+angles to one another. Comparative trials were ordered by the Admiralty
+in the following year to test the merits of the _Archimedes’_ screw as
+compared with the ordinary paddlewheels applied to her Majesty’s mail
+packets on the Dover station. The results were inconclusive.[155] But
+a subsequent voyage round the coasts of Great Britain, during which
+the machinery of the _Archimedes_ was laid open to the inspection of
+the general public, and a later voyage from Plymouth to Oporto which
+recreated a new record for a steam passage, went far to establish in
+public estimation the merits of the new propeller. But generally the
+invention was discouraged. Prejudice and vested interests, rather than
+a reasoned conservation, seem to have operated to oppose its progress.
+“A striking instance of prevailing disinclination to the screw
+propeller was shown on the issue of a new edition of the _Encyclopædia
+Britannica_, in which the article on steam navigation contained no
+notice whatever of the subject.”
+
+But in spite of all prepossessions against it the screw had won a
+decisive victory over its rival. So striking were the results recorded
+by the _Archimedes_, that a decision was made in December, 1840, to
+change the _Great Britain_, an Atlantic liner then under construction,
+from paddlewheel to screw propulsion. In two ways she was a gigantic
+experiment: she was the first large ship to be built of iron, and it
+was now proposed to fit her with a screw. Mr. Brunel took all the
+responsibility for advising the adoption of both these revolutionary
+features; the result was a splendid testimony to his scientific
+judgment, boldness of enterprise, and “confident reliance on deductions
+from facts ascertained on a small scale.”
+
+Before the completion of the _Great Britain_ the Admiralty had
+initiated experiments which were to furnish important information as
+to the power and efficiency of the screw propeller in its various
+forms, and to settle beyond cavil the question of its superiority over
+the paddlewheel for the propulsion of warships. The sloop _Rattler_,
+888 tons and 200 horsepower, was fitted with screw machinery. Several
+forms of screw were tried during the winter of 1843-4. First the
+screw as used in the _Archimedes_ was fitted: a screw of 9-foot
+diameter, 11-foot pitch, and of 5½ feet length, consisting of two
+half-convolutions of a blade upon its axis. Then a screw was tried
+of the same diameter and pitch but of only 4-foot length; and then
+the length was again reduced to 3 feet. The effect of cutting down
+the length was to give an increase of efficiency.[156] The screw was
+again shortened by 2 feet, and finally to 1 foot 3 inches; with each
+reduction in length the slip diminished and the propulsive efficiency
+increased. Various other forms of screws were tried, and it was shown
+that Pettit Smith’s short two-bladed propeller was on the whole the
+most efficient.
+
+The best form of screw having been determined, it still remained to
+compare the screw propeller with the paddlewheel. Accordingly the
+_Alecto_, a paddlewheel sloop of similar lines to the _Rattler_, was
+selected as the protagonist of the older form of propulsion, while
+the _Rattler_ herself represented the screw. Naval opinion was still
+completely divided on the great question, while in the competing sloops
+the utmost emulation existed, each captain advocating his own type of
+propeller. The speed trials took place, and showed the _Rattler_ to
+have an undoubted advantage. The paddlewheel, however, laid claim to
+a superiority in towing power. So a further competition was ordered,
+as realistic as any, perhaps, in the history of applied science:
+nothing less than a tug-of-war between Paddle and Screw, those two
+contending forms of steam propulsion! Lashed stern to stern and both
+steaming ahead full power, one evening in the spring of ’45 the two
+steamers struggled for mastery. And as _Rattler_ slowly but surely
+pulled over _Alecto_, the question which had been for years so hotly
+debated was settled; the superiority of the screw was demonstrated.
+With the adoption of the screw the problem of disposing the armament
+was settled. The broadsides and the spaces between decks were once
+more free to the guns along the entire length; moreover the action of
+the screw was in complete harmony with that of the sails. With the
+screw as an auxiliary to sail power, and subsequently with the screw
+as sole means of propulsion, a change came over the character of the
+pivot armament. Whereas with the paddlewheel the pivot gun was the
+chief means of offence, when the screw was introduced the broadside
+was restored, and though the heavy pivot guns were retained (steam and
+the pivot gun had become associated ideas), yet by their comparatively
+limited numbers they became a subordinate element in the total armament.
+
+[Illustration: _RATTLER_ VERSUS _ALECTO_
+
+From an aquatint in the South Kensington Museum]
+
+External affairs now lent a spur to screw propulsion. In ’44 the
+French navy came under the reforming power of the ambitious Prince de
+Joinville, and from this year onwards the attitude of France to this
+country became increasingly hostile and menacing. The thoughts of
+the French were turned toward their navy. No sooner had de Joinville
+been placed in command than schemes of invasion were bruited in this
+country; and the public viewed with some alarm the altered problems of
+defence imposed on our fleets by the presence in the enemy’s ports of a
+steam-propelled navy. Sanguine French patriots sought to profit by the
+advent of the new power. A pamphlet appeared in Paris claiming to prove
+that the establishment of steam navigation afforded France the very
+means by which she could regain her former level of naval strength. The
+writer, using the same arguments as Colonel Paixhans had used in ’22,
+reviewed the effect of steam power on the rival navies, and pointed to
+the Duke of Wellington’s warnings in parliament of the defencelessness
+of the English coasts and to his statement that if Napoleon had
+possessed steam power he would have achieved invasion. These cries of
+alarm, said the writer, should trace for France her line of policy. She
+should emulate the wise development of steam propulsion as practised
+by Great Britain. “We think, England acts; we discuss theories, she
+pursues application. She creates with activity a redoubtable steam
+force and reduces the number of her sailing ships, whose impotence
+she recognizes.... Sailing vessels have lost their main power; the
+employment of steamers has reduced them to the subaltern position
+of the siege artillery in a land army.” The writer praised English
+policy in the matter of steam development: its wise caution, its
+reasoned continuity. There had admittedly been some costly deceptions.
+Nevertheless the method was to be commended, and France should proceed
+in a similar manner: by a succession of sample units while steam was
+still in the experimental stage, by far-sighted single strides, and
+then by bold and rapid construction of a steam navy which would compete
+on more even terms with that of her hereditary rival.[157]
+
+Faced with the probability that our rivals would pursue some such
+progressive and challenging policy as outlined by the pamphleteer, the
+Admiralty acted rapidly. Before the _Rattler_ trials were complete a
+decision was made favourable to the screw propeller, and an order was
+made for its wide application to warships built and building. It was
+resolved, on the advice of Sir Charles Napier, that the screw should
+be regarded solely as an auxiliary to, and in no way as in competition
+with, sail power. The _Arrogant_ was laid down, the first frigate
+built for auxiliary steam power; and screws driven by engines of small
+horse-power were subsequently fitted to other ships with varying
+degrees of success.
+
+Two important features were specified for all: the machinery was
+required to be wholly below the water-line, and the screw had to
+be unshippable. Engines were now required for Block Ships and for
+sea-going vessels. So the principal engineers of the country were
+called together and were asked to produce engines in accordance with
+the bare requirements given them. A variety of designs resulted. From
+the experience obtained with this machinery two important conclusions
+were quickly drawn: firstly, that gearing might be altogether dispensed
+with; secondly, that no complex contrivance was necessary for altering
+the pitch to enable engines to work advantageously under varying
+conditions, the efficiency of the screw varying very little whether
+part of the ship’s velocity were due to sail power or whether it were
+wholly due to the screw.[158]
+
+And here it may not be amiss to note, in relation to a nation’s
+fighting power, the significant position assumed by naval material.
+In land warfare a rude measure of force could always be obtained by
+a mere counting of heads. At sea man was in future to act, almost
+entirely, through the medium of the machine.
+
+However we may have deserved the eulogy of the French writer in
+respect of developing the paddlewheel war steamer, the development
+of screw propulsion in the next decade was marked by a succession of
+failures and a large outlay of money on useless conversions and on new
+construction of poor fighting value, most of which could have been
+avoided. Had our methods been less tentative and more truly scientific
+the gain would have been undoubtedly very great; we should have laid
+our plans on a firmer basis and arrived at our end, full screw power,
+by a far less circuitous route than that actually taken. In this
+respect France had the advantage of us.
+
+Although a decision had been made to maintain the full sail power of
+our ships and install screw machinery only as an auxiliary motive
+power, attempts were naturally made to augment so far as possible the
+power exerted by the screw; and within a short time new ships were
+being fitted with machinery of high power, in an endeavour to make the
+screw a primary means of propulsion. The results were disappointing. As
+the power increased difficulties thickened. The weight of the machinery
+grew to be excessive, the economy of the comparatively fast-running and
+short-stroke engines proved to be low, and the propulsive efficiency of
+the screws themselves grew unaccountably smaller and smaller. So poor
+were the results obtained, indeed, that in the case of a certain ship
+it was demonstrated that, by taking out the high-power machinery and
+substituting smaller engines an actual gain in speed was obtained, with
+the reduced displacement. The first screw ship in which an attempt was
+made to obtain full power with the screw was the _Dauntless_, of 1846.
+Although a frigate of beautiful lines she was considered a comparative
+failure. It was agreed that, equipped with paddlewheels and armed with
+guns of larger calibre, she would have constituted a faster and more
+powerful warship than, with her 580-horse-power engines, her 10 knots
+of speed, and her 32-pounder guns, she actually was.
+
+Part of the trouble was due to the unsuitability of our ships’ lines
+for screw propulsion. It has already been noted that, owing to the
+carriage of heavy weights at their extremities, war vessels were always
+given very full bows and sterns. In the case of the _Rattler_, whose
+records served as a criterion for later designs of screw ships, the
+lines of the stern were unusually fine: partly, no doubt, in imitation
+of the _Archimedes_. Also, since it had been necessary to allow
+space enough for a long screw to be carried (a screw of a complete
+convolution was thought possible) the _Rattler’s_ short screw as
+finally adopted worked at some distance aft of the deadwood, and thus
+suffered no retarding influence from it when under way. But in the case
+of later ships these advantages did not obtain. They were built with
+the usual “square tuck,” a bluff form of stern which prevented a free
+flow of water into the space ahead of the propeller and thus detracted
+from its efficiency. It was not appreciated at this time that, for
+efficient action, the screw propeller demands to be supplied with a
+body of unbroken, non-eddying water for it to act upon, which with the
+square-cut stern is not obtained. At low speeds, and in the ship to
+which the screw was fitted as an auxiliary, the effect of the square
+tuck was not marked. But as power and speed increased its effect became
+more and more evident; the increase in power gave no proportionate
+increase in speed; and many, ignorant of the cause, surmised that there
+was a limit to the power which could be transmitted by a screw and that
+this limit had already been reached. The inefficiency of the square
+tuck was exposed by trials carried out in H.M.S. _Dwarf_ at Chatham. As
+a result of these, future new and converted ships were given as fine a
+stern as possible.
+
+For several years, however, the policy of the Admiralty remained the
+same: the screw was regarded solely as an auxiliary. The French, on the
+other hand, took a less compromising line of action. After waiting for
+some time and watching our long series of experiments, they convened
+in 1849 a grand _Enquête Parliamentaire_: a commission which, primed
+with the latest information as to British naval material, was to
+decide on what basis of size, number, armament and means of propulsion
+future French warships should be built. For two years the commission
+sat sifting evidence. And then it recommended screw propulsion of the
+highest power for all new ships, as well as the conversion of some
+existing classes to auxiliary screw power. England had fitted her
+ships with screws capable of giving them small speed; France must fit
+hers with screws of greater power. Speed, said the commission, is
+an element of power. Superior speed is the only means by which the
+English can be fought with a good chance of success. Sails must be
+secondary, therefore, and full reliance must be placed on the screw.
+The recommendations of the commission were duly realized. In the
+following years a powerful force of fast screw battleships, frigates,
+transports, and despatch boats was constructed which by ’58 had brought
+the aggregate of the horse-power of the French fleet almost to a level
+with that of England.
+
+When the Crimean War brought the two navies together as allies in
+’54 the full effect of the new policy of the French had not yet been
+made apparent. Some apprehension existed in this country as to the
+adequacy and efficiency of our navy, when compared directly with that
+of France. But from then onwards this country became aware of the
+increasing hostility of the French public and government; speeches
+were made, and letters appeared in the press of both countries, which
+tended to fan the flames of fear and suspicion.[159] It was not till
+’58, however, that general attention was drawn to the great strides
+which the French navy had made in recent years, and to the skilful
+way in which its position, relative to that of its great rival, had
+been improved. An article entitled “The Navies of England and France”
+appeared in the _Conversations Lexicon_ of Leipsic, and caused a great
+sensation. Reprinted in book form, with a long analysis and with a
+mass of information about the French, English and other navies and
+arsenals,[160] this notorious article brought apprehension to a head.
+Though written by no friendly critic, it was in most respects an
+accurate presentment of the respective navies and of their condition.
+The analysis of Hans Busk, while ostensibly exposing its bias and its
+inaccuracies, in effect confirmed the main contentions of the German
+article; in addition his book gave in spectacular columns a summary of
+the units of the rival navies, which gave food for thought. The article
+itself professed to show how much France had benefited by the bold
+and scientific manner in which she had handled the problem of naval
+construction since the coming of steam. Other factors were discussed,
+the forms of ships, the Paixhans system of armament, problems of
+manning and of education; but the factor which had caused the greatest
+accession of strength to France, by her wise divergence from the
+English policy, was (according to the critic) steam propulsion. In the
+case of paddlewheel steamers England, by her unscientific and ruinous
+experiments, had squandered millions of money and produced a series of
+crank and inefficient war vessels. In the case of screw ships England’s
+waste of exertions and money was even more surprising; the building of
+new ships and the conversion of others was carried out at an enormous
+cost with many galling disappointments. The French, on the other hand,
+took longer to consider the principle of the screw, but then, when
+their more scientific constructors had completed their investigations
+and analysed the new power, they acted thoroughly and without delay.
+From all of which the German critic inferred that England had good
+reason to watch with anxious eye the significant development of
+strength on the part of her neighbours across the Channel. “We
+must pronounce,” he concluded, “that with a nearly equal amount of
+_matériel_, the French navy surpasses the English in capacity and in
+command of men. France need feel no hesitation in placing herself in
+comparison with England.... Never was the policy of England so yielding
+and considerate towards France as at the present day. And then, with
+respect to the vexed question of the invasion, it is certain that
+Napoleon III has the means of effecting it with greater ease and far
+greater chance of success than his uncle.”
+
+The means was steam power. But the much-talked-of invasion was never
+to be attempted. Other events intervened, other developments took
+place, which reduced the tension between the two great naval powers and
+removed for an indefinite time the danger, which the Leipsic article
+disinterestedly pointed out, of war under novel and unprecedentedly
+terrible conditions: with shell guns and wooden unarmoured steam
+warships.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE IRONCLAD
+
+
+The year 1860 marks the most dramatic, swift, and far-reaching change
+which has ever befallen war material: the supersession of the wooden
+ship-of-the-line by the modern battleship in its earliest form. What
+were the causes, suddenly realized or acknowledged, which impelled this
+revolutionary change, and what were the circumstances which moulded
+the new form of naval construction? This final chapter will attempt to
+show. Before descending to a detailed examination of this evolution,
+however, let us trace out the most striking features of the transition;
+their measure of accuracy can be estimated by the light of the
+subsequent narration of progress.
+
+In the first place, then, we remark that, potentially, from the time
+when shell-throwing ordnance was introduced into the French, and then
+as a counter-measure into our own fleet, unarmoured wooden ships were
+doomed. Strange it seems that so long a time elapsed before this fact
+was realized; though it is true that with spherical shells and small
+explosive charges the destructive effects of shell fire were not
+greatly superior to those of solid shot, that fuzes were unreliable,
+that trials of artillery against material were rarely resorted to,
+and that, moreover, no opportunity occurred between 1822 and the
+outbreak of the Crimean War to demonstrate in actual sea-fighting such
+superiority as actually existed. Implicit trust was placed in our
+fine sailing ships. So long as solid shot were used, indeed, these
+timber-built ships were admirably suited for the line of battle;
+as size and strength increased and as our methods of construction
+improved the ship gained an increasing advantage over the gun, defence
+increasingly mastered attack, to such a degree that by the end of the
+long wars with France the ship-of-the-line had become almost unsinkable
+by gun-fire. But so soon as shell guns were established--even with
+spherical shells fired from smooth-bore ordnance--wooden ships
+loomed easy targets for destruction. For a long time this disquieting
+conclusion was ignored or boldly denied; expert opinion with sagacity
+turned a blind eye to the portentous evidence presented to it of the
+power of shell. War came, but even then the full possibilities of shell
+fire were not developed. Enough proof was given, however, to show that
+in the special circumstances of that war unarmoured ships were of small
+value against shell fire. Armour was accordingly requisitioned, and,
+some few years after the war, was applied to seagoing warships.
+
+Another development now took place. At this period when disruptive and
+incendiary shell was proving itself a more powerful agent than solid
+shot of equal size, both shell and shot gained an enhanced value from
+the application of rifling to ordnance; moreover, ordnance itself was
+developing so quickly that each year saw an appreciable increase in
+the unit of artillery force. This variation in the unit profoundly
+affected naval architecture. No longer was there a unit of standard
+and unchanging value, which, when multiplied by a certain number,
+conveyed a measure of a ship’s offensive power. No longer was the size
+of a ship a rough measure of its fighting strength; by concentrating
+power in a few guns, offensive strength could be correspondingly
+concentrated, if desired, in a small vessel. On the other hand, in
+view of the sudden accession of offensive strength, the defensive
+capacities of a ship remaining as before, it was now true that size had
+become an element of danger, diminutiveness of safety. Hence warships,
+which had for centuries triumphed in the moral and physical effect of
+their height and size, suddenly sought to shrink, to render themselves
+inconspicuous, to take the first step towards total invisibility.
+
+An effect of the same development--of the increasing size of the unit
+gun, and therefore of the decreasing number of units which a ship could
+carry--was the mounting of every big gun so as to command as large an
+arc of fire as possible.
+
+As the final development we note that the steam engine, in endowing the
+warship with motions far more variable, certain and controlled than
+those of the sailing ship, called forth tactical ideas quite different,
+in many respects, from those which governed sea actions in the canvas
+period. The warship itself is the embodiment of tactical ideas. Hence
+the design of the steam-propelled warship evolved along a different
+line from that of the sailing ship.
+
+By the effect and interaction of these developments a complete
+revolution was compassed in naval architecture; by the progress of
+artillery and the steam engine, and by the improvement in mechanical
+processes in general, an entirely new unit of naval force was evolved
+from the old sailing ship: the mastless, turreted ironclad of the late
+’sixties, the precursor of the modern battleship.
+
+
+§
+
+No sooner had the shell gun given proofs of its destructive powers than
+experiments on the penetrative power of projectiles began to assume
+importance, and as early as 1838 trials were being made at Portsmouth
+against a hulk, the result of which, confirming the experiments made
+by the French with the _Pacificateur_ some sixteen years previously,
+demonstrated the far-reaching effects of explosive shell against a
+ship’s side-timbers. Four years later the prime minister was apprised
+from New York that the Americans had discovered a suitable and adequate
+protection for ships’ sides; iron plates of three-eighths of an inch
+in thickness, riveted together to form a compound 6-inch plate, were
+alleged to have been found ball-proof. On receipt of which intelligence
+the Admiralty instructed Sir Thomas Hastings, captain of the
+_Excellent_, to confirm or disprove by actual trial. Trial was made,
+but it was reported that no protection was afforded by such plates
+against the fire of 8-inch shell or 32-pounder shot, even at 200 yards’
+range. No defensive remedy could be devised against shell fire, and the
+only counter-measures deemed practical were of an offensive nature,
+viz. to mount shell guns as powerful as those of the enemy, and to keep
+him at a distance by the employment of large and far-ranging solid-shot
+ordnance.
+
+In the meantime iron, which was not acceptable as a protection, had
+been accepted as a constructive material for ships. For some years it
+had been increasingly used for mercantile shipping with satisfactory
+results. The scarcity of timber and its cost, as well as the positive
+advantages to be obtained from the use of the much stronger and more
+plentiful material, had decided the Admiralty in ’43 to build iron
+warships. Some small vessels were built and, in spite of adverse
+criticism and alarming prediction, acquitted themselves admirably on
+service. In ’46 it was resolved, however, to put iron to the test
+of artillery. An iron steamboat, the _Ruby_, was used as a target
+by the _Excellent_ gunners, and the results were unfavourable; the
+stopping power of the thin metal was small, and the balls which went
+clean through the near side wrought extensive damage on the opposite
+plates. In ’49 trials were made with stouter plates with more promising
+results: a report favourable to iron as a protection for topsides was
+made. But in ’51, as the result of elaborate trials made against a
+“mock up” of the side of the _Simoon_, the previous conclusions were
+reversed. Iron was condemned altogether as unsuitable for ships of war.
+“The shot and shell,” reported Captain Chads, “on striking are shivered
+into innumerable pieces, passing on as a cloud of langrage with great
+velocity,” and working great destruction among the crew. Nor was a
+combination of wood and iron any better. In fact the report claimed
+that, as regards the suitability or the unsuitability of iron, these
+experiments might be deemed to set the question at rest. The experience
+of the French had apparently been somewhat similar to our own. In both
+countries the use of iron for warships received a sudden check and,
+in England at any rate, the idea of unarmoured wood was once again
+accepted. In both countries the opinion was widely held that iron was
+unsuitable either for construction or protection, and that the view of
+General Paixhans, that vessels might be made proof even against shells
+by being “cuirassées en fer,” was preposterous and impracticable.[161]
+
+Potentially, as it now seems, wooden sailing ships were so weak in
+defensive qualities that the new artillery, if only it could be
+adequately protected, had them at its mercy. Actually it required the
+rude test of war to establish the unpalatable truth. In November,
+1853, such proof was given. At Sinope a squadron of Turkish frigates
+armed with solid-shot guns was almost blown out of the water by shell
+fire from a powerful Russian squadron; the latter were practically
+uninjured, while the Turkish fleet was set on fire and a terrible
+mortality inflicted among the crews in a short time. General Paixhans,
+who had lived to see his invention fulfil in actual warfare his early
+predictions, was able to emphasize, in the columns of the official
+_Moniteur_, the arguments against large ships and the advantages which
+would accrue to France especially by the subdivision of force and the
+substitution of small protected steamers armed with heavy guns for the
+existing wooden ships-of-the-line. The concentrated fire of a few such
+steamers would overpower the radiating fire of the largest three-decker.
+
+The type of naval warfare imposed on the allies in the Crimean War lent
+special force to Paixhans’ arguments. For the attack of fortresses
+and coasts whose waters were exceptionally shallow it was at any rate
+clear that the orthodox form of warship, unarmoured, of large size
+and of deep draught, was of very limited value. Some special form was
+necessary; France made a rapid decision. Napoleon III issued an order
+for the construction of a flotilla of floating batteries, light-draught
+vessels capable of carrying heavy shell guns and of being covered with
+iron armour strong enough to resist not only solid shot but the effects
+of explosive shell.
+
+The idea of armouring ships was, of course, not novel. Armour of sorts
+had been utilized from antiquity; in the days when the shields of the
+men-at-arms were ranged along the bulwarks of the war galleys; in
+the Tudor days when the waists of ships were protected by high elm
+“blinders,” and when Andrea Doria’s carrack was so sheathed with lead
+and bolted with brass that “it was impossible to sink her though all
+the artillery of a fleet were fired against her.” In the eighteenth
+century the French themselves had attempted to clothe floating
+batteries with armour, not indeed against shells but against red-hot
+shot. In 1782 they had devised, for the attack on Gibraltar, six wooden
+floating batteries which, with their armament, were protected by a
+belt of sand enclosed in cork and kept moist with sea water. But this
+experience had been disastrous. The sand-drenching apparatus failed to
+act, and the batteries were almost totally destroyed by fire.
+
+But now, although experiments with iron-plated ships had been the
+reverse of satisfactory, data were to hand which showed that, if used
+in sufficient thickness, iron plates _were_ capable of withstanding
+the disruptive effects of shell. At Vincennes trials had been made,
+between 1851 and 1854, with various thicknesses and dispositions of
+iron; with plates four to five and a half inches thick, with compound
+plates, and with plates supported on a hard wood lining eighteen
+inches thick; of all of which the thick simple plates had proved the
+most effective. So the five floating batteries ordered for work in the
+Crimea were covered with 4-inch iron plates backed by a thick lining.
+Sixty-four feet long, 42 feet in beam, drawing about 18 feet of water,
+armed with sixteen 56-pounder shell guns and equipped with auxiliary
+steam machinery for manœuvring, their construction was hastened with
+all possible speed. By October, ’55, three of them, the _Dévastation_,
+_Tonnante_, and _Lave_, had joined the allied flags, and on the 17th of
+that month they took a principal part in the bombardment of Kinburn.
+Their success was complete. Although repeatedly hit their iron plates
+were only dented by the Russian shot and shell. “Everything,” reported
+the French commander-in-chief, “may be expected from these formidable
+engines of war.” Once again the arguments of Paixhans for armoured war
+vessels had been justified; the experience gained with iron armour at
+Kinburn confirmed that gained with shell guns at Sinope. France at once
+proceeded to apply these lessons to the improvement of her navy proper.
+
+In England, on the other hand, no great impression was created either
+by shells or by iron protection. A comfortable faith in our fleets of
+timber-built ships persisted; and, with regard to policy, as it had
+been with shell guns, and with steam propulsion, so it appeared to be
+with armour; the national desire was to avoid for as long a time as
+possible all change which would have the effect of depreciating the
+value of our well-tried material. At the same time it is remarkable
+how small an effect was conveyed to expert opinion, both here and in
+America, by the events of the Crimean War. In the years immediately
+following the war some notable technical works were published:
+Dahlgren’s _Shell and Shell Guns_, Read’s _Modifications to Ships of
+the Royal Navy_, Grantham’s _Iron Shipbuilding_, Sir Howard Douglas’
+_Naval Warfare with Steam_, and Hans Busk’s _Navies of the World_. From
+these works and from the press and parliamentary discussions of the day
+it is evident that, outside France, the impressions created were vague
+and conflicting. The main lesson conveyed was the great tactical value
+of steam propulsion. The reports laid no emphasis on shells, and so
+scanty was the information concerning them that it was very difficult
+to appraise their value. Their effect at Sinope was disguised by the
+overwhelming superiority of the Russian force, which rendered the
+result of the action a foregone conclusion; on another occasion (at
+Sebastopol) shells fired at long range were reported to have failed to
+penetrate or embed themselves in a ship’s timbers. Commander Dahlgren
+was uncertain, in the absence of fuller information, whether shells had
+justified their advocates or not. Nor was Grantham impressed by the
+French floating batteries. “One only of these vessels,” he incorrectly
+says, “was thus engaged, but then not under circumstances that gave any
+good proof of their efficiency, as the fire was distant and not very
+heavy.”
+
+So no violent change in our naval material followed as the immediate
+result of the war. Only in the matter of light-draught gunboats and
+batteries tardy action was forced on the authorities by public opinion.
+Although iron had been condemned for warship construction iron ships
+had been built in the years preceding the war in considerable numbers
+for foreign governments; the firms of Laird and Scott Russell had
+built in 1850 powerful light-draught gunboats for Russia, and in the
+same year Russia had ordered from a Thames firm an iron gunboat whose
+novel design had been brought to the notice of the Admiralty. But these
+craft were intended for the defence of shallow waters, and nothing
+analogous to them was considered necessary for the British navy. The
+exigencies of the war demonstrated in the course of time the value of
+these light-draught vessels. Still there was long hesitation; though
+the French government pressed on us their advantages, and presented
+our minister with the plans of their own floating batteries. The
+disappointment of the Baltic expedition, however, and the realization
+that the powerful British fleet which in the summer of ’54 had set
+out to reduce Cronstadt had done nothing but prove the inherent
+unsuitability of large ships-of-the-line for the attack of fortresses
+in shallow waters, gave rise to a loud demand in the press that
+gunboats should be built. Several were accordingly laid down. The first
+of these were found to be too deep, but others of lighter draught
+were designed and by the autumn of ’55 sixteen were ready; and these,
+together with some dockyard lighters which had been fitted as mortar
+vessels, joined a flotilla of French floating batteries in the Baltic
+and effectually bombarded Sveaborg. As the war progressed the value of
+ironclad gunboats became more fully appreciated. A large number was
+ordered, but most of them were only completed in time to fire a grand
+salute in honour of the proclamation of peace.[162]
+
+Apart from the building of these gunboats innovation was avoided.
+Unarmoured wooden ships, equipped with a mixed armament of shot and
+shell guns, continued to be launched and passed into commission,
+and it was only after France had constructed, at Toulon in ’58, an
+iron-encased frigate, that England unwillingly followed suit, convinced
+at last that a reconstruction of her materials could no longer be
+averted.
+
+_La Gloire_, the iron-belted frigate, was the direct result of the
+lessons gained from the floating batteries in the Russian war. After
+Kinburn the French naval authorities took up the study of how to apply
+armour to sea-going ships. Was it possible to embody in a fighting unit
+sea-going capacity, high speed, great offensive power, in addition to
+the defensive qualities possessed by the slow, unwieldy batteries?
+Could such a weight as iron armour would entail be embodied in a ship
+design without loss of other important qualities? It was concluded
+that, while it would be impossible to cover the sides completely, it
+would be possible to protect the surfaces near the water-line, under
+cover of which all the ships’ vital parts could be secreted. A great
+increase in defensive power would thus be obtained. Before developing a
+plan in detail it was decided to carry out further armour trials, and
+solid iron plates of 4½ inches thickness were fired at with English
+68-pounders and French 50-pounders, with solid balls and with charged
+shells. The results were satisfactory, so these plates were adopted as
+the standard of armour protection. To the design of M. Dupuy de Lôme
+the first ironclad frigate was constructed from a fine two-decked ship,
+the _Napoleon_, which was cut down, lengthened, and armoured from stem
+to stern. The result was the celebrated _Gloire_. She was followed
+shortly afterwards by two sister vessels. And then, in order to obtain
+a direct comparison between timber-built and iron ships, an armoured
+_iron_ frigate, the _Couronne_, was also built. The three wooden ships
+were given a complete belt round the water-line of 4½ inches of iron;
+the _Couronne_ had compound armour--3-inch and 1½-inch iron plates
+separated from each other and from the iron stem-plating by wood lining
+6 inches in thickness. The armament of all four frigates consisted of
+thirty-six 50-pounder shell guns, carried low. They were given yacht
+masts and equipped with propelling machinery designed to give them 12
+knots speed.
+
+
+§
+
+The naval position of England at this time was the reverse of
+satisfactory. Comparing the material resources of the two great
+maritime rivals, it came to be noted with surprise that France, taking
+advantage of the development of steam propulsion during the decade,
+had actually drawn level with England in the numbers of steam warships
+available and in their aggregate motive horse-power. The French had
+submitted to great financial outlay on account of their navy. In this
+country a reaction, following the large and partially ineffective
+expenditure incurred in the Crimean War, had dried up the sources of
+supplies and stunted constructional development; there was little to
+show for the money spent on such works as the enlargement of docks
+and on the extensive new factories and docks established at Sheerness
+and Keyham. Apprehension was widespread when the intelligence of the
+building of the iron-sided ships was received, and this apprehension
+developed when whispers reached Westminster of a huge prospective
+programme meditated by France. To allay the panic a parliamentary
+committee was formed to inquire into the relative strength of the two
+navies; and their report, published in January, 1859, made bad reading.
+Comparing the steam navies--for, the committee reported, sailing ships
+could not be opposed to steamships with any chance of success--France
+and England each had afloat the same number of line-of-battle ships,
+viz. twenty-nine; and as regards frigates France had thirty-four to
+England’s twenty-six! This did not include the four _frégates blindées_
+laid down by France, which would be substitutes for line-of-battle
+ships, which were being built with the scantling of three-deckers,
+and which were to be armed with thirty-six heavy guns, most of them
+50-pounders throwing an 80-pound hollow percussion shell. “So convinced
+do naval men seem to be in France,” note the committee, “of the
+irresistible qualities of these ships, that they are of opinion that
+no more ships-of-the-line will be laid down, and that in ten years
+that class of vessel will have become obsolete.” The position is bad
+enough; yet so bewildered are our experts by the radical developments
+of the rival navy, so difficult appears the problem of countering the
+French designs by any new and well-studied procedure, that all that the
+committee can recommend is the accelerated conversion of our remaining
+sailing ships to steam. The committee realize that naval architecture,
+and still more naval artillery, is in a state of transition, and that
+the late invention of Armstrong’s gun “may possibly affect even the
+size and structure of ships of war.”
+
+It is not possible, however, for a country desirous of maintaining its
+maritime supremacy to wait upon perfection in the manner implied as
+the policy of the parliamentary committee. Some drastic and immediate
+action was necessary, to redress the advantage accruing to France from
+the possession of the _Gloire_ and her sister frigates. Such action was
+duly taken; but before proceeding to examine this action it will be
+necessary to revert for a moment to a consideration of iron. We have
+already sketched the evolution of iron as a protective covering for
+warships; we must now glance back and briefly trace its progress as a
+constructive material.
+
+Iron vessels had appeared on the canals of England in the latter part
+of the eighteenth century. In 1815 a pleasure boat of that material
+had sailed on the River Mersey, attracting crowds of people whose
+credulity had been severely strained by the statement that an iron ship
+would float. Admiral Napier had manifested an early interest in iron
+ships; in 1820, in partnership with a Mr. Manby, he had constructed
+the first iron steamer, the _Aaron Manby_, and navigated it from
+London up the Seine to Paris, where in ’22 it attracted considerable
+attention. From this date onwards iron vessels increased in number.
+In ’39 the _Nemesis_ and _Phlegethon_ were built by Mr. Laird for the
+East India Company, and in the China war of ’42 these gunboats played
+a conspicuous and significant part. The grounding of the _Nemesis_ in
+’40 on the rocks of Scilly afforded early evidence of the value of
+watertight bulkheads (a Chinese invention) when embodied in an iron
+hull.
+
+As the size of ships increased, the disabilities attaching to the use
+of timber became more and more evident. Though braced internally by
+an elaborate system of iron straps, knees, and nutted bolts in iron
+or copper, the large timber-built ship, considered as a structure,
+was fundamentally weak; in fact the presence of the straps and ties
+contributed in no small degree to its inability to withstand continuous
+stress. The fastenings did not accord with the materials which they
+fastened together, and the wood was relatively so soft that when a
+severe strain arose a general yielding took place, the boltheads
+sinking into the wood and causing it to give way to the pressure thrown
+locally upon it. As tonnage increased the metal fastenings grew more
+and more conspicuous, the ship became a composite structure of wood
+and iron, with the result that uniformity of elasticity and strength
+was lost and the stresses, instead of being distributed throughout
+the structure, tended to become localized at certain points. “The
+metallic fastenings of a timber-built ship act to accelerate her
+destruction so soon as the close connection of the several parts is at
+all diminished.” So in 1840 wrote Augustin Creuze, a graduate of the
+disbanded school of naval architecture and one of the most gifted and
+eminent men of his profession at that day.
+
+Iron ships, on the other hand, were found to be well adapted to
+withstand the racking stresses, the localized loads and the vibrations
+which were introduced by steam machinery; they were lighter than
+wooden ships, more capacious, more easily shaped to give the fine
+lines necessary for speed, cheaper and immeasurably stronger. In
+course of time the objections to them gradually vanished; by aid of
+the scientists the derangement of their compasses was overcome, the
+dangers from lightning were obviated, and the extent of the fouling to
+which their surfaces were liable was kept within limits. In course of
+time, in spite of natural preference and vested interest, and since
+the advantages of iron were confirmed by continuous experience, wood
+became almost entirely superseded by the metal for large mercantile
+construction. But in the case of warships, as we have seen, insuperable
+objections seemed to prohibit the change of material. No sooner had a
+step been taken by the Admiralty, in the ordering of a group of iron
+paddlewheel frigates in ’43, than an outcry arose; the wooden walls
+of England were in danger, the opponents of iron declared, and iron
+ships were wholly unsuitable for warlike purposes. More were ordered in
+’46. Sir Charles Napier, whose opinion naturally carried great weight
+with the public, led the opposition, and when, in ’49, the artillery
+trial demonstrated the dangerous effects of shot and shell on thin iron
+plates, the advocates of iron were fain to admit the error of their
+opinions. The iron frigates were struck from the establishment and
+transformed--such of them as were completed--into unarmed transports.
+
+As experience with iron ships accumulated, the feeling grew in
+certain quarters that the artillery trials, the results of which had
+been claimed as being decisive proof of the unsuitability of iron
+for warships, might not have been the last word upon the subject.
+The events of the Crimean War tended to emphasize the doubt and
+uncertainty. A few there were who saw in that war clear proofs of the
+superiority of iron over wood; who argued that, though iron had proved
+to be dangerous in the form of thin plates in certain circumstances,
+yet it had shown itself to be impervious both to shot and shell, and
+indeed an indispensable defence in certain circumstances when applied
+in sufficient thickness; that thicker plates than those condemned as
+dangerous might therefore prove to be a great protection against shell
+fire; and that, even as regards thin plates, the splintering effect of
+shell against these was small, from all accounts, compared with the
+_incendiary_ effect of shell against timber. And in what other respects
+were the advantages of iron contested?
+
+But, acting upon expert advice and influence, doubtless, by the
+remembrance of the _Birkenhead_ and _Simoon_ fiasco, the government
+still felt unable to sanction the use of iron, and it was not until
+news of the laying down of the _Gloire_ reached England that a decision
+was made to adopt the new material, both as armour and for the hulls of
+warships.
+
+The high protagonist of timber-built ships, it was shortly afterwards
+revealed, was Sir Howard Douglas: the most strenuous advocate of iron
+was John Scott Russell. For years, it appeared, Sir Howard had been
+the influential and successful adviser of the government against the
+adoption of iron. “I was consulted by Sir Robert Peel,” he wrote
+in 1860, “on his accession to the government, as to the use and
+efficiency of a certain half-dozen iron frigates, two of which were
+finished, and four constructing by contract. I stated in reply that
+vessels wholly constructed of iron were utterly unfit for all the
+purposes of war, whether armed or as transports for the conveyance of
+troops.” In the same paper he stated the arguments on which he had
+tendered this advice; and these arguments appeared so fallacious,
+and the facts on which they were based so disputable, as to seem to
+call for some reply from the builders of iron ships. Sir Howard had
+certainly strayed far from science in his unsupported statements
+as to the calamitous effects of iron if used for warships; and
+unfortunately he had allowed himself to stigmatize the _Great Eastern_,
+as representative of iron ships generally, as “an awful roller,” and
+as never having attained anything like her calculated speed. Scott
+Russell made a violent reply. “After establishing that Sir H. Douglas’s
+conclusions are the reverse of the truth,” he began, “I shall proceed
+to establish that the future navy of England must be an iron navy. That
+its construction must be founded on facts and principles, which Sir H.
+Douglas’s writings ignore, and his deductions contradict; and I believe
+I shall prove that if iron ships had been introduced at the time
+when Sir Howard says he sedulously and systematically opposed their
+introduction, the money which has been spent on a wooden fleet about to
+become valueless would have given England a fleet greatly more powerful
+than the combined navies of the world.”[163]
+
+It may be conceded that in this public argument Scott Russell had the
+advantage: the architect of the _Great Eastern_ had little difficulty
+in confuting the views of the artillerist. But by this time the
+battle between wood and iron had been fought and won. The Board of
+Admiralty, influenced by the arguments of Scott Russell and their own
+constructors, and in the presence of gigantic achievements in the form
+of iron-built liners, felt unable to agree with Sir Howard in his
+continued advocacy of timber; Sir John Pakington expressed his personal
+doubts to him in a correspondence. Expert opinion, naval officers and
+architects, leaned more and more in the direction of the new material,
+and, early in 1859, the decision was made to build an armoured frigate
+_of iron_. It was a momentous decision. The “wooden walls” had crumbled
+at last, and iron had won acceptance as alone able to cope with the
+new forces brought into existence by the progress of artillery and
+steam machinery. The opponents of iron could not sustain for long their
+arguments in favour of timber; experience was accumulating against
+them, and it was necessary to accept defeat. Chief among them was Sir
+Howard Douglas. There is, surely, something pathetic in the episode of
+his long-continued struggle against radical change; something tragic in
+the spectacle of this scientist, whose labours had done more, perhaps,
+than any other man’s for the efficiency of the nineteenth-century navy,
+in his old age casting the great weight of his influence unwittingly
+against the navy’s interest? How gamely the old general fought for
+his convictions is told us by his biographer, who with a natural
+warmth denounced the fierce criticism which Scott Russell had directed
+against a veteran of eighty-five winters, devoting his last hours to
+the service of his country. “His resistance to armour ships bore him
+down, his arguments met with unbelief, or elicited taunts, and ceased
+to influence the public. ‘All that I have said about armour ships will
+prove correct,’ he remarked, twenty-four hours before his death, toward
+the end of ’61. ‘How little do they know of the undeveloped power of
+artillery!’”
+
+
+§
+
+In June, 1859, some months before the launching of the _Gloire_, the
+reply was given: the _Warrior_ was laid down. Up to this time the
+initiative, in the slow evolution of naval material, had rested mainly
+with France. From this moment England, having taken up the challenge,
+assumed the initiative and its responsibilities; and from now onwards,
+in spite of false moves, failures, and ineffective expenditures of
+money and labour, she regained more and more surely the preponderance
+in naval strength which she had possessed of old. At last a scientific
+era of naval architecture had opened. Up to this time the design and
+construction of warships had been treated as a mere craft: a craft
+hampered, moreover, by absence of method, reluctance to adopt new
+views, limitations as to size, interference and ever-varying decisions
+as to such factors as the extent of sail-power or the number of guns
+to be carried. By the official acceptance of scientific methods this
+was largely changed. By the raising of the old office of Surveyor to
+the dignity of Controller of the Navy, by the institution of a new
+school of naval architecture to take the place of that suppressed
+in 1832 (whose most eminent graduates, fittingly enough, were the
+chief witnesses against the debased state and management of naval
+construction as it was prior to 1860), by utilizing the services of
+men trained in mathematics, the effect on naval architecture soon
+became apparent. Originality had scope, forethought and cleverness had
+full play; men of considerable technical knowledge were pressed into
+service, who proved well able to cope with the new developments.
+
+The outcome of this new orientation was the _Warrior_. It is usual to
+think of her as similar to the _Gloire_; like her she was designed to
+resist the 68-pounder unit of artillery, like her she carried a belt of
+iron armour 4½ inches thick, and was equipped with steam machinery to
+give her a high speed. Yet in important respects she differed from her
+French rival.
+
+[Illustration: THE _WARRIOR_
+
+From a photograph in the possession of Dr. Oscar Parkes, O.B.E.]
+
+Firstly, her size in relation to her armament caused general surprise.
+Admittedly the policy of restricting dimensions, pursued with such
+rigour from the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century,
+had operated to the detriment of our naval construction; admittedly
+the long and fine-shaped sailing vessels built during recent years
+were greatly superior to those of the older models; yet no reason
+presented itself for building a ship, of armament equal to that of the
+5000-ton French frigate, which would displace over 9000 tons. Were not
+cost and tonnage directly related, and was there some real necessity
+forcing us to build ships of so large a size? Was it true that the
+basins at Portsmouth would require to be enlarged to take such a ship,
+and that her draught would be such that she could only be docked
+at certain tides? The question was debated vigorously by the Board
+itself. Three considerations, according to an authoritative statement
+made to parliament, prompted the decision to depart widely from the
+design adopted by the French: considerations one or more of which have
+influenced all subsequent construction in this country. Firstly, the
+world-wide duties of the British navy demanded a type of ship capable
+of making long and distant voyages either with steam or sail: in
+short, a fully rigged ship, a good sailer, and at the same time one
+with sufficient carrying capacity to enable her to keep the seas for
+a long time. Secondly, to ensure good sailing qualities and to avoid
+a defect which had been experienced in our own ships fitted with
+heavy pivot guns, and which was predicted in the case of the _Gloire_,
+the extremities must be as lightly loaded as possible, and not weighed
+down with heavy armour. Thirdly--and this was more or less special to
+the period--since artillery was already in a state of rapid transition
+to higher power, any protective armour approved must sooner or later
+be insufficient and require to be augmented. These conditions, and the
+advantages which increase of length were known to give in reducing
+the propeller power necessary to obtain a certain speed, governed the
+specifications to which the _Warrior_ was built. She was given a length
+of 380 feet, machinery for a speed of nearly 14 knots, full canvas,
+telescopic funnels, and waterline armour over her central parts: the
+ends being left unarmoured, but subdivided by watertight compartments.
+Of her forty-eight smooth-bore guns, twenty-six were behind armour and
+twelve were outside of the protective belt; the remaining ten were
+mounted on the upper deck, also without protection.
+
+In another respect the _Warrior_ bore witness to the foresight of
+the Board. Hidden behind, and altogether disguised by, the shapely
+bow with its surmounting figure-head, was a stout iron ram-stem,
+worked to the knee and side-plates of the bow: an inconspicuous but
+significant feature. Ever since steamers had been established in the
+navy the possibilities of ramming had been discussed. The revolution
+in tactics resulting from the introduction of steam as motive power
+had been examined by authorities such as Bowles and Moorson, Douglas,
+Dahlgren and Labrousse, and all of them saw in the new conditions an
+opening for the use of the ram. In ’44 Captain Labrousse had suggested
+strengthening the bows of wooden ships for this purpose, and in England
+Admiral Sartorius had become the advocate of a special type of warship
+built expressly to ram. The circumstances of the naval warfare of the
+Crimea, in which slow-moving steamers operated in restricted waters,
+had displayed to naval men the advantages to be obtained from actual
+collision--from the use of their ship itself as a projectile against
+the enemy’s hull. In the case of the _Warrior_ an additional argument
+was now to hand for providing a ram. The use of iron as armour had
+restored the equilibrium between defence and attack which had been
+disturbed by the adoption of shell fire; nay more, it had actually
+turned the scale against artillery, the 68-pounder being unable to
+penetrate the armour of the ship in which it was carried. For this
+reason, that for the moment armour had the ascendancy over the gun, a
+ram was considered to be necessary as an additional means of offence;
+and a ram was accordingly embodied in the _Warrior_, to the strength of
+which her converging iron-plate structure aptly contributed.
+
+And now, leaving the _Warrior_ for a moment, it will be convenient to
+glance ahead and note the part played by the ram and the value set upon
+it in connection with later types of warships.
+
+In 1860 no doubt was felt but that ramming would play a very important
+part in future warfare. The experiences of the American Civil War
+of ’62 seemed to supply a perfect confirmation of this opinion. “We
+fought the _Merrimac_ for more than three hours this forenoon,” wrote
+the engineer of the _Monitor_ to John Ericsson, “and sent her back
+to Norfolk in a sinking condition. Ironclad against ironclad, we
+manœuvred about the bay here (Hampton Roads), and went at each other
+with mutual fierceness.... We were struck twenty-two times, the pilot
+house twice, the turret nine times, the side armour eight times, deck
+three times.... She tried to run us down and sink us, as she did the
+_Cumberland_ yesterday, but she got the worst of it. Her bow passed
+over our deck, and our sharp upper-edged side cut through the light
+iron shoe upon her stem, and well into her oak. She will not try that
+again. She gave us a tremendous thump but did not injure us in the
+least.... The turret is a splendid structure....”
+
+On the preceding day the iron-covered _Merrimac_ had sunk the wooden
+sailing ship _Cumberland_ by ram alone, without the aid of artillery,
+the shots from her victim’s guns glancing off her iron casing “like
+hailstones off a tin roof.” She had then opened on the wooden
+_Congress_ with shell fire, and in a short time the crowded decks of
+that ship had been reduced to a shambles. Then she had fought the
+inconclusive duel with the armoured _Monitor_. What lessons were at
+length driven home by these three single actions! What a novel warfare
+did they not foretell! The helplessness of the wooden ship when
+attacked by an ironclad was apparent, the terrific effects of shell
+fire were once again conclusively proved. The value of thick armour was
+once more shown, but, above all, the power of the ram, the new _arme
+blanche_ of sea warfare, seemed to be indisputably demonstrated. On
+both sides of the Atlantic a revision of values took place: the wooden
+navies of the world sank into insignificance, the _Warrior_ and her
+type were seen to be the main support and measure of each nation’s
+naval power. “The man who goes into action in a wooden ship is a fool,”
+Sir John Hay was quoted as saying, “and the man who sends him there
+is a villain.” The ocean-sceptre of Britain was broken, thought an
+American writer forgetful of the limitations of monitors, by the blow
+which crushed the sides of the _Cumberland_ and _Congress_.
+
+Four years later the battle of Lissa, in which the ironclad squadrons
+of Austria and Italy were engaged with one another, gave confirmation
+that the lessons of Hampton Roads were also applicable to blue-water
+actions. “Full speed. Ironclads rush against the enemy and sink him,”
+was the signal made by the Austrian admiral, Tegetthof. The ram was
+his chief weapon of offence, the gun being a useful auxiliary in
+gaining him the victory; gunfire, by disabling the steering gear of the
+_Ré d’Italia_, making her an easy prey for the ram of his flagship,
+_Ferdinand Max_.
+
+Of all the factors influencing the evolution of naval material, the
+experiences and records of actual warfare are naturally considered
+to carry the greatest weight in council: they are, indeed, the only
+data whose acceptance is indisputable. The claims and achievements
+put forward in time of peace, however their excellence may have been
+attested by the most realistic experiments, are all referred to
+actual war for trial, and are accepted only in so far as they fit
+in with war experience. But sea actions between ironclads have been
+few and far between. It has been the more difficult, therefore, to
+draw from them the true lessons conveyed; the fixed points have been
+insufficient in number, so to speak, to allow of the true curve of
+progress being traced. Not only has this insufficiency been evident,
+but the restriction in the area of war experience has had another
+harmful effect, in that undue weight has been given to each individual
+experience. Difficult as it always is to strip each experience of its
+special circumstances and deduce from it the correct conclusion, errors
+have undoubtedly been made; and these errors have had a prominence
+which would not have been theirs if the number of experiences had been
+greater. On the other hand, an altogether insufficient weight has
+commonly been given to the experiences of peace-time.
+
+These remarks find one application in the ram, and in the value placed
+upon it in the ’sixties and ’seventies. During this period artillery
+was undergoing a continuous and rapid improvement, eventually turning
+the scales against defensive armour; steam power was expanding and
+the manœuvring capacities of ships were being extended, so as to make
+ramming an operation more and more difficult to perform. Yet faith in
+the ram grew rather than decreased, influenced almost entirely by the
+evidence of the two sea-actions.
+
+What was the actual experience of ramming gained in peace-time? In ’68
+Admiral Warden, commanding the Channel Fleet, reported: “So long as
+a ship has good way on her, and a good command of steam to increase
+her speed at pleasure, that ship cannot be what is called ‘rammed’;
+she cannot even be struck to any purpose so long as she has room,
+and is properly handled. The use of ships as rams, it appears to me,
+will only be called into play after an action has commenced, when
+ships, of necessity, are reduced to a low rate of speed--probably
+their lowest.” As time progressed the chances of ramming certainly
+grew less. Yet Lissa and Hampton Roads continued to influence opinion
+to such a degree, as to lead to a glorification of ram tactics; in
+the press, and in the technical institutions which had now come into
+being, the ram retained a lustre which it no longer deserved. So long
+as artillery was feeble and gunnery of low efficiency, and so long as
+speeds of ships were slow and manœuvring power restricted, the ram was
+of great potential value. As these conditions changed, the value of
+the ram declined. But for a time it was actually in question which of
+the two forms of power, the steam engine or the gun, would ultimately
+exert the greater influence as a weapon in action. The subject of a
+Prize Essay for 1872 was, “The Manœuvres and System of Tactics which
+Fleets of Ships should adopt, to develop the powers of the Ram, Heavy
+Artillery, Torpedoes, etc., in an action in the open sea”; and it was
+the opinion of the prize-winner, Commander G. H. Noel, that the ram
+was at that time fast supplanting the gun in importance. “The serious
+part of a future naval attack,” wrote Captain Colomb, in _Lessons
+from Lissa_, “does not appear to be the guns, but the rams.” And the
+French Admiral Touchard described the ram as “the principal weapon in
+naval combats--the _ultima ratio_ of maritime warfare.” “There is a
+new warfare,” said Scott Russell in 1870. “It is no longer, Lay her
+alongside, but, Give her the stem, which will be the order of battle.”
+And he predicted fleets of high-speed vessels, equipped with powerful
+rams and twin-screw engines, in which both guns and armour were merely
+of secondary importance. And writers on tactics discerned future
+squadrons in action charging each other after the manner of heavy
+cavalry.
+
+The evolution of artillery falsified these expectations. With the
+growing advantage of artillery over the defence, and with the coming of
+the torpedo, fighting ranges increased and the use of the ram declined.
+With greater speeds and greater ranges the possibility of ramming
+became (as might be deduced mathematically) a diminishing ratio; before
+the end of the century it was sufficiently clear, and was confirmed by
+actual warfare, that the ram formed but a very secondary factor of a
+warship’s offensive power. But for some years ramming, and “bows-on”
+fighting in which ramming was intended to play an important part,
+influenced to a great extent the designs of warships.
+
+So much for the ram, first fitted in the _Warrior_. In her sister
+ship the ram was less pronounced and, before Hampton Roads had drawn
+attention to its possibilities, it was even in question to renounce
+it altogether. In the case of the _Warrior_ the heavy figure-head
+so overhung the ram that many were dubious whether the latter would
+seriously damage an enemy; and, moreover, the wisdom of driving a fully
+rigged ship against another vessel, and risking the dismantling of
+her masts and rigging, was widely doubted. In other respects, except
+for her armour belt and for the material of which she was built, that
+vessel was not radically different from her predecessors; the first of
+iron-built ironclads was a handsome screw frigate not unlike previous
+British ships of her type, from whom she was lineally descended.
+
+Although on the whole she was a conspicuous success, it was soon
+apparent that the great length of the _Warrior_ tended to make her
+difficult to manœuvre: in fact, made her deficient in that very
+quality--handiness--which was indispensable to her effective use as
+a ram. And this unhandiness was accentuated in the _Minotaur_ class
+which was begun in 1861. These ships were given a belt an inch thicker
+than that of the _Warrior_, and, partial protection being considered
+objectionable, especially as leaving exposed the steering gear and a
+portion of the gun armament, the belt was made continuous over the
+whole length of the ship. This length, owing to the extra weight of
+the armour, was 400 feet: 20 feet greater than that of the _Warrior_
+and a hundred greater than that of the longest timber-built ships. At
+first, five masts were fitted, in order to obtain a large sail-area
+while at the same time keeping the size of each sail within desirable
+limits; but these were afterwards reduced to three. Sail power and
+steam machinery were seen to be an imperfect combination in so large
+a vessel. The _Minotaur_ class proved to be costly, unhandy and
+vulnerable ships, and signalled a return to smaller dimensions. It was
+found possible to design ships equally fast and equally well armed and
+protected, by the use of fuller lines and less length and an increased
+engine power. “Increased manœuvring power and reduction in prime cost,”
+wrote the designer of the new type, “more than make amends for the
+moderate addition to the steam power.”[164]
+
+Here we may briefly note the conversion of the timber-built fleet. In
+’57 Captain Moorsom had submitted a scheme of cutting down ships to
+a short height above the water-line and using the weight thus gained
+to provide an armour belt. Sir Charles Napier had advocated a similar
+policy in parliament. As soon as the necessity for armour was accepted
+this policy was adopted; not only were the resources of the private
+ship-yards bent to the building of a fleet of new iron warships, but
+the best of the old navy was metamorphized in the royal dockyards by
+the process of the _razee_: the cutting down of two-deckers and their
+conversion into iron-belted frigates. By these exertions France was
+soon outstripped in the struggle. For a long time she clung to wooden
+ships, though in ’62 she adopted iron for upper works; and of such
+ships, of wooden bottoms but of iron above the water-line, she built a
+fleet “possessing only one possible merit--uniformity; which the new
+English construction lacked.” The combination of heavy steam machinery
+and wooden hulls was the cause of continuous difficulties; the growth
+of artillery rendered the ships obsolete almost before they were built.
+
+
+§
+
+By the time the _Warrior_ and her sister ships were afloat the great
+struggle between armour and artillery was well in progress. It was
+a struggle which was to lead to unsuspected developments in naval
+architecture.
+
+For the moment, and in the presence of the new iron-built ironclads,
+the gun was at its lowest point of effectiveness. But rifling had
+conferred new powers on it, and the greatest efforts were being put
+forth to improve its position. As it grew rapidly in size and power,
+naval experts were faced with a succession of problems of extraordinary
+difficulty. Two things were in question: both the type and the
+disposition of gun best suited for a warship’s armament.
+
+With regard to type, the adoption of armour inevitably gave a set-back
+to the value of the shell gun. Shells, which would rend and set on
+fire a wooden ship, would not pierce armour or inflame iron plates; of
+which facts Hampton Roads afforded a demonstration. It seemed clear
+also from that incident, to experts in this country and in France,
+that no extension of the Paixhans principle was likely to compete with
+armour in the future. The system of shell fire of General Paixhans,
+like the shot system of the inventor of the carronade, had relied on
+low muzzle velocities and curved trajectories, to effect its purpose.
+His shells were for lodgment rather than penetration, and did not
+gain their effect by their kinetic energy; and in view of this their
+inventor had himself conceived the use of iron armour as the very means
+whereby they might be countered. Nevertheless the Americans had been
+strongly attracted by the Paixhans principle, and with their Dahlgrens
+and Columbiads had extended it in practice to embrace the use of guns
+of the largest calibres. The action between the _Monitor_ and the
+_Merrimac_ did nothing to shake their faith in this class of ordnance.
+Subsequent experiments appeared to confirm the national predilection;
+and one of their writers, in giving credit to the navy chiefs for
+adhering to the principle of the large smooth-bore gun, recorded that
+the small-bore-and-high-velocity theory had received its quietus by
+the utter demolition of a 6-inch plate by a ball from a 15-inch gun at
+Washington in February, 1864.[165] In France and England it was held,
+and held rightly, that high velocities were necessary for the attack of
+armour.
+
+If shell guns were of small value, what was suitable? Were the old
+spherical solid shot still capable of beating the defence? A serious
+effort was made in this country to bring them to do it. The Armstrong
+rifled breech-loading guns recently adopted had been proving defective
+and indifferent on service; a return was wisely made to muzzle-loading;
+and it was in question also to revert to spherical shot and shell.
+Spherical shot of hardest steel were tried by the _Excellent_, in the
+hope that they would penetrate 4½-inch plates. Experimental guns were
+also made, in 1864, to discharge 100-pound balls with charges of 25
+pounds of powder; guns so heavy (6½ tons) that it was doubted at the
+time whether they could be efficiently worked on the broadside of a
+rolling ship. Should not increased power be obtained by persevering
+with rifled guns? The advantages possessed by the rifled gun in ranging
+power, accuracy, capacity of shell, were admitted; nevertheless the
+navy as a whole favoured the smooth-bore, with its simplicity, rapidity
+of fire, strength, and greater initial velocity, and thought that, at
+close ranges, the 100-pounder 6½-ton smooth-bore gun was the best and
+most suitable weapon for the service. But the rifled gun was advancing
+rapidly. “By May, 1864, the 7-inch muzzle-loading rifled shunt gun of
+6½ tons had been tried in the _Excellent_, and had a good deal shaken
+the position of the smooth-bore. Captain Key reported that it was more
+than equal to naval requirements.... It was admirably adapted for the
+naval service.”[166] This fired a projectile 115 pounds in weight. By
+June of the following year the target of 9-inch plate representing the
+side of the _Hercules_ had beaten the latest Armstrong achievement, a
+12½-ton 300-pounder. And on this pretext, and judging the defensive
+power of the whole ship by the defensive power of the thickest patch of
+its armour, a still more powerful gun was demanded for the navy by the
+inventor and by the press: a 25-ton 600-pounder.
+
+So rapidly the power of ordnance grew. It has been observed that of
+this feverish evolution of armour and artillery the circumstances
+were doubly remarkable. Firstly, no foreign pressure existed which
+called for such overleaping and experimental advances. The Americans
+still clung to their smooth-bore system; the French, who like us had
+adopted breech-loading guns, retained the system in their service and
+suffered for some years from its continuous inefficiency. Secondly,
+the navy was itself “unwillingly dragged into the cul-de-sac of
+experimental construction induced by the clamour of public opinion.”
+The type, the size of the gun which was to be embodied in our latest
+warships, was decided mainly by forces outside the navy, and changed
+from year to year. Naval architecture changed with it. The adoption
+of the succession of increasingly powerful rifled guns set experts at
+their wit’s ends devising warships suitable for carrying them; entailed
+continuous alterations both in the armaments of new ships and in the
+design of the new ships themselves; but also, as it happened, had the
+effect of giving this country a mastery over naval material which it
+has never since surrendered.
+
+The type having been decided for each individual vessel, there remained
+the question of the disposition of the armament.
+
+Two main considerations guided the evolution of the ironclads of
+this period in respect of the disposition of their guns: one mainly
+tactical, the other mainly constructive. It appears probable that, from
+the date of Trafalgar onward, the limitations of merely broadside fire
+had been realized; that the end-on attack, such as had obtained in the
+supreme actions fought by Nelson and Rodney, had shown the weakness
+of the broadside ship in ahead fire and had made obvious the anomaly
+that, in all ships-of-the-line, the course of the ship, the direction
+in which the attack was made, was the very direction in which gunfire
+was least powerful, if not altogether non-existent. With the coming of
+steam and the consequent growth of the ram and ramming tactics, this
+anomaly was more and more apparent; and from the _Warrior_ onwards
+each new type presented an enhanced effort to provide, particularly,
+ahead fire. The growth of the gun materially assisted this effort.
+Ahead fire increased, between the years 1860 and 1880, from zero to a
+large proportion of the total fire. The broadside ship was for a time
+abandoned.
+
+The constructive consideration was the requirement of a protected
+armament capable of the maximum effective fire in all directions. In
+the first half of the century an increased effectiveness had been
+obtained, with the old-fashioned truck guns, by adaptation of the ports
+or by use of specially designed carriages, to permit of as large an arc
+of training as possible. Even so the arc through which guns could be
+fired was small, and in the case of the 68-pounder of the _Warrior_ was
+only thirty degrees before and abaft the beam. The demand for greater
+utility was emphasized when, with the increase in size of the unit gun,
+the number of pieces carried by each ship was diminished.
+
+How, then, having regard to these two considerations, should a
+warship’s guns be disposed? Various methods were adopted. In the first
+instance, it was seen to be possible to augment the ahead fire of a
+ship, and to give a wide sweep of training to some of her guns, by
+indenting the sides; by so shaping the ship’s side-plating as to allow
+guns mounted in the forward part to fire in the direction of the ship’s
+longitudinal axis. At first, slight use was made of this method: with
+the fine lines given to iron ships it appeared practicable in only a
+small degree. Moreover, it was objected to as causing a “funnelling”
+effect to the path of fragments of enemy shell or shot; it was found
+that shrapnel shell, fired at indented embrasures at Shoebury, broke
+up, and the number of balls which entered the portholes was ten times
+the number which entered similar portholes on a straight side. But,
+after the _Minotaur_ class, less length and greater beam were given
+to ships, and recessed ports and indented sides therefore became more
+feasible.
+
+As guns increased in weight and individual importance the advantages
+of concentration became apparent. It was now undoubtedly desirable
+to protect _all_ the guns; yet, if they had been strung out along
+the whole length of the ship, the weight, both of the guns and their
+protective armour, would prove to be an excessive burden to the ship.
+Hence the advantage of the _central battery_. By concentrating the guns
+into a central area, an armoured box amidships, the weight of armour
+necessary to protect them could be kept within reasonable limits,
+protection was afforded not only to the guns but to the vital parts
+of the ship, while at the same time the extremities were left lightly
+loaded. The complete water-line belt of armour was retained, but,
+both in the French and in the English navy, the system of complete
+protection as embodied in the _Gloire_ and _Warrior_ was given up.
+
+This device of the central battery was at first used solely for
+broadside guns. But the desire for ahead fire from behind armour soon
+caused the adaptation of the battery to allow it. Ports were cut in
+the two transverse bulkheads, the ship’s sides were indented, suitable
+gun-mountings were provided whereby some of the battery guns could be
+shifted from one porthole to another; and in this way it was secured
+that a fair proportion of the armament could be fired either on the
+beam or parallel with the keel-line of the ship. A power of offence was
+given in all directions, and no “point of impunity” existed.
+
+Ingenious were the arrangements resorted to, to obtain the maximum
+effect from the new medium-sized artillery which superseded the
+original truck-guns of the _Warrior_ and former warships. The armoured
+boxes, instead of being made with their sides respectively parallel,
+and at right angles, to the sides of the ship, were sometimes set
+diagonally, with their sides at forty-five degrees with fore-and-aft.
+Sometimes they were octagonal, sometimes with curved bulkheads,
+sometimes two batteries were superposed one on the other; but always
+the desire was to utilize each gun over as large as possible an arc
+of fire, and always the tendency was to augment the ahead fire. The
+central battery formed a powerful citadel covering the whole beam
+of the ship amidships. The guns of this citadel, by the power of
+manœuvring given by the adoption of twin-screw propelling machinery,
+could, it was argued, be brought to bear in any direction desired. Of
+all directions, “right ahead” was considered to be of the greatest
+importance. End-on fighting, it was assumed, would always be resorted
+to in future; and it was the power of keeping the ship end-on to the
+enemy which was the great military advantage conferred by twin screws.
+
+A further step in the direction of giving to each gun a large arc of
+fire was taken in the introduction of the sponson. By means of this
+circular platform, projecting from the vessel’s side, a gun could be
+carried so as to fire through an arc of 180 degrees. The same system
+obtained largely in the French ships of this period; by mounting guns
+in overhung circular turntables, one at each corner of the central
+battery _en caponière_, a large effective arc was obtained for them.
+
+Only one step more was necessary: that which would allow each gun to
+command the whole sweep of the horizon, and to be available for duty
+upon either beam and any bearing: the adoption of the _centre-line
+turret_. But before tracing the evolution of the turret, let us
+recapitulate the typical ships built between 1860 and 1873 which
+composed our central-battery fleet.
+
+The germ of the central-battery idea may be seen, perhaps, in the
+belted _Minotaur_, in which, in order to allow the chase guns to be
+fought from behind armour, a transverse armour bulkhead was worked, at
+a distance of some 25 feet aft of the bow. Had foreign influence not
+exerted itself it may be supposed with reason that from the _Minotaur_
+the central battery would have been evolved. However this may be, the
+evolution was hastened by French initiative; for in each of the two
+wooden ships _Magenta_ and _Solferino_, laid down in ’59, was found a
+complete two-decked central battery whose whole depth was faced with
+armour for the protection of fifty-two 5-ton cannon, the rest of the
+ship’s water-line being protected by an armour belt much narrower than
+that of the _Gloire_. In imitation of this plan our own designs were
+prepared; and gradually, and only by a series of steps, we achieved
+what our rivals had obtained in a single stride.
+
+In ’63 Sir Edward Reed, at that time Mr. Reed, one of the graduates of
+the school which in ’48 had been established at Portsmouth Dockyard,
+was appointed to the office of Chief Constructor of the Navy. Possessed
+of broad and original views and gifted to an unusual degree in the arts
+of exposition and argument, he made himself responsible for designs of
+warships differing widely from their large and unwieldy precursors. The
+first of these was the _Bellerophon_, a short and easily manœuvred,
+fully rigged belt-and-battery ship, carrying ten 12-ton Armstrong guns
+for broadside fire in the battery, and two 6-ton guns for ahead fire
+in a small armoured battery in the bows. Not only in the disposition
+of her armament was the _Bellerophon_ different from all former ships.
+She was a radical departure from existing practice in many important
+respects. Constructionally, she was built on a new “bracket-frame”
+system designed to give great girder strength for small expenditure of
+weight, already in vogue for mercantile shipping. The use of watertight
+compartments was extended as a defence against an enemy ram, the system
+of double bottoms was extended as a consequence of the introduction of
+the torpedo. A powerful ram was carried, but the bow took a new form;
+a U- instead of a V-section was adopted in order to give buoyancy
+and thus minimize the tendency to plunge which was inherent in a
+fine-bowed ship; the section near the water-line being fined away so
+as to form a cut-water. Steel was largely used instead of iron, with
+a consequent saving of weight. A novel trim was given her--six feet
+by the stern--to give a deep immersion for the powerful screw and to
+assist the ship in turning quickly on her heel under the action of
+the balanced rudder; an adjustment which experience showed to have a
+detrimental effect on the propulsive efficiency.
+
+Next came the _Enterprise_, a still smaller ship. In the _Bellerophon_,
+as we have seen, there was no bow fire possible from the central
+battery; in the _Enterprise_ this was obtained by piercing the
+athwartship bulkheads of the battery with ports, and substituting
+movable for fixed bulwarks. The same arrangement was developed in the
+_Pallas_ and _Penelope_, in which ships the arc of fire of the corner
+guns of the battery was further extended by the device of indented
+sides. Then came the _Hercules_, generally like the _Bellerophon_ but
+with indented sides and, as a novelty, alternative ports in the battery
+armour by means of which the corner guns could be trained, on revolving
+platforms, to fire either on the beam or nearly in line with the keel;
+a system which presented an obvious disadvantage in requiring twelve
+ports for eight guns. In the _Kaiser_ class, designed by Sir Edward
+Reed shortly afterwards for the German government, this disadvantage
+was obviated by the expedient of forming ports in facets of the battery
+set at forty-five degrees with the keel-line, and by muzzle-pivoting
+guns.
+
+Both in the _Bellerophon_ and the _Hercules_ axial fire had only been
+obtained by the provision of special batteries, at the bow and stern,
+of partially protected guns. Now, this accumulation of weight at the
+extremities was a feature viewed with disfavour by naval opinion;
+moreover, these bow batteries did not meet the ever-growing demand
+for a considerable ahead fire. So in the _Sultan_, which carried a
+central-battery armament similar to that of the _Hercules_, an upper
+deck armoured battery was embodied, superposed on the after end of
+the main deck battery and carrying guns which gave both astern and
+beam fire; while, for bow fire, two 12-ton guns were mounted in the
+forecastle, but without any protection.
+
+The central-battery system had now to sustain the greatest attack that
+had yet been made upon it by the advocates of centre-line turrets. The
+position of the central-battery school was already somewhat shaken;
+ordnance had grown to a weight and power which justified the main
+argument of the turret advocates; Lissa had just shown the importance
+of being able to concentrate on any one bearing a maximum of offensive
+power. Controversy raged hotly on the relative merits of turret and
+central battery.
+
+In these circumstances the Admiralty in ’68 determined to consider both
+types, with a view to embodying the best arrangement in the new class
+of vessels then projected. The principal shipbuilders of the country
+were invited to compete, and were presented with specifications for
+a first-class warship so widely drawn as to leave them the greatest
+latitude in design. Of the seven designs submitted, three were of the
+central-battery type, three were turret ships, and one a compound of
+the two. After comparison with an Admiralty design produced by Sir
+Edward Reed, it was decided to adopt this in preference to those of
+the private firms, and to build a whole class of six ships to it. The
+result was the _Audacious_ class--of which the best-remembered are
+the _Iron Duke_ and the ill-fated _Vanguard_. In this class a strong
+all-round fire was obtained by arranging two central batteries of the
+same size, one on the main and one on the upper deck. The main deck
+battery had only broadside ports for its six 12-ton guns, each gun
+training thirty degrees before and abaft the beam; the upper deck
+battery had four guns of the same calibre mounted at ports cut in
+armour facets at forty-five degrees with the keel-line, and training
+through ninety degrees. To allow axial fire from these guns the upper
+battery was made to project slightly, sponson fashion, over the sides
+of the ship, and the bulwarks forward and aft of the battery were set
+slightly back toward the centre line to enable the guns to fire past
+them.
+
+A final stage in the evolution of the central-battery ship was attained
+in the _Alexandra_, laid down in ’72. The type had proved tenacious
+of life, and, for masted vessels, still held its own up to this point
+against the turret system. The design for the _Alexandra_ gave as
+complete an all-round fire as was attainable in a central-battery
+ironclad; for the first time, it was said, we really had a masted ship
+with satisfactory all-round fire. Generally like the _Audacious_ class,
+the _Alexandra_ possessed an advantage in that the two forward guns of
+the upper deck battery were 25 ton instead of 18 ton, and in having,
+in addition to the six broadside guns of the main deck battery, two
+additional 18-ton guns mounted so as to be capable of firing nearly
+ahead and on the beam as well. Designed to fulfil the requirements of
+“end-on” fighting, she made a heavy sacrifice of broadside fire to
+obtain a maximum of bow fire; and at a later date, when a different
+valuation had come to be placed on axial fire, this sacrifice was
+noted against her. “She could only take her place at a disadvantage in
+any form of battle which was suited to the armaments of the ironclads
+that had gone before her.”[167] Nevertheless she was a formidable
+vessel. Defensively, too, she was pronounced to be conspicuously
+successful; her armour belt, which attained a thickness of 12 inches
+at the water-line amidships, was carried down at the bow to cover and
+strengthen the stem, and to protect the vessel from a raking fire. For
+the protection of the stern against a raking fire, an armour bulkhead
+was worked across the after part, extending to a depth of 6 feet below
+the water-line.
+
+The _Alexandra_ was the last of the purely “central battery”
+ships.[168] By the time she was launched experience had set the seal of
+approval on another type, to the evolution of which we must now revert.
+
+
+§
+
+It is difficult to trace to its source the invention of the armoured
+gun-turret. The inventive Ericsson is said to have envisaged at an
+early age the idea of a protected gun carried on a mobile raft, “an
+idea probably inspired by his river-rafts in Sweden”; and it is known
+that at a later date he planned in detail a primitive monitor, the
+design of which at the outbreak of the Crimean War he offered to
+Napoleon III. Perhaps the idea, which M. Paixhans first developed in
+public, of applying iron armour to a sea-going ship, induced the idea
+of a pivot-gun protected by an armour shield. A protected armament
+was found, as we have seen, in the French batteries built for the
+assault of Kinburn: the armoured vessel and the armoured gun were first
+embodied in the same unit; and though these units were the first to be
+tried in actual war, yet some years previously, in 1842 or thereabouts,
+a Mr. Stevens of New York had proposed and made an armoured floating
+battery. But in neither of these instances was the gun in a turret.
+The turret idea, like so many other inventions, had an independent
+development in Europe and in America. In each case war supplied the
+incentive. In America, in ’62, Ericsson himself produced in a national
+emergency the _Monitor_, the low, shallow-draft armoured vessel
+carrying two 11-inch Dahlgren guns in a steam-rotated turret which
+served to counter the Southern _Merrimac_, the rasée with the fixed
+penthouse armour roof over its guns which the Confederates had built by
+the light of French experience.
+
+The _Monitor_, both in design and in the circumstances of its
+production, was a great achievement; its success gave sanction to the
+revolving turret as a form of structure by means of which a big gun
+could be carried and trained. Nevertheless it is doubtful whether it
+influenced to an appreciable degree the evolution of the sea-going
+turret ship on this side of the Atlantic. Already, when the _Monitor_
+fought her action with the _Merrimac_, the turret had been adopted in
+coast-defence ships ordered for European powers; and, dramatic though
+it was, the incident of Hampton Roads afforded merely a confirmation
+of the effectiveness of the turret form of gun mounting. It was to an
+episode of the Crimean War that the development of the sea-going turret
+ship was directly due.
+
+In the Sea of Azov, in the spring of 1855, Commander Cowper Coles, of
+H.M. steamer _Stromboli_, constructed in a single night, of barrels,
+spars and boards, a raft capable of bearing heavy artillery, which he
+named the _Lady Nancy_; by means of which he brought within range and
+destroyed by shell fire the Russian stores at Taganrog.
+
+The naval operations of this war had drawn general attention to the
+special problems in connection with the navigation of shallow waters by
+vessels with a heavy armament, and Commander Coles’ exploit immediately
+excited official interest. Models of armed rafts were submitted by him
+for Admiralty inspection, and shortly afterwards he was himself ordered
+home to give advice upon the requirements of this form of construction:
+in connection with which the necessity for armour protection for the
+gun or guns was a point early insisted on by him. In that same year he
+sketched a design for a belted shallow-draught vessel for the attack of
+stationary forts which he equipped with guns of the heaviest pattern,
+each working in a fixed hemispherical shield. From the fixed shield
+to a revolving turret was a small step. In a short time Commander
+Coles made himself the enthusiastic exponent of armour-protected guns,
+mounted in cupolas or turrets on or near the centre-line of a ship so
+as to give a command over nearly the whole sweep of the horizon. By
+such a system, he argued, a vessel could be endowed with a concentrated
+offensive power on any bearing unapproachable by broadside armament,
+however designed; all guns were effective on almost any bearing without
+diverting the ship, their force required no evolution to elicit,
+existing as it did when the ship was at anchor, in dry dock or on a
+constant course. The height of the turrets gave them a plunging fire,
+an effect particularly useful now that ships’ sides were armoured and
+their decks alone remained penetrable.
+
+His advocacy of the turret system, aided by the technical assistance
+of Mr. Brunel, made a deep impression on a large section of the public
+and gained the interest of the Prince Consort. He did not profess the
+technical knowledge of a shipbuilder or designer; but in his insistence
+on the advantages to be derived from the method of mounting guns on the
+centre-line he wielded arguments of great natural force, and enlisted
+in his favour the professional sympathies of eminent builders and naval
+men. In 1860 he produced before the newly founded Institution of Naval
+Architects a plan of a sea-going ship carrying nine turrets, seven on
+the centre-line and two off-set so as to allow ahead fire from three
+turrets. In the following year he wrote to the Admiralty undertaking
+to prove that a vessel could be built on his principle of armament
+100 feet shorter than the _Warrior_ and in all military respects her
+superior: “I will guarantee to disable and capture her in an hour; she
+shall draw four foot less water, require only half the crew, and cost
+the country for building at least £100,000 less. I am ready to stand or
+fall on these assertions.”
+
+Such a pronouncement could not be lightly passed over. Moreover,
+coast-defence vessels embodying the turret system--light-draught
+vessels characterized by small tonnage, small cost and indifferent
+sea-going qualities, in combination with massive protection and a large
+offensive armament--were already being built by the private firms of
+this country for various foreign powers. In ’61, for instance, Denmark
+had ordered the _Rolf Krake_, a turret gunboat carrying a 4½-inch belt
+and four 68-pounder guns, a pair in each of two armoured turrets; which
+three years later proved her value in action against a nominally
+superior force. Prussia had ordered her first ironclad, a turret
+ship. Holland, Italy, Brazil, Russia--all were known to be purchasing
+coast-defence vessels of the turret type. And two sea-going turret
+ships which had been ordered by the American Confederates, and which
+were building in this country--the _Wyvern_ and _Scorpion_--had been
+seized and purchased by our government.
+
+In these circumstances the Admiralty, though there was a preponderance
+of official opinion against the idea, resolved to countenance the
+turret system and give it a trial. The _Royal Sovereign_ was cut down
+from a three-decker of 120 guns, armoured with a 5½-inch belt and a
+1-inch deck, and equipped with four turrets carrying a total of five
+12½-ton guns--two in the foremost and one in the remaining turrets. At
+the same time the _Prince Albert_, also a four-turret ship, was laid
+down by the firm of Samuda to an Admiralty order. These ships were
+a distinct success so far as the armament was concerned. They were
+certainly not ocean-going ships. There were many faults and undesirable
+features to be found in them. But the disposition of the armament was
+found satisfactory, and the captain of the _Royal Sovereign_ reported
+most favourably of his ship, describing her as the most formidable
+man-of-war; “her handiness, speed, weight of broadside, and the small
+target she offers, increase tenfold her powers of assault and retreat.”
+
+Time, and the progress of artillery, were on the side of Captain Cowper
+Coles. He saw, and the Admiralty advisers felt, that although it was
+possible to work existing guns on the broadside, yet increase in the
+size and weight of guns would sooner or later necessitate the mounting
+of them on accurately balanced turntables secured by central pivots
+on the centre-line. Only by such a method could the largest gun be
+worked and the full weight of metal be poured, as required, on either
+broadside. In fact the turret, the original object of which was purely
+defensive, was now regarded from a quite different point of view: as a
+convenient device by which guns of the highest calibre could be carried
+and worked. Was complicated machinery objected to? The common winch,
+the rack and pinion, were in constant use on every railway turntable,
+nor had the American turrets ever failed in action or caused a loss
+of confidence in their reliability. Reliance upon a central pivot was
+disliked? Yet the pivot was already in use for holding the broadside
+guns of our ironclads--a mere bolt 4 inches in diameter and itself
+exposed to gunfire.[169]
+
+The Admiralty constructors were insistent on the practical difficulties
+which lay in the way of designing a satisfactory sea-going turret ship.
+The advantages which had been claimed for turrets were obvious, said
+Sir Edward Reed; the larger and heavier the individual gun, the greater
+the gain of mounting it in a turret. But enthusiastic advocates of
+this method lost sight of the fact that turrets were incompatible with
+masts and sails, and with the forecastle and high freeboard necessary
+for good sea-going qualities. At that time, 1865, it was possible to
+protect and work eight of the largest guns, mounted on the broadside,
+with as little expenditure of weight as would be required to mount four
+of the guns two in a turret on the centre-line; while in the latter
+case they could only fire in two different directions at the same time,
+whereas in the former they could fire in eight.
+
+In order to allow both sides in the controversy to come to grips with
+the practical difficulties, a committee was formed at the Admiralty in
+May, ’65, and Captain Coles was asked to produce a turret-ship design
+by the aid of a draughtsman and with the drawings of the _Pallas_ for
+guidance. His design, a vessel showing two 600-pounders each mounted
+in a centre-line cupola, was not considered suitable. So the Board
+resolved to build a ship to Sir Edward Reed’s design--a fully rigged
+and masted, high-freeboard ship, with an armour belt and protected bow
+and stern batteries, and with two centre-line turrets amidships mounted
+over a central battery, each carrying two 25-ton 600-pounder guns. This
+was the _Monarch_. She was the first truly ocean-going turret ship,
+and her performances at sea in ’69 in company with central-battery
+ships like the _Bellerophon_ and _Hercules_ proved her to be a valuable
+and efficient unit; by this experiment it was demonstrated, said Mr.
+Brassey, “that it was practicable to design a thoroughly seaworthy
+turret ship, although for sea-going purposes a central battery presents
+great advantages over the turret system.”
+
+In the meantime Captain Coles had protested vigorously against the
+design of the _Monarch_ as representative of his system. The plan was
+not his; the turrets were mounted so high that there was a large area
+to protect and the ship, unlike the low-freeboard ships of his own
+design, presented a large target. But his chief objection was, that
+the presence of a forecastle and an armoured bow battery annihilated
+the whole advantage of turret guns by preventing ahead fire from them.
+After protracted negotiations he obtained Admiralty permission to have
+a ship built to satisfy his own views and independently of criticism
+from Admiralty officials. In ’69 the _Captain_, built by Messrs. Laird
+to his drawings, was launched at Birkenhead. The _Captain_, although
+generally similar to the _Monarch_ (the growth of artillery limited
+the number of the turrets to two), differed from her in one important
+respect: her designed freeboard was only 8 feet as compared with 14;
+and, by some error in calculation, this dimension proved to be only
+6 feet when the vessel was in sea-going trim. This low freeboard,
+in conjunction with her large sail-area, produced a condition of
+instability at large angles of heel which led to disaster and sealed
+the doom of the fully rigged turret ship.
+
+Even in the _Captain_ ahead fire was not found possible. In the
+original plans she had the low freeboard favoured by her designer;
+but in the later plans poops and forecastles were added to give the
+necessary sea-going qualities, and ahead fire was thereby sacrificed.
+Complete mastage was given her: iron masts in the form of tripods
+to avoid the use of shrouds and to give as clear an arc of fire as
+possible. The rigging was all stopped short at, and worked from, a
+narrow flying deck which was built above the turrets. This flying deck
+provided a working space for the crew, who in a moderately rough sea
+would not be able to make use of the low upper deck.
+
+[Illustration: THE _MONARCH_
+
+From a photograph by Symonds, Portsmouth]
+
+On the night of September 6th, 1870, the _Captain_ capsized in a heavy
+sea off C. Finisterre. In St. Paul’s Cathedral the memorial brass,
+erected in commemoration of this disaster, records that the _Captain_
+was built in deference to public opinion expressed in parliament and
+through other channels, and in opposition to the views and opinions of
+the Controller and his department; and that the evidence all tended to
+show that they generally disapproved of her construction.
+
+
+§
+
+The difficulty of combining the turret system with a full rig of masts
+and sails had for a long time been recognized. Some eighteen months
+before the loss of the _Captain_, the Admiralty, in the presence of the
+increasing efficiency of steam machinery, had decided to construct a
+mastless sea-going turret ship.
+
+American experience greatly influenced this decision. In America, where
+the principle of machinery for propulsion and for working the guns had
+been accepted with a greater readiness than in Europe, the line of
+development had been more direct. From the original _Monitor_ a whole
+series of derivatives had been produced, and from coast-defence vessels
+of a single turret advance had been made to ocean-going mastless
+turret ships of low freeboard, carrying the largest smooth-bore guns.
+These ocean monitors, lacking though they did some features which were
+considered indispensable in British warships, yet exerted an undoubted
+influence upon our own construction. Weakly designed in many respects,
+with small fuel capacity, and unsteady as gun platforms, they were
+regarded by some writers as the true progenitors of the class of
+warship which now superseded the masted vessels of the ’sixties.
+
+The problem of the naval architect henceforth was greatly simplified.
+Masts and sails, which had in the past proved such an embarrassment,
+were now frankly abandoned, with the result that a thousand
+difficulties which had beset the designer of the turret ship were swept
+away. No longer had the stability curve to conform to the conflicting
+requirements of the sailing vessel and the gun platform. The large
+weight gained by dispensing with masts and sails could be embodied as
+an addition to the armament or to the fuel carried. The single screw,
+which in the case of a ship intended to use sails had been almost a
+necessity, could be replaced by twin screws of greater power; and the
+change would remove the liability of complete disablement, and give a
+number of constructive advantages which it is unnecessary to enumerate.
+Indeed, it may be said conversely, that the adoption of twin screws
+so improved the reliability of the propelling machinery as to make
+practicable the abandonment of masts and sails.
+
+In April, 1869, the _Devastation_ was commenced. Designed by Sir
+Edward Reed, she “forestalled, rather than profited by, the dreadful
+lesson of the _Captain_ and by her success gave proof of the judgment
+and initiative of the Board and their adviser.” Sir Edward Reed had
+recognized, more fully than his critics, the conflicting elements
+inherent in the rigged turret ship. And it is significant that, just
+at a time when the assured success of the _Monarch_ must have been a
+gratification to her designer, he should record: “My clear and strong
+conviction at the moment of writing these lines [March 31st, 1869] is
+that no satisfactorily designed turret ship with rigging has yet been
+built, or even laid down.”
+
+The _Devastation_ design was a development of those of some previous
+mastless turret ships, the _Cerberus_, the _Hotspur_, and the
+_Glatton_ class, which had embodied Sir Edward Reed’s ideas as to the
+requirements of coast-service vessels. At first given four 25-ton
+guns, the _Devastation_ was ultimately armed with four M.L. guns each
+weighing 35 tons and carried in turrets on the centre-line, one at
+each end of a central breastwork, 150 feet in length, built round the
+funnels.
+
+This central breastwork, raised above the upper deck and armoured along
+its sides with 10-inch steel, supported the two turrets and enabled
+the guns to be carried at a desirable height above the water-line. The
+upper deck itself was low. The sides, up to its level, were protected
+by a complete belt of armour 8 inches in thickness.
+
+The abolition of masts and rigging had a striking effect on the design.
+Compared with the _Monarch_, of nearly the same tonnage, she carried
+heavier guns, double the weight of armour, double the amount of fuel,
+and required little more than half the crew to work her.
+
+The loss of the _Captain_, confirming the doubts which experts had
+expressed as to the seaworthiness of rigged turret ships, caused an
+alarm for the safety of all turret ships, built and building. In
+the public mind, in consequence of the reported shortcomings of the
+American monitors and the known deficiencies of our coast-defence
+vessels, the belief was growing that the turret system was inherently
+unsafe. It was believed, also, that mastless ships, having no spread of
+sail to steady their motion, would be liable to excessive and dangerous
+rolling. To allay the uneasiness as to the safety of the _Devastation_
+and her type a Committee on Designs was formed. The Committee, composed
+of some of the most eminent of naval architects and officers, made a
+report in the spring of ’71 which, though it met with considerable
+opposition from one school, nevertheless “formed the groundwork upon
+which the English Admiralty determined to construct their policy for
+the future.” The Committee pronounced altogether against fully rigged
+ships for the line of battle; it was impossible, in their opinion, to
+combine in the same vessel great offensive and defensive power and
+a full spread of canvas. They considered the _Devastation_ class as
+the most suitable type of armoured ship for future service, and found
+them to have sufficient stability for safety and to be in almost all
+respects a satisfactory design of warship. As regards the _Devastation_
+herself they recommended some minor alterations, the effect of
+which was to improve the stability of the ship and to give greater
+accommodation for the crew. The main alteration consisted in the
+carrying up of the ship’s sides amidships to the level of the central
+breastwork, and in continuing the breastwork deck outward to the sides,
+to form unarmoured side superstructures.
+
+Besides the _Devastation_, two others of the type were laid down
+shortly afterwards, the _Thunderer_ and the _Dreadnought_. The three
+ships differed from each other slightly in dimensions, but embodied
+the same characteristic features. Of chief interest is the transition
+of the unarmoured side superstructures, in the _Devastation_, to
+an armoured central battery of the same width as the ship, in
+the _Dreadnought_. The influence of Sir Edward Reed, who had now
+given place to Mr. Nathaniel Barnaby as Chief Constructor at the
+Admiralty, was apparent in this evolution. In ’73 he stated publicly
+his objections to the carrying up of the _Devastation’s_ sides, and
+pictured a shell entering the unarmoured superstructure and blowing
+up all the light iron structure in front of the guns. The result
+was seen in the _Dreadnought_, in which the breastwork was made a
+continuation of the ship’s side and armoured. More freeboard was also
+given to the forecastle and the after deck than was found in the
+_Devastation_ and _Thunderer_, with the desire to make the vessel drier
+and more comfortable; and, owing to the height at which the turrets
+were carried, this was found possible without restricting the arcs
+of fire of the guns. The movement from the monitor type toward the
+modern battleship in respect of freeboard is clearly traced in these
+three ships of the _Devastation_ class. Low freeboard, in spite of its
+effect in rendering inconspicuous the ship in which it was embodied,
+was gradually being abandoned. High freeboard was foreshadowed for
+future ships. The loss of the _Captain_ had led to a serious study, by
+naval architects and mathematicians, of the stability of warships at
+large angles of rolling, and the advantages of high freeboard were by
+this time widely appreciated. High freeboard not only made a ship more
+habitable; by the form of stability curve it gave it allowed a vessel’s
+beam to be reduced with safety, and thereby contributed to a steadier
+and more easily propelled ship than would have been obtained without it.
+
+In other respects these three ships show the lines along which progress
+was being made. In the turrets of the _Devastation_ the twin 35-ton
+guns had been loaded and worked by hand; but in the forward turret
+of the _Thunderer_ the new hydraulic system of Messrs. Armstrong was
+applied with success to two 38-ton 12-inch guns; and this system was
+adopted for both turrets of the _Dreadnought_. The guns were loaded
+externally, the turrets being revolved by steam, after firing, till
+the guns were on the requisite bearing; they were then depressed by
+hydraulic power, and the 700-pound projectiles were rammed into their
+muzzles by a telescopic hydraulic rammer. In 1879 an accident occurred
+in the _Thunderer_ which helped, it is said, to hasten the return to
+breech-loading guns. Simultaneous firing was being carried out; one
+of the guns missed fire without anyone either inside or outside the
+turret being aware of it. The guns were loaded again, and, on being
+discharged, one of them burst. Such double-loading, it was clearly
+seen, would not have obtained with breech-loading guns.
+
+The _Devastation_ had twin screws driven by independent engines, but
+these were non-compound engines of the trunk type working with a
+maximum steam pressure of 30 lbs. per square inch. In the _Dreadnought_
+an advance had been made to compound the three-cylinder vertical
+engines, working with 60 lbs. per square inch in engine-rooms divided
+by a longitudinal watertight bulkhead.
+
+
+§
+
+The evolution of the battleship was being forced along at a hot pace
+by the evolution of artillery. No sooner had the mastless turret ship
+received the sanction of the Committee on Designs as the standard
+type for warfare of the immediate future, than a sudden increase in
+the power of guns necessitated the consideration of new principles and
+brought into being a new type.
+
+So far, defence had managed to compete fairly successfully with
+offence; the naval architect, by devoting as much as 25 per cent of the
+total of a ship’s weight to protective armour, had been able to keep
+level with the artillerist. But it was clear that he could not follow
+much further, by the existing methods. Armour could not be thickened
+indefinitely. Penetrable armour was no better than none; worse, in
+fact, since it was a superfluity, and in a ship a superfluity was
+doubly wasteful, implying a loss of strength in some other direction.
+Armour might have to go altogether? It seemed that, after all, the
+predictions of Sir Howard Douglas might well come true; that, just as
+gunpowder had forced the foot soldier, after burdening him with an
+ever-increasing weight, to dispense altogether with body-armour, so
+rifled artillery would render ship armour increasingly ineffectual and,
+eventually, an altogether useless encumbrance.
+
+The advance in artillery took place in connection with Italian
+construction. In 1872 Italy laid down the _Duilio_, and a year later
+the _Dandolo_, two mastless turret ships of a novel class, engined by
+Penn and Maudsley, and equipped with two diagonally placed turrets each
+designed to carry two 60-ton Armstrong guns; guns which were afterwards
+changed to 100-ton guns of 17¾ inches bore. In the same ships the
+Italians introduced a solution of the armour difficulty. They abandoned
+vertical armour altogether, except for a very thick belt over the
+central portion of each vessel which was to protect the vital machinery
+and the gun turrets.
+
+The reply to these was the _Inflexible_, laid down in ’74.
+
+We have already seen how, in the last of the _Devastation_ class,
+the central armoured breastwork was widened to the full beam of the
+ship. It had been proposed by Mr. Barnaby to take advantage of this
+arrangement to off-set the two turrets of the _Dreadnought_ at a
+distance each side of the centre line of the ship, so as to allow
+a powerful ahead fire. Although not then approved, this suggestion
+was embodied in the _Inflexible_ as her most distinctive feature. In
+this, however, she was forestalled by the Italians. Her two turrets,
+each weighing 750 tons, were carried diagonally on a central armoured
+citadel plated with compound armour of a maximum thickness of 24
+inches. Forward and aft of this citadel the unarmoured ends were
+built flush with it, and along the centre line was built, the whole
+length of the ship, a narrow superstructure. This superstructure did
+not contribute anything to her stability; nor was such contribution
+needed in view of the comparatively high freeboard. But it rendered
+unnecessary a flying deck such as had been fitted in the _Devastation_
+class, and provided accommodation for the crew, without restricting to
+any appreciable degree the arcs of fire of the big guns.
+
+The _Inflexible_ was of over 11,000 tons displacement, the heaviest
+and most powerful warship that had ever been built. She was 320 feet
+in length and 75 feet broad at the water-line; this unprecedented beam
+being required, in spite of the high freeboard, on account of the
+height at which the turrets were carried. Nevertheless, so improved
+was her propulsive efficiency as compared with that of former ships,
+so great the gain resulting from Mr. Froude’s historic researches on
+ship form and the action of propellers, that a speed of 15 knots was
+obtained at a relatively small expense in horse-power.
+
+The idea of sails was not yet altogether dead. In deference to a strong
+naval opinion she was originally designed to carry two pole masts,
+with sails for steadying her motion in a seaway and as a standby in
+the event of her propelling machinery being disabled. But this scheme
+was modified owing to the possibility of falling masts and rigging
+interfering with the working of guns and screw in action. It was
+decided that she should be brig-rigged for peace service; and that,
+on an anticipation of war, she should be docked to allow the cruising
+masts to be removed and replaced by two short iron masts without yards
+for signalling and for carrying crows’ nests.
+
+But it was in the bold abandonment of armour for the ends of the ship
+and its concentration on the sides of the citadel that the _Inflexible_
+design was most freely criticized. Armour, except in the form of an
+under-water protective deck, was not used at all forward and aft of the
+citadel. The ends of the ship were left unprotected, but subdivided;
+the compartments near the water-line formed watertight tanks filled
+with coals, stores, or--next to the side of the ship--cork. This
+criticism was directed from two directions.
+
+To many naval men the attempt to beat the gun by adding to the
+thickness of the armour was a game no longer worth the candle. The
+point of view, moreover, that the defensive power of a ship was
+accurately represented by the defensive power of an armour patch upon
+its side was condemned as altogether too partial and theoretical. The
+same fallacy was abroad in respect of guns. “Men were apt to think
+and speak as if the mounting of a single excessively heavy gun in a
+ship would make her exceptionally powerful, no matter what number of
+powerful, but still less powerful, guns were displaced to make room for
+it. The targets and guns at Shoeburyness were held to be real measures
+of the defensive and offensive powers of ships.”[170]
+
+On the other hand, experience was at this time bringing to light the
+inefficiency of heavy naval artillery. In ’71 a paper by Captain Colomb
+attracted attention, in which he analysed the effective gun power of
+the _Monarch_, and showed, by the light of experiments carried out by
+her against a rock off Vigo in company with _Captain_ and _Hercules_,
+that “in six minutes from the opening of her fire on the sister ship at
+1000 yards, she will have fired twelve shot, of which one will have hit
+and another may have glanced, and it remains an even chance whether the
+single hit will have penetrated the enemy’s armour.” In the following
+summer Mr. Barnaby was himself impressed with the difficulty which the
+_Hotspur_ experienced in hitting the turret of the _Glatton_ at a range
+of 200 yards in the smooth water of Portland Harbour: an experiment
+which, while confirming confidence in the reliability of a turret and
+its power to withstand shock, led him to question whether we were wise
+to put so much weight into the protection of turrets, and whether it
+might not be a better plan to stint armour on guns in order to add to
+their number and power.
+
+From another direction the criticism was more directly effective.
+In ’75 Sir Edward Reed, now a private member of parliament, made a
+pronouncement on his return from a visit to Italy in the following
+words: “The Italian ships _Duilio_ and _Dandolo_ are exposed, in my
+opinion, beyond all doubt or question, to speedy destruction. I fear
+I can only express my apprehension that the Italians are pursuing a
+totally wrong course, and one which is likely to result in disaster.”
+The Italian Minister of Marine indignantly refuted the assertion,
+based as it must have been (he said) on incomplete information; and
+the construction of the _Duilio_ and the _Dandolo_ proceeded. But the
+remarks of the ex-Chief Constructor applied with equal force to the
+_Inflexible_; and in the following session he stated as much in the
+House of Commons. It was possible, he insisted, that in an action the
+cork and stores which filled the unarmoured ends of the _Inflexible_
+might be shot away, and the ends riddled and water-logged; and that in
+such an event the citadel, though intact, would not have sufficient
+stability to save the ship from capsizing.
+
+The reply of the Admiralty was to the effect that Sir Edward Reed had
+assumed an extreme case, and that such a complete destruction as he
+had envisaged was, even if possible, never likely to occur in a naval
+action.
+
+The effect of both statements was to cause widespread anxiety in the
+public mind, and a lamentable loss of confidence in the projected
+warship. A decision was therefore made to appoint another Committee, of
+unquestioned eminence and freedom from bias, to investigate and report
+on the _Inflexible_ design. In due course the Committee reported. They
+confirmed in a long statement the Admiralty point of view that the
+complete penetration and water-logging of the unarmoured ends of the
+ship, and the blowing out of the whole of the stores and the cork by
+the action of shell fire, was a very highly improbable contingency;
+they found that the ship, if reduced to the extremest limit of
+instability likely to occur, viz. with her ends completely riddled
+and water-logged, but with the stores and cork remaining and adding
+buoyancy, would still possess a sufficient reserve both of buoyancy and
+of stability; and, balancing the vulnerability of the citadel with its
+24-inch armour and the destructibility of the unarmoured ends, they
+came to the conclusion that the unarmoured ends were as well able as
+the armoured citadel to bear the part assigned to them in encountering
+the risks of naval warfare, and that therefore a just balance had been
+maintained in the design, so that out of a given set of conditions a
+good result had been obtained. Except that a recommendation was made
+that the system of cork chambers should be extended, no structural
+alteration from the existing design was proposed.
+
+The _Inflexible_ was followed by its smaller derivatives, the _Ajax_
+and _Agamemnon_, _Colossus_ and _Edinburgh_, and by the _Conqueror_, an
+improved _Rupert_, with a single turret. Movement was in the direction
+of smaller displacements and less armour; construction was influenced
+at this time more by Italian than by French practice.
+
+
+§
+
+All through this transitional decade, 1870-80, experience and various
+new developments were imperceptibly causing a gradual change of
+opinion as to what constituted the best type of battleship. At no
+period, perhaps, was the warship more obviously a compromise, at no
+time were the limitations of size and weight more keenly felt. So many
+considerations interacted with one another, so conflicting were the
+claims made of the naval architect, that it appeared indeed almost
+impossible to embody them in a satisfactory design. (And yet nothing is
+more remarkable than the unanimity with which designers, given certain
+conditions, arrived at the same final result: the _Duilio_ and the
+_Inflexible_ are a case in point.) Whatever the design might be, it
+was open to powerful criticism. And the chief part of this criticism
+was directed, as we have seen, against the use and disposition of the
+armour.
+
+In ’73 Mr. Barnaby had questioned the wisdom of expending a large
+weight in the protection of turrets. Three years later Commander Noel,
+in a Prize Essay, was advocating unarmoured batteries, with a view
+to multiplying the number of battery guns, utilizing for offence the
+weight thus saved. In ’73 Mr. Barnaby had argued that the stinting of
+armour on the hull in order to thicken it on the battery would drive
+the enemy to multiply his light and medium machine-guns. Within a few
+years warships were bristling with Gatling and Gardner, Nordenfelt and
+Hotchkiss guns, which by their presence gave a new value to armour,
+however thin. Mr. Froude, too, in his experiments in connection with
+the _Inflexible_, brought into prominence the advantage which thin
+armour on a ship’s ends conferred on her stability. The idea of
+substituting cellular construction for armour was proving attractive.
+While the French continued to favour the complete water-line belt,
+the Italians went to the limit in the _Italia_ and _Lepanto_, in
+which the water-line was left entirely unprotected by side armour.
+Such armour as was carried was embodied in the form of a protective
+deck, a feature found above water and in conjunction with a side belt
+in our _Devastation_ class, and under water and without side armour
+in the _Inflexible_ and smaller contemporary ships. The protective
+deck, which covered the vitals of a ship and deflected shot and shell
+from its surface, was a device which found increasing favour with
+naval architects. It was advocated by the Committee on Designs in
+’71 as possessing important advantages over a similar weight of side
+armour. If placed at some distance below water it formed the roof of
+a submerged hull structure which was immune from damage by gun-fire,
+the sides of this hull being protected sufficiently by sea-water. If,
+as was subsequently done, the protective deck were placed at a small
+distance above water, and if the sides of it were bent down so as to
+meet the ship’s sides at a distance below water beyond which a shot was
+unlikely to penetrate, the deck offered other advantages: the vital
+machinery, though now partly above water, was still protected, the
+sloping parts of the deck being able to deflect shots which would have
+penetrated a much thicker vertical plate; moreover, if the ship’s sides
+were riddled in action, the protective deck still preserved a large
+portion of the water-line area intact, and thereby secured her lateral
+stability.
+
+The ram was still in favour, but opinion was slowly changing as to the
+necessity for bow-fire. “It is my impression,” wrote Commander Noel in
+’76, “that too great a value was attached by some of the authorities,
+two or three years ago, to bow-fire; and that the manœuvring of a fleet
+in action will be more for the purpose of using the ram effectually,
+and the guns in broadsides on passing the enemy.” The firing of the
+heavy guns in the approach to ram was considered undesirable, owing
+to the obscuring of the scene by smoke. In short, bow-fire was not of
+primary importance, and the disposition of armament which sought to
+obtain a concentration of bow-fire at the expense of broadside fire was
+based on a false principle. Commander Noel advocated a broadside ship,
+of moderate tonnage, with an unarmoured battery of moderate-size guns,
+with an armour belt round her water-line of 10-inch armour tapering
+to 5 inches forward and aft, and backed by wood and coal. Watertight
+subdivisions he proposed as a defence against the ram and the torpedo.
+
+As the decade progressed the navy and naval affairs were less and less
+a subject of public interest. The design of warships continued to be
+discussed by a small circle, but the Board, alive to the transitional
+nature of the citadel ships, and under the influence of a national
+movement for retrenchment and economy, had almost ceased to build. In
+the three years ’76, ’77, and ’78 England laid down only two armoured
+battleships, while France laid down a dozen. In ’78 four foreign ships
+building in this country were hastily purchased on a Vote of Credit.
+But by 1880 the French armoured navy was once more equal in strength to
+that of England.
+
+The gun, by its rapid evolution, was blocking design. The long debates
+over sails and steam had been settled; it was now the achievement of
+powerful breech-loading guns of large and small calibre which threw
+all existing ideas of warship design into the melting-pot. It became
+known that the French at last possessed efficient breech-loading
+guns; and artillerists showed that, in spite of the inconvenience of
+long-barrelled guns in ships, long barrels and slow-burning powder
+were necessary if greater powers were to be developed, and that our
+short-barrelled muzzle-loaders were already becoming obsolete. In the
+summer of ’79 public interest was aroused by the arrival at Spithead of
+some Chinese gunboats built by the firm of Armstrong. These gunboats
+each carried two 12-ton breech-loading guns mounted on centre pivots,
+one forward and one aft: guns so powerful and efficient compared with
+any mounted in the Royal Navy, that the possibilities of the diminutive
+craft were instantly appreciated. The contest between B.L. and M.L.
+was approaching a climax. The 100-ton M.L. gun was undergoing proof at
+Woolwich. In August a committee of naval officers visited Germany to
+witness and report upon the trials of Krupp’s new breech-loaders, and
+these trials, and those of Armstrong in this country, confirmed the
+formidable character of the new ordnance. Armour was also improving
+its power; compound armour (of combined steel and iron) was found to
+possess unexpected powers of resistance to penetration.
+
+The torpedo, moreover, in its growing efficiency was now beginning
+to have an effect, not only on the details of ship design, but on
+the whole nature of naval warfare. The influence of the torpedo in
+its various forms had been appreciated in the early days of the
+decade.[171] The catastrophic but, happily, fictitious Battle of
+Dorking, fought in the pages of _Blackwood’s Magazine_ in 1871, had
+been preceded by a naval action in which all but one of our fine
+ironclads had been sunk by torpedoes in attempting to ram the French
+fleet. The moral was obvious. From that time onwards the potential
+effect of the torpedo was seen to be very great. The ram seemed at last
+to have found a check. And it appeared that, in combating the ram, the
+torpedo had once more given the primacy to the fast-improving gun.
+Broadside actions of the old type, carried on at high range and speed,
+were predicted.[172]
+
+In 1880 a new type of battleship was evolved of sufficient permanence
+to form the basis of whole classes of future ships.
+
+An intimate account of the genesis of the _Collingwood_ design is given
+us by the biographer of Sir Cooper Key, to illustrate the manner in
+which that prescient administrator succeeded in forecasting the trend
+of future construction. In ’66, he says, Captain Key had put on paper a
+résumé of his ideas on warship design which was clearly several years
+in advance of current opinion. Briefly, he had maintained that the
+specifications for our first-class battleships of the future should be
+drawn to cover the following features so far as possible:--moderate
+speed, small length and great handiness; perfect protection for vital
+parts and a complete water-line belt, rather than protection for
+personnel and above-water structure; a main-deck armament of broadside
+guns of medium calibre amidships, and of lighter calibre towards the
+ends, in combination with an upper-deck armament of four large guns
+in two unarmoured barbettes, one mounted before the foremast and
+one abaft the mizzen-mast; no sails. But for some years no approach
+was made to this ideal ship of Captain Key’s; the ideas it embodied
+were antagonistic to those held by the great majority of his brother
+officers.
+
+“In 1878 there had been laid down by the French, at Toulon, a ship
+called the _Caiman_. She was 278 feet long, and had a speed of 14½
+knots. She carried a single 42-cm. breech-loading rifled gun at the
+bow, and another at the stern, each mounted _en barbette_, and she
+further carried on each broadside, between the barbettes, two 10-cm.
+guns, besides machine-guns. She was heavily armoured by a water-line
+belt 19½ inches thick amidships, and tapering in thickness towards bow
+and stern. The middle part of the ship, between the barbettes, was
+further protected by a steel deck 2·8 inches thick. Evidently, there
+was in this ship some approach to that general ideal which had been
+in Sir Cooper Key’s mind in 1866--not, however, more than this. She
+gave a sort of hint to the constructors at the Admiralty, and, before
+Sir Cooper Key joined the Board, a new design, based indeed on the
+_Caiman’s_ hint, but yet differing widely from her, and, by as much as
+she differed, approaching more nearly to Sir Cooper Key’s ideal, was in
+process of completion there. The ship was the _Collingwood_.”
+
+The _Collingwood_ was of 9150 tons displacement, 325 feet in length, 68
+feet in breadth, and 15·7 knots speed. There was in her, for the first
+time in the navy, that particular disposition of guns which Captain Key
+had recommended in ’66: two guns at bow, two at stern, on turntables,
+and a strong broadside armament between them. In the end the adoption
+of a breech-loading system led to a larger barbette and a smaller
+battery armament: to 43-ton guns at bow and stern and only 6-inch guns
+on the broadsides; and in this way the final design differed more than
+did the original from the ’66 ideal. “The bow and stern guns were
+protected by barbette and other armour, but Key had required that
+some protection should be given to the turntables and the machinery
+for working them. Hydraulics had greatly increased the quantity and
+importance of this machinery, and as by its means the crews of the
+guns were very much diminished, we can imagine the admiral concurring
+in the change as a natural development of his principle. So we can
+understand him as now definitely concurring in the abandonment of sail
+power for first-class battleships.” In ’78 he had flown his flag in the
+_Thunderer_ at sea, and he had then experienced the reliability of the
+gun machinery and the difficulties attendant on the manœuvring of a
+modern fleet under sail.
+
+Both in armament and in disposition of armour the _Collingwood_ was a
+great but a natural advance on the citadel ships of the _Inflexible_
+type. The symmetrical placing of the big gun turntables, one forward
+and one aft, proclaimed the advent of new tactical ideas--the
+recognition of the battleship as a unit which must take its place in
+the line with others, and the rejection of “end-on” methods of fighting
+which involved a concentration of bow-fire. The provision of the
+powerful secondary armament was a tribute to the growing efficiency
+of French torpedo craft, while at the same time serving, offensively,
+to force an enemy to protect himself against it: to spread his armour
+over as large a surface as possible in the attempt to preserve his
+stability in a protracted action. The concentration of armour on the
+fixed barbettes and on a partial belt over the central portion of the
+ship was in accordance with the _Inflexible_ arrangement. But, in
+consequence of the strictures which had been passed on that vessel
+and on the exposure of her large unprotected ends, the _Collingwood_
+was given a longer belt, though not so thick. Fifty-four per cent of
+her length was covered with 18-inch compound armour, as compared with
+42 per cent, and 24-inch armour, in the former ship. Although this
+longer belt appeared to confer greater longitudinal stability on the
+ship, its narrowness was such that it was of doubtful efficacy, as Sir
+Edward Reed was not slow to point out. So narrow was this belt, so big
+still remained the unarmoured ends, that the slight sinkage caused by
+their filling would bring the whole of the armour belt, he said, under
+water. Thus all the advantage arising from a longer citadel was more
+than destroyed by this lowering of the armour, and, so great was the
+consequent danger of the vessel capsizing, that he hesitated to regard
+the _Collingwood_ as an armoured ship.
+
+The _Collingwood_ was laid down in July, 1880. But what was there to
+show that her design would be in any degree permanent? Was it safe to
+consider it sufficiently satisfactory to form the master-pattern for a
+number of new ships, urgently required?
+
+For a short time there was uncertainty. “The French type, where there
+were isolated armoured barbette towers generally containing single
+heavy guns placed at the ends and sides of the ships upon the upper
+deck, with broadside batteries of lighter guns, entirely unprotected
+by armour, upon the deck below, did not commend itself to the English
+naval mind, yet, in the sort of despair which possessed us, the new
+Board turned somewhat towards the French system. The _Warspite_ and
+_Impérieuse_ were laid down in 1881, and were again a new departure in
+British design.... It was intended to adhere to sail power in these
+new types, and it was only after they were approaching completion that
+the utter incongruity of the proposal was realized, and sail power was
+given up in the last of the armoured ships to which it was attempted to
+apply it.”
+
+But the Admiralty still wished, without alarming the public, to regain
+as soon as possible a safe balance of armoured construction over that
+of France. “There was no design before the Board which was more likely
+to perpetuate itself than that of the unlaunched _Collingwood_. Suppose
+a bold policy were adopted? Suppose it were assumed that the time had
+come when diversities of type were to cease, would it be made less
+likely by the frank abandonment of sail power?”
+
+The bold step was taken. Four more ships to the _Collingwood_ design
+were laid down in ’82, the five being thereafter spoken of as the
+“Admiral” class. “At the time, little note was taken of this very
+great step in advance. Even at this day it is scarcely remembered
+that this is the step which made possible, and led up to, our
+present great battle fleet, and that never before had so many as
+five first-class ironclads of a definite type been on the stocks
+together.... In the Admiral class there was the definite parting with
+sail power, the rejection of the tactical ideas brought to a climax
+in the _Inflexible_, and, above all, the definite adoption of the
+long-barrelled breech-loading rifled gun. Without question, we must say
+that we owe the Admiral class, and all that has followed, in great part
+to the enterprising and yet well-balanced mind that then governed the
+naval part of the Council at Whitehall.”
+
+
+§
+
+At this point in the evolution of the ironclad it is convenient to
+bring our survey to an end. The _Collingwood_ marks the final return
+(with one or two notorious exceptions) to the truly broadside ship,
+the ship with armament symmetrically disposed fore and aft, intended
+to fight with others in the line. From the Admiral class onwards the
+modern battleship evolved for years along a continuous and clearly
+defined curve of progression. It only remains to close this brief and
+necessarily superficial historical sketch with a few remarks upon the
+classification of warships.
+
+In tracing the types of ironclads which superseded each other in direct
+succession, no mention has been made of other than those which formed
+in their time the chief units of naval force. Other war-vessels there
+were, of course, subsidiary to the main fighting force, whose value and
+functions we now briefly indicate.
+
+So long as sails remained the sole motive power, warships retained the
+same classification as they had received in the seventeenth century.
+“Up to the time of the Dutch Wars,” says Admiral Colomb, “ships were
+both ‘royal’ and of private contribution; of all sorts and sizes
+and ‘rates.’ Fighting was therefore promiscuous. Fleets sailed in
+the form of half-moons, or all heaped together and, except for the
+struggle to get the weather gage, there were no tactics. Actions were
+general.” Then, in order to protect their fleets from the fire ship,
+the Dutch first introduced the Line of Battle: “in which formation
+it was easy for a fleet to leeward to open out so as to let a fire
+ship drift harmlessly through.” And so the efficacy of the fire ship
+was destroyed. “But now, with a Line, each ship had a definite place
+which she could not quit. Hence the diversities in sizes began to be
+eliminated. The weakest ships, which might find themselves opposite
+the strongest, were dropped for ships ‘fit to lie in the line,’ i.e.
+for what were afterwards called ‘line-of-battle ships.’ These ships
+would be individually as powerful as possible, only subject to the
+objection of putting too many eggs in one basket. Uniformity would thus
+be attained. The fleet of line ships, however, required look-outs or
+scouts, which could keep the seas and attend, yet out-sail, the fleet.
+Hence the heavy frigate. Lastly, there was the much lighter attendant
+on commerce (either by way of attack or defence), the light cruiser.”
+
+Although this differentiation of types was based ostensibly upon
+displacement or tonnage, in reality it was formed on a more scientific
+basis. Admiral Sir George Elliot demonstrated, in 1867, that the real
+basis was not a rule of size, but a _law of safety_, similar to that
+which operates in the natural world; a law so important that it should
+under no circumstances be disregarded. He showed that sailing ships
+conformed to this law. He showed that the reduction of a vessel’s
+size, for instance, endowed her with smaller draught and an increased
+speed; that the dispensing with one quality automatically gave another
+in compensation; and that thus the weakly armed vessel always possessed
+the means, if not to fight, to escape from capture.[173]
+
+With the coming of steam and armour, all this was changed. Size had
+now no inherent disability; on the contrary, the larger the ship the
+greater the horse-power which could be carried in her, the greater her
+probable speed and sea endurance. The small ship had no advantages.
+The old classification had clearly broken down. The first ironclads,
+the _Warrior_ and her successors, although of frigate form, belonged
+to no particular class; they were of a special type intended to cope
+with the most powerful ships afloat or projected; and subsequent ships
+were designed with the same end in view. These ships being faster as
+well as more powerful than those of a smaller size, there was no object
+in attempting to build others of a frigate class for the purpose of
+outsailing them.
+
+As material developed, and as the warship became more and more
+obviously a compromise between conflicting qualities, differentiation
+of types was once more seen to be necessary. Attempts were made to
+classify on the bases of displacement, material, defensive and motive
+power, service, system of armament. In the end British construction
+divided itself into two categories: armoured and unarmoured vessels.
+And each of these categories was subdivided into classes of ships
+analogous to those of the old sailing ships.
+
+But, during the transitional period 1860 to 1880, when armour and
+iron ships, steam engines, rifled guns, and fish torpedoes, were all
+in their infancy and subject to the most rapid development, no such
+classification was recognized. The circumstances of the Crimean War,
+with the adoption of armour and the sudden and enormous growth in the
+unit of artillery force which took place soon afterwards, led to the
+first differentiation of ironclads, into ocean-going and coast-defence
+vessels. We have already noted this fact. We have seen how, especially
+to the lesser Powers, the turreted monitor appeared to offer an
+economical and effective form of naval force; and we have noted how, in
+America, the evolution proceeded in the opposite direction, viz. from
+coast-defence monitor to ocean-going turret ship. This differentiation
+prevailed for many years. It prevailed even in the British navy, in
+spite of its being in full opposition to the offensive principle on
+which that navy had always based its policy.
+
+Later, although convinced that in any war involving this country and
+its colonies the chief combats must be fought in European waters, naval
+opinion saw the necessity for a type of ship designed primarily for the
+defence and attack of commerce: a speedy, lightly armed and protected
+type capable of overhauling and injuring a weaker, or of escaping from
+a more powerful enemy. The American War of ’62, in which no general sea
+action was fought, gave the impulse to the construction of the type
+which eventually became known as the _cruiser_. Vessels were built in
+’63 expressly to overtake Confederate vessels and drive from the seas
+the Southern mercantile marine. These vessels were to annihilate the
+enemy’s commerce without being drawn themselves to take part in an
+engagement, unless in very favourable circumstances. Several such ships
+were built. The first, the _Idaho_, was a complete failure; the next
+attempt was little more successful; and those subsequently constructed,
+the _Wampanoag_ class, the finest ships of the type which existed at
+the close of the war, which were designed for 17 knots and to carry
+sixteen 10- or 11-inch smooth-bore cast-iron guns on the broadside and
+a revolving 60-pounder rifle in the bows, suffered from miscalculations
+in design and from the weakness peculiar to long and heavily weighted
+timber-built ships. “These pioneers of the type,” says Brassey, “were
+followed, both in England and in France, by vessels believed by the
+builders of their respective countries to be better adapted for the
+work for which they were designed.”
+
+At first England and France had built and appropriated small ironclads
+to this secondary service; in France the _Belliqueuse_, in England
+the _Pallas_, were designed to this end. But in ’66 the first ship of
+the cruiser type was built for the British navy: the _Inconstant_,
+of Sir Edward Reed’s design, an iron-built, fine-lined vessel with a
+speed of 16 knots and a large coal capacity. She was followed by the
+corvettes _Active_ and _Volage_, and then, in ’73, by the _Shah_ and
+_Raleigh_. Experience with the early cruisers showed the advantages
+of large displacement. “The greater number of the American corvettes
+had now been launched. A trial of one of them showed that the high
+hopes which had been entertained of their performance were fallacious.
+It now appeared no longer necessary that the English corvettes
+should possess such extraordinary power and speed, qualities which
+necessarily required very large displacements. The Admiralty, however,
+still believing in the wisdom of the policy which they had previously
+adopted, decided to follow a totally different course from that which
+all other navies had been compelled by financial considerations to
+follow. So far from diminishing the size of their ships, increased
+displacement was given to the new designs.”[174] Full sail power was
+still required, for the high-power steam engine used by the cruiser for
+fighting purposes was most uneconomical. The _Raleigh_, for instance,
+burned her six hundred tons of coal in less than 36 hours, at full
+speed.
+
+But after the _Raleigh_ came a slight reaction. With a view to economy
+a smaller type of vessel was designed, the smallest possible vessel
+which could be contrived which would possess a covered-in gun deck
+in combination with other features considered essential in a frigate
+class; the result was the _Boadicea_ or the _Bacchante_ class. In the
+late ’seventies size again increased, and the _Iris_ and _Mercury_,
+unsheathed vessels of steel, with coal-protection for their water-line
+and extended watertight subdivision of the hull, were laid down.
+
+From the unarmoured, unprotected cruiser was in time evolved, by the
+competition of units, the armoured cruiser. Russia led the way. Her
+_General-Admiral_, the first belted cruiser, was built to compete with
+the _Raleigh_ and _Boadicea_. Then England designed the _Shannon_,
+partially belted and with protective deck and coal protection, to
+outmatch her. Eventually the cleavage came, and the cruisers were
+themselves divided into two or more classes, in accordance with their
+duties, size and fitness for the line of battle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of the development of torpedo craft this is not the place to write;
+although the torpedo was fast growing in efficiency and importance, it
+had not, before 1880, become the centre and cause of a special craft
+and a special system for its employment in action. But after that
+date the creation of torpedo flotillas began to exercise a marked and
+continuous effect upon the evolution of the ironclad. The fish-torpedo,
+improving at a phenomenal rate in the first years of its development,
+and at first esteemed as of defensive value and as a counter to the
+ram, became, after 1880, an offensive weapon of the first importance.
+The ram, already suspected of being placed too high in popular
+estimation, suffered a decline; the danger of its use in action was
+emphasized by naval officers, whose opinion alone was decisive: its
+use, as an eminent tactician explained, reduced the chances of battle
+to a mere toss-up, since there was “only half a ship’s length between
+ramming and being rammed.” The gun developed in power, in range, and
+accuracy; but not (up to the end of the century) at so great a rate
+as its rival, the torpedo. The steam engine affected all weapons
+by its continuous development. It depressed the ram, enhanced the
+importance of the gun, and endowed the torpedo with a large accession
+of potential value in placing it, in its special fast sea-going craft,
+within reach of the battleship; moreover, it enabled the cruiser to
+regain its old supremacy of speed over the line-of-battle unit. Armour,
+quick-firing guns, secondary armament, watertight construction, net
+defence, all influenced the development of the various types. But it
+was the torpedo, borne into action by the high-speed steam engine,
+which had the greatest effect on naval types in the last two decades of
+the century, and which at one time bid fair to cause a constructional
+revolution as great as that of 1860. The torpedo, according to a
+school of French enthusiasts, had destroyed the ironclad battleship
+and dealt a heavy blow at English sea power by paving the way for an
+inexpensive navy designed for a _guerre de course_. The ironclad was
+dead, they cried, and might as well be placed in the Louvre museum
+along with the old three-deckers! In Italy and Germany, too, the
+logic of facts seemed to point to a vast depreciation in the power of
+existing navies: the fate of the expensive ironclad seemed assured, in
+the presence of small, fast, sea going torpedo-boats. Still, it was
+noticed, England laid down battleships. True; this was quite in keeping
+with her machiavellian policy. Had she not resisted--“not blindly, but
+with a profound clairvoyance”--all the inventions of the century? Had
+she not successfully baulked the development of Fulton’s mines, steam
+navigation, the shell gun, and the ironclad itself? And, now that steam
+had made the blockade impossible and the torpedo had attacked the
+ironclad effectually, making sea-supremacy an empty term, could not
+the British Empire be destroyed by taking the choice of weapons out of
+England’s hands?
+
+The prospect was alluring. Yet the ironclad survived the menace
+and remained the standard unit of naval power. Expensive, designed
+with several aims and essentially complex,--a compromise, like man
+himself,--it could not be replaced by a number of small, cheap,
+uni-functional vessels, each constructed for one sole and special
+purpose, without loss of efficiency and concentration of power.
+Nor could it be supplanted by a type which, like the sea-going
+torpedo-boat, could only count on an ascendancy over it in certain
+moments of its own choosing--for example, at night-time or in a fog. To
+every novel species of attack the ironclad proved superior, calling to
+its aid the appropriate defensive measures.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+[1] Sir Harry Nicolas: _History of the Royal Navy_.
+
+[2] The greatest authoritative works on ancient and medieval shipping,
+it should be mentioned, are the _Archéologie Navale_ and the _Glossaire
+Nautique_ of M. Jal, published in 1840 and 1848 respectively.
+
+[3] Corbett: _Drake and the Tudor Navy_.
+
+[4] Corbett.
+
+[5] Oppenheim.
+
+[6] Corbett.
+
+[7] Navy Records Soc.: Edited by Sir John Laughton.
+
+[8] Cases were known where ships, unfit for sea, completed their voyage
+in safety, to fall to pieces immediately on being taken into dock and
+deprived of that continual support which they derived from the water
+when afloat (_Charnock_).
+
+[9] Chief-constructor D. W. Taylor, U.S.N.
+
+[10] Creuze: _Shipbuilding_.
+
+[11] Manwayring.
+
+[12] Navy Records Soc.: 1918. _Edited by_ W. G. Perrin, Esq., O.B.E.
+
+[13] Captain John Smith’s _Sea Man’s Grammar_ also appeared in the
+early part of this century.
+
+[14] Sir J. Knowles, F.R.S.
+
+[15] Willett: _Memoirs on Naval Architecture_.
+
+[16] It has been suggested that the restricted draught given to the
+Dutch ships, owing to the shallowness of their coast waters, had the
+result of necessitating a generous breadth, and therefore made them
+generally stiffer than vessels of English construction.
+
+[17] Derrick in his Memoirs refers to this ship us having been built of
+burnt instead of kilned timber, and as having special arrangements for
+circulating air in all its parts.
+
+[18] Charnock.
+
+[19] Colomb: _Sea Warfare_.
+
+[20] Creuze: _Papers on Naval Architecture_.
+
+[21] Even the scientific Sir William Petty cast a veil of mystery
+over his processes. “I only affirm,” he writes, “that the perfection
+of sailing lies in my principle, _finde it out who can!_” (See Pepys’
+Diary for 31st July, 1663.)
+
+[22] Creuze: _Shipbuilding, Encycl. Brit._, 7th Edition, 1841. It
+should be mentioned that the work of Dr. Colin McLaurin, of Edinburgh,
+in giving a mathematical solution for the angles at which a ship’s
+sails should be set, had received considerable attention on the
+Continent.
+
+[23] See a paper by Mr. Johns, R.C.N.C., in _Trans. I.N.A._ 1910.
+
+[24] Willett: _Memoirs on Naval Architecture_.
+
+[25] At the beginning of the eighteenth century the English first
+rates carried 100 guns. The second rate comprised two classes: (1) a
+three-decker of 90; (2) a two-decker of 80. Ships of these rates were
+few in number and very expensive. The bulk of our fleets consisted of
+third rates: two-deckers of 70 guns in war and 62 in peace time and on
+foreign stations (_Charnock_).
+
+[26] Sir C. Knowles: _Observations on Shipbuilding_.
+
+[27] _Letters of Sir Byam Martin_: N.R. Soc.
+
+[28] Sir C. Knowles: _Observations on Shipbuilding_.
+
+[29] In 1784 Thomas Gordon published a treatise entitled _Principles
+of Naval Architecture_, drawing attention to the work of the French
+scientists and advocating increased length and breadth, finer lines,
+and a more systematic disposition of materials, for improving the
+strength and seaworthiness of our royal ships. No notice was taken of
+his communications to Lord Sandwich, but there is no evidence that his
+predicted fate overtook him: “to be traduced as an innovator theorist,
+and visionary projector, as has been the fate of most authors of useful
+discoveries in modern times, particularly in Britain.”
+
+“The bigotry of old practice,” recorded Mr. Willett in 1793, “opposes
+everything that looks like innovation.”
+
+[30] Fincham says their armament was established as, thirty 32-pounders
+on the lower deck, thirty 24-pounders on the middle deck, thirty-two
+18-pounders on the upper deck, and on the quarter-deck and forecastle
+eighteen 12-pounders.
+
+[31] James: _Naval History_.
+
+[32] _Letters of Sir Byam Martin_: N.R. Soc.
+
+[33] Sharp: _Memoirs of Rear-Admiral Sir W. Symonds_.
+
+[34] Hannay: _Ships and Men_. This formula was known before, for
+Bushnell mentions it in his _Compleat Shipwright_ of 1678.
+
+[35] Sharp: _Memoirs of Admiral Sir W. Symonds_.
+
+[36] E. J. Reed: _On the Modifications to Ships of the Royal Navy_.
+
+[37] _Ibid._
+
+[38] Lieut.-Col. H. W. L. Hime: _The Origin of Artillery_.
+
+[39] In the _Histoire d’Artillerie_ of MM. Reinaud and Favé long
+excerpts from Bacon are examined, from which it appears that he
+suggested the use of gunpowder in military operations. Gibbon says:
+“That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of the ingredients,
+saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals the third in a sentence of
+mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the consequences of his own
+discovery.”
+
+[40] Lieut. H. Brackenbury, R.A.: _Ancient Cannon in Europe_. Vol. IV
+and V of Proc. R.A.I.
+
+[41] Schmidt: _Armes à feu portatives_.
+
+[42] Sir Harry Nicolas, in his _History of the Royal Navy_, attributes
+the documents to the reign of Edward III: an error of more than seventy
+years. The mistake is exposed by a writer in Vol. XXVI of _The English
+Historical Review_, in an article on “Firearms in England in the
+Fourteenth Century.” The writer also gives the English records relating
+to the use of firearms at Cressy.
+
+[43] Brackenbury.
+
+[44] The secrecy of the early writers of Italy on gunnery and kindred
+subjects has been remarked on by Maurice Cockle in his _Bibliography of
+Military Books_. He attributes it to two motives: fear that the Infidel
+(the Turk) might profit by the knowledge otherwise gained, and a desire
+to keep the secrets of the craft in the hands of their countrymen,
+whose knowledge and assistance the foreigner would then be forced to
+purchase.
+
+[45] _The Great Cannon of Muhammad II_: Brig.-Gen. J. H. Lefroy, R.A.,
+F.R.S. Vol. VI of Proc. R.A.I.
+
+[46] Ascribing the deliverance of Constantinople from the Saracens in
+the two sieges of A.D. 668 and 716 to the novelty, the terrors, and
+the real efficacy of Greek fire, Gibbon says: “The important secret
+of compounding and directing this artificial flame was imparted by
+Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in Syria, who deserted from the
+service of the caliph to that of the emperor. The skill of a chemist
+and engineer was equivalent to the succour of fleets and armies.”
+
+For the story of the manner in which its mystery was guarded at
+Constantinople, of its theft by the Infidel, and of the use he made of
+it against the Christian chivalry at the crusades, see Chapter LII of
+_The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.
+
+[47] Grose: _Military Antiquities_.
+
+[48] Hayley’s MSS.: quoted by M. A. Lower.
+
+[49] Oppenheim.
+
+[50] Oppenheim.
+
+[51] Corned powder was graded in France in the year 1540 into three
+sizes by means of sieves which varied with the types of guns for which
+they were intended (see Hime: _Origin of Artillery_). By the end of the
+century the manufacture had evidently improved in this country. “Some
+do make excellent good corn powder, so fine, that the corns thereof are
+like thime seed,” wrote Thos. Smith in his _Art of Gunnery_, A.D. 1600.
+
+[52] Oppenheim.
+
+[53] Bourne: _The Art of Shooting in Great Ordnance_, 1587.
+
+[54] Sir J. K. Laughton: _Armada Papers, N.R.S._
+
+[55] Smith demolished, to his own satisfaction, a theory current
+that some molecular movement of the metal took place at the moment
+of gunfire. “I asked the opinion of a soldier, who for a trespass
+committed was enjoined to ride the canon, who confidently affirmed, he
+could perceive no quivering of the metal of the piece, but that the air
+which issued out of the mouth and touch-hole of the piece did somewhat
+astonish and shake him.”
+
+[56] The advantages of large calibres had been appreciated in the
+previous century. Sir Richard Hawkins, in his _Observations_, printed
+in 1593, compares the armament of his own ships with that of his
+Spanish opponents, and says: “Although their artillery were larger,
+weightier, and many more than ours, and in truth did pierce with
+greater violence; yet ours being of greater bore, and carrying a
+weightier and greater shot, was of more importance and of better effect
+for sinking and spoiling.”
+
+[57] Oppenheim.
+
+[58] A significant view of the attitude of these professionals toward
+any innovation in gunnery material is afforded by the entry of Mr.
+Pepys in his diary for the 17th April, 1669.
+
+[59] An anonymous writer in the _Pall Mall Gazette_.
+
+[60] Le Sieur Malthus, gentil-homme Anglois, Commissaire Général des
+Feux et Artifices de l’Artillerie de France, Capitaine General des
+Sappes et Mines d’icelle & Ingeniéur és Armées du Roy, published his
+_Pratique de la Guerre_ in 1668. This notable but almost-forgotten
+artillerist introduced the use of mortars and bombs into France, in
+1637. He was killed by a musket ball at the siege of Gravelines, as he
+elevated himself above the rampart of a trench in order to watch the
+effect of a bomb (St. Remy: _Mémoires_).
+
+[61] This account is taken from _Historical Notes on Woolwich_, Lieut.
+Grover, R.E. (Proc. R.A.I., Vol. VI).
+
+[62] Le Blond: _Traité de l’Artillerie_, 1743.
+
+[63] Lieut.-Gen. Sir William Congreve, Bart., was, as Captain Congreve,
+appointed in 1783 to the control of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich.
+Sent in ’79 to Plymouth, to examine the gunpowders of H.M. ships in
+consequence of the complaints of Admiral Barington, he found only
+four serviceable barrels in the whole fleet. The gross frauds then
+brought to light led to the formation of the Government establishment
+at Waltham Abbey. His son was the inventor of the Congreve sight and
+rocket.
+
+[64] Gen. Sir Thomas Blomefield, Bart., who started his service
+career as a midshipman, commanded a bomb vessel under Rodney at the
+bombardment of Havre in 1759, and was present at Quiberon. After varied
+service abroad he was appointed, in 1780, Inspector of Artillery and
+of the Brass Foundry. “Never was the need of military supervision
+over military manufactures more apparent than at this period. The
+guns supplied to the naval and military forces had degenerated to the
+lowest point in quality. Bursts were of frequent occurrence, and would
+doubtless have been much more frequent if the roguery of contractors in
+gunpowder had not kept pace with the roguery of contractors in guns....
+From this period dates the high character of British cast iron and
+brass ordnance.”
+
+[65] Favé.
+
+[66] The author of the _Études sur l’Artillerie_ places emphasis on
+the importance of the substitution of cast iron for stone projectiles,
+as augmenting the power of artillery. Stone balls broke to pieces on
+impact with masonry, and were of small destructive power except when
+in large mass, as projected from the largest bombards. He claims the
+introduction of iron shot, the use of trunnions for elevating, and the
+standardization of calibres, for the French artillery of Charles VIII,
+who in 1495 descended on Italy.
+
+[67] Favé.
+
+[68] Lieut.-Col. Hime, R.A.: _The Progress of Field Artillery_.
+
+[69] Owen: _Lectures on Artillery_.
+
+[70] Whewell: _History of the Inductive Sciences_.
+
+[71] _Encycl. Brit._, 11th Edition.
+
+[72] This project, however, is mentioned of an engine called by him “a
+semi-omnipotent engine,” the subject of the 98th invention: “an engine
+so contrived, that working the _Primum mobile_ forward or backward,
+upward or downward, circularly or cornerwise, to and fro, straight,
+upright or downright, yet the pretended operation continueth and
+advanceth, none of the motions above-mentioned hindering, much less
+stopping the other.”
+
+This engine is obviously not the same as that described as the
+sixty-eighth invention.
+
+[73] A well-known story, quoted at length in the Memoirs of Sir John
+Barrow, connected de Caus with the Marquis of Worcester in dramatic
+fashion. The Marquis was being conducted through the prison of the
+Bicêtre in Paris when his attention was attracted by the screams of
+an old madman who had made a wonderful discovery of the power of
+steam, and who had so importuned Cardinal Richelieu that he had been
+incarcerated as a nuisance.
+
+“This person,” said the insolvent Lord Worcester after conversing with
+him, “is no madman; and in my country, instead of shutting him up, they
+would heap riches upon him. In this prison you have buried the greatest
+genius of your age.”
+
+The fable, and its exposure by a French writer, M. Figuier, are
+described in Dirck’s book.
+
+[74] Millington: _Natural Philosophy_.
+
+[75] Sir E. D. Lawrence: _Steam in Relation to Cornwall_.
+
+[76] Enouf: _Papin, sa vie et son œuvre_.
+
+[77] On the evidence of a picture purporting to represent the first
+Newcomen engine, in which mechanisms are shown for operating the cocks
+automatically, an attempt has been made to prove that the manipulated
+cocks were a figment and the story of Humphrey Potter a myth. The
+iconoclast has not been successful. The evidence that the first engines
+were hand-controlled is very general (see Galloway’s _Steam Engine and
+Its Inventors_).
+
+[78] At this time the corpuscular theory of heat still held the field.
+“Caloric,” or the matter of heat, was supposed to be a substance which
+could be imparted to or abstracted from a body, which had the property
+of augmenting its bulk, but not its weight, by setting its particles at
+a greater or less distance from one another.
+
+[79] _Encycl. Brit._, Eleventh Edition.
+
+[80] A text-book published a few years before Robins’ birth (Binnings’
+_Light to the Art of Gunnery_, 1689) told how a certain profane and
+godless gunner, Cornelius Slime, was carried off by the devil before
+the eyes of the astonished onlookers!
+
+[81] Whewell: _Hist. of the Inductive Sciences_.
+
+[82] Dr. Halley: _Phil. Trans._, 1686.
+
+[83] How strange and almost incredible this phenomenon appeared to
+people long after Robins’ time, may be seen from the manner in which
+Ezekiel Baker, one of the principal London gunmakers and the contractor
+who supplied the rifles with which the Rifle Brigade was equipped in
+the year 1800, poured gentle sarcasm on the account of this experiment.
+In his book on _Rifle Guns_, published in 1825, he can only assign the
+cause of the deflection to “some peculiar enchantment in the air.”
+“Or,” he continues, “with all my practice I have yet much to learn in
+guns, and the effects of powder and wind upon the ball in its flight.”
+
+[84] Of the superstitious awe with which an iron field-piece was
+regarded by the highlanders in ’45, and of its small material value in
+the field, a note will be found in the appendices to Scott’s _Waverley_.
+
+[85] Mr. Patrick Miller, who is mentioned in a later chapter as
+builder of the first successful steam-propelled vessel, was also an
+enthusiastic artillerist. In a memorandum to the Select Committee of
+the House of Commons, appointed in 1824 to consider the claims of
+various inventors of steam-vessels, a Mr. Taylor gave the following
+evidence: “I found him (Mr. Miller) a gentleman of great patriotism,
+generosity, and philanthropy; and at the same time of a very
+speculative turn of mind. Before I knew him (1785) he had gone through
+a very long and expensive course of experiments upon artillery of which
+the carronade was the result.”
+
+[86] On April 20th, 1669, Mr. Pepys recorded in his diary a
+visit to “the Old Artillery-ground near the Spitalfields” to see
+a new gun “which, from the shortness and bigness, they do call
+Punchinello.” Tried against a gun of double its own length, weight,
+and powder-charge, Punchinello shot truer to a mark and was easier
+to manage and had no greater recoil--to the great regret of the old
+gunners and officers of the ordnance that were there.
+
+The gallant inventor offered Mr. Pepys a share in the profits; there
+seemed great promise that the king would favour it for naval use.
+“And,” adds Pepys, “no doubt but it will be of profit to merchantmen
+and others to have guns of the same form at half the charge.”
+
+[87] James: _Naval History_.
+
+[88] The carrying of _sham_ guns among their armament was not unknown
+in the case of vessels which boasted a reputation for their superior
+speed and sailing qualities (vide _Bentham Papers_).
+
+[89] Captain Simmons, R.A.
+
+[90] The carriage thus formed out of a baulk or trunk appears to have
+been known as a trunk carriage. Norton describes the cannon-periers as
+being mounted on “trunk carriages provided with four trucks.”
+
+[91] Oppenheim.
+
+[92] It was evidently a practice at this period to vary the diameter
+of the trucks to suit the ship’s structure and the height of the
+gun-ports. “Be careful,” says Bourne in 1587, “that the trucks be not
+too high, for if the trucks be too high, then it will keep the carriage
+that it will not go close against the ship’s side.... And the truck
+being very high, it is not a small thing under a truck that will stay
+it, etc. etc. And also, if that the truck be too high, it will cause
+the piece to have the greater reverse or recoil. Therefore, the lower
+that the trucks be, it is the better.”
+
+Bourne also mentions, in the same book, the _Art of Shooting in Great
+Ordnance_, as a curious invention of a “high Dutchman” a gun mounting
+so devised as to allow the piece to rotate through 180° about its
+trunnions for loading.
+
+[93] Manwayring: _Sea-Man’s Dictionary_.
+
+[94] Oppenheim.
+
+[95] Hutchinson: _Naval Architecture_.
+
+[96] In the margin of the copy of _The Art of Gunnery_, Thos. Smith,
+A.D. 1600, in the library of the R.U.S.I. in Whitehall, is the
+following note, written in legible seventeenth-century script: “Some
+make a device to discharge at a distance by a long string, fixed to a
+device like a cock for a gun with a flint or like a musket cock with a
+match.”
+
+In the same work are instructions as to firing in a wind, when the
+train of powder might be blown from the vent before the linstock could
+be applied. The gunner was to form a clay rampart, a sort of tinker’s
+dam, on the metal of the piece on the windward side of the touch-hole.
+
+[97] On this Sir John Laughton remarked: “The exercise, so born,
+continued as long as the old men-of-war and the old guns--‘Ships
+passing on opposite tacks; three rounds of quick firing’” (_Barham
+Papers_, N.R. Soc.).
+
+[98] A form of sight for use with ordnance was described by Nathaniel
+Nye, in his _Art of Gunnery_, of 1674. It consisted of a lute-string
+and a movable bead, with a scale opposite the latter graduated in
+degrees and inches.
+
+[99] In Lloyd and Hadcock’s _Artillery_ an extract from a letter
+written in 1801 by Lord Nelson relative to a proposal to use gun-sights
+at sea is given. The letter is unfavourable to the invention on the
+ground that, as ships should always be at such close quarters with
+their enemies that missing becomes impossible, such appliances would be
+superfluous. But in this connection the observation is made that, with
+the degree of accuracy of guns up to the nineteenth century a rough
+“line of metal” aim was probably all that was justified, in the matter
+of sighting. In other words, with one element of the system (the gun)
+so very inaccurate, nothing was to be gained by increasing the accuracy
+of another element (the sight) to a disproportionate degree. With
+increasing accuracy of the gun, increasing accuracy of sight was called
+for.
+
+[100] In Vol. IV of the _Proceedings of the Royal Artillery
+Institution_, in an article by General Lefroy, an order is quoted
+showing that trials were made of firing shells horizontally by the
+Royal Artillery in Canada in 1776. The author also shows that the
+trials made by the French in 1784-6 were brought to the notice of Lord
+Nelson.
+
+In Vol. V is the following extract: “Experiments were made on
+Acton Common in 1760, to fire coehorn and royal shells from 12-and
+24-pounders, in order to be applied to the sea service; but as the
+shells were found frequently to burst in the guns, it was thought too
+hazardous to introduce them on board ships of war.”
+
+[101] The first public demonstration was given by Lieut. Shrapnel,
+R.A., before the G.O.C., Gibraltar, in the year 1787.
+
+[102] Simmons: _Effect of Heavy Ordnance_, 1837.
+
+[103] James: _Naval History_.
+
+[104] A short review of both books is given in the _Papers on Naval
+Architecture_, edited by Morgan and Creuze, 1829.
+
+[105] See Hugo’s _Toilers of the Sea_.
+
+[106] “As for guns,” wrote Fuller in his _Worthies of England_,
+comparing the relative merits of the inventions of printing and
+gunpowder, “it cannot be denied, that though most behold them as
+instruments of cruelty; partly, because subjecting valour to chance;
+partly, because guns give no quarter (which the sword sometimes doth);
+yet it will appear that, since their invention, Victory hath not stood
+so long a neuter, and hath been determined with the loss of fewer
+lives.”
+
+[107] At a later date this reduction in number of types of ordnance was
+extended to cover land artillery. In ’62 the French brought down the
+number of different calibres to four: one for the field, one for the
+siege, and two (the 30-and 50-pounders) for the navy.
+
+[108] Dahlgren: _Shells and Shell-Guns_, 1856.
+
+[109] By this time Denmark, Holland, Russia and Sweden had all
+recognized the possibilities of shell guns, and had adopted them in
+greater or less degree. By this time, too, France actually possessed
+more steam war-vessels than we had ourselves.
+
+[110] Simmons: _Effects of Heavy Ordnance_.
+
+[111] The crossbow was looked upon as a weapon unworthy of a brave
+man; a prejudice which afterwards prevailed with respect to fire-arms
+(Hallam: _Middle Ages_).
+
+[112] The Hon. T. F. Fremantle: _The Book of the Rifle_.
+
+[113] _Le Développement des Armes à Feu_, 1870.
+
+[114] In this aspect of the origin of the grooves there is a curious
+analogy between the rifle-barrel and the drill used in machine tools.
+In the primitive drill the shank is appreciably less in diameter than
+the hole cut by the drill, so that the drillings can easily work their
+way out of the hole. When, however, it was desired to make the shank
+almost of the same diameter as the hole, so as to form a guide, it was
+necessary to flute it with two grooves or more to allow the drillings
+to get away. In the course of its evolution these grooves became spiral.
+
+[115] Quoted in _The Book of the Rifle_ from Schmidt’s _Armes à Feu
+Portatives_, 1889.
+
+[116] Delvigne: _Notice historique des armes rayées_.
+
+[117] Beaufoy: _Scloppetaria_.
+
+[118] A paragraph in Beaufoy’s _Scloppetaria_ (1808) shows the complete
+misconception under which its author laboured as to the function of
+rifling. Just as the air turns a windmill or a shuttlecock (he says),
+so, after an indented ball quits its rifled barrel the air, forced
+spirally along its grooves, will cause the ball to turn. In short, he
+regarded the spiral grooves of a barrel as being of no further utility,
+with respect to the generating of the rotary motion, than as an easy
+way of giving the ball the requisite indentations.
+
+[119] Fremantle: _The Book of the Rifle_.
+
+[120] Captain A. Walker: _The Rifle_, 1864.
+
+[121] At the beginning of the century Ezekiel Baker had noted that “a
+wadding in the shape of an acorn cup placed on the powder, and the ball
+put on the top of the cup, will expand the cup and fill the bore--and
+of course the windage will be much diminished.”
+
+[122] Mention must be made of an important prior development of the
+elongated bullet which had been carried out by General Jacob in India,
+quite independently of French research. General Jacob conducted, in an
+altogether scientific manner, experiments the successful results of
+which were communicated by him to the home government on more than one
+occasion. The importance of his discoveries remained unrecognized, and
+the value of his improvements was lost to this country.
+
+[123] In military circles the possibilities of the invasion of this
+country had for some time been under discussion, in view of the
+increasingly aggressive temper of the French. Interest in national
+defence became general with the warning letter of the Duke of
+Wellington which appeared in _The Times_ on the 9th January, 1847. In
+’51 was held the Great Exhibition, and for a time opinion was less
+agitated. The Exhibition, it was thought and hoped by numbers of
+people, would inaugurate the millennium.
+
+[124] This advantage of the rifled gun hod been fully appreciated
+by Captain Norton. As early as 1832 he had conducted trials with
+one-pounder rifled cannon, to confirm his belief that the projectile
+would maintain its rotation during flight and hit the target
+point-first (_Journal of R.U.S.I._, 1837).
+
+[125] Commander R. A. E. Scott, R.N.: _Journal of R.U.S.I._, Vol. VI,
+1862.
+
+[126] Tennant: _The Story of the Guns_. This book gives in detail the
+controversy which arose between the advocates of the Armstrong and the
+Whitworth systems.
+
+[127] _Edinburgh Review_, 1859. Quoted by Sir E. Tennant.
+
+[128] The sudden and extraordinary development of rifled ordnance
+which now took place had a revolutionary effect not only on naval
+architecture and gunnery but on land fortification. In ’59 Sir William
+Armstrong, giving evidence before a committee appointed by the War
+Secretary, stated that he could attain with a specially constructed
+gun a range of five miles. The statement made a sensation; for in the
+presence of such a gun most of the existing defences of our dockyards
+and depots were almost useless. A Commission on National Defence
+was formed. It reported that new fortifications were necessary for
+our principal arsenals, the fleet alone being insufficient for the
+defence of ports. “The introduction of steam,” stated the report, “may
+operate to our disadvantage in diminishing to some extent the value of
+superior seamanship; the practice of firing shells horizontally, and
+the enormous extent to which the power and accuracy of aim of artillery
+have been increased, lead to the conclusion that after an action even
+a victorious fleet would be more seriously crippled and therefore a
+longer time unfit for service.” Thus the command of the Channel might
+be temporarily lost. As steam facilitated invasion, the immediate
+fortification of vital points on the South Coast was considered
+necessary. In short, faith in the mobile fleet was temporarily
+abandoned.
+
+The recommendations of the Commission were carried out almost in their
+entirety. In the case of Portsmouth, for instance, the reinforcement of
+the Hilsea Lines, decided on only two years previously, was suspended
+in favour of a defence of far greater radius--a circle of forts some of
+which were designed to prevent an enemy from gaining possession, from
+the land side, of Portsdown Hill, a ridge less than five miles from the
+Dockyard and therefore a position from which, with the new artillery,
+the Dockyard could be bombarded. A similar girdle of defences was given
+to Plymouth.
+
+[129] Commander R. A. E. Scott, R.N.
+
+[130] Lloyd and Hadcock.
+
+[131] Woodcroft: _Steam Navigation_, 1848.
+
+[132] de la Roncière: _La Marine Française_.
+
+[133] Woodcroft: _Steam Navigation_.
+
+[134] Rigaud: _Early Proposals for Steam Navigation_.
+
+[135] Enouf: Papin; _Sa Vie et Son Œuvre_.
+
+[136] Quoted in Fincham’s _Naval Architecture_.
+
+[137] Mr. Taylor’s evidence to Select Committee, 1824. Quoted in
+Woodcroft’s _Steam Navigation_.
+
+[138] Miller is said to have approached the Admiralty twice upon the
+subject, and certainly he was keenly interested in naval affairs. A
+generous tribute has been paid him by a friend whose name is honoured
+in our naval annals: “I was unwearied,” says John Clerk of Eldin in
+the preface of his Essay on Naval Tactics, published in 1804, “in
+my attention to the many valuable experiments of the ingenious and
+liberal-minded Mr. Patrick Miller of Dalswinton; to whom, whether in
+shipbuilding or in constructing artillery, both musketry and great
+guns, his country is more indebted than has hitherto been properly
+acknowledged.”
+
+[139] Dickinson: _Robert Fulton, Engineer and Artist_.
+
+[140] Colden: _Life of Fulton_.
+
+[141] _M. Marestier’s Report on Steam Navigation in the U.S.A._ (Morgan
+and Creuze, 1826).
+
+[142] _Fraser’s Magazine_, 1848.
+
+[143] In his book _On Naval Warfare with Steam_, published thirty
+years later, Sir Howard Douglas set out more clearly the case for
+the strenuous development of steam navigation by this country, and
+exposed one of the chief flaws in M. Paixhans’ argument. At that date
+it was still the all-but-universal opinion in foreign countries that
+the introduction of steam had rendered superiority in seamanship
+of comparatively little importance in naval warfare. Sir Howard
+Douglas showed that English superiority had spread to machine design,
+construction and manipulation, and that if this country chose to exert
+itself it could maintain its lead.
+
+It is curious to note that not one of these three writers emphasises
+the main disability under which France has actually suffered, viz. the
+unsuitability of French coal as warship fuel and the distance of her
+iron and coal mines from her chief shipbuilding centres.
+
+[144] Briggs: _Naval Administrations_.
+
+[145] A steam paddle-boat, named the _Lord Melville_ in honour of the
+descendant of Charlotte Dundas, was then plying regularly between
+London Bridge and Calais.
+
+[146] _Memoirs of Sir John Barrow, Bart._
+
+[147] Williams: _Life of Sir Charles Napier_.
+
+[148] In 1835 a new department, of Royal Naval Engineers, was formed:
+to consist of technically trained men to manage the machinery of steam
+vessels. A uniform button was designed for them, and they were given
+the rank of Warrant Officers. Up to this time the machinery had been
+in charge of men who, for the most part, were “mere labourers”; and,
+commanding officers being ignorant of mechanical engineering, extensive
+fraud and waste had been practised, especially in connection with the
+refitting of vessels by contractors (Otway: _Steam Navigation_).
+
+[149] Reed: _On the Modifications to H.M. Ships in the XIXth century_.
+
+[150] The strategic value of steam power in warfare was first
+demonstrated by Lord John Hay in ’30. In the operations on the North
+Coast of Spain “the opportune arrival of a reinforcement of fifteen
+hundred fresh troops from Santander, by one steamer alone, despatched
+the previous day from San Sebastian, a distance of a hundred miles,
+for that express purpose, gave a decisive and important turn to the
+transactions of that day” (Otway: _Steam Navigation_).
+
+[151] Fincham.
+
+[152] The author of this work, M. Paucton, in addition to discussing
+the possibility of replacing the oar by the screw, threw out the
+suggestion of its use for aerial flight. “Je sçais qu’on ne peut guère
+manquer de faire rire, en voulant donner des aîles à un homme. Je sçais
+que plusieurs personnes, qui out osé prendre l’effor dans les airs,
+n’ont pas eu un meilleur succès que l’imprudent Icare.” Nevertheless,
+it is incontestable that a man can lift more than his weight. And if he
+were to employ his full force on a machine which could act on air as
+does the screw, it would lift him by its aid through the air as it will
+propel him through the water.
+
+M. Paucton hastened to calm the incredulous reader by assuring him with
+an affectation of levity that he was not really serious. “Il est permis
+de s’égayer quelquefois.”
+
+[153] A full account of these is given in Bourne’s _Treatise on the
+Screw Propeller_.
+
+[154] Weale: _Papers on Engineering_.
+
+[155] The _Archimedes_, with a 3-foot stroke engine which worked at
+27 strokes per minute, was run against the _Widgeon_, the fastest
+paddlewheel steamer on the Dover station. Two points of importance
+were noted by the Admiralty representatives with reference to the
+propelling machinery of the _Archimedes_: the objectionable noise made
+by the spur-wheels, and their liability to damage and derangement. As,
+however, Mr. Smith proposed to obviate this objection “by substituting
+spiral gearing in lieu of the cogs” the representatives did not lay
+stress on these disadvantages.
+
+[156] A similar paradox was accidentally revealed in the case of the
+paddlewheel. It was at first thought that, the broader the floats the
+greater would be the pull. A certain steam vessel, however, being found
+to have too much beam to allow her to pass into a lock, was altered by
+having her floats and paddle-boxes made narrower. It was found that her
+speed had thereby been improved (Otway).
+
+[157] Note sur l’État des Forces Navales de la France, 1844.
+
+[158] Parliamentary Report on Screw Propulsion in H.M. Navy, 1850.
+
+[159] Sir Howard Douglas was instrumental in bringing to the notice
+of the Government the aggressive aims implied by the _Enquête
+Parlementaire_: His notes were printed confidentially in ’53 at the
+press of the Foreign Office. Vide his _Defence of England_, published
+in 1860.
+
+[160] _The Navies of the World._ Hans Busk, M.A., 1859.
+
+[161] The details of these trials against iron plate will be found in
+Sir Howard Douglas’ _Naval Gunnery_, third and subsequent editions.
+
+[162] The rapid construction of over two hundred gunboats and
+their steam machinery revealed the enormous industrial capacity of
+this country, and constituted a feat of which the whole nation was
+rightly proud. For instance of successful organization, Messrs. Penn
+of Greenwich contracted to build eighty sets of main engines in
+three months--a proposition ridiculed as impossible. By the rapid
+distribution of duplicate patterns throughout the country the resources
+of all the greatest firms were utilized, and the contract was fulfilled
+almost to the day!
+
+Some seven or eight years later, when the building of ironclads was
+being debated in parliament, the government was able to recall this
+achievement as an argument for not building too many ships of a new and
+probably transitional type. If we liked, it was said, we could soon
+produce a fleet of ironclads far greater than all the other Powers of
+Europe besides.
+
+[163] J. Scott Russell: _The Fleet of the Future: Iron or Wood?_ 1861.
+
+[164] Reed: _Our Ironclad Ships_.
+
+[165] Boynton: _The Navies of England, France, America, and Russia._
+New York, ’65.
+
+[166] Colomb: _Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key_.
+
+[167] Colomb: _Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key_.
+
+[168] In parenthesis, for she is of no special interest as a type, we
+may note here the _Temeraire_, built at Chatham and completed in 1877:
+a compromise between the central-battery and the turret ship. Generally
+like the _Alexandra_ in disposition of armament, she carried in
+addition, in order to give all-round fire, two open barbettes, one at
+each end of the upper deck, each containing a 25-ton gun hydraulically
+operated.
+
+[169] The freedom of the _Royal Sovereign’s_ turrets from any liability
+to jam was demonstrated at Portsmouth by subjecting them to the impact
+of projectiles fired from the 12-ton guns of the _Bellerophon_.
+
+[170] Colomb: _Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key_.
+
+[171] Hitherto the torpedo had been used in warfare only in the form
+of a stationary mine, or motion had been given to it either by letting
+it drift on a tide or by attaching it rigidly to the bow of a vessel.
+After the American Civil War, in which conflict three-fourths of the
+ships disabled or destroyed were so disposed of by torpedoes, efforts
+were made to give motion to it, either by towing or by self-propulsion.
+In ’69 Commander Harvey, R.N., brought to the notice of the Admiralty
+his invention of a torpedo or sea kite which was so shaped that, when
+launched from the deck of a steamer and towed by a wire, it diverged
+from the steamer’s track and stood away at an angle of 45°. It could be
+exploded either electrically or by contact. The possibilities of this
+weapon were illustrated in a volume published in ’71, one picture of
+which showed luridly “an ironclad fleet surprised at sea by a squadron
+of torpedo craft armed with Harvey’s sea torpedoes.”
+
+The towed torpedo was overshadowed by the fish or self-propelled
+torpedo. In ’70 Mr. Whitehead came to England and, prosecuting
+experiments under the eyes of naval officers, with a 16-inch torpedo
+successfully sank an old corvette anchored in the Medway at 136 yards’
+range. The result was the purchase by the Admiralty of his secret and
+sole rights. In ’77 the first torpedo-boat was ordered.
+
+[172] Colomb: _Attack and Defence of Fleets_.
+
+[173] Vice-Admiral Sir G. Elliot: _On the Classification of Ships of
+War_.
+
+[174] Brassey: _The British Navy_.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  _Active_, the, 298
+
+  _Agamemnon_, the, 288
+
+  _Ajax_, the, 288
+
+  _Alarm_, the, 44
+
+  _Alecto_, the, 239
+
+  _Alexandra_, the, 274
+
+  Anderson, Robert, 167
+
+  Anson, Lord, 43, 121, 151
+
+  Archimedes, 95, 115, 234
+
+  _Archimedes_, the, 238
+
+  _Argyle_, the, 225
+
+  Armada, the Spanish, 9, 77, 79
+
+  Armstrong, Lord, 200
+
+  Armstrong gun, the, 201, 255, 268
+
+  Atwood, 40
+
+  _Audacious_, the, 274
+
+
+  Bacon, Lord, 34, 93, 96
+
+  Bacon, Roger, 62
+
+  Baker, Ezekiel, 119, 189
+
+  Baker, James, 15
+
+  Baker, Matthew, 15
+
+  Balchen, Admiral, 147
+
+  Barnaby, Sir N., 50, 283, 289
+
+  Barrow, Sir J., 98, 229
+
+  Battery, central, ships, 270
+
+  Bawd, Peter, 72
+
+  Beaufoy, Colonel, 40
+
+  Beaufoy, Corporal, 190
+
+  Belleisle, siege of, 83
+
+  _Bellerophon_, the, 272
+
+  Bentham, Sir S., 55, 136, 162
+
+  Berghen-op-Zoom, siege of, 120
+
+  Bernouilli, Daniel, 37, 216
+
+  Bernouilli, John, 37, 115
+
+  Berthold the Friar, 62
+
+  _Birkenhead_, the, 257
+
+  Blake, 42
+
+  Blomefield, General, 85
+
+  Board of Ordnance, 145
+
+  Bold, Charles the, 87
+
+  Bonaparte, 165
+
+  Borda, the Chevalier, 37
+
+  Bossut, Abbé, 38
+
+  Bouguer, 37, 216
+
+  Boulton, 108, 222
+
+  Bourne, Robert, 143, 212
+
+  Boyle, 96
+
+  Boynton, 267
+
+  Brackenbury, General, 62
+
+  Bramah, 222, 234
+
+  Bridgewater, the Duke of, 218
+
+  Briggs, Sir J., 228
+
+  Broke, Sir P., 154
+
+  Brown Bess, rifle, 192
+
+  Brown, Commander, 235
+
+  Brunel, 228, 238, 277
+
+  Brunswick, rifle, 190
+
+  Buckhurst, Lord, 79
+
+  Burrell, Andrew, 23
+
+  Bushnell, 213
+
+  Busk, Hans, 184, 244
+
+  Byng, Admiral, 42
+
+
+  Cabots, the, 5
+
+  _Caiman_, the, 293
+
+  _Caledonia_, the, 49, 226
+
+  _Captain_, the, 280
+
+  Caus, Solomon, 95-98
+
+  Cawley, 103
+
+  _Cerberus_, the, 282
+
+  Chads, Captain, 249
+
+  Chapman, 39, 149
+
+  Charles I, King, 23
+
+  Charles II, King, 29, 96
+
+  Charles V, Emperor, 88
+
+  _Charlotte Dundas_, the, 219
+
+  Charterhouse, garden, 119
+
+  Chatfield, 59
+
+  _Chesapeake_, the, 156
+
+  Chinese gunboats, 291
+
+  Clerk of Eldin, 219
+
+  _Clermont_, the, 223
+
+  Cloyne, Bishop of, 116
+
+  Cockle, Maurice, 65
+
+  _Collingwood_, the, 292
+
+  Colomb, Admiral, 264, 287
+
+  _Colossus_, the, 288
+
+  Columbus, 5
+
+  _Comet_, the, 225, 229
+
+  _Commerce de Marseille_, the, 46
+
+  Compass, discovery of, 3
+
+  Condorcet, 38
+
+  _Congo_, the, 238
+
+  _Congress_, the, 263
+
+  Congreve, General, 85
+
+  Congreve, Sir W., 85, 91, 147, 158
+
+  _Conqueror_, the, 288
+
+  Consort, Prince, 277
+
+  Constantinople, siege of, 66
+
+  Corbett, Sir Julian, 1, 6, 7, 8, 9
+
+  _Couronne_, the, 254
+
+  Cowper Coles, Captain, 276
+
+  Creuze, Augustin, 59, 256
+
+  Cruiser, type, 298
+
+  Cumberland, Earl of, 20
+
+  _Curaçoa_, the, 230
+
+
+  Dahlgren, 139, 234, 261
+
+  _Dandolo_, the, 285
+
+  _Dauntless_, the, 242
+
+  Deane, Sir A., 28
+
+  Delvigne, 187, 194
+
+  _Demologos_, the, 225
+
+  Denny, Messrs., 226
+
+  Derrick, 28, 31
+
+  Desaguliers, Dr., 101
+
+  Desblancs, 217
+
+  _Devastation_, the, 281
+
+  Dirck, 98
+
+  _Doncaster_, the, 229
+
+  Douglas, Sir C., 151
+
+  Douglas, Sir H., 86, 173, 228, 257, 261
+
+  _Dreadnought_, the, 283
+
+  Duckworth, Sir J., 67
+
+  _Duilio_, the, 285
+
+  _Duke_, the, 130, 152
+
+  Dundas, Lord, 218
+
+  Dunkirk privateers, 23
+
+  Dupuy de Lôme, 253
+
+  Dutch ships, characteristics of, 27
+
+  _Dwarf_, the, 243
+
+
+  Elliot, Admiral, 246
+
+  Enfield rifle, 197
+
+  _Enterprise_, the, 273
+
+  Ericsson, 236
+
+  _Essex_, the, 137
+
+  Euler, 37, 216
+
+  _Excellent_, the, 158
+
+
+  _Ferdinand Max_, the, 263
+
+  Fincham, 1, 48, 53, 233
+
+  Finsbury Field, 82
+
+  Fitch, 220
+
+  Forbin, Count, 40
+
+  _Formidable_, the, 134, 153
+
+  Fortifications, land, 204
+
+  Fournier, Abbé, 144
+
+  Frederick the Great, 90
+
+  Fremantle, Hon. T. F., 184
+
+  Frigate, origin of, 23
+
+  Froissart, 64
+
+  Froude, 286
+
+  Fuller, 27, 171
+
+  Fulton, 221
+
+  Furring of ships, 17
+
+
+  _Galatea_, the, 229
+
+  Galileo, 95, 116
+
+  Galleasse, 4, 211
+
+  Galleon, 4, 7
+
+  Galley, 2, 71, 210
+
+  Gama, Vasco di, 5
+
+  Garoy, Blasco de, 212
+
+  Gautier, 216
+
+  Genoese, the, 4
+
+  Gibbon, 66, 69
+
+  Gibraltar, siege of, 250
+
+  Girdling of ships, 29
+
+  _Glatton_, the, 135, 282
+
+  _Gloire_, the, 205, 253
+
+  Gordon, Thomas, 48
+
+  _Grace à Dieu_, the, 76
+
+  _Great Britain_, the, 238
+
+  _Great Eastern_, the, 258
+
+  Greek fire, 61
+
+  Greener, 193
+
+  Gribeauval, 90
+
+  Gunpowder, 3, 70, 76, 99
+
+  Gustavus Adolphus, 90
+
+
+  Haddock, Sir R., 29
+
+  Halley, 117
+
+  Hampton Roads, battle of, 262
+
+  Hannay, 57
+
+  Hardy, Sir T. M., 159, 230
+
+  Harvey torpedo, 291
+
+  _Harwich_, the, 31
+
+  Hastings, Captain, 174
+
+  Hastings, Sir T., 248
+
+  Hautefeuille, J. de, 99
+
+  Hawke, Admiral, 43, 122, 151
+
+  Hawkins, Sir J., 8
+
+  Hawkins, Sir R., 9, 80
+
+  Hay, Lord John, 232
+
+  _Hébé_, the, 134
+
+  Henri II, King, 75, 89
+
+  Henry VIII, King, 6, 72
+
+  Henry, Prince, 19
+
+  _Hercules_, the, 273
+
+  Hero of Alexandria, 94
+
+  _Hibernia_, the, 48
+
+  Hime, Colonel, 61, 77
+
+  Hogue, battle of La, 32
+
+  Honourable Artillery Co., 82
+
+  Horse artillery, 91
+
+  Hoste, 37
+
+  _Hotspur_, the, 282, 287
+
+  Howard, Lord, 9, 77
+
+  Hugo, Victor, 147
+
+  Hulls, Jonathan, 215
+
+  Hutton, 122, 129, 132
+
+  Huyghens, 37, 96, 99
+
+
+  _Impérieuse_, the, 295
+
+  _Inconstant_, the, 298
+
+  India, East, Company, 45, 135
+
+  _Inflexible_, the, 285
+
+  Inman, Dr., 57
+
+  _Invincible_, the, 44
+
+  _Iron Duke_, the, 274
+
+  _Italia_, the, 289
+
+
+  Jacob, General, 196
+
+  Jal, 5
+
+  James I, King, 15
+
+  James II, King, 33
+
+  James, the historian, 49, 132
+
+  Joinville, Prince de, 240
+
+  Jouffroi, 217
+
+  Juan, Don G., 37
+
+
+  Kaltoff, Caspar, 97
+
+  Kempenfelt, Captain, 123
+
+  Keppel, Lord, 48
+
+  Key, Admiral Cooper, 268
+
+  Keyham, 254
+
+  Kinburn, 251
+
+  Knowles, Sir C., 45, 46
+
+  Krupp, 208
+
+  Kuper, Admiral, 206
+
+
+  _Lady Nancy_, the, 276
+
+  Laird, Messrs., 252, 280
+
+  Laputa, 34
+
+  Laughton, Sir J. K., 1, 9, 77, 153
+
+  Lepanto, battle of, 72, 78
+
+  _Lepanto_, the, 289
+
+  Lefroy, General, 67
+
+  Leibnitz, 214
+
+  Leipsic lexicon, 244
+
+  Lissa, battle of, 263
+
+  Livingstone, 222
+
+  Louis XI, King, 87
+
+
+  _Magenta_, the, 272
+
+  Malthus, 82
+
+  Manby, Aaron, 255
+
+  Manwayring, Sir H., 13, 143
+
+  Marestier, 224
+
+  _Mars_, the, 121
+
+  Marshall gun carriage, 158
+
+  Marsilly gun carriage, 158
+
+  _Mary Rose_, the, 74
+
+  Massé, Colonel, 86
+
+  Maudsley, Messrs., 285
+
+  _Maure_, the, 41
+
+  McLaurin, Colin, 39
+
+  _Medea_, the, 230
+
+  Melville, General, 127
+
+  Melville, Lord, 228
+
+  Mercier, Captain, 163
+
+  _Merrimac_, the, 262
+
+  Metacentre, discovery of, 37
+
+  Middleton, Sir C., 46, 123
+
+  Miller, Patrick, 127, 217
+
+  Minié, rifle, 195
+
+  _Minotaur_, the, 265
+
+  _Monarch_, the, 279
+
+  _Monitor_, the, 262
+
+  _Monkey_, the, 229
+
+  Monro, Colonel, 173
+
+  Mons Meg, 65
+
+  Moore, Sir Jonas, 98, 143
+
+  Moorfields, 82
+
+  Moorsom, Captain, 261, 266
+
+  Morland, Sir S., 29, 99
+
+  Muller, 84, 88
+
+  Murray, Mungo, 39
+
+
+  _Nancy Dawson_, the, 58
+
+  Napier, Sir C., 230, 233, 241, 255, 266
+
+  Napoleon III, 75, 87, 199, 250
+
+  Navarino, battle of, 156
+
+  Nelson, 45, 154, 269
+
+  _Nemesis_, the, 255
+
+  Newcomen, 102-106
+
+  Newton, 35, 96, 117, 214
+
+  Nicolas, Sir H., 3, 63
+
+  Noble, Captain, 207
+
+  Noel, Commander, 264, 289
+
+  Normans as shipbuilders, 5
+
+  Norton, Captain, 193, 199
+
+  Norton, Robert, 76, 78, 142
+
+  Nye, Nathaniel, 98
+
+
+  Oak, English, 27
+
+  _Odin_, the, 233
+
+  Oppenheim, 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 73, 75, 77, 81
+
+  _Orient_, the, 164
+
+  Otway, Commander, 110, 231
+
+
+  _Pacificateur_, the, 172, 248
+
+  Paixhans, 166, 227
+
+  Pakington, Sir J., 258
+
+  _Pallas_, the, 279
+
+  Palliser, Major, 205
+
+  Papin, 102, 213
+
+  Pardies, 36
+
+  Pascal, 95
+
+  Peake, Sir H., 56
+
+  Pechell, Captain, 157
+
+  Peel, 257
+
+  _Pembroke_, the, 41
+
+  _Penelope_, the, 233
+
+  Penn, Messrs., 253
+
+  Pennington, Sir J., 23
+
+  Pepys, 27, 33, 81, 96, 130
+
+  Perrin, 15
+
+  Pett, Peter, 23
+
+  Pett, Phineas, 15, 18
+
+  Petty, Sir W., 35
+
+  _Phœbe_, the, 138
+
+  _Phœnix_, the, 26, 175
+
+  Pickard, 108, 217
+
+  Pitt, 49
+
+  Plat, Sir H., 186
+
+  Point-blank defined, 114
+
+  Porta, della, 95
+
+  Potter, Humphrey, 105
+
+  Prevesa, battle of, 72
+
+  _Prince Albert_, the, 278
+
+  _Prince Royal_, the, 19
+
+  _Princessa_, the, 43
+
+  Proof of guns, 81
+
+  Punchinello, 130
+
+
+  _Rainbow_, the, 134
+
+  Raleigh, Sir W., 16, 24, 79
+
+  _Raleigh_, the, 298
+
+  Ram tactics, 263, 290
+
+  Ramelli, 212
+
+  _Rattler_, the, 239
+
+  _Ré d’Italia_, the, 263
+
+  Reed, Sir E., 59, 274, 279
+
+  Richelieu, 24, 212
+
+  Riders in ships, 11
+
+  _Rob Roy_, the, 226
+
+  Robins, Benjamin, 112-124, 129, 187
+
+  Robison, 106
+
+  Rodney, 134, 153
+
+  _Rolf Krake_, the, 277
+
+  Romme, 38
+
+  Roncière, de la, 212
+
+  Ross, Sir J., 227
+
+  _Royal George_, the, 43, 83
+
+  _Royal Katherine_, the, 35
+
+  Royal Society, foundation of, 96
+
+  _Royal Sovereign_, the, 278
+
+  _Royal William_, the, 28
+
+  _Ruby_, the, 249
+
+  Rumsey, 220
+
+  _Rupert_, the, 288
+
+  Rupert, Prince, 214
+
+  Russell, Scott, 252, 257, 264
+
+
+  Samuda, Messrs., 278
+
+  Sartorius, Admiral, 261
+
+  _Savannah_, the, 226
+
+  Savery, 100, 215
+
+  Schalk, 83
+
+  Scharnhorst, 88
+
+  Schmidt, 184
+
+  Scloppetaria, 184
+
+  Scott, Commander, 200
+
+  _Scourge of Malice_, the, 20
+
+  Seppings, Sir R., 46, 51
+
+  Sewell, 39
+
+  _Shah_, the, 298
+
+  _Shannon_, the, 154, 299
+
+  Sheathing, introduction of, 18
+
+  Sheerness, 254
+
+  Shish, 29, 35
+
+  Shovell, Admiral, 81
+
+  Shrapnel, Lieutenant, 91, 163
+
+  _Sidon_, the, 233
+
+  Simmons, Captain, 164, 176
+
+  _Simoon_, the, 249
+
+  Sinope, battle of, 162, 249
+
+  Slingsby, Sir R., 145
+
+  Smith, Pettit, 236
+
+  Snodgrass, 47
+
+  _Solferino_, the, 272
+
+  _Sovereign of the Seas_, the, 24
+
+  Spitalfields, 81, 130
+
+  _Sprightly_, the, 229
+
+  Stanhope, Lord, 221, 228
+
+  Stevinus, 95
+
+  Stockton, Captain, 237
+
+  _Stromboli_, the, 276
+
+  _Sultan_, the, 273
+
+  Surveyors, abilities of, 55
+
+  Sussex, iron mines, 69, 78
+
+  Sutherland, T., 35
+
+  Sveaborg, bombardment of, 252
+
+  Symington, 218
+
+  Symonds, Admiral, 57
+
+
+  Tactics, 2, 8, 30, 33, 77, 131, 153, 210, 263
+
+  Tartaglia, 89, 116
+
+  Taylor, 218
+
+  Tegetthof, Admiral, 263
+
+  _Temeraire_, the, 275
+
+  Tennant, Sir E., 200
+
+  _Terrible_, the, 233
+
+  _Thames_, the, 225
+
+  “Thieves, Forty,” the, 56
+
+  Thouvenin, Colonel, 195
+
+  _Thunderer_, the, 283
+
+  Torelli, 212
+
+  Torpedo, evolution of, 291
+
+  Torricelli, 95
+
+  Touchard, Admiral, 264
+
+  _Trades Increase_, the, 21
+
+  Trafalgar, battle of, 45, 49, 53, 269
+
+  Treuille de Beaulieu, 199
+
+  Trim, definition of, 13
+
+  Trinity House, 24
+
+  Trollope, Captain, 135
+
+  Tromp, 31
+
+  Trunnions, evolution of, 86
+
+  Truss frames, 52
+
+  Tunnage, 5, 49, 56
+
+  Turgot, 38
+
+  Turret, the evolution of, 271, 275
+
+  Types, differentiation of, 296
+
+
+  Upnor Castle, 81
+
+
+  _Vanguard_, the, 274
+
+  Vauban, Marshal, 160
+
+  Ventilation, study of, 44
+
+  _Victory_, the, 45, 53, 147
+
+  Villani, 64
+
+  Vincennes, 194, 250
+
+  _Volage_, the, 298
+
+
+  Walker, Captain, 193
+
+  Wallis, 35, 96
+
+  Walter, 120
+
+  Waltham Abbey, 85
+
+  _Warrior_, the, 205, 260
+
+  _Warspite_, the, 295
+
+  Watt, 93, 105-110, 217
+
+  Waymouth, Captain, 17
+
+  Wellington, 240
+
+  _Whelps_, the, 23
+
+  Whitehead, 292
+
+  Whitworth, Sir J., 197
+
+  Willett, 43, 48
+
+  Woodcraft, 212
+
+  Woolwich, 82
+
+  Worcester, Marquis of, 93, 97, 213
+
+  Wynter, Sir R., 145
+
+
+  Zöllner, 184
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
+preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
+Archaic spellings have not been changed; the spelling of non-English
+words has not been changed.
+
+Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
+quotation marks retained.
+
+Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of
+inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.
+
+Pages with Plate-illustrations included printer’s information regarding
+the pages the plates should face. That information has been removed in
+this eBook, as those illustrations are positioned as close as possible
+to those pages.
+
+The spelling and grammar of French text has been reproduced here as it
+was printed in the original book.
+
+The publication information of a few citations was italicized, but as
+that is not the style in most of the book, those words and dates are
+shown here unitalicized.
+
+Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of pages, have been collected and
+placed just before the Index of this eBook.
+
+Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.
+
+Page 5: “tunnage” was printed that way and is in the Index, but the
+other pages to which the Index entry refers spell the word as “tonnage”.
+
+Page 23: “remonstance” was printed that way.
+
+Page 47: “to their rates, And” was printed that way.
+
+Page 72: “the King’s feedmen” was printed that way, probably should be
+“freedmen”.
+
+Page 265: “Give her the stem” was printed that way.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of Naval Armament, by 
+Frederick Leslie Robertson
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF NAVAL ARMAMENT ***
+
+***** This file should be named 56777-0.txt or 56777-0.zip *****
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of Naval Armament, by 
+Frederick Leslie Robertson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: The Evolution of Naval Armament
+
+Author: Frederick Leslie Robertson
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2018 [EBook #56777]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF NAVAL ARMAMENT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by deaurider, Charlie Howard, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="transnote covernote">
+<p class="center">Transcriber’s Note</p>
+<p class="center">Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h1 class="wspace">THE EVOLUTION OF<br />
+NAVAL ARMAMENT</h1>
+
+<div id="ip_0" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 25.625em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p000.jpg" width="410" height="528" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>A SIXTY-GUN SHIP OF LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY</p>
+  <p class="smaller">From John Smith’s <cite>Sea-Man’s Grammar</cite> (1694 edition)</p>
+  </div><div class="captionr"><i>Frontispiece</i></div></div>
+
+<p class="newpage p4 center vspace wspace large">
+THE EVOLUTION OF<br />
+<span class="large">NAVAL ARMAMENT</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center vspace wspace">BY<br />
+<span class="larger">FREDERICK LESLIE ROBERTSON</span><br />
+<span class="small">ENGINEER COMMANDER, ROYAL NAVY</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center"><span class="small wspace">WITH EIGHT HALF-TONE PLATES AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center vspace wspace">LONDON<br />
+<span class="larger gesperrt1">CONSTABLE &amp; COMPANY LTD</span><br />
+10 ORANGE STREET LEICESTER SQUARE WC<br />
+<span class="smaller">1921</span>
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">v</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="PREFACE">PREFACE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> notes on which these essays are based were
+collected in the course of two commissions spent
+under the lee of the Admiralty library, close to the
+Royal United Service Institution, and in touch with the
+Reading Room of the British Museum and other public sources
+of information.</p>
+
+<p>The lack of a book describing in popular language the
+materialistic side of naval history is, I think, generally
+admitted. Historians as a rule have devoted small space to
+consideration of material; in particular, the story of the
+revolutionary changes in naval material which took place
+during the nineteenth century has never been placed before
+the public in convenient form. In the attempt to supply such
+a description I have taken the liberty, as an engineer, of treating
+of naval material as a whole; tracing, as well as my
+technical knowledge permits, the progress of all the three
+principal elements—ship, gun, engine—and their interdependence.
+The result, faulty and incomplete as it is, may
+nevertheless be of considerable service, it is hoped, in clarifying
+the work of the historians and bridging the gap which divides
+the classic histories from our modern text-books.</p>
+
+<p>I have considered our modern navy to begin with the
+“Admiral” class of battleship, about the year 1880.</p>
+
+<p>My respectful thanks are due to the heads of three Admiralty
+departments: Captain R. H. Crooke, C.B., lately Director of
+Naval Ordnance; Engineer Vice-Admiral Sir George Goodwin,
+K.C.B., LL.D., Engineer-in-Chief of the Fleet; and Sir Eustace
+T. D’Eyncourt, K.C.B., Director of Naval Construction; for
+their unofficial approval. I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness
+to the officials of the Admiralty and the R.U.S.I. libraries,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">vi</span>
+for their invariable kindness; to the Directors of the British and
+S. Kensington Museums, for permission to reproduce pictures
+in their possession; to Mr. A. W. Johns, C.B.E., Assistant
+Director of Naval Construction, Engineer Commander E. C.
+Smith, O.B.E., R.N., Mr. H. W. Dickinson, of the S. Kensington
+Museum, Mr. Edward Fraser, and Sir George Hadcock,
+F.R.S., R.A., of Elswick, for various help and criticism; and
+especially to Mr. L. G. Carr Laughton, of the Admiralty
+library, of whose advice and knowledge I have often availed
+myself, and to whose encouragement the completion of the
+work has been largely due.</p>
+
+<p>It only remains to state that the whole of the book is written
+and published on my own responsibility, and that it is in no
+manner or degree an official publication.</p>
+
+<p class="sigright">F. L. R.</p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table id="toc" summary="Contents">
+  <tr class="small">
+    <td class="tdr">CHAPTER</td>
+    <td> </td>
+    <td class="tdr">PAGE</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr first">I.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Sailing Ship</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">1</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr first">II.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Smooth-bore Gun</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">61</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr first">III.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Steam Engine</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">93</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr first">IV.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">“<span class="smcap">New Principles of Gunnery</span>”</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">112</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr first">V.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Carronade</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">125</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr first">VI.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Truck Carriage</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">140</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr first">VII.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Shell Gun</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">160</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr first">VIII.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Rifled Gun</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">181</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr first">IX.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Propelling Machinery</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">210</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr first">X.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Ironclad</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">246</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td> </td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Index</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#INDEX">303</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="PLATES">PLATES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class="loi" summary="Plates">
+  <tr class="nobpad">
+    <td class="tdl">A Sixty-gun Ship of late Seventeenth Century</td>
+    <td class="tdr small mid"><a href="#ip_0"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+  <tr class="small">
+    <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><i>To face page</i></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">A Tudor Ship of Period 1540–50</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_60">60</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Tudor Ships under Sail</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_124">124</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">The <i>Speaker</i>, a Second-rate of the Commonwealth</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_180">180</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">The <i>Comet</i> of 1812</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_224">224</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl"><i>Rattler</i> versus <i>Alecto</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_240">240</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">The <i>Warrior</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_260">260</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">The <i>Monarch</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_280">280</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<h2 class="newpage p2">ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT</h2>
+
+<table class="loi" summary="Illustrations">
+  <tr class="small">
+    <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><i>Page</i></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Diagram illustrating Distortion of Frames under Load</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_52">52</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Diagram representing a Ship with Trussed Frames</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_53">53</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Typical Sections of “Symondite” and contemporary Ships</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_59">59</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Turkish Bronze Cannon</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_68">68</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">French Twenty-four Pounder, with Spherical Chamber</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_84">84</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Savery’s Engine</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_101">101</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Newcomen’s Engine</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_104">104</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Connecting-rod</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_111">111</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">A Carronade</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_132">133</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">A Truck Gun</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_147">147</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Method of Gun-Exercise in H.M.S. <i>Shannon</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_155">155</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">A Paixhans Gun</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_173">173</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Bullet Mould</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_187">187</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Rifleman Presenting</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_189">189</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">“Carabine à Tige”</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_195">195</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Minié Bullet</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_195">195</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Whitworth Rifle Bullet</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_198">198</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Ship and Galley</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_211">211</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">The <i>Charlotte Dundas</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_219">219</a></td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">Pettit Smith’s Propeller</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#ip_235">235</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">1</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="THE_EVOLUTION"><span class="larger vspace">THE EVOLUTION<br />
+OF NAVAL ARMAMENT</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak p2 vspace"><a id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I<br />
+
+<span class="subhead">THE SAILING SHIP</span></h2>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">To</span> attempt to trace in any detail the evolution of
+the sailing warship is a task, it must be at once
+admitted, far beyond the scope and intention of the
+present essay.</p>
+
+<p>The history of naval architecture is, of course, a vast and
+many-sided subject. Few are the writers who have dealt with
+it, and, for reasons which will appear, few of those have written
+in the English language. Such books as treat of it are too
+cumbrous and technical for easy reading; they are not written
+in the modern style; by the frequent digressions of their
+authors on matters of general history, high politics, battles,
+economics, commerce, and even sport, they bear witness to the
+difficulties of the task and the complexity of the subject. The
+history of naval architecture still remains to be written. In the
+meantime the student will find the monumental <cite>Marine
+Architecture</cite>, of Charnock, and the smaller <cite>Naval Architecture</cite>,
+of Fincham, invaluable fields of inquiry; among the historians
+the works of Nicolas, Laughton, Corbett and Oppenheim, will
+furnish him with the materials for the complete story of the
+evolution up to the end of the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>The following pages give a sketch, drawn chiefly from these
+authors, of the progress of the timber-built sailing ship and of
+the principal influences which guided the evolution. Lessons
+may still be drawn from this history, it is suggested, which
+even in the altered circumstances of to-day may be of value in
+some other application. One lesson, long unlearnt, the great
+blunder of two centuries, lies clearly on the surface. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">2</span>
+evidence will show how, by our long neglect of the science of
+naval architecture, the British navy fought frequently at an
+unnecessary disadvantage; but it will also show how, masters
+of the art of shipbuilding, we gave our fleets such a superiority
+in strength and seaworthiness as almost to neutralize the
+defects inherent in their general design.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>Before the fourteenth century the sailing ship, i.e. the ship in
+which sails were used as the chief motive power, could not
+compete in battle on equal terms with the oar-driven vessel;
+both in the Mediterranean and in Northern waters the oar-driven
+galley possessed advantages of speed and handiness
+which relegated the heavy, high-built and capacious sailing
+ship to the position of a mere transport or victualler. The
+fighting ships were the galleys: long speedy vessels with fine
+lines and low freeboard, propelled by rowers and fought by
+soldiers clad in mail and armed with swords and lances. Sails
+were carried, but only as secondary power, for use when the
+galleys ran before the wind.</p>
+
+<p>Sea tactics consisted in ramming and boarding; the vessels
+were designed accordingly. The royal galleys of King Henry
+III, which formed the fighting fleet of Hubert de Burgh, are
+described as having each two tiers of oars, with platforms
+along each side over the heads of the rowers, on which the
+soldiers stood. Hung on the bulwarks in front of them were
+their shields. From the gaudily painted mast pennons and
+banners floated on the wind; a large square cotton sail,
+embroidered with the royal arms, was triced to the yard. The
+masthead was crowned with a circular “top,” a repository
+for bricks and iron bars wherewith to bilge an enemy vessel.
+At both ends of the galley were raised platforms or “castles”
+filled with picked soldiery, who during the approach to action
+would pour brass-winged arrows into the enemy and who,
+when the enemy had been grappled, leaped aboard. From
+mechanical engines low down in the waist large stones would
+be projected, and, if on the windy side, quicklime would be
+thrown, and other “instruments of annoyance.” The galleys
+were lightly built, and carried no pumps. It was no uncommon
+sight, we are told, to see half the knights baling, while the
+others fought hand-to-hand with the enemy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">3</span>
+By the year 1300 the size and utility of ships had made considerable
+advance. Two masts were given them, each supported
+by a few shrouds and carrying a single large square sail;
+neither masts nor sails were yet subdivided, but the sails could
+be enlarged by having one or more “bonnets” laced to their
+lower part. Of the two masts the taller, the foremast, raked
+considerably over the bows, and both were surmounted by
+tops, with flagstaff and streamers. A central rudder appeared
+in this century, in place of the paddle fixed to the quarter, and
+a rudimentary bowsprit. The largest <em>cogs</em>, as they were now
+called, were of 250 tons burthen. When hired of merchants
+for war service, they were converted by the addition of fore-, aft-, and
+top-castles, built high so as to overtop, if possible, the
+enemy. The war vessels were at this time lavishly decorated;
+the sails were silk, dyed red or embroidered with armorial
+designs, the tops and stages were aflame with banners and
+pennons, the masts and yards were gilt. Large sums of money
+were spent by the knights in beautifying their ships.</p>
+
+<p>But in this century two great inventions brought to a close an
+epoch in warship construction. Gunpowder and the mariner’s
+compass were discovered. Cannon were adapted to ships in
+place of the mechanical engines which had formerly been
+carried, and by aid of the compass, housed in its wood-pegged
+bittacle in the steerage, vessels began to venture out of touch
+with land and sail with a new security the uncharted ocean.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of each of these two discoveries was the same: a
+growth in the size, strength, and capacity of ships, a decline in
+the use of oars and a greater reliance on sails. High sides were
+required against the waves, stouter timbers to support the
+weight of ordnance, more capacious holds for the stowage of the
+ballast, food, and cordage which would be needed for a long sea
+voyage. The galley, with its low flush deck and outward-sloping
+sides was ill adapted for the new conditions; a new
+construction was seen to be needed. Two new types were
+evolved, one in the Mediterranean and one, more gradually, in
+Atlantic waters.</p>
+
+<p>Even before the Christian era there had been a distinct
+differentiation between the ships of the Mediterranean and
+those of the Atlantic seaboard. The latter, as shown by
+Nicolas’ quotation from Cæsar, were more strongly built than
+the Roman galleys, with flatter bottoms, to “adapt them to the
+shallows and to sustain without danger the ebbing of the tide,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">4</span>
+and with prows and sterns “very high and erect, to bear the
+hugeness of the waves”: properties which, even before the
+advent of fire artillery, conferred on them important advantages.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">1</a>
+Nevertheless, complete differentiation did not obtain
+until after the discovery of gunpowder and the mariner’s
+needle. Before that time the vessels used by the Northern
+nations in war were of the galley type, built by themselves or,
+after the Crusades had revealed the superiority of the Mediterranean
+powers in warship design, hired not infrequently
+from Venetians or from Genoese. The Genoese were the chief
+naval mercenaries of Europe at this age: “Genoese were
+vice-admirals to the English king, and Genoese galleys fought
+for the French at Sluys.”</p>
+
+<p>The new type evolved in the Mediterranean was the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">galleasse</i>.
+For centuries, as we have seen, large sailing ships had been
+used for commerce, both in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean.
+With the inevitable increase in size brought about by
+the adoption of cannon, and by the desire for greater sea-keeping
+qualities, resort was now had by the Genoese and
+Venetians to sails in war vessels as a means of propulsion of
+equal importance with oars. Thus an uncomfortable compromise
+was effected between oars and sails; both were
+provided. The galleasse was originally a large decked galley,
+with three pole masts for its lateen sails, and with cannon
+spaced at intervals along its sides above the rowers. In form
+it differed little from the galley, but in the disposition of its
+armament it was entirely different; it represented the first
+stage in the evolution of the broadside fighting ship.</p>
+
+<p>But the galleasse, though it might meet the requirements of
+Mediterranean warfare, was almost as unsuited as the galley
+to Atlantic conditions. Accordingly the warship underwent a
+separate and independent development at the hands of the
+Atlantic nations. Forsaking the galley, they took the lofty,
+strong and capacious sailing merchant ship as the basis of a
+new type, and from the lumbering carrack and caravel and
+dromon they evolved the vessel which eventually became
+known as the <em>galleon</em>. A distinctive naval architecture, Gothic
+rather than Byzantine in character, was thus founded on the
+Atlantic seaboard. The oar was entirely superseded by the
+sail. The ships were high, and their sides, instead of falling out
+like those of galleys, were curved inwards so as to “tumble<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">5</span>
+home” above the water-line: an arrangement which protected
+the ordnance, added to the strength of the vessels, and tended
+to render them steadier gun-platforms. The top-castles were
+retained on the masts, but the end-castles disappeared, or
+rather, were incorporated into the structure of the lofty bow
+and stern, to provide accommodation for officers, and cover for
+the crew. The <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">voile latine</i> gave way to the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">voile quarrée</i>. In
+place of the large lateen sails carried by galley and galleasse,
+were smaller sails and courses, square, more easily manipulated
+and allowing of greater variation in disposition and effective
+area, to suit the conditions of weather and the trim of the ship.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the fifteenth century the sailing ship developed.
+“While in the first quarter,” writes Mr. Oppenheim of English
+shipping, “we find that men-of-war possess, at the most, two
+masts and two sails, carry three or four guns, and one or two
+rudimentary bowsprits, at the close of the same century they
+are three- or four-masters, with topmasts and topsails, bowsprit
+and spritsail, and conforming to the characteristics of
+the type which remained generally constant for more than two
+centuries.” The English mariner had by this time acquired
+his honourable reputation. In merchant ships he carried
+Bordeaux wine, the casks of which became the unit for measurement
+of their tunnage; even in winter months, we are told,
+he braved the Bay with pilgrims on tour to the shrine of
+St. James of Compostella. Large royal ships of over 1000
+tons burthen were built, in the early part of the century, in
+English yards. As builders the Normans seem at this time
+to have excelled.<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">2</a> But the most wonderful development of
+the science of seamanship in all its branches took place in the
+Peninsula. Largely through the inspiration of one man the
+greatest efforts of Spain and Portugal were directed to the
+cult of navigation and geography, the improvement of shipbuilding,
+and the discovery of new and distant lands and
+oceans. A brilliant impetus was given to the study of ship
+construction by the voyages of Columbus, the Cabots, Vasco
+di Gama, and other intrepid spirits who, by aid of the compass,
+braved the moral and physical terrors of far-distant voyages—“fighting
+immensity with a needle.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">6</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>With the development of artillery the value of the sailing
+ship for sea warfare came gradually to view. Naval tactics
+suffered a complete change.</p>
+
+<p>Until the early days of the sixteenth century sea-fights had
+been land-fights in character; ships came as quickly as
+possible to close quarters, grappled or charged one another,
+cut rigging, and essayed to board. The sailor was subservient
+to the soldier. The gun, represented in the main by serpentines,
+periers, murderers, and other quick-firing pieces, was
+primarily a defensive armament, for the defence, firstly, of
+the entire ship, or, in the event of the waist being captured,
+of the fortified end citadels or castles. “These castles, which
+in vessels especially constructed for war came to take the form
+of a forecastle and a half-deck, were made musket-proof; and
+being closed athwartship with similarly protected bulkheads,
+known as ‘cubbridge-heads,’ were impenetrable to boarders;
+while at the same time, by means of loopholes and quick-firing
+pieces in-board, they could enfilade the waist with musketry
+and murdering shot. Thus a ship of the English pattern, at
+any rate, could rarely be held even if boarders entered, until
+her ‘cage works’ or protected castles were destroyed by gunfire.”<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">3</a>
+The ship itself, being deep-waisted and built with an
+exaggerated sheer upwards toward bow and stem, had no
+continuous deck: the decks were laid on various levels, rising
+from the waist by steps to the two citadels, an arrangement
+which did not contribute, as a flush-deck would have done,
+to the longitudinal strength of the vessel, and which was found
+inconvenient for the working and transport of ordnance of the
+heavier sort.</p>
+
+<p>King Henry VIII, in his efforts to possess fighting ships
+superior to those of Spain, France and Scotland, raised not
+only artillery but ships themselves to a different rôle. As
+he personally urged the manufacture of ordnance in this
+country by the subsidizing of foreign talent, so he sought to
+improve the design of his ships by inviting Italian shipwrights
+to come to England and apply their knowledge to the royal
+vessels. Dockyards were founded at Woolwich, Deptford, and
+Portsmouth. Large ships were laid down, several were rebuilt,
+with many improvements embodied in them: chief of these<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">7</span>
+being a new artillery armament. The king had seized the
+advantages of the sailing ship with broadside fire. “The
+development of broadside fire,” says Sir Julian Corbett, “was
+a question of gunnery, of naval architecture, and of seamanship.
+With Henry’s introduction of heavy guns on board his
+larger vessels, however, the true note had been struck, and by
+the end of his reign the first two arts had made great strides.
+Guns of all patterns and sizes were being cast in England, both
+in bronze and iron, which were little inferior to those Nelson
+fought with.” The result of the king’s efforts was seen in the
+ships laid down in the last years of his reign. The frontispiece
+of Mr. Oppenheim’s <cite>History of the Administration of the Royal
+Navy</cite> is a picture of one of these, the <i>Tiger</i>, a four-masted
+flush-decked vessel, with no sheer, little top hamper, a long
+tier of ordnance on the gun deck, and with a beak-head ending
+in a spur: one of a class “which shows a very great advance
+on anything before afloat and indicates a steady progression
+towards the modern type.”</p>
+
+<p>In short, a reversion to a smaller and seaworthier type took
+place. The large, unstable and unwieldy “great ship,” such
+as the <i>Henry Grace á Dieu</i>, built on the Spanish model, with
+lofty ends overweighted with small ordnance, was not effective.
+A new invention, attributed to Descharges of Brest in 1501,
+viz. the adaptation of portholes to ordnance along the sides
+of a ship, perhaps suggested a better form. As the century
+advanced, as new and far-distant countries appeared on the
+map, the arts of seamanship and gunnery continuously improved;
+naval architecture made a corresponding progress.
+For sea fighting the high-charged and imposing “great ship”
+gave place to a more perfected type—the galleon. “It was
+the development of the galleon,” insists the historian, “which
+changed the naval art from its medieval to its modern state.”
+The galley, eminently suited to the Mediterranean, where
+winds were light and slave labour abundant, was found to be
+increasingly unsuitable for Atlantic warfare; the galley was
+in danger of being rammed, in any wind, by a strong, quick-turning
+sailing ship, and suffered from having nearly all its
+artillery in the bows; moreover, “the galley service was
+always repugnant to our national temperament.” The
+galleasse, the hybrid between the oar-driven galley and the
+sailing ship, suffered from all the disadvantages of the compromise.
+The great ship had now proved to be cumbrous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">8</span>
+and expensive, crank and unseaworthy, leewardly and unmanageable
+in even a moderate breeze.</p>
+
+<p>The galleon therefore became the type favoured by the
+English navy. Whereas the merchant ship was short in proportion
+to its beam, the galleon was built long, with a length
+equal to three times its breadth. It had also a long flat floor
+like a galley, and was of lower freeboard than a round-ship.
+“It was also like a galley flush-decked, and would seem
+always to have had the half-deck carried across the waist so
+as to make one flush-deck with the old forecastle. In the
+larger types the quarter-deck was also carried flush from
+stem to stem, so that latterly at any rate a true galleon had
+at least two decks and sometimes three. On the upper deck
+in the earlier types were erected both fore and aft high-castles
+as in a galleasse, but usually on curved lines, which gave the hull
+of the old-fashioned galleons the appearance of a half moon.”<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">4</a>
+The depth of hold at the waist was only about two-fifths
+the beam. Its artillery was light but effective, being composed
+of light muzzle loaders, a mean between the man-killers and
+the heavy bombards of an earlier day. Its masts and spars
+were made heavy and large sail area was given it, for speed
+and quick manœuvring were the essential qualities which it
+was hoped to oppose to the lumbering, high-charged ships of
+Spain. Victory was to be sought by a skilful combination of
+seamanship and gunnery, rapid fire being poured into an
+enemy at a convenient range and bearing. “Plenty of room
+and a stand-off fight” sufficiently defines the sea tactics of the
+new era.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the reign of Elizabeth the galleon still remained
+the favourite type, though opinion differed, and continued to
+differ through the two following centuries, as to the degree to
+which it was desirable to “build lofty.” The Hawkins family
+of Plymouth shipowners carried a great influence in the
+councils of the navy. Sir John Hawkins, whose experience
+of shipbuilding and seamanship rendered him a man of importance,
+was the author of improvements in this respect, as
+in so many others; “the first Elizabethan men-of-war, the
+fastest sailers and best sea-boats then afloat, were built to his
+plans; and from the time of his appointment as Treasurer of
+the Navy dates the change to the relatively low and long type
+that made the English ships so much more handy than their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">9</span>
+Spanish antagonists.”<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">5</a> His kinsman, Sir Richard, on the
+other hand, preferred large and high-charged ships, “not only
+for their moral effect on the enemy, but for their superiority
+in boarding and the heavier ordnance and larger crews
+they would carry. Two decks and a half he considers to be
+the least a great ship should have, and was of opinion that the
+fashion for galleasse-built ships—or, as he calls them, ‘race’
+ships—in preference to those ‘lofty-built’ had been pushed
+too far.”<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">6</a> Ships with large cage-works had an advantage,
+he maintained, in affording cover for the crew and positions
+for quick-firing batteries; his opponents argued that the
+weight of top-hamper saved by their abolition could be put
+with better advantage into a heavy artillery.</p>
+
+<p>The advocates of the fast, low-lying ships carried the day.
+War came with Spain, and there was soon work to show what
+the English ships could do. The <cite>Armada Papers</cite><a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">7</a> light up
+for us, by the fitful glare of the cressets of Hawkins and Co.,
+the preparation of the fleet at Plymouth, and show us what
+state of efficiency the royal ships were in. “The <i>Hope</i> and
+<i>Nonpariel</i> are both graved, tallowed, and this tide into the
+road again,” writes William Hawkins to his brother. “We
+trim one side of every ship by night and the other side by
+day, so that we end the three great-ships in three days this
+spring. The ships sit aground so strongly, and are so staunch
+as if they were made of a whole tree. The doing of it is very
+chargeable, for that it is done by torchlight and cressets, and
+in an extreme gale of wind, which consumes pitch, tallow, and
+firs abundantly.” Not only the few royal ships, but the whole
+of the force which lies in the Sound is tuned for the fight.
+“For Mr. Hawkins’ bargain,” writes the Commander-in-Chief
+to Lord Burghley, “this much I will say: I have been aboard
+of every ship that goeth out with me, and in every place where
+any may creep, and there is never a one of them that knows
+what a leak means. I do thank God that they be in the estate
+they be in.” The Spanish ships prove to be in a very different
+condition. High-charged and leewardly, poorly rigged and
+lightly gunned, they are so hammered and raked by Lord
+Howard’s well-found fleet that, when bad weather ultimately
+comes, they are in no condition to combat the elements.
+With masts and rigging shattered, water-casks smashed, no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">10</span>
+anchors; short-handed and leaking like sieves, they are
+hounded northwards to a disaster unparalleled in naval history.</p>
+
+<p>And now, before tracing its evolution through the seventeenth
+and eighteenth centuries, let us glance at the warship
+as it existed at the end of the Elizabethan era, and note its
+chief constructive features.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>Athwart a keel of large squared timbers, scarphed together
+and forming with a massive inner keelson the principal member
+or backbone, were laid the curved frames or ribs which, bolted
+to each other and to the keel with iron bolts washered and
+clinched, gave to the hull its transverse strength and form.
+These frames were held together, as they curved upward from
+the ground or floor level, by thick longitudinal wales, worked
+externally along the frames at convenient heights, and curved
+so as to suit the degree of sheer desired.</p>
+
+<p>At the fore end the wales and frames converged to the
+centre-line and the keel was prolonged upward to meet
+them in a curve or compassing timber, forming the bow or
+stem: to the beauty and shapeliness of which, with its projecting
+beak-head, the builder devoted much of his attention
+and skill. At the other end the frames and wales converged
+to a square and lofty stern. The stern post was a massive
+timber fastened to the keel and sloping somewhat aft from the
+vertical, and from it rose two fashion-pieces “like a pair of
+great horns,” which formed, with the horizontal arch and
+transom timbers, the framework of the stern. When the
+frames had been built up to the requisite height the upper
+ends of each opposite pair were joined across by horizontal
+beams, which were secured to them by means of brackets or
+knees; such beams were worked at the level of the main and
+other decks, and served to support them when laid. Joined
+by its beams, each pair of frames thus formed a closed structure:
+a combination of members which was to resist crushing
+and deformation, the blows of the sea, the stresses of gunfire,
+the forces due to the weight of the guns and the vessel itself,
+and especially the forces thrown on it when the vessel was
+aground or on a careen. The rigidity of this combination was
+enhanced by the fitting of pillars which were placed vertically
+over the keelson to support each beam at its middle. And
+sometimes the lower pillars were supplemented by sloping<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">11</span>
+struts, worked from the curve of the frames up to the middle
+of each beam above.</p>
+
+<p>The skeleton of a ship thus formed, built with well-seasoned
+timber, was left standing on the stocks “in frame” for a considerable
+period, sometimes for years, exposed to the open
+weather. On it eventually a skin of planks was fastened,
+secured by wood trenails split and expanded by soft-wood
+wedges, both internally and externally; and inside the ship,
+to reinforce the frames and in line with them, timbers known
+as “riders” were worked. On the beams the decks were
+laid: the orlop below the water-line level, and above it, at
+a height suitable for the ordnance, the main or gun deck;
+above that the upper deck, on the ends of which were reared
+the poop (sometimes a half-deck, extending from the stern to
+the mainmast, sometimes on that a quarter-deck, over the
+steerage) and the forecastle.</p>
+
+<p>Such, very briefly, was the mode of ship construction. The
+resulting structure, when caulked and swelled by sea-water,
+presented a water-tight and serviceable vessel. Timber provided,
+for ships up to a certain size, a suitable material. It
+afforded strength and buoyancy, and elasticity sufficient to
+obviate local strains and to spread the stresses due to lading,
+grounding, careening, or the actions of the wind and sea. The
+different parts of the ship’s frame gave mutual support, and
+the pressure of the fluid on the exterior of the hull tended, by
+constraining the component parts, to preserve the vessel.<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">8</a></p>
+
+<p>But the timber-built ship possessed an inherent weakness.
+Metal plates or girders can be bolted or riveted together so
+efficiently as to leave the joints between them almost as strong
+as the sections of the plates or girders themselves. Not so wood
+beams. However skilfully they might be joined, their joints
+were necessarily weaker than all other sections: “it was then,
+and still is, impracticable to develop the full strength in end
+connections between wooden members.”<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">9</a> The softness of
+the wood was an additional source of weakness. Two beams
+fastened together by iron bolts might form initially a close
+and rigid joint; but if, under the action of alternating or
+racking stresses, they became loosened even in a minute<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">12</span>
+degree, the tendency to become still looser increased: the
+wood gradually yielded under the bolt washers, the bolts no
+longer held rigidly, “the very fact that wood and iron were
+dissimilar materials tended to hasten the disintegration of
+the structure.” With planking a similar effect obtained.
+Trenails, expanded by wedges and planed off flush with the
+planks which they held together, had only shearing strength;
+if once they were loosened they had little power to prevent
+the planks from opening further. These weaknesses were
+recognised. To minimize their effects the butts of frames,
+decks, and side planking, were arranged so that no two neighbouring
+butts lay in the same line. But in spite of the most
+painstaking craftsmanship, the size of the wooden ship was
+limited by its inability to withstand a high degree of stress.
+As sizes increased extraordinary endeavours were made to
+meet the hogging and sagging strains, to prevent cambering
+of the hull, and to stiffen it longitudinally and circumferentially.
+Enormous masses of timber were worked into the
+internal structure in the form of riders, pillars, standards, and
+shores, “the whole of which had an appearance of great
+strength, but which in fact, from its weight and injudicious
+combinations, was useless, if not injurious.”<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> Which did, in
+fact, clog the ship and usurp the space required for stowage.</p>
+
+<p>As for the masts, experience fixed their number, size and
+position. In the earlier ships, as we have seen, four and sometimes
+five masts were fitted, after the Mediterranean style.
+But later this number was reduced to three. Of these the
+foremast was the most important, and it was stepped directly
+over the fore-foot of the vessel, the main and mizzen being
+pitched to suit. Their height varied with the service and type
+of ship. Taunt masts, like those carried by the Flemish ships,
+were best for sailing on a wind, for with them narrow sails
+could be used which could be set at a sharp angle with the
+keel; but short masts and broad yards were favoured by
+English mariners, as bringing less strain on a vessel’s sides
+and rigging and as being less likely to produce a state of
+dangerous instability. The masts were short, very thick, and
+heavily shrouded; the standing rigging was led to channels
+and deadeyes on the outside of the bulwarks. The bowsprits
+were large and “steved” upward at a large angle with the
+horizontal; spritsails and spritsail topsails were set on them,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">13</span>
+of use mainly when sailing before a wind, yet retaining their
+place in our navy till, half-way through the eighteenth century,
+the introduction of the fore-and-aft jib brought about an
+improvement and in so doing affected the whole disposition
+of mastage.</p>
+
+<p>One feature of the masting of the old ships is notable: the
+manner in which the various masts were raked. In the <cite>Sea-Man’s
+Dictionary</cite><a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">11</a> the <em>trim</em> of a ship was defined as, “the
+condition, as to draught, staying of masts, slackness of shrouds,
+etc., in which a ship goes best.” For a given set of conditions
+there was a certain rake of masts, a certain position of the
+centre of wind-pressure against the sails, which, when discovered,
+gave to the vessel its finest sailing qualities. The
+knowledge of this adjustment constituted no small part of the
+great art of seamanship. In the king’s ships a high proficiency
+was attained in it; merchantmen sailed under more diverse
+conditions and showed, it appears, a lower level of scientific
+inquiry. “Next to men of war (whose daily practice it is)
+the Scotch men are the best in the world to find out the trym
+of a ship, for they will never be quiet, but try her all ways, and
+if there be any goodness in her, they can make her go.” Generally,
+the effect of raking the masts aft was to make the vessel
+fly up into the wind, and vice versa; in ships with high-built
+sterns, especially, it was necessary to have the head-sails set
+well forward, to keep them out of the wind. To allow the
+masts to be raked as desired their heels were pared away, and
+wedges of suitable thickness were driven between them and
+the “partners.”</p>
+
+<p>Many other factors contributed to affect, in a manner always
+subtle and frequently inexplicable, the sailing qualities of a
+ship. The form of the body, the position of masts and the
+setting up of the rigging, the disposition of weights, the angle
+of the yards, the conditions of stability, all had their effect on
+the vessel’s motion, and therefore on her speed through the
+water. Free water in a ship’s bilge, for example, had an effect
+on her degree of stiffness, and from this cause her speed was
+not easily predictable. Charnock relates how, in the colonial
+wars of the late eighteenth century, an American vessel, the
+<i>Hancock</i>, was captured after an unprecedented chase, solely
+because her commander, injudiciously supposing that by
+lightening his ship he would enhance her swiftness, pumped<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">14</span>
+water out of her. It was noticed, again, that in certain circumstances
+the speed of a ship increased when the crew
+turned into their hammocks.</p>
+
+<p>The lines of the ship were drawn without reference to any
+science of naval architecture, and merely by instinct and the
+accumulated experience of the builder; the laws of stability
+and of fluid resistance were at this time unknown. Experience
+indicated the desirability of a short keel, to make the ship
+turn quickly; of an ample rake forward from keel to beak-head—“more
+than a third the length of the keel, commonly,”
+says Sir Henry Manwayring, for, “a great rake forward gives
+a ship good way and makes her keep a good wind, but if she
+have not a full bow it will make her pitch mightily into a
+head sea.... The longer a ship’s rake is, the fuller must be
+the bow”; of a fine run aft, so as to let the water flow strongly
+and swiftly to the rudder and make the ship steer and sail
+well; of a narrow rudder, so as not to hold much dead water
+when the helm was over,—yet, “if a ship have a fat quarter,
+she will require a broad rudder.” The correct formation of
+the bow was recognised as of the greatest importance, and
+the most difficult compromise in the design of a ship. A bow
+too bluff offered much resistance to motion through the
+water; on the other hand, too sharp a bow lacked buoyancy,
+and, from the great weight of mastage, headsails, anchors, etc.,
+which it had to support, caused a vessel to pitch badly in a
+head sea. “If the bow be too broad,” wrote Captain John
+Smith, in his <cite>Sea Man’s Grammar</cite>, “she will seldom carry a
+bone in her mouth, or cut a feather, that is, to make a foam
+before her: where a well-bowed ship so swiftly presseth the
+water as that it foameth, and in the dark night sparkleth like
+fire.”</p>
+
+<p>Generally, a vessel built with fine lines lacked end support,
+and tended to become arched or camber-keeled, while its
+stowage capacity was inconveniently small. The ship’s sides
+were made with a considerable degree of tumble-home above
+the water-line; though this, again, was a point of compromise
+and much argument. For while a reduced breadth of deck
+tended to give the hull more girder strength and to diminish
+the racking effect on it of heavy ordnance, yet this feature at
+the same time, by reducing the angle at which the shrouds
+could be set, augmented the stresses which were thrown on
+shrouds and bulwarks.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">15</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>With the seventeenth century a new age of scientific speculation
+opened, and, under the personal encouragement of the
+Stuart kings, the art and mystery of shipbuilding received an
+illumination which was of great value to the royal armaments.</p>
+
+<p>The early interest of James I in his navy is signalized by his
+grant of a charter to the corporation of shipwrights: a corporation
+whose short-lived story is told by the editor of <cite>The Autobiography
+of Phineas Pett</cite>, recently published.<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">12</a> Before the
+sixteenth century, he tells us, no special trade was recognized
+for the building of warships, as distinct from traders. But in
+the early Tudor days, when, owing to the introduction of the
+new artillery the war vessel began to diverge in general design
+from the merchant ship, certain master shipwrights had been
+subsidized by the king for the building and repair of the royal
+vessels. The position of these officials was one of importance,
+their duties and privileges were extensive. The office was often
+hereditary. Thus, the royal patent granted to one James
+Baker in 1538 descended, with the accumulated lore and
+secrets of his profession, to his son Mathew Baker in 1572. And
+that granted to Peter Pett in 1558 descended to Joseph Pett
+in 1590. But as shipping grew and shipbuilding became more
+complex and widely distributed, the need for some central
+authority, which could regulate practice and standardize procedure,
+became increasingly felt. Accordingly a petition was
+presented. In 1605 the king granted a charter incorporating
+the master shipwrights of England as one body corporate and
+politic, for the good regulation of shipbuilding of all descriptions.
+In 1612 another charter was sealed, giving increased
+power to the confraternity: with instruction that it was to
+examine each new ship to see that it was properly built,
+“with two orlops at convenient distances, strong to carry
+ordnance aloft and alow, with her forecastle and half-deck
+close for fight.” Shipwrights’ Hall, as the corporation was
+called, surveyed and reported on tonnage and workmanship,
+and gave advice, when sought, to the lord high admiral. In
+the course of time its prestige declined. With the Commonwealth
+it grew into disuse, and by 1690 it was altogether
+extinct. For nearly a century the guild had struggled in vain
+to fulfil the intentions of its founders.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">16</span>
+The most distinguished of the master shipwrights of this
+period was Phineas Pett, sometime master of arts at Emmanuel
+College, Cambridge, who in 1612 succeeded old Mathew Baker
+as Master of the guild. Pett, who to a practical knowledge of
+design and construction added considerable sea experience,
+rose far above his contemporaries, most of whom were little
+more than mere carpenters, ignorant of many of the principles
+which are now accepted as governing ship design, and themselves
+governed almost entirely by tradition and blind precedent.
+Science was still in its veriest infancy. The progress
+of ship design was still by the tentative and costly method of
+full-scale experience; not till the beginning of the nineteenth
+century, when new forces and materials had been discovered
+which in the end spelt the decline and supersession of the
+sailing ship, did science sufficiently direct the lines on which
+large sailing ships should be built.</p>
+
+<p>By his bold deviation from established usage, says Fincham,
+Mr. Pett established his fame and advanced the interest and
+power of the British navy. Before reviewing his handiwork,
+however, it will be convenient to note the main directions in
+which improvement was at this period sought.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Henry Manwayring, an acquaintance for whom Pett
+designed and built a pinnace in the year 1616, wrote at this
+time <cite>The Sea-Man’s Dictionary</cite>. In the early years of the
+century were also written two treatises which, though not
+printed till a later date, had great effect in creating an interest
+in naval matters: Sir Walter Raleigh’s <cite>Observations on the
+Navy</cite> and <cite>Invention of Shipping</cite>. In the former paper Sir
+Walter laid down the six requisites of a good ship: viz. that
+she should be strongly built, swift, stout-sided, carry out her
+guns in all weathers, lie-to in a gale easily, and stay well. For
+the attainment of these qualities he specified certain structural
+features: a long run forward, to make her sail well; a long
+bearing floor and a “tumble home” above water from the
+lower edge of the ports, for stoutness and for stiffness sufficient
+to enable her to carry her lower ordnance (which must lie
+four feet clear above water) in all weathers. “It is a special
+observation,” he wrote, “that all ships sharp before, that
+want a long floor, will fall roughly into the sea and take in
+water over head and ears. So will all narrow quartered ships
+sink after the tail. The high charging of ships it is that brings
+them all ill qualities.” In the latter paper he recapitulated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">17</span>
+the various improvements in material of which he had himself
+been witness; from which for its interest we quote the following
+extract. “The striking of the topmast (a wonderful great
+ease to great ships both at sea and in harbour) hath been
+devised, together with the chain pump ... the bonnet and
+the drabler. We have fallen into consideration of the length
+of cables, and by it we resist the malice of the greatest winds
+that can blow, witness our small Milbrook men of Cornwall,
+that ride it out at anchor, half seas over between England and
+Ireland, all the winter quarter.... For true it is, that the
+length of the cable is the life of the ship in all extremities.
+We carry our ordnance better than we were wont, because
+our nether overloops are raised commonly from the water, to
+wit, between the lower part of the port and the sea. We have
+also raised our second decks and given more vent thereby to
+our ordnance, tying on our nether overloop. We have added
+cross pillars in our royal ships to strengthen them, which be
+fastened from the kelson to the beams of the second deck. We
+have given longer floors to our ships than in elder times, and
+better bearing under water, whereby they never fall into the
+sea after the head and shake the whole body, nor sink stern,
+nor stoop upon a wind, by which the breaking loose of our
+ordnance or the not use of them, with many other discommodities
+are avoided.... And to say the truth a miserable
+shame and dishonour it were for our shipwrights, if they did
+not exceed all other in the setting up of our royal ships, the
+errors of other nations being far more excusable than ours.”
+Sir Walter was inaccurate in attributing all the improvements
+enumerated to his own generation; bonnets, for instance, were
+in use long before his day. Nevertheless his paper constitutes
+one of the most important contributions to the history of naval
+architecture in this country.</p>
+
+<p>In the early years of the century, too, evidence as to the
+shortcomings of contemporary naval construction was
+furnished by a fierce critic, Captain Waymouth. He proclaimed
+that English shipwrights built only by uncertain
+traditional precepts and observations; that none of them
+could build two ships alike or predict with accuracy their
+draught of water; that all their ships were crank, leewardly—“a
+great disadvantage in a fight”—difficult to steer and sail,
+too deep in the water, of less capacity than the Hollanders, and
+so badly built and designed as frequently to require “furring,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">18</span>
+or reinforcing by extra planking. He advocated building ships
+longer, broader, with longer floors so as to reduce their draught,
+and snugger in respect of upper works. And though he failed
+on trial to translate his ideas into successful performance, his
+criticisms are accepted by historians as being probably well-founded.</p>
+
+<p>The opinions expressed by the above writers<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">13</a> indicate for us
+in general terms the chief particulars in which the ships of this
+period fell short of naval requirements. They were designed
+without knowledge of the laws governing the strength of
+materials, stability, and the motion of bodies through water;
+they were built without adequate supervision, frequently of
+green timber badly scarphed or cut across the grain, and were
+overburdened with ordnance. Their holds were cumbered with
+large quantities of shingle ballast which tended to clog the
+limber-holes of the bilge and rot the frames and floor timbers;
+while the stowage space amidships was further usurped by the
+cook-rooms, which were placed on the shingle, and which, by
+the heat radiated from their brick sides, did damage to the
+timbers and seams in their vicinity. Vessels were rarely
+sheathed. Though John Hawkins had devised a system of
+sheathing by a veneer of planking nailed over a layer of hair
+and tar, it was only to ships going on special service in seas
+where the worm was active that sheathing was applied.
+Sheathing possessed, then, some significance. In 1620, for
+instance, the Venetian ambassador reported to his government
+the discovery that some of our ships were being sheathed,
+and from this fact deduced an impending expedition to the
+Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>With the navy in the depths of neglect and with shipbuilding
+in the state described, Phineas Pett began to impose his
+permanent mark on design and construction. The mechanism
+by which he secured his results, the calculations and methods
+and rules used by him, were veiled in profound secrecy, in
+accordance with the traditions of his profession. He began by
+new-building old ships of the Elizabethan time, giving them
+an improved form so far as practicable. His friend and patron
+was the young Prince Henry, for whom in 1607 he made a
+model which the king greatly admired. And shortly after this,
+in the face of much jealousy on the part of his rivals, he laid down<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">19</span>
+by command a new great ship—the <i>Prince Royal</i>, of 1187 tons,
+with a breadth of 43 feet and a keel length of 115 feet, double-built
+and sumptuously adorned, in all respects the finest ship
+that had ever been built in England. She carried no less than
+fifty-five guns, her general proportions were of a unity, and
+her strength was of a superiority, far in advance of current
+practice. In strength especially she marked an advance which
+yielded benefit later, in the wars with Holland. She was double
+planked, “a charge which was not formerly thought upon, and
+all the butt-heads were double-bolted with iron bolts.”</p>
+
+<p>But how difficult a matter it was for a builder to depart from
+tradition, is shown from Pett’s account of the inquisition to
+which he was subjected in connection with the building of this
+famous ship. His rivals took advantage of the “Commission
+of Enquiry into the abuses of the navy,” of 1608, to indict
+him for bad design, bad building, and peculation. So much
+hard swearing took place on both sides that at last King James
+himself decided to act as judge, and at Woolwich, with the
+wretched Phineas on his knees before him, opened his court of
+inquiry. “Much time,” says the diarist, “was spent in
+dispute of proportions, comparing my present frame with
+former precedents and dimensions of the best ships, for length,
+breadth, depth, floor, and other circumstances. One point of
+proportion was mainly insisted upon and with much violence
+and eagerness urged on both sides, which was the square of the
+ship’s flat in the midships, they affirming constantly upon their
+oath it was full thirteen feet, we as constantly insisting that it
+was but eleven foot eight inches.” In the end the king called
+in a mathematician and had the controversy settled by actual
+measurement. None of the charges brought against him being
+sustained, Phineas was acquitted and restored once more to
+royal favour, to his own delight and to that of his youthful
+patron, Prince Henry.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Prince Royal</i> marks a new epoch in ship design. She
+was such a departure from all previous forms that she made the
+fame of Phineas Pett secure. She became, indeed, the parent
+or type of all future warships down to the beginning of the
+nineteenth century; for (says Charnock), were the profuse
+ornaments removed, her contour, or general appearance, would
+not so materially differ from that of the modern vessel of the
+same size as to render her an uncommon sight, or a ship in
+which mariners would hesitate to take the sea. In her a final<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">20</span>
+departure was made from the archaic form imposed on fighting
+ships by tradition. The picture Charnock gives of her is of a
+highly ornamented but low and flush-decked vessel armed to
+the ends with two tiers of heavy guns. The projecting beak-head,
+a relic from the galley days which had been so prominent
+a feature of Tudor construction, has almost disappeared: the
+bow curves gracefully upward to a lion close under the bowsprit.
+The wales have little sheer; the stern is compact and
+well supported, with beautiful lines. The quarter galleries are
+long, and are incorporated in the structure in a curious manner:
+in the form of indented, tower-like projections, with ornamented
+interspaces. The whole picture gives evidence of stout
+scantlings and invaluable solidity. Although in many respects
+the <i>Prince Royal</i> was a masterpiece she was primitive in the
+variety of her armament. On the lower deck she carried two
+cannon-petro, six demi-cannon, twelve culverins; on her upper
+deck eighteen demi-culverins; and on quarter-deck and poop
+a number of sakers and port-pieces. Also, unfortunately, she
+was built of green timber, so her life was short.</p>
+
+<p>In building a ship of unprecedented burthen Pett had the
+support of a large public opinion. The advantages attaching
+to large size were by this time generally appreciated: in the
+case of fighting ships, in respect of strength, artillery force, and
+sea endurance, in the case of merchant ships, in respect of
+carrying capacity and economy of crew. The growth in the
+size of merchant shipping during the reign was indeed remarkable.
+Trade followed the flag, and the Jacobean merchant
+made haste to profit by the conquests of the Elizabethan
+adventurer. For a short while after the war with Spain our
+mercantile marine was stagnant; at the accession of James I
+only small vessels of less than a hundred tons were being built,
+and English merchants were having strange recourse to the
+hiring of foreigners. But this state of things did not last for
+long. The story of the success of the Earl of Cumberland and
+his 800-ton <i>Scourge of Malice</i>, and the sight of the great Portuguese
+carrack captured in 1592, are said to have stimulated the
+merchants of London to possess themselves of vessels fit for the
+Eastern trade. It is said, again, that the appearance of two
+large Dutch ships in the Thames supplied the sudden impulse
+to build big. Be that as it may, “the idea spread like wild-fire.”
+Larger ships were laid down, and by the end of the
+reign the country possessed a considerable fleet of ships of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">21</span>
+500 tons and above. In one instance, at least, the pendulum
+swung too far, and experience soon exposed the disadvantages
+of excessive dimensions: the reduction in strength, the
+unhandiness in shallow waters, the almost impossibility of
+graving and breaming, the risking in a single bottom of too
+great a venture. The <i>Trades Increase</i>, built for the new East
+India Company in 1605 by William Burrell and launched by
+the king at Deptford, was of no less than 1,100 tons burthen.
+On her first voyage to Java she was lost by fire, and no more
+ships of her size were ordered by the Company.</p>
+
+<p>With the expansion of merchant shipping and with the
+recognition of artillery as the main instrument of naval warfare
+fighting ships made a corresponding advance in size. The
+Commission of Reform of 1618, on whose report the subsequent
+reorganization of the Navy was based, held that the primacy
+of the big gun had at last been established. “Experience
+teacheth,” the Commissioners recorded, “how sea-fights in
+these days come seldom to boarding, or to great execution of
+bows, arrows, small shot and the sword, but are chiefly performed
+by the great artillery breaking down masts, yards,
+tearing, raking, and bilging the ships, wherein the great
+advantage of His Majesty’s navy must carefully be maintained
+by appointing such a proportion of ordnance to each ship as
+the vessel will bear.” They recognized the extravagance of
+small ships, and advised that in future the royal navy should
+consist of a nucleus of about thirty large ships, which with the
+merchant fleet should form one complete service; royal ships
+of over 800 tons; great ships of over 600 tons; middling ships
+of about 450 tons. They also formulated the chief requirements
+of naval construction in considerable detail. This pontifical
+pronouncement on ship dimensions was doubtless of value in
+connection with the contemporary project to which their work
+had reference; nevertheless it formed a dangerous precedent
+for future administrations. It shackled the genius of the shipbuilder.
+It degraded design. The ship, especially the timber-built
+sailing warship, was essentially a compromise between a
+number of conflicting elements. To obtain full value from his
+skill the designer required as free as possible a choice of means
+to his end; and any over-drawing of the specification, or
+surplusage of data beyond the barest requirements, tended to
+tie his hands and render impossible a satisfactory design. It
+was this over-specifying of dimensions in the interests of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">22</span>
+standardization which, as we shall presently see, stultified
+shipbuilding in England not only in the seventeenth but
+throughout the whole of the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>But the report of 1618 was doubtless of great value as a
+guidance for the building of the new Stuart navy. “The
+manner of building, which in ships of war is of greatest importance,
+because therein consists both their sailing and force. The
+ships that can sail best can take or leave (as they say), and use
+all advantages the winds and seas afford; and their mould, in
+the judgment of men of best skill, both dead and alive, should
+have the length treble the breadth, and the breadth in like
+proportion to the depth, but not to draw above 16 foot of
+water because deeper ships are seldom good sailers.... They
+must be somewhat snug built, without double galleries and too
+lofty upper works, which overcharge many ships and make
+them loom fair, but not work well at sea.” As for the
+strengthening of the royal ships the Commissioners subscribed
+to the manner of building approved by “our late worthy
+prince”: “first, in making three orlops, whereof the lowest
+being two feet under water, both strengtheneth the ship, and
+though her sides be shot through, keepeth it from bilging by
+shot and giveth easier means to find and stop the leaks.
+Second, in carrying their orlops whole floored throughout from
+end to end. Third, in laying the second orlop at such convenient
+height that the ports may bear out the whole fire of
+ordnance in all seas and weathers. Fourth, in placing the cook-rooms
+in the forecastle, as other ships of war do, because being
+in the midships, and in the hold, the smoke and heat so search
+every corner and seam, that they make the oakum spew out,
+and the ships leaky, and some decay; besides, the best room
+for stowage of victualling is thereby so taken up, that transporters
+must be hired for every voyage of any time; and,
+which is worst, when all the weight must be cast before and
+abaft, and the ships are left empty and light in the midst, it
+makes them apt to sway in the back, as the <i>Guardland</i> and
+divers others have done.”</p>
+
+<p>The ships built under the regulations of the Commissioners
+were certainly an improvement on earlier ships in many
+respects, but in one element of power they proved to be
+deficient, namely, in speed. The stoutly built, full-bodied,
+lumbering English two-deckers were out-sailed and out-manœuvred,
+it was noticed, by the relatively light and fine-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">23</span>lined
+Hollanders. Moreover our smaller ships were known to
+be no match in speed for the Dunkirk privateers which at this
+time infested the seas. A new type was seen to be necessary.
+The existing differentiation of warships into rates or classes
+was insufficient. For the line of battle there must be ships in
+which force of artillery was the predominant quality; but for
+other duties there must also be ships in which speed, and not
+force, was the distinguishing note. From this necessity was
+evolved the <em>frigate</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the accession of Charles I an attempt was made to
+establish the new type by building small vessels on the model of
+the largest, miniatures which it was hoped would prove good
+sailors and capable, although square-sailed, of sailing near a
+wind. The Ten Whelps were laid down: flush-decked three-masted
+vessels of 200 tons, 62 feet long on the keel and 25
+feet in breadth. They were not a success. It was left for
+Dunkirk, “the smartest dockyard in Europe,” to found the
+new model. In imitation of a captured Dunkirk privateer our
+first frigate was built in 1646 by Peter, son of Phineas Pett,
+and her success was such that he had the achievement recorded
+on his tomb. The <i>Constant Warwick</i> was 85 feet in keel-length,
+26 feet 5 inches in breadth, of 315 tons burden and 32 guns.
+She was “an incomparable sailer.” Before the first Dutch war
+was over she had taken as much money from privateers as
+would have completely laden her.</p>
+
+<p>It seems probable that the prestige of his name was sufficient
+to give Peter Pett a freedom from interference in his design
+which was not accorded less distinguished shipbuilders. In
+’45 Andrews Burrell, in a remonstance addressed to Parliament,
+protested, “For the love of heaven let not the shipwrights
+that are to build them [three frigates for special service] be
+misled by those that would, but cannot, direct them, which
+error hath been very hurtful to the navy heretofore.” By the
+interference of Sir John Pennington, he asserted, the builders
+of the Ten Whelps were so misled that they proved sluggish and
+unserviceable. “Let no rules be given the shipwrights more
+than their tonnage, with the number and weight of their
+ordnance, and that the number and weight of their ordnance
+may be suitable to the burden of each frigate.”</p>
+
+<p>King Charles, whose personal interest in the royal navy
+equalled that of his father, favoured the tendency to enlarge
+the tonnage and the individual power of his fighting ships.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">24</span>
+The <i>Prince Royal</i> displayed the advantages of size. The
+Dutch people, jealous of the interference with their eastern
+trade, were known to be building large ships. Across the
+channel an ambitious and all-powerful minister was envisaging
+the possession of a navy in which an inferiority in numbers
+might be neutralized by the superiority of the unit. In France
+a vessel of 1400 tons had been laid down. Charles determined
+to take up the challenge, obtaining the money by hook or by
+crook wherewith to build a greater. In the year 1634 the
+decision was made. A model of a great three-decker mounting
+a hundred and four guns was presented to him by Phineas
+Pett, and shortly afterwards the master of the shipwrights
+received the royal command to build a ship, and to proceed in
+person to the forests of Durham to select the thickstuff, knee
+timber, and planking requisite for the task.</p>
+
+<p>Opposition to the building of such a prodigious vessel
+appeared from different quarters. Great ships, in the opinion
+of Sir Walter Raleigh, were “of marvellous charge and fearful
+cumber.” The cost of so large a ship must needs be great, for
+not only the whole cost, but the cost per ton, increased with
+the size of the vessel; so wasteful a process was the building of
+a great ship, indeed, that it was not unusual to build a small
+ship simultaneously, out of the timber discarded: a practice
+known as “building a small ship out of a great one’s chips.”
+Ships of the greatest size, again, were “of little service, less
+nimble, less mainable, and very seldom employed.” Nor was
+it believed that so large a vessel as that projected could be
+built. Trinity House, when they heard of the design, uttered
+a formal protest. Such a ship, they argued, would be too big
+for service, and unsafe from her enormous size. To carry such
+a number of pieces she must be a three-decker, and to build a
+serviceable three-decker was beyond the art or wit of man; if
+the lower tier were too low they would be useless in a sea, if at
+5 or 5½ feet above the water-line then the third tier would be
+so high as to endanger the ship. In spite of this protest the
+new ship was laid down, and nearly two years later, in the
+autumn of ’37, she was launched at Woolwich, “the pride and
+glory of the Caroline navy.”</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Sovereign of the Seas</i>, the <i>Sovereign</i>, or the <i>Royal
+Sovereign</i>, as she was called by successive governments, was
+another great advance in size and solidity on all preceding
+construction, and was the masterpiece of Phineas Pett. Her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">25</span>
+length by the keel was 128 feet, her main breadth 48 feet, her
+overall length 232 feet. She had three flush decks and a forecastle,
+a half-deck, a quarter-deck, and a roundhouse. Her
+armament showed an approach to symmetry; the lower tier
+consisted of cannon and demi-cannon, the middle tier of
+culverins and demi-culverins. In one respect she was less
+advanced than Pett’s earlier effort, the <i>Prince Royal</i>, in that
+she had an old-fashioned beakhead, low hawses and a low and
+exposed forecastle. In general form she was extolled by all, and
+bore witness to the genius of her designer. No better form,
+said a later critic and constructor<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">14</a> after making an analysis
+of her lines—no better form could have been devised for a ship
+built (according to the prevailing customs of the times) so high
+out of water and so overloaded with ornaments. The king
+took a personal pride in her, and during her construction visited
+Woolwich and “seriously perused all the ship within board.”
+For him an elaborate description was written which, quoted at
+length by various writers, serves to show the extent to which
+mere decoration contributed to the cost of a royal ship. Two
+pictures of the vessel are reproduced by Charnock, of such
+obvious disparity that they serve to show (as the author
+observes) to what a degree artists may differ in the presentment
+of the same vessel. They confirm, besides, the profuseness
+of the ornamentation which was massed on her—the trophies,
+angels, emblems, mouldings—which made her the occasion of
+loud complaints against ship-money, and “a miracle of black
+and gold.”</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Sovereign of the Seas</i> had a distinguished career. When
+cut down a deck she proved to be an exceptionally serviceable
+unit, taking part in all the great actions of the Dutch wars and
+crowning her work at La Hogue, where she engaged, crippled,
+and forced to fly for shallow water the great <i>Soleil Royal</i>, 104,
+the French flagship. At length, when laid up at Chatham in
+1696 in order to be rebuilt, she was set on fire by negligence and
+destroyed.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>By the outbreak of the first Dutch war the modern ideas
+introduced by Phineas Pett had received a general embodiment
+in the navy. Blake found to his hand ships well suited
+to the intended warfare, nor was he much concerned to add
+either to their number or their magnitude. Only in one feature<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">26</span>
+did the new vessels built show any difference from older construction:
+their depth in hold was reduced, probably to render
+them more suitable for work among the shallow waters of the
+coast of Holland.<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">15</a> In other important respects improvement
+had preceded the opening of hostilities.</p>
+
+<p>The lofty stern with which it had been the custom to endow
+the sailing ship was a feature which had survived from ancient
+times. In the galley, whose armament was concentrated in the
+bows, the after part was not devoted to military fittings, but
+was appropriated chiefly to the accommodation of the officers.
+So it was in the galleon or sailing ship. With the desire and
+need for increased accommodation the extra space was obtained
+by prolonging aft the broad horizontal lines of the vessel and
+terminating them in a square frame. To give more space,
+quarter galleries were then added, outside the vessel. Then
+extra tiers of cabins were added, also with quarter galleries,
+each storey, as in the case of domestic architecture, projecting
+over that beneath it, and the whole forming, with its surmounting
+taffrails, lanterns and ornaments, an excessively
+weighty and top-heavy structure. Similarly, at the fore end
+of the ship there remained the survival of the ancient forecastle.</p>
+
+<p>With the acceptance of artillery as the medium for battle,
+with the decay of boarding tactics and the decline in value of
+small man-killing firearms, close-fights and end-castles, the
+lofty forecastles and sterns ceased to possess much of their
+special value. The arguments of Sir Richard Hawkins’ day in
+favour of large cage-works no longer held; nor could the
+preference of some shipbuilders for high sterns, as allowing a
+quick sheer and thereby contributing to the girder strength of
+the hull, be considered sufficient to justify their retention. The
+stern galleries held a great deal of wind and tended to rot the
+decks in their vicinity; their weight put a strain upon the
+supporting keel; but, chiefly, the danger of their taking fire in
+action induced the authorities to cut them down. For similar
+reasons the forecastles were attacked. But there was strong
+opposition to their elimination, because of the cover which they
+afforded in a fight. In 1652 the <i>Phœnix</i>, one of the finest
+frigates in the service, was taken by a Dutch ship, “having no
+forecastle for her men to retire to.” In the second Dutch war
+experience confirmed their usefulness. “All the world,” wrote<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">27</span>
+Mr. Secretary Pepys in his diary for the 4th July, 1666, “now
+sees the use of forecastles for the shelter of men.”</p>
+
+<p>No general increase in the size of our ships took place till
+toward the end of the third Dutch war. Until that time the
+navy of France was a negligible quantity; in 1664, it is said,
+the only war-vessel at Brest was one old fireship. The Dutch,
+our only strong opponents, fought in ships not unlike our own,
+stout, buoyant vessels mounting from 24 to 60 guns, and of
+from 300 to 1200 tons burden. Geography had a curious
+influence on their construction. Owing to the shallowness of
+their coasts the Hollanders built their ships with less draught
+and flatter floors than those of other countries; from which
+policy they derived advantages of a greater carrying capacity
+and, in pursuit, an ability to retreat among the shallows; but
+on account of which they suffered a serious handicap in the
+hour of action, when, faced by English ships built of superior
+material and with finer bottoms which enabled them to hold a
+better wind, they were weathered and out-fought.<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">16</a></p>
+
+<p>There was no apparent advantage, therefore, in augmenting
+the size of our ships. Improvement was sought, rather, from a
+further unification of the calibres of the guns, and from an
+increase in the number carried. Their characteristics of shortness
+and large bore were such as to make them well-suited to
+the form of battle now favoured by English leaders—the close-quarter
+action.</p>
+
+<p>In solidity of construction the English ships compared
+favourably with those of the Dutch. The thick scantlings
+introduced by Phineas Pett now proved of great value; the
+wood itself, tough English oak, was unequalled by any other
+timber. English oak was the best, as Fuller noted. Even the
+Dutch had built some of their ships of it; while other countries
+frequently built of inferior fir, the splinters of which killed more
+than were hit by hostile cannon balls. To what was the
+superiority of the English timber due? To the soil and climate
+of this favoured country. Under the influence of successions of
+warmth and cold, of rain and sunshine, frost and wind, all in a
+degree most favourable for alternate growth and consolidation,
+the English oak attained an unrivalled strength and durability.
+Trees planted in forests, where mutual protection was afforded<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">28</span>
+from wind and cold, grew rapidly, but were inferior in quality
+to trees planted in small parcels or along the hedgerows; these
+latter, slow-growing and tough, felled “at the wane of the
+moon and in the deep of winter,” supplied the thickstuff, knees,
+and planking for generations of our royal ships. Their endurance
+was frequently remarkable. The bottom timbers would
+last for fifty or sixty years, but the upper works, which were
+subject to alternations of heat and cold, dryness and moisture,
+decayed in a much shorter space of time. The <i>Royal William</i>
+is quoted by Charnock as a case in point. This first rate ship
+was launched in the year 1719, and never received any material
+repair until 1757. A few years later she was cut down to a
+third rate of 80 guns. Participating in all the sea wars of the
+time, she was surveyed in 1785 and converted into a guardship,
+which post she filled till early in the nineteenth century.<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">17</a></p>
+
+<p>Much attention, as we have noted, was given in this scientifically
+minded Stuart age to the form of body best suited to
+motion through water, but the efforts to improve design were
+largely misdirected. Many of our ships were unsatisfactory,
+not only from their slowness but because they were crank or
+tender-sided, and unable to bear out their lower guns or even
+to carry a stout sail. They were so clogged with timbers
+internally that they could not carry the victuals and stores
+necessary for long voyages; and vessels built by contract were
+often found to be carelessly put together, of green, unseasoned,
+and unsuitable timber.</p>
+
+<p>After the Restoration the mantle of the Petts descended on a
+master shipwright of Portsmouth, who became an authoritative
+exponent of ship design, and to whose ability several improvements
+were due. “Another great step and improvement to our
+navy,” recorded Mr. Pepys in 1665, “put in practice by Sir
+Anthony Deane, was effected in the <i>Warspight</i> and <i>Defiance</i>,
+which were to carry six months’ provisions, and their guns four
+and a half feet from the water.” In the same diary for 19th
+May of the following year occurs the following characteristic
+note: “Mr. Deane did discourse about his ship the <i>Rupert</i>,
+which succeeds so well, as he has got great honour by it; and
+I some, by recommending him. The king, duke, and every
+body, say it is the best ship that was ever built. And then he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">29</span>
+fell to explain to me the manner of casting the draught of
+water which a ship will draw, beforehand, which is a secret the
+king and all admire in him; and he is the first that hath come
+to any certainty beforehand of foretelling the draught of water
+of a ship, before she is launched.” The calculations used by
+Sir Anthony Deane to forecast the draught of a projected ship
+might win him applause among the philosophers; but the
+scoffer at theory was able to point to considerable achievements
+wrought by men who made no pretence of any knowledge of
+science. In 1668 the <i>Royal Charles</i>, 110, was launched at
+Deptford. “She was built,” wrote Evelyn, “by old Shish, a
+plain, honest carpenter, master builder of this dock, but one
+who can give little account of his art by discourse, and is hardly
+capable of reading.”</p>
+
+<p>The interest of Charles II in naval architecture may be
+gathered from a letter written by him in 1673: “I am very
+glad that the <i>Charles</i> does so well; a girdling this winter, when
+she comes in, will make her the best ship in England: the next
+summer, if you try the two sloops that were built at Woolwich
+that have my invention in them, they will outsail any of the
+French sloops. Sir Samuel Morland has now another fancy
+about weighing anchors; and the resident of Venice has made
+a model also to the same purpose.”</p>
+
+<p>To girdle a ship, was to fasten planks along her sides some
+two or three strakes above and below the water-line; this had
+the effect of adding to her beam and thereby rendering her
+stiffer under sail. Incessant girdling seems to have been necessary
+at this period, to counter the defective conditions in which
+English ships were designed, built, and sent to sea. Ships were
+consistently restricted in beam, in compliance with the faulty
+“establishments,” and under a mistaken notion that narrowness,
+in itself, directly contributed to speed. “Length,” says
+Charnock, “was the only dimension regarded as indispensably
+necessary, by the ancients for their galleys and by the moderns
+for galleons. Breadth was not considered, or if considered was
+accepted as a necessary evil.” Pepys remarked, “that the
+builders of England, before 1673, had not well considered that
+breadth only will make a stiff ship.” It was an inquiry ordered
+by Sir Richard Haddock in 1684 which brought to light the
+fulness of the fallacy; ships were subsequently made broader,
+and experience showed that a good breadth was beneficial, not
+only for stability but for speed and sea-keeping qualities.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">30</span>
+But even if a ship were built initially broad enough, the
+continual addition of armament and top-hamper to which she
+was often subjected had the effect eventually of impairing her
+stability. In such a case there were two remedies: to ballast
+or to girdle. The former expedient was objectionable, as it
+involved an increase both of displacement and of draught.
+Girdling was therefore generally practised. By this means
+the vessel was made stiffer, her buoyancy was improved, and
+her sides were also rendered less penetrable between wind and
+water. Even if, when thus girdled, she proved to be less stiff
+than the enemy this was not altogether a disadvantage: she
+formed a steadier gun-platform, her sides were less strained by
+the sea and, because her rolling was less violent, her topmasts
+were less liable to be sprung. But sufficient stiffness was
+necessary to allow of her lowest and heaviest tier of guns being
+fought in moderate weather; and for this reason alone, girdling
+was preferable to ballasting, in that the former tended to keep
+the guns high out of water while the latter brought them nearer
+the water-line.</p>
+
+<p>Although rigidly restricted in dimensions, ships put to sea in
+these days under such varying conditions that it was difficult
+indeed to foretell whether a vessel were seaworthy or not.
+A commissioner of James the Second’s reign complained bitterly
+of the injudicious management whereby “many a fast sailing
+ship have come to lose that property, by being over-masted,
+over-rigged, over-gunned (as the <i>Constant Warwick</i>, from
+26 guns and an incomparable sailer, to 46 guns and a slug),
+over-manned (<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">vide</i> all the old ships built in the parliament time
+now left), over-built (<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">vide</i> the <i>Ruby</i> and <i>Assurance</i>), and having
+great taffrails and galleries, etc., to the making many formerly a
+stiff, now a tender-sided ship, bringing thereby their head and
+tuck to lie too low in the water.”</p>
+
+<p>In spite of these strictures it must be remembered that our
+ships had qualities which, brought into action by brave crews
+and resolute leaders, served the nation well in the day of battle.
+In no naval war, perhaps, did superiority of material exert
+such a consistent and preponderating effect as in the seventeenth
+century wars between this country and Holland.</p>
+
+<p>The tactics of the English leaders involved close-quarter
+fighting. The material, both guns and ships, certainly favoured
+these tactics; though to what extent tactics dictated the form
+of the material, or material reacted on tactics, it may be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">31</span>
+difficult to decide. In one respect tactics undoubtedly directed
+the evolution of the material: while the Dutch employed a
+“gregarious system” of mutual support of their vessels by
+others of various force, fighting in groups and throwing in fireships
+as opportunity offered, the English always sought to
+match individual ships.<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">18</a> Forming in line ahead—a formation,
+said to have been first used by Tromp, which enabled our
+vessels to avoid the fireships—they came to close quarters in a
+series of duels in which the strength and prowess of each
+individual ship was its only means of victory. The success of
+this plan caused the Dutch to imitate it. The size of their ships
+rapidly grew; their weakest units were discarded. Three-deckers
+were laid down, at first carrying only 76 guns, but later,
+after the peace of 1674, as large as the British first rates. But
+by that time the critical battles had been lost and won. And
+the success of the British is ascribed, in Derrick’s memoirs,
+chiefly to the superior size of our ships, “an advantage which
+all the skill of the Dutch could not compensate.”</p>
+
+<p>With the institution of the line of battle a need arose for a
+symmetry between ships which had never before existed. From
+this arose, not only that more complete differentiation of
+force<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">19</a> which lasted through the following century, but a still
+more stringent ruling of dimensions according to “establishments,”
+which ruling, injudiciously applied, was henceforth to
+exercise so harmful an effect on English naval construction.</p>
+
+<p>After the peace of 1674 the navy sank into inefficiency. The
+French navy, on the other hand, ascended in power with an
+extraordinary rapidity. By 1681 it had expanded so much
+under the fostering care of M. Colbert that it comprised no
+fewer than one hundred and fifteen ships of the line. In design,
+as apart from construction, French ships were superior to ours.
+In size especially they had an advantage, being universally
+larger than British ships of the same artillery force: an
+advantage based on the law, known to our own shipbuilders
+but never applied, that <em>the greater the dimensions of a ship,
+relatively to the weight she has to carry, the better she will sail</em>. So
+superior were some French ships which visited Spithead seen
+to be, that in imitation of them Sir Anthony Deane was ordered
+to design and build the <i>Harwich</i>; and from the plans of this
+ship nine others were ordered by parliament, the class constituting
+the greatest advance in naval architecture of that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">32</span>
+time. But this departure from precedent had little effect. In
+dimensions as compared with tonnage we continued parsimonious.
+In the face of French experience we cramped our
+ships to the requirements of the faulty “establishments”; and
+until the end of the century no increase in size took place
+except in the case of some ships laid down in the year 1682,
+when the threat of a war with Louis XIV not improbably
+caused them to be constructed on a more extensive scale than
+had ever before been in practice.</p>
+
+<p>In another respect our ships were inferior in design to those
+of our chief rivals: in the extreme degree of “tumble home”
+given to their sides. Adhering to ancient practice in this particular,
+in order to obtain advantages which have already
+been mentioned, we suffered increasingly serious disadvantages.
+The sides of our ships were so convex that, when sailing
+on a wind, every wave was guided upward to the upper deck,
+thereby keeping the crew continually wet. The deck space
+required for the efficient working of the sails was contracted.
+Moreover, ships having this high degree of convexity were
+more easily overset than were wall-sided ships. This exaggerated
+convexity had a striking effect on one feature of
+our construction, viz. the manner in which we affixed the
+chain-plates, to which the shrouds were secured, in a low
+position on the curve of the hull; while Holland and France
+raised them to a more convenient height—over the upper tier
+of guns, in their two-decked ships.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand the horizontal lines of our ships were (in
+the absence of science) cleverly moulded. The after lines in
+particular were well suited for supporting the stern and at the
+same time allowing a free run of water to the rudder; other
+nations, overlooking the importance of this part of the vessel,
+adhered to the old-fashioned square tuck and stern which was
+a chief but unappreciated factor of the resistance to the passage
+of the vessel through water.</p>
+
+<p>When war actually broke out in 1689 the balance of material
+between English and French was much the same in character
+as it had been between English and Dutch. Our fleet was once
+more in a seaworthy and efficient condition. Our guns were
+generally shorter and of larger bore than those of the French;
+our ships were narrower and less able to bear out their ordnance,
+but their sides were thicker, and better able to withstand the
+racket of gun fire. Once more, at La Hogue, the British<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">33</span>
+squadrons showed that they possessed the offensive and
+defensive qualities which favoured victory in close-quarter
+fighting; and the end of the century found the prestige of the
+navy at a level as high as that to which Cromwell and Blake
+had brought it.</p>
+
+<p>In the decade which ended in 1689 the navy had passed, on
+its administrative side, “from the lowest state of impotence
+to the most advanced step towards a lasting and solid prosperity.”
+In Pepys’ rare little <cite>Memoirs</cite> the story of this
+dramatic change is told. We read how, after five years’
+governance by the commission charged by the king with the
+whole office of the Lord High Admiral, the navy found itself
+rotten to the core; how in ’85 the king resolved to take up
+its management again, helped by his royal brother; how he
+sent for Mr. Pepys; how at his instigation new, honest, and
+energetic Commissioners were appointed, including among
+them the reluctant Sir Anthony Deane; how Mr. Pepys
+himself strove to reorganize, how new regulations were introduced,
+sea stores established, finances checked, malpractices
+exposed, the navy restored both in spirit and material.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pepys claimed to prove that integrity and general knowledge
+were insufficient, if unaccompanied by vigour, assiduity,
+affection, strictness of discipline and method, for the successful
+conduct of a navy; and that by the strenuous conjunction
+of zeal, honesty, good husbandry and method, and not least
+by the employment of technical knowledge, the Royal Navy
+had been rendered efficient once again.</p>
+
+<p>The following extract from an Essay on the Navy, printed
+in 1702, is here quoted for its general significance:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“The cannon (nearly 10,000 brass and iron) are for nature
+and make according to the former disposition and manner of
+our mariners’ fighting (whose custom was to fight board and
+board, yard-arm and yard-arm, through and through, as they
+termed it, and not at a distance in the line, and a like, which
+practice till of late our seniors say they were strangers to), they
+are therefore much shorter and of larger bore than the French,
+with whom to fight at a distance is very disadvantageous, as
+has been observed in several fights of late, their balls or bullets
+flying over our ships before ours could reach them by a
+mile....” etc., etc.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">34</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>In Laputa, early in the eighteenth century, the people were
+so engrossed in the mathematics that the constant study of
+abstruse problems had a strange and distorting effect on
+the whole life of the island. Their houses were built according
+to such refined instructions as caused their workmen to
+make perpetual mistakes; their clothes were cut (and often
+incorrectly) by mathematical calculation; the very viands on
+their tables were carved into rhomboids, cycloids, cones,
+parallelograms, and other mathematical figures!</p>
+
+<p>To most Englishmen of that time any attempt to apply
+science to shipbuilding must have appeared as far-fetched and
+grotesque as these practices of the Laputans. Ship design
+was still an art, veiled in mystery, its votaries guided only by
+blind lore and groping along an increasingly difficult path by
+processes of trial and error. The methods of applied science
+were as yet unknown. The builder was often a mere carpenter,
+ignorant of mathematics and even of the use of simple plans;
+the savant in his quiet study and the seaman on the perilous
+seas lived in worlds apart from each other and from him, and
+could not collaborate. Such speculative principles as the shipbuilder
+possessed were almost wholly erroneous; no single
+curve or dimension of a ship, it is said, was founded on a
+rational principle. Everything was by tradition or authority.
+Knowledge had not yet coalesced in books. Men kept such
+secrets as they had in manuscript, and their want of knowledge
+was covered by silence and mystery. Preposterous theories
+were maintained by the most able men and facts were denied
+or perverted so as to square with them. “Forgetful of the
+road pointed out by Lord Bacon, who opposed a legitimate
+induction from well-established facts to hypothesis founded on
+specious conjectures, and too hastily giving up as hopeless
+the attainment of a theory combining experiment with established
+scientific principles, they have contented themselves
+with ingeniously inventing <em>mechanical methods</em> of forming the
+designs of ships’ bodies of arcs of circles, others of ellipses,
+parabolas, catenaries—which they thought to possess some
+peculiar virtue and which they investigated with the minutest
+mathematical accuracy. So they became possessed of a
+System. And, armed with this, they despised all rivals without<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">35</span>
+one; and, trusting to it, rejected all the benefits of experiment
+and of sea experience.”<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">20</a></p>
+
+<p>The intervention of the philosophers had not had any
+appreciable effect. Sir William Petty had indeed projected a
+great work on the theory of shipbuilding; he had carried out
+model experiments in tanks, and had invented a double-keeled
+vessel which, by its performances on passage between Holyhead
+and Dublin, had drawn public attention to his theories.<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">21</a>
+In his discourse before the Royal Society on Duplicate Proportions,
+he had opened out new and complex considerations for
+the shipbuilder; inviting him to forsake his golden rule, or
+Rule of Three, and apply the law <em>x varies as y²</em> to numerous
+problems in connection with his craft. But it could soon be
+shown, by a reference to current practice, that this new law
+could not be rigidly applied. And the shipbuilder, realizing
+his own limitations and jealous of sharing his professional
+mysteries with mathematicians and philosophers, was willing
+to laugh the new theories out of court.</p>
+
+<p>Again, of what practical use had been the discovery of the
+“solid of least resistance” or of that “cono-cuneus” which
+Dr. Wallis had investigated with a view to its application to
+the bows of a ship? A final blow to the scientists was given
+when the <i>Royal Katherine</i>, a three-decker of 80 guns, designed
+by the council of the Royal Society, was found so deficient in
+stability that it was deemed necessary to girdle her. Old
+Shish had beaten Sir Isaac Newton and all the professors! The
+impossibility of applying abstract scientific principles to so
+complex a machine as a sailing ship, moving in elements so
+variable as air and water, was patent to everyone. The
+attitude of the professional may be judged from the resigned
+language of William Sutherland, a shipwright of Portsmouth
+and Deptford Yards, who in 1711 published his <cite>Ship-builder’s
+Assistant</cite>:</p>
+
+<p>“Though some of our preceding Master Builders have proposed
+length as expedient to increase motion, yet it has seldom
+answered; much extra timber is required to make them
+equally strong. Besides, if the solid of least resistance be a
+blunt-headed solid, extreme length will be useless to make
+cutting bodies.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">36</span>
+Again, in connection with the dimensions of masts:</p>
+
+<p>“Though several writers say, that the velocities are the
+square roots of the power that drives or draws the body;
+from which it should be a quadruple sail to cause double
+swiftness. Hence, unless the fashion is adapted to the magnitude
+of the ship, all our Art can only be allowed notional, and
+the safest way of building and equipping will be to go to
+precedent, if there be any to be found. But this is a superfluous
+caution, since ’tis very customary, that let a ship be
+fitted never so well by one hand, it will not suit the temper of
+another. Besides, the proper business of a shipwright is
+counted an very vulgar imploy, and which a man of very indifferent
+qualifications may be master of.”</p>
+
+<p>Science was, in short, discredited. The corporation of shipwrights
+had disappeared, not long surviving the fall of the
+house of Stuart. No master-builder had succeeded the Petts
+and the Deanes having sufficient influence and erudition to
+expose the faulty system under which warships were now
+built, English shipbuilding had once more become a craft
+governed entirely by precedent and the regulations. The
+professor was routed, and the practical man said in his heart,
+There is no knowing what salt water likes.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the science of naval architecture was at the dawn. Not
+in this country, but in France, in the early part of the eighteenth
+century, research and inquiry received such encouragement
+from the State that it conferred on their fleets a superiority
+of design which they retained for long: a superiority which
+enabled them, in the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">guerre de course</i> which was developed after
+La Hogue under the intrepid leadership of men like Jean Bart,
+Forbin, and Duguay-Trouin, to strike us some shrewd blows.</p>
+
+<p>We propose to summarize as briefly as possible the principal
+events which mark the evolution of the scientific side of naval
+architecture.</p>
+
+<p>A mere enumeration of the names and works of the men
+who chiefly contributed to the discovery of the true natural
+principles underlying the performance of sailing ships would
+suffice to show the debt owed by the world to French effort,
+and the tardiness with which this country faced the intellectual
+problems involved. In the year 1681 a series of conferences
+was held at Paris on the question of placing the operations of
+naval architecture on a stable scientific basis; but before that
+date, in 1673, Father Pardies, a Jesuit, had published the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">37</span>
+results of his attempts to calculate the resistance of bodies
+moving in fluids with varying velocities. In ’93 the Chevalier
+Renaud and Christian Huyghens were engaged in public controversy
+on the merits and deficiencies of Pardies’ laws. In
+’96 James Bernouilli entered the lists on Huyghen’s side, and
+in the following year a remarkable work appeared from the
+pen of another Jesuit, Paul Hoste, professor of mathematics
+at Toulon. Father Hoste, having noticed the frequency with
+which vessels of that time required girdling, had put the
+question, why they should not be built initially with the form
+which they had when ultimately girdled. The replies given
+him being unsatisfactory, the professor investigated a whole
+series of problems: the relation between speed and resistance,
+the effect of form on resistance, stability, stowage, the properties
+affecting pitching, and the best form of bow. Though
+incorrect in much of his theory, he had admittedly a great
+influence on later research. He was followed, in 1714, by John
+Bernouilli, professor at Basle, whose investigations were purely
+theoretical. And then, a few years later, M. Bouguer made
+his great discovery of the <em>metacentre</em>, that all-important point in
+space whose position in a ship, relatively to its centre of gravity,
+marks with precision the nature of the vessel’s stability.</p>
+
+<p>A treatise by Euler, entitled <cite>Scientia Navalis</cite>, was published in
+1749, and a little later, stimulated by prizes offered by the
+Société Royale des Sciences, Don G. Juan in Spain, Euler in
+Russia, and Daniel Bernouilli in Germany, all published the
+results of their investigations into the forces acting on a rolling
+ship. Euler’s contribution was especially valuable. Treating
+the ship as a pendulum he laid down two definite rules for the
+guidance of shipbuilders, (1), not to remove the parts of a ship
+too far from the longitudinal axis, (2), to make the most distant
+parts as light as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Up to this time the discoveries of the mathematicians had
+had little practical effect on shipping. The abstruse form in
+which new truths were published, and the lack of education
+of the shipbuilders, prevented that mutual collaboration
+which was necessary if the art of shipbuilding was to benefit
+by the advances of science. Soon after 1750, however, a
+succession of able men, possessed of imagination and initiative,
+led inquiry into practical channels, and by actual trial
+proved, incidentally, that much of the accepted theory was
+faulty. The Chevalier de Borda, a naval captain and a member<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">38</span>
+of the Academy of Sciences, investigated with models the
+resistance of fluids to motion through them, and enunciated
+laws which shook confidence in current beliefs. The result was
+a commission from the government to three eminent men,
+M. D’Alembert, the Marquis Condorcet and the Abbé Bossut,
+to report on and continue de Borda’s investigations. The
+report, read by the Abbé before the Academy in 1776, confirmed
+generally de Borda’s theories, and revealed new
+problems—in particular, the alteration in shape of the free
+water surface and the effect of wave resistance, the latter of
+which was ultimately to be solved in this country by Mr. W.
+Froude—that required investigation. The circumstances of
+this commission illustrate the enlightened interest of the State
+in the advancement of knowledge, significant testimony to
+which was paid by Abbé Bossut. “M. Turgot,” he said of
+the Comptroller-General of Finances, who took responsibility
+for it, “who is not only an admirer of the sciences, but has
+pursued the study of them himself amidst his numerous
+important official functions, approved of our intentions, and
+granted every requisite for prosecuting them.”</p>
+
+<p>In the same year curious and important discoveries were
+made by M. Romme, professor of navigation at La Rochelle.
+In an endeavour to find the form of ship body which would
+give good stability in conjunction with small resistance, he
+ascertained the importance of the “run” or after part.
+Hitherto the form of bow had absorbed attention to the almost
+entire exclusion of the form of run, except in so far as it had
+been shaped to allow water to flow freely to the rudder. M.
+Romme called in aid methods which are now approved as
+scientific, but which were then conspicuously novel: he
+experimented by comparative trials between models in which
+all variable features except one had been carefully eliminated.
+He was rewarded by some new discoveries. By fixing the
+length and successively varying the curvature of different parts
+of his models he laid bare an important paradox. While at
+low speeds the resistance was least when a sharp end was in
+front and a blunt end in rear, at higher speeds the opposite
+obtained. This accounted for a great deal of the contradictions
+of previous investigators. M. Romme went further:
+the curves by which the bow of a ship was connected with her
+middle body, hitherto looked on as all-important, were shown
+to be relatively immaterial. He astonished the world of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">39</span>
+science by proving that, given certain conditions, the resistance
+upon an arc of a curve is the same as that upon the chord of
+this arc. His deductions were proved by commissions to be
+well founded. Experience confirmed that the form of the bow
+curve did not much influence the resistance experienced in
+passing through water; on the other hand the form of the
+run was shown to have a far greater effect than had hitherto
+been suspected.</p>
+
+<p>In the year before M. Romme published the results of his
+experiments a treatise appeared, full of empirical rules and
+shrewd reasoning, by one of the greatest naval architects,
+Henry de Chapman, chief constructor of the Swedish navy, an
+Anglo-Swede who came of an old shipbuilding family of Deptford.
+Chapman was a most gifted shipbuilder. Though his
+formulæ were empirical, they were founded on careful observation
+and induction, and his name ranks with those of Phineas
+Pett and Anthony Deane in the history of naval architecture.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing, so far, had come from English writers. “The only
+English treatise on shipbuilding that can lay any claim to a
+scientific character was published by Mungo Murray in 1754;
+and he, though his conduct was irreproachable, lived and died
+a working shipwright in Deptford dockyard.”<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">22</a> But indifference
+was at last giving place to interest. Inspired by the formation
+of the Society of Arts in 1753 (which Society was itself inspired
+by the recognition, on the part of the founder, of the value of
+prizes and rewards in improving our breed of racehorses) a
+London bookseller named Sewell succeeded in 1791 in forming
+a Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture.
+“Impressed with the many grave complaints which reached
+him as to the inferiority of our warships as compared with
+those of France and Spain,” he gained the interest of Lord
+Barham and other influential men. A meeting was held at
+which it was decided, as something of a novelty, that the
+theory and art of shipbuilding were subjects of national importance;
+that a radical deficiency in knowledge of the same
+existed; and that the most effective remedy was a focussing
+of the wisdom of the country on this matter by the institution
+of the above Society.<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">23</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">40</span>
+For a time the society flourished. A learned paper by
+Atwood before the Royal Society, on the stability of a rolling
+ship, proved that this country was not wholly destitute of
+mathematical talent. An interesting series of experiments was
+carried out for it by Colonel Beaufoy, a devoted student who
+had made his first experiments on water resistance before he
+was fifteen years old. It appears that his attention was first
+drawn to the subject by hearing an eminent mathematician
+state one evening that a cone drawn through water base foremost
+experienced less resistance than with its apex foremost;
+and it was said that sailors always took a mast in tow by the
+heel. The paradox excited young Beaufoy’s curiosity. Before
+bedtime, with the assistance of a neighbouring turner, he was
+making experiments in one of the coolers in his father’s brew-house,
+a large bunch of counting-house keys being put into
+requisition as a motive power. Though the society was
+dissolved in 1799 Beaufoy continued to pursue this subject
+with unabated zeal until his death. In one direction, especially,
+he did good work. Attracted by the frequency with which
+North Sea fishing vessels, fitted with wells for carrying the fish,
+foundered at sea, he showed experimentally the loss of stability
+involved in carrying open tanks of water. He also demonstrated
+to English builders by means of models that Bouguer’s
+diagram of metacentric stability was of great practical value,
+even for large angles of heel. “His experiments,” says Mr.
+Johns, “should take an important place in the history of
+stability of ships.”</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>We now revert to the beginning of the eighteenth century.
+In the desultory warfare which was carried on during the
+reign of Queen Anne events occurred to demonstrate the
+superiority in design of the French warship over its English
+opponent of the same nominal force. One in particular, an
+expedition under Count Forbin which was intended to cover a
+descent on the Scotch coast in favour of the Pretender,
+“showed, even in failure, that in material France held a lead
+on us.” Chased back to its ports from the latitude of Edinburgh
+by larger English forces, Forbin’s squadron proved a
+superiority over all our ships, both in speed and seaworthiness.
+In weather which disabled many of our vessels the French<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">41</span>
+squadron arrived home with the loss of only three—and these
+all English built.</p>
+
+<p>At about the same time the capture by us of a 60-gun ship,
+the <i>Maure</i>, of extraordinarily large dimensions for her rate,
+showed the direction in which French design differed from our
+own. The recapture, not long afterwards, of the <i>Pembroke</i>,
+which was now found to carry only fifty, instead of her original
+number of sixty-four guns, corroborated (says Charnock) the
+direction in which improvement was sought and found.</p>
+
+<p>But for some time the lesson remained unlearnt. For a
+number of years the inferiority of our design was an accepted
+fact; “every action won by British valour was a stigma to
+British science.” Throughout the whole of this century we set
+no value on scientific principles as applied to naval architecture,
+and were content to remain copyists. Although before the
+advent of the Napoleonic wars we had thus endeavoured to
+reduce their balance of advantage, yet even so the French still
+maintained an absolute superiority in design. In the first half
+of the century this superiority was especially conspicuous; and,
+in conjunction with an inferiority of seamanship and workmanship
+which in the end more than neutralized all its advantages,
+it was the cause of the disreputable incongruities which Charnock
+has depicted in his well-known epigram: <em>Very few ships
+captured by the enemy from the British have ever continued long
+the property of their possessors. If it has so happened, that one of
+them, being in company with others of French construction, has
+ever fallen in with any English squadron, that ship, almost without
+exception, has been among those captured, and most frequently
+the first which has fallen. On the other hand, the recapture of any
+ship from the British, which was originally French, is a circumstance
+extremely uncommon. Captured French ships were sought
+for as the best commands, which not infrequently were the means of
+recapturing captured English vessels.</em></p>
+
+<p>Very seldom was our failure to overhaul the speedy Frenchman
+attributed to inferiority of design; nearly always to the
+fortuitous circumstance that we were foul-bottomed and the
+enemy clean; which may have been sometimes true, but
+which was evidently a partial and inaccurate explanation.</p>
+
+<p>We have already made mention of the periodic “establishments”
+of dimensions to which ships built for the royal navy
+were made to conform. The first of these, after the rules laid
+down by the commissioners of James I, was decreed in 1655,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">42</span>
+when Blake was organizing a new standard navy. In 1677
+dimensions were established for ships of 100, 90, and 70 guns,
+but were exceeded in the case of those ships which were
+actually built; and in ’91 a revised establishment for all
+classes, very similar to those which previously governed
+practice, appeared. In 1706 a new establishment was decreed,
+a compromise between the ideas of the Surveyor and the
+master shipwrights, in which the dimensions of each class were
+slightly increased. The dimensions still remained small compared
+with those of all foreign ships, however, and still “all
+superior faculties of sailing were attributed to the mere length
+of the vessel itself, without any but trivial regard to shape or
+form of bottom.” Assuming that the ships built under this
+establishment derived some slight advantage over earlier
+construction on account of their augmented tonnage, yet this
+was nullified when, in 1716, the force of their armament was
+raised. As the work of a committee presided over by Admiral
+Byng, a new establishment of guns was ordered, a change being
+made in calibres but not in <span class="locked">numbers:—</span></p>
+
+<p>First and second rates, instead of carrying 32-pounders on
+the lower, 18-pounders on the main, and 9-pounders on the
+upper deck, were ordered to carry, 42-pounders (or 32-pounders)
+on the lower, 24-pounders on the main, and 12-pounders on the
+upper deck. Eighty-gun ships, instead of carrying 24-pounders
+on the lower, 12-pounders on the main, and 6-pounders on the
+upper deck, were ordered to carry 32-pounders on the lower,
+12-pounders on the main, and 6-pounders on the upper deck.
+Seventy-gun ships, which in the previous century had carried
+18-pounders on their main, and 9-pounders on their upper
+deck, and which during the reign of Queen Anne had carried
+24-pounders and 9-pounders, were now ordered to carry
+24-pounders and 12-pounders. And so on with the smaller
+rates.</p>
+
+<p>In 1719 a new establishment for ships was decreed, the
+dimensions slightly exceeding those of 1706, but being totally
+insufficient for satisfactory construction. In ’32 and ’41
+attempts were made to formulate new rules; but the master
+shipwrights seem to have been loth to accept the lesson which
+the French enemy was teaching them, and hesitated to recommend
+any radical departure from traditional practice.</p>
+
+<p>At length, in 1745, general complaint of the inferiority of
+our ships in size and scantlings forced improvement on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">43</span>
+authorities. Spain, who had joined France in war against us,
+possessed ships which exceeded in size even French ships of the
+same rate. The capture in 1740 of a Spanish 70-gun ship, the
+<i>Princessa</i>, by three of our ships, nominally of equal force with
+herself but of far inferior dimensions and scantlings, is said to
+have been the chief cause of the new reform. Their lordships
+of the Admiralty, surveying naval construction in this country,
+noted that our royal ships were weak and crank, while those of
+other nations went upright. There was no uniform standard of
+size, ships of the same class were of different dimensions, the
+existing establishment was not adhered to. They therefore
+decided on a new establishment, based on the latest armament
+of guns; which should result in ships which would carry
+their lower tier six feet above the water, and four months’
+provisions.</p>
+
+<p>The new standard was of little avail, for the same error made
+some thirty years previously was now repeated: with the
+augmentation of the ship dimensions the armament was also
+raised in calibre. The first rates were ordered to carry the
+42-pounder (which had before been optional) on their lower
+deck; the 90-gun ships, 12-pounders on their upper decks;
+the eighties, 18-pounders and 9-pounders instead of 12’s and
+6’s; the seventies, which were only two hundred tons in excess
+of the former establishment, 32-pounders and 18-pounders,
+instead of 24’s and 12’s. “The ships, therefore, built by this
+establishment proved, in general, very crank and bad sea-boats.”<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">24</a></p>
+
+<p>This establishment was, in point of fact, little adhered to.
+The war with France during the years 1744–8 repeatedly
+revealed the defective nature of our ship design. Experience
+pointed to the necessity either of reduced gun-weights or of
+larger ships. Able administrators were now willing, under the
+inspiration of such names as Hawke and Anson, to initiate
+improvements. Our naval architecture at last took benefit,
+though still by slow and cautious degrees, from foreign experience.
+Some time was necessary for results to show themselves;
+not only were new decisions slowly formed, but the rate of
+building was deliberately slow. The <i>Royal George</i>, for instance,
+described as “the first attempt towards emancipation from
+the former servitude,” was ten years building. But, when war
+broke out again in 1756, the improvements already embodied<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">44</span>
+in the newest construction proved of considerable benefit. The
+establishment of ’45 was given the credit. “The ships built
+by the establishment of 1745,” says Derrick in his Memoirs,
+“were found to carry their guns well, and were stiff ships, but
+they were formed too full in their after part; and in the war
+which took place in 1756, or a little before, some further
+improvements in the draughts were therefore adopted, and the
+dimensions of the ships were also further increased.”</p>
+
+<p>To meet the advances in French construction a new classification
+of rates took place, with French captured ships as models.
+The capture of the <i>Foudroyant</i>, for instance, in 1758, provided
+us with the form and dimensions of a splendid two-decked
+84-gun ship. Our 80-gun three-deckers were thereupon
+abolished, and no three-decker was thenceforth built with
+fewer than 90 guns. The capture of the <i>Invincible</i>, in 1757,
+gave us a valuable model for a 74-gun ship, a rate highly
+esteemed, which bore the brunt of most of this century’s
+warfare.<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">25</a> From her was copied the <i>Triumph</i>, and other
+experimental 74’s, with dimensions varying from those of the
+<i>Invincible</i>, were at this time laid down. All 50-gun ships had
+already dropped out of the line of battle; they were now
+followed by the 60’s. No more 60 or 70-gun ships were built;
+their places were taken by 64’s and 74’s respectively, of
+relatively large size and displacement.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was improvement confined to form and dimensions.
+Attention was now paid to material. New rules were made for
+the cutting and seasoning of timber, and for its economical use.
+Sheathing was tried; in 1761 the frigate <i>Alarm</i> was sheathed
+in copper for service in the West Indies, where the worm was
+active. The copper was found to keep clean the hull, but at
+the expense of the iron fastenings; so when, in ’83, copper
+sheathing became general, an order was issued for all new
+royal ships to be copper fastened up to the water-line: an
+order beneficial on another count, since even without the
+presence of copper sheathing, iron bolts had always been liable
+to corrosion from the acids contained in the oak timbers.
+Ventilation was also studied, more for its effects on the hull
+timbers than on the health of the crews. The scantlings of all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">45</span>
+ships were strengthened. Taffrails and quarter-pieces were
+reduced in size, and the weight thus saved was devoted to
+strengthening the sterns and reinforcing the deck supports;
+additional knees and fastenings were provided throughout the
+structure. Moreover, towards the middle of the century the
+formation of the sails was gradually altered, first in the smaller
+rates and afterwards in the larger ships. The old-fashioned
+spritsail, which had been of greatest effect when going free, but
+which had also been used with the wind abeam by the awkward
+expedient of topping up its yard, gave place in our navy to the
+fore and aft jib, which could be used with the wind before the
+beam. Later the lateen sail on the mizzen gave place to a
+spanker hung from a gaff or half-yard. These alterations had
+a general effect on the size and position of masts and sails.</p>
+
+<p>The order of 1745 was virtually the last of those rule-of-thumb
+establishments which had imposed rigorous maximum
+limits of length, beam and draught in conjunction with an
+equally rigorous minimum of armament weight, and which had
+been a glaring example of the evil effects of standardization
+when unscientifically and unsuitably applied. The East India
+service, the contract-built ships of which were designed by architects
+untrammelled by the rules which cramped and distorted
+the official architecture, provided the clearest proof that the
+King’s ships were, as a whole, of poor design. Naval opinion
+confirmed it.<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">26</a></p>
+
+<p>For further evidence that it was the system and not the men
+at fault, we may note Charnock’s statement that, given a free
+hand, Englishmen proved themselves better shipbuilders than
+foreigners. “It stamps no inconsiderable degree of splendour
+on the opinion which even the arrogance of Spain felt itself
+compelled to hold in regard to the superior practical knowledge
+possessed by the British shipwrights in the construction
+and art of putting a vessel together, when brought in comparison
+with that of their own people. The builders in all the
+royal dockyards and arsenals, the Havanna excepted, were
+Britons.”</p>
+
+<p>How many, we may wonder, of the ships shattered by Lord
+Nelson at Trafalgar were constructed by our countrymen?
+The <i>Victory</i>, which was to bear his flag, was laid down (we may
+note in passing) in the year 1759: she was 186 feet in length on
+the gun-deck, 52 feet broad, and of 2,162 tons burthen.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">46</span>
+In 1774 the American war broke out. The colonists, who
+possessed a small but efficient frigate navy, were joined soon
+afterwards by France, and then by Spain, and Holland. Lord
+Rodney acknowledged the superiority of the French in speed,
+who, though his ships were equally clean with theirs, yet had
+the power daily to bring on an action. The war proved a rough
+test for our honest but unscientific construction. “In 1778,
+assailed by numerous enemies, England put forth all her naval
+strength. Powerful fleets had to be found simultaneously for
+the Channel, the North Sea, the East Indies, America, and the
+West Indies. Five years of such warfare proved exhausting,
+the ships on paying off in 1783 were in a terrible state of decay.
+Several foundered returning home, owing to their ill-construction
+and rickety condition; their iron bolts broke with the
+working, and the ships were mere bundles of boards. All this
+was owing to want of a better system of building, such as has
+since been brought to such perfection by Sir R. Seppings.”<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">27</a></p>
+
+<p>After the peace the size of the French ships continued to
+increase, and every effort was made to improve their design;
+but they were weak both in construction and material. Large
+three-deckers were once more built; the <i>Commerce de Marseille</i>,
+120, was of such extraordinary dimensions that English critics
+thought that “size had now reached its ultimatum.” In 1786
+the French abolished the use of shingle as ballast; it created a
+damp vapour between decks and gave a high centre of gravity.
+Iron ballast had been tried in the frigate <i>Iphigène</i> with great
+success. “She was very easy in a sea when under her courses;
+her extremities were not overloaded with cannon; she mounted
+only 13 guns a side, whereas she had room for 15. She was the
+best sea boat, and fastest sailing ship, perhaps, ever built. Her
+length was more than four times her breadth.”<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">28</a></p>
+
+<p>In England, as witnessed by the formation of the Society for
+the Improvement of Naval Architecture, feeling was widespread
+at this time that something was lacking in our methods of ship
+construction. The navy was in process of reorganization by a
+great administrator. In 1784 Sir Charles Middleton created
+an establishment of naval stores. He took under consideration
+shortly afterwards the growing scarcity of timber and its more
+economical use. And in the course of his inquiry views were
+expressed on naval shipbuilding which had an influence on
+subsequent practice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">47</span>
+The conditions under which ships were built for the East
+India Company were far more scientific than those obtaining
+in the royal dockyards. The timber was more carefully picked,
+and better seasoned. The hulls were laid up under cover and
+well aired; they stood in frame for six months, and then,
+when the planks had been tacked on, they stood again, and no
+tree-nails were driven till all moisture had been dried out of the
+timber. In design they were in many ways superior; in fact,
+they were reputed the best and safest vessels in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gabriel Snodgrass, the Company’s surveyor, under
+whose supervision, it was claimed, 989 ships had been built
+and repaired between the years 1757 and 1794, only one of
+which had been lost at sea, gave illuminating evidence. “I am
+of opinion,” he said, “that all the ships of the navy are too
+short, from ten to thirty feet according to their rates, And
+if ships in future were to be built so much larger as to admit
+of an additional timber between every port, and also if the
+foremost and aftermost gun-ports were placed a greater distance
+from the extremities, they would be stronger and safer,
+have more room for fighting their guns, and, I am persuaded,
+would be found to answer every other purpose much better
+than the present ships. The foremasts of all ships are placed
+too far forward; the ships are too lofty abaft, and too low
+in midships; they would be much better and safer, if their
+forecastles and quarter-decks were joined together; for if they
+carry two, three, or four tiers of guns, forward and abaft, they
+certainly ought to carry the same in midships, as it is an
+absurdity to load the extremities with more weight of metal
+than the midships. No ships, however small, that have forecastles
+and quarter-decks, should go to sea with deep waists:
+they certainly ought to have flush upper decks.”</p>
+
+<p>Ships of the navy, he considered, were too weak; they had
+plenty of timber, but were deficient in iron fastenings, brackets,
+and standards. Knees should be of iron, which was lighter,
+cheaper, and stronger than wood. The bottoms of all navy
+ships were too thin; the wales and inside stuff too thick. He
+particularly recommended diagonal braces from keelson to
+gun-deck clamps: six or eight pairs of these, secured with iron
+knees or straps, should prevent ships from straining as they
+did. He would reduce the tumble-home given to the topsides,
+and thus add to the strength both of hulls and masts; he
+would abolish quarter-galleries and give less rake to the sterns.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">48</span>
+Finally, he would design ships so as to require a minimum of
+compass timber; make no use of oak where he could substitute
+fir or elm with propriety; and have all timbers cut as nearly
+to the square as possible, to conserve strength.</p>
+
+<p>His evidence, ending in a recommendation to the government
+to improve the status of the naval shipwrights, has been
+handed down as a remarkable exposition of sound knowledge
+and good sense. The proposals were beneficial, so far as they
+went, but they did not go far enough: the whole system on
+which the hull timbers were disposed was wrong. The continuous
+increase in the size of ships was gradually exposing
+their weakness. And though in the next century a more
+scientific disposition was to be adopted, for some years yet
+construction continued on the ancient lines.<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">29</a></p>
+
+<p>The great wars with France, which broke out in the year
+1792, found us adding both to the length and to the scantlings
+of our new ships. Three years before, the Admiralty had
+ordered two 110-gun ships to be built, of 2332 tons burthen.
+One of them, the <i>Hibernia</i>, not finished till the year 1805, was
+made more than eleven feet longer than originally intended.
+Both of these ships were established with 32-pounder guns for
+their main deck.<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">30</a> The unwieldy 42-pounder, used on the
+lower decks of first and second-rate ships, was now displaced,
+in most ships, by the more rapidly worked 32-pounder. Lord
+Keppel had tried, also, to substitute 32-pounders for 24-pounders
+on the main deck of the <i>Victory</i> and other ships in
+commission, so as to establish them generally; but they were
+found too heavy on trial. He replaced 6-pounders by 12-pounders,
+however, on the quarter-decks and forecastles.
+Carronades were now making their appearance. In excellence
+of material and honesty of workmanship our fleets were pre-eminent.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">49</span>
+The value of large dimensions was by this time discerned;
+where possible extra length was given to ships building and
+those under repair. Size still increased. The great <i>Commerce
+de Marseille</i>, brought home a prize by Lord Hood in ’94, was
+forthwith matched by the <i>Caledonia</i>, which, ordered in this
+year but not completed until 1810, was the greatest ship
+which had ever been built in this country. Still, side by side
+with news of world-shaking victories, came evidence of our
+ships’ inferiority in design. Not only the French, but the
+Spanish dockyards, produced vessels which could often
+outsail ours. Four large prizes taken at the battle off Cape
+St. Vincent surprised their new owners: “under their jury-masts,
+and poorly manned as they necessarily were, they beat
+all the English ships working into the Tagus.”<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">31</a></p>
+
+<p>As the great wars went on, Britain deployed a constantly
+increasing naval force. Prizes went to swell the number of
+ships put in commission. “Mr. Pitt was foremost in getting
+every possible ship to sea; and under this pressure rotten old
+ships were doubled and cross-braced and otherwise strengthened
+and rendered fully adequate to temporary service. Trafalgar
+followed, and the efforts of the civil departments were rewarded.”<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">32</a></p>
+
+<p>We have made little mention, in the foregoing pages, of the
+actual tonnage or dimensions of ships, for the reason that the
+figures would be for the most part unreliable or misleading
+in import. The basis on which tonnage was measured was
+constantly changing. It was difficult to obtain accurate
+measurements of the principal dimensions; length, especially,
+was an indeterminate dimension, and, in the days when a
+large fore and aft rake was given, the length of keel gave no
+indication of the over-all length. Even if the over-all dimensions
+could be accurately measured, they gave small information
+as to the form of the hull: the fullness or fineness of the
+lines, the form of the bow-curves and tuck, the position of the
+section of maximum breadth, both longitudinally and relatively
+to the water-line—proportions on which the sailing
+qualities of a ship largely depended. In the seventeenth
+century the tonnage figures were generally untrustworthy;
+the <i>Sovereign</i> was quoted by three different authorities as
+being of 1141, 1637, and 1556 tons burthen. In the eighteenth
+century tonnage and dimensions possessed greater comparative<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">50</span>
+value. We confine ourselves to quoting the following table of
+typical dimensions, taken from Charnock, showing the gradual
+expansion which took place in the hundred years which have
+just been reviewed.</p>
+
+<table id="shipdim" summary="Ship Dimensions">
+  <tr><th class="first">Establishment</th><th>Length<br />(gun-deck)</th><th>Keel</th><th>Breadth</th><th>Depth</th><th>Tonnage</th></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">1706 }</td>
+    <td class="tdc">171′ 9″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">139′ 7″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">49′ 3″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">19′ 6″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">1809</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">1719 } 100-gun ships</td>
+    <td class="tdc">175′ 0″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">140′ 7″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">50′ 3″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">20′ 1″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">1883</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl">1745 }</td>
+    <td class="tdc">178′ 0″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">145′ 2″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">52′ 0″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">21′ 6″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">2091</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdl"><i>Commerce de Marseille</i> (120)</td>
+    <td class="tdc">208′ 4″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">172′ 0″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">54′ 9″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">25′ ½″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">2747</td></tr>
+  <tr class="bot">
+    <td class="tdl"><i>Caledonia</i> (120)</td>
+    <td class="tdc">205′ 0″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">170′ 9″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">53′ 8″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">23′ 2″</td>
+    <td class="tdc">2616</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>The slow progress of naval architecture up to the end of
+the eighteenth century, an advance the rate of which may be
+gauged from the fact that, except for sheathing and pumps,
+no important improvement was patented between the years
+1618 and 1800, has been characterized as consisting mainly of
+approximations to the successive forms and arrangements of
+Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and French ships, all of which
+had been in their turn superior to ours. Until the end of the
+eighteenth century the “bigotry of old practice” had effectually
+opposed any radical improvement, even though such
+improvement had been operating for years in foreign navies
+and were brought continually before the eyes of our professionals,
+embodied in captured prizes. In his <cite>Naval Development
+of the Century</cite> Sir Nathaniel Barnaby has drawn attention
+to the remarkable similarity which existed between the
+<i>Caledonia</i> of the early nineteenth, and the old <i>Sovereign</i> of
+the seventeenth century: “Almost the only things of note
+were the reduction in height above water, forward and aft,
+and a slight increase in dimensions. The proportion between
+length and breadth had undergone but little change. There
+was almost the same arrangement of decks and ports; the
+same thin boarding in front of the forecastle; the same mode
+of framing the stern, the same disposition of the outside
+planking in lines crossing the sheer of the ports; nearly the
+same rig; the same external rudder-head, with a hole in the
+stern to admit the tiller; and probably the same mode of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">51</span>
+framing the hull. For the ships of 1810 had no diagonal
+framing of wood or iron, but the old massive vertical riders;
+no shelf or waterway to connect the beams with the sides;
+no fillings above the floor-head; and no dowels in the frames.
+Ships were still moored by hempen cables, and still carried
+immense stores of water in wooden casks.”</p>
+
+<p>To Sir Robert Seppings was due the series of innovations
+in constructional method which placed shipbuilding on a
+relatively scientific basis and thereby rendered it capable of
+meeting the increasing demands involved in the growing size
+and force of warships. His scheme, some elements of which
+had already been tested in H.M. ships, was described in a paper
+read before the Royal Society in 1814. In the briefest language
+we will attempt to explain it.</p>
+
+<p>In the theory of structures, a jointed figure formed of four
+straight sides is known as a <em>deficient</em> frame, since it has
+not a sufficient number of members to keep it in stable equilibrium
+under any system of loading. A triangle, on the other
+hand, is a <em>perfect</em> frame, since it has enough, and not more
+than enough, members to keep it in equilibrium however it
+may be loaded.</p>
+
+<p>The hull of a timber-built ship consisted of a number of
+rigidly jointed frames or cells, some lying in horizontal, some
+in vertical, and some in intermediate planes: the unit cell
+being a quadrilateral, whose sides were formed by the frames
+and vertical riders and by the planks, wales, and horizontal
+riders. Practically all the materials composing the fabric of a
+ship were disposed either in planes parallel to the plane of
+the keel or in planes at right angles to it. And up to the end
+of the Napoleonic wars our ships, without appreciable exception,
+were built on this primitive quadrilateral system. The
+system was essentially weak. All warships showed a tendency
+to arch or hog—to become convex upwards, in the direction
+of their length—owing to the fact that the support which they
+derived from the water was relatively greater amidships than
+in the neighbourhood of their extremities. In the old days
+when ships were short in length this tendency was small, or,
+if appreciable, a remedy was found in working into the structures
+additional longitudinal and transverse riders, until the
+holds were not infrequently clogged with timber. But as
+ships increased in length, the forces tending to “break the
+sheer” of a ship and arch its keel increased in greater ratio<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">52</span>
+than the ship’s power of resistance to the distortion; and by
+the end of the eighteenth century, in spite of the aid of iron
+knees, stronger fastenings, and improved material generally,
+the essential weakness of our mode of construction had been
+gradually exposed. The <i>Victory</i> herself suffered from arching.
+The extremities of a 74-gun ship dropped six inches, sometimes,
+when she entered the water from the stocks. A similar
+tendency to hog took place also across the breadth of a ship,
+occasioned by the dead weight of her guns. When rolling in
+heavy weather the momentum of her top weights caused large
+racking stresses to be thrown on the joints between the frames
+and the deck-beams. The biographer of Admiral Symonds
+quotes Captain Brenton as follows: “I remember very well,
+when I was a midshipman in a 64-gun ship coming home from
+India, cracking nuts by the working of the ship. We put
+them in under the knees, as she rolled one way, and snatched
+them out as she rolled back again.”</p>
+
+<div id="ip_52" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 20.75em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p052.jpg" width="332" height="87" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING DISTORTION OF FRAMES UNDER LOAD</div></div>
+
+<p>From these remarks it will be clear that a new method of
+construction which, by substituting the triangle for the rectangle,
+prevented the distortion of a ship’s hull under the
+stresses of hogging and sagging, would constitute an important
+innovation: even more important if, in addition, the new
+method resulted in a large economy of material. Such a
+system Sir Robert Seppings introduced. Treating the hull as
+a girder liable to bend, he disposed the timbers to the best
+advantage to resist deformation. The rectangular system,
+wherein frames and riders formed rectangular cells with no
+other power of resisting distortion into rhomboids than that
+derived from the rigidity of the joints, had been proved inefficient;
+just as a common field gate would be inefficient, and
+would easily distort, if built up solely of vertical and horizontal
+timbers without any diagonal brace to make it a rigid figure.
+He solved the problem with the triangle. By bracing each
+quadrilateral cell with a diagonal timber he thereby divided
+it into two rigid and immovable triangles, and thus made the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">53</span>
+whole ship rigid. The quadrilateral, when braced, was known
+as a <em>trussed frame</em>. All the chief frames in the ships he trussed;
+and since all bending took place from the centre of the ship
+downwards to its ends, he made the trussed frames symmetrical
+about the centre: the diagonals sloped forward in
+the after body, and aft in the fore body, so as to resist the
+arching by extension. The truss frame was embodied, not only
+in the lower part of the vessel (where its effect in resisting
+longitudinal bending was comparatively small), but in the more
+nearly vertical planes, and even in the topsides between the
+gun-ports (where it was most effective). Its use was estimated
+to result in the saving of nearly two hundred oak trees in the
+building of a 74-gun ship.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_53" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 22.125em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p053.jpg" width="354" height="48" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">DIAGRAM REPRESENTING A SHIP WITH TRUSSED FRAMES</div></div>
+
+<p>This was one element of Seppings’ system. The others were:
+the filling in of the spaces between the ground frames of the
+ship, so as to oppose with a continuous mass of timber the
+tendency of the lower parts to compress longitudinally, and to
+form a thick and solid bottom; the omission of the interior
+planking below the orlop clamps; the connection of the beams
+with the frames by means of shelf-pieces, waterways, and side
+binding-strakes to the deck; and the laying of the decks
+diagonally.</p>
+
+<p>In two other important respects Seppings improved on
+previous construction.</p>
+
+<p>At Trafalgar the <i>Victory</i>, during her end-on approach to the
+enemy line, was raked, and her old-fashioned forecastle, with
+its thin flat-fronted bulkhead rising above the low head, was
+riddled and splintered. This and similar experiences led to the
+introduction by the Surveyor of an improved bow, formed by
+prolonging the topsides to meet in a high curved stem, which
+not only deflected raking shot, but also consolidated the bow
+into a strong wedge-shaped structure supporting a lofty bowsprit,
+and capable of being armed to give ahead fire from a
+number of guns.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly the weakness of ships’ sterns was remedied. The
+broad flat overhanging stern which had been given to our ships<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">54</span>
+throughout the eighteenth century was not only structurally,
+but defensively weak. In many actions, but notably in Admiral
+Cornwallis’ fighting retreat from the French in 1795, the
+weakness of our stern fire had been severely felt; and,
+especially in view of the possible adaptation of steam to ship
+propulsion, at this time foreshadowed, the desirability of an
+improvement was evident. Seppings abolished the flat stern
+in all new two- and three-deckers, substituting sterns circular
+(as seen from above), more compactly embodied, and having
+ports and embrasures in them for guns capable of fire along
+divergent radii. The circular stern gave place, after a few
+years, to an elliptical stern, which presented a more graceful
+appearance and afforded increased protection to the
+rudder-head. “The principal curves visible in it,” it
+was said, “harmonize so well with the sheer lines of the
+ship, that she appears to float lightly and easily upon the
+water.”</p>
+
+<div id="ip_54" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 26.9375em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p054.jpg" width="431" height="359" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>In the opening years of the new century important advances
+were made, too, in the organization of the royal dockyards.
+The interests of naval architecture were served notably by Sir<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">55</span>
+Samuel Bentham, brother of the famous jurist and an ex-shipwright,
+who acquired honours in Russia and returned to
+England to be Civil Architect and Engineer to the navy.
+Bentham became a courageous Commissioner, and did much to
+stamp out abuses and to encourage efficiency; he was instrumental
+in checking the sale of stores, in abolishing “chips,” in
+introducing steam pumps, block machinery, and dry dock
+caissons, in improving the methods of building ships and of
+mounting carronades.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_55" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 22.4375em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p055.jpg" width="359" height="387" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>But still naval architecture, considered either as an art or as
+a science, was stagnant. As a class the Surveyors were men of
+very restricted education—“there is scarcely a name on the
+list of any eminence as a designer or a writer.” Those who
+ordered ships at the Board were “busy politicians, or amateurs
+without a knowledge of science, or sailors too impatient of
+innovation to regard improvements.” In no other profession,
+perhaps, were theory and practice so out of sympathy with
+each other. The native art of the builder was numbed and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">56</span>
+shackled, by the restrictions imposed upon him as to tonnage
+and dimensions; the study of ship form, with a view to
+analysing the forces under which sailing ships moved by wind
+through water and to discovering the laws which those forces
+obeyed, was still mainly an academic pastime of the Society for
+Improving Naval Architecture, and outside the province of the
+naval authorities. Our ships were still formed on no rational
+principle. Captured French ships served as models to be
+copied. Often our builders would make fanciful variations
+from the originals—a little more sheer, a little more beam, etc.
+etc.—and as often they spoiled their copies. Whenever they
+followed closely the forms and features of the originals they
+succeeded in producing vessels which were pronounced to be
+among the best ships in the navy.</p>
+
+<p>With this state of affairs, it is no matter for surprise that
+much of the new construction of the period was of small value.
+“Sir Joseph Yorke produced a set of corvettes, longer and
+narrower than brigs, none of which answered; and they were
+sold out of the service. Then came the ‘Forty Thieves,’ a
+small class of 74’s; but in justice to the designer, Sir H. Peake
+(who copied them from a French ship), it must be added that
+his lines were altered by the Navy Board, and the vessels were
+contract-built. Lord Melville built half a dozen ‘fir frigates,’
+which neither sailed nor stood under canvas. The 22-gun and
+28-gun donkey frigates ‘could neither fight nor run away’;
+it was dangerous to be on board them; and the bad sailing of
+such vessels was the chief cause of our ill success in the
+American War. The old 10-gun brigs, or ‘floating coffins,’ as
+they were significantly styled, were equally dangerous and
+unsightly. They had no room to fight their guns; no air
+between decks, which were only five feet high; extra provisions
+and stores were piled above hatches; and the fastest of them
+sailed no more than eight or nine knots.”<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">33</a></p>
+
+<p>The merchant service was in even worse plight. The tonnage
+rules had had a deplorable effect upon merchant shipping. The
+ancient method of assessing a ship’s burthen was by measuring
+the product of its length and breadth and depth, and dividing
+this by a constant number, which varied, at different periods,
+from 100 to 94. Early in the eighteenth century, however, a
+simplification was innocently made: the depth of the average
+ship being half the beam, a new formula was approved—length<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">57</span>
+multiplied by half the square of the beam, divided by 94.<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">34</a>
+The result might have been anticipated. Dues being paid
+only on the length and breadth, vessels were given great depth
+of hold, full lines, and narrow beam. Absolved by the convoy
+system from trusting to their own speed for self-protection,
+English merchantmen became slugs: flat-bottomed, wall-sided
+boxes, monstrosities of marine architecture of which it was said
+that they were ‘built by the mile and served out by the yard.’</p>
+
+<p>To raise the skill and status of our builders, the Committee
+of Naval Revision of 1806 presided over by Lord Barham
+advised the establishment of an official school, in which the
+more highly gifted apprentices might study the science involved
+in naval architecture. In 1811 the school was opened at Portsmouth,
+with Dr. Inman, a senior wrangler, as president. Ships
+were designed by Dr. Inman and his pupils excellent in many
+respects, and generally on an equality with those of the
+Surveyor and the master shipwrights. Yet still they were very
+imperfect. The official designs were hampered, not only by the
+hereditary prejudices and dogmas and by the cautious timidity
+of the builders themselves, but by the restrictions still imposed
+by the Navy Board, who insisted on a certain specified armament
+in combination with a totally inadequate specified
+tonnage: who laid down incompatible conditions, in short,
+under which genius itself must fail of producing a satisfactory
+result.</p>
+
+<p>The chains were broken in 1832.</p>
+
+<p>In that year, when the whole administration of the navy was
+in process of reorganization, the office of Surveyor was offered
+to and accepted by a naval officer, Captain W. Symonds, R.N.:
+accepted by him on the condition that he should be given a free
+hand in design and allowed to decide himself of what tonnage
+and dimensions every ship should be. Sir Robert Seppings was
+superannuated. The school of naval architecture was abolished.
+The sensation produced was powerful. “Except on matters of
+religion,” said Sir James Graham, when the appointment was
+being debated in the House of Commons some years afterwards,
+“I do not know any difference of opinion which has been
+attended with so much bitterness—so much anger—so much
+resentment, as the merits of Sir W. Symonds and the virtues
+of his ships.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">58</span>
+These violent differences and resentments have long since
+been composed, and Sir William Symonds has been accorded
+the position due to him in the history of naval architecture.
+His opponents, those who had resented his appointment as
+against the best interests of the service, rejoiced that he had
+freed ship design from the traditional restrictions under which it
+had stagnated; his chief admirers were led in the course of
+time to agree in the desirability of having as Surveyor a man
+thoroughly grounded in the scientific principles underlying the
+motion of bodies through water, their stability in water, and all
+the forces acting on a ship at sea.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1821 Lieutenant Symonds, while holding an
+appointment at Malta, had designed and built for himself a
+yacht which he called <i>Nancy Dawson</i>. Yachting had at this
+date become a national sport, and the interest of influential
+patrons in sailing matches was already acting as a stimulus to
+the study of ship form. The chief cause of the beneficial
+reaction from the indifference of former generations, says his
+biographer, was the establishment of the Yacht Club, after the
+peace of 1815, and the interest which men of rank and fortune
+henceforth took in shipbuilding, and in procuring the best
+native models.<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">35</a> So great was the success of the <i>Nancy
+Dawson</i>, that (in his own words) he was led to believe that he
+had hit upon a secret in naval architecture; while experiments
+on other sailing boats seemed to confirm him in his principles.
+Great breadth of beam and extraordinary sharpness—in fact,
+what was described as “a peg-top section”—were the
+characteristic features of his system, with a careful attention to
+stowage, the stand of the masts, and the cut and setting of
+the sails.</p>
+
+<p>“Upon this most slender basis was the whole fabric of Sir
+William’s subsequent career built. The yacht gained him the
+notice of noblemen and others, then followed a pamphlet on
+naval architecture (in which the defects of existing ships were
+pointed out, and great breadth of beam and rise of floor
+advocated); then came a promise from the First Lord of the
+Admiralty, Lord Melville, that he should build a sloop of war
+on his plans, which he did, the vessel being called the <i>Columbine</i>
+(promotion intervening); then further patronage from the
+Duke of Portland and the Duke of Clarence, the latter of whom,
+when he became Lord High Admiral, ordered him to lay down<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">59</span>
+a 40-gun frigate (promotion again intervening); then the
+building of the <i>Pantaloon</i>, 10-gun brig, for the Duke of Portland,
+from whom the Admiralty purchased her; then the patronage
+of that most mischievous civilian First Lord, Sir J. Graham;
+then the order for the <i>Vernon</i>, 50-gun frigate; and then, in
+’32, the Surveyorship of the Navy.”<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">36</a></p>
+
+<p>To Sir Edward Reed and other shipbuilding officers the
+appointment of this brilliant amateur to the supreme control
+of the department seemed an act of war, not only on professional
+architects, but upon naval architecture itself.
+They admitted the success of the Symondite ships in speed and
+certain sailing qualities, but denied the correctness of his
+principles and strenuously resisted his innovations. A great
+breadth of beam was particularly objectionable to the scientific
+builder; not only did it imply a large resistance to the passage
+of the ship through water, but it contributed to an excess in
+metacentric height, abnormal stiffness, and an uneasy motion.
+“For a time his opinions triumphed; but after a while the
+principles expounded by his subordinates (Creuze, Chatfield,
+and Read) were accepted as correct, while not a single feature
+of Sir William’s system of construction is retained, except
+certain practical improvements which he introduced.”<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">37</a></p>
+
+<div id="ip_59" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 36.375em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p059.jpg" width="582" height="368" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">
+
+<p class="floatl">
+‘Victoria’<br />
+Breadth = 59′ 2″<br />
+Length = 204′<br />
+<br />
+‘Caledonia’<br />
+Breadth = 53′ 6″<br />
+Length = 205′<br />
+<br />
+<span class="in2">Fig: 1.</span></p>
+
+<p class="floatr">
+‘Vernon’<br />
+Breadth = 52′<br />
+Length = 176′<br />
+<br />
+‘Barham’<br />
+Breadth = 47′ 10″<br />
+Length = 173′ 8″<br />
+<br />
+<span class="l1">Fig: 2.</span></p>
+
+<p class="floatc"><br />TYPICAL SECTIONS OF “SYMONDITE” AND CONTEMPORARY SHIPS</p></div></div>
+
+<p>Nevertheless his opponents, as before remarked, freely
+acknowledged the value of his services to the country, especially
+in breaking down the restrictions which had hitherto been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">60</span>
+imposed on constructors in respect of dimensions. His
+biographer pays tribute to the intuitive genius which enabled
+him to tell at a glance the trim required for a sailing ship, and
+to sketch out, as a brilliant impromptu, the best form of hull.
+But were these efforts entirely spontaneous? Were they not
+the reward of hidden and persistent work, observation, and
+calculation, carried out for years by the young officer who never
+let a sailing ship come near him without contriving to board her
+and ascertain her principal properties and dimensions? Here,
+surely, is the undramatic but praiseworthy method by which
+he attained success: a method, essentially scientific, which
+enabled its user, even without knowledge of other important
+principles governing ship design, to perform a national service
+in revolutionizing our methods of naval architecture.</p>
+
+<p>Under the control of Sir William Symonds the improvement
+in the form and qualities of our ships, begun under the surveyorship
+of Sir Robert Seppings, continued to progress. Ship
+dimensions increased, and now bore a more correct relation to
+the dead-weight of armament, stores, and crew, which they had
+to carry. All classes from cutters to first-rates carried a more
+generous beam, and gained by the novel feature. Sounder
+rules were devised, partly as the result of a succession of sailing
+trials, for the pitching of masts and the methods of stowing. In
+short, naval architecture entered upon a new and promising era.
+Foreign observers recorded the progress made. Instead of
+being servile imitations of the products of French and Spanish
+models the vessels which flew the English flag became objects
+of admiration to all the world.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_60" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 38em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p060.jpg" width="608" height="408" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>A TUDOR SHIP OF PERIOD 1540–50</p>
+
+<p class="smaller">From a Cottonian MS. in the British Museum</p></div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">61</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_II" class="vspace">CHAPTER II<br />
+
+<span class="subhead">THE SMOOTH-BORE GUN</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap b"><span class="smcap1">On</span> the question of the date at which the discovery of
+gunpowder took place writers have held the most
+divergent views. The opinion of the majority has
+been that its properties were known in the remote ages of
+antiquity, and this opinion has been formed and confirmed by
+the accounts given of its origin by most of the medieval
+writers. The Chinese claim to have known it long before the
+Christian era. And from hints in classical literature, and on
+the broad ground of probability, it has been inferred by some
+authorities that the explosive properties of gunpowder were
+known to the ancients. The wonderful property of saltpetre,
+they argue, must certainly have been known to the wise men
+of old: its extraordinary combustive power when mixed with
+other substances. Melted alone over a hot fire saltpetre does
+not burn; but if a pinch of some other substance is added, a
+violent flame results. In many fortuitous circumstances, they
+say, saltpetre must have been found in contact with that other
+essential ingredient of gunpowder, charcoal. And such a circumstance
+has been pictured by one writer as occurring when
+camp fires, lit upon soil impregnated with nitre (like that in
+parts of India), were rekindled; the charred wood converted
+into charcoal forming with the nitre a slightly explosive
+mixture.</p>
+
+<p>Other investigators maintain that gunpowder, which claims
+a spurious antiquity, is really an invention of the Middle Ages.
+Incendiary compositions—Greek fire, and other substances
+based on the properties of quicklime, naphtha, phosphorus, etc.—were
+undoubtedly known to the ancient world. But explosive
+compositions, based on saltpetre as the principal ingredient,
+were certainly not known in all their fearful power.
+The silence of history on the subject of the projection of
+missiles by explosive material, says a recent authority,<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">38</a> is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">62</span>
+eloquent; the absence of its terminology from such languages
+as Chinese and Arabic, conclusive.</p>
+
+<p>Whichever of the two views may be correct it is certain
+that a knowledge of gunpowder was possessed by the great
+alchemist, Roger Bacon, who in <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1249 committed to
+paper an account of its properties.<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">39</a> To Berthold the Black
+Friar is given the credit for its application to military ends;
+whom legend, in an impish mood, has hoisted with his own
+discovery.</p>
+
+<p>In a learned work on the early days of artillery an English
+writer has described the difficulties encountered in tracing
+the first stages of the evolution of guns and gunpowder. Confusion
+was caused by the fact that, after gunpowder had been
+introduced, military engines were still known by the same
+generic names as those borne in pre-gunpowder days. No
+contemporary pictures of guns could be discovered. The
+loose statements of historians, the license of poets, and the
+anachronisms of the illuminators of the medieval MSS., all
+tended to lead the investigator astray and to make his task
+more difficult. The statements of the historians are indeed
+whole hemispheres and centuries apart; as for poets, our own
+Milton assigned the invention of artillery to the devil himself;
+and “from the illuminators we should gain such information
+as, that Gideon used field pieces on wheeled carriages with
+shafts, when he fought against the Midianites, as in a MS. in
+the British Museum.”<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">40</a></p>
+
+<p>Of all the clues which throw light on the origin of artillery
+the most important yet discovered lies in some MSS. belonging
+to the city of Ghent. After a list of municipal officers for the
+year 1313 occurs the entry: “Item, in this year the use of
+bussen was first discovered in Germany by a monk.” And there
+is evidence that in the following year “guns” were manufactured
+in Ghent and exported to England.<a id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">41</a> The same
+century was to witness a wonderful development of the new-found
+power.</p>
+
+<p>It was but natural that the first application of gunpowder<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">63</span>
+to warlike purposes should have been, not only to strike
+terror by violent explosion and thus obtain an important
+moral effect, but to project the missiles already in military
+use: arrows and ponderous stones. Two distinct types of
+artillery were thus foreshadowed. The first took the form of
+a dart-throwing pot or vase, a narrow-necked vessel from
+which, in imitation of the cross-bow, stout metal-winged arrows
+were fired; while, for projecting stones of great size and weight
+in imitation of the ancient siege-machines, large clumsy pieces
+made of several strips of iron fitted together lengthways and
+then hooped with iron rings were eventually developed.</p>
+
+<p>In the first half of the fourteenth century the guns manufactured
+were of the former type. In <cite>The Origin of Artillery</cite>
+a reproduction is given of an illuminated MS. belonging to
+Christ Church, Oxford, dated 1326, showing an arrow-throwing
+vase: the earliest picture of a gun which is known. And, from
+a French document quoted by Brackenbury, it appears that
+in 1338 there was in the marine arsenal at Rouen an iron
+fire-arm—<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">pot de fer</i>—which was provided with bolts (“carreaux,”
+or quarrels) made of iron and feathered.</p>
+
+<p>But the unsuitability of the arrow for use in conjunction
+with gunpowder as a propellant was, even at this date, realized.
+There was obvious difficulty in preventing the powder gases
+from escaping through the windage space between the arrow-shafts
+and the neck of the vase, even with the aid of leather
+collars. So the arrow almost immediately evolved into a
+stone or metal sphere; the narrow neck of the vase increased
+to the full diameter of the vessel. And as early as 1326, the
+date of the picture of the arrow-throwing vase, cannon of
+brass, with iron balls, were being made at Florence for the
+defence of the commune. The use of the new weapons quickly
+spread. By 1344 the cannon is mentioned by Petrach as “an
+infernal instrument of wood, which some think invented by
+Archimedes,” yet “only lately so rare as to be looked on as a
+great miracle; now, ... it has become as common as any other
+kind of weapon.” By 1412, according to unquestionable testimony
+supplied by public documents, cannon were employed in
+English ships: breech-loading guns with removable chambers.<a id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">42</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">64</span>
+In 1346 Edward III fought Cressy. Whether or no cannon
+were used in this decisive battle has been a matter of considerable
+controversy. According to Villani, an old Florentine
+chronicler who gave an account of the campaign, they were;
+but no mention of them was made by Froissart, who wrote
+some years later. The silence of Froissart has been attributed,
+however, to a desire to avoid offending our court by implying
+that the victory was due to other than the prowess of the
+Prince of Wales; or tainting our success with any mention of
+“devilish machines which were universally regarded as
+destructive to valour and honour and the whole institution of
+chivalry.” Though English chronicles contain no mention of
+gunpowder till some years after Cressy, yet evidence exists
+that artillery—“gunnis cum sagittis et pellotis”—was extensively
+used in this campaign. “But the powder was of so feeble
+a nature and the cannon so small, that the effect of a few of
+them, fired only a few times, could not have been very noticeable
+compared with the flights of arrows.”<a id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">43</a></p>
+
+<p>Cannon in the first half of the fourteenth century were
+indeed feeble weapons compared with the huge mechanical
+engines of the period; yet their moral effect was very great
+and their physical effect by no means negligible. They were
+destructive of chivalry, in a quite literal sense. The value of
+cavalry as an arm was greatly reduced by their adoption in
+the field. They took from the horseman cased in complete
+armour all the advantage he possessed over other troops.
+Instead of forming the nucleus of the fighting strength of an
+army, the armour-clad nobles and their mounted retinues
+became somewhat of an encumbrance, and a change in the
+composition and strength of armies from this time ensued.
+Tournaments went out of fashion, chivalry declined.</p>
+
+<p>Against material, cannon proved even more effective. As
+the arrow-throwing gun gradually disappeared, giving place to
+small cylindrical cannon firing lead and iron balls, other
+ordnance, designed for projecting large stones against the
+gates and walls of forts and castles, grew rapidly to an enormous
+size. Made usually of forged iron bars welded and strengthened
+circumferentially by coils of iron ribbon or rope, and using a
+weak gunpowder, these giant “bombards” began to play an
+important part in land warfare, especially in those internecine
+wars which were constantly being waged in Flanders and in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">65</span>
+Northern Italy. Two peoples were conspicuous at this period
+for their wealth, culture, and energy: the Lombards and the
+Flemings. The former, by their contact with the East, had
+drawn into their hands most of the commerce of Europe; the
+latter, welded together in the Hanseatic League, were in the
+van of northern civilization. It was in Italy, probably, that
+cannon were first employed, and in Italy where they developed
+most rapidly. Their use had an immediate effect on land
+warfare; the defensive value of masonry was suddenly depreciated,
+and town-gate, fort, and campanile, which had for
+centuries defied the old mechanical engines, could no longer
+be considered impregnable.<a id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">44</a></p>
+
+<p>In the following century the development of the bombard
+continued. The Lombards cast them in bronze, adorned them
+with elaborate mouldings and furnished their ends with
+swellings like capstan-heads, of equal diameter, to facilitate
+rolling and parbuckling. In the hands of the Flemish artisans
+this type reached a remarkable degree of perfection in a
+famous bombard called “Dulle Griete,” which was made at
+Ghent about <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1430. The bombard of Ghent consists of
+two parts, a larger part to form the barrel for the stone sphere
+of 25 inches diameter, a smaller part, of much thicker metal,
+to form the chamber in which the powder charge is placed.
+These two parts are screwed together, screw threads being
+formed on a boss on the front end of the chamber and in a
+hole in the rear end of the barrel. This is thought to be the
+piece described by Froissart as “une bombarde merveilleusement
+grande, laquelle avoit cinquante trois pouces de bec, et
+jetoit carreaux merveilleusement grands et gros et pesants;
+et quand cette bombarde descliquoit, on l’ouoit par jour bien
+de cinq lieues loin, et par nuit de dix; et menoit si grand’ noise
+au descliquer, que il sembloit que tous les diables d’enfer
+fussent au chemin.”</p>
+
+<p>A fine example of the built-up bombard is “Mons Meg,”
+the piece which now lies at Edinburgh Castle, and which was
+made at Mons about <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1460: formed of longitudinal
+wrought-iron bars welded and hooped circumferentially, of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">66</span>
+20 inches in the bore, and designed to fire a stone ball of over
+three hundred pounds’ weight.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the hands of the Turks, then at the zenith of
+their power, that medieval ordnance achieved its greatest
+development, and it is thought probable that Flemish pieces
+served as the model on which the Ottoman artillery was based.
+The siege of Constantinople, in the year 1453, was notable for
+“the reunion which it presented of ancient and modern
+artillery—catapults, cannon, bullets, battering rams, gunpowder
+and Greek fire.” And it was especially notable from
+the power of the modern artillery there assembled, an artillery
+which represented a climax of size and military value. Gibbon
+has given us a vivid description of the Ottoman ordnance and
+its capabilities. “Mahomet studied with peculiar care the
+recent and tremendous discovery of the Latins; and his
+artillery surpassed whatever had yet appeared in the world.
+A founder of cannon, a Hungarian, a deserter from the Greek
+service, was liberally entertained by the Sultan. On his
+assurance a foundry was established at Adrianople; the metal
+was prepared; and at the end of three months Urban produced
+a piece of brass ordnance of stupendous and almost incredible
+magnitude; a measure of twelve palms is assigned to the bore;
+and the stone bullet weighs above six hundred pounds. A
+trial was held, a proclamation having warned the populace.
+The explosion was enormous and was heard one hundred
+furlongs off, and the ball, by the force of the gunpowder, was
+hurled above a mile.”</p>
+
+<p>“A stranger as I am to the art of destruction,” continues the
+historian—who, we may note in passing, had been through his
+courses at Hilsea and was a major in the Hants Militia—“I can
+discern that the modern improvements of artillery prefer the
+number of pieces to the weight of metal; the quickness of fire
+to the sound, or even the consequence, of a single explosion.
+Yet I dare not reject the positive and unanimous evidence of
+contemporary writers; nor can it seem improbable that the
+first artists, in their rude and ambitious efforts, should have
+transgressed the standard of moderation.... The great
+cannon, flanked by two fellows of almost equal size, was set up.
+Fourteen batteries thundered at once against the walls, one of
+which contained 130 guns! Under a master who counted the
+minutes, firing could take place seven times in a day.”</p>
+
+<p>Interesting corroboration of Gibbon’s account has since been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">67</span>
+discovered in a MS. by a contemporary Greek writer, found
+at Constantinople in the year 1870.<a id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">45</a> According to this
+chronicler the cannon are actually cast on the field of action.
+Mahomet summons the gunmakers and discourses with them
+on the kind of ordnance required to beat down the walls of the
+city. They reply that larger cannon are necessary than any
+they possess; and they suggest melting down the pieces
+available to form others of sufficient size and power. The
+Sultan commands the thing to be done. Quantities of plastic
+clay are kneaded, linen and hemp and threads being mixed
+with it to stiffen it for forming gigantic moulds. Furnaces are
+erected, and charged with copper and tin. Bellows are worked
+for three days and three nights, and then, the metal being
+ready, the molten mass is poured. Within sight of the
+beleaguered city huge cannon are cast which, placed on
+wooden sleepers on the ground with their butts supported to
+prevent recoil discharge stones weighing nearly 700 pounds
+against the walls.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no need of documentary evidence to attest the
+power of the Ottoman artillery of this period; cannon built on
+the above model have guarded the Dardanelles for centuries,
+and, what is more, have proved sufficiently effective in modern
+engagements. In 1807 Sir John Duckworth’s squadron was
+struck repeatedly by stones of enormous weight, discharged
+from these cannon in an attempt to prevent its passage. And
+it is known that some of them were made shortly after the
+taking of Constantinople. These cannon, says General Lefroy,
+were cast on their faces, “the dead-head being left at the
+breech-end and hewn off with axes, probably while the metal
+was hot.” In one of them brought home to England “the axe
+marks are plain; similar marks may be observed on other
+early guns which have the breech cut off square.” The similarity
+of design between this Turkish gun and the Flemish
+bombards is too close to be accidental; their construction is of
+peculiar interest and has the main features in common. “The
+external form of the gun is a cylinder, the muzzle being as large
+as the breech; but either half is relieved by a boldly projecting
+moulding at each end, which is divided transversely by
+sixteen cross-bars into as many recesses: thus serving to give
+a purchase to the levers used in screwing the two parts<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">68</span>
+together.” How the screw threads were cut is not known, but
+“we can suppose that moulding pieces were first cut in wood
+and nicely fitted and then applied to the clay moulds.” The
+charge of powder used with this type of piece was as much as a
+hundredweight. In spite of the weakness of the squib-like
+powder its physical and moral effect was undoubtedly important.
+“Thus inconceivable and incredible,” writes the
+chronicler of 1467, “is the nature of this machine. The ancient
+princes and generals did not possess and had no knowledge of
+such a thing.... It is a new invention of the Germans or of
+the Kelts made about one hundred and fifty years ago, or a
+little more. It is an ingenious and happy discovery, especially
+the powder, which is a composition made of saltpetre, of
+sulphur, of charcoals, and of herbs, from the which composition
+is generated a dry hot gas....”</p>
+
+<div id="ip_68" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 24em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p068.jpg" width="384" height="197" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>TURKISH BRONZE CANNON</p>
+
+<p class="smaller">From Lloyd and Hadcock’s <cite>Artillery</cite></p></div></div>
+
+<p>The founding of these enormous cannon on the field of
+action is in itself a tribute to the energy and resourcefulness of
+the nation who have been described as being, at that time, the
+finest engineers in the world. Of the effectiveness of the
+Ottoman artillery there is evidence in the results achieved.
+Constantinople fell to the giant bombards. And in the early
+part of the following century Rhodes, the last outpost of the
+Knights, fell to the same great power. The invention of the
+Christians<a id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">46</a> was, in fact, the weapon which gave supremacy to
+the Infidel in the eastern part of Europe.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">69</span>
+In the meantime the evolution of artillery was taking a new
+direction. The large and relatively feeble ordnance of the
+Turks was, in the circumstances, not entirely unsuitable for
+the purpose for which it was intended: the smashing of
+masonry and the breaching of gates and walls. The maximum
+of effect was obtained from a missile of enormous mass projected
+with a low velocity. Nevertheless its disadvantages
+were obvious. Large cannon cast in bronze were necessarily of
+great expense and weight, their discharges were few and far
+between, they wore rapidly and were thus short-lived, and
+they possessed the dangerous property of becoming brittle
+when heated. An increase in power and a reduction in weight
+were required for the achievement of a portable artillery, and
+the progress of mechanical science pointed to wrought iron as
+the material of which such an artillery might be made.</p>
+
+<p>The extraction of iron in small quantities from ferruginous
+ore was a comparatively simple operation, even in primitive
+times. With the aid of bellows and a plentiful supply of wood
+charcoal the smith was able to make his furnace yield small
+masses of metallic iron of the purest quality. This iron,
+wrought on an anvil, could be drawn out into plate or bar as
+desired, the resulting metal being, by reason of the purity of
+the charcoal used in its extraction, of great toughness, homogeneity,
+and strength. In Spain and Italy were mines which
+had long been famed for their iron. In England the Roman
+had made good use of the metal found in the Sussex mines, and
+all through the middle ages the wealds of Kent and Sussex were
+the centres of the English iron trade. In the fourteenth
+century improved methods came into use; the adoption of
+water-power for driving the bellows, for crushing the charcoal,
+and for operating the tilt-hammers, had its effect on the
+development of the iron-smelting industry; higher temperatures
+obtained and larger masses of ore could now be treated;
+the iron, produced in larger quantities by improved methods,
+was perhaps purer and stronger than before.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">70</span>
+In wrought iron, then, a material was available which
+almost alone was suitable for the manufacture of the more
+portable sorts of gun. By its use guns could be made strong
+enough, without being of an excessive weight, to withstand the
+increasing stresses thrown on them, first, by the use of iron
+bullets instead of stone, and secondly, by the discovery of an
+improved gunpowder. Artillery underwent a dual development.
+On the one hand, for use with the weak cannon powder,
+was the large stone-throwing ordnance, made of cast bronze or
+of hooped bars of iron; on the other, for use with iron shot and
+a stronger propellant, were various denominations of small
+portable and semi-portable wrought-iron guns. These two
+distinct types developed side by side until the middle of the
+sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>The use of iron and lead balls, the superiority of which over
+balls of stone had doubtless been manifested in former
+centuries in connection with the projection of Greek fire, was
+practised by the Florentines soon after the invention of guns
+themselves. The discovery of “corned” gunpowder took
+place a century later.</p>
+
+<p>In its original form gunpowder possessed many disadvantages
+as a propellant. Ground into a fine powder, and composed
+in the first instance of almost equal proportions of
+saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal, it was peculiarly liable to
+accidental explosion, so that frequently the charcoal was kept
+separate from the other ingredients and mixed just prior to use.
+If kept mixed it easily disintegrated, in the shaking of transport,
+into three strata, the charcoal coming to the top and the
+sulphur sinking to the bottom. It was intensely hygroscopic,
+and quickly fouled the barrels of the pieces in which it was
+used. But, most important of all, the efficiency of its combustion
+depended to an inconvenient degree upon the density
+with which, after being ladled into the gun, it was rammed
+home. The greatest care had to be exercised in ramming. If
+pressed into too dense a mass the powder largely lost its
+explosive character; the flame which ignited the portion
+nearest the vent could not spread through the mass with
+sufficient speed; it quietly petered out. If rammed too
+loosely, on the other hand, the explosive effect was also lost.
+A great gain ensued therefore when, in place of the fine or
+“serpentine” powder, corned powder came to be used, about
+the middle of the fifteenth century. In this form the powder<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">71</span>
+was damped and worked into grains, crushed to the requisite
+size and sieved for uniformity. These grains were finally
+glazed to prevent deterioration from the effects of damp; and
+the resulting powder proved stronger and more efficient in
+every way than the same mixture in its more primitive form.</p>
+
+<p>Some time was to elapse before guns could be cast of
+sufficient strength to withstand the force of corned powder.
+“Chemistry had outrun metallurgy.” The larger species of
+ordnance were restricted to the use of serpentine powder until
+the middle of the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, cast
+ordnance as well as the lighter forged iron guns were developed
+continuously for service in the field. Named after birds and
+reptiles and clumsily cast of such shapes and weights as pleased
+the founders’ fancy, they were of use chiefly in demolishing by
+attrition the gates and walls of forts and cities. From the
+battle of Cressy onward, first in huge carts and then on their
+own wheeled carriages, they rumble across the pages of
+European history.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>At sea the evolution of ordnance had to conform, of course,
+to the progress of naval architecture and the changing nature of
+the warfare. In the Mediterranean, where the oar-propelled
+galley remained for centuries the typical fighting ship, the
+bombard was planted in the bows, shackled to a deck-carriage
+upon the centre line, to give ahead fire and to supplement the
+effects of a powerful ram. As the galley developed, the main
+central gun became flanked by other bow-chasers; while on
+the beams and poop light wrought-iron breech-loading swivel
+guns formed a secondary armament whose double function was
+to repel boarders and to overawe its own slave-crew. In the
+Atlantic, where the typical fighting vessel was the lofty sailing
+ship, the same two different types of armament had vogue.
+But in this case their distribution was different; the sailing
+ship, with no recourse to oars for manœuvring, could not
+always ensure an end-on attack or defence, and had to arm
+herself against an enemy from any quarter. Her freedom from
+oars, her height, and the invention of the porthole, enabled the
+early “great ship” to mount a sufficiently distributed all-round
+armament. While her sides were pierced for ponderous
+bombards, her poop and forecastle bristled with the same light
+secondary armament as figured in the Mediterranean galley.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">72</span>
+This artillery was almost entirely for defence. Before Elizabethan
+days (as we have already noted) sea battles were
+nothing more than hand-to-hand fights; the attacking vessel
+was laid alongside its enemy, sails were furled, and boarding
+took place. If, after being swept by spherical shot from the
+bombards and showers of stones and dice from the mortars and
+periers, the boarders could carry the waist of the defending
+ship, they still had to capture the barricaded forecastle and
+poop, from whose rails a multitude of the smaller ordnance—port-pieces,
+fowlers, serpentines—were trained upon them and
+behind whose bulkheads crossbow and harquebuss were plied
+against them in concealment.</p>
+
+<p>The sixteenth century witnessed the greatest strides in the
+evolution of sea ordnance. In the Mediterranean the decisive
+effect of gunfire, proved in the sea fight off Prevesa in the year
+1538, was confirmed by the victory of the Christians over the
+Turks at Lepanto in 1571. In the Atlantic England began her
+long preparation for securing a sea supremacy and, under the
+masterful eye of King Henry VIII, adapted more and more
+powerful guns for service in the royal ships. Of the professional
+interest which the King took in the development of ordnance
+there is ample evidence. At the royal word French and Flemish
+gunfounders were induced to come to England to teach the
+technique of their craft, and to this puissant prince the Italian
+savant, Tartaglia, dedicated his classic treatise on the Art of
+Shooting. England now learnt to found, not only bronze, but
+<em>cast-iron</em> cannon. “Although,” says Grose, “artillery was
+used from the time of King Edward III and purchased from
+abroad by all our successive Kings, it seems extremely strange,
+that none of our workmen attempted to cast them, till the
+reign of King Henry VIII, when in 1521, according to Stowe,
+or 1535 (Camden says), great brass ordnance, as canons and
+culverins, were first cast in England by one John Owen, they
+formerly having been made in other countries.” And from
+Stowe’s Chronicle he quotes the following: “The King
+minding wars with France, made great preparations and
+provision, as well of munitions and artillery as also of brass
+ordnance; amongst which at that time one Peter Bawd,
+a Frenchman born, a gun-founder or maker of great ordnance,
+and one other alien, called Peter Van Collen, a gunsmith, both
+the King’s feedmen, conferred together, devised and caused to
+be made, certain mortar pieces, being at the mouth from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">73</span>
+11 inches, unto 19 inches wide; for the use whereof, the said
+Peter and Peter caused to be made certain hollow shot of cast
+yron, stuffed with fire-works, or wild-fire; whereof the bigger
+sort for the same had screws of yron to receive a match to carry
+fire kindled, that the fire-work might be set on fire to break
+in small pieces the same hollow shot, whereof the smallest piece
+hitting any man, would kill or spoil him. And after the King’s
+return from Bullen, the said Peter Bawd by himself in the first
+year of Edward VI did also make certain ordnance of cast yron
+of diverse sorts and forms, as fawconets, falcons, minions,
+sakers and other pieces.”<a id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">47</a> The casting of iron guns in Germany
+has been traced back as far as the fourteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>According to another account the first English cast-iron
+guns were made at Buxted, in Sussex, by one Ralph Hogge in
+1543. Peter Bawd, the French founder, was an assistant who
+had come to this country to teach him the method. But it
+seems that his connection with Hogge was not of long duration;
+for, “John Johnson, covenant servant to the said P. Bawd,
+succeeded and exceeded his master in this his art of casting
+ordnance, making them cleaner and to better proportion.
+And his son, Thomas Johnson, a special workman, in and
+before the year 1595 made 42 cast pieces of great ordnance of
+iron, for the Earl of Cumberland, weighing 6000 pounds, or
+three tons a-piece.”<a id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">48</a></p>
+
+<p>The advance made in the power of King Henry’s sea
+ordnance is unmistakably shown from trustworthy documents.
+There is a continuous progress during the reign, and ships
+which were rebuilt subsequently carried an armament entirely
+different from that which they originally had. The <i>Sovereign</i>,
+for instance, built about the year 1488, originally carried one
+hundred and eighty guns, mostly small serpentines. As
+rebuilt in <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1509 she carried an armament which included
+four curtalls, three demi-curtalls, three culverins, two falcons,
+and eleven heavy iron guns. From an inventory of the
+armament of the <i>Henry Grace à Dieu</i>, of 1514, it appears<a id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">49</a>
+that that historic ship was then armed with a miscellaneous
+collection of pieces, comprising 122 iron serpentines, 12 “grete
+yron gonnes of oone makyng and bygnes,” 12 ditto “that
+come owt of fflaunders,” all with separate chambers; 2 “grete<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">74</span>
+Spanish peces of yron of oone sorte,” with chambers; 18
+“stone gonnes apon Trotill wheles,” with chambers; “ffawcons
+of Brasse apon Trotill wheles”; one “grete bumberde of
+Brasse apon iiij trotill wheles”; two “grete culverynes of
+Brasse apon unshodd wheles”; as well as a “grete curtalle of
+Brasse upon iiij wheles,” a sling, vice pieces, and serpentines
+of brass on wheels shod with iron. Rebuilt at a later date the
+<i>Henry</i> carried a different armament, which included brass
+cannons, demi-cannons, culverins, demi-culverins, sakers, and
+cannon-periers.</p>
+
+<p>The transition of armament is plainly marked for us in the
+case of the <i>Mary Rose</i>, rebuilt in 1536, which nine years later
+came to an untimely end off Brading. At the time of her oversetting
+she carried, in fact, both types of ordnance. In the
+Rotunda at Woolwich are to be seen some of the guns recovered
+from her wreck: a built-up wrought-iron breech-loading
+stone-throwing gun on its baulk-of-timber carriage, identical
+in character with a serpentine illustrated in Napoleon III’s
+<cite>Études sur l’Artillerie</cite> as having been taken by the Swiss from
+Charles the Bold in <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1476; and a bronze cannon royal
+(with John Owen’s name on it), demi-cannon, culverin, and
+culverin-bastard, all of them finished specimens of the founder’s
+art, and of an offensive, instead of a merely defensive, value.
+“The system,” says Mr. Oppenheim of this growth of artillery
+armament, “was extended as the reign progressed, and in
+1546 we find comparatively small ships like the <i>Grand Mistress</i>
+carrying two demi-cannon and five culverins, the <i>Swallow</i> one
+demi-cannon and two demi-culverins, out of a total of eight
+heavy guns; the <i>Anne Galant</i> four culverins, one curtall, and
+two demi-culverins,” etc. etc.</p>
+
+<p>What were the dimensions of the various pieces? It is
+difficult to give an exact answer. Owing to the continuous
+development of ordnance throughout the century the pieces
+increased in size while they retained their class-names, and
+there is a wide variation between the table of ordnance of
+Tartaglia, for instance, compiled in 1537, and those drawn up
+by English authors at the beginning of the seventeenth
+century. Briefly, we may note that pieces could be grouped
+in four classes: viz. cannons, culverins, periers, and mortars.
+The cannons were large in calibre and of medium length; the
+culverins were of great length, to give them high ranging
+power; the periers, or stone-throwers, were a sort of howitzer;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">75</span>
+and the mortars, named probably from the apothecary’s
+utensil to which they bore a resemblance, were squat pieces
+used for projecting stones or iron balls at a high elevation.
+The old stone-throwing serpentine was a gun weighing about
+260 pounds, which fired a stone “as big as a swan’s egg.” The
+curtall, or curtlow was (according to Mr. Oppenheim) a heavy
+gun of some 3000 pounds, hitherto only used as a siege-piece
+on land; “courtaulx” are mentioned by Napoleon III as
+having been, in <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1498, fifty-pounders weighing 5500 livres.
+The slings were large breech-loaders, probably of the perier
+class.</p>
+
+<p>With the adoption of a more powerful armament not only
+did the old pieces disappear, but a simplification of calibres
+ensued. France led the way in the standardizing of calibres;
+about the year 1550 the French king Henri II introduced his
+six “calibres of France.” In the English navy at this period
+several types were discarded, and a limit was set to the size
+of the largest ship gun. “The report drawn up in 1559 tells
+us that there were 264 brass and 48 iron guns, all of calibres
+down to falconets, on board the ships, and 48 brass and 8 iron
+in store.... The heaviest piece used on shipboard was the
+culverin of 4500 lbs.; throwing a 17⅓ lb. ball with an extreme
+range of 2500 paces; the next the demi-cannon weighing
+4000 lbs. with a 30⅓ lb. ball and range of 1700 paces; then the
+demi-culverin of 3400 lbs., a 9⅓ lb. ball and 2500 paces; and
+the cannon petroe, or perier, of 3000 lbs., 24¼-lb. ball and
+1600 paces. There were also sakers, minions, and falconets,
+but culverins and demi-culverins were the most useful and
+became the favourite ship guns. A contemporary wrote, ‘the
+founders never cast them so exactly but that they differ two
+or three cwt. in a piece,’ and in a paper of 1564 the average
+weights of culverins, demi-culverins, and cannon periers are
+respectively 3300 lbs., 2500 lbs., and 2000 lbs.”<a id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">50</a></p>
+
+<p>So far, cast iron had not come into general use. The large
+iron guns were built up like the early Flemish bombards;
+the demi-cannons and culverins were all of brass. At the
+beginning of Elizabeth’s reign there seems to have been an
+attempt to replace the expensive brass by the cheaper cast
+iron, but later there was a reversion to brass, and it was not
+until the following century that cast iron was generally recognized
+as a material for heavy ordnance, and then only for the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">76</span>
+heaviest types. Some technical considerations may help to
+indicate the chief factors which determined the material and
+the dimensions of the Elizabethan ordnance.</p>
+
+<p>Writing in 1628, Robert Norton, in his book <cite>The Gunner</cite>,
+refers as follows to the early Tudor ordnance. “Gun-founders
+about 100 or 150 years past,” he says, “did use to cast ordnance
+more poor, weak, and much slenderer fortified than now, both
+here and in foreign parts: also the rather because saltpetre
+being either ill or not refined, their sulphur unclarified, their
+coals not of good wood, or else ill burnt, making therewith also
+their powder evilly receipted, slenderly wrought, and altogether
+uncorned, made it prove to be but weak (in respect of
+the corned powder used now-a-days), wherefore they also
+made their ordnance then accordingly (that is much weaker
+than now). For the powder now being double or treble more
+than it was in force of rarification and quickness, requireth
+likewise to encrease the metal twice or thrice more than before
+for each piece.” And, in fact, the weight of cannon increased
+in the period mentioned from eighty to two hundred times, the
+weight of culverins from a hundred to three hundred times,
+the weight of their shot. The slender large-bore built-up guns
+of the <i>Henry Grace à Dieu</i> could only be used with a weak
+slow-burning powder. At the same time this slow-burning
+powder required, for its complete combustion, a great length of
+gun. These guns, such of them as were breech-loaders, must
+have suffered from the leakage of gas at the joints of their
+primitive chambers; in the case of the smaller pieces a serious
+inefficiency was the excessive windage allowed between shot
+and gun. Until the end of the sixteenth century the windage
+bore no direct relation to the diameter of the shot or bore of the
+gun: it was a fixed amount, one quarter of an inch. The effect,
+therefore, of the leakage of powder gases past the shot, the loss
+in efficiency of discharge, was greatest in the smallest guns.</p>
+
+<p>The lines along which improvement lay were those which
+were taken. First, an elimination of the smallest guns.
+Second, a return to muzzle loading. Third, a strengthening of
+the powder by corning. Fourth, a further fortifying and a
+general augmenting of the weight of the cast pieces, which had
+the double effect of giving the necessary strength to meet the
+stronger powders coming into use,<a id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">51</a> and of giving the extra<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">77</span>
+mass required to minimize the violence of their recoil. Cast
+iron could not yet compete with well-found brass for the guns
+required. Demi-cannon proved too unwieldy, and as Elizabeth’s
+reign progressed, gave place more and more to the
+long-ranging culverins, demi-culverins, and sakers, “which
+strained a ship less, were served more quickly and by fewer
+men, and permitted a heavier broadside in the same deck
+space.”<a id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">52</a> As powder grew stronger the conditions improved;
+smaller charges were necessary, windage had less effect, and,
+owing to the quicker combustion, it was possible to shorten
+the pieces without detracting seriously from their ranging
+power; and this was done in the Queen’s Navy, the guns
+being thereby made lighter and more easily manipulated,
+while at the same time their projecting muzzles were less
+liable to entangle and interfere with the tackles of the sails.<a id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">53</a></p>
+
+<p>The substitution of the powerful, safe, and easily manipulated
+demi-cannon and the long-ranging culverin and demi-culverin
+in place of the old chambered ordnance of the first
+half of the century made possible a new form of naval warfare.
+The cannon at last became, in the hands of the Elizabethan
+seaman, the chief instrument of battle. Off-fighting was now
+feasible: a mode of action which largely neutralized the
+effects of an enemy’s superiority in size of ship or number of
+men, and which gave full scope and advantage to superior
+seamanship. Though no high standard of gunnery efficiency
+was then possible, yet it was the great superiority of the English
+gunfire, principally from the demi-culverins, the sakers, and
+the minions, over that of Spain, which conduced more than
+any other factor to the dispersal and subsequent flight of the
+Invincible Armada. The gun was the weapon on which the
+English seaman had learnt to rely. It was the gun, plied with
+rapidity just out of pistol-shot of his lofty ships, which in the
+year 1588 harassed and put to confusion the Spaniard, the
+haughty fighter who still maintained a quixotic contempt for
+the use of cannon and esteemed artillery “an ignoble arm.”<a id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">54</a>
+What a volume of fire was poured against him may be seen
+from a letter written by the admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham:<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">78</span>
+“All the world,” he writes, “never saw such a force
+as theirs was; and some Spaniards that we have taken, that
+were in the fight at Lepanto, do say that the worst of our four
+fights that we have had with them did exceed far the fight they
+had there; and they say that at some of our fights we had
+twenty times as much great shot plied as they had there.”</p>
+
+<p>By this time the founding of guns in cast iron had made
+progress. Cast iron was cheap, and of a greater hardness and
+endurance than bronze, but more like to crack and fly and
+endanger the crew, and requiring an enormous expenditure
+of wood-charcoal for its production. The use of mineral coal
+for iron smelting was not discovered until the following
+century, and even then, because of the opposition of the vested
+interests, it was long before it displaced the use of timber. In
+the Tudor times the iron and brass foundries were nearly all
+in the wooded south of England. The rivers of Sussex and
+Kent had for centuries been dammed to form hammer-ponds,
+and the sound of the tilt-hammers was heard throughout
+these counties. To such an extent were the forests depleted
+of wood to form fuel for the Wealden foundries, that serious
+inroads were made on the available supplies of shipbuilding
+timber; legislation was required in Elizabeth’s reign to
+prevent the charcoal-burner from robbing the shipwright of his
+raw material.</p>
+
+<p>Gun-founding, even in bronze, was still a somewhat primitive
+art. But, once taught, the English founders soon excelled
+their teachers; and Norton’s eulogy, and the records of foreign
+efforts to obtain possession of English pieces, bear witness to
+the superiority of our workmen. The products of the most
+famous founders of that time in Europe were very imperfect.
+“Some of their pieces (and not a few) are bored awry, their
+soul not lying in the midst of the body of metal; some are
+crooked in their chase, others of unequal bores, some too light
+towards the breech turn their mouths downwards in their
+discharge, and so endanger their own vawmures and defences;
+others are too heavy also in their breach, by placing the
+trunnions too much afterwards, that coynes can hardly be
+drawn.... Some are come forth of the furnace spongey, or
+full of honeycombs and flaws, by reason that the metal runneth
+not fine, or that the moulds are not thoroughly dryed, or well
+nealed.... Yet thus much I dare say to the due commendations
+of our English gunfounders, that the ordnance which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">79</span>
+they of late years have cast, as well for neatness, as also for
+reasonable bestowing and disposing of the metal, they have far
+excelled all the former and foreign aforementioned founders.”
+Norton, a land gunner, was here referring to brass ordnance,
+alone used on shore.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most interesting witness to the success of
+the English gunfounders is Sir Walter Raleigh, who in his
+<cite>Discourses</cite> rebuked the detestable covetousness of those
+licensed to sell ordnance abroad. So great was the number of
+pieces exported, that all other nations were equipped with
+good English artillery for ships and forts and coast defence.
+“Without which,” he remarks, “the Spanish King durst not
+have dismounted so many pieces of brass in Naples and elsewhere,
+therewith to arm his great fleet in ’88. But it was
+directly proved in the lower house of parliament of Queen
+Elizabeth, that there were landed in Naples above 140
+culverins English.... It is lamentable that so many have
+been transported into Spain.”</p>
+
+<p>In 1589 Lord Buckhurst wrote to the justices of Lewes Rape,
+complaining of their neglect in permitting the surreptitious
+export of ordnance. “Their lordships do see the little regard
+the owners of furnaces and the makers of these pieces have of
+their bonds, and how it importeth the state that the enemy of
+her Majesty should not be furnished out of the land with
+ordnance to annoy us.”</p>
+
+<p>It is not improbable, in short, that some of the Armada’s
+cannon had been moulded and poured on English soil.</p>
+
+<p>The imperfection of the sixteenth-century foundry products
+may be gauged from Bourne’s evidence that the use of cartridges
+was inconvenient because, on account of honeycombs
+and flaws, “you shall scant get the cartridge home unto the
+bottom of the piece.” On the other hand loading by ladle was
+still considered dangerous. In his <cite>Art of Gunnery</cite>, of 1627,
+Thos. Smith, soldier, of Berwick-on-Tweed, warns the gunner
+always to stand to one side of the mouth of the piece when
+thrusting home the ladle; otherwise, the charge being ignited
+by smouldering débris in the cavities of the metal, it takes
+fire and kills the loader—“as happened in Anno 1573 at the
+siege of Edinborough Castle, to two experienced gunners.”<a id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">55</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">80</span>
+At about the same date as Smith’s book was written, Sir H.
+Manwayring, in <cite>The Sea-Man’s Dictionary</cite>, described the
+“arming” of cross-bar shot: i.e. the binding them with
+oakum, yarn, or cloth, to prevent their ends from catching hold
+in any flaws during their passage through the gun, which might
+break it.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>Under the Stuart kings a continuous development of ship
+armament took place.</p>
+
+<p>This development was not always in the right direction.
+The Commission of Reform of the year 1618 recorded, as we
+have already seen, the importance of artillery in naval warfare,
+but owing to the absence of all system it was long before the
+principle found effective application. Owing to divided
+authority, or to a lack of unity in the conception of the fighting
+ship, a tendency to excess in the number and weight of guns
+continued to be noticeable, an excess which was to react
+unfavourably on the performances of our ships both in the
+seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Progress was made in the classification of pieces and in
+the reduction of the number of different types carried; a
+change was also made in the forms of the guns, in order to
+enhance the fighting value of the gun armament in certain
+circumstances. The great guns were made still shorter than
+before; the quicker-burning powders now in use allowed this to
+be done. By which expedient the ratio between gun-weight
+and weight-of-metal-thrown was reduced; more guns could
+be carried for a given weight of metal; they could be more
+easily manipulated; and if they were of small ranging power
+they yet possessed a power of penetration sufficient for close-quarter
+fighting. Moreover, the reduction in length enabled an
+increase in calibre to be made; and this was one of the factors
+which led to the reintroduction of larger types than had
+formerly been considered suitable: the cannon-serpentine,
+the cannon, and even the cannon-royal, with its sixty-six pound
+shot and its eight thousand pounds of metal.<a id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">56</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">81</span>
+In the Dutch Wars the preponderance in the size and weight
+of the unit shot lay with the English ships, and was in itself
+undoubtedly a great advantage in their favour; though
+complaints were made of the great weight and clumsiness of the
+pieces, “which caused much of the straining and rolling
+at sea.” Writing of naval ordnance in the year 1690, Sir
+Cloudesley Shovell recorded that, “our lower-deck guns are
+too big and the tackles ill fitted with blocks, which makes them
+work heavy; the Dutch who have light guns have lignum
+vitæ sheaves. The Dutch guns are seldom larger than twenty-four
+pounders.” By this time, it will be noted, the more
+scientific nomenclature had come into vogue; the cannon-petro
+was now known as the 24-pounder, and the heavy
+lower-deck guns referred to were the old bastard-cannons,
+known since the reorganization of the Commonwealth navy as
+42-pounders.</p>
+
+<p>The founding of guns continued to be, throughout the
+seventeenth century, an affair of private enterprise. Proof
+was carried out under the supervision of the Board of Ordnance.</p>
+
+<p>In 1619 a decree was issued that gun-founding was to be
+confined to Kent and Sussex, that guns were to be landed at
+or shipped from the Tower Wharf only, and that East Smithfield
+was to be the one market-place for their sale or purchase.
+Guns could be proved only in Ratcliff fields, and all pieces were
+to have on them at least two letters of the founder’s name,
+with the year and the weight of the gun. Exportation was
+illegal; nevertheless the illicit traffic went on just as in
+Elizabeth’s time. The royal forts themselves were turned into
+marts for these and other unlawful transactions, and Upnor
+Castle is described as having been “a staple of stolen goods, a
+den of thieves, a vent for the transport of ordnance.”<a id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">57</a></p>
+
+<p>In later years proof took place at other government grounds,
+all within the London area. In Moorfields, according to Stowe,
+was the Artillery Yard, “whereunto the gunners of the Tower
+do weekly repair; and there, levelling certain brass pieces of
+great artillery against a butt of earth made for that purpose,
+they discharge them for their exercise.”<a id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">58</a> Spitalfields also had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">82</span>
+its artillery butts. “Where Liverpool-street Station now
+stands the Tower gunners of Elizabeth’s day had their yard,
+and there discharged great pieces of artillery for exercise, while
+throughout the seventeenth century guns were both cast and
+tested in the vicinity, as Gun-street, Fort-street, and Artillery
+Lane hard by serve to remind us. Finsbury Field, levelled for
+an archery ground in 1498, passed from the London archers to
+the London gunners, and, as the Honourable Artillery Company’s
+Ground, survives to carry on the long traditions of
+the spot.”<a id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">59</a></p>
+
+<p>Under the Commonwealth progress was made in the quality
+of gunpowder, and improved methods were introduced of
+testing it for strength and uniformity. This advance had its
+effect on the guns. Failures were frequent, and, in spite of
+improved founding, pieces had to be made heavier than before;
+cast iron in particular was found unequal to withstanding the
+stresses caused by the improved powders, and this metal came
+into such disfavour that a whole century elapsed before it was
+again accepted as suitable by both naval and military artillerists.
+Founding in bronze had undergone improvement.
+Malthus, an Englishman who had risen in the French service
+to be Director of their Artillery,<a id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">60</a> mentions in his <cite>Pratique de la
+Guerre</cite>, as evidence of this improvement, the fact that in
+breaking up old pieces lumps of free tin and copper were
+frequently discovered, whereas in the case of new guns the
+metal was invariably found well-mixed.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere between the years 1665 and 1680—presumably
+later than 1667—the proof of ordnance was transferred from
+Moorfields to the naval depôt at Woolwich, and the nerves of
+the metropolis were no longer shaken by the roar of pieces
+loaded with powder charges equal, for proof, to one-and-a-half
+times the weight of the shots themselves. A proof-master and
+“his Majesty’s founder of brass and iron ordnance” were
+instituted to supervise and advise the various contractors.
+The State did not at first take over the work of casting its own
+guns. But in 1716 an event occurred which brought about the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">83</span>
+formation of the Royal Gun Factory, and the manufacture of
+both land and sea ordnance by the state. A disastrous
+accident occurred in the City of London. It happened that,
+after the peace of Utrecht in 1713, the guns captured by
+Marlborough from the French had been exhibited outside the
+Moorfields foundry. Three years later they were still there, and,
+the national ordnance being much depleted by the late wars, it
+was resolved to recast these pieces and so utilise their metal.
+On the appointed date a large concourse of the public attended
+to witness the operation. Late at night the metal was poured.
+A big explosion ensued, owing to the use of damp moulds, and
+a number of people were killed and injured.</p>
+
+<p>To avoid a recurrence of such an accident it was decided
+that the government should possess a brass foundry of their
+own. The services of an able foreigner, Andrew Schalk of
+Douai, were sought, and the Royal Foundry at Woolwich was
+established with Schalk as master founder. The change was a
+complete success, and Schalk held the position for the next
+sixty years. Some of his guns, cast in the year 1742, were
+raised from the “Royal George” in 1840.<a id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">61</a></p>
+
+<p>By the middle of the eighteenth century the processes of
+gunnery had been placed for the first time on a scientific
+foundation; by whom, and in what manner, we shall describe
+in a later chapter.</p>
+
+<p>The design of guns had by this time become subject to more
+scientific consideration than had hitherto been bestowed, and
+their manufacture had been improved by the Swiss invention
+of the boring machine, which enabled them to be cast solid
+instead of being cast hollow on a core. Iron guns came more
+and more into favour as the century progressed, especially for
+naval use. The cost of iron was only one-eighth that of brass.
+The art of casting iron in homogeneous masses had by this
+time made progress, and though hitherto it had been the
+custom to make iron ordnance of great thickness and weight,
+repeated trial proved that they could be made lighter, if
+required, without undue loss of strength, and that in action
+they outlasted brass ordnance, which cracked, bent at the
+muzzle, and wore out at the vent. A well-made iron gun was
+almost indestructible. At the siege of Belleisle, in the Seven
+Years’ War, the brass guns soon wore out, and had to be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">84</span>
+replaced by iron ship guns; and it was long, indeed, before a
+suitable brass was discovered, which would withstand the
+repeated fire of large charges without losing its tin-element and
+degenerating into a spongy and craterous material. Muller,
+in his <cite>Treatise of Artillery</cite>, of 1768, described how he had seen
+cast iron at the Carron works so tough that “it would flatten
+and tear like brass”; and advocated iron guns of a new and
+light construction to replace Schalk’s brass guns forming the
+armament of the <i>Royal George</i>, and give a saving in weight of
+over a hundred and sixty tons.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_84" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 24em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p084.jpg" width="384" height="138" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>FRENCH TWENTY-FOUR-POUNDER WITH SPHERICAL CHAMBER</p>
+
+<p class="smaller">From St. Remy’s <cite>Mémoires</cite></p></div></div>
+
+<p>In respect of design, the newly acquired knowledge of the
+true principles governing internal ballistics began gradually,
+in the latter part of the century, to show its effect. Hitherto,
+ever since gunpowder had been in military use, pieces had
+been cast in masses of varying size and shape and ornamented
+to please the fancy of the founder. Cannon had been made with
+double or triple reinforces of metal, so that their exterior
+surface was stepped longitudinally from muzzle to breech.
+Experience probably pointed out on many occasions the bad
+design of a piece whose sections showed sudden alterations in
+shape; but it was not till after the middle of the eighteenth
+century that this consideration was discussed by a professional.
+“Since powder acts uniformly and not by starts it is hard to
+judge from whence this ridiculous custom has arisen....
+There should be no breakings in the metal.” The piece,
+continues Muller, should be of cylindrical bore, and its outer
+contour should be a curve slightly concave, corresponding
+presumably to the curve of the powder pressure. But as this
+curve would be difficult to find, he recommends a sloping
+straight line from breech to muzzle as sufficiently exact for
+practical purposes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">85</span>
+Innumerable experiments were made in the first half of this
+century with a view to improving the efficiency of combustion
+in guns, and much argument centred round such subjects as the
+shape of the chamber and the position of the vent. In France
+pieces were adopted having spherical chambers: it being
+proved that, with the charge concentrated in a spherical cavity,
+as much power could be obtained as from a larger and heavier
+flush-chambered gun. But such pieces were dangerous. Not
+only was their recoil so violent as to break their carriages, but
+many good gunners lost their arms while charging chambers in
+which smouldering debris lay hidden. The spherical chamber
+was abandoned.<a id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">62</a></p>
+
+<p>It may be said that the design and manufacture of guns has
+now entered the scientific stage. Art there still is, but it lies
+below the surface. The old “vain ornaments” preserved by
+tradition are thrown away: the scrolls, mouldings, and
+excrescences which broke the surface of the metal; the ogees,
+fillets, and astragals which ran riot over the products of some
+foundries; the muzzle swells which by their weight caused the
+chase to droop; the grotesque cascabels. All mouldings, said
+Muller, should be as plain and simple as possible; the trunnions
+should be on the axis of the piece; the windage of all types of
+guns should be smaller, and there should be more moderation in
+the charges used.</p>
+
+<p>In time all these improvements came. The smooth-bore gun,
+strengthened and simplified, preserved its establishment in the
+navy far into the nineteenth century, as will later appear. For
+the present we must confine ourselves to noting that, in the
+final stages of its evolution it received improvement in form
+from two distinguished artillerists whose influence was progressive
+in the whole realm of gunnery: Generals Congreve<a id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">63</a>
+and Blomefield.<a id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">64</a> There is yet another eminent officer of this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">86</span>
+period to whom the navy owes a debt incalculable: Who can
+assess the value of the work done by General Sir Howard
+Douglas in his classic treatise on Naval Gunnery?</p>
+
+<p>To the foregoing survey of the evolution of heavy ordnance
+we now append a few notes on the evolution of the material
+of purely land artillery: from which it will be seen that, while
+the intensive competition of great armies resulted in much of
+this latter evolution originating among the continental powers,
+the share of this country in initiating improvement was, in the
+latter years, by no means negligible.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>It will be noted by the student of European history as
+significant, that superiority of artillery material has almost
+invariably marched with national power. Thus in the past
+the evolution of artillery has been the monopoly of no one
+nation; it has been progressed by each in turn; each in turn
+has attained superiority, and each has contributed something
+of importance to it, in the day of its greatness.</p>
+
+<p>Two ancient and preventable practices seem to have operated
+in chief measure to retard the progressive development of a
+mobile land artillery: first, the custom of setting the trunnions
+of a gun at an appreciable distance below the horizontal plane
+of the gun-axis; second, the custom of making small pieces
+relatively longer than those of larger calibre.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_86" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 29.125em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p087.jpg" width="466" height="65" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">From Binning’s <cite>A Light to the Art of Gunnery</cite>, <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1689</div></div>
+
+<p>The first guns had no trunnions. To obtain the requisite
+angle of elevation the piece was laid in a dug-out trunk or
+carriage and this carriage was set on trestles; in which
+manner, it appears, the English at the siege of Orleans in
+<span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1428 “threw into the town from their bombards large
+numbers of stones which, flying over the walls, smashed in
+the roofs of houses.”<a id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">65</a> During the fifteenth century trunnions
+came into use, and the carriages were mounted on wheels.
+In his <cite>Introduction of Artillery into Switzerland</cite> a French writer,
+Colonel Massé, has given an account of the early evolution of
+an artillery of position, as used by the Swiss and their enemies
+in the fifteenth century. The huge siege bombards, possessed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">87</span>
+by most of the great cities at the end of the fourteenth century,
+were too cumbrous for transport. Built up of welded and
+coiled iron, and therefore without trunnions, they were
+replaced, toward <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1443, by lighter pieces on wheeled
+carriages. And before the Burgundian War “coulevrines de
+campagne” were being cast in Switzerland, of bronze, with
+trunnions to give each piece an elevation independently of its
+carriage. Relics are still preserved which show the gun-trunnion
+in its early stages, as embodied in the Burgundian
+artillery of Charles the Bold. The first method of obtaining
+elevation for the gun was by hinges or trunnions on the front
+of the carriage or trunk, in combination with a curved rack
+erected on the trail for supporting the rear end. Then the
+trunk disappeared; the trunnions were cast on the gun,
+whose cascabel was supported by a cross-pin between the
+flanks of the trail; and then the cross-pin was made removable,
+and a series of holes was provided for its reception, to give the
+elevation desired. At first these trunnions were cast level
+with the gun axis; in Napoleon III’s treatise on artillery is
+a picture of a trunnion gun taken by the Swiss from Charles
+the Bold in 1476, and another of a cannon of Louis XI,
+cast in 1478, and in both cases the trunnions are level with
+the gun axis. But pieces cast later almost invariably had
+their trunnions set on a level with the bottom of the bore;
+partly, perhaps, for the insignificant reason given by Norton—that
+“lying somewhat under the concave cylinder of the
+bore they will the better support the great weight”—but
+primarily to ensure a downward pressure on the quoin or trail
+when discharge took place. The effect of this trivial alteration
+was enormous. The impulse of the recoil was given a moment
+about the trunnion axis which, as the force of powders increased,
+produced an increasingly great downward pressure
+on the trail. Carriages, though made of massive scantlings,
+frequently broke; nor was it till the latter half of the eighteenth
+century that the cause was removed, the trunnions being raised
+nearer the axes of the guns and the carriages being thereby<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">88</span>
+relieved of the excessive cross-strains which they had borne
+for nearly three hundred years. Muller, in his Artillery, refers
+to the “absurd method” of placing the trunnions so low and,
+in the year 1768, points out the advantages to be gained by
+raising them. “Writers do not appear to have had any idea,”
+says Favé, “of the effect which the position of the trunnions
+had on the stressing of the carriage.” Scharnhorst the Prussian
+gives as an important advantage to be gained by raising the
+trunnions, the larger wheels which could be employed without
+adding to the height of the gun above the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Progress was also checked by the great length given to the
+smaller varieties of cannon. With the fine powder of the
+Middle Ages a great length of barrel was necessary to ensure
+complete combustion, and such primitive observations as were
+made all seemed to prove that, the longer the barrel the greater
+the range. But with the introduction of corned powder a
+reduction in length should have been possible. No such
+change was made. Tradition had consecrated long guns, and
+official standardization of types afterwards helped to oppose
+any innovation in this respect until the eighteenth century,
+with few exceptions.</p>
+
+<p>To Charles V of Spain belongs the credit for the first systematic
+classification of guns. In his hands artillery had, for the
+first time, become an efficient instrument of battle in land
+campaigns, and all Europe saw that, in his batteries of bronze
+trunnion-guns, on wheeled carriages, firing cast-iron balls
+against foe or crumbling masonry, a new power had arisen.<a id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">66</a>
+The emperor, experiencing the inconvenience of a multiplicity
+of types and calibres, sought to simplify his material.
+Accordingly, in the year 1544 or shortly before, he approved
+seven models to which all pieces in use throughout the vast
+possessions of the Spanish monarchy were thenceforth to
+conform. These seven types comprised a cannon (a 40-pounder),
+a cannon-moyen (24-pounder), two 12-pounder culverins, two
+6-pounder culverins, and a 3-pounder falcon.</p>
+
+<p>The French soon improved on Charles’ example. The oldest
+patterns of their cannon, according to a table given by St.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">89</span>
+Remy in his <cite>Mémoires</cite>, were of a uniform length of ten feet. In
+<span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1550 Henri II issued an edict restricting the number of
+different calibres to six, named as <span class="locked">follows:—</span></p>
+
+<blockquote class="hang">
+
+<p>Canon, a 33-pounder, 10½ feet long, weighing 5200 livres,
+drawn by 21 horses.</p>
+
+<p>Grande coulevrine, a 15-pounder, 11 feet long, weighing 4000
+livres, drawn by 17 horses.</p>
+
+<p>Coulevrine bâtarde, a 7-pounder, 9 feet long, weighing 2500
+livres, drawn by 11 horses.</p>
+
+<p>Coulevrine moyenne, a 2-pounder, 8½ feet long, weighing
+1200 livres, drawn by 4 horses.</p>
+
+<p>Faucon, a 1-pounder, 7½ feet long, weighing 700 livres,
+drawn by 3 horses.</p>
+
+<p>Fauconneau, a ¾-pounder, 7 feet long, weighing 410 livres,
+drawn by 2 horses.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>These dimensions are only a rough approximation. In the
+year 1584 two other types, found useful by the Spaniards in
+the Low Countries, were included—a 12- and a 24-pounder.</p>
+
+<p>The relatively greater lengths of the small pieces will be
+noted. As it was with the French, so it was with other nations,
+and the list of Italian ordnance given in Tartaglia’s <cite>Art of
+Shooting</cite> shows a general resemblance to that of Henri II. The
+desire for a maximum of ranging power, and the necessity of
+making the smaller pieces long enough to enter the embrasures
+of fortifications, and strong enough to fire many more rounds
+than those of the largest size, tended to cause an augmentation
+in their size and weight; difficulties of transport had an
+effect in imposing a limit of weight on the largest guns which
+in the case of the smaller pieces did not operate to the same
+degree.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the French possessed, from 1550 onwards,
+an organized artillery suitable for transport on campaigns.
+The six calibres were mounted on wheeled carriages, horse-drawn,
+from which they could be fired; they were moved,
+muzzles foremost, with their ponderous trails dragging on the
+ground in rear.</p>
+
+<p>At that point French artillery remained, or with little
+advance beyond it, until the middle of the eighteenth century.
+In the Germanic states, on the other hand, important progress
+was made: by the end of the sixteenth century shorter pieces,
+shell-fire from mortars, and the use of elevated fire for varying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">90</span>
+ranges, had been adopted. But the chief centre of artillery
+progress at the end of the sixteenth century was the Low
+Countries, then in the thick of their warfare with Spain. “In
+their glorious struggle for independence their artillery contrived
+to avail itself of the latest and best theory and practice, to
+employ cannons and carriages of simplicity and uniformity;
+and it has endowed the art of war with two inventions of the
+first order—the hand-grenade and the bomb.”<a id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">67</a></p>
+
+<p>In the first half of the seventeenth century the genius of
+Gustavus Adolphus gave a new value to land ordnance. He
+made it mobile. He divided his artillery into two categories,
+Siege and Field, and for the latter devised the famous light
+“leather guns” which, operating in mass on certain points,
+had an important effect on the issue of battles. But after
+his death at Lützen in 1632 the effort to attain mobility
+relaxed; an increase in the strength of powders at this time
+rendered the possibility still more remote; and it was not
+until the following century that the Prussians, under Frederick
+the Great, evolved a satisfactory light artillery. Both in
+Prussia and in Austria great efforts were made, in the middle
+of the eighteenth century, to evolve a mobile and efficient
+ordnance. The Seven Years’ War found the former state
+experimenting with pieces varying in weight between eighty
+and a hundred and fifty times the weight of their ball; and in
+1762 a certain French observer, who was destined to become
+famous as one of the great artillery reformers of all time, wrote
+letters from Vienna describing the fine qualities of the Austrian
+service: with its pieces all sixteen calibres in length, all 115
+times their balls in weight, all bored to their true nominal
+dimensions, and firing accurately spherical balls of correct
+size, with a small windage and a powder-charge of less than
+one-third the weight of the shot.</p>
+
+<p>In the years immediately following the close of the Seven
+Years’ War the lessons learned at Vienna were translated into
+practice in France. By 1765 Gribeauval had begun his reorganization
+of the French material. In order to obtain
+mobility he made new models of 12, 8, and 4-pounders, very
+plain, unchambered pieces, each eighteen calibres in length,
+150 times its own shot in weight, and firing well-fitting balls
+with unprecedented precision, with powder-charges of one-third
+the weight of the balls. Limbers, in the form of small-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">91</span>trucked
+bogies, had been in occasional use ever since the
+sixteenth century. Gribeauval introduced large-wheeled
+limbers, and dragged his 12-pounders by six, his 8- and
+4-pounders by four horses. From the number of horses, as
+compared with that of the edict of Henri II, one can measure
+the progress made in two centuries. The whole of Gribeauval’s
+material was designed to afford rapid transport and rapid and
+accurate fire; interchangeability of wheels and other parts
+formed a novel and important element of the standardization
+which he accomplished. Iron axle-trees, cartridges (used
+with effect by Gustavus in the preceding century), elevating
+screws, tangent scales, and other improvements were adopted
+under his authority. But, “Gribeauval could not force on
+France the two great inventions of the century—the limber-box
+and the Horse Artillery.”<a id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">68</a></p>
+
+<p>The horse, or flying, artillery, designed to be attached to,
+and supported by, cavalry, as field or foot artillery was attached
+to infantry, was a Prussian invention. It was adopted by
+France after the outbreak of the Revolution, and almost
+simultaneously it appeared in the British army.<a id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">69</a></p>
+
+<p>By the end of the century all the great Powers had adopted
+Gribeauval’s system in most of its important parts: notably
+in the grouping of artillery into the three categories—siege,
+field, and coast defence. Progress continued. In the opening
+years of the next century a new competitor among the Powers
+began to attract attention by its proficiency. “In the first
+campaigns of the Revolution the English artillery showed
+itself less advanced than that of several other powers. But so
+well did it succeed in ameliorating its condition that when it
+reappeared on the Continent to take an active part in the
+Peninsular War it was seen to be itself worthy in its turn to
+serve as a model.”</p>
+
+<p>This is the tribute paid by Colonel Favé.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident from his further remarks that the English
+artillery surprised its adversaries, not only by its superior
+mobility, but by the effectiveness of its innovations, two of
+which, especially, proved to be inventions of the first order—Shrapnel’s
+projectiles and Congreve’s war-rockets. France
+recognized the high efficiency of its opponent artillery, and
+some years later adopted a material embodying some of its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">92</span>
+most important features. Experiments were made, and comparative
+trials carried out, with modified English and modified
+Gribeauval equipments. The former were preferred,
+and a new series of designs was introduced and approved:
+this becoming known as “the system of 1827.”</p>
+
+<p>Three years later war experience led to investigations in
+France which caused a revolution in artillery material. In a
+few years’ time smooth-bore cannon were being converted to
+rifles, for use both on land and sea.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">93</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_III" class="vspace">CHAPTER III<br />
+
+<span class="subhead">THE STEAM ENGINE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> greatest of the world’s inventions appear to have
+had a very casual birth. So much an affair of chance
+has been their first manifestation, that science has
+not been called in aid; no law can be discerned which might
+govern the time and sequence of their coming; they seem to
+have been stumbled on, unpedigreed offspring of accident and
+time. A monk of Metz discovers gunpowder. “Surely,” says
+Fuller, “ingenuity may seem transposed, and to have crossed
+her hands, when about the same time a soldier found out
+printing.” “It should seem,” writes Lord Bacon, “that
+hitherto men are rather beholden to a wild goat for surgery, or
+to a nightingale for music, or to the ibis for some part of physic,
+or to the pot-lid that flew open for artillery, or generally to
+chance, or anything else, than to logic for the invention of the
+Arts and Sciences.” So it seemed. And in due time the legend
+of the pot-lid was woven round the unfortunate Marquis of
+Worcester, who, tradition had it, made the discovery of the
+steam engine by observation of the stew-pot in which, when
+confined a prisoner in the Tower, he was engaged in cooking his
+dinner. At a later date and in another form the story was
+connected with James Watt.</p>
+
+<p>In reality, the story of the discovery of the steam engine is
+far more inspiring. The history of the application of steam to
+human use is almost the history of science itself; the stages of
+its development are clearly marked for us; and the large
+succession of these stages, and the calibre of the minds which
+contributed to the achievement of the perfected steam engine,
+are some measure of the essential complexity of what is to-day
+regarded as a comparatively simple machine. For the steam
+engine was not the gift of any particular genius or generation;
+it did not leap from any one man’s brain. Some of the greatest
+names in the history of human knowledge can claim a share in
+its discovery. From philosopher to scientist, from scientist to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">94</span>
+engineer the grand idea was carried on, gradually taking more
+and more concrete form, until finally, in an age when by the
+diffusion of knowledge the labours of all three were for the first
+time co-ordinated, it was brought to maturity. A new force of
+nature was harnessed which wrought a revolution in the
+civilized world.</p>
+
+<p>An attempt is made in this chapter to chronicle the circumstances
+under which the successive developments of the steam
+engine took place. The progress of the scientific ideas which
+led up to the discovery of the power of steam is traced. The
+claims of the various inventors chiefly associated with the
+steam engine are set forth in some detail, not for the difficult
+and invidious task of assessing their relative merits, but
+because by the light of these claims and altercations it may be
+possible to discern, in each case, where the merit lay and to
+what stage each novelty of idea or detail properly belonged.
+From this point of view, it is thought, the recital of circumstances
+which hitherto have been thought so trivial as to be
+scarcely worthy of record, may be of some suggestive value.
+The result of the investigation is to make clear the scientific
+importance of the steam engine: the steam engine regarded,
+not as the familiar drudge and commonplace servant of to-day,
+but in all its dignity of a thermodynamic machine, that
+scientific device which embodied so much of the natural
+philosophy of the age which first unveiled it—the seventeenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>Before the Christian era steam had been used to do
+mechanical work. In a treatise, <cite>Pneumatica</cite>, written by Hero
+of Alexandria about 130 <span class="smcap smaller">B.C.</span>, mention is made of a primitive
+reaction turbine, which functioned by the reactionary force of
+steam jets thrown off tangentially from the periphery of a
+wheel. In the same work another form of heat-engine is
+described: an apparatus in which, by the expansion from
+heating of air contained in a spherical vessel, water was
+expelled from the same vessel to a bucket, where by its weight
+it gave motion mysteriously to the doors of temples. And
+evidence exists that in these two forms heat engines were used
+in later centuries for such trivial purposes as the blowing of
+organs and the turning of spits. But except in these two
+primitive forms no progress is recorded for seventeen centuries<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">95</span>
+after the date of Hero’s book. The story of the evolution of
+steam as a motive force really begins, with the story of modern
+science itself, at the end of the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p>With the great revival of learning which took place in
+Southern Europe in the latter part of the fifteenth century new
+light came to be thrown on the classical philosophies which still
+ruled men’s minds, and modern science was born. New views
+on natural phenomena began to irradiate, and, sweeping aside
+the myths and traditions which surrounded and stifled them,
+the votaries of the “new science” began to formulate opinions
+of the boldest and most unorthodox description.<a id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">70</a> The true
+laws of the equilibrium of fluids, discovered originally by
+Archimedes, were rediscovered by Stevinus. By the end of
+the sixteenth century the nature of the physical universe was
+become a pursuit of the wisest men. To Galileo himself was
+due, perhaps, the first distinct conception of the power of
+steam or any other gas to do mechanical work; for “he, the
+Archimedes of his age, first clearly grasped the idea of force as a
+mechanical agent, and extended to the external world the conception
+of the invariability of the relation between cause and
+effect.”<a id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">71</a> To his brilliant pupil Torricelli the questioning world
+was indebted for the experiments which showed the true nature
+of the atmosphere, and for the theory he proclaimed that the
+atmosphere by its own weight exerted its fluid pressure—a
+theory which Pascal soon confirmed by the famous ascent of
+his barometer up the Puy-de-Dôme, which demonstrated that
+the pressure supporting his column of mercury grew less as the
+ascent proceeded. Giovanni della Porta, in a treatise on
+pneumatics published in the year 1601, had already made two
+suggestions of the first importance. Discussing Hero’s door-opening
+apparatus, della Porta showed that steam might be
+substituted for air as the expanding medium, and that, by
+condensing steam in a closed vessel, water might be sucked up
+from a lower level by virtue of the vacuum so formed. And a
+few years later, in 1615, Solomon de Caus, a French engineer,
+had come to England with a scheme almost identical with della
+Porta’s, and actually constructed a plant which forced up
+water to a height by means of steam. Shortly afterwards the
+“new science” received an accession of interest from the
+invention, by Otto von Guericke of Magdeburg, of a suction<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">96</span>
+pump by which the atmospheric air could be abstracted from a
+closed vessel.</p>
+
+<p>By the middle of this century the learned of all European
+countries had been attracted by the knowledge gained of the
+material universe. In England the secrets of science were
+attacked with enthusiasm under the new strategy of Lord
+Bacon, enunciated in his <cite>Novum Organum</cite>. The new philosophy
+was patronised by royalty itself, and studied by a company of
+brilliant men of whom the leading physicist was Robert Boyle,
+soon famous for his law connecting the volumes and the
+pressures of gases. In France, too, a great enthusiasm for
+science took birth. A group of men, of whom the most
+eminent was Christian Huyghens, banded themselves together
+to further scientific inquiry into the phenomena of nature and
+to demolish the reigning myths and fallacies: they also working
+admittedly by the experimental method of Bacon.</p>
+
+<p>The time was ripe, however, for wider recognition of these
+scientists and the grand object of their labours. Within a short
+time the two groups were both given the charter of their
+respective countries; in France they were enrolled as the
+Royal Academy of Sciences; in England, as the Royal Society
+for Improving Natural Knowledge. In other countries
+societies of a similar kind were formed, but their influence was
+not comparable with that exerted by the societies of London
+and Paris. Between these two a correspondence was started
+which afterwards developed into one of the most famous of
+publications: the <cite>Philosophical Transactions</cite>. In England,
+especially, the Royal Society served from its inception as a
+focus for all the great minds of the day, and in time brought
+together such men as Newton, Wren, Hooke, Wallis, Boyle—not
+to mention his majesty King Charles himself; who, with
+the best intentions, could not always take seriously the
+speculations of the savants. “Gresham College he mightily
+laughed at,” noted Mr. Pepys in his diary for the first of
+February, 1663, “for spending time only in weighing of ayre,
+and doing nothing else since they sat.” A year later Pepys
+was himself admitted a member of the distinguished company,
+and found it “a most acceptable thing to hear their discourse,
+and see their experiments, which were this day on fire, and how
+it goes out in a place where the air is not free, and sooner out in
+a place where the ayre is exhausted, which they showed by an
+engine on purpose.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">97</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1663, just after the formation of the Royal
+Society, a small book was published by the Marquis of
+Worcester, <cite>A Century of the Names and Scantlings of such
+Inventions as he had tried and perfected</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>Of these inventions one, the sixty-eighth, is thus described:</p>
+
+<p>“An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water
+by fire, not by drawing or sucking it upwards, for that must
+be as the Philosopher calleth it, <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Intra sphæram activitatis</i>,
+which is but at such a distance. But this way hath no bounder,
+if the vessels be strong enough; for I have taken a piece of a
+whole cannon, whereof the end was burst, and filled it three-quarters
+full of water, stopping and screwing up the broken
+end, as also the touch-hole; and making a constant fire under
+it, within twenty-four hours it burst and made a great crack.
+So that having a way to make my vessels, so that they are
+strengthened by the force within them, and the one to fill after
+the other; I have seen the water run like a constant fountain-stream
+forty foot high; one vessel of water rarified by fire
+driveth up forty of cold water. And a man that tends the
+work is but to turn two cocks, that one vessel of water being
+consumed, another begins to force and refill with cold water,
+and so successfully, the fire being tended and kept constant,
+which the selfsame person may likewise abundantly perform
+in the interim between the necessity of turning the said cocks.”</p>
+
+<p>On this evidence the claim is made that the marquis was the
+original inventor of the steam engine. Is he at all entitled to
+the honour? The whole affair is still surrounded with mystery.
+It is known that he was an enthusiastic student of physical
+science, and that for years he had working for him a Dutch
+mechanic, Caspar Kaltoff; it seems certain that he actually
+made a water-pumping engine worked by steam, of whose
+value he was so impressed that he promised to leave the
+drawings of it to Gresham College and intended to have a
+model of it buried with him.<a id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">72</a> But neither model nor drawings<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">98</span>
+has ever yet been traced. And, considering the social influence
+of the inventor and the importance of the invention, the silence
+of his contemporaries on the discovery is strange and inexplicable.
+He received a patent for some form of water-pumping
+engine. Distinguished visitors came to Vauxhall to see his
+engine at work. He numbered among his acquaintances Sir
+Jonas Moore, Sir Samuel Morland, Flamstead and Evelyn:
+probably Mr. Pepys, Sir W. Petty, and others of the group of
+eminent men of his time who were interested in natural science.
+Yet no trace of his inventions has come down to us. His
+<cite>Century</cite> was admittedly compiled from memory—“my former
+notes being lost”—and perhaps it was designedly obscure;
+science was at that time a hobby of the cultured few, and
+scientific men loved to mystify each other by the exhibition,
+without explanation, of paradoxes and toys of their own construction.
+The marquis, it will be agreed, left valuable hints to
+later investigators. Whether his claim to have invented the
+steam engine is sufficiently substantiated, we leave to the opinion
+of the interested reader, who will find most of the evidence on
+this subject in Dirck’s <cite>Life of the Marquis of Worcester</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>The power of steam to drive water from a lower to a higher
+level had been shown by Solomon de Caus,<a id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">73</a> who, in his work,
+<cite>Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes</cite>, published in <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1615, had
+described a hot-water fountain operated by heating water in
+a globe. In Van Etten’s <cite>Récreation Mathematique</cite> of 1629 was
+an experiment, described fifty years later by Nathaniel Nye in
+his <cite>Art of Gunnery</cite> as a “merry conceit,” showing how the
+force of steam could be used to discharge a cannon. As
+the century advanced the ornamental was gradually superseded
+by the utilitarian; the usefulness of steam for draining
+fens, pumping out mines, was realized; and applications for
+patents to cover the use of new and carefully guarded inventions
+began to appear.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">99</span>
+Gunpowder as a medium was a strong competitor of steam.
+In 1661 King Charles granted to Sir Samuel Morland, his
+master of mechanics, “for the space of fourteen years, to have
+the sole making and use of a new invention of a certain engine
+lately found out and devised by him, for the raising of water
+out of any mines, pits, or other places, to any reasonable
+height, and by the force of air and powder conjointly.” What
+form the engine took is not known; whether the gunpowder
+was used to produce a gaseous pressure by which the work was
+done, or whether its function was to displace air and thus
+cause a vacuum as its gases cooled. In France, too, efforts
+were made at this time to produce a gunpowder engine. In
+1678 a Jean de Hautefeuille raised water by gunpowder, but
+authorities differ as to whether he employed a piston—which
+were then in use as applied to pumps—or whether he
+burned the powder so that the gases came in actual contact
+with the water. In the following year an important advance
+was made. Huyghens constructed an engine having a piston
+and cylinder, in which gunpowder was used to form a vacuum,
+the atmospheric pressure providing the positive force to
+produce motion; and in 1680 he communicated to the
+Academy of Sciences a paper entitled, “A new motive power
+by means of gunpowder and air.”</p>
+
+<p>But it was to his brilliant pupil, Denis Papin, that we are
+indebted for a further step in the materialization of the steam
+engine. Papin suggested the use of steam for gunpowder.</p>
+
+<p>In 1680 Papin, who like Solomon de Caus had brought his
+scientific conceptions to England in the hope of their furtherance,
+was admitted on the recommendation of Boyle to a
+fellowship of the Royal Society. After a short absence he
+returned to London in ’84 and filled for a time the post of
+curator to the society, meeting, doubtless, in that capacity
+the leading scientists of the day and coming in touch with all
+the practical efforts of English inventors. During his stay
+here he worked with enthusiasm at the production of a prime
+mover, and when he left in ’87 for a mathematical professorship
+in Germany he continued there his researches and experienced
+repeated failures. In a paper published in ’88 he showed
+a clear conception of a reciprocating engine actuated by
+atmospheric pressure, and in ’90 he suggested for the first
+time the use of steam for forming the vacuum required. As
+water, he wrote, has elasticity when fire has changed it into<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">100</span>
+vapour, and as cold will condense it again, it should be possible
+to make engines in which, by the use of heat, water would
+provide the vacuum which gunpowder had failed to give.
+This memorable announcement gave a clear direction to the
+future development of the heat engine. Steam was the
+medium best suited for utilizing the expansive power of heat
+generated by the combustion of fuel; steam was the medium
+which, by its expansive and contractile properties, could be
+made to impart a movement <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">de va et vient</i> to a piston. Though
+Papin did not succeed in putting his idea into practical form
+his conception was of great value, and he must be counted
+as one of the principal contributors to the early development
+of the steam engine. His life was an accumulation of apparent
+failures ending in abject poverty. To-day he is honoured
+by France as the inventor of the steam engine, and at Blois
+a statue has been erected and a street named to his memory.</p>
+
+<p>Before the end of the century an effective engine had been
+produced, in England.</p>
+
+<p>In 1698 Thomas Savery, a Devonshire man, obtained a
+patent for “a new invention for raising of water and occasioning
+motion to all sorts of millwork by the impellent force of
+fire.” Before the king at Hampton Court a model of this
+invention was displayed, and the importance of the new
+discovery was soon realized by the landed classes; for in the
+following year an act of parliament was passed for the encouragement
+of the inventor and for his protection in the
+development of what, it was recognized, was likely to prove
+of great use to the public. In the same year Savery published
+a pamphlet called <cite>The Miner’s Friend</cite>, and republished it,
+with additions, in 1702. This pamphlet contained a full and
+clear description of his engine; but significance has been
+attached to the omission from it of any claim that it embodied
+a new idea. The omission may be accidental.</p>
+
+<p>The steam engine, shown in the accompanying illustration,
+was simply a pump, whose cycle of operations was as follows.
+Steam, admitted into the top of a closed vessel containing
+water and acting directly against the water, forced it through
+a pipe to a level higher than the vessel itself. Then, the vessel
+being chilled and the steam in it thereby condensed, more
+water was sucked into the vessel from a lower level to fill the
+vacuum thus formed; this water was expelled by steam in
+the same way as before, cocks being manipulated, and, eventually,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">101</span>
+self-acting valves being placed, so as to prevent the
+water from returning by the way it came. Two chambers
+were used, operating alternately.</p>
+
+<p>For this achievement Savery is by many regarded as the
+first and true inventor. He certainly was the first to make
+the steam engine a commercial success,
+and up and down the country it was
+extensively used for pumping water
+and for draining mines. By others
+Savery was regarded as a copyist; and
+indeed it is difficult to say how far
+originality should be assigned him.
+The marquis too had claimed to raise
+water; his engine had evidently acted
+with a pair of displacement-chambers,
+from each of which alternately water
+was forced by steam while the other
+vessel was filling. And if he did not
+specify or appreciate the effect of the
+contractile force of the steam when
+condensed, yet in this respect both
+inventors had been anticipated by
+Giovanni della Porta.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_101" class="figright" style="max-width: 15.5em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p101.jpg" width="248" height="512" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p class="smaller">Steam from Boiler.</p>
+
+<p>SAVERY’S ENGINE</p></div></div>
+
+<p>The marquis had a violent champion
+in Dr. Desaguliers, who in his <cite>Experimental
+Philosophy</cite>, published in 1743,
+imputed disreputable conduct to the later inventor. “Captain
+Savery,” said the doctor, “having read the Marquis of Worcester’s
+book, was the first who put into practice the raising
+of water by fire. His engine will easily appear to have been
+taken from the Marquis of Worcester; though Captain
+Savery denied it, and the better to conceal the matter, bought
+all the Marquis of Worcester’s books that he could purchase
+in Pater-Noster Row and elsewhere, and burned them in the
+presence of the gentleman his friend, who told me this. He
+said that he found out the power of steam by chance, and
+invented the following story to persuade people to believe it,
+viz. that having drunk a flask of Florence at a tavern, and
+thrown the empty flask upon the fire, he called for a bason
+of water to wash his hands, and perceiving that the little wine
+left in the flask had filled the flask with steam, he took the
+flask by the neck and plunged the mouth of it under the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">102</span>
+surface of the water in the bason, and the water in the bason
+was immediately driven up into the flask by the pressure of
+the air. Now, he never made such an experiment then, nor
+designedly afterwards, which I shall thus prove,” etc. etc.</p>
+
+<p>Other writers saw no good reason for depriving the captain
+of the title of inventor. With reference to the book-burning
+allegation, the only evidence tending to substantiate it lay
+in the fact that the book “on a sudden became very scarce,
+and but few copies of it were afterwards seen, and then only
+in the libraries of the curious.”<a id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">74</a> It has been remarked, also,
+that Desaguliers was himself to some extent a rival claimant,
+several improvements, such as the substitution of jet for the
+original surface condensation being due to him; and that this
+fact gave a palpable bias to his testimony on the work of
+others.</p>
+
+<p>In recent years the claims of Savery have been upheld, as
+against those of the marquis, by a writer who argued, not
+only that the engine of the marquis had never passed the
+experimental stage, but that no counter-claim was made by
+his successors at the time Savery produced his engine and
+obtained his patent. “Although a patent for ninety-nine
+years (from 1663 to 1762) was granted the marquis, yet
+Captain Savery and his successors under his patents which
+extended for thirty-five years (from 1698 to 1733) compelled
+every user of Newcomen’s and other steam engines to submit
+to the most grinding terms and no one attempted to plead
+that Savery’s patents were invalidated by the Marquis of
+Worcester’s prior patents.”<a id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">75</a></p>
+
+<p>By the admirers of Papin it has been claimed that it was
+from him that Savery received his idea. “After having
+minutely compared Savery’s machine,” says a biographer of
+Papin, “one arrives at the conviction that <em>Savery discovered
+nothing</em>. He had borrowed from Solomon de Caus the use of
+steam as a motive force, perfected by the addition of a second
+chamber; from Papin, the condensation of the steam....
+And as for the piston, borrowed ten years later by Newcomen,
+that was wholly Papin’s.”<a id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">76</a></p>
+
+<p>Suppose it true; even so, his countrymen would always
+think great credit attaches to Savery for his achievement.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">103</span>
+His engine, though used extensively for lifting water through
+small distances, was exceedingly wasteful of fuel, nor could it
+be used conveniently for pumping out mines or for other
+purposes in which a large lift was required. The lift or “head”
+was directly proportional to the steam pressure. Efforts to
+improve the lift by augmenting the steam pressure resulted
+in endless accidents and discouragement; the solder of the
+engine melted when steam of a higher pressure was used, the
+joints blew open and the chambers burst.</p>
+
+<p>Living at Dartmouth, within some fifteen miles of Savery’s
+home, were two men, Newcomen, an ironmonger, and Cawley,
+a glazier. These two had, doubtless, every opportunity of
+seeing Savery’s engine at work. They appreciated its limitations
+and defects, and, undertaking the task of improving it,
+they so transformed the steam engine that within a short time
+their design had almost entirely superseded the more primitive
+form. Here, too, it might be said that they invented nothing.
+The merit of their new machine consisted in the achievement
+in practical form of ideas which hitherto had had scarcely
+more than an academic value. The labours of others gave
+them valuable aid. Newcomen, it is certain, could claim considerable
+knowledge of science, and though little is known of
+his personality there is evidence that he had pursued for years
+the object which he now achieved. He knew of the previous
+forms of piston engine which had been invented. He had
+probably read a translation, published in the <cite>Philosophical
+Transactions</cite>, of Papin’s proposal for an atmospheric engine
+with a vacuum produced by the condensation of steam. He
+obtained from Savery the idea of a separate boiler, and other
+details. And where Papin had failed, Newcomen and his
+partner succeeded. Their Atmospheric Steam Engine, as it
+was aptly called, was produced in the year 1705, and at once
+proved its superiority over the old “Miner’s Friend.” It had
+assumed an entirely new form. In a large-bore vertical
+cylinder a brass piston was fitted, with a leather flap round its
+edge and a layer of water standing on it to form a seal against
+the passage of steam or air. The top of the cylinder was open
+to the atmosphere, the bottom was connected by a pipe with
+a spherical boiler. The piston was suspended by a chain to
+one end of an overhanging timber beam, which was mounted
+on a brick structure so as to be capable of oscillating on a
+gudgeon or axis at its middle. One end of this beam was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">104</span>
+vertically over the piston; at the other end was the bucket
+of a water-pump, also attached to a crosspiece or “horse-head,”
+by means of a chain or rod. The whole machine
+formed a huge structure like a pair of scales, one of which (the
+water-pump) was loaded with weights so as to be slightly
+heavier than the other (the steam engine).</p>
+
+<div id="ip_104" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 17.3125em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p104.jpg" width="277" height="293" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">NEWCOMEN’S ENGINE</div></div>
+
+<p>To work it, steam was generated in the boiler at a pressure
+slightly greater than atmospheric. By the opening of a cock
+steam was admitted to the cylinder, below the piston, which
+was initially at rest in its highest position. The steam having
+filled the cylinder and expelled nearly all the air, the cock
+was shut and the cylinder was chilled by an external spray
+of cold water. Whereupon, as soon as the steam in the cylinder
+began to condense, the piston, forced down by the now unbalanced
+atmospheric pressure above it, began to descend.
+As soon as it had completed its downward stroke steam was
+again admitted beneath the piston, and, the pressure on the
+two sides of the piston becoming equal, the piston began to
+move up again to its original position. And so on.</p>
+
+<p>This was the original Newcomen engine. Even in this
+primitive form it far surpassed Savery’s in economy of fuel
+and in safety. It had, too, far greater flexibility in the manner<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">105</span>
+in which its power could be applied; it could be used not only
+to lift a certain volume of water through a relatively small
+height, but a smaller volume through a greater height: which
+was a desideratum in the case of deep mines like those of
+Cornwall. In 1720 an engine was erected at Wheal Fortune
+mine having a cylinder nearly four feet in diameter and
+drawing water, at fifteen strokes a minute, from a depth of
+180 feet.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was apparent that the engine was in many respects
+inefficient. The cocks, for instance, which controlled the
+motion of the piston had to be opened and shut by a man.
+Sometimes he let the piston rise too far, in fact, right out of the
+cylinder; sometimes he let it down too fast, so as to damage
+the engine. Again, the external spraying of the cylinder at
+every stroke to induce condensation of the steam within was an
+obviously clumsy and primitive operation. It was not long
+before external spraying gave place to internal cooling of the
+steam by the injection of water; this method being discovered,
+it is said, as the result of a leaky piston allowing its sealing
+water to pass, yet giving unaccountably good results. The
+difficulties with the cocks were overcome by the laziness or
+initiative of a youth named Humphrey Potter, who attached
+some strings and catches to the cocks of an engine which he
+was employed to work at Wolverhampton.<a id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">77</a></p>
+
+<p>With these improvements the engine remained practically
+without alteration for the next forty years. Its greatest
+sphere of usefulness was in the northern coalfields, where cheap
+and abundant fuel was close at hand. In Cornwall, until by
+special legislation the duty on seaborne coal was remitted when
+used for Newcomen’s engine, the cost of fuel proved a great
+obstacle to its use.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>In 1764 James Watt, an instrument maker employed on
+work for Glasgow College, was given the task of repairing a
+working model of a Newcomen engine.</p>
+
+<p>A man of serious and philosophical mind, an intimate friend<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">106</span>
+of Professor Robison, the physicist, and acquainted with the
+famous Dr. Black of Edinburgh, then in the thick of his
+researches on the phenomena of latent heat, Watt often
+discussed with these two scientists the possibility of improving
+the steam engine; which apparatus was still only employed for
+the purpose of pumping water, and which was so clumsy and so
+wasteful of fuel as to be comparatively little used. To this end
+he was induced to try some experiments on the production and
+condensation of steam. The results of these, and a knowledge
+of the newly discovered phenomenon of latent heat,<a id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">78</a> convinced
+him that the existing cycle of operations in the engine
+was fundamentally inefficient, and that improvement was to
+be sought in the engine itself rather than in the boiler, which
+was the element which was receiving most attention from
+contemporary investigators.</p>
+
+<p>In particular, he clearly discerned the thermal inefficiency
+of the Newcomen engine: the waste of heat involved in alternately
+heating and cooling the large metal cylinder, which
+absorbed such immense quantities of fuel. Watt’s first idea
+was, to lag the cylinder in wood so as to prevent all outward
+radiation. But the result of a trial of a lagged cylinder was
+disappointing. A gain was certainly obtained in that the
+steam, when admitted to the cylinder, did not require to raise
+by partial condensation the temperature of the walls; it
+exerted its expansive force at once and the piston rose. But on
+the other hand much greater difficulty was experienced in condensing
+it when a vacuum was required, for the down stroke.
+Moreover it was observed that an increase in the amount of
+injection water only made matters worse.</p>
+
+<p>Watt was faced with a dilemma, and he overcame it by a
+series of studies in the properties of steam which constitute,
+perhaps, the highest achievement of this workman-philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>Out of all his experiments two conclusions were drawn by
+him; first, that the lower the temperature of condensation of
+steam the more perfect the vacuum thereby formed; second,
+that the temperature of the cylinder should be as nearly as
+possible equal to that of the steam admitted to it. In Newcomen’s
+engine these two conditions were obviously incompatible,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">107</span>
+and the problem was,—how could they be reconciled?
+Early in 1765, while walking one Sunday afternoon in Glasgow
+Green the idea flashed upon him of condensing the steam in a
+separate vessel. The steam was generated in a separate vessel,
+why not produce the vacuum separately? With a view to
+trying this effect he placed a hollow air-tight chest beneath the
+steam cylinder, connected with it by a pipe having a stop-cock
+in it. This new or lower vessel was immersed in a cistern of cold
+water. Upon trial being made, it was found that by this simple
+contrivance as perfect a vacuum as desired was produced; the
+speed of the engine was greatly increased, the expenditure of
+fuel radically reduced, the walls of the steam cylinder were
+maintained at a high and constant temperature, and the whole
+arrangement promised great success. The new vessel Watt
+called a Condenser.</p>
+
+<p>Fresh difficulties now arose. As the engine worked, the
+condenser gradually filled with the condensed steam and
+had to be emptied periodically. The water in which it was
+immersed became so hot, by absorbing the heat of the steam,
+that it frequently required changing. Watt promptly called in
+aid two new auxiliaries, two organs whose motion was derived
+from the main beam of the engine: the Air Pump and the
+Circulating Pump. By these expedients the action of the
+condenser was rendered satisfactory, and an engine resulted
+which had a fuel-consumption less than half that of Newcomen’s
+engine.</p>
+
+<p>Much, he saw, yet remained to be done to obtain economical
+expenditure of steam. In particular the open-topped
+cylinder, whose walls were chilled at every descent of the
+piston by contact with atmospheric air, was an obvious source
+of inefficiency. He therefore determined not to expose the
+walls to the atmosphere at all, but to enclose all the space
+above the piston; and, thinking thus, he conceived the idea
+of replacing the air above the piston by steam, an equally
+powerful agent. The cylinder he proposed to maintain at a
+constant high temperature by means of a layer of hot steam
+with which he encased it, which he called a steam jacket. And
+so the atmospheric engine as left by Newcomen evolved into
+the <em>single-acting steam engine</em> of Watt;—an engine in which
+steam was still used below the piston, only to displace air and
+provide a vacuized space for the downward motion of the
+piston; but in which steam now acted positively above the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">108</span>
+piston, in lieu of atmospheric air, to drive it down. It was still
+a sufficiently primitive form of prime mover. The piston was
+still lifted by the counterweight at the other end of the timber
+cross-beam; the engine had not yet developed the organs necessary
+for producing a satisfactory rotary motion. This step
+was shortly to follow.</p>
+
+<p>In 1769 Watt obtained his patent for the “double impulse,”
+as it was called; and by this step, by the transition from a
+single- to a double-acting engine, the possibilities of such
+machines for every variety of application first came into
+general view. This stage of the development showed to the
+full the ingenuity of Watt’s mechanical mind. By the invention
+of the slide-valve he distributed steam to the top and to the
+bottom of the cylinder, and in appropriate phase with these
+actions opened the two ends to the condenser; so that
+the piston was actuated positively and by an equal force on
+both up and down strokes. The chain by which the piston had
+been suspended was no longer adequate; it was replaced by a
+rod. A straight-line motion was required for the top end of the
+rod; so he formed a rack, to gear with the circular end
+or horse-head of the beam. But this noisy mechanism was
+soon superseded by another contrivance, the beautifully
+simple “parallel motion,” in which two circular motions are
+combined to produce one which is rectilinear. This was
+patented in ’84.</p>
+
+<p>Four years before this, that ancient mechanism the crank
+and connecting rod had been applied, together with a flywheel,
+to transform the reciprocating motion of a steam engine into a
+rotary motion; and the non-possession of this invention of
+James Pickard’s proved for a time a stumbling-block to Watt
+in his further development of his engine. Watt would have
+nothing to do with it. By now he had joined his fortunes with
+those of Mr. Boulton, of Soho, Birmingham, a man of great
+business ability, in conjunction with whom he was engaged in
+constructing engines in large numbers to suit the varying
+conditions of the mines in Cornwall and the North. Considerable
+ingenuity was expended by him in trying to circumvent
+the troublesome crank of Pickard, and many devices were
+produced, the most noteworthy being the “sun-and-planet
+wheels,” which enabled him with some sacrifice of simplicity
+to obtain the rotary motion desired.</p>
+
+<p>Watt seemed to be borne along by the momentum of his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">109</span>
+own discoveries; every inquiry yielded him valuable reward.
+For some time he had studied the possibility of reducing the
+violence with which the piston, now positively steam-driven on
+both sides, came to the end of its stroke. This problem led
+him to the discovery of the advantage of using steam expansively:
+of cutting off the inflow of steam before the piston had
+travelled more than a fraction of its stroke, and letting its
+inherent elastic force impel it through the remainder of its
+journey, the steam meanwhile expanding and thus exerting a
+continuously decreasing force. Later came the throttle valve,
+and the centrifugal governor for controlling the speed of
+rotating engines; there was no end to his ingenuity. And so
+complete was his inquiry into the possible sources of improvement
+of the steam engine, that he even considered means of
+regulating the force which the piston exerted on the crank
+throughout its working stroke, a force which was compounded
+of the steam pressure itself and of the mass-acceleration of the
+piston and other moving parts.</p>
+
+<p>Another cardinal invention followed: the Indicator. The
+principle of the indicator is now applied to every form and kind
+of piston engine. It is a reproduction on a small scale of the
+essential part of the engine itself; a small piston, held by a
+spring and moving in a cylinder connected by a pipe with the
+cylinder of the engine itself, shows by the degree of compression
+imparted to the spring the gaseous pressure actually
+present at any moment in the engine cylinder. By recording
+the position of the indicator piston on a paper wrapped round a
+rotating drum whose motion represents the motion of the
+engine’s piston, a diagram is obtained which by its area
+measures the work done by the steam during the stroke of the
+engine.</p>
+
+<p>This instrument was designed by Watt to give his firm some
+standard of work which would serve as a basis for the power of
+each engine, on which to charge their customers; their engines
+being sold by the horse-power. But its usefulness far exceeded
+the immediate purpose for which it was produced. Its diagram,
+to the eye of an expert, gave valuable information in respect of
+the setting of the valves, the tightness of the piston, the dryness
+of the steam, the degree of vacuum in the condenser, and,
+generally, of the state of efficiency of the engine. “It would be
+difficult to exaggerate the part which this little instrument has
+played in the evolution of the steam engine. The eminently<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">110</span>
+philosophic notion of an indicator diagram is fundamental in
+the theory of thermodynamics; the instrument itself is to the
+steam engineer what the stethoscope is to the physician, and
+more, for with it he not only diagnoses the ailments of a faulty
+machine, whether in one or another of its organs, but gauges
+its power in health.”<a id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">79</a></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>We have now traced the evolution of the steam engine up to
+the time when it was first adapted to the propulsion of war-vessels.
+There we must leave it. In a later chapter we shall
+consider the evolution of the propelling machinery in its
+relation, especially, to the military qualities of ships. A few
+observations will be sufficient to illustrate the conditions, as to
+design, practice, and material, under which the steam engine
+made its appearance in the royal navy.</p>
+
+<p>After the death of Watt all improvement of steam machinery
+was strenuously opposed by the combined force of prejudice
+and vested interest. The great Watt himself had set his face
+against the use of high-pressure steam, and, such was the
+lingering force of his authority, years passed before the general
+public gave assent to the advances made by his talented
+successors—Hornblower, Woolf, Evans, and Trevithick. Before
+the end of the eighteenth century the first steps had been made
+to use the force of steam for driving ships. Before Trafalgar
+was fought steam engines had made their appearance in the
+royal dockyards. Then there was a pause; and many years
+passed by before steam propulsion was admitted to be a
+necessity for certain classes of war-vessels.</p>
+
+<p>An interesting account of the state of design and practice
+as it existed on ship-board in the year of Queen Victoria’s
+accession is given by Commander Robert Otway, R.N., in his
+treatise on <cite>Steam Navigation</cite>. Low-pressure principles are still
+in vogue; steam is generated still, at a pressure not exceeding
+three pounds per square inch, in rectangular boilers of various
+forms according to the fancy of the maker, scarcely two being
+alike. The engines are also of varying forms, every size,
+variety, and power being deemed suitable for similar vessels.
+They are amazingly ponderous: weigh about twelve hundredweight,
+and the boilers eight hundredweight, to the horsepower.
+The engines of all makers exhibit the greatest variations<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">111</span>
+in the relative dimensions of their various parts: one
+firm embodies a massive frame and light moving rods and
+shafts, another adopts massive rods and shafts, and supports
+them within the lightest framework. The author advocates a
+correct design and a “total dispensation of all superfluous
+ornament.”</p>
+
+<div id="ip_111" class="figright" style="max-width: 3.5em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p111.jpg" width="56" height="250" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>CONNECTING ROD</p>
+
+<p class="smaller">From Otway</p></div></div>
+
+<p>Already, however, following the example of the
+Cornish mines, the builders of steam vessels were at
+this time beginning to adopt high-pressure steam,
+generated at a pressure of ten to fifteen pounds per
+square inch in cylindrical boilers, and working expansively—“doing
+work in the cylinder by its
+elasticity alone”—before returning to the jet condenser.
+This improvement, strenuously opposed by
+orthodox engineers as being unsafe for ship practice,
+was introduced first into the Packet Establishment
+at Falmouth, and then, tardily, into Government
+steamers. It gave a gain in economy measured by
+the saving of “thousands of bushels of coal per
+month.” Steam engines working on the low-pressure
+system used from nine to twelve pounds of coal per
+hour, for each horse-power. These engines were
+carried in vessels “built on the scantling of 10-ton
+brigs,” of great draught and of such small coal capacity—about
+35 tons, on an average—that when proceeding
+out of home waters “they were burthened with, at the
+least, four days’ more fuel, <em>on their decks</em> (top hamper), in
+addition to that which already filled up their coal-boxes
+below.” Boilers emitted black clouds of smoke at sea. In
+harbour the paddle-wheels had to be turned daily, if but a few
+float-boards only, by the united force of the crew. “Coaling
+ship” was carried out with the help of convicts from the
+hulks:—“pampered delinquents,” observes the author, “whose
+very movements are characteristic of their moral dispositions—being
+thieves of time; for their whole day’s duty is not worth
+an hour’s purchase.”</p>
+
+<p>In these unattractive circumstances the steam engine, most
+wonderful contrivance of the brain and hand of man, presented
+itself for embodiment in the navy, by the personnel of which
+it was regarded, not without reason, as an unmitigated evil.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">112</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_IV" class="vspace">CHAPTER IV<br />
+
+<span class="subhead">“NEW PRINCIPLES OF GUNNERY”</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">We</span> have traced the smooth-bore cannon through the
+successive stages of its evolution. It is now
+proposed to give, in the form of a biographical
+sketch, an account of the inception of scientific methods as
+applied to its use, and at the same time to pay some tribute to
+the memory of the man who laid the foundations deep and true
+of the science of modern gunnery. One man was destined to
+develop, almost unaided, the principles of gunnery as they are
+known to-day. This man was a young Quaker of the eighteenth
+century, Benjamin Robins.</p>
+
+<p>For a variety of reasons his fame and services seem never to
+have been sufficiently recognized or acknowledged by his own
+countrymen. To many his name is altogether unknown. To
+some it is associated solely with the discovery of the ballistic
+pendulum: the ingenious instrument by which, until the
+advent of electrical apparatus, the velocities of bullets and
+cannon balls could be measured with a high degree of accuracy.
+But the ballistic pendulum was, as we shall see, only one
+manifestation of his great originating power. The following
+notes will show to what a high place Robins attained among
+contemporary thinkers; and demonstrate the extent to which,
+by happy combination of pure reason and experiment, he
+influenced the development of artillery and fire-arms. His
+<cite>New Principles of Gunnery</cite> constituted a great discovery,
+simple and surprisingly complete. In this work he had not
+merely to extend or improve upon the inventive work of
+others; his first task was to expose age-long absurdities and
+demolish all existing theories; and only then could he replace
+them by true principles founded on correct mathematical
+reasoning and confirmed by unwearying experiment with a
+borrowed cannon or a “good Tower musquet.”</p>
+
+<p>Down to the time of Robins, gunnery was still held to be an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">113</span>
+art and a mystery. The gunner, that honest and godly man,<a id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">80</a>
+learned in arithmetic and astronomy, was master of a terrible
+craft;—his saltpetre gathered, it was said, from within vaults,
+tombs, and other desolate places;—his touchwood made from
+old toadstools dried over a smoky fire;—himself working
+unscathed only by grace of St. Barbara, the protectress of all
+artillerymen. The efficiency of his practice depended overwhelmingly
+on his own knowledge and on the skill with which
+he mixed and adjusted his materials. No item in his system
+was of sealed pattern; every element varied between the
+widest limits. There were no range-tables. His shots varied in
+size according to the time they happened to have been in
+service, to the degree of rusting and flaking which they had
+suffered, and to their initial variations in manufacture. His
+piece might be bored taper; if so, and if smaller at the breech
+end than at the muzzle, there was a good chance of some shot
+being rammed short of the powder, leaving an air space, so that
+the gun might burst on discharge; if smaller at the muzzle end
+the initial windage would be too great, perhaps, to allow of
+efficient discharge of any shot which could be entered. There
+was always danger to be apprehended from cracks and flaws.</p>
+
+<p>But the greatest of mysteries was that in which the flight of
+projectiles was shrouded. At this point gunnery touched one of
+the oldest and one of the main aspects of natural philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>The Greek philosophers failed, we are told, in spite of their
+great mental subtlety, to arrive at any true conception of the
+laws governing the motion of bodies. It was left to the period
+of the revival of learning which followed the Middle Ages to
+produce ideas which were in partial conformity with the truth.
+Galileo and his contemporaries evolved the theory of the
+parabolic motion of falling bodies and confirmed this brilliant
+discovery by experiment. Tartaglia sought to apply it to the
+motion of balls projected from cannon, but was held up by the
+opposing facts: the initial part of the trajectory was seen to be
+a straight line in actual practice, and even, perhaps, to have an
+upward curvature. So new hypotheses were called in aid, and
+the path of projectiles was assumed to consist of three separate
+motions: the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">motus violentus</i>, the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">motus mixtus</i>, and the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">motus
+naturalis</i>. During the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">motus violentus</i> the path of the spherical<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">114</span>
+projectile was assumed to be straight—and this fallacy, we
+may note in passing, gave rise to the erroneous term “point
+blank,” to designate the distance to which the shot would
+travel before gravity began to operate; during the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">motus
+naturalis</i> the ball was assumed to fall along a steep parabola;
+and during the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">motus mixtus</i>, the path of the trajectory near its
+summit, the motion was assumed to be a blend of the other
+two. This theory, though entirely wrong, fitted in well with
+practical observation; the trajectory of a spherical shot was
+actually of this form described. But in many respects it had
+far-reaching and undesirable consequences. Not only did it
+give rise to the misconception of the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">point en blanc</i>; it tended
+to emphasize the value of heavy charges and high muzzle
+velocities while at the same time obscuring other important
+considerations affecting range.</p>
+
+<p>So the gunner was primed with a false theory of the trajectory.
+But even this could not be relied on as constant in
+operation. The ranging of his shot was supposed to be affected
+by the nature of the intervening ground; shot were thought to
+range short, for some mysterious reason, when fired over water
+or across valleys, and the gunner had to correct, as best he
+could, for the extra-gravitational attraction which water and
+valleys possessed. In addition to all these bewilderments there
+was the error produced by the fact that the gun itself was
+thicker at the breech than at the muzzle, so that the “line of
+metal” sight was not parallel with the bore: a discrepancy
+which to the lay mind, and not infrequently to the gunner
+himself, was a perpetual stumbling-block.</p>
+
+<p>It is not surprising that, in these conditions, the cannon
+remained a singularly inefficient weapon. Imperfectly bored;
+discharging a ball of iron or lead whose diameter was so much
+less than its own bore that the projectile bounded along it and
+issued from the muzzle in a direction often wildly divergent
+from that in which the piece had been laid; on land it attained
+its effects by virtue of the size of the target attacked, or by use
+of the <em>ricochet</em>; at sea it seldom flung its shot at a distant ship,
+except for the purpose of dismasting, but, aided by tactics,
+dealt its powerful blows at close quarters, double-shotted and
+charged lavishly, with terrible effect. It was then that it was
+most efficient.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is it surprising that, in an atmosphere of ignorance as
+to the true principles governing the combustion of gunpowder<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">115</span>
+and the motion of projectiles, false “systems” flourished. The
+records of actual firing results were almost non-existent.
+Practitioners and mathematicians, searching for the law which
+would give the true trajectories of cannon balls, found that the
+results of their own experience would not square with any tried
+combination of mathematical curves. They either gave up the
+search for a solution, or pretended a knowledge which they
+were unwilling to reveal.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1707 Robins was born at Bath. Studious and
+delicate in childhood, he gave early proof of an unusual mathematical
+ability, and the advice of influential friends who had
+seen a display of his talents soon confirmed his careful parents
+in the choice of a profession for him: the teaching of
+mathematics. Little, indeed, did the devout Quaker couple
+dream, when the young Benjamin took coach for London with
+this object in view, that their son was destined soon to be the
+first artillerist in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>That the choice of a profession was a wise one soon became
+evident. He was persuaded to study the great scientific writers
+of all ages—Archimedes, Huyghens, Slusius, Sir James Gregory
+and Sir Isaac Newton; and these, says his biographer, he
+readily understood without any assistance. His advance was
+extraordinarily rapid. When only fifteen years old he aimed
+so high as to confute the redoubtable John Bernouilli on the
+collision of bodies. His friends were already the leading
+mathematicians of the day, and there were many who took a
+strong interest in the brilliant and attractive lad. He certainly
+was gifted with qualities making for success; for, we are told,
+“besides his acquaintance with divers parts of learning, there
+was in him, to an ingenuous aspect, joined an activity of
+temper, together with a great facility in expressing his thoughts
+with clearness, brevity, strength, and elegance.”</p>
+
+<p>Robins’ mind was of too practical a bent, however, to allow him
+to stay faithful to pure mathematics; his restless energy required
+another outlet. Hence he was led to consider those “mechanic
+arts” that depended on mathematical principles: bridge
+building, the construction of mills, the draining of fens and the
+making of harbours. After a while, taking up the controversial
+pen again, he wrote and published papers by which a great
+reputation gradually accrued. In 1735 he blew to pieces, with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">116</span>
+a <cite>Discourse on Sir Isaac Newton’s Method of Fluxions</cite>, a treatise
+written against the mathematicians by the Bishop of Cloyne.
+And shortly after followed further abstruse and controversial
+studies: on M. Euler’s Treatise on Motion, on Dr. Smith’s
+System of Optics, and on Dr. Jurin’s Distinct and Indistinct
+Vision.</p>
+
+<p>His command of language now attracted the attention of
+certain influential gentlemen who, deploring the waste of such
+talent on mathematical subjects, persuaded their young
+acquaintance to try his hand at the writing of political
+pamphlets: party politics being at that time the absorbing
+occupation of the population of these islands. His success was
+great; his writings were much admired. And—significant of
+the country and the age—friendships and acquaintances were
+formed by the pamphleteer which were later to be of great
+value to the rising scientist.</p>
+
+<p>This phase of his activities, fortunately, did not last long.
+Kindling the lamp of science once more, he now started on the
+quest which was to make him famous.</p>
+
+<p>For thoughtful men of all ages, as we have already noted,
+the flight of bodies through air had had an absorbing interest.
+The subject was one of perennial disputation. The vagaries
+of projectiles, the laws governing the discharge of balls from
+cannon, could not fail to arouse the curiosity of an enthusiast
+like Robins, and he now set himself in earnest to discover
+them by an examination of existing data, by pure reason,
+and by actual experiment. Perusal of such books as had been
+written on the subject soon convinced him of the shallowness
+of existing theories. Of the English authors scarcely any two
+agreed with one another, and all of them carped at Tartaglia,
+the Italian scientist who in the classic book of the sixteenth
+century tried to uphold Galileo’s theory of parabolic motion
+as applied to military projectiles. But what struck Robins
+most forcibly about all their writings was the almost entire
+absence of trial and experiment by which to confirm their
+dogmatical assertions. This absence of any appeal to experiment
+was certainly not confined to treatises on gunnery; it
+was a conspicuous feature of most of the classical attempts
+to advance the knowledge of physical science. Yet the flight
+of projectiles was a problem which lent itself with ease to that
+inductive method of discovering its laws through a careful
+accumulation of facts. This work had not been done. Of all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">117</span>
+the native writers upon gunnery only four had ventured out
+of two dimensions; only four had troubled to measure definite
+ranges. All four asserted the general proposition that the
+motion of bodies was parabolic. Only one noticed that
+practice did not support this theory, and he, with misapplied
+ingenuity, called in aid the traditional hypothesis of a violent,
+a crooked, and a natural motion. Which wrong hypothesis
+enabled him, since he could choose for himself the point at
+which the straight motion ceased, to square all his results
+with his precious theory.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the books of the practitioners, Robins had more to
+learn from the great circle of mathematicians who in the first
+part of the eighteenth century lent a lustre to European
+science. The old hypotheses were fast being discarded by
+them. Newton, in his <cite>Principia</cite>, had investigated the laws of
+resistance of bodies to motion through the air under gravity,
+by dropping balls from the cupola of St. Paul’s Cathedral;
+and he believed that the trajectory of a cannon ball differed
+from the parabola by but a small extent. The problem was
+at this time under general discussion on the Continent; and
+led to a collision between the English and the German mathematicians,
+Newton and Leibnitz being the two protagonists.<a id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">81</a>
+But, whatever the merits or outcome of the controversy, one
+thing seems certain. None of the great men of the day understood
+the very great accession of resistance which a fast-travelling
+body encountered in cleaving the air, or realized the
+extent to which the trajectory was affected by this opposing
+force. It was in fact universally believed and stated, that
+“<em>in the case of large shot of metal, whose weight many times
+surpasses that of air, and whose force is very great, the resistance
+of air is scarcely discernible, and as such may, in all computations
+concerning the ranges of great and weighty bombs, be very safely
+neglected</em>.”<a id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">82</a></p>
+
+<p>In 1743 Robins’ <cite>New Principles of Gunnery</cite> was read before
+the Royal Society.</p>
+
+<p>In a short but comprehensive paper which dealt with both
+internal and external ballistics, with the operation of the
+propellant in the gun and with the subsequent flight of the
+projectile, the author enunciated a series of propositions which,
+founded on known laws of physics and sustained by actual<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">118</span>
+experiment, reduced to simple and calculable phenomena the
+mysteries and anomalies of the art of shooting with great guns.
+He showed the nature of the combustion of gunpowder, and
+how to measure the force of the elastic fluid derived from it.
+He showed, by a curve drawn with the gun axis as a base,
+the variation of pressure in the gun as the fluid expanded,
+and the work done on the ball thereby. Producing his ballistic
+pendulum he showed how, by firing a bullet of known weight
+into a pendulum of known weight, the velocity of impact
+could be directly ascertained. This was obviously a very
+important discovery. For an accurate measurement of the
+“muzzle velocity” of the bullet discharged from any given
+piece of ordnance was, and still is, the solution and key to
+many another problem in connection with it: for instance,
+the effect of such variable factors as the charge, the windage
+or the length of gun. In fact, as the author claimed, there
+followed from the theory thus set out a whole host of deductions
+of the greatest consequence to the world’s knowledge of
+gunnery. Then, following the projected bullet in its flight,
+he proceeded to tell of the continuous retardation to which it
+was subject owing to the air’s resistance. He found, he said,
+that this resistance was vastly greater than had been anticipated.
+It certainly was not a negligible quantity. The resistance
+of the air to a twenty-four pound cannon ball, fired with
+its battering charge of sixteen pounds of powder, was no less
+than twenty-four times the weight of the ball when it first
+issued from the piece: a force which sufficiently confuted the
+theory that the trajectory was a parabola, as it would have
+been if the shot were fired in vacuo. It was neither a parabola,
+nor nearly a parabola. In truth it was not a plane curve at
+all. For under the great force of the air’s resistance, added to
+that of gravity, a ball (he explained) has frequently a double
+curvature. Instead of travelling in one vertical plane it
+actually takes an incurvated line sometimes to right, sometimes
+to left, of the original plane of departure. And the cause of
+this departure he ascribed to a whirling motion acquired by
+the ball about an axis during its passage through the gun.</p>
+
+<p>The reading of the paper provoked considerable discussion
+among the learned Fellows, who found themselves presented
+with a series of the most novel and unorthodox assertions,
+not in the form of speculations, but as exact solutions to
+problems which had been hitherto unsolved; and these were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">119</span>
+presented in the clearest language and were fortified by experiments
+so careful and so consistent in their results as to
+leave small room for doubt as to the certainty of the author’s
+theory. Of special interest both to savants and artillerists
+must have been his account of “a most extraordinary and
+astonishing increase in the resistance of the air which occurs
+when the velocity comes to be that of between eleven and
+twelve hundred feet in one second of time”: a velocity, as
+he observed, which is equal to that at which sounds are
+propagated in air. He suggested that perhaps the air, not
+making its vibrations with sufficient speed to return immediately
+to the space left in the rear of the ball, left a vacuum
+behind it which augmented the resistance to its flight. His
+statement on the deflection of balls, too, excited much comment.
+And, in order to convince his friends of the reality of this
+phenomenon, which, though Sir Isaac Newton had himself taken
+note of it in the case of tennis balls, had never been thoroughly
+investigated, Robins arranged an ocular demonstration.</p>
+
+<p>One summer afternoon the experiments took place in a
+shady grove in the Charterhouse garden. Screens—“of finest
+tissue paper”—were set up at intervals of fifty feet, and a
+common musket bored for an ounce ball was firmly fixed in a
+vice so as to fire through the screens. By repeated discharges
+the various deflections from the original plane of departure
+were clearly shown; some of the balls whirled to the right, some
+to the left of the vertical plane in which the musket lay. But
+not only was the fact of this deflection established to the satisfaction
+of the visitors. A simple but dramatic proof was
+afforded them of the correctness of Robins’ surmise that the
+cause was the whirling of the ball in flight. A musket-barrel
+was bent so that its last three or four inches pointed to the
+left of the original plane of flight. The ball when fired would
+then be expected to be thrown to the left of the original plane.
+But, said Robins, since in passing through the bent part
+the ball would be forced to roll upon the right-hand side of
+the barrel; and as thereby the left side of the ball would
+turn up against the air, and would increase the resistance on
+that side; then, notwithstanding the bend of the piece to the
+left, the bullet itself might incurvate towards the right. “And
+this, upon trial, did most remarkably happen.”<a id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">83</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">120</span>
+Robins by now had gained a European reputation. Mathematical
+controversy and experiments in gunnery continued to
+occupy his time and absorb his energies, and it was not long
+before he was again at the rostrum of the Royal Society,
+uttering his eloquent prediction as to the future of rifled
+guns. Speaking with all the emphasis at his command he
+urged on his hearers the importance of applying rifling not
+only to fire-arms but to heavy ordnance. That State, he said,
+which first comprehended the advantages of rifled pieces;
+which first facilitated their construction and armed its armies
+with them; would by them acquire a superiority which would
+perhaps fall little short of the wonderful effects formerly produced
+by the first appearance of fire-arms. His words had
+little or no effect. Mechanical science was not then equal
+to the task. A whole century was to elapse before rifled
+ordnance came into general use. The genius of Whitworth
+was required to enable the workshops of the world to cope
+with its refined construction.</p>
+
+<p>Another subject which attracted Robins’ attention at this
+time was fortification, the sister art of gunnery, which now
+had a vogue as a result of the great continental wars. He was
+evidently regarded as an authority on the subject, for we find
+him, in 1747, invited by the Prince of Orange to assist in the
+defence of Berghen-op-Zoom, then invested and shortly afterwards
+taken by the French.</p>
+
+<p>Now befell an incident which, besides being a testimony
+to the versatility of his genius, proved to be of great consequence
+to him in his study of artillery. In 1740 Mr. Anson
+(by this time Lord Anson, and at the head of the Admiralty)
+had set out on his famous voyage to circumnavigate the
+world. For some time after his return the public had looked
+forward to an authentic account, on the writing of which the
+chaplain of the <i>Centurion</i>, Mr. Richard Walter, was known to
+be engaged. Mr. Walter had collected, in the form of a journal,
+a mass of material in connection with the incidents of the
+voyage. But on a review of this it was decided that the whole
+should be rewritten in narrative form by a writer of repute.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">121</span>
+Robins was approached, and accepted the commission. The
+material of the chaplain’s journal was worked up by him into
+a narrative, and the book was published in 1748. “It was
+an immediate success; four large editions were sold in less
+than a year; and it was translated, with its stirring accounts
+of perils and successes, into nearly all the languages in Europe.”
+Robins’ name did not appear in it, and his share in the authorship
+is to this day a subject of literary discussion.</p>
+
+<p>The acquaintance with Lord Anson thus formed was of
+great benefit to him, not only in securing for him the means
+of varied experiment with all types of guns in use in the royal
+navy, but by the encouragement which his lordship gave him
+to publish his opinions even when they were in conflict with
+the orthodox professional opinion of the day. To this encouragement
+was due the publication in 1747 of a pamphlet
+entitled, <cite>A Proposal for increasing the strength of the British
+Navy, by changing all guns from 18-pounders downwards into
+others of equal weight but of a greater bore</cite>; a paper which, indirectly,
+had considerable influence on the development of
+sea ordnance. In the introduction to this paper the author
+explains that its subject-matter is the result of the speculations
+and experiments of earlier years; and he describes the
+incident which at the later date induced its publication. It
+appears that at the capture of the <i>Mars</i>, man-of-war, a manuscript
+was discovered on board which contained the results
+and conclusions of some important gunnery trials which the
+French had been carrying out. This manuscript, being shown
+to Robins by Lord Anson, was found to contain strong confirmation
+of his own views both as to the best proportions of
+guns and the most efficient powder-charges for the same.
+He had not published these before, he plaintively explains,
+because, “not being regularly initiated into the profession of
+artillery, he would be considered a visionary speculatist.”
+But fortified by the French MS. he no longer hesitated to
+submit his proposal to the public.</p>
+
+<p>Briefly, the paper is an argument for a more efficient
+disposition of metal in ordnance. Robins states his case in
+language simple and concise. Large shot, he says, have
+naturally great advantages in ranging power over small shot;
+in sea fighting the size of the hole they make and their increased
+power of penetration gives them a greatly enhanced value.
+Hence the endeavour made in all cases to arm a vessel with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">122</span>
+largest cannon she can with safety bear. And hence the
+necessity for so disposing the weight of metal in a ship’s
+ordnance to the best advantage; all metal not usefully
+employed in contributing to the strength of the pieces being
+not only useless but prejudicial to efficiency.</p>
+
+<p>He then proceeds to prove (not very convincingly, it must be
+admitted) that there is a law of comparison to which the
+dimensions of all guns should conform, and by which their
+weights could be calculated. For every pound of bullet there
+should be allowed a certain weight of metal for the gun. So,
+taking the service 32-pounder as having the correct proportions,
+the weight and size of every other piece can be found from this
+standard. He observes, however, that in actual practice the
+smaller the gun, the greater its relative weight; the 6-pounder,
+for example, weighs at least eighteen hundredweight, when by
+the rule it should weigh ten. The proposal is therefore to utilize
+the redundant weight of metal by increasing the calibre of the
+smaller guns. At the same time it is proposed to limit the
+stress imposed on all guns by reducing the powder-charge to
+one-third the weight of the bullet, for all calibres; this smaller
+charge being almost as efficient for ranging as the larger
+charges used, and infinitely less dangerous to the gun.</p>
+
+<p>The publication of the pamphlet came at an opportune
+moment. A new spirit was dawning in the navy, a new
+enthusiasm and search for efficiency were abroad, which in the
+next half-century were to be rewarded by a succession of well-earned
+and decisive victories. Interest in the proposed change
+in armament was widespread, both in and outside the royal
+service. And a significant commentary on the proposed
+regulation of powder-charges was supplied, this very year, by
+Admiral Hawke, who reported that in the fight off Ushant all
+the breechings of his lower-deck guns broke with the repeated
+violence of recoil, obliging him to shoot ahead of his opponent
+while new breechings were being seized.</p>
+
+<p>Some time was to elapse before the arguments of Robins
+gave signs of bearing fruit. Experiments carried out at Woolwich
+in the seventies by Dr. Hutton with all the facilities
+ensured by the patronage of a ducal master-general of ordnance
+merely extended and confirmed Robins’ own results. In ’79
+the carronade made its appearance, to attest in dramatic
+fashion the value, at any rate for defensive work, of a large
+ball, a small charge, and an unusually small windage. As<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">123</span>
+offensive armament it represented, of course, the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">reductio ad
+absurdum</i> of the principles enunciated by Robins; its dominant
+feature of a ball of maximum volume projected with a minimum
+velocity was, in the words of an American authority,
+“manifestly as great an error as the minima masses and the
+maxima velocities of the long gun system, to which the
+carronade was thus directly opposed.” Nevertheless, the
+carronade (whose history we deal with in a later chapter) did
+excellent work. Mounted upon the upper decks and forecastles
+of merchantmen and the smaller classes of warships, it emphasized,
+by the powerful and often unexpected blows which it
+planted in the ribs of such adversaries as ventured within its
+range, the comparative inefficiency of the smaller types of long
+gun with which our ships of war were armed. To the clearest-sighted
+of our naval captains the relative merits and defects
+of the carronade and the small long gun were evidently
+clear. In the year 1780 we find Kempenfelt advocating,
+in a letter to Sir Charles Middleton, a weapon with
+a little more length and weight than a carronade: something
+between it and a long gun. Robins’ arguments against
+the still prevalent types of small pieces have proved convincing
+to him, and he transcribes the whole of the <cite>Proposal</cite> for the
+consideration of his superior. “Here you have, sir,” he writes,
+“the opinion of the ablest artillery officer in England at that
+time, and perhaps in Europe.”</p>
+
+<p>Once more the versatile and gifted pen was called in aid of
+politics. In 1749 he was persuaded to write what his biographer
+describes as a masterpiece of its kind: <cite>An apology for the
+unfortunate affair at Preston-Pans in Scotland</cite>.<a id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">84</a> But soon an
+opening worthier of his talents presented itself. The East
+India Company, whose forts in India were as yet ill-adapted
+for defence, required the services of an expert in military
+fortification. An offer was made, and, as Engineer-General to
+the Company, Robins left England for the East at the end of
+’49, to the great sorrow of all his acquaintance. They were
+not to see him again. In the summer of the following year he
+died of a fever, pen in hand, at work upon his plans in the
+service of the Company.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">124</span></p>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<p>So ended a short, a brilliant, and a very honourable career.
+Benjamin Robins possessed in an exceptional degree the
+power, inherent in so many of his countrymen, of applying
+the truths of science to practical ends. An individualist
+deriving inspiration from the great masters of the past, he
+followed the bent of his enthusiasms in whatever direction it
+might lead him, till ultimately his talents found expression in
+a field undreamed of by himself or by his early friends. In
+the realm of gunnery he was an amateur of genius. Partly
+for that reason, perhaps, his views do not appear to have been
+considered as authoritative by our own professionals; the
+prophet had more honour in Berlin, Paris and Washington.
+Speaking of the rifle, the true principle of which was admittedly
+established by him, the American artillerist Dahlgren wrote in
+1856: “The surprizing neglect which seemed to attend his
+labours was in nothing more conspicuous than in the history
+of this weapon. Now that whole armies are to wield the rifled
+musket with its conical shot, one is surprized at the time which
+was permitted to elapse since that able experimenter so
+memorably expressed his convictions before the Royal Society,
+in 1746.”</p>
+
+<p>Of the value of his work to the nation there is now no doubt.
+Of the man himself an entertaining picture is given in his
+biography, published, together with his principal papers, by
+Dr. Hutton, from which many of the foregoing notes have been
+taken. Among other eminent men who have given their life and
+labours to the public service, and whose efforts in building up
+the past greatness of England have been generously acknowledged,
+let us not forget to honour that distinguished civilian,
+Benjamin Robins.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_124" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 37.9375em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p124.jpg" width="607" height="407" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>TUDOR SHIPS UNDER SAIL</p>
+
+<p class="smaller">From the same MS. as plate facing page 60</p></div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">125</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_V" class="vspace">CHAPTER V<br />
+
+<span class="subhead">THE CARRONADE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap al"><span class="smcap1">At</span> the monthly meeting of the Carron Company, a
+Scotch iron-founding and shipping firm, which was
+held in December, 1778, the manager informed the
+board that, in order to provide armament for some of the
+Company’s sailing packets, he had constructed a very light
+species of gun, resembling a cohorn, which was much approved
+by many people who had come on purpose to inspect it. So
+favourable, indeed, was the impression given by the inspection
+of this weapon that, with the company’s permission, he could
+receive a great many orders for them. Whereon it was resolved
+to authorize the manufacture of the new species in quantity;
+and to call all such guns as should be made by them of this
+nature, Carronades.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the circumstances in which the carronade first
+came into use. And the following advertisement, appearing in
+Edinburgh shortly afterwards, sufficiently explains the
+incentive for exploiting the new type of ordnance, and the
+reason of its popularity among shipowners, passengers and
+crews. “To sail March 5, 1779, the <i>Glasgow</i>, Robert Paterson
+master, mounting fourteen twelve-pounders, and men answerable....
+N.B.—The Carron vessels are fitted out in the
+most complete manner for defence at a very considerable
+expense, and are well provided with small arms. All mariners,
+recruiting parties, soldiers upon furlow, and all other steerage
+passengers who have been accustomed to the use of fire-arms,
+and who will engage in defending themselves, will be accommodated
+with their passage to and from London, upon satisfying
+the masters for their provisions, which in no instance
+shall exceed 10s. 6d. sterling. The Carron vessels sail regularly
+as usual, without waiting for the convoy.”</p>
+
+<p>The carronade was a very short, light, carriage gun of
+relatively large bore, made to take a standard size of long-gun
+shot and project it, by means of a small charge of powder,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">126</span>
+against an enemy at close range. Its proprietors soon found a
+market for the produce of their foundry, not only for merchant
+ships but for men-of-war. The reputation of the new ordnance
+quickly spread; carronades found a place almost immediately
+among the orthodox armament of the greater number of our
+fighting ships; and kept their place till, after a chequered
+career of half a century, during which they contributed both to
+victory and to defeat, they were finally discarded from the sea
+service.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the carronade begins some little time before the
+meeting of the Carron board in the year 1778. It will be
+remembered that in 1747 Mr. Benjamin Robins had advocated,
+in a much-talked-of paper, an increase in the calibre of warships’
+guns at the expense of their ranging power, and that in
+support of his argument he had drawn attention to two features
+of ship actions—first, that the great majority of duels were
+fought at close quarters; secondly, that the destructive effect
+of a cannon-ball against an enemy’s hull depended largely on
+the external dimensions of the ball, the larger of two balls
+producing an effect altogether out of proportion to the mere
+difference in size.</p>
+
+<p>However invalid may have been the arguments founded on
+these assertions—and that there was a serious flaw in them
+time was to show—there could be no doubt that, so far as
+considerations of defence were concerned, the conclusions
+reached were of important value. In the case of a merchant
+packet defending herself from boarding by a privateer, for
+example, a light, short-ranging gun throwing a large ball
+would give far more effective protection than a small-calibre
+long gun. And if, moreover, the former involved a dead
+weight less than a quarter, and a personnel less than half, of
+that involved by the latter, the consideration of its superiority
+in action was strongly reinforced, in the opinion of shipowners
+and masters, by less advertised considerations of weight,
+space, and equipment—very important in their relation to the
+speed and convenience of the vessel, and hence to all concerned.</p>
+
+<p>So the arguments of Robins, though propounded solely with
+reference to warships, yet applied with special force to the
+defensive armament of merchant ships. A conception of this
+fact led a very able artillerist, General Robert Melville, to
+propose, in 1774, a short eight-inch gun weighing only thirty-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">127</span>one
+hundredweight yet firing a nicely fitting sixty-eight pound
+ball with a charge of only five and a half pounds of powder.
+This piece he induced the Carron company to cast, appropriately
+naming it a Smasher. Of all the carronades the Smasher
+was the prototype. It possessed the special attributes of the
+carronades in the superlative degree; the carronade was a
+reproduction, to a convenient scale, of the Smasher. That
+General Melville was the prime inventor of the new type, has
+been placed beyond doubt by the inscription on a model subsequently
+presented to him by the Carron Company. The
+inscription runs: “Gift of the Carron Company to Lieut.-General
+Melville, inventor of the Smashers and lesser carronades
+for solid, ship, shell, and carcass shot, etc. First used against
+French ships in 1779.”<a id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">85</a></p>
+
+<p>In almost every respect the Smasher was the antithesis of
+the long gun: the advantages of the one were founded on the
+shortcomings of the other. For instance, the smallness of the
+long gun’s ball was a feature which, as ships’ sides came to be
+made stronger and thicker, rendered the smaller calibres of
+long guns of a diminishing value as offensive armament. It
+was becoming increasingly difficult to sink a ship by gunfire.
+The round hole made near the enemy’s water-line was insufficient
+in size to have a decisive effect; the fibres of the
+timber closed round the entering shot and, swelled by sea-water,
+half closed the hole, leaving the carpenter an easy task
+to plug the inboard end of it. The large and irregular hole made
+by a Smasher, on the other hand, the ragged and splintered
+opening caused by the crashing of the large ball against the
+frames and timbers, was quite likely to be the cause of a
+foundering. Again, the high velocity of the long gun’s ball,
+while giving it range and considerable penetrative power, was
+actually a disadvantage when at close quarters with an enemy.
+The maximum effect was gained, as every gunner knew, when
+the ball had just sufficient momentum to enable it to penetrate
+an opponent’s timbers. The result of a high velocity was often<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">128</span>
+to make a clean hole through a ship without making a splinter
+or causing her to heel at all. Hence the practice of double-shotting:
+a system of two units which, as we have just seen,
+was less likely to prove effective than a system of a larger
+single unit. On the other hand the Smasher vaunted its low
+muzzle velocity. As for the relative powder charges, that of
+the long gun was wastefully large and inefficient, while that
+of the Smasher was small and very effective. It was in this
+respect, perhaps, that the Smasher showed itself to the greatest
+advantage. And as this feature exerted from the first an
+important influence on all other types of ordnance, we will
+examine in some detail the means by which its high efficiency
+was attained.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the inefficiency inherent in the small-ball-and-big-velocity
+system the long gun laboured under mechanical
+disadvantages from which its squat competitor was happily
+free. In the eighteenth century the state of workshop practice
+was so primitive as to render impossible any fine measurements
+of material. Until the time of Whitworth the true
+plane surface, the true cylinder and the true sphere were unattainable
+in practice. For this reason a considerable clearance
+had to be provided between round shot and the bores of the
+guns for which they were intended; in other words, the inaccuracies
+which existed in the dimensions of guns and shots
+necessitated the provision of a certain “windage.” But other
+considerations had also to be taken into account. The varying
+temperatures at which shot might require to be used; the
+fouling of gun-bores by burnt powder; the effect of wear and
+rust on both shot and bore, and especially the effect of rust on
+the shot carried in ships of war (at first enlarged by the rust
+and then, the rust flaking or being beaten off with hammers,
+reduced in size)—all these factors combined to exact such
+disproportionate windage that, in the best conditions, from
+one-quarter to one-third of the force of the powder was altogether
+lost, while, in the worst conditions, as much as one-half
+of the propulsive force of the powder escaped unused.
+Not only was a large charge required, therefore, but the range
+and aim of the loosely fitting shot was often incorrect and
+incalculable; the motion of the shot was detrimental to the
+surface of the bore and the life of the gun; while the recoil
+was so boisterous as sometimes to dismount and disable the
+gun, injure the crew, and even endanger the vessel.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">129</span>
+The inventor of the Smasher, by eliminating this obvious
+deficiency of the long gun, gave to his weapon not only a
+direct advantage due to the higher efficiency of the powder-charge,
+but also several collateral advantages arising from it,
+such as, economy of powder, ease of recoil, and small stresses
+upon the mounting and its supporting structure.</p>
+
+<p>It had been laid down by Dr. Hutton in 1775, as one of the
+chief results of the systematic experiments carried out by him
+at Woolwich in extension of the inquiries originated by Robins,
+that if only the windage of guns could be reduced very important
+advantages would accrue; among others, a saving of
+at least one-third of the standard charges of powder would
+result. General Melville determined to give the Smasher the
+very minimum of windage necessary to prevent accident. The
+shortness of the bore favoured such a reduction. The large
+diameter, though at first it might appear to render necessary
+a correspondingly large windage, was actually an advantage
+from this point of view. For, instead of adhering to the
+orthodox practice with long guns, of making the windage
+roughly proportional to the diameter of the bore, he gave the
+Smasher a windage less than that of a much smaller long gun,
+arguing that though a certain mechanical clearance was
+necessary, yet the amount of this clearance was in no way
+dependent on the diameter of the shot or piece. The large
+size of the Smasher acted therefore to its advantage. The
+windage space through which the powder gases could escape
+was very small in relation to the area of the large ball on
+which they did useful work.</p>
+
+<p>But this divergence from the standard practice would appear
+to necessitate the provision of special ammunition for use
+with the Smasher: the nicely fitting sixty-eight pound ball
+would require to be specially made for it? And this would
+surely militate against the general adoption of the Smasher
+in the public service? No such difficulty confronted the
+inventor. For, curiously enough, the principle on which the
+dimensions of gun-bores and shot were fixed was the reverse
+of the principle which obtains to-day. Instead of the diameter
+of the <em>gun</em> being of the nominal dimension and the diameter
+of the shot being equal to that of the gun minus the windage,
+the diameter of the <em>shot</em> was the datum from which the amount
+of the windage and the calibre of the gun were determined.</p>
+
+<p>So, the size of the shot being fixed, a reduction of windage<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">130</span>
+was obtainable in a new design of gun by boring it to a smaller
+than the standard diameter. And this was what the inventor
+of the Smasher did. The large ball, in combination with the
+restricted windage and the small charge of powder, gave the
+Smasher ballistic results far superior, relatively, to those
+obtained with the long gun. Its lack of ranging power was
+admitted. But for close action it was claimed that it would
+prove an invaluable weapon, especially in the defence of
+merchant ships.<a id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">86</a> Not only would its large ball make such
+holes in the light hull of an enemy privateer as would break
+through his beams and frames and perhaps send all hands to
+the pumps; but, projected with just sufficient velocity to
+carry it through an opponent’s timbers, it would thereby
+produce a maximum of splintering effect and put out of action
+guns, their crews, and perhaps the vessel itself.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>On the lines of the Smasher the “lesser carronades,” more
+convenient in size and more easily worked, were cast, and
+quickly made a reputation in merchant shipping. The
+Smasher itself was offered to the admiralty, but was never
+fitted in a royal ship; though trials were carried out with it
+later with hollow or cored shot, to ascertain how these
+lighter balls compared in action with the solid 68-pounders.
+Meanwhile the Carron Company found a large market for
+the lighter patterns of carronade; the 24, 18, and 12-pounders
+were sold in large numbers to private ships and
+letters-of-marque, and to some of the frigates and smaller
+ships of the royal navy. The progress of the new ordnance
+was watched with interest by the board of admiralty. In 1779
+we have Sir Charles Douglas writing to Sir Charles Middleton
+in full accord with his views on the desirability of mounting
+Carron 12-pounders on the poop of the <i>Duke</i>, and suggesting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">131</span>
+24-pounders, three a side, upon her quarter-deck. To the same
+distinguished correspondent Captain Kempenfelt writes, deploring
+that no trials have yet been made with carronades.
+Shortly afterwards the navy board discusses the 68-pound
+Smasher and desires the master-general of ordnance to make
+experiment with it. A scale is drawn up by the navy board,
+moreover, and sanctioned by the admiralty, for arming
+different rates with 18-and 12-pounder carronades. The
+larger classes of ships, the first, second, and third rates, have
+their quarter-decks already filled with guns; but accommodation
+is found for a couple of carronades on the forecastles, and
+for half a dozen on the poop, which for nearly a century past
+has served chiefly as a roof for the captain’s cabin. This is
+now timbered up and given three pairs of ports, making a
+total of eight ports for the reception of carronades. In the case
+of smaller ships less difficulty is experienced. Ports are
+readily cut in their forecastles and quarter-decks, and in
+some cases their poops are barricaded, to give accommodation
+for from four to a dozen carronades.<a id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">87</a></p>
+
+<p>The new weapon found its way into most of our smaller
+ships, not always and solely as an addition to the existing
+long-gun armament, for use in special circumstances, but in
+many cases in lieu of the long guns of the establishment. The
+saving in weight and space gained by this substitution made
+the carronade especially popular in the smaller classes of frigate,
+the sloops, and brigs; many of which became almost entirely
+armed with the type. The weak feature of the carronade, which
+in the end was to prove fatal to it—its feeble range and penetrating
+power—was generally overlooked, or accepted as being
+more than compensated for by its many obvious advantages.
+The carronade, it was said by many, was the weapon specially
+suited to the favourite tactics of the British navy—a yard-arm
+action.</p>
+
+<p>There were others, however, who were inclined to emphasize
+the disability under which the carronade would lie if the enemy
+could contrive to avoid closing and keep just out of range.
+And on this topic, the relative merits of long gun and carronade
+as armament for the smaller ships, discussion among naval
+men was frequent and emphatic. The king’s service was
+divided into two schools. The advocates of long guns could
+quote many a case where, especially in chase, the superior<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">132</span>
+range of the long gun had helped to win the day. The advocates
+of the carronade replied with recent and conclusive
+examples of victories won by short-gun ships which had been
+able to get to grips and quickly neutralize the advantages of a
+superior enemy armed with long guns. When challenged with
+the argument that, since the advantages of the carronade
+entirely disappear at long ranges it is essential that ships armed
+with them should be exceptionally fast sailers, they replied,
+that the very lightness of a carronade armament would, other
+things being equal, give ships so armed the property required.
+As for out-ranging, they were even ready to back their
+carronades in that respect, if only they were well charged with
+powder. It was a matter of faith with many that, in spite of
+Dr. Hutton’s published proof to the contrary, a considerable
+increase of range could be obtained by the expedient of
+shortening the gun’s recoil; so that in chase it was a common
+procedure to lash the breechings of carronades to the ship’s
+timbers, to prevent recoil and to help the shot upon its way.</p>
+
+<p>At first mechanical difficulties occurred in the fitting of the
+new carronade mountings which, though not due to any
+defect inherent in the equipments, nevertheless placed them
+under suspicion in certain quarters. Though the prototype
+had trunnions like a gun, the carronades afterwards cast were
+attached by lugs to wooden slides which recoiled on slotted
+carriages pivoted to the ship’s side timbers, the slide being
+secured to the carriage by a vertical bolt which passed down
+through the slot. The recoil was limited by breechings; but as
+these stretched continuously the bolt eventually brought up
+with a blow against the end of the slot in the carriage: the bolt
+broke, and the carronade was disabled. This happened at
+Praya Bay, where the carronades broke their beds, owing to
+slack breechings, after a few rounds. Captains complained, too,
+that the fire of the carronades was a danger to the shrouds and
+rigging.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_132" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 23.875em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p133.jpg" width="382" height="237" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">A CARRONADE</div></div>
+
+<p>In spite of these views the popularity of the new ordnance
+increased so rapidly that in January, 1781, there were, according
+to the historian James, 429 ships in the royal navy which
+mounted carronades. On the merits of these weapons opinion
+was still very much divided. The board of ordnance was
+against their adoption; the navy board gave them a mild
+approval. In practice considerable discretion appears to have
+been granted to the commanders of ships in deciding what<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">133</span>
+armament they should actually carry.<a id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">88</a> But the uncertainty
+of official opinion gave rise to a surprising anomaly: <em>the
+carronade, although officially countenanced, was not recognized
+as part of the orthodox armament of a ship</em>. What was the cause
+of this is not now clear. It has been said in explanation, that
+the carronade formed too fluctuating a basis on which to rate a
+ship’s force; that a long-gun basis afforded a key to the stores
+and complement of a ship, whereas carronades had little effect
+on either complement or stores; or that it may have been
+merely inertia on the part of the navy board. Whatever the
+cause, the ignoring of the carronade, in all official quotations of
+ships’ armaments, led to great uncertainty and confusion in
+estimating the relative force of our own and other navies, to
+suggestions of deception on the part of antagonists, to the
+bickering of historians and the bewilderment of the respective
+peoples. This extraordinary circumstance, that carronades
+with all their alleged advantages were not thought worthy to
+be ranked among the long guns of a ship, is commented on at
+length by James. “Whether,” he says, “they equalled in
+calibre the heaviest of these guns, added to their number a full
+third, or to their power a full half, still they remained as mere
+a blank in the ship’s nominal, or rated force, as the muskets in
+the arm-chest. On the other hand, the addition of a single<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">134</span>
+pair of guns of the old construction, to a ship’s armament,
+removed her at once to a higher class and gave her, how novel or
+inconvenient soever, a new denomination.”</p>
+
+<p>While the products of the Carron firm were gaining unexpected
+success in the defence of merchant shipping, their
+value in ships of the line was not to remain long in doubt.
+Some of the heavier carronades had been mounted in the
+<i>Formidable</i>, <i>Duke</i>, and other ships, and their presence had a
+material effect in Admiral Rodney’s action of April, 1782. As
+had been generally recognized, the carronade was especially
+suited to the British aims and methods of attack—the destruction
+of the enemy by a yard-arm action. To the French, whose
+strategy and methods were fundamentally different, its value
+was less apparent. So that for long this country reaped alone
+the benefit of its invention; until in somewhat half-hearted
+way France gradually adopted it, and then mostly in the
+smaller sizes, and more apparently with a view to defence than
+for offensive purposes. In the action with de Grasse the
+carronades of the British fleet operated, in the opening stages,
+as an additional incentive to the enemy to avoid close quarters.
+And later, at the in-fighting, their weight of metal contributed
+in no small degree to the superiority of fire which finally forced
+him to surrender.</p>
+
+<p>It was later in this same year that the carronade won its
+most dramatic victory as armament of a small ship. In order
+to give a thorough trial to the system the navy board had
+ordered the <i>Rainbow</i>, an old 44, to be experimentally armed
+with large carronades, some of which were of as large a calibre
+as the original Smasher; by which her broadside weight of
+metal was almost quadrupled. Thus armed she put to sea and
+one day fell in with the French frigate <i>Hébé</i>, armed with
+18-pounder long guns. Luring her enemy to a close-quarter
+combat, the <i>Rainbow</i> suddenly poured into the Frenchman the
+whole weight of her broadside. The resistance was short, the
+<i>Hébé</i> surrendered, and proved to be a prize of exceptional
+value as a model for frigate design. The capture was quoted as
+convincing proof of the value of a carronade armament, and
+the type continued from this time to grow in popularity, until
+the termination of the war in 1783 put a stop to further experiments
+with it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">135</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the long war which broke out ten years later the
+carronade played a considerable part in the succession of duels
+and actions which had their climax off Trafalgar. It was now
+generally adopted as a secondary form of armament, captains
+being permitted, upon application, to vary at discretion the
+proportion of long-gun to carronade armament which they
+wished to carry. In the smaller classes especially, a preponderance
+of carronades was frequently accepted; the accession
+of force caused by the substitution of small carronades
+for 6-and 9-pounder long guns in brigs and sloops could
+hardly be disputed. In ships-of-the-line the larger sizes continued
+in favour. The French now benefited, too, by their
+adoption; on more than one occasion their poop and forecastle
+carronades, loaded with langrage, played havoc with
+our personnel. Spaniards and Dutchmen did not carry them.
+How far their absence contributed to their defeats it is not now
+to inquire; but how the tide of battle would have been affected
+by them—if the Dutch fleet, for instance, had carried them at
+Camperdown—may be a not unprofitable speculation.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the war the carronade system was to score its
+greatest defensive triumph, and this, by a happy coincidence,
+in the hands of the old <i>Rainbow’s</i> commander.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Glatton</i>, one of a few East Indiamen which had been
+bought by the admiralty, was fitted out in 1795 as a ship of
+war, and left Sheerness in the summer of the following year
+under the command of Captain Henry Trollope to join a
+squadron in the North Sea. At her commander’s request she
+was armed with carronades exclusively. She was without ahead
+or astern fire, without a single long bow or stern chaser; she
+carried 68-pounder carronades along her sides, whose muzzles
+were so large that they almost filled the small port-holes of the
+converted Indiaman and prevented more than a small traverse.
+Off the Flanders coast she fell in one night with six French
+frigates, a brig-corvette, and a cutter; and at ten o’clock a
+close action began. The <i>Glatton</i> was engaged by her antagonists
+on both sides, her yard-arms almost touching those of the enemy.
+She proved to be a very dangerous foe. Her carronades,
+skilfully pointed and served by supply parties who worked
+port and starboard pieces alternately, poured out their heavy
+missiles at point-blank range. So heavy was her fire that one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">136</span>
+by one the frigates had to haul off, severely damaged, and the
+<i>Glatton</i> was left at last to spend the night repairing her rigging
+unmolested, but in the expectation that the French commodore
+would renew the attack in the morning. To her surprise no
+action was offered. The blows of the 68-pounders had done
+their work. Followed by the <i>Glatton</i> with a “brag countenance,”
+the enemy retired with his squadron in the direction of
+Flushing.</p>
+
+<p>The action had more than one lesson to teach, however,
+and no more ships, except small craft, were armed after this
+upon the model of the <i>Glatton</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We must at this point mention an experiment made in the
+year 1796, at the instance of Sir Samuel Bentham, in the
+mounting of carronades on a non-recoil system. Sir Samuel,
+who in the service of Russia had armed long-boats and other
+craft with ordnance thus mounted, produced arguments before
+the navy board for attaching carronades rigidly to ships’
+timbers; so as to allow of no other recoil than that resulting
+from the elasticity of the carriage and the materials connecting
+it to the ship. The ordnance board reported against the new
+idea. Sir Samuel pointed out that the idea was not new.
+Both the largest and the smallest pieces used on board ship
+(viz. the mortar and the swivel) had always been mounted
+on the principle of non-recoil. He showed how bad was the
+principle of first allowing a gun and its slide or carriage to
+generate momentum in recoil and then of attempting to
+absorb that momentum in the small stretch of a breeching-rope.
+He argued that a rifle held at the shoulder is not allowed
+to recoil: if it is, the rifleman smarts for it. He instanced the
+lashing of guns fast to the ship, especially in chase, for the
+purpose of making them carry farther. No; the novelty
+consisted in preparing suitable and appropriate fastenings for
+intermediate sizes of guns between the mortar and the swivel.
+The adoption of his proposal, he contended, would result in
+smaller guns’ crews, quicker loading, and greater safety.</p>
+
+<p>As a result of these arguments certain sloops designed by
+him were armed on this principle; and in other cases, notably
+in the case of the boats used at the siege of Acre, the carronades
+and smaller types of long gun were successfully mounted and
+worked without recoil by attaching their carriages to vertical
+fir posts, built into the hull structures to serve as front pivots.
+But, generally, the system was found to be impracticable.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">137</span>
+The pivots successfully withstood the stresses of carronades
+fired with normal charges of powder; no permanent injury
+resulted to the elastic hull structures over which the blows were
+spread. But the factor of safety allowed by this arrangement
+was insufficient to cover the wild use of ordnance in emergencies.
+The regulation of charges and the prevention of
+double-shotting was difficult in action, and pieces were liable
+to be over-charged in the excitement of battle in a way which
+Sir Samuel Bentham had failed to realize. Pivots were
+broken, ships’ structures strained, and the whole system found
+ill-adapted for warship requirements.</p>
+
+<p>It was not till the war of 1812 that the fatal weakness of the
+carronade, as primary armament, was fully revealed. The
+Americans had not developed the carronade policy to the
+same extent as ourselves, for transatlantic opinion was never
+at this period enamoured of the short-range gun. Their well-built
+merchant ships, unhampered by tonnage rules or by the
+convoy system which had taken so much of the stamina from
+British shipping, were accustomed to trust to their speed and
+good seamanship to keep an enemy at a distance. Their
+frigates, built under less pedantic restrictions as to size and
+weight, were generally swifter, stouter and more heavily
+armed than ours. And, though they included carronades
+among their armament, these were not generally in so large
+a proportion as in our ships, and in part were represented by
+a superior type—the colombiad, a hybrid weapon of proportions
+intermediate between the carronade and the long gun.
+Our ships often depended heavily upon the carronade element
+of their armament. Experience was soon to confirm what
+foresight might, surely, have deduced: namely, that when
+pitted against an enemy who could choose his range and
+shoot with tolerable accuracy the carronade would find itself
+in certain circumstances reduced to absolute impotence.</p>
+
+<p>This was to be the fate and predicament of our ships on
+Lakes Erie and Ontario, in face of the Americans. “I found
+it impossible to bring them to close action,” the English
+commodore reported. “We remained in this mortifying
+situation five hours, having only six guns in all the squadron
+that would reach the enemy, not a carronade being fired.”
+The same lesson was to be enforced shortly afterwards on the
+Americans. One of their frigates, the <i>Essex</i>, armed almost
+exclusively with carronades, was fought by an English ship,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">138</span>
+the <i>Phœbe</i>, armed with long guns. The <i>Essex</i>, it should be
+noted, possessed the quality essential for a carronade armament,
+namely, superior speed. But the <i>Phœbe</i> fell in with her
+in circumstances when, owing to damage, her superior speed
+could not be utilized. The captain of the <i>Phœbe</i> was able to
+choose the range at which the action should be fought. He
+kept at a “respectful distance”: within range of his own long
+guns and out of range of his opponent’s carronades. Both
+sides fought well, but the result was a foregone conclusion.
+The <i>Essex</i>, disabled and on fire, had to surrender. From that
+time the carronade was discredited. For some years after the
+peace it found a place in the armament of all classes of British
+ships, but it was a fallen favourite. The French commission
+which visited this country in 1835 reported that, although
+still accounted part of the regular armament of older ships, the
+carronade was being replaced to a great extent by light long
+guns in newer construction. Opinion certainly hardened more
+and more against the type, and, gradually falling into disuse,
+it was at last altogether abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>There was a feature of the carronade, however, which if it
+had been exploited might have made the story of the carronade
+much longer: might, in fact, have made the carronade the
+starting-point of the great evolution which ordnance was to
+undergo in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. We
+refer to the large area of its bore, as rendering it specially
+suitable for the projection of hollow spheres charged with
+powder or combustibles: in short, for shells. Although, as
+shown by the inscription on the model presented to him,
+General Melville’s invention covered the use of shell and
+carcass shot, yet there was no general appreciation in this
+country, at the time of its invention, of the possibilities which
+the new weapon presented for throwing charges of explosive
+or combustible matter against the hulls of ships. Empty
+hollow shot were tried in the original Smasher for comparison
+against solid shot, in case the latter might prove too heavy;—and
+these, as was pointed out by an eminent writer on
+artillery,<a id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">89</a> possessed in an accentuated degree all the disadvantages
+of the carronade system, their adoption being
+tantamount to a reversion to the long-exploded granite shot
+of the medieval ordnance—but the use of <em>filled</em> shell in connection
+with carronades does not appear to have been seriously<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">139</span>
+considered. The disadvantages of filled shell as compared
+with solid shot were fairly obvious; their inferiority in range,
+in penetrative power, in accuracy of flight, their inability to
+stand double-shotting or battering charges—all these were
+capable of proof or demonstration. Their destructive effect,
+both explosive and incendiary, as compared with that of uncharged
+shot, was surprisingly under-estimated. Had it been
+otherwise, the carronade principle would have led naturally
+to the introduction of the shell gun. “The redeeming trait in
+the project of General Melville,” wrote Dahlgren, “the
+redeeming trait which, if properly appreciated and developed,
+might have anticipated the Paixhans system by half a century,
+was hardly thought of. The use of shells was, at best, little
+more than a vague conception; its formidable powers unrealized,
+unnoticed, were doomed to lie dormant for nearly
+half a century after the carronade was invented, despite the
+evidence of actual trial and service.”</p>
+
+<p>In other respects the carronade did good service in the
+development of naval gunnery. Its introduction raised (as
+we have seen) the whole question of windage and its effects,
+and was productive of general improvement in the reduction
+and regulation of the windage in all types of gun. By it the
+advantages of quick firing were clearly demonstrated. And
+by its adoption in the ship-of-the-line it contributed largely
+to bring about that approach to uniformity of calibre which
+was so marked a feature of the armament schemes of the first
+half of the nineteenth century.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">140</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_VI" class="vspace">CHAPTER VI<br />
+
+<span class="subhead">THE TRUCK CARRIAGE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">From</span> the small truck, <em>trochos</em>, or wheel on which it ran,
+the four-wheeled carriage which served for centuries
+as a mounting for the long guns of fighting ships has
+come to be known as a truck carriage: the gun, with trunnions
+cast upon it, as a truck gun.</p>
+
+<p>Artillery being from the first an affair common, in almost all
+respects, to land and to sea service, and being applied to ships
+as the result of its prior development on land, it would be
+expected that naval practice should in its evolution follow
+in the wake of that on land. And so it has, in the main, until
+the time of the Crimean War; since when, completely revolutionizing
+and in turn revolutionized by the rapid development
+of naval architecture and material, it has by far surpassed land
+practice both in variety and power. But while the wooden
+ship imposed its limitations no branch of affairs, perhaps,
+appeared to be more conservative in its practice than naval
+gunnery. No material seemed less subject to change, no
+service less inclined to draw lessons from war experience.
+And in recent years the truck carriage has often been taken as
+typifying the great lack of progress in all naval material which
+existed between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Whether there was in fact so great a stagnation as is commonly
+supposed, and to what causes such as existed may have
+been due, we may discern from an examination of the truck
+carriage itself and of its development from the earliest known
+forms of naval gun mounting.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>The first large ordnance to be used on land, having as its
+object the breaching of walls and gates and the reduction of
+fortresses, was mounted solidly in the ground in a way which
+would have been impracticable on board a ship at sea. In<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">141</span>
+time, as the energy of discharge increased, this method of
+embedding the gun in soil grew dangerous: a certain recoil
+was necessary to absorb and carry off the large stresses which
+would otherwise have shattered the piece. In time, too, as the
+power of explosives and the strength of guns increased, their size
+diminished; cannon, as we have seen, became more portable.
+No longer embedded in earth or fixed on ponderous trestles,
+they were transported from place to place on wheeled carriages.
+And on these carriages, massive enough to stand the shock of
+discharge and well adapted to allow a certain measure of recoil,
+the land ordnance were fired with a tolerable degree of safety.</p>
+
+<p>Both of these methods were followed in principle when guns
+came to be used at sea.</p>
+
+<p>In the early Mediterranean galley the cannon was mounted
+in a wooden trough placed fore and aft on the deck in the bow
+of the vessel. The trough was secured to the deck. In rear of
+the cannon’s breech and in contact with it was a massive bitt
+of timber, worked vertically, which took the force of the recoil.
+Later, as force of powder increased, this non-recoil system of
+mounting ordnance failed. The cannon had to be given a
+certain length of free recoil in order that, by the generation of
+momentum, the energy which would otherwise be transmitted
+to the ship in the form of a powerful blow might be safely
+diverted and more gradually absorbed. Hence free recoil was
+allowed within certain limits, the cannon being secured with
+ropes or chains.</p>
+
+<p>But, as had doubtless been found already with land
+ordnance, the violence of recoil depended largely upon the
+mass of the recoiling piece; for any given conditions of discharge
+the heavier the gun, the less violent was its recoil. It
+was a natural expedient, then, to make the recoiling mass as
+large as possible. And this could be effected, without the
+addition of useless and undesirable extra deadweight, by
+making the wooden trough itself partake of the recoil. The
+cannon was therefore lashed solidly to the trough, and both
+gun and trough were left free to recoil in the desired direction.
+The primitive mounting helped, in short, by augmenting the
+weight of the recoiling mass, to give a quiet recoil and some
+degree of control over the piece.</p>
+
+<p>Later, this trough or baulk of timber performed an additional
+function when used as a mounting for a certain form of gun.
+When the piece was a breech-loader—like those recovered from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">142</span>
+the wreck of the <i>Mary Rose</i>—the trough had at its rear end a
+massive flange projecting upwards, forming the rear working
+face for the wedge which secured the removable breech
+chamber to the gun. “The shot and wadde being first put into
+the chase,” wrote Norton in 1628, “then is the chamber to be
+firmly wedged into the tayle of the chase and carriage.” The
+mounting was, in fact, an integral part of the gun. In the
+8-inch breech-loading equipment of the <i>Mary Rose</i> which lies
+in the museum of the Royal United Service Institution in
+Whitehall there is evidence of two small rear wheels. Most of
+these early ship carriages had two wheels, but for the more
+powerful muzzle-loaders introduced toward the middle of the
+sixteenth century, four came into favour. With four wheels
+our timber baulk has become a primitive form of the truck
+carriage of the succeeding centuries.<a id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">90</a></p>
+
+<p>But perhaps the truck carriage may more properly be
+regarded as a derivative of the wheeled mounting on which, as
+we have seen, land ordnance came eventually to be worked.
+The ship being a floating fort, the mode of mounting the guns
+would be that in vogue in forts and garrisons ashore, and the
+land pieces and their massive carriages would be transferred,
+without modification, for use on shipboard. How different the
+conditions under which they worked! The great cannon,
+whose weight and high-wheeled carriages were positive
+advantages when firing from land emplacements, suitably
+inclined, were found to work at great disadvantage under sea
+conditions. Their great weight strained the decks that bore
+them, and their wheeled carriages proved difficult to control
+and even dangerous in any weather which caused a rolling or
+pitching of the gun platform. With the introduction of portholes
+their unfitness for ship work was doubtless emphasized;
+there was neither height nor deck-space enough to accommodate
+them between decks. Hence the necessity for a form of
+carriage suitable for the special conditions of sea service, as
+well as for a size of gun which would be within the capacity of
+a ship’s crew to work. In the early Tudor ships the forms of
+mounting were various: guns were mounted on two or four-wheeled
+carriages, or sometimes, especially the large bombards,
+upon “scaffolds” of timber.<a id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">91</a> By Elizabeth’s reign the limit<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">143</span>
+had been set to the size of the gun; the demi-cannon had been
+found to be the heaviest piece which could be safely mounted,
+traversed, and discharged. This and the smaller guns which
+were plied with such effect against the Spanish Armada
+were mounted on low, wheeled, wooden carriages which were
+the crude models from which the truck carriage, the finished
+article of the nineteenth century, was subsequently evolved.
+Even then the carriages had parts which were similar and
+similarly named to those of the later truck carriage; they had
+trunnion-plates and sockets, capsquares, beds, quoins, axle-trees,
+and trucks.<a id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">92</a> On them the various pieces—the demi-cannons,
+the culverins, the basilisks and sakers—were worked
+by the nimble and iron-sinewed seamen; run out by tackles
+through their ports, and traversed by handspikes. Loaded and
+primed and laboriously fired by means of spluttering linstocks,
+the guns recoiled upon discharge to a length and in a direction
+which could not be accurately predicted. The smaller guns, at
+any rate, had no breechings to restrain them: these ropes being
+only used for the purpose of securing the guns at sea, and
+chiefly in foul weather.<a id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">93</a></p>
+
+<p>On the whole these low sea carriages appear to have proved
+satisfactory, and their continued use is evidence that they
+were considered superior to those of the land service pattern.
+“The fashion of those carriages we use at sea,” wrote Sir
+Henry Manwayring in 1625, “are much better than those of
+the land; yet the Venetians and others use the other in their
+shipping.” In essentials the carriage remained the same from
+Elizabeth to Victoria. Surviving many attempts at its supercession
+in favour of mechanically complicated forms of mounting,
+it kept its place in naval favour for a surprising length of
+time; challenging with its primitive simplicity all the elaborate
+mechanisms which pitted themselves against it.</p>
+
+<p>An illuminating passage from Sir Jonas Moore’s treatise on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">144</span>
+artillery, written in 1689 and copied from the <cite>Hydrographie</cite> of
+the Abbé Fournier, shows at a glance the manner in which the
+armament of small Mediterranean craft of that period was
+disposed, and the method on which the guns were mounted.
+“At sea the ordnance are mounted upon small carriages, and
+upon four and sometimes two low wheels without any iron
+work. Each galley carries ordinarily nine pieces of ordnance in
+its prow or chase, of which the greatest, and that which
+delivers his shot just over the very stem, and lies just in the
+middle, is called the Corsiere or ‘cannon of course’ or ‘chase
+cannon,’ which in time of fight doth the most effectual service.
+It carries generally a shot of thirty-three or forty pounds
+weight, and are generally very long pieces. It recoils all along
+the middle of the galley to the mast, where they place some
+soft substance to hinder its farther recoil, that it might not
+endamage the mast. Next to this Corsiere are placed two
+Minions on each side, which carries a five or six-pound ball; and
+next to these are the Petrieroes, which are loaded with stone-shot
+to shoot near at hand. Thirdly, there are some small
+pieces, which are open at the breech, and called Petrieroes a
+Braga, and are charged with a moveable chamber loaded with
+base and bar shot, to murder near at hand. And the furthest
+from the Corsiere are the Harquebuss a Croc, which are charged
+with small cross-bar shot, to cut sails and rigging. All these
+small pieces are mounted on strong pins of iron having rings,
+in which are placed the trunnions with a socket, so that they
+are easily turned to any quarter.</p>
+
+<p>“All the guns are mounted upon wheels and carriages; moreover
+the Petrieroes, which are planted in the forecastle and
+quarter to defend the prow and stern, are mounted upon strong
+pins of iron without any reverse; the greatest pieces of battery
+are planted the lowest, just above the surface of the water,
+the smallest in the waist and steerage, and with the Petrieroes
+in quarter-deck and forecastle. Upon the sea, to load great
+ordnance they never load with a ladle, but make use of cartridges,
+as well for expedition as security in not firing the
+powder, which in time of fight is in a continual motion.”</p>
+
+<p>Before passing to a consideration of the truck carriage in
+detail there is an important circumstance to be noted with
+regard to the conditions under which its design and supply to
+the naval service were regulated. It is a remarkable fact that,
+during almost the whole of what may be called the truck<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">145</span>
+carriage era, the arming of ships with ordnance, the supply of
+the requisite guns and their carriages, the design of the guns
+and their mode of mounting, was no part of a naval officer’s
+affair. The Board of Ordnance had control both of land and of
+sea artillery. From the death of Sir William Wynter onwards
+the mastership of the ordnance by sea was absorbed into the
+mastership of the ordnance by land. From this arrangement,
+as may be imagined, many inconveniences arose, and many
+efforts were made at various times to disjoin the offices and to
+place the armament of ships under naval control. For, apart
+from the fact that at an early date the ordnance office acquired
+“an unenviable reputation for sloth and incapacity,”<a id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">94</a> the
+interests of the sea service were almost bound to suffer under
+such a system. And in fact the inconvenience suffered by the
+navy, through the delays and friction resulting from the
+system whereby all dealings with guns and their mountings
+and ammunition were the work of military officials, was
+notorious. The anomalous arrangement survived, in spite of
+the efforts of reformers, till far into the nineteenth century.
+Probably the Board of Ordnance argued honestly against
+reintroducing a dual control for land and sea artillery material.
+They had, at any rate, strong interests in favour of the status
+quo. For, writing in the year 1660, Sir William Slingsby noted
+regretfully that “the masters of the ordnance of England,
+having been ever since of great quality and interest, would
+never suffer such a collop to be cut out of their employment.”</p>
+
+<p>The arming of ships, therefore, apart from the original
+assignment of the armament, remained in the province of the
+military authorities.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>An examination of the design of the perfected truck carriage
+and a glance at the records of its performances in action show
+that the advocates of rival gun mountings were not altogether
+incorrect in their contention that the manner in which the
+broadside armament of our ships was mounted was wrong
+in principle and unsatisfactory in actual detail. The many
+defects of the truck carriage were indeed only too obvious.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, the breechings were so reeved that the
+force sustained by them in opposition to the recoil of the gun
+tended inevitably to cause the piece to jump. The reaction of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">146</span>
+the breeching acted along lines below the level of the gun-axis;
+the breeching therefore exerted a lifting force which, instead
+of pressing down all of the four trucks upon the deck and
+thus deadening the recoil, tended to raise the fore trucks in
+the air and reduce the friction of the carriage upon the deck.
+The larger the gun and the higher the gun-axis above the
+trucks, the greater was this tendency of the gun to lift and
+overturn. If the rear trucks, about which the gun and carriage
+tended to revolve, had been set at some distance in rear of
+the centre of gravity of the equipment, it would have been
+rendered thereby more stable. But space did not permit of
+this. And actually they were so placed that, when discharge
+was most violent, the weight of the equipment was scarcely
+sufficient to oppose effectively the tendency to jump. Again,
+the anchoring of the breeching to two points in the ship’s
+frames, one on either side of the gun, was wrong and liable to
+have serious consequences. For with this arrangement not
+only had the breeching to be continuously “middled” as the
+gun shifted its bearing, but even when accurately adjusted
+the “legs” of the breeching bore an unequal strain when the
+gun was fired off the beam. In other words, the horizontal
+angles subtended between the gun-axis, when off the beam,
+and the two lines of the breeching were unequal; one side
+of the breeching took more of the blow of gunfire than the
+other; and not infrequently the gun carriage was thrown
+round violently out of the line of recoil, with damage to the
+equipment and injury to the crew.</p>
+
+<p>The design of the carriage was in no way influenced, apparently,
+by a desire to obtain a minimum area of port opening
+in combination with a maximum traverse of the gun. For the
+broad span of the front part of the carriage soon caused the
+gun to be “wooded” when slewed off the beam. And a
+further disadvantage of this broad span was in the effect it
+had of automatically bringing the gun right abeam every
+time it was hauled out after loading: the front span of the
+carriage coming square with the timbers of the port-sill.</p>
+
+<p>As for the system of recoil, while the recoiling of the carriage
+with the gun had an advantage in reducing the stresses brought
+on the hull structure, yet this arrangement had the correlative
+disadvantage that the carriage as well as the gun had to be
+hauled out again. And, as regards safety, it is a matter for
+surprise that the system of chocking recoil by means of large<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">147</span>
+ropes—of absorbing the momentum of a heavy gun and its
+carriage in a distance corresponding to the stretch of the
+breechings under their suddenly applied load—was not far
+more injurious than experience proved to be the case. Even
+so, the results obtained from it were far from satisfactory.
+“It is a lamentable truth”—we quote Sir William Congreve,
+writing in 1811—“that numbers of men are constantly
+maimed, one way or another, by the recoiling of the heavy
+ordnance used on board ships of war. Most of the damage is
+done by the random recoil of the carriage which, moving with
+the gun along no certain path, is much affected by the motion
+of the vessel and the inequalities of the deck. It is difficult
+to know, within a few feet, to where the carriage will come,
+and the greatest watchfulness is necessary on all hands to
+prevent accidents.” This refers, observe, to the truck gun
+under control. How terrible an uncontrolled gun could be,
+may be read in the pages of Victor Hugo’s <cite>Quatre-Vingt-Treize</cite>,
+of which romance the breaking loose of a piece on the gun-deck
+of a frigate forms a central incident. It was conjectured
+that the old <i>Victory</i>, Admiral Balchen’s flagship which went
+down off the Casquets in 1744, “mouse and man,” was lost
+through the breaking loose of her great guns in a gale.<a id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">95</a></p>
+
+<div id="ip_147" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 25.125em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p147.jpg" width="402" height="164" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">A TRUCK GUN</div></div>
+
+<p>The accessories of the truck carriage were a source of
+frequent accident. The attachment of breechings and tackles
+to the ship’s side often involved disablement in action, the
+numerous bolts being driven in as missiles among the crew,
+who were also in danger of having their limbs caught up in
+the maze of ropes and trappings with which the deck round
+the gun was encumbered. Considered as a mechanism the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">148</span>
+whole gun-equipment was a rude and primitive affair; the
+clumsy carriage run out to battery by laborious tackles, the
+cast-iron gun laid by a simple wedge, the whole equipment
+traversed by prising round with handspikes—by exactly
+the same process, it has been remarked, as that by which the
+savage moved a log in the beginning of the world.</p>
+
+<p><em>Why, then, did the truck carriage maintain its long supremacy?</em></p>
+
+<p>The answer is, that with all its acknowledged defects it
+had merits which universally recommended it, while its
+successive rivals exhibited defects or disadvantages sufficient
+to prevent their adoption to its own exclusion. It was a case,
+in fact, of the survival of the fittest. And if we examine its
+various features in the light of the records of its performances
+in action (the truck carriage appears in the background of
+most of our naval letters and biographies), we shall understand
+why it was not easily displaced from favour with generation
+after generation of our officers and seamen.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place the truck carriage, a simple structure of
+resilient elm, with bed, cheek-plates, and trunnions strongly
+fitted together and secured by iron bolts, was better adapted
+than any other form for the prevention of excessive stresses,
+resulting from the shock of recoil, on either gun or ship’s
+structure. By the expedient of allowing the whole gun
+equipment to recoil freely across the deck, by allowing the
+energy of recoil to assume the form of kinetic energy given to
+the gun and carriage, the violent reactionary stresses due to
+the sudden combustion of the gunpowder were safely diverted
+from the ship’s structure, which was thus relieved of nearly
+the whole of the firing stresses. Moreover, by allowing the
+gun to recoil readily under the influence of the powder-gases
+the gun itself was saved from excessive stresses which would
+otherwise have shattered it. From this point of view the
+weight of the carriage, relatively to that of the gun, was of
+considerable importance. If the carriage had been at all too
+heavy it would not have yielded sufficiently under the blow
+of the gun, and, howsoever strongly made, would eventually
+have been destroyed, if it had not by its inertia caused the
+gun to break; if too light, the violence of the recoil would have
+torn loose the breechings. Actually, and as the result of a
+process of trial-and-error continuously carried on, the weight
+of the finally evolved elm carriage was so nicely adapted to
+that of its gun that a recoil of the most suitable proportions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">149</span>
+was generally obtained, a free yet not too boisterous run back.
+This, of course, upon an even keel. Conditions varied when
+the guns were at sea upon a moving platform. With the ship
+heeled under a strong wind the weather guns were often fired
+with difficulty owing to the violence of the recoil. On the
+other hand the listing of the ship when attacking an enemy
+from windward favoured the lee guns by providing a natural
+ramp up which they smoothly recoiled and down which they
+ran by gravity to battery, as in a shore emplacement. Of
+which advantage, as we know, British sea tactics made full use
+at every opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>It was strong, simple, and self-contained. Metal carriages,
+whose claims were periodically under examination, proved
+brittle, too rigid, heavy, and dangerous from their liability
+to splinter. Gunslides, traverses, or structures laid on the
+deck to form a definite path for the recoil of the gun (such as
+the Swedish ships of Chapman’s time, for example, carried)
+were disliked on account of their complication, the deck-space
+occupied, and the difficulty which their use entailed of keeping
+the deck under the gun dry and free from rotting; though
+beds laid so as to raise the guns to the level of the ports were
+sometimes fitted, and were indeed a necessity in the earlier
+days owing to the large sheer and camber given to the decks.
+The use of compressors, or of adjustable friction devices,
+in any form, for limiting the recoil, was objected to on account
+of the possibilities which they presented for accident owing to
+the forgetfulness of an excited crew. The truck carriage, being
+self-contained and independent of external adjustment, was
+safe in this respect.</p>
+
+<p>The four wood trucks were of the correct form and size to
+give the results required. The resistance of a truck to rolling
+depends largely upon the relative diameters of itself and its
+axle. It was thus possible, by making gun-carriage trucks of
+small diameter and their axles relatively large, to obtain the
+following effect: on gunfire the carriage started from rest
+suddenly, the trucks skidding on the deck without rotating
+and thus checking by their friction the first violent motion of
+recoil; during the latter phase of the recoil the trucks rotated,
+and the carriage ran smoothly back until checked by the
+breechings.</p>
+
+<p>The friction of the trucks on the deck was also affected,
+however, by another feature of the design: the position of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">150</span>
+the trunnions relatively to the axis of the gun. How important
+was this position as influencing the history of land artillery,
+we have already seen. Truck guns were nearly always
+“quarter-hung,” or cast with their trunnions slightly below
+their axis, so as to cause the breech to exert a downward
+pressure on firing, and thus augment the friction of the rear
+trucks on the deck and check the recoil. The position of the
+trunnions was studied from yet another point of view: namely,
+to give the minimum of jump to the gun and ensure a smooth
+start to the recoil. With this object they were so placed that
+the two ends of the gun were not equally balanced about the
+trunnion axis, but a preponderance of about one-twentieth of
+the weight of the gun was given to the breech-end, thus
+bringing a slight pressure, due to deadweight alone, upon the
+quoin.</p>
+
+<p>As for this quoin or primitive wedge by which the gun was
+roughly laid, this had a great advantage over the screw (which
+gained a footing, as an alternative, when the carronade came
+into use) in that it allowed of rapid changes of elevation of the
+gun. Hence, though the quoin was liable to jump from its
+bed on gunfire and do injury to the crew, it kept its place
+as an accessory almost as long as the truck carriage itself
+survived.</p>
+
+<p>There was one advantage possessed by the truck carriage
+which was perhaps the most important of all: its superior
+transportability. The gun equipment was easily transferable,
+and what this meant to the seaman may be gathered from the
+accounts of the way in which, in sailing-ship days, ships’
+armaments were continually being shifted. The armament,
+we have noted, was not embodied, as it is to-day, as an integral
+part of the design of the ship. The guns and their carriages
+were in the nature of stock articles, which could be changed in
+size, number and position according to the whim of the
+captain or the service of the ship. And there was every reason
+why all parties concerned, and especially the ordnance people,
+should tend to standardize the forms of guns and carriages, to
+keep them self-contained and as independent as possible of the
+special requirements of individual ships or positions. The
+shifting of guns was constantly going on in a commissioned
+ship. At sea they were lashed against the sides so as to leave as
+clear a deck as possible. In chase a shifting of guns, among
+other heavy weights, was resorted to in order that the vessel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">151</span>
+should not lose way by plunging heavily. If she set sail on a
+long voyage some of the guns were struck down into the hold,
+to stiffen her and give her an increased stability. And on her
+return to harbour the guns might be removed for examination
+and repair by the ordnance officials, the ship being laid alongside
+a sheer hulk for the purpose. In the days before the
+sheathing of ships’ bottoms was successfully practised, and in
+the absence of docks, it was constantly necessary to careen
+ships for the repair of their ground-timbers, for the cleaning
+of their sides and the caulking of their seams. This, again,
+necessitated a shifting or complete removal of most of their
+stores and ordnance. Great advantages were offered, therefore,
+from having gun-carriages compact, self-contained, and
+capable of being quickly removed from one place to another.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>Having inspected the truck carriage in some detail, let us
+now briefly glance at the development of its use which took
+place in the last hundred years of its service, between the
+middle of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>The stream of improvement in naval gunnery began to flow
+strongly under the administration of Lord Anson. New
+methods of firing, experiments with priming tubes to replace
+the primitive powder horns and trains of vent powder, and gun
+locks to replace the dangerous and unreliable slow match and
+linstock,<a id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">96</a> were under trial in the fleets commanded by Admiral
+Hawke, but with results not altogether satisfactory. The locks
+supplied were lacking in mechanical precision, and the tubes—“very
+pernicious things” they were voted—were apt to fly
+out and wound the men. But that the unsatisfactory results
+obtained were not due to defects inherent in the new devices
+was soon clearly proved. Twenty years later an eminent
+gunnery officer, Sir Charles Douglas, by perseverance and an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">152</span>
+enthusiastic attention to mechanical detail, succeeded in making
+both locks and priming tubes a practical success, greatly
+enhancing by their aid the rate and effectiveness of fire of the
+great guns. Flint-locks of his own design he bought and fitted
+to the guns of his ship at his private expense. Flannel-bottomed
+cartridges, to replace the parchment-covered cartridges
+which had caused so much fouling, and goose-quill
+priming tubes, were provided by him, and to him is certainly
+due the credit for initiating the series of improvements in
+material which, trivial as they may seem in detail, yet in the
+aggregate had the effect of placing our gunnery at a relatively
+high level in the ensuing wars.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to introducing improvements in methods of
+firing, Sir Charles Douglas did much to improve the efficiency
+of the truck carriages themselves. On his appointment to the
+<i>Duke</i> in 1779 he at once began to put his schemes in hand.
+To ease the recoil of the guns and to save their breechings he
+devised and fitted steel springs in some way to the latter;
+with such surprising good effect (he reported) that even with a
+restricted length of recoil no breeching, not even that of a
+32-pounder weather gun double-shotted and fired over a
+slippery deck, was ever known to break. The recoil he further
+eased by loading the truck carriage with shot, which he slung
+on it, thereby augmenting the recoiling mass. He also proposed
+and tried another apparatus having the same effect:
+suspended weights, secured to the carriage by ropes reeved
+through fairleads, which on recoil the gun was made to lift.
+Which weights also had an effect in helping to run the gun out
+again which he calculated to be equal to that of two extra men
+on the tackles.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the principal improvements due to Sir Charles
+Douglas were those which had as their object the firing of
+ships’ guns on other bearings than right abeam. He realized
+the importance of possessing a large arc of training for his guns;
+and with this object he cleared away all possible obstructions
+on the gun decks of the <i>Duke</i>, removing and modifying knees,
+standards and pillars to allow his guns to be pointed a full
+four points before and abaft the beam: a degree of obliquity
+hitherto unknown in the navy for broadside armament. To
+traverse the carriages quickly to the required line of bearing he
+had eyebolts fitted in line between the guns for attachment to
+the tackles; and to shorten and control the recoil and thus<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">153</span>
+allow of firing on an extreme bearing in a confined space, and
+also to improve the rate of fire, he shod the carriage-trucks
+with wedges designed to act as drags. “We now dare to fire
+our guns without running them out,” he wrote to Lord Barham,
+“and so as to admit of the ports being shut, with certain
+impunity, even to the obliquity of three points before or abaft
+the beam. A wedge properly adapted is placed behind each
+truck, to make up for the reduction of space to recoil in, in
+firing to windward or in rolling weather. The gun first ascends
+the wedges by rotation, and when stopped, performs the
+remainder of her recoil as a sledge, so feebly as scarce to bring
+her breeching tight. The bottoms of the wedges, to augment
+their friction against the deck, are pinked, tarred, and rubbed
+with very rough sand or with coarse coal dust. This method
+has also, I hear, been adopted in the <i>Union</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>It was also adopted in the <i>Formidable</i>, in which ship Sir
+Charles fought as first captain to Admiral Rodney in the great
+fight which took place three years after the above was written.
+At the Battle of the Saints not a single goose-quill failed in the
+<i>Formidable</i>, nor did a gun require to be wormed so long as the
+flannel-bottomed cartridges held out. Of the hundred and
+twenty-six locks fitted in the <i>Duke</i>, only one failed; with this
+exception a single Kentish black flint served for each gun
+throughout the whole engagement. The oblique fire which our
+ships were enabled to employ so shattered the enemy by the
+unexpectedly rapid and concentrated fire poured into him,
+that victory was not left long in doubt; the toll of his killed and
+wounded was enormous. The <i>Duke</i>, it was reckoned, fired
+twice as many effective shots as would have been possible
+under the old system. The <i>Formidable</i> reported that two, and
+sometimes three, broadsides were fired at every passing
+Frenchman before he could bring a gun to bear in reply.<a id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">97</a> If
+all the ships of the fleet, it was said, had been able to use their
+guns as they were used in these two, very few of the enemy
+would have escaped. The advantage accruing to the British
+fleets from the improvements initiated and developed by Sir
+Charles Douglas and other captains of his time was palpable
+and undisputed. It is possible, however, that the total effect
+produced by all these developments in gunnery material, both<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">154</span>
+in this action and in those of the following war, may have been
+insufficiently emphasized by historians?</p>
+
+<p>It is to the war which broke out with the United States of
+America in 1812 that we must turn to see the truck equipment
+working at its highest point of efficiency. By this time the advantage
+of gun-sights<a id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">98</a> for giving accuracy of aim has been seized by
+a few individual officers, and sights of various patterns have
+been fitted by enthusiasts. No official encouragement is given,
+however, to experiments with sights and scales and disparting
+devices, and once again it is left to private initiative and
+expense to make a further advance toward efficiency. Applications
+for gun-sights are rejected during the war on the ground
+that these novelties are “not according to the regulation of
+the Service.”<a id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">99</a></p>
+
+<p>These are the circumstances in which a certain vessel in the
+royal navy exhibits such a superiority in gunnery over her contemporaries
+as to render her conspicuous at the time and, for
+several decades afterwards, the accepted model by which all
+such as care may measure themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Shannon</i>, nominally a 38-gun frigate, carried twenty-eight
+18-pounder long guns on her gun deck and fourteen
+carronades, 32-pounders, upon her quarter-deck and forecastle;
+in addition to four long 9-pounders. She was commanded by
+Captain Philip Broke, whose fame as a gallant commander is
+secure for all time but whose attainments in the realm of
+gunnery have been less widely appreciated. Captain Broke,
+possessing a keen insight into the possibilities of the <i>Shannon’s</i>
+armament, set himself to organize, from the first day of his
+ship’s memorable commission, her crew and material for the
+day of battle. No other ship of the time was so highly
+organized. For all the guns sighting arrangements were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">155</span>
+provided by him. To each gun-carriage side-scales of his own
+design were attached, marked with a scale of degrees and
+showing by means of a plumb-bob the actual heel of the ship;
+so that every gun could be laid by word of command at any
+desired angle of elevation. For giving all guns a correct
+bearing a circle was inscribed on the deck round every gun-port,
+degrees being represented by grooves cut in the planks
+and inlaid with white putty; by which device concentration
+of fire of a whole battery was rendered possible, the sheer of
+the ship being compensated for by cutting down the carriages
+and adjusting them with spirit-levels.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_155" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 23.375em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p155.jpg" width="374" height="130" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>METHOD OF GUN-EXERCISE IN H.M.S. “SHANNON”</p>
+
+<p class="smaller">From a pamphlet by Captain S. J. Pechell, R.N.</p></div></div>
+
+<p>Beside these improvements applied to his material—steps
+which seem simple and obvious to-day, but which were far-sighted
+strides in 1812—the training of his personnel was a
+matter to which he paid unremitting attention. His gunners
+were carefully taught the mysteries of the dispart. Gun drill
+was made as realistic as possible and prizes were given out of
+his private purse for the winners of the various competitions.
+Often a beef cask, with a piece of canvas four feet square
+attached to it, was thrown overboard as a target, the ship
+being laid to some three hundred yards away from it. The
+captain’s log was full of such entries as: “Seamen at target,”
+“fixed and corrected nine-pounder sights,” “mids at target
+and carronade,” “swivels in maintop,” “practised with
+musket,” “exercised at the great guns,” etc. etc. Systematic
+instruction in working the guns, fixing sights and
+reading scales, was carried out. And a method of practising
+gun-laying, which later came to be used in other ships from the
+example set by the <i>Shannon</i>, is illustrated by the accompanying
+sketch. A gun was taken onto the quarter-deck and secured;
+a spar was placed in its muzzle with a handspike lashed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">156</span>
+across it; and then two men surged the gun by means of the
+handspike to imitate the rolling of the ship, while the captain
+of the gun, crouching behind it, looked along his line of sight
+for the target (a disc placed in the forepart of the ship) and
+threw in the quoin when he had taken aim.</p>
+
+<p>With such a training did the captain of the <i>Shannon</i> prepare
+for the duel which fortune was to give him with the <i>Chesapeake</i>.
+The pick of the British fleets was to meet an American of
+average efficiency. Superiority of gunnery would have decided
+that famous action in favour of the former, it may safely be
+said, whatever the conditions in which it had been fought. At
+long range the deliberate and practised aim of the <i>Shannon’s</i>
+18-pounders would have overborne even the good individual
+shooting of an American crew. At night or in foggy weather
+or in a choppy sea the <i>Shannon’s</i> arrangements for firing on a
+given bearing and at a given elevation would have given her
+the superiority. As it happened, the combined and correct
+fire at pistol range, of long gun and carronade—the long gun,
+double-shotted, searching the <i>Chesapeake’s</i> decks with ball and
+grape, the carronade splintering her light fir-lined sides and
+spreading death and destruction among the crew—quickly
+secured a victory, and showed the naval world the value of
+high ideals in the technique of gunnery.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Shannon</i> we have the high-water mark of smooth-bore
+gunnery. From that time onward, in spite of the precedents
+which her captain created, little appears to have been done in
+the way of extending his methods or of applying his improvements
+to the armament of the navy generally. As a consequence,
+relatively to the continuously improving defensive
+efficiency of the ships themselves there was an actual decline
+in the efficiency of the truck gun after the American War: a
+decline which culminated in Navarino. It was a time when
+“new-fangled notions,” developments of method and material,
+were viewed with strong suspicion, even with resentment, by
+many of the most influential of naval officers. In the case of
+the truck gun, strong prejudices reacted against the general
+introduction of such refinements as had admittedly been found
+effective in exceptional cases, and the demand still went up for
+everything in connection with gunnery to be “coarsely
+simple.” To many it doubtless seemed impolitic, to say the
+least, that anything should be done in the way of mechanical
+development which would have the effect of substituting pure<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">157</span>
+skill for the physical force and endurance, in the exertion of which
+the British seaman so obviously excelled. The truck gun was
+merely the rough medium by which this physical superiority
+gained the desired end, and it had been proved well suited to
+the English genius. Nothing more was asked than a rough
+equality of weapons. The arguments used against such finesse
+in gunnery as that used by the commander of the <i>Shannon</i>
+were much the same, it may be imagined, as those used at an
+earlier date (and with better reason) to prohibit the use of the
+mechanically worked crossbow in favour of the simple longbow,
+strung by the athletic arm of the English archer.</p>
+
+<p>That little was done for years to improve the truck gun
+equipment, is evident from a letter, written in 1825 by Captain
+S. J. Pechell and addressed to the Commander-in-Chief of the
+Mediterranean squadron, deploring the defective equipment
+of ships’ guns. Even at this date, it appears, few of the guns
+were properly disparted, few had sights or scales fitted to
+them. No arrangements had yet been generally adapted for
+permitting horizontal, or what Captain Broke had called
+“blindfold” firing; or for laying all the guns together by
+word of command. The truck carriages still gave insufficient
+depression, preventing a ship from firing her weather guns at
+point-blank when listed more than four degrees. The quantity
+of powder and shot allowed for exercise only amounted to one
+shot for each captain of a gun in seven months. No instruction
+was given in sighting or fixing sights, no system of instruction
+in principles was followed. And once again, as in the seventeenth
+century, the disadvantage under which naval gunnery
+laboured by reason of the dual control in all matters pertaining
+to the ordnance was strongly felt. “It is singular,” wrote
+Captain Pechell, “that the arming of a ship is the only part of
+her equipment which has not the superintendence of a Naval
+Officer. We have no sea Officer at the Ordnance to arrange and
+decide upon the proper equipment of Ships of War; or to
+carry into effect any improvement which experience might
+suggest. It is in this way that everything relating to the
+Ordnance on board a Man of War has remained nearly in the
+same state for the last thirty years; and is the only department
+(I mean the naval part of it) that has not profited by
+experience or encouraged Officers to communicate information.
+Much might be done now that the Marine Artillery are stationed
+at Portsmouth. At present it is not even generally known that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">158</span>
+a manual exercise exists.... If some such system were
+adopted, we should no longer consider the length of an action
+at its principal merit; the <i>Chesapeake</i> was beat in eleven
+minutes!”</p>
+
+<p>Captain Pechell was a firm believer in the desirability of
+developing to its utmost British material. He had an enthusiastic
+belief, moreover, in the possibilities of his personnel;
+and stated his conviction that officers were only too anxious to
+be given the chance of instruction, prophesying an emulation
+among them and as great a desire to be distinguished “in
+gunnery as in Seamanship.” His advocacy of a system of
+gunnery training bore fruit later in the establishment of the
+<i>Excellent</i> at Portsmouth. The scheme for the development of a
+corps of scientific naval officers, which had been foreshadowed
+by Sir Howard Douglas in his classic treatise on Naval Gunnery
+and which was formulated later in detail by Captain Pechell,
+was one of the reforms brought to maturity by Sir James
+Graham in the year 1832.</p>
+
+<p>Through all the subsequent changes of armament up to the
+Crimean War, from solid shot to shell-fire, the truck carriage
+maintained its place of favour. In 1811 Colonel (afterwards
+Sir William) Congreve had published a treatise demonstrating
+the defects of the truck carriage and proposing in its place a
+far more scientific and ingenious form of mounting. It lacked,
+however, some of the characteristics which, as we have seen,
+gave value to the old truck carriage. Except where special
+conditions gave additional value to its rival, the truck carriage
+kept its place. In 1820 an iron carriage was tried officially,
+for 24-pounders, but gave unsatisfactory results. In 1829 the
+Marshall carriage was tried, offering important advantages
+over the standard pattern. Its main feature was a narrow
+fore-carriage separate from the recoiling rear portion, this fore-carriage
+being pivoted to a socket in the centre of the gun-port.
+But still the truck carriage survived the very favourable
+reports given on its latest rival.</p>
+
+<p>As concentration of fire became developed new fittings such
+as directing bars, breast chocks and training racers made
+their appearance and were embodied in its design. As the
+power of guns and the energy requiring to be absorbed on recoil
+increased, the rear trucks disappeared and gave place, in the
+two-truck Marsilly carriage, to flat chocks which by the
+friction of their broad surfaces against the deck helped more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">159</span>
+than trucks to deaden the motion of the carriage. The quoin,
+perfected by the addition of a graduated scale marked to show
+the elevation corresponding to each of its positions, gave place
+at length to various mechanical forms of elevating gear. The
+elm body was replaced by iron plates bolted and riveted
+together. And then at length, with the continuous growth of
+gun-energy, the forces of recoil became so great that the
+ordinary carriage constrained by rope breechings could no
+longer cope with them. The friction of wood rear-chocks
+against the deck was replaced by the friction of vertical iron
+plates, attached to the carriage, against similar plates attached
+to a slide interposed between carriage and deck, and automatically
+compressed: the invention, it is said, of Admiral
+Sir Thomas Hardy. The truck carriage, as it had been known
+for centuries, had at last been left behind in the evolution of
+naval artillery.</p>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<p>With the advent of modern gun mountings the old anomaly
+of the divided responsibility of War Office and Admiralty
+became unbearable; the necessity for a close adaptation of
+each gun to its ship-position, for careful co-ordination of the
+work of artillerist, engineer and shipbuilder, produced a crisis
+which had important effects on future naval administration.
+A single paragraph will suffice to show the position as it
+presented itself in the early ’sixties. “There were a thousand
+points of possible collision,” wrote the biographer of Captain
+Cooper Key, the captain of the <i>Excellent</i>, “as it became more
+and more certain that gun carriages, instead of being loose
+movable structures capable of being used in any port, were
+henceforth to be fixed in the particular port which was adapted
+for them, with special pivoting bolts and deck racers—all part
+of the ship’s structure. Where the War Office work began and
+the Controller’s ended in these cases, no one knew, but the
+captain of the <i>Excellent</i> came in as one interfering between a
+married pair, and was misunderstood and condemned on both
+sides.”</p>
+
+<p>In 1866 the solution was found. Captain Cooper Key was
+appointed to the Admiralty as Director-General of Naval
+Ordnance.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">160</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_VII" class="vspace">CHAPTER VII<br />
+
+<span class="subhead">THE SHELL GUN</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> chief function of land artillery in its earlier days
+was the destruction of material. The huge engines of
+the ancients were of value in effecting from a safe
+distance what the tortoise and the battering-ram could only
+do at close quarters: the breaching of walls and the battering-in
+of gates, doors and bulwarks. After the invention of gunpowder
+the use of artillery remained, we have seen, substantially
+the same. Apart from the moral effect on horse and man
+of the “monstrous roare of noise” when in defence, the
+offensive object of ordnance was almost entirely the breaching
+of the enemy’s works. The guns were literally “pieces of
+battery,” doing their slow work by the momentum of their
+large projectiles.</p>
+
+<p>Thus considered, artillery was not a very effective instrument.
+And, just as in earlier times it had been sought to
+supplement mere impact by other effects—by the throwing
+into besieged fortresses of quicklime, for instance, “dead
+horses and other carrion,”—so, after the arrival of gunpowder,
+endeavour was made to substitute incendiarism or explosion
+for the relatively ineffective method of impact. The use of
+grenades, hand-thrown, was discovered. And then followed,
+as a matter of course, their adaptation to the mortars already
+in use for the projection of stones and other solid material.
+These mortars, as in the case of the early cannon, were at first
+made of an inconveniently large size; and, also as in the case
+of cannon, they came later to be cast of more moderate proportions
+to facilitate their transport and thus render them
+more serviceable for operations in the field. Artillery was now
+devoting its attention to the personnel. The result of this
+evolution was the howitzer, a weapon whose value to land
+armies was greatly enhanced by the discovery, by Marshal
+Vauban at the end of the seventeenth century, of the efficacy
+of the <em>ricochet</em>. Under this system the fuzed bomb or grenade,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">161</span>
+instead of being projected from a mortar set at a high elevation,
+to describe a lofty and almost parabolic trajectory, was discharged
+from a howitzer at a sufficiently low elevation to cause
+it to strike the ground some distance short of its objective,
+whence it proceeded, leaping and finally rolling along the
+ground till it came to its target, where it exploded.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_161" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 19.1875em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p161.jpg" width="307" height="210" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>So far shell fire had developed on land. In sea warfare the
+solid cannon ball remained the orthodox missile; the use of
+explosive or incendiary shells was deemed so dangerous a
+practice as to forbid its acceptance by the great maritime
+powers, save in exceptional cases, until the nineteenth century.
+Toward the end of the eighteenth century serious consideration
+was given, by France especially, to the possibilities of shell
+fire. Frenchmen felt restless and dissatisfied with the conditions
+in which they were waging war with England. Sea
+ordnance, which in the past had wrought so much by the
+destruction of personnel, was becoming increasingly impotent,
+not only against personnel but against ships themselves.
+Trafalgar came as a proof of this, when not a single ship was
+sunk by gunfire. Sea fighting was again resolving itself into a
+straightforward physical struggle between the guns’ crews of
+the opposing fleets, in which struggle the victory went by
+attrition to the side which plied its guns with the greatest
+rapidity and perseverance. Élan, enthusiasm, science, the
+mental alertness of the individual, were bound to be overborne
+in such a case by superior endurance, physique, coolness, and
+sound workmanship. Both sides had a profound belief in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">162</span>
+superiority of their personnel in hand-to-hand conflict. Where
+fighting was, as in the earliest days of the rival navies, “man
+to man, lance to lance, arrow to arrow, stone to stone,” success
+depended entirely upon courage and physical strength; and
+in such cases, says Nicolas, the English were almost always
+victorious. If, stated a French writer, sea actions could be
+decided by hand-to-hand combat the arms of France would
+triumph. But sea fights were in fact almost solely a matter of
+artillery. If only the conditions of battle could be altered; if
+only the forces of incendiarism or explosion could be summoned
+to put the enemy ships-of-the-line in jeopardy, a short cut to
+victory might be found or, at any rate, the superiority of
+England in material might be seriously depreciated.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_162" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 13.375em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p162.jpg" width="214" height="231" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>Some time was to elapse, however, before France was to see
+even the partial consummation of this fervent desire.</p>
+
+<p>While the use of grenades, bombs, carcasses and other
+explosive and incendiary missiles had been recognized on land
+for centuries, an event occurred in the year 1788 which, coming
+to the ears of Europe, should have had considerable effect in
+turning the thoughts of artillerists to the possibilities of their
+use at sea. In that year, some sixty-five years before the
+action off Sinope, a Deptford shipwright who had risen to high
+service under the Russian government fitted out for his
+employers a flotilla of long-boats for an attack upon a Turkish
+squadron. These long-boats Sir Samuel Bentham—he was
+the ex-shipwright—armed with brass ordnance mounted on his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">163</span>
+favourite non-recoil system, and for them he requisitioned a
+large supply of shells, carcasses and solid shot. At the mouth
+of the Liman river in the Sea of Azov the Russians, with these
+insignificant war vessels, attacked a very superior force of
+Turkish ships, and gained a complete victory. The effect of the
+shells, fired at close range into the Turkish ships, was startling
+and impressive. Great holes were torn in the sides of the
+vessels, and fires were started which, in a favouring medium of
+dry timber and paint and pitch, rapidly spread and caused the
+squadron’s destruction.</p>
+
+<p>No evidence can be quoted, it must be admitted, to show
+that contemporary opinion realized how portentous was this
+sea action; no stress is laid on the event in histories relating
+to that time. Nor does another event which occurred at this
+period appear to have caused the notice it deserved: the
+firing, at the suggestion of a Captain Mercier, 35th Regiment,
+of mortar shells from the British long 24-pounders, from
+Gibraltar into the Spanish lines.<a id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">100</a> Nor was Lieutenant
+Shrapnel’s contemporaneous invention,<a id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">101</a> of a shell containing
+case shot explodable by a small bursting charge, developed or
+the possible adaptation of its use for sea warfare fully appreciated.
+Or, if authority did discern the eventual effect of these
+innovations, a wholesome dread of their extension and development
+in naval warfare appears to have dictated a policy of
+calculated conservatism in respect of them, a suppression of
+all ideas and experiments which had in view any intensifying
+or improvement of our artillery methods. “So long as foreign
+powers did not innovate by improving their guns, by extending
+the use of carronades and, above all, by projecting shells
+horizontally from shipping; so long it was our interest not to
+set the example of any improvement in naval ordnance—the
+value of our immense material might otherwise be depreciated.
+Many of the defects which were known to exist, so long as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">164</span>
+they were common to all navies, operated to the advantage of
+Great Britain.”<a id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">102</a></p>
+
+<p>Apart from this consideration, however, it is remarkable how
+small a value was set by English opinion, even at a late date,
+upon explosive as compared with solid projectiles. The
+obvious disadvantages of hollow spherical shell—their smaller
+range, more devious flight and less penetrative power—were
+emphasized; their admittedly greater destructive effect (even
+taking into account the small bursting charges deemed suitable
+for use with them) was rated at a surprisingly low figure.</p>
+
+<p>The French, on the other hand, showed great eagerness to
+explore the possibilities of shell fire in fighting ships. Addicted
+to science, they searched unceasingly throughout the revolutionary
+wars for some development of naval material which
+would neutralize the obvious and ever-increasing superiority
+of the British navy under existing conditions, even if it might
+not actually incline the balance of power in their favour. To
+this end they courted the use of incendiary projectiles. Our
+own authorities, partly from a lively apprehension of the
+danger believed to be inherent in their carriage and use in
+wooden ships and partly from a feeling of moral revulsion
+against the employment of what they genuinely believed to be
+an unfair and unchivalrous agency, limited the use of fuzed
+shells, carcasses and other fireworks as much as possible to
+small bomb vessels of special construction—and inferior morals.
+But in ships-of-the-line the use of such missiles was strongly
+deprecated by naval opinion, and even the use of hand-grenades
+in the tops was forbidden by some captains. Time justified
+this cautious attitude. The French suffered for the precipitancy
+with which they adopted inflammatory agents; fires
+and explosions were frequent in their fleets; the history of
+their navy in these wars—“la longue et funeste guerre de la
+Révolution”—is lit up from time to time with the conflagrations
+of their finest ships, prey to the improperly controlled
+chemical forces of their own adoption. One example alone need
+be cited: the <i>Orient</i> at the battle of the Nile. Even if the
+French flagship was not set on fire by their direct agency,
+small doubt exists that the spread of the fire which broke out
+in her was accelerated by the presence of the combustibles
+which, in common with most of the French ships, she carried.
+Throughout the wars fuzed shells, carcasses, stinkpots, port-fires,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">165</span>
+proved far more terrible to friend than foe. And the foe
+doubtless felt confirmed and fortified in his opinions that such
+substances were quite unsuitable for carriage in warships. As
+to the ethics of explosives even the French themselves seem to
+have been doubtful. For, shortly after the battle in Aboukir
+Bay, some of their officers accused an English captain of
+having been so “unfair” as to use shells: an audacious
+manœuvre on their part, for, on some of the shells in question
+being produced and the gunner questioned as to whence they
+came, “to the confusion of the accusers, he related that they
+were found on board the <i>Spartiate</i>, one of the ships captured on
+the first of August!”<a id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">103</a></p>
+
+<p>Continuous trials were carried out in France with shells fired
+from guns. In 1798, following a series of successful experiments,
+trials were prosecuted at Meudon by a special commission,
+who caused 24-and 36-pound shells to be fired at a
+target representing a ship-of-the-line, at ranges of 400 and
+600 yards. The results were impressive, and the report
+rendered to Bonaparte such as to confirm his personal conviction
+in the value of shell fire. Less than a year later, we
+may note in passing, the Consul was himself the target of shell
+fire: being subjected, at the siege of Acre, to the unpleasant
+attentions of a 68-pounder carronade from the English fleet.
+In 1804, with the avowed object of keeping our cruisers at a
+distance, he had long howitzers cast and placed for the defence
+of Toulon and other ports. And hardly a year passed but some
+trial was made of horizontal fire of shells from guns and
+mortars.</p>
+
+<p>Of the two great maritime powers, Britain had contributed
+more, perhaps, towards the building up by actual practice of
+the system of artillery which was shortly to come into vogue.
+Shell fire from mortars had been used with far more effect by
+her forces than by those of her great enemy. The invention of
+the carronade was in itself almost a solution; and, though it
+did not lead directly to the shell gun, yet it undoubtedly
+induced the weapon which most strongly resembled it: the
+medium ship-gun, as designed by Congreve and Blomefield,
+which was something between the carronade and the long gun,
+and which for a time was mounted in our two-decked ships for
+the purpose of preserving unity of calibre.</p>
+
+<p>But the French, free from the bias against change of method<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">166</span>
+and material which operated in this country, seized on the
+possibilities of existing elements, and combined them in such
+a way as to form a complete solution of the shell-fire problem.
+To General Paixhans, the eminent officer of artillery, the credit
+for this solution is undoubtedly due.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>The experiments of M. Paixhans, carried out in order to
+confirm the theories on which his new system was founded,
+extended over several years and resulted in the publication of
+two books—the <cite>Nouvelle Force Maritime et Artillerie</cite>, 1822, and
+<cite>Expériences faites sur une Arme Nouvelle</cite>, 1825.</p>
+
+<p>In these works<a id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">104</a> the author developed in detail the scheme of
+ship armament which was to win adoption, in the course of
+time, in the French navy; whereby our own authorities were
+also gradually forced to abandon methods and standards of
+force by which the British navy had grown great. Two
+principles formed the basis of this scheme:—(1) unity of calibre,
+embodying the maximum simplification of means; (2) shell
+fire, embodying the maximum augmentation of effect.</p>
+
+<p>On these two principles M. Paixhans reared and elaborated
+in minutest detail the revolutionary system with which his
+name is associated. No new element or discovery was necessary
+for giving effect to his designs. Indeed he expressly
+disclaimed having introduced any novelty: “Nous n’avons
+donc rien inventé, rien innové, et presque rien changé; nous
+avons seulement réuni des élémens épars, auxquels il suffisait
+de donner, avec un peu d’attention, la grandeur et les proportions
+convenables, pour atteindre le but important que nous
+étions proposé.” It may be said, in fact, that unity of calibre
+had been an ideal sought for years before M. Paixhans’ time;
+while shell fire, the New Arm of 1822, was almost the logical
+consequence of Robins’ discoveries in the principles of gunnery,
+extended as they were by the researches of Doctors Hutton and
+Gregory. In particular, mention is made by M. Paixhans
+himself of two of the results brought out by Dr. Hutton’s
+experiments: one, that the length of the bore of a gun has but
+a small effect upon the range of its projectile, the range varying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">167</span>
+as the fifth root of the length; two, that the muzzle velocity
+may be considered to be independent of the weight of the gun.</p>
+
+<p>As to the lack of novelty of shell fire on ship-board, M.
+Paixhans gives a significant extract from French naval annals.
+In 1690, it appears, a M. Deschiens had invented a means of
+firing bombs from long guns horizontally, instead of parabolically
+as from mortars. This secret was of great use to him;
+for, falling in with four English ships at sea, he so surprised
+them by this new invention that, fearful of being set on fire,
+they drew off and did not attempt to renew battle. This same
+French captain at a later date attacked two Dutch ships more
+than a match for him, and, by means of these horizontally fired
+bombs, sank one and disabled the other. But M. Deschiens
+died and his secret with him; though, as M. Paixhans remarks,
+this “secret” would have been easy to find if anyone had
+looked for it.</p>
+
+<p>A whole chapter of <cite>The Genuine Use and Effects of the Gunne</cite>,
+written by Robert Anderson and published at London in 1674,
+concerns “the shooting of Granados out of Long Gunnes.”</p>
+
+<p>Briefly, the grand idea of M. Paixhans consisted in the
+establishment of a fleet of steam vessels armed with guns
+designed to project charged shells horizontally at considerable
+velocities. But as this consummation could only be attained
+by degrees, he proposed that in the meantime the existing
+French fleet should be re-armed in such a way as to give to
+each ship a maximum of force combined with unity of calibre.
+This part of his scheme was applicable to solid shot (<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">boulets
+massifs</i>) as well as to shell (<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">boulets creux</i>). But the former he
+considered too ineffectual for use in future sea engagements.
+Although they might be the most suitable projectiles for the
+destruction of land works, the breaching of ramparts and the
+battering of stone walls, yet hollow shot, filled with powder and
+other combustible material, were far better adapted to rend
+and set fire to defences of wood, impregnated with tar,
+and, in time of action, replete with every species of inflammable
+substance, and crowded with combatants. No,
+M. Paixhans hoped to make solid shots entirely obsolete, by
+adopting, in combination with small steam vessels, or, for the
+present, in combination with the existing fleets of sailing ships,
+an ordnance specially dedicated to shell fire, and to shell fire
+alone. By its means the enormous superiority of Great
+Britain would be effectually eliminated, or transferred into the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">168</span>
+hands of France; her material would be rendered suddenly
+obsolete, her maritime power would shrivel; and the power of
+France would be augmented to such a degree that the defeat of
+these islands might at last be encompassed.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the amiable intention of M. Paixhans.</p>
+
+<p>The arguments which he employed in favour of his revolutionary
+proposals are of sufficient interest and importance,
+perhaps, to merit consideration. The past histories of the two
+navies showed, he argued, that the introduction of improvement
+or of innovation into either navy was shortly afterwards
+followed by its introduction into the other; so that there was
+never any important change in the relative naval strength of
+the two nations. It followed, therefore, that the only means by
+which power could be wrested from the possessor of it, must be
+such a change of system as would render useless the existing
+means by which that power was sustained. How could this be
+accomplished? Foreign nations had always felt the innate
+strength of England, residing in the race of splendid seamen
+(a highly specialized profession) who formed so great a part of
+her population. France especially had felt her own weakness
+in not possessing a reserve, a nursery of seamen, such as
+England had. If only seamanship could be discounted——!
+M. Paixhans proceeded to show that the coming of the steamer
+was itself an event which would go a long way to discount a
+superiority in seamanship. The accursed English “devil
+boat,”<a id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">105</a> which had begun to spread its pall of smoke over all the
+northern waters, might be, in truth, a potent friend to France.
+Steam vessels required only a small and unskilled personnel to
+man them, instead of prime seamen. Steam vessels could
+always outstrip sailing ships, and thus could choose their own
+range and accept or decline battle as occasion required. Moreover,
+the effect of shell fire would be to upset completely the
+balance of power existing between big ships and little ships, as
+such. Instead of size being a measure of power, it would be a
+measure of vulnerability. The larger the ship the more she
+would be endangered. Costly three-deckers would cease to
+exist, and in their place small steam vessels, fast and heavily
+armed, easily manœuvred and perhaps encased in armour,
+would hold power. Thus the great obstacle to the acquirement
+by France of a large naval force—the necessity for a
+numerous and experienced personnel—would be easily<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">169</span>
+removed. In short, the adoption of his scheme would in any
+case be most favourable to France. Even if it were simultaneously
+adopted by Great Britain its adoption would at least
+ensure that in future the naval power of the two states would
+be in proportion to the strength of their <em>whole</em> population,
+instead of only that part of it familiarized with maritime affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Considering first the conversion of the existing French navy,
+he examined and enlarged upon the various inefficiencies
+inherent in the usual disposition of ship armaments; in the
+manner in which the unit and the number of units of artillery
+force were selected for any individual design of ship; in the
+variety of the units, and in the lack of system observed in the
+various proportions between the gun, the charge and the
+projectile. He observed that the constant tendency of
+development, both in the French and in the English navy, was
+in the replacing of smaller by greater calibres, by which process
+the diversity of calibres was diminished and the effective force
+of the armament increased. Continuing this process, it
+appeared that the ideal armament would be reached, the
+maximum degree of force would be attained, when unity of
+calibre was achieved. When the calibre of the largest-sized
+cannon carried on the principal gun deck of ships-of-the-line
+was adopted as the sole calibre used, the maximum of force
+would be attained: the greatest possible destructive effect
+combined with the greatest possible simplification of means.
+These remarks applied equally to a solid shot and to a shell gun
+armament. If for some reason it were decided not to adopt
+shell fire, nevertheless it would be of advantage to re-arm the
+French sailing fleets on this principle, with guns of one calibre.</p>
+
+<p>M. Paixhans proposed as the unit the French 36-pounder.
+He explained the advantages to be derived from arming
+existing ships-of-the-line with 36-pounders all of the same
+calibre but of different weights on the respective decks. The
+guns on different decks would take different charges and would
+therefore project the shot with different muzzle velocities.
+They would be disposed, the heaviest on the lower deck; a
+lighter type (reamed out from 24-pounders) on the main deck;
+still lighter guns on the upper deck, and 36-pounder carronades
+on the quarter-deck and forecastle would complete the armament.</p>
+
+<p>The employment of solid shot was not favoured by him, however,
+and he claimed the results of various trials as showing the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">170</span>
+superior offensive value of shells, when compared with solid
+shot. Comparing a solid shot and a shell of the same external
+dimensions discharged with the same muzzle velocity, the
+former, he said, had only the advantage in superior range and
+penetrative power. The latter, while having a range greater
+than those at which sea actions were invariably fought and
+sufficient penetrative power to effect a lodgment in a ship’s
+timbers, required less powder to propel it, a lighter and therefore
+more rapidly worked gun from which to discharge it, and
+it had a destructive effect enormously greater than that of the
+solid ball.</p>
+
+<p>The complete proposal therefore involved the adoption of
+shell guns exclusively, new guns being made and old guns
+being reamed out as necessary to enable each ship to carry
+pieces of one calibre alone. The calibre proposed as unit was
+the long French 48-pounder. And, as an example of the way
+in which M. Paixhans would convert armaments, the case of the
+French 74-gun ship is here taken. This, with an existing
+armament <span class="locked">of:—</span></p>
+
+<p class="in0 in4">
+28 36-pounders,<br />
+30 18-pounders,<br />
+14 6-pounders,<br />
+14 6-pounder carronades,
+</p>
+
+<p class="in0">a total of 86 pieces throwing 2250 pounds of solid shot, he
+would convert into a ship armed <span class="locked">with:—</span></p>
+
+<p class="in0 in4">
+28 48-pounders (reamed from 36-pounders),<br />
+30 48-pounders (of same weight as 18-pounders),<br />
+28 48-pounder carronades;
+</p>
+
+<p class="in0">eighty-six pieces throwing 3010 pounds of charged shell
+weighing 35 pounds each.</p>
+
+<p>For the new shell gun he proposed a design of iron howitzer
+in which the distribution of metal was so adjusted as to give a
+sufficient factor of safety at every section, while at the same
+time allowing the total weight of the piece to be reduced to a
+minimum. This <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">canon-à-bombe</i> was to be mounted on a stable
+form of carriage, made without trucks but fitted with running-out
+rollers and directing bars to control the line of fire and the
+direction of recoil.</p>
+
+<p>To those who were inclined to regard with feelings of horror
+this new use of explosive missiles, this progress in the art of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">171</span>
+destruction, the inventor put the question, whether experience
+had not proved that the perfection of arms had not had the
+effect of making warfare actually less bloody; whether it was
+not a fact worth consideration, that, while in days of old the
+destruction and loss of life in battles was enormous, the loss of
+English seamen by gunfire in the numerous combats of three
+long and bitter wars of recent times amounted to less than five
+thousand killed. And would not, therefore, further development
+of arms be a positive benefit to humanity?<a id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">106</a></p>
+
+<p>One other feature was put forward to complete this scheme
+of re-armament, the importance of which it is unnecessary to
+emphasize. M. Paixhans explored the possibility, by the
+sacrifice of a tier or more of guns, of rendering all classes of
+ships invulnerable by casing their sides with iron plates.
+Although rejected at the time, and as the result of trials which
+he himself carried out, this suggestion was destined to be
+carried into effect in startling fashion some thirty years
+later: with what consequences to naval architecture we shall
+presently see. In connection with the scheme of re-armament
+outlined by M. Paixhans in 1822 the suggestion was important
+in that there was implied in it an admission of one of the two
+weak features of the inventor’s system. The shell gun would
+lose its superiority over the shot gun, and might indeed be
+reduced to absolute impotence if, in imitation of France, the
+enemy also cased his ships of war with iron. The solid shot
+gun would once again have the advantage; in fact, that very
+equilibrium of relative values which M. Paixhans was endeavouring
+to destroy would once more obtain between the
+navies of the two rival powers.</p>
+
+<p>For this reason, presumably, and because the shell gun
+system contained, though in a less degree, the disability
+inherent in the carronade system—inferior ranging power,
+enabling a clever opponent armed with long solid shot guns to
+fight at a range which was too great for shell—the Paixhans
+scheme was not adopted in its entirety by the French government
+of the time. But the principle of unity of calibre was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">172</span>
+acclaimed and approved almost immediately, applied to solid
+shot guns. The French 30-pounder was chosen as the unit.
+In 1829 guns of this calibre, made on several different models
+to suit the various decks and classes of ship, were mounted in
+their fleets.<a id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">107</a></p>
+
+<p>In the meantime M. Paixhans had made further progress
+toward perfecting the details of his shell gun system. A
+<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">canon-obusier</i> of 80 pounds was made to his design, a
+chambered howitzer of the same weight (about 72 hundredweight)
+as the French 36-pounder truck gun and of 22 centimetres
+calibre. This was designed to project a hollow shell of
+the same size as the French 80-pound solid shot, but weighing,
+when its cavity was filled with a charge of 4 pounds of powder,
+56 pounds French (62½ pounds English). The shell gun itself
+was of a distinctive shape. The characteristics of short chase,
+large bore, a chamber, a small propelling charge, and a scientific
+elimination of all useless metal, resulted in a form of ordnance
+quite different from that of the long-accepted smooth-bore
+cannon. It was easily recognizable by its straight muzzle,
+smooth lines and the absence of the usual ornaments and
+reinforcing rings. When, eventually, the New Arm was
+adopted by other powers, their shell guns too, though independently
+evolved, were found to exhibit the same external
+features: the features of what came to be known universally
+as a “Paixhans gun.”</p>
+
+<p>The terrific effect of charged shell, fired from this form of
+gun with sufficient velocity to find a lodgment in a ship’s
+timbers, was demonstrated at Brest in 1821 and 1824; in the
+latter trials the target being a frigate, the <i>Pacificateur</i>, moored
+in the roadstead. High range and accurate shooting were
+obtained. The incendiary effect of the shell was prodigious:
+so impressive, indeed, that in spite of a strong opinion in the
+French navy against further carriage of bombs in ships-of-the-line,
+the Commission recommended “that <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">canons-à-bombe</i>
+be adopted, even in ships-of-the-line, but in small numbers.”</p>
+
+<p>But though the principle of the shell gun was accepted by
+experts, public opinion was not yet ready for the change. The
+Commission had shown a sage circumspection in regard to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">173</span>
+extent of the change proposed; but public opinion was not
+yet satisfied that the new arm was sufficiently safe. The
+scheme suffered a long postponement. In the meantime
+several further trials were held. The design of the piece was
+again modified; a larger chamber was arranged and a support
+was cast, at the commencement of the chase, for carrying a
+sight. Tests <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">à outrance</i> were made to find what maximum
+charge such a shell gun would safely stand; and at last, in
+1837, the principle of shell fire was accepted by the government,
+the Paixhans gun being assigned a place in the prescribed
+armament of the fleets of France. To the impairment
+of the unity-of-calibre principle, lately achieved, shell guns of
+22 centimetres were admitted as part-armament of ships the
+greater number of whose pieces were 30-pounders firing
+solid shot.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_173" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 17.5625em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p173.jpg" width="281" height="106" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">A PAIXHANS GUN</div></div>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>In England the arguments in favour of a new and more
+scientific adjustment of ship armament had not until this
+date been clearly formulated. Of the tendency to a single
+calibre there certainly had been many demonstrations in the
+last decades of the eighteenth century: a tendency favoured
+by the replacement of the smaller long guns of the fleet by
+carronades. Sir Howard Douglas, in his <cite>Naval Gunnery</cite>, the
+first edition of which was published in 1820, had demonstrated
+the advantages of large calibre, the inefficiency of
+random broadsides, and the high importance of the deliberate
+aim of single guns. And in 1825, before the French began to
+remodel their ordnance, Colonel Munro, of the Royal Artillery,
+submitted his project to the naval authorities of arming our
+ships solely with 32-pounders, of different classes and weights
+to suit the various circumstances. But no radical revision of
+armament was made in the British navy until some years after<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">174</span>
+the French had made the great stride of 1829, already
+described.</p>
+
+<p>Unity of calibre, then, was no novel idea on the part of
+M. Paixhans. “No project,” says Dahlgren—“no project
+has proved more attractive to naval men than that of having
+a uniform calibre throughout the entire fleet. It has been
+proposed from time to time without success, until adopted for
+the French navy in 1829.</p>
+
+<p>“In the promptness with which the example was followed by
+England and the United States, may be recognized the general
+convictions of the profession in regard to the serious mischief
+inseparable from the chaos of calibres that prevailed, and the
+urgent necessity for some measure that would simplify the
+complex economy of naval ordnance.</p>
+
+<p>“In a three-decker might be witnessed the extreme phase
+of the evil: long 32-pounders, 18-pounders, and carronades,
+requiring three sizes of shot and four classes of full charge, with
+as many reduces as caprice might suggest. All this variety of
+supply was to be distinguished and selected in the magazines
+and shot-lockers—circulated with perfect exactness in the
+confusion and obscurity of the lower passages, to a particular
+hatchway, then up to the deck where was placed the gun for
+which each charge or shot was designed: and this was to be
+accomplished, not with the composure, deliberation, and
+attention that the nature of the operation itself demanded, but
+amid all the excitement and hot haste of battle.”<a id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">108</a></p>
+
+<p>The plans of M. Paixhans, in particular those for the
+adoption of shell fire on a large scale, were viewed with much
+misgiving in this country. But, as already noted, Great
+Britain moved very cautiously in the counter-measures which
+she took in view of the policy then under review in France.
+It is probable that the publication, in 1828, of a memoir by
+Captain F. A. Hastings, R.N., commanding the Greek steam
+vessel of war <i>Karteria</i>, had great effect in encouraging the
+authorities to countenance shell fire. From this memoir it
+appears that Captain Hastings was led, by arguments similar
+to those which influenced M. Paixhans, to consider the possibilities
+of discharging at an enemy something more devastating
+in effect than the solid sphere of iron in general use. His navy
+was inferior in numbers to possible rivals; he expressed the
+opinion that this inferiority might be nullified by the use of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">175</span>
+shell, but he “got well laughed at for his pains.” Soon afterwards,
+however, he came across Paixhans’ work. Acting on
+his ideas, he applied shell fire with great success in action, and
+at once became an enthusiastic advocate of the new arm. One
+great objection to its adoption he almost laid to rest: the
+increased danger due to the carriage of shells. He denied that
+there was any increased danger. On the contrary, he considered
+charged shells less dangerous than powder in cartridges,
+if properly packed. They were less dangerous, he argued,
+because their use involved bigger and therefore fewer guns
+than an ordinary ship would carry. Therefore there was less
+confusion in action, less jostling, more working spaces, and
+fewer cartridges and projectiles to be handled. In support of
+his opinion he could point to an entire absence of accidents
+during his commission in the <i>Karteria</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In 1829 a general increase of calibre was obtained by the
+inexpensive expedient of boring out guns to their next larger
+calibre; in which operation the opportunity was taken to
+arrange for a reduced allowance of windage for the guns thus
+altered, and thus to secure a double gain, of increased calibre
+and improved discharge. Experiments were made with shell
+fire <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">à la Paixhans</i>. Tentative designs of shell gun were
+produced by the ordnance department, and guns of 8-inch,
+10-inch and 12-inch calibre were made; one of which, an
+8-inch, mounted in H.M.S. <i>Phœnix</i>, made very effective
+shooting at San Sebastian in the year ’36 and gave thereby an
+advertisement to shell fire.</p>
+
+<p>And then, in 1837, came the French decision to adopt a
+shell gun armament generally.</p>
+
+<p>The result was a complete and corresponding reorganization
+of British ship armament.<a id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">109</a> By 1839, the authorities being at
+last convinced of the necessity of meeting the French innovations
+with similar innovations on our part, Colonel Munro’s
+proposal of 1825 had been adopted, and various classes of ship
+were equipped with six different patterns of 32-pounder long
+gun. With these were associated, in small numbers, 8-inch
+shell guns of fifty-three and sixty-five hundredweight. Thus
+this country by a single move countered the two moves made<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">176</span>
+by France in ’29 and ’37 respectively, and denied to M.
+Paixhans, for a while at any rate, any considerable change in
+the relative strength of the two navies. As in the French
+navy, shell fire was only introduced as an auxiliary to the
+solid shot. Thus the great ideal of unity-of-calibre, so long
+sought and at last almost attained, was found incompatible
+with the other ideal, shell fire; and was therefore sacrificed.
+No doubt was felt, at this time, as to the necessity for two
+types of gun. The superior power of shells was dreaded,
+suspected, half-acknowledged; but the superior range and
+penetration of solid shot fired from long guns made the latter
+indispensable to ships’ equipment. So shell and large-bore
+shot guns were mounted in ships side by side. Old guns and
+carronades were “scrapped” in large numbers to give place to
+the new ordnance; and an official announcement was made, in
+justification of the Admiralty policy, that “the changes were
+not made until they had been adopted by foreign powers.”</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>Shell fire was at last accepted. The perils associated with
+the carriage of shells in wooden ships were found to have been
+exaggerated; experience soon confirmed that, if special precautions
+were taken, no danger was inherent in their use.</p>
+
+<p>Even after its introduction into our fleets the shell gun
+was regarded by many as of doubtful value. For some years
+previously the opponents of shells had agitated the question
+of a compromise: viz. the use of hollow shot uncharged,
+instead of solid balls. And when M. Paixhans had published
+his great scheme they had held that more advantages would
+have been offered by it if he had stopped short at charging the
+shot with powder, and had advocated merely hollow shot,
+which by their larger size would give the advantages of heavier
+calibre. But the argument for hollow shot was finally
+demolished in 1837 by a writer whose views carried great
+influence. Incorrectly attributing to M. Paixhans himself the
+proposal to use them, Captain Simmons, R.A. proved clearly
+and conclusively their comparative uselessness. The adoption
+of hollow shot, he showed,<a id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">110</a> would be tantamount to a reversion
+to the use of stone or granite projectiles; it mattered little,
+for practical purposes, what the projectile be formed of, so that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">177</span>
+its density be what was desired: whether hollow iron or solid
+granite. Except the Turks, who still guarded the Dardanelles
+with granite-firing cannon, all nations had abandoned granite
+in favour of the heaviest metals, and no one questioned the
+vast improvement thereby obtained, “except the inventors of
+the carronade and the promoters of this same system, improved
+by M. Paixhans.” As a matter of fact the carronade was
+designed for the special circumstances in which hollow shot
+were not without value. And M. Paixhans, as we know, never
+intended to forego the use of a charge of powder in the cavity
+of his <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">boulet creux</i>. But the arguments of Simmons sufficed to
+kill the advocacy of hollow, uncharged shot.</p>
+
+<p>Doubt was cast, too, on the capacity of the shell gun to
+project its shells to a sufficient range and with sufficient
+striking velocity in action. In the case of the first shell guns
+cast, a strict limitation had to be placed on the powder-charges
+which could safely be used; and this involved a limitation of
+range, apart from the reduction due to the lower specific
+gravity of the projectile. Both French and English shell guns
+suffered in this respect. For this reason they had been deemed
+by the French specially suited for use in steam vessels, which
+could by their locomotive power attain the desired range.
+But, it was said, steam gives the power of avoiding, as well as
+of closing to action; and steam, it was foreseen, was a
+giant which would one day haul even ships-of-the-line into
+position for battle. Might not future actions be fought at
+considerable ranges? And for close-quarter work, could not
+our powerful long guns, double-shotted, be used with greater
+effect than shell guns?</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, the flight of shells was not nearly so certain as
+that of solid shot. The effects of eccentricity, which in the
+case of solid shot had always militated against accurate shooting,
+were in the case of shells considerably enhanced. The
+varying thickness of the shell, the lack of homogeneity of the
+metal, the presence of the protruding fuze, all tended to
+produce eccentricity and give a bias. The centre of gravity
+of a shell was seldom at its centre of figure; and this eccentricity
+was the cause of deviations in flight, in range and
+direction, which made the trajectory of a shell not easily
+predictable. Savants and artillerists, both here and in other
+countries, discussed for years these deviations, and on the
+relationship between range and eccentricity numbers of trials<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">178</span>
+were made and theories were propounded. Which is the more
+strange, seeing that Robins had placed on record an almost
+complete solution. Briefly, the effect of eccentricity may be
+explained as follows. Just as a stick held vertically by a thread
+receives, when struck at a point in it other than the centre of
+percussion, a tendency to motion not only of translation but
+also of rotation round that centre of percussion; so a spherical
+shell whose centre of gravity lies away from its centre of figure
+receives, from the pressure of the powder gases acting at its
+centre of figure, a rotary motion about its centre of gravity in
+addition to a motion along the bore. If the centre of gravity lies
+below the centre of figure this rotary motion is in such a direction
+that, as the shell approaches the muzzle, points on its
+upper surface are moving towards the muzzle, points on the
+lower part are moving inwards. And this rotation, maintained
+during flight, has the effect—as was demonstrated by Robins
+with the musket ball—of giving the sphere a vertical deviation
+in a downward direction; i.e. of reducing its range.</p>
+
+<p>It follows, then, that an artificial increase of range could be
+obtained by placing the sphere with its centre of gravity <em>above</em>
+the centre of figure? This is precisely what was done; and by
+many a measured eccentricity was considered a desideratum,
+as giving a higher range than could be obtained without it.
+With such a system, however, the deviations still remained
+large and flights still more irregular. And the best opinion held
+that the most satisfactory solution lay in reducing the errors of
+flight as far as possible by the use of perfectly concentric shells.
+This ideal was difficult of attainment. Sir Howard Douglas has
+described at length experiments with shells the axis of whose
+eccentricity was found by floating them in mercury: experiments
+which revealed that not one shell in a hundred of those
+supplied was perfectly balanced. For this reason misgiving
+was felt as to the effectiveness of shell fire when carried out
+at considerable ranges against solid shot, and efforts were
+continuously made to correct all shell before issue.</p>
+
+<p>Nor were the Americans inclined to view the shell gun with
+much favour; remembering, doubtless, what they owed to
+their long and powerful guns when they were opposed to our
+light guns and carronades in the war of ’12 and ’13. America
+was more cautious even than this country. But in ’41 the
+8-inch shell gun appeared in American ships as an auxiliary to
+the long guns: four or so on each gun deck. And four years<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">179</span>
+later the types of guns in their ships were limited to 8-inch
+shell guns, in combination with 32-pounder long guns of
+various patterns; in fact, their system of armament was
+assimilated to that of the French and British.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the relative value of shell and solid shot might be,
+experience showed that increase in size favoured the former.
+Though medium-sized solid shot might be more efficient than
+medium-sized shells, yet it was widely accepted that large solid
+shot would probably be of less value than large shell. Strong
+tendencies were at work, making for such increase in the size
+of artillery. It was in 1837 that a writer already quoted
+showed the direction in which the arguments of M. Paixhans
+were leading. Citing Sir Howard Douglas on the advantages
+of large calibre and the inefficiency of random broadsides,
+Captain Simmons put forward the argument that, if these
+statements were accepted, it followed that all ships of war
+should be armed with a few long guns of the maximum calibre
+and giving the maximum muzzle energy which the ship could
+safely carry, with other guns on other decks of the same calibre
+but of varying weight and range. “Instead of determining
+the armament of a ship from the length of her decks and
+crowding as many guns together as possible; determining the
+number by the extent of the battery, and subjecting their
+nature to their number—making, in fact, the weight and type
+of gun depend, not on the service demanded, but on the
+quotient arising from dividing the total deck-weight by the
+number, previously fixed on; it might be safer to place on
+board a few of the most powerful guns which her construction
+would admit, and then regulate the total number carried by
+their aggregate weight—making the <em>number</em> and not the
+<em>nature</em> of the guns depend on what is inevitably fixed: the
+capacity of the vessel?”</p>
+
+<p>The English writer went farther than M. Paixhans had gone.
+His argument foreshadowed the evolution which was so
+largely influenced by the coming of the steam vessel, with its
+large paddle-wheels and small crew, and with its deck space
+necessitating the concentration of its armament into a few
+guns of the largest calibre; it foreshadowed the supersession
+of the broadside by the pivot gun, and the enormous expansion
+in the size of ordnance which took place after the Crimean War.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">180</span></p>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<p>The evolution of the shell gun was at this partial stage when
+the Crimean War broke out. In 1854 both types of projectiles
+were still struggling for ascendancy, though large shell guns
+were by this time acknowledged as the superior armament for
+steam vessels. Both friend and foe were now literally
+“stormed at by shot and shell”—of which the shell proved
+on the whole the more effective missile. No decisive superiority
+could be claimed, however, by one type over the other; and,
+as we shall see later in surveying the evolution of the ironclad,
+it was only gradually that the inherent superiority of the shell
+gun came to be recognized.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the close of the war a new step in the evolution of
+armament made its supremacy decisive. The rifled cannon
+at last materialized. The cylinder superseded the sphere.
+The increase in volume gained by the adoption of this form of
+projectile, and the enhanced range and striking velocity which
+it was possible to impart to it, set all doubts at rest as to the
+military value of the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Arme Nouvelle</i>.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_180" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 38.1875em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p180.jpg" width="611" height="356" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>THE <i>SPEAKER</i>, A SECOND-RATE OF THE COMMONWEALTH</p>
+
+<p class="smaller">From Fincham’s <cite>Naval Architecture</cite></p></div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">181</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_VIII" class="vspace">CHAPTER VIII<br />
+
+<span class="subhead">THE RIFLED GUN</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">While</span> the evolution of smooth-bore ordnance owed
+little if anything to the prior development of
+small arms, the evolution of rifled ordnance which
+took place in the middle of the nineteenth century followed
+closely on that of rifling as applied to the musket. Experience
+with the rifled musket supplied the information necessary for
+the application of rifling on the larger scale. In tracing the
+development of rifled ordnance, therefore, the development of
+the rifled musket must first be considered: the two evolutions
+are historically linked together. In this chapter an endeavour
+is made to trace these two evolutions in their
+natural sequence, and to describe the circumstances in which
+each took place, the objects aimed at, the difficulties encountered
+and the results achieved. We shall see how the
+smooth-bore musket was replaced by the rifle firing a spherical
+ball; how the spherical ball gave place, in the course of time, to
+an elongated bullet; and how, when the elongated bullet had
+been evolved, the principle of the rifle was extended to field
+and to heavy ordnance. A complete survey of the whole
+process can be obtained only by stepping back, past the days
+of the primitive rifled fire-arm, to the age when the longbow
+was still “the surety, safeguard, and continual defence of this
+realm of England and an inestimable dread and terror to the
+enemies of the same.”</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>The might of England, avouches the historian, stood upon
+archers. The prowess of the archer, the dreadful precision of
+the longbow, and the athletic arm by which it was strung, form
+the constant and animated theme of ancient British story. In
+battle and the chase, we are told, the power of the archers
+always prevailed, and the attainment of that power was an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">182</span>
+object of incessant anxiety, in all ranks of people, from their
+earliest infancy. The longbow was thus, as described in the
+above-quoted act of Henry VIII, a continual defence of the
+realm. Over all other countries England had this advantage,
+that against the exigencies of war she had, not only her race of
+splendid seamen, but armies of the most skilful archers in the
+world. In peace she was thus well prepared. Good use was
+made by legislation to maintain the skill and stimulate the
+ardour of the bowmen, and the statute book bears witness,
+reign after reign, to the importance attached to archery from
+its military aspect. At one time every man between the ages
+of fifteen and sixty had to possess a bow equal in length to his
+own height. Every township had to maintain its butts, each
+saint’s day had its shooting competition. The churchyard yew
+gave its wood for staves, the geese on the green their best
+wing feathers; and a goose’s head was the orthodox and
+inconspicuous target. No man under the age of twenty-four
+was allowed to shoot at any standing mark, and none over
+that age at any mark of eleven score yards or under. Restraint
+was laid on the exercise of sports which might interfere with
+archery, and when the mechanically strung crossbow was
+introduced its use was forbidden except under special
+conditions.<a id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">111</a> Honours and prizes were awarded the best
+marksmen. The range and accuracy achieved by them was
+without doubt prodigious. Much of their power lay in their
+strength of arm; but one of the chief secrets of their craft lay
+in the way in which they set their arrow-feathers at the
+requisite angle to give the arrows a spin which would ensure a
+long, a true and a steady flight.</p>
+
+<p>With the advent of gunpowder the shooting competitions
+declined. An embargo was put on fire-arms; instead of being
+pressed to possess them the people were forbidden their use
+except under conditions. The military character became a
+separate order in society. Encouragement was no longer given
+to the individual to own and master the unwieldy fire-arm. The
+English peasant, enthusiasm evaporating as his skill declined,
+no longer gave the State the military value which his forefathers
+possessed. The clumsy mechanism of the English
+musket, the uncertainty of its action (especially in wet<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">183</span>
+weather), its slow rate of fire, its gross inaccuracy, and its
+inability to penetrate armour under all conditions, were factors
+which kept fire-arms for long years in disfavour in this country.</p>
+
+<p>Abroad, on the other hand, the development of fire-arms
+was actually encouraged and skill in their use patronised.
+The rivalry which already existed with bow and arrow was
+extended to the new medium, and in Sweden and Switzerland,
+Germany and France, shooting competitions continued in
+vogue and proficiency with musket and arquebus was honoured
+and substantially rewarded. In Switzerland and Southern
+Germany especially, shooting was very popular. The character
+of the people, their skill in making delicate mechanisms, the
+nature of the country, all tended to promote an interest in
+musketry which did not exist among our own people. As a
+result England has little to claim in the early stages of the
+development of portable fire-arms.</p>
+
+<p>During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries smooth-bore
+weapons firing spherical lead balls were the only kind known
+and used. But in the early part of the sixteenth century a
+development took place which was to prove of the first
+importance to fire-arms; which was to make the primitive
+weapon in the course of time “the most beautiful, and at the
+same time the most deadly instrument of warfare ever devised
+by the ingenuity of man.” The value of rifling was discovered.</p>
+
+<p>How, when, or where this discovery was first made, appears
+to have defied the researches of investigators. As to the
+manner in which the development took place and the effects
+which it was intended to produce by its means there is an
+assortment of evidence; and this is so various and so interesting
+as bearing on the action of the rifle and its evolution, that
+we reproduce it in some detail. On one point there appears to
+be small doubt: <em>The earliest rifling had no twist in it</em>.</p>
+
+<p>“It seems to have been generally accepted by writers on the
+subject,” says the author of <cite>The Book of the Rifle</cite>, “that the
+earliest barrels had straight grooves, the object of which was to
+give a space into which the fouling of previous shots might
+stow itself without obstructing the process of loading with a
+well-fitting ball, and that spiral grooving was merely an
+accidental variation of this, afterwards found to possess special
+advantages.” Nevertheless, he himself inclines to the opinion
+that the straight groove was not necessarily a prior form of the
+spiral. The collections in museums contain examples of spiral<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">184</span>
+grooving older than the oldest straight-grooved barrels. In
+any case, it is antecedently more probable, he considers, that
+the spiral grooving was not a variation of the straight groove,
+but that it was “a deliberate attempt to find a means of giving
+to the bullet the spiral spin which was well known as having a
+steadying effect on the javelin, or on the arrow or bolt discharged
+from the bow.”<a id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">112</a></p>
+
+<p>But in this view he is in a minority. Whereas the invention
+of helical grooving is generally attributed to Augustin Kutter,
+a gunmaker of Nuremburg who died in <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1630, straight
+grooving had been known since 1480, and is ascribed to one
+Gaspard Zöllner, a gunmaker of Vienna. “Smooth-bore guns,”
+says Schmidt,<a id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">113</a> “had the disadvantage of fouling, and with the
+poor powder could only be recharged by leaving a comparatively
+large space between the ball and the barrel. This
+windage prejudiced straight shooting. To overcome this
+deficiency the practice was adopted of cutting grooves, more or
+less numerous, in the barrel, and in wrapping the ball in a rag
+greased with suet. In this way the windage was reduced, and
+as the greased rag cleaned the barrel, the weapon could be
+recharged for a large number of rounds. At first these grooves
+were made straight.”</p>
+
+<p>A theory propounded in a well-known treatise published in
+the year 1808, entitled <cite>Scloppetaria</cite>, was to the effect that
+grooving had its origin in the habit which the early huntsman
+had of gnawing or biting the balls before putting them into the
+piece, with a view to causing the wound inflicted by them to be
+rendered more severe. This habit gave rise to the idea that the
+barrel itself might be made to do the work of jagging or
+indenting the bullet. “These grooved or sulcated barrels
+appear to be of great antiquity, and are said to have existed in
+Russia long before their introduction among the civilized
+nations of the south.”</p>
+
+<p>According to Hans Busk, straight grooving was adopted for
+the reason given by Schmidt: i.e., purely for the purpose of
+facilitating loading, and for assisting to dislodge the products
+of combustion left in the bore. “No doubt the adoption of this
+plan was calculated to increase the efficiency and accuracy of
+the arm from the steadiness it imparted to the bullet in its
+passage through the barrel.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">185</span>
+And that is a view which, it is suggested, might be expanded
+to give a motive or combination of motives which may well
+have operated to induce the early gunmakers to cut grooves in
+their musket-barrels. Thus: the variations in the flight of
+spherical lead balls fired from smooth-bore guns were chiefly
+due (though these causes were not clearly appreciated till a
+much later date) to the incalculable effect of windage and to the
+varying axis about which spin took place. If by any means
+windage could be reduced, and if the ball could be made to
+assume a central position in the bore and spin about a definite
+axis in its flight, a large increase in accuracy would be attained.
+Suppose, for instance, a single groove or gutter were filed along
+the barrel parallel with its axis. The effect surely would be, by
+creating a rush of powder-gases along this groove, to cause the
+ball, under the tangential impulse of the gases, to rotate always
+in the same plane as it passed through the bore. And thus by
+the cutting of this single groove a uniformity of flight of the
+ball would be attained which was unattainable without the
+groove. The same effect, in fact, was produced by Robins when
+he bent the musket barrel. He demonstrated that the result
+was to make the ball roll on a definite part of the barrel and
+thus to deviate during flight in a definite direction. He might
+have shewn, as another result of his experiment, that by
+giving the ball a uniform spin he had endowed it with a regularity
+of flight, or accuracy, many times greater than it before
+possessed.</p>
+
+<p>Or suppose that, instead of one groove, two or more grooves
+were filed in the same way. While the above advantage derived
+from the single groove would be less fully obtained, another
+would result. By providing a space on each side into which
+fouling might spread, and into which the plastic metal of the
+ball might be intruded by the pressure of the ramrod, their
+presence would certainly allow of a tight-fitting ball being used.
+The loss in efficiency of discharge due to friction between ball
+and barrel would be more than compensated for by the
+annihilation of windage.<a id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">114</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">186</span>
+Suppose, however, that the grooves were augmented in
+number until they became a series of triangular serrations all
+round the interior of the barrel. The value of this formation
+might lie, not so much in the grooves, as in the ends or points
+of the serrations which supported the ball and held it in a
+central position on the true axis of the gun. In short, the prime
+idea of the gunmaker may have been, not so much the provision
+of grooves, as the provision of internal ribs for holding the ball
+truly in the musket.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the cause or motive which led to its adoption,
+the rifling of musket barrels became a common practice in the
+sixteenth century. Two significant quotations will suffice to
+show the period of the invention. The first is an edict issued
+by the Swiss Government in 1563:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“For the last few years the art of cutting grooves in the
+chambers of the guns has been introduced with the object
+of increasing the accuracy of fire; the disadvantage resulting
+therefrom to the common marksmen has sown discord
+among them. In ordinary shooting matches marksmen are
+therefore forbidden under a penalty of £10 to provide themselves
+with rifled arms. Everyone is nevertheless permitted
+to rifle his military weapon and to compete with marksmen
+armed with similar weapons for special prizes.”<a id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">115</a></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The second is a recipe from a book by Sir Hugh Plat,
+written in 1594.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“How to make a pistol whose barrel is two feet in length
+to deliver a bullet point blank at eight score. A pistol of
+the aforesaid length and being of petronel bore, or a bore
+higher, having eight gutters somewhat deep in the inside
+of the barrel, and the bullet a thought bigger than the bore,
+and is rammed in at the first three or four inches at the
+least, and after driven down with the skowring-stick, will
+deliver his bullet at such distance.”</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>So at some date not long after that at which straight
+grooving was put into common practice, the evolution of the
+rifle made a further advance by the introduction of spiral
+grooving. This gave all the advantages of the straight
+grooving, and in addition, spin in a definite plane to a definite<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">187</span>
+degree; so that it entirely superseded straight grooving in all
+countries where fire-arms were in common use. Experience
+amply confirmed the superiority of the twisted rifling. With
+the accession of accuracy the skill of the marksman naturally
+increased, enthusiasm grew, and the shooting competitions
+gained in popularity and importance. “Le goût de tir des
+armes rayées de précision est poussé jusqu’à la passion:
+passion qui excite l’amour-propre en ne laissant pas à la
+maladresse l’excuse si facile de l’imperfection inévitable de
+l’arme à canon lisse.”<a id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">116</a></p>
+
+<div id="ip_187" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 9.5em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p187.jpg" width="152" height="115" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">BULLET MOULD</div></div>
+
+<p>Yet in spite of improvements the rifled musket remained
+unrecognized as a military weapon for another two hundred
+years. Its use was confined to sporting purposes; though far
+less in common use than the smooth-bore it became, for its
+increased accuracy, the favourite weapon of the deer-stalker
+and the chamois hunter. In England it was little known before
+the nineteenth century; and when, in 1746, Robins made his
+famous prophecy, the possibilities inherent in rifled fire-arms,
+even such as were then in existence, were unrealized by the
+people of this country.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be noted that it was only in increased accuracy of
+flight that the rifled gun had a superiority over the smooth-bore;
+no increase in ranging power was possessed by it. And
+yet this claim is constantly made by old writers, that, probably
+(as they say) owing to the fact that increased resistance
+of the ball to initial motion gave time for all the charge to be
+thoroughly ignited, the rifled gun carried further than the
+smooth-bore. As a fact, the contrary was true; other things
+being equal, the range of the rifle was actually less than that
+of the smooth-bore. The explanation of the paradox was
+given by Robins. “It is not surprising,” he said, “that those<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">188</span>
+habituated to the use of rifled pieces gave way to prepossessions
+like these; for they found that with them they could
+fire at a mark with tolerable success, though it were placed at
+three or four times the distance to which the ordinary pieces
+were supposed to reach: and therefore as they were ignorant
+of the true cause of this variation ... it was not unnatural for
+them to imagine, that the superiority in the effect of rifled
+pieces was owing either to a more violent impulse at first, or
+to a more easy passage through the air.” The true value of
+the spiral grooving resided, of course, in the spinning motion
+which it gave the ball. By making this spin uniform two
+variable factors determining the trajectory were thereby
+transformed into constants: first, the effect just mentioned,
+the influence of the varying resistance of the air on the parts
+of the ball which met it at different speeds, some parts moving
+forward relatively to its centre and some parts retreating;
+secondly, the effect of eccentricity of mass and irregularity of
+exterior surface, which were both almost nullified by the
+rotation. The importance of this second effect may not at
+first sight be apparent. It must be remembered, however,
+that the balls used in those days were of the roughest description;
+cast in hand moulds, “drawn” in cooling to such an
+extent that in a large proportion an actual cavity was left in
+their interior, which could be revealed only by cutting them
+open; their burrs removed with pincers, their surface rough
+and broken, their shape distorted by the ramrod’s blows.</p>
+
+<p>The superiority of the rifle in accuracy was generally
+admitted; and this advantage not only counterbalanced such
+deficiency in ranging power as may have accrued from the use
+of grooving, but actually led to a general but mistaken belief
+that the rifle carried farther than the smooth-bore. The
+reverse was the case. Moreover, it was not safe to use with a
+rifle the very large charges of powder which could be used
+with safety with a smooth-bore musket. On account of the
+resistance to motion of the ball which had been forced by
+ramrod, sometimes even by mallet, down the grooved barrel
+of the rifle, high chamber pressures resulted, and not infrequently
+the barrels burst. Hence in spite of the thicker metal
+of which they were generally made, rifles could only be used
+with moderate charges, and so could not compete on equal
+terms, in this respect, with the smooth-bores for superiority
+of range.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">189</span>
+Toward the end of the eighteenth century events occurred
+which drew attention to the utility of the rifle for military
+purposes. In spite of its slow rate of fire—to load it carefully
+took from one and a half to two minutes—it showed itself to
+be a very effective weapon in the hands of French tirailleurs,
+Swiss, Austrian, and Tyrolese <i xml:lang="de" lang="de">Jägers</i>, Hottentots and American
+Indians. In the War of Independence the superior accuracy
+of their rifles, and their capacity for hitting at ranges beyond
+the 200 yards which were about the limit of the smooth-bore
+musket, placed the American backwoodsmen at such an
+advantage over the British troops that riflemen were recruited
+on the Continent and sent across the Atlantic to counter them.
+New military tactics came into vogue at this time, their inception
+influenced by the gradual improvement in fire-arms and
+artillery. Bodies of riflemen, “a light erratic force concealing
+itself with facility and forming an ambuscade at will,” were
+formed in the continental armies to act in concert with the
+masses of infantry as skirmishers or sharp-shooters, their object
+being to surprise and demoralize the enemy by the accuracy
+of their long-range shooting. Rifles were now looked on, too,
+as the natural counterpart of the now flying or horse artillery,
+“which, from the rapidity of its motions, the execution of
+cannon-shot in all situations, appears to be the effects of little
+less than magic.”<a id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">117</a></p>
+
+<div id="ip_189" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 22.875em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p189.jpg" width="366" height="94" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>RIFLEMAN PRESENTING</p>
+
+<p class="smaller">(From Ezekiel Baker’s <cite>Rifled Guns</cite>, <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1813.)</p></div></div>
+
+<p>In 1800 a rifle corps was raised by the British government
+from the old 95th Regiment. As the result of competitive
+trials the rifle made by Ezekiel Baker, a gunmaker of
+Whitechapel, was adopted: taking spherical balls of twenty
+to the pound, and having a barrel 30 inches long, rifled with
+two grooves twisted one-quarter of a turn. This degree of
+twist was certainly much less than that used in French, German
+and American rifles, which as a rule had three-quarters or a
+whole turn in them; but Baker found that so great a twist<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">190</span>
+caused stripping of the balls; so, as the accuracy of the lower
+twist was as great as that of the higher up to a range of 300
+yards, and as it required a relatively smaller charge, gave
+smaller chamber pressures and caused less fouling of the barrel
+than its competitors, it was accepted. There was a strong
+opinion at the time in favour of the larger twist as universally
+used by the more expert foreign marksmen; and this opinion
+was justified by experience.<a id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">118</a> The quarter-turn twist might
+give sufficient accuracy at low ranges, but as the skill of the
+riflemen increased longer ranges were attempted; and then it
+was found that sufficient accuracy was unattainable with the
+approved weapon. Rifles having a larger twist were therefore
+made by rival gunmakers and, the results of shooting matches
+giving incontestable evidence of their superiority, a demand
+arose for their supply to the army riflemen. Accordingly in
+1839 the Brunswick rifle was adopted for the British army.
+The new weapon had two deep grooves twisted a whole turn
+in the length of the barrel, in which grooves studs, cast on the
+ball and designed to prevent stripping, were made to engage.</p>
+
+<p>This was the last stage of the evolution of the rifle firing a
+spherical ball. So long as the spherical ball was retained, spiral
+grooving offered relatively small advantages over straight
+grooving; straight grooving offered small advantages over
+the best smooth-bore muskets. The tedious loading of these
+rifles and the inefficiency of the system by which windage was
+eliminated by the force of ramming, are sufficiently set forth
+by the various writers on early fire arms; and there is small
+wonder that the value of rifles as military weapons was seriously
+questioned by the highest professional opinion of the time.
+The charge of powder had to be carefully varied according to
+the state of the weather and the foulness of the piece. Care
+had to be taken that all the grains of the charge poured into it
+went to the breech end and did not stick to the sides of the
+barrel. Patches of leather or fustian were carried, in which
+the ball was wrapped on loading, to absorb windage, lubricate
+the rifling, and prevent the “leading” of the barrel and the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">191</span>
+wear which would ensue if a naked ball were used. “Place
+the ball,” says Ezekiel Baker, “upon the greased patch with
+the neck or castable, where it is cut off from the moulds, downwards,
+as generally there is a small hole or cavity in it, which
+would gather the air in its flight.” The ball, a good tight fit,
+had to be rammed, in its surrounding patch, right down to the
+powder: for, if not rammed properly home, an air-space
+would be left and the barrel would perhaps burst on discharge;
+at the least, would give an inaccurate flight to the ball. If the
+barrel were at all worn, double or treble patches were necessary.
+To loosen the filth which collected in the barrel, and
+which sometimes prevented the ball from being either rammed
+or withdrawn, water had to be poured down; not infrequently
+urine was used.</p>
+
+<p>All sizes and shapes of groove were given to the early rifle,
+and their number depended largely upon caprice or superstition.
+Seven, for instance, was a number frequently chosen
+on account of its mystic properties; in <cite>Scloppetaria</cite> an
+attempt is made to prove that an odd number has an advantage
+over an even. So, also, various degrees of twist were used.
+But in respect of this the evolution followed a definite course.
+The pitch of the twist necessarily bore a certain relationship to
+muzzle velocity. With the earliest rifles a fairly rapid twist
+was given, being rendered possible by the small muzzle
+velocities employed, and indeed being rendered necessary to
+ensure stability to the flight of the ball. Then, with the
+endeavours made, at the end of the eighteenth century, to use
+higher charges and thereby to extend their range, higher muzzle
+velocities came into use, and the danger of stripping was then
+only prevented by the use of low twists. Special devices
+enabled a return to be made, in the Brunswick and other
+patterns, to the more rapid twists originally used.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever devices were adopted to prevent stripping, however
+perfect the design and material of the equipment
+employed, two factors stood in the way of any further advance
+in the evolution of the rifle firing the spherical ball. First, the
+unsuitability of the sphere itself for projection through a
+resisting medium, by reason of the large surface which it
+offered to the air’s resistance and the relatively small mass by
+means of which it could maintain its flight. Second, the
+gyroscopic action of the spinning sphere, which limited its
+effective range in a manner which was probably unrealized<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">192</span>
+until after it had been completely superseded. The sphere,
+unlike the elongated bullet, which always keeps its axis approximately
+tangential to its trajectory, maintained throughout
+flight its spin on its original axis. This did not matter much
+when ranges were short and trajectories flat; but as greater
+ranges and loftier trajectories came into use the effect on
+accuracy of aim became very important. During its descent
+through the latter part of the trajectory the rifle ball rotated in
+a plane no longer normal to its direction of flight; “it tended
+more and more to roll upon the air, and deviated considerably.”<a id="FNanchor_119" href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">119</a></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>The old Brown Bess, the ¾-inch smooth-bore musket which
+our armies carried at Waterloo, in the Peninsula, and even at
+the Crimea, differed in no great respect from the muskets borne
+by British troops at Ramillies, whose inefficiency was such
+that it was seriously questioned whether, without the invention
+of the bayonet, they would have permanently superseded the
+crossbow of the Middle Ages. The inefficiency of Brown Bess
+was indeed remarkable. Its standard of accuracy was so low
+that a trained marksman could only depend on putting one
+shot in twenty into an eighteen-foot square target at two
+hundred yards, at which range it was supposed to be effective.
+Its windage was so great that bullets flew wild from the muzzle;
+and it is not very surprising that, armed with such a weapon,
+our infantry should often have been impelled “to resort to the
+strong and certain thrust of the bayonet, rather than rely for
+their safety on the chance performances of the clumsy and
+capricious Brown Bess.” Writers on fire-arms are able to give
+dozens of tragic and laughable instances of its erratic shooting.
+In the Kaffir war, for example, our troops had to expend no
+fewer than eighty thousand rounds to kill or cripple some
+twenty-five naked savages. After Waterloo a musket was
+sent down to Woolwich, to ascertain whether its ball would
+penetrate a French cuirass at two hundred yards’ range. The
+cuirass was mounted on a pole, the musket aligned and held
+firmly in a vice; but it was found impossible to secure a hit
+until, at last, a random shot fired by one of the officers present
+did take effect! Nevertheless, Brown Bess remained in favour
+for a number of years after Waterloo. It had a flat and raking<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">193</span>
+trajectory, owing to the very high muzzle velocity imparted
+to it by the large charge of powder used; from its great
+windage it loaded easily; and, although rather too heavy for
+long marches, it was strong enough to bear any amount of
+hard usage.<a id="FNanchor_120" href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">120</a></p>
+
+<p>So long as the rifle used a spherical ball it could not claim to
+rival Brown Bess for general service. As soon as the elongated
+projectile was developed the supersession of the smooth-bore
+was a matter of time alone. It is strange, however, in view of
+the enthusiasm of the Victorian rifleman and the ease with
+which the fire-arm lent itself to novel experiments, that the
+evolution of the elongated projectile covered so long a period
+as it did.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the fact that cylindrical bars and shot had often
+been fired from ordnance, it was known that Benjamin Robins
+himself had tried the experiment of firing egg-shaped projectiles
+from a rifle with a certain amount of success. The inefficiency
+of the loose sphere, in the case of the smooth-bore, and of the
+tightly rammed sphere, in the case of the rifle, were both
+recognized in the early days of the century. And, while no
+solution could be found, the problem was generally agreed to
+be: how to drop the projectile loosely down the barrel, and
+tighten it so as to absorb the windage when already there.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three English inventors made proposals. In 1823 a
+Captain Norton, of the 34th Regiment, submitted an elongated
+projectile with a base hollowed out in such a way as to
+expand automatically when the pressure of the powder-gas
+came on it, and thus seal the bore. The idea came to him from
+an examination of the arrow used by the natives of Southern
+India with their blow-tube: an examination which revealed
+that the base of the arrow was formed of elastic lotus-pith,
+which by its expansion against the cylindrical surface of the
+tube prevented the escape of air past it. In 1836 Mr. Greener
+submitted a pointed bullet having a cylindrical cavity in its
+base in which a conical plug was fixed, expanding the base by a
+wedging action when under the pressure of the powder gases.<a id="FNanchor_121" href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">121</a>
+Had either of these ideas been considered with the attention
+which it deserved, the development of the rifle in this country<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">194</span>
+might have been more rapid than it was. “By blindly rejecting
+both of these inventions the authorities deprived England
+of the honour of having initiated the greatest improvement in
+small arms.”</p>
+
+<p>It was in France that the elongated projectile waged an
+eventually successful struggle against the spherical ball, its
+ancient rival. The French, troubled by the superiority of their
+Arab enemies in shooting at long range, founded a School of
+Musketry at Vincennes. In 1828 Captain Delvigne, a distinguished
+staff officer of that school, established the two main
+principles on which all succeeding inventors were obliged to
+rely: one, that in muzzle-loading rifles the projectile must slip
+down the barrel with a certain windage, so as to admit of easy
+loading; two, that only elongated projectiles were suited to
+modern rifles.</p>
+
+<p>Before coming to these two conclusions Delvigne had made
+important efforts to render the spherical ball as efficient as
+possible. He had, in particular, proposed to make that part of
+the barrel near the breech which formed the powder-chamber of
+slightly smaller diameter than the rest of the barrel; so that a
+spherical ball, rammed down on it, became indented against
+its ledge and flattened sufficiently to fill the rifling grooves.
+By this device quick loading was obtained and the accuracy of
+aim, it was found, was doubled. Certain practical disadvantages,
+however, were associated with it: the chamber
+fouled rapidly, and the ball was frequently distorted and
+jagged by over-ramming. So in ’33 the Delvigne system, as it
+was called, was modified by the wrapping of the ball in a
+greased patch and the attaching of the patch to a “sabot” or
+wad of wood which was interposed between the ball and the
+shoulders of the powder-chamber. Rifles thus loaded did good
+work in Algeria in ’38.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Delvigne, admittedly inspired by the
+writings of Robins, was urging on the authorities the superiority
+of the elongated ball. He was insistent on the advantages
+which would accrue from augmenting the mass of the projectile
+while at the same time making it present to the air during
+flight its smallest surface. The shape he proposed was that of
+the present-day rifle bullet, considerably shortened: a bullet
+with a flat base, cylindrical sides and ogival head, somewhat
+resembling the form which had been proposed by Sir Isaac
+Newton as a “solid of least resistance.” After a succession of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">195</span>
+disappointments and refusals, the inventor had the satisfaction
+of seeing his bullet accepted. Its advantages over the
+spherical ball had been made manifest on the proving-ground.
+It was accepted in combination with the
+<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">carabine à tige</i>, a rifle invented by a Colonel
+Thouvenin, in which the Delvigne shouldered
+chamber was replaced by a small central
+pillar or anvil, projecting from the breech-end
+of the bore, against which the bullet
+was rammed. The powder, when poured
+into the barrel, collected in the annular
+space around the pillar. By this arrangement
+the necessity for the sabot was obviated
+and the charge of powder, protected by the
+pillar, was not in danger of being crushed
+or mealed. In ’46 the new bullet proved
+its high accuracy and ranging power on
+active service in Algeria. But the pillar was
+found liable to bend and distort; and the
+difficulty in keeping the space round it free
+from fouling proved to be another of its
+inherent disadvantages.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_195" class="figright" style="max-width: 9.875em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p195.jpg" width="158" height="480" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">“CARABINE À TIGE”</div></div>
+
+<div id="ip_195b" class="figleft" style="max-width: 7.75em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p195b.jpg" width="124" height="57" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">MINIÉ BULLET</div></div>
+
+<p>And then, in 49 the Minié compound
+bullet, self-expanding, of the same shape
+as the Delvigne and utilizing the same principle of an expansive
+bore as that embodied in Greener’s bullet, was produced.
+The full value of the rifle was at last obtained. By
+virtue of the elongated bullet the mass of the projectile could
+be increased to a large extent without any increase in the
+cross-sectional area exposed to air resistance.
+With such a projectile, impelled
+by a charge whose combustive
+effect could be accurately gauged owing
+to the absence of all windage losses, great
+speed and accuracy were possible. As to
+power, the only limit imposed was the strength of the barrel
+and the capacity of the marksman to withstand the reactionary
+blow due to the projectile’s momentum. But now, not only
+was rifling advantageous: with the elongated bullet rifling
+was an absolute necessity. “Rotation,” it was said, “is
+the soul of the bullet.” Rotation was necessary to impart
+stability, and to keep the projectile, by virtue of the initial<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">196</span>
+spin acquired, true in its flight throughout the whole
+trajectory.</p>
+
+<p>In England, where the two-grooved Brunswick still marked
+the limit of development, the discovery of the Minié weapon
+and its powers occasioned misgiving and surprise.<a id="FNanchor_122" href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">122</a> In ’51
+some Minié rifles were purchased and issued, as a temporary
+expedient, to our army. And, interest in the question now
+becoming general,<a id="FNanchor_123" href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">123</a> it was resolved to take under government
+control the future manufacture of military small arms. A
+commission of officers visited America for the purpose of
+inspecting the ingenious tools and appliances known to be
+employed there in the manufacture of rifles; and the features
+of the various European and American weapons were seriously
+studied. A government factory was established at Enfield, and
+with the products of this factory certain of our regiments were
+armed for service when the Crimean War broke out. The
+Enfield rifle, as it was called, combined the best features of
+the Minié with those of other types. It had a three-grooved
+barrel with a half-turn twist in its length of 39 inches.
+It was .577 inch in the bore, and fired a bullet whose
+recessed base was filled with a boxwood instead of an iron
+cup or plug.</p>
+
+<p>The nation soon obtained value from the new development.
+The efficiency of the Enfield rifle at the Alma and at Inkerman
+was attested by the correspondent of <cite>The Times</cite>, who reported
+that “it smote the enemy like a destroying angel.” Three years
+later the Indian Mutiny afforded a still more conclusive proof
+of the value of this weapon. Though, from the greased cartridges
+which were used, it served as one of the pretexts
+for the mutiny, it proved in the sequel a powerful military
+instrument, and demonstrated both to friend and foe its
+superiority over the smooth-bore musket with which the rebels<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">197</span>
+were armed. In fact, with the adoption of the Enfield rifle,
+England found herself in advance even of France; the French,
+partly perhaps from motives of economy, partly from a desire
+for symmetry, had retained in their Minié rifle the same calibre
+as that of their old smooth-bore: indeed, the greater part of the
+French army rifles were merely converted smooth-bores. In
+the Enfield a wise reduction of calibre had been made;
+whereby, while the weight of the rifle was reduced, its strength
+and the size of the permissible charges, and therefore the range
+and penetrating power of the projectile were all considerably
+augmented.</p>
+
+<p>Having once gained the lead, England now took another
+rapid move forward in the development of the rifle. Though
+the new standards set by the Enfield were high, expert opinion
+aimed at something still higher; the Enfield gave variations
+in range and direction which could not be accounted for by
+errors in manufacture, nor did the range and penetrative power
+of the bullet come up to expectations. In these circumstances
+the government sought the advice of a man whose name was
+destined to loom large in the story of the subsequent development
+of ordnance: Mr. Whitworth. Mr. Whitworth was
+described as the greatest mechanical genius in Europe at that
+time. Certain it is that, although in the realm of ordnance his
+name may have been overshadowed to a certain extent by that
+of his great rival, yet on the broad ground of the influence his
+inventions exerted on the progress of mechanical science generally,
+his fame now grows with time. He it was who first swept
+away the medieval conception of measurement which hitherto
+had obtained in factories and workshops, and introduced a
+scientific precision into the manufacture of machines and
+mechanisms. The true plane surface, as we know it to-day,
+was unattained before his time; and his contemporaries
+marvelled at plates of metal prepared by him of so true a surface
+that, by their mere adhesion, one could be lifted by means
+of the other. The micrometer was a similar revelation. Men
+whose minimum of size had hitherto been the thickness of a
+chalk-line or a simple fraction of an inch, were taught by him
+to measure the inch to its ten-thousandth part, and even to
+gauge the expansion of a rod caused by the warmth imparted
+by the contact of a finger.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the man who made modern artillery possible.
+To Mr. Whitworth, who knew nothing himself of guns or of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">198</span>
+gun-making, the government went for advice on the shortcomings
+of the Enfield rifle. At their request he promptly
+began an analytical inquiry into the principles underlying the
+action of rifles and the flight of their projectiles, resolved and
+urged to discover the secret of the very partial success so far
+attained. The results of this inquiry, published in ’57, had a
+great influence on the future of rifled fire-arms and ordnance.
+Briefly, he discovered that the amount of twist hitherto given
+to the rifling of gun-barrels had been wholly insufficient to
+maintain the projectile in its true direction during flight; the
+weight of the projectile, relatively to its diameter,
+had been insufficient to give it the necessary momentum
+to sustain its velocity against the resistance of
+the air; lastly, the accuracy of manufacture of rifles
+had been inadequate to the ensuring of a good fit of
+the bullet in the bore. To prove the truth of these
+assertions a Whitworth rifle was produced by him
+which gave better results than any other hitherto
+made. The form of rifling which the inventor adopted
+was considered objectionable, and the rifle itself,
+with its polygonal barrel, was not approved by the
+authorities; but, instead, the valuable results of Whitworth’s
+experiments were embodied in the Enfield, to
+its obvious improvement.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_198" class="figleft" style="max-width: 2.875em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p198.jpg" width="46" height="182" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">WHITWORTH<br />
+RIFLE<br />
+BULLET</div></div>
+
+<p>The muzzle-loading rifle had now reached the limit of its
+development. The rifle was the accepted arm of all the great
+military powers. But in the case of one of them, Prussia, the
+principle of breech-loading was already in favour, and it was
+not long before the progress in mechanical science enabled this
+principle to prove its superiority over the ancient principle of
+muzzle-loading. Although in the Prussian needle-gun great
+difficulties were encountered; although in service its reputation
+suffered from such defects as the rusting of the needles
+which pierced the percussion cartridges, the failure of springs,
+the escape of gases at the breech; yet it was recognized that
+none of these defects was necessarily inherent in the breech-loading
+system, and its merits were admitted. With the
+breech-loader a greater rapidity of fire was always attainable,
+there was less difficulty in preventing fouling, and, above all,
+there was the certainty that the powder-charge would be fired
+to its last effective grain.</p>
+
+<p>In 1864 breech-loading rifles were recommended for the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">199</span>
+British army, and shortly afterwards they were introduced
+in the form of converted Enfields.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>We have seen how the development of field ordnance
+stimulated the development of the rifle. In turn the attainment
+of superior range and accuracy by rifled small arms led
+directly to a corresponding development of field ordnance,
+designed to recover the loss of its ascendancy. In France,
+where the logical consequences of the progress in small arms
+were officially noted on several occasions, Napoleon III, himself
+an authority on artillery, took the initiative to restore field
+ordnance to its former relative position. It was in the Crimean
+War that the enhanced effects of rifle regiments were first
+seriously felt. Convinced by the protraction of the operations
+before Sebastopol of the inadequacy of smooth-bore guns, the
+Emperor caused bronze pieces to be rifled, and these, being
+sent to Algeria on active service, gave conclusive proof of their
+increased efficiency. On report of which, all the bronze field
+pieces in the French army were rifled in accordance with the
+plans which a M. Treuille de Beaulieu had submitted in 1842,
+viz. with six shallow rounded grooves in which engaged zinc
+studs carried on two bands formed on the cylindrical projectile.
+The gain in power obtained by rifling ordnance was
+greater even than that obtained from rifling as applied to
+small arms. For not only did rifling confer the advantages of
+a more massive projectile more suitably shaped for flight
+through a resisting medium, but it allowed a large increase in
+the number of balls which could be discharged in the form of
+case or shrapnel, and a large increase in the powder-charge
+which could be carried inside a common shell. An advantage
+was also gained in respect of that important detail, the fusee
+or fuze; the rotation of the projectile about a definite axis
+made it possible to use fuses whose action depended on one
+definite part of the projectile coming first in contact with the
+ground or target.<a id="FNanchor_124" href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">124</a> All these advantages were found to be
+present in the French field pieces when rifled on the above<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">200</span>
+plan. “And thus,” said an English writer, “at slight expense
+but too late for use in the Crimean War, France was put in
+possession of an artillery which, consuming its usual powder
+and using either round ball or elongated projectiles, proved of
+immense value in the war against Austria in 1856, when, at
+Magenta and at Solferino, the case shot from their rifled
+field-pieces ploughed through the distant masses of opposing
+infantry and decimated the cavalry as they formed for the
+attack.”<a id="FNanchor_125" href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">125</a></p>
+
+<p>In England an almost simultaneous development took place,
+but on entirely different lines. Let us tell it in the words of
+Sir Emerson Tennant:</p>
+
+<p>“The fate of the battle of Inkerman in November, 1854,
+was decided by two eighteen-pounder guns which by almost
+superhuman efforts were got up late into the field, and these,
+by their superior range, were effectual in silencing the Russian
+fire. Mr. William Armstrong was amongst those who perceived
+that another such emergency could only be met by
+imparting to field-guns the accuracy and range of the rifle;
+and that the impediment of weight must be removed by
+substituting forged instead of cast-iron guns. With his earliest
+design for the realization of this conception, he waited on the
+Secretary for War in December, 1854, to propose the enlargement
+of the rifle musket to the standard of a field gun, and to
+substitute elongated projectiles of lead instead of balls of cast
+iron. Encouraged by the Duke of Newcastle, he put together
+his first wrought-iron gun in the spring of 1855.”<a id="FNanchor_126" href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">126</a></p>
+
+<p>The manufacture of this gun marked a new era in ordnance.
+Repeated trials followed its completion; with the result that
+in 1858 the Armstrong gun was officially adopted for service
+in the field,—the epoch-making Armstrong gun: a tube made
+of wrought-iron bar coiled in a closed helix and welded at a
+white heat into a solid mass; turned to a true cylinder and
+reinforced by outer tubes shrunk on to it; rifled with a large
+number of grooves; breech-loading, a powerful screw holding
+a sliding vent-piece tightly against the face of the breech;
+firing a lead-coated projectile in whose plastic covering the
+rifling engaged as soon as it started its passage through the bore;
+and mounted on a field-carriage in such a way that the gun<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">201</span>
+could recoil up an inclined slide and return by gravity, and
+in such a way that its motion both for elevating and for
+traversing was under the accurate control given by screw
+gearing.</p>
+
+<p>The coming of the Armstrong gun at once revolutionized
+artillery practice and material in this country. The sum of all
+the improvements embodied in it was so great that existing
+material scarcely bore comparison with it. Its accuracy as
+compared with that of the smooth-bore field piece which it
+displaced was stated in parliament to be in the ratio of fifty-seven
+to one. And the effect of its inventor’s achievement
+was, “that from being the rudest of weapons, artillery has
+been advanced to be nearly on a par mechanically with the
+steam engine or the power-loom; and it differs as essentially
+from the old cast-iron tube dignified with the name of a gun,
+as the railway train of the present day differs from the stagecoach
+of our forefathers.”<a id="FNanchor_127" href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">127</a> A revolutionary invention it
+certainly was. Yet, like most revolutionary inventions, it
+relied for its grand effect more on the aggregate effect of the
+small improvements in its various elements than on the
+materialization of some new-born idea. The building up of
+guns in coils was not a new discovery, polygroove rifling was
+already in use abroad, breech-loading, lead-coated projectiles,
+elevating screws—all had been known for years. Nor does
+this fact detract in the least from the fame of Mr. Armstrong
+in this connection. His greatness lay, surely, in the insight
+and initiative with which he made use of known forms and
+combinations, summoning to his aid the new powers placed at
+his disposal by Whitworth, Nasmyth, Bessemer and their
+contemporaries in order to evolve a system incomparably
+superior to anything hitherto achieved.</p>
+
+<p>In England, too, an independent development was at the
+same time taking place in yet another direction. Mr. Whitworth,
+having satisfactorily established the principles governing
+the design of rifles, felt confident of extending them to field
+and heavy ordnance. Adhering to the muzzle-loading principle
+and to his hexagonal form of rifling he manufactured, between
+the years 1854 and 1857, several guns which fired projectiles of
+from six to twenty-four pounds’ weight with great accuracy and
+to ranges greater than any yet attained. Events occurred
+which caused him to be given every encouragement by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">202</span>
+government. The attitude of the French in these years was
+suspicious and unfriendly. Schemes of invasion were openly
+discussed in their press, and war vessels of various types
+equipped with armour plate were designed and actually built.
+Reports of their plans, following closely on the exposures of the
+Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, rendered the country
+increasingly restless and apprehensive as to the value of our
+offensive and defensive armaments. And then, although the
+new Armstrong gun was acclaimed as eminently suited for
+service in the field, doubts had been cast as to whether the
+principles of its design could be applied satisfactorily to the
+heaviest ordnance. Other rifled artillery had certainly failed to
+give the results expected from it. The Lancaster rifled gun, a
+muzzle-loading gun with a twisted bore of a slightly oval
+section, had failed lamentably at the Crimea owing to the
+tendency, according to one account, of the oval projectile to
+wedge itself against the slightly larger oval of the bore; according
+to another account, owing to the flames from the powder
+gases penetrating the interior of the welded shells
+which had been supplied for it. The breech-loading ordnance
+of Cavalli had failed the Italians. In Sweden several accidents
+had occurred with Wahrendorf’s breech-loading pieces. The
+French system, which had been copied by the majority of the
+powers, was that which appeared to be giving the least unsatisfactory
+results.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances every encouragement was given
+Mr. Whitworth to develop ordnance on his own lines. In ’58
+a committee on rifled guns was appointed by parliament to
+examine and report on the relative merits of the various
+systems in use. The committee quickly set to work. No
+difficulty was found in eliminating all but two, on which
+attention was soon concentrated: the Armstrong and the
+Whitworth. The result of the final investigation was a report
+in favour of the Armstrong gun, which, as we have already
+seen, was adopted in the same year for field service. Mr.
+Armstrong, who had handed over his rights in the gun for the
+benefit of the nation, was knighted and his services were
+subsidized for the improvement of rifled ordnance generally.
+The title of “Engineer to the War Department” was conferred
+on him, and later he received the further appointment of
+“Superintendent of the Royal Gun Factory” at Woolwich.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">203</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>The revolution in field guns was closely followed by a
+corresponding revolution in heavy ordnance. The experience
+of the Crimean War proved two things: that the development
+of the shell gun necessitated the provision of armour to
+protect the flanks of warships; and that the development of
+armour necessitated a heavy ordnance of a greater power than
+existing smooth-bore cannon. The shell gun, in fact, induced a
+rifled ordnance.</p>
+
+<p>The French, who had already found a cheap and sufficiently
+effective rifled field artillery in the conversion of their smooth-bores
+on the de Beaulieu principle, merely had to extend this
+conversion to their heavier pieces. By 1860 they had converted
+their 30- and 50-pounder cannon in this way, thus
+enabling them to be used for the discharge of either spherical
+or elongated projectiles.</p>
+
+<p>Britain, on the other hand, found herself committed to an
+entirely new and experimental system which could not be
+applied to existing ordnance; a large outlay of money was
+thereby involved for new plant and guns; our vast establishment
+of smooth-bore cast-iron cannon was in danger of being
+reduced to scrap material. At the same time doubts were
+expressed whether this new system, whose success as applied
+to medium pieces was generally admitted, would be found
+satisfactory when applied to the largest size of ordnance. It
+was natural, then, that great interest should be centred in
+what was regarded as a less experimental alternative to the
+Armstrong system, in case the latter failed. The results
+obtained by Mr. Whitworth in the manufacture of solid
+cannon, rifled hexagonally, muzzle-loading and capable of
+firing hexagonal bolts or, in emergency, spherical balls, were
+such as to give promise of competing successfully with those
+obtained from the ordnance officially patronized. To the
+public the simplicity of his system strongly appealed. Mr.
+Whitworth himself, far from being deterred by the decision
+given in favour of his rival, was now an enthusiastic exponent
+of the constructive principles which he had made his own.
+Trial succeeded trial, piece after piece was made and tested to
+destruction. By 1860 a very successful ordnance was evolved
+at Manchester by him: guns made of homogeneous iron,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">204</span>
+forged in large masses, and formed of cylindrical tubes forced
+one over another by means of a known hydraulic pressure—not,
+as in the Armstrong system, by heating and shrinking. And
+on the sands at Southport a series of public trials were carried
+out with these guns, the results of which proved a great
+advertisement for the Whitworth system. The accuracy of
+flight of the projectiles was unprecedented, and all records in
+ranging power were broken by one of the pieces, a 3-pounder,
+which threw a shot to a distance of 9,688 yards!<a id="FNanchor_128" href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">128</a></p>
+
+<p>Even if the new Whitworth system were adopted, the
+utilization of the old smooth-bore cannon which formed the
+existing national armament of ships and fortresses was not
+secured. Neither the Armstrong nor the Whitworth system
+provided an expedient for converting to rifled ordnance the
+thousands of cast-iron guns in which the defence of the country
+was invested. Efforts were therefore made to reinforce the old
+pieces so that, when rifled, they would be sufficiently strong to
+withstand the greater stresses entailed. Greater stresses in the
+metal, due to higher chamber pressures of the powder gases,
+were almost a necessary concomitant of rifling. For, apart
+from the increase in the size and mass of the projectile and its
+greater initial resistance to motion, pressures tended to
+increase in a greater ratio than the size of the pieces themselves;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">205</span>
+the mass of the projectile increased as the cube, the
+propulsive force of the gases as the square, of the diameter of
+the bore; hence to attain a given velocity, the larger the bore
+the higher the pressure required to propel it with a given type
+of powder,—other things being equal. No limit, therefore, could
+be assigned to the strength and power required of heavy
+ordnance. Moreover a struggle had begun in ’59, with the
+building of the <i>Gloire</i> and <i>Warrior</i>, which was already foreshadowing
+tremendous developments both of guns and of
+armour.</p>
+
+<p>The experiences of America in this connection were not
+encouraging. The civil war served as an incentive to the
+Americans to rifle all their large calibre guns as quickly as
+possible. In ’62 large numbers of cast-iron cannon were rifled
+and reinforced by external hoops of iron. The results were
+deplorable. A great number of pieces burst; and experience
+made it clear that “a gun made up of a single homogeneous
+casting soon reaches a limit of resistance to internal pressure
+beyond which the addition of extra metal has little or no
+effect.” Two improvements must be mentioned as having
+more than a passing effect on the progress of ordnance in
+America: first, the adoption of compressed and perforated
+powder which, by prolonging the combustion period, caused a
+more even distribution of stresses over all sections of the
+barrel; second, the casting of guns hollow and the chilling of
+their interiors, so as to form on the inside of the piece a
+hardened stratum on which the outer parts of the casting
+contracted as they slowly cooled, thus giving it support. But
+in spite of these inventions it became apparent that cast iron
+was in its nature unsuited as a material for rifled ordnance.</p>
+
+<p>In England a safer method of conversion was followed. Guns
+were bored out, on a scheme proposed in ’63 by Major Palliser,
+and accurately turned tubes of coiled wrought iron were fitted
+in them, which were afterwards rifled. The resulting pieces
+consisted, then, of a wrought-iron inner tube, supported by a
+surrounding cast-iron jacket against which, on firing, the inner
+tube expanded. Thus converted, the old smooth-bores were
+enabled to develop an energy far in excess of their original
+limit, and so to prolong for some years their period of usefulness.</p>
+
+<p>The conversion of the cast-iron guns was seen to be only
+a temporary expedient. Just as the smooth-bore cannon,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">206</span>
+after a last effort to overcome iron plates with spherical solid
+shot of the largest calibre, withdrew from the competition; so,
+as the thickness of armour increased, the converted cast-iron
+cannon, with its special armour-piercing shot of chilled iron,
+soon reached the limit of its power and gave place to the rifled
+artillery of wrought iron or steel.</p>
+
+<p>And now, rifled ordnance having definitely supplanted the
+smooth-bore, a new struggle arose between the various systems
+of gunmaking, and more especially between the two rival
+methods of loading: by the breech and by the muzzle. The
+prognostications of those who had doubted whether the latter
+method was suitable for large ordnance were seen to be
+partially justified. Other nations had already relapsed into
+muzzle-loading, impressed by the complexity and weakness of
+the breech-loading systems of Cavalli, Wahrendorf and other
+inventors. Besides ourselves only the Prussians, the originators
+of the breech-loading rifled musket in its modern form,
+continued to trust in breech-loading ordnance. The Italians,
+following the example of the French and Americans, abandoned
+the system. “Thus,” said an English authority in ’62, “while,
+after more than four centuries of trial, other nations were giving
+up the moveable breech, ... we are still going from plan to
+plan in the hope of effecting what will, even if successful in
+closing the breech, be scarcely safe with the heavy charges
+necessary for smashing armour plates.”<a id="FNanchor_129" href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">129</a></p>
+
+<p>In the following year, ’63, the committee appointed to
+carry out the competitive trials between Whitworth and
+Armstrong guns, reported that the many-grooved system of
+rifling, with its lead-coated projectiles and complicated breech-loading
+arrangements, entailing the use of tin caps for obturation
+and lubricators for the rifling grooves, was far inferior
+for the general purposes of war to both of the muzzle-loading
+systems tried. This view received early and practical confirmation
+from a report sent to the Admiralty by Vice-Admiral
+Sir Augustus Kuper, after the bombardment of Kagosima. In
+that action several accidents occurred owing to the Armstrong
+guns being fired with their breech-blocks not properly screwed
+up. The guns were accordingly withdrawn from service and
+replaced by muzzle-loaders. In 1864 England reverted
+definitely to muzzle-loading ordnance, which, in the face of
+violent controversy and in spite of the gradual reconversion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">207</span>
+of her rivals to the breech-loading principle, she maintained
+for the next fifteen years. Whitworth’s system was adopted
+in the main, but the hexagonal form of bore and projectile was
+avoided. Studded projectiles were approved, the pieces being
+rifled with a few broad shallow grooves not unlike those used
+by the French. England at last possessed a muzzle-loading
+sea ordnance, characterized by ease and rapidity of loading,
+accuracy, cheapness, and capacity for firing, in emergency,
+spherical shot as well as rifled projectiles.</p>
+
+<p>What was the effect of this retrogression upon the status of
+our naval armaments?</p>
+
+<p>It seems frequently to have been held that, in view of the
+eventual victory of the breech-loading gun, the policy of
+reverting to muzzle-loading was wrong, and that this country
+was thereby placed at a serious disadvantage to her rivals.
+Several good reasons existed, however, for the preference
+given to muzzle-loading ordnance at that time. The accidents
+with removable breeches had been numerous and demoralizing.
+Muzzle-loading guns, besides the advantages which they
+possessed of strength, solidity and simplicity of construction,
+offered important advantages in ease and rapidity of loading—particularly
+in the case of turret or barbette guns, where
+“outside loading” was a great convenience. On the other
+hand the principal deficiency of the muzzle-loader, namely,
+the large windage required with studded projectiles, was now
+eliminated by the invention of the cupped “gas check,” a
+copper disc attached to the rear of the projectile which, on
+discharge, expanded automatically and sealed the bore.</p>
+
+<p>Expert opinion confirmed the wisdom of the government
+policy. Experience, in the Franco-Prussian war and elsewhere,
+confirmed the views of the experts. “Reviewing the
+action of the artillerists who decided to adopt muzzle-loaders,
+with the greater experience we now possess it seems that they
+were right in their decision at the time it was first made; but
+there was too much hesitation in coming back to breech-loaders
+when new discoveries and great progress in powder
+quite altered conditions.”<a id="FNanchor_130" href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">130</a> In fact, once having abandoned
+the disparaged system, the country was with difficulty persuaded
+by the professionals to retrace its steps. In the end,
+ordnance followed small arms; the researches of Captain
+Noble at Elswick proved conclusively to the world at large the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">208</span>
+necessity for a reversion to breech-loading; and in 1880 the
+muzzle-loading gun was finally superseded by a greatly improved
+form of breech-loader.</p>
+
+<p>In 1880 the state of knowledge and the conditions under
+which ordnance was manufactured were certainly altered from
+those of ’64. The struggle between guns and armour begun
+with the <i>Gloire</i> and <i>Warrior</i> had continued. In the presence
+of the new powers of mechanical science, artillerists and shipbuilders
+had sought to plumb the possibilities of offensive and
+defensive elements in warship design. Guns influenced armour,
+armour reacted on guns; both revolutionized contemporary
+naval architecture. It was in the effort to aggrandize the power
+of guns that Noble discovered that, with the existing powders
+and with the short muzzle-loading gun, a natural limit of
+power was soon reached. Better results could only be obtained,
+he showed, by the adoption of slow-burning powder and a
+longer gun; by the avoidance of the sudden high chamber
+pressure which resulted from the small-grained powder, and
+the substitution for it of a chamber pressure which would rise
+gradually to a safe maximum and then suffer only a gradual
+reduction as the gases expanded behind the moving projectile.
+The work done by the gases on the projectile could by this
+means be enormously increased. But, for this result, larger
+powder-charges were required; and these larger charges of
+slow-burning powder were found to require much larger
+chambers than those embodied in existing guns; in short, the
+new conditions called for a new shape of gun. Long guns,
+having powder chambers of larger diameter than that of the
+bore, were necessary, and these could not conveniently be
+made muzzle-loading.</p>
+
+<p>So a return to the breech-loading ordnance became inevitable,
+and the change was made. The old Armstrong moveable
+vent-piece was avoided, however, in the new designs; of
+the two alternative breech-closing systems in use, viz. the
+wedge system of Krupp and the “interrupted screw” system
+of the French, the latter was adopted. A steel tube, rifled on
+the polygroove system, formed the body of the piece, and this
+was strengthened by hoops of iron or steel shrunk on its exterior.
+The new gun yielded a very great increase of power.
+Muzzle-loading guns were at once displaced, in the projected
+programme of new battleships, for the new type of ordnance,
+and a further series of revolutionary changes in ship armament<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">209</span>
+at once took place. Other nations had already augmented
+the length and power of their guns. By the adoption of the
+improved breech-loading ordnance, Great Britain, who for the
+last few years had been falling behind her rivals, not only drew
+level with them but definitely took the lead in the power of
+her heavy ordnance: a lead which from that time to this she
+has successfully maintained.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">210</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_IX" class="vspace">CHAPTER IX<br />
+
+<span class="subhead">PROPELLING MACHINERY</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">No</span> aspect of old naval warfare is so difficult for the
+modern reader to visualize, perhaps, as that which
+displays the essential weakness of the sailing warship:
+its impotence in a calm. It was a creature requiring for its
+activities two elements, air and water. Ruffle the sea with a
+breeze, and the sailing ship had power of motion towards most
+of the points of the compass; withdraw the winds, and she
+lay glued to the smooth water or rolling dangerously in the
+heavy swell, without power either of turning or translation.
+For centuries this weakness told heavily against her and in
+favour of the oar-propelled vessel, particularly in certain
+latitudes. Through many years, indeed, the two types held
+ascendancy each in its own waters; in the smooth stretches
+of the Mediterranean the oar-driven galley, light, swift, and
+using its sharp ram or bow-cannon as chief means of offence or
+defence, was a deadly danger to the becalmed sailing ship; in
+the rougher north Atlantic the sailing ship, strong, heavy,
+capacious, and armed for attack and defence only along its
+sides, proved far too fast and powerful for the oar-driven rival.
+Progress—increase of size, improvement in artillery, the
+development of the science of navigation—favoured the sailing
+ship, so that there came at last the day when, even in the
+Mediterranean, she attained ascendancy over the galley. But
+always there was this inherent weakness: in a dead calm the
+sailing ship lay open to attack from a quarter where her
+defence lay bare. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, perhaps,
+she could move sufficiently to beat off her attacker by bringing
+her broadsides to bear. The hundredth, she lay at the mercy
+of her adversary, who could, by choosing his range and quarter
+of attack, make her temporary inferiority the occasion of
+defeat. For this military reason many attempts were made
+to supplement sails with oars. But oars and sails were incompatible.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">211</span>
+They were often, seen together in early times, but
+with progress the use of one became more and more irreconcilable
+with the use of the other. The Tudor galleasse, though
+possessing in our northern waters many advantages over the
+galley type, had the defects inherent in the compromise, and
+gave place in a short time to the high-charged “great ship”
+propelled by sails alone. The sailing ship was by that time
+strong and powerful enough to risk the one-in-a-hundred
+chance of being attacked by oared galleys in a stark calm.
+It was only when the first steam vessels plied English waters
+that the old weakness became apparent again. It was then
+seriously urged that the ship-of-the-line should carry oars once
+more, against the attack of small steamers converging on her
+from a weakly defended quarter.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_211" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 24.4375em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p211.jpg" width="391" height="309" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>SHIP AND GALLEY</p>
+
+<p class="smaller">(From Tartagliá’s <cite>Arte of Shooting</cite>, English Ed., <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1588.)</p></div></div>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>The oar was in many ways an objectionable form of power.
+It was very vulnerable, its presence made manœuvring at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">212</span>
+close quarters risky and difficult; and apart from the necessity,
+on which the galley service was based, of a large supply
+of slave-labour for working them, oars and the rowers absorbed
+a large proportion of the available inboard space, to the
+detriment both of artillery and merchandise.</p>
+
+<p>Many attempts were therefore made, not only to substitute
+animals for men, for the work of propulsion, but to apply
+power in a manner more suitable than by the primitive method
+of levers: oars or sweeps. The paddlewheel was thought of
+at a very early date; a Roman army is said to have been
+transported into Sicily by boats propelled by wheels moved
+by oxen, and in many old military treatises the substitution of
+wheels for oars is mentioned.<a id="FNanchor_131" href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">131</a> In 1588 Ramelli, engineer-in-ordinary
+to the French king, published a book in which was
+sketched an amphibious vehicle propelled by hand-worked
+paddlewheels: “une sorte de canot automobile blindé et
+percé de meurtrières pour les arquesbusiers.” In 1619 Torelli,
+Governor of Malta, fitted a ship with paddles, and in it passed
+through the Straits of Messina against the tide. But Richelieu,
+to whom he offered his invention, was not impressed with its
+value.<a id="FNanchor_132" href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">132</a> Before this, Blasco de Garoy, a Spanish captain, had
+exhibited to the Emperor Charles V, in 1543, an engine by
+which ships of the largest size could be propelled in a calm:
+an arrangement of hand-operated paddlewheels.</p>
+
+<p>In Bourne’s <cite>Inventions and Devices</cite>, published in 1578, is the
+first mention of paddlewheels (so far as we know) in any English
+book. By the placing of certain wheels on the outside of the
+boat, he says, and “so turning the wheels by some provision,”
+the boat may be made to go. And then he proceeds to mention
+the inversion of the paddlewheel, or the paddlewheel which is
+driven, as distinguished from the paddlewheel which drives.
+“They make a watermill in a boat, for when that it rideth at
+an anker, the tide or stream will turn the wheels with great
+force, and these mills are used in France,” etc. It is possible,
+indeed, that this was the prior form, and that the earliest
+paddlewheel was a mill and not primarily a means of propelling
+the vessel.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the seventeenth century the mechanical sciences
+began to develop rapidly and as the century advanced the
+flood of patents for the propulsion of ships increased. “To<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">213</span>
+make boats, ships, and barges to go against the wind and tide”;
+“the drawing and working of barges and other vessels without
+the use of horses”; “for making vessels to navigate in a
+straight line with all winds though contrary”; these are some
+of the patents granted, the details of which are not known.
+At last the ingenious Marquis of Worcester, who in 1663
+was granted a patent for his steam engine, also obtained a
+patent for an invention for propelling a vessel against wind
+and stream. It has sometimes been inferred that this invention
+was connected in some way with the steam engine, and
+the claim has been made that the Marquis was one of the first
+authors of steam propulsion. This is not so. Contained in the
+description of the ship-propelling invention are two statements
+which dispose completely of the theory that steam was the
+motive force; first, that the “force of the wind or stream
+causeth its (the engine’s) motion”; secondly, that “the more
+rapid the stream, the faster it (the vessel) advances against
+it.” From this it appears that the Marquis intended to utilize
+the watermill as described by Bourne. From a study of the
+description of the apparatus it has been concluded that “a
+rope fastened at one end up the stream, and at the other to
+the axis of waterwheels lying across the boat, and dipping
+into the water so as to be turned by the wheels, would fulfil
+the conditions proposed of advancing the boat faster, the more
+rapid the stream; and when at anchor such wheels might have
+been applied to other purposes.”<a id="FNanchor_133" href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">133</a> If this reconstruction is
+correct, the scope of the propelling device was very limited.</p>
+
+<p>In Bushnell’s <cite>Compleat Shipwright</cite>, published in 1678, a proposal
+was made for working oars by pivoting them at the
+vessel’s side and connecting their inboard ends by longitudinal
+rods operated by cranks geared to a centre-line capstan. But
+the disadvantages of oars so used must have been apparent,
+and there is no evidence that this invention was ever put into
+practice. The obvious alternative was the paddlewheel, and
+though that device had been known and used in a primitive
+form long before the seventeenth century, it was continually
+being reinvented (especially in the ’nineties) and tried by
+inventors in various countries. Denis Papin turned his original
+mind to the solution of this problem. A paper on the subject
+written by him in Germany in 1690 is of interest. Discussing
+the use of oars from ships’ sides he notes that, “Common oars<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">214</span>
+could not be conveniently used in this way, and it would be
+necessary to use for this purpose those of a rotary construction,
+such as I remember to have seen at London. They were
+affixed to a machine made by direction of Prince Rupert, and
+were set in motion by horses, so as to produce a much greater
+velocity than could be given by sixteen watermen to the
+Royal Barge.” Papin, who had suggested the atmospheric
+steam engine, also suggested the possible application of steam
+to propulsion. But it was left to others to achieve what he
+had to propose. His talent, it has been said, lay rather in
+speculations on ingenious combinations, than in the mechanical
+power of carrying them into execution on a great scale. In
+1708 he laid before the Royal Society, accompanied by a letter
+of recommendation from Leibnitz, a definite proposal for a
+boat “to be moved with oars by heat ... by an engine after
+the manner that has been practised at Cassel.” What form
+this engine was to take, and how the power was to be transmitted
+to the oars, is still a matter of conjecture. Only this is
+known, that the proposal was considered in detail by the
+president, Sir Isaac Newton, and that on his advice no further
+action was taken.<a id="FNanchor_134" href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">134</a></p>
+
+<p>In France it has been widely claimed that Papin actually
+engined a boat and propelled it over the waters of the Weser
+by the force of steam. His biographer states that on the 24th
+September, 1707, Papin “embarquait sur le premier bateau à
+vapeur toute sa fortune.”<a id="FNanchor_135" href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">135</a> But the statement is not correct.
+The misconception, like that which assigned to the Marquis of
+Worcester the invention of a steam-propelled vessel, was
+doubtless due to the fact that the inventor was known to be
+engaged in the study of the steam engine and of ship-propelling
+mechanism. The two things, though distinct in themselves,
+were readily combined in the minds of his admirers. It is
+generally agreed to-day, we think, even by his own countrymen,
+that Papin, though he may claim the honour of having
+first suggested the application of steam to ship propulsion,
+never himself achieved a practical success.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Savery in England had produced his
+successful engine. In his case, too, the claim has been made
+that he first proposed steam propulsion for ships. But in his
+<cite>Miner’s Friend</cite> this able mechanician showed that he recognized<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">215</span>
+the limited application of his steam engine. “I believe,” he
+says, “it may be made very <em>useful</em> to ships, but I dare not
+meddle with that matter; and leave it to the judgment of
+those who are the best judges of maritime affairs.” But in
+propulsion by hand-operated paddlewheels Savery was an
+enthusiastic believer. In 1698 he had published, in a book
+bearing the title, “<cite>Navigation Improv’d: Or the Art of Rowing
+Ships of all Rates, in Calms, with a more easy, swift, and
+steady Motion than Oars can</cite>,” a description of a mechanism
+consisting of paddlewheels formed of oars fitted radially to
+drumheads which were mounted on the two ends of an iron
+bar placed horizontally across the ship. This bar was geared
+by mortice wheels with another bar mounted vertically as
+the axis of a capstan; rotation of the capstan was thus transmitted
+to the paddlewheels. Savery fitted this mechanism to
+a wherry and carried out successful trials on the Thames
+before thousands of people. But the Navy Board would not
+consider it. They had incurred a loss, it appeared, on a horse
+tow-vessel which had been in use at Chatham a few years
+previously: a vessel which towed the greatest ships with the
+help of four, six, or eight horses, and which, incidentally, may
+have influenced Savery in adopting the term “horse power”
+as the unit of work for his steam engine. The sanguine inventor
+made great efforts to interest the authorities, but without
+avail; the Surveyor rejected the proposal. So in an angry
+mood Savery published his book, with a description of his
+mechanism and an account of his efforts to interest the authorities,
+to show how one man’s humour had obstructed his engine.
+“You see, Reader, what to trust to,” he concluded, “though
+you have found out an improvement as great to shipping as
+turning to windward, or the compass; unless you can sit
+round the green table in Crutched Friars, your invention is
+damned of course.”</p>
+
+<p>The first detailed scheme for applying steam-power to ship
+propulsion was contained in the patent of Jonathan Hulls, in
+1736. Though great credit is generally given to this inventor
+(who has even been dubbed the father of steam navigation), it
+does not appear that in reality he contributed much to the
+advancement of the problem; which was, indeed, still waiting
+on the development of the steam engine. Hulls’ notion,
+explained in a pamphlet which he published in 1737, was to
+connect the piston of a Newcomen engine by a rope gearing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">216</span>
+with some wheels mounted in the waist of the vessel, which
+wheels oscillated as the piston moved up and down. These
+wheels were in turn connected by rope gearing with a large
+fan-wheel mounted in a frame rigged out over the vessel’s
+stern, the fans in their lowest position dipping into the water.
+The oscillating motion of the inboard wheels was converted
+into a continuous ahead motion of the fan-wheel by means
+of a ratchet. With this machinery he designed to tow
+ships in harbours and rivers. It must, however, be remarked
+that the invention was never more than a paper
+project; and that if Hulls had tried to translate his ideas
+into three dimensions he would have encountered, in all
+probability, insuperable practical difficulties. One very
+original suggestion of his certainly deserves notice; as a
+special case he proposed that when the tow-boat was used in
+shallow rivers two cranks, fitted to the axis of his driving
+wheels, should operate two long poles of sufficient length to
+reach the bottom of the river; these trailing poles, moving
+alternately forward, would propel the vessel. Here is an early
+application of the crank. But in this case it will be noted that
+the crank is driven, and that it converts a rotary into a reciprocating
+motion; in short, it is an inversion of the driving crank
+which, as applied to the steam engine, was not invented till
+some years later.</p>
+
+<p>As before remarked, the whole problem of steam propulsion
+waited upon the development of the steam engine. In the
+meantime the application of convenient forms of man power
+received considerable study, especially in France. In Bouguer’s
+<cite>Traité du Navire</cite> the problem was investigated of propulsion
+by blades or panels, hinged, and folding when not in use
+against the vessel’s sides; and in 1753 the prize offered by the
+Academy of Sciences for an essay on the subject was won by
+Daniel Bernouilli, for a plan on those lines. Euler proposed
+paddlewheels on a transverse shaft geared like Savery’s, by
+mortice wheels to a multiple capstan. Variations of this
+method were proposed by other writers and inventors, and
+some of the best intellects in France attacked the problem. But
+nothing definite resulted. The most valuable result of the
+discussion was the conclusion drawn by M. Gautier, a professor
+of mathematics at Nancy, that the strength of the crew was
+not sufficient to give any great velocity to a ship. He proposed,
+therefore, as the only means of attaining that object, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">217</span>
+employment of a steam engine, and pointed out several ways
+in which it might be applied to produce a rotary motion.<a id="FNanchor_136" href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">136</a></p>
+
+<p>In the course of time the problem marched forward to a
+solution. The first great improvement in the steam engine
+which rendered it adaptable to marine use was the invention
+by Watt of the “double impulse”; the second, Pickard’s
+invention of the crank and connecting-rod. By virtue of these
+two developments the steam engine was made capable of imparting
+to a shaft a continuous rotary motion without the
+medium of noisy, brittle or inefficient gearing. As soon as
+engines having this power were placed on the public market
+attempts were made to mount them in boats and larger
+vessels; steam navigation was discerned as a possibility.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>Of the many efforts which were made at the end of the
+eighteenth century to apply steam power to the propulsion of
+ships a striking feature is their complete independence from
+each other and from the results of prior experience and
+research. Little information is available as to the results of
+various experiments which were known to be carried on in
+France at this time, and, with all respect, it is improbable that
+they contributed in any way to the subsequent evolution of the
+steam vessel. The Abbé Darnal in 1781, M. de Jouffroi in 1782,
+and M. Desblancs in 1802 and 1803, proposed or constructed
+steamboats. M. de Jouffroi is said to have made several
+successful attempts on the Saone at Lyons; but the intervention
+of the Revolution put an end to his undertakings.</p>
+
+<p>In Britain a successful attempt to apply the steam engine
+to the paddlewheel was made in 1788. In that year three
+men, combining initiative, financial resource, and a large
+measure of engineering ingenuity, proved the possibility of
+steam propulsion in an experiment singularly complete and of
+singularly little effect on subsequent progress. In the summer
+of ’87 a wealthy and inventive banker, Mr. Patrick Miller of
+Dalswinton, Edinburgh, had been making experiments in the
+Firth of Forth with a double vessel of his own invention, sixty
+feet long, which, when wind failed for sailing, was set in motion
+by two paddlewheels. These paddlewheels were fitted between
+the two hulls of the vessel and were worked by men, by means<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">218</span>
+of a geared capstan. Miller believed that a boat furnished with
+paddlewheels and worked manually would be of great
+advantage for working in shallow rivers and canals. But the
+result of a sailing race between his boat and a custom-house
+wherry of Leith, in which his own sails were supplemented by the
+labours of four men at the wheels, convinced him that manpower
+was insufficient. His sons’ tutor, a Mr. Taylor, suggested
+the application of a steam engine. And being acquainted
+with an engineer named Symington, Taylor prevailed on his
+patron to engage him to mount a one-horse-power engine in
+a double pleasure boat, upon the lake at Dalswinton. The
+experiment was a complete success. “The vessel moved
+delightfully, and notwithstanding the smallness of the cylinder
+(4 inches diameter), at the rate of 5 miles an hour. After
+amusing ourselves a few days the engine was removed and
+carried into the house, where it remained as a piece of ornamental
+furniture for a number of years.”<a id="FNanchor_137" href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">137</a> Determined to
+pursue the experiment, Miller ordered a replica of the original
+engine on a larger scale, and this engine, with a cylinder of
+18 inches diameter, was erected at Carron and fitted to a
+larger boat. This also was successful. But no further trials
+were made after ’89; for Patrick Miller, who had spent a large
+sum in order to establish the feasibility of the invention, decided
+to close his investigations, and to turn to other pursuits.</p>
+
+<p>No further attempt was made in Great Britain until 1801,
+when Lord Dundas engaged Symington to make a series of
+experiments on the substitution of steam power for horse
+towage of barges on the Forth and Clyde canal: experiments
+which resulted in the <i>Charlotte Dundas</i>. In this celebrated
+vessel a double-acting Watt engine, with its 22-inch
+diameter cylinder mounted horizontally on the deck, actuated,
+through a simple connecting-rod and a crank with a 4-foot
+throw, a paddlewheel which was carried in a centre-line recess
+at the stern. In March, ’03, Symington in the <i>Charlotte
+Dundas</i> towed two 70-ton vessels nineteen miles against a
+strong head wind in six hours. Success seemed assured to him.
+His reputation was already high, and now an invitation came
+from the Duke of Bridgewater for eight similar tow-boats to
+ply on his canal. But the inventor’s hopes were disappointed.
+The Duke died suddenly, and the governing body of the Forth<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">219</span>
+and Clyde canal vetoed the further use of steam vessels for fear
+of the damage the waves might cause the banks. Other bodies
+took the same view, and thus came to an end an important
+passage in the history of steam navigation. It is remarkable,
+considering the efforts which had been made by inventors from
+the sixteenth century onwards to improve on oar-propulsion
+for military purposes, that Miller, Symington, and their friends
+do not seem to have envisaged any use for steamboats other
+than as tugs on canals. It is remarkable that in the presence of
+this initial success neither the government nor the public
+showed any realization of the possibilities which it unfolded;
+that no attempt was made by commercial enterprise—even if,
+in the realm of naval strategy, such an innovation was regarded
+as impolitic or impracticable<a id="FNanchor_138" href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">138</a>—to develop its advantages and
+to secure an undisputed lead in the new application of steam
+power.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_219" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 24.625em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p219.jpg" width="394" height="155" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>THE “CHARLOTTE DUNDAS”</p>
+
+<p class="smaller">(From Fincham.)</p></div></div>
+
+<p>It was in America that the most persistent and continuous
+development took place, quite independently of efforts elsewhere
+and almost contemporaneously with those above
+described. America, whose geographical conditions made
+water transport relatively far more important than it was in
+Great Britain, lent a ready ear to the schemes of inventors. In<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">220</span>
+1784 James Rumsey, and shortly afterwards John Fitch, had
+already laid plans before General Washington for the propulsion
+of boats by steam.</p>
+
+<p>John Fitch, whose original idea was a steamboat propelled
+by means of an endless chain of flat boards, afterwards experimented
+with an arrangement, “borrowed no doubt from the
+action of Indians in a canoe,” of paddles held vertically in
+frames mounted along the sides of the boat and operated by
+cranks. In 1786 a boat thus equipped made a successful trial
+on the Delaware, and in the following year a larger boat, fitted
+with a horizontal double-acting engine with a 12-inch cylinder
+and a 3-foot stroke, giving motion to six paddles on each side,
+was publicly tried on the same river. The speed attained was
+very small. At last in 1790, still protected by a patent which
+granted him a temporary monopoly in steamboat building,
+Fitch succeeded in building a boat which was an undisputed
+mechanical success. Discarding the paddle-frame and adopting
+a beam engine to drive paddle-boards at the stern, he produced
+a steamboat which, after being tested and credited with eight
+knots’ speed on a measured mile in front of Water Street,
+Philadelphia, in the presence of the governor and council of
+Pennsylvania, ran two or three thousand miles as a passenger
+boat on the Delaware before being dismantled. It was a considerable
+achievement. But the excessive weight and space
+absorbed by the machinery prevented the boat from being
+a financial success; and, after a journey to France, then
+distracted by the Revolution, Fitch returned home to America
+and ended his days a disappointed and a broken man.
+Nevertheless, the work he did was of service to others. He
+proved that the ponderous nature of the machinery was the
+greatest obstacle to the propulsion of small craft by steam,
+and from his failure deduced the conclusion, on which later
+inventors were able to build, that the solution of the problem
+lay in the <em>scale</em>: that, “it would be much easier to carry a
+first-rate man-of-war by steam at an equal rate than a small
+boat.”<a id="FNanchor_139" href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">139</a></p>
+
+<p>James Rumsey, a Virginian, carried out in 1775 the first
+practical trials of water-jet propulsion, a small boat of his
+plying the Potomac at a small speed by means of a steam pump
+which sucked in water at the bow and threw it out at the stern.
+But as he felt himself obstructed in further experiments by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">221</span>
+patent rights which had been given his rival Fitch he came to
+England; where, financed by a wealthy compatriot and aided
+by James Watt himself, he produced in ’93 a boat which on the
+Thames attained a speed of over four knots. Unfortunately
+Rumsey died in the middle of his experiments.</p>
+
+<p>An individual of extraordinary qualities had now turned his
+attention to the problem of steam propulsion. In that same
+year a young American artist, Robert Fulton, who had come to
+England to work under the guidance of his countryman
+Benjamin West, wrote to Lord Stanhope informing him of a
+plan which he had formed for moving ships by steam. Lord
+Stanhope, well known as a scientific inventor, had recently
+been experimenting with a vessel fitted with a 12-horse-power
+engine of Boulton and Watt’s working a propeller which
+operated like the foot of an aquatic bird. A correspondence
+ensued. Fulton, whose self-confidence equalled his originality,
+illustrated by drawings and diagrams his ideas on the
+subject. At first, he said, he thought of applying the force of
+an engine to an oar or paddle which, hinged on the counter at
+the stern, by a reciprocating motion would urge the vessel
+ahead. But on experimenting with a clockwork model he
+found that, though the boat sprang forward, the return stroke
+of the paddle interfered with the continuity of the motion.
+“I then endeavoured,” he wrote, “to give it a circular motion,
+which I effected by applying two paddles on an axis. Then the
+boat moved by jerks; there was too great a space between the
+strokes. I then applied three paddles, forming an equilateral
+triangle to which I gave a circular motion.” These paddles he
+proposed to place in cast-iron wheels one on each side of the
+boat and mounted on the same shaft at some height over the
+waterline, so that each wheel would “answer as a fly and brace
+to the perpendicular oars.” And he stated that he found, from
+his experiments with models, that three or six oars gave better
+results than any other number. From which it is clear that the
+paddlewheel was evolved by Fulton from the simple paddle
+independently of suggestion received from previous inventors.</p>
+
+<p>Some time was to elapse before the results of his experiments
+were utilized. Attracted by the boom in canal construction
+then in vogue Fulton devoted his mind to that
+subject; though in this connection the idea of steam-propelled
+boats still occupied him, as is shown by a letter he wrote in ’94
+to Messrs. Boulton and Watt, asking for an estimate of costs<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">222</span>
+and dimensions of “an engine with a rotative movement of the
+purchase of 3 or 4 horses which is designed to be placed in a
+boat.” From England he went to Paris, to try his fortune at
+half a dozen projects. In ’98 he was experimenting on the
+Seine with a screw propeller—“a fly of four parts similar to
+that of a smoke-jack,” which gave promising results. This
+screw propeller, however, was as yet unrecognized as the
+propulsive medium of the future. It had already been patented
+in England by Bramah in 1785—“a wheel with inclined fans, or
+wings, similar to the fly of a smoke-jack or the vertical sails of a
+windmill”; and, hand-operated, it had actually been used in
+America in 1776 by Bushnell in connection with his submarine.
+But in 1802 Fulton had decided against the screw, and in
+favour of the paddlewheel.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this year that an introduction to an influential
+compatriot, himself an experimenter in steam propulsion, gave
+Fulton the opportunity to display his talents to their mutual
+advantage. Chancellor Livingston, U.S. Minister to France,
+was aware of the enormous advantages which would accrue to
+America (and to the happy inventor) if steam propulsion could
+be achieved economically. With Fulton’s aid he decided on
+building an experimental steam vessel in France, with a view
+to transferring to America for commercial enterprise the
+perfected results of their labour. A partnership was formed,
+the work proceeded; but the experimental steamboat, whose
+scantlings were unequal to supporting the weight of the 8-horsepower
+machinery placed on board, sank at her moorings in a
+storm. A second boat, stronger and bigger, attained complete
+success. Fulton promptly wrote to Messrs. Boulton and Watt
+asking them to export to America a 24-horse-power engine
+complete with all accessories, in accordance with his sketches;
+and with a brass air-pump suitable for working in salt water.
+Then, going himself to England, he visited Messrs. Boulton and
+Watt and gleaned what information he could as to the
+properties of their machinery; studied the newly published
+results of Colonel Beaufoy’s experiments on ship form and
+fluid resistance; and journeyed to Scotland to visit Symington
+and see the famous <i>Charlotte Dundas</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with this knowledge, with all the experience of
+Rumsey and Fitch, and with the data from his own trials,
+Fulton brought to a successful solution the problem of
+steam propulsion on a commercial scale. It has been remarked<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">223</span>
+that there was no element in the <i>Clermont</i> or her
+successors so original in conception that it would entitle
+Fulton to be regarded as the inventor of steam navigation.
+Nor did he himself claim to be such. He was successful
+in fitting together the elements, the inventions of others.
+Science is measurement, and Fulton applied his data and
+measured with great insight, adapting his elements in the
+right manner and proportion to form an efficient whole. “He
+was the first to treat the elementary factors in steamship
+design—dimensions, form, horse-power, speed, etc.—in a
+scientific spirit; to him belongs the credit of having coupled
+the boat and engine as a working unit.” From Fitch he had
+learned the economy of size, and the advantages of enlarging
+the scale of operations; from Beaufoy, the importance of a
+fair underwater form, with a sharp bow and stern. From
+Symington, who generously took him for a trip in the <i>Charlotte
+Dundas</i>, he could not fail to have gleaned much practical
+advice and information; it is remarkable, in this connection,
+that, after a sight of Symington’s horizontal cylinder with its
+simple connecting-rod drive to the stern wheel, he should have
+adhered to the vertical cylinder and the bell-crank or beam for
+the transmission of the force: an initial divergence which was
+perpetuated, and which became the hall-mark distinguishing
+American from English practice for some years to come.
+Most of his knowledge he gained by his activities in England,
+and many writers have contested a claim—which so far as is
+known was never made by him—to the invention of the steamship.
+His achievements were well defined and legitimately
+executed, and the remarkable insight and initiative which he
+displayed in adapting the labours of others to serve his own
+utilitarian ends cannot, surely, deserve the opprobrium cast on
+them by some of the nineteenth-century writers. Prometheus,
+it is said, stole fire from heaven. Fulton bought his in the open
+market; obtaining his engine in Soho and his boiler in Smithfield
+he transported them across the Atlantic, and in 1807
+produced the <i>Clermont</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Clermont</i>, a flat-bottomed wall-sided craft 166 feet in
+length and only 18 feet in beam, steamed at a speed of five
+knots from New York to Albany, in August, 1807; to the
+surprise of thousands of spectators who knew her as “Fulton’s
+folly,” and whose shouts of derision gave place to silence, and
+then to a chorus of applause and congratulation. Many of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">224</span>
+inhabitants of the banks of the Hudson had never heard even
+of an engine, much less of a steamboat. “A monster moving
+on the waters, defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames
+and smoke! The first steamboat used dry pine wood for fuel,
+which sends forth a column of ignited vapour many feet above
+the flue, and, whenever the fire is stirred, a galaxy of sparks fly
+off which, in the night, have a very brilliant and beautiful
+appearance.”<a id="FNanchor_140" href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">140</a> The <i>Clermont</i> was followed by others, each an
+improvement on the last; until in 1816, so rapid was the
+process of evolution, the <i>Chancellor Livingston</i> was built,
+ship-shaped, with figure-head and fine bows, faired sides and
+tapering stern, with engines of 75-horse-power and with
+promenade decks and accommodation for 120 passengers.
+Certain characteristics now showed themselves in all American
+construction. The engines were mounted with cylinders
+vertical, their rods actuating large overhead beams which
+transmitted the force of the steam to the paddlewheels. The
+boats were made very broad to give the necessary stability, the
+machinery being carried high; and to reduce their underwater
+resistance as much as possible their bodies were made full
+near the water-line and lean below. For the same reason, and
+since the principal weights were concentrated amidships, fine
+forward and after bodies were given them; a rising floor, and a
+deep draught if necessary. The position of the paddlewheels
+was limited by that of the engine. Experience showed that
+where two paddles on each side were used their relative
+position had to be adjusted nicely, otherwise the rear paddles,
+acting on accelerated water, might actually be a disadvantage.
+Much difficulty was caused with accidents to paddles; on the
+Mississippi the wheels were generally mounted astern, where
+they were protected from floating logs of timber. In some
+cases double hulls were built, with the paddlewheels between
+them; but owing to the rush of water on which they acted
+these wheels were not very efficient.<a id="FNanchor_141" href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">141</a></p>
+
+<div id="ip_224" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 36.5625em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p224.jpg" width="585" height="409" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>THE <i>COMET</i> OF 1812</p>
+
+<p class="smaller">From an oil painting in the South Kensington Museum</p></div></div>
+
+<p>Fulton had so far built steam vessels only for commercial
+traffic. He now came near to revolutionizing naval warfare
+with them. In 1813, in the middle of the war with this country,
+he presented to the President his plan for a steam-propelled
+armoured warship for coast defence, a design of an invulnerable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">225</span>
+vessel of thirty guns, twin-hulled, with a 120-horse-power engine
+in one hull, a boiler in the other, and a single paddlewheel in a
+space between the two; double-ended, flat-bottomed, and
+protected by a belt of solid timber 58 inches thick. Her
+armament was to consist, in addition to thirty 32-pounders, of
+submarine guns or columbiads, carried at each end and firing
+100-pound projectiles below the water-line. Named the
+<i>Demologos</i>, this monstrous vessel was nearly completed when
+the war came to an end. It was too late for use. The treaty of
+Ghent being signed, interest in armaments immediately evaporated.
+Nevertheless, in the following year a trial of the
+<i>Demologos</i> was carried out, which showed that a speed of five
+and a half knots could be attained with her. The <i>Demologos</i>,
+now renamed the <i>Fulton</i>, served no useful purpose. She was
+laid up in Brooklyn Navy Yard, and many years elapsed before
+steam war vessels were built again in America.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime progress had been made on this side of the
+Atlantic. Stimulated by Fulton’s commercial successes,
+Thomas Bell of Helensburgh built in 1812 a vessel of thirty tons’
+burden named the <i>Comet</i>, successfully propelled by a 3-horse-power
+engine which worked a paddlewheel on each beam.
+This “handsome vessel” was intended to ply between Glasgow
+and Greenock, to sail by the power of wind, air, and steam;
+and so it did, with fair financial success, with a square sail
+triced to the top of a tall smoke-stack: the first passenger
+steamer to ply in European waters. Shortly afterwards steam
+vessels were built which pushed out to the open sea. In 1815
+the <i>Argyle</i>, built on the Clyde and renamed <i>Thames</i> on being
+purchased by a London company, made a voyage from
+Greenock to London which was the subject of much comment.
+On making the Cornish coast after a stormy run south, boats
+were seen by those on board making towards her with all
+possible speed in the belief that she was on fire! All the rocks
+commanding St. Ives were covered with spectators as she
+entered the harbour, and the aspect of the vessel, we are told,
+“appeared to occasion as much surprise amongst the inhabitants,
+as the ships of Captain Cook must have produced on his
+first appearance among the islands of the South Seas.” Next<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">226</span>
+day the <i>Thames</i>, her 9-foot paddlewheels driven by a 16-horse-power
+engine, reached Plymouth, where the crews of all the
+vessels in the Sound filled the rigging, and the harbour-master
+was “struck with astonishment.” From Plymouth she
+steamed to Portsmouth, making the passage in twenty-three
+hours. So great was the swarm of vessels that crowded round
+her, that the port admiral was asked to send a guard to
+preserve order. She steamed into harbour, with wind and tide,
+at from twelve to fourteen knots. A court-martial was sitting
+in the <i>Gladiator</i> frigate, but the whole court except the
+president adjourned to inspect the strange visitor. Next day
+the port admiral sent off a guard and band; and soon afterwards
+he followed, accompanied by three admirals, eighteen
+post captains, and a large number of ladies.<a id="FNanchor_142" href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">142</a></p>
+
+<p>The success of the <i>Thames</i> led to the immediate building of
+other and larger steamers. In ’17 the son of James Watt
+purchased a 94-foot boat, the <i>Caledonia</i>, fitted her with
+28-horse-power machinery driving 10-foot paddlewheels, and
+for a pleasure trip proceeded in her up the Rhine as far as
+Coblentz. From this time onwards steam navigation for
+commercial purposes progressed rapidly. In 1818 a steamboat
+made regular voyages at sea; the <i>Rob Roy</i>, 90 tons, built by
+Denny of Dumbarton, with engines of 30 horse-power made
+by Napier, plied regularly between Holyhead and Dublin. In
+the same year the <i>Savannah</i>, a ship of 350 tons’ burden built
+and fitted with auxiliary steam machinery at New York,
+crossed the Atlantic, partly under steam; her paddlewheels
+with their cast-iron frame and axletree successfully withstanding
+heavy weather. In ’21 the postmaster-general introduced
+a steam service for the mails at Dover and Holyhead; and in
+the following year there were steamboats running between
+London and Leith, and other seaports. The experience of the
+Holyhead packets was of special value, as it proved that
+steam vessels could go to sea in weather which would keep
+sailing vessels in harbour. Soon after this the question was
+raised of employing steam power to shorten the passage between
+England and the East, as well as of the navigation by steam of
+the great Indian rivers. Steam superseded sails in the government
+mail service between Falmouth, Malta and Corfu;
+everywhere commercial enterprise was planning new lines of
+steamships and new possibilities of ocean travel. In ’25 a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">227</span>
+barque belonging to Mr. Pelham, afterwards Earl of Yarborough,
+was fitted with steam machinery as an auxiliary and
+made the voyage to India. The plash of the paddlewheel was
+then heard for the first time in Oriental waters.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the great question of steam as applied to
+naval ends had arrived to agitate the Admiralty.</p>
+
+<p>In ’22 M. Paixhans discharged his revolutionary treatise at
+the French nation, advocating, with a wealth of argument, a
+navy of steam-propelled warships armed with a few shell
+guns. Six years later a warning echo reverberated through
+Whitehall. Captain Sir John Ross published a volume on
+“Steam Navigation, with a System of the Naval Tactics
+peculiar to it,” in which, though his name was not mentioned,
+the arguments of M. Paixhans were set forth from an opposite
+point of view. The two books, starting with the same
+arguments, arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions.
+While Paixhans claimed that steam power offered important
+advantages to France, the English writer reached the gratifying
+conclusion that the change which steam would effect in naval
+affairs might be rendered favourable to this country. For
+coast defence alone steam vessels would be invaluable. The
+colonies would be safer from piracy. Passages, at present
+difficult or dangerous, would be made with speed and safety.
+Incidentally, an entirely new system of tactics would be evolved
+by the coming of steam; each ship-of-the-line would be
+escorted by a steam vessel, to tow her into position, and
+concentration of force would be obtained by such means as,
+harnessing two steamers to one sailing ship, so as to tow one
+half of the fleet to a position of vantage over the enemy. After
+the main action the steamers would themselves attack each
+other; and so on. Both French and English writers agreed
+that there would be a reversion to the ancient warfare of the
+galleys; the steamer, whose paddlewheels lent themselves
+readily to a pivot gun armament and to great powers of
+manœuvring, would always attack like a bull, facing the
+enemy, its bows presenting one or more large and well-protected
+cannon. Sir John Ross regarded the steamer, however,
+essentially as an auxiliary. M. Paixhans took a more sanguine
+view. “At this moment,” he wrote in May, ’22, “the English
+admiralty are building two steam vessels, each of thirty horsepower,
+one at Portsmouth and one at Plymouth, for tugging
+sailing ships held up by contrary winds. They commence by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">228</span>
+being the servitors of the ships-of-the-line; but it is their
+destiny to become their masters.”<a id="FNanchor_143" href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">143</a></p>
+
+<p>But the views of Sir John Ross did not find favour at the
+Admiralty. In the presence of the revolution the authorities
+continued to steer a policy of passive resistance to all changes
+and methods which might have the effect of depreciating existing
+naval material; and Lord Melville himself penned, as a reply
+to the Colonial Office to a request for a steam mail service
+between two Mediterranean ports, the principle which guided
+the Board. They felt it their bounden duty (he wrote in 1828)
+to discourage, to the utmost of their ability, the employment
+of steam vessels, as they considered that the introduction of
+steam was calculated to strike a fatal blow at the naval
+supremacy of the Empire.<a id="FNanchor_144" href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">144</a><a id="FNanchor_145" href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">145</a></p>
+
+<p>So far, then, new methods of propulsion had not been greeted
+with enthusiasm. Yet to the First Lord himself was due the
+utilization of steam for minor purposes in the navy. In spite of
+the non-success of Lord Stanhope’s experimental “ambi-navigator”
+ship in 1795, Lord Melville in 1815 caused the
+three-masted schooner <i>Congo</i>, designed for a surveying
+expedition to the river of that name, to be fitted with paddlewheels
+and machinery by Boulton and Watt, expressly to try
+it in a ship-of-war. This machinery was so large and ponderous
+that, not only did it usurp one-third of the space aboard
+the ship, but brought her down so deep as only to give four
+knots through the water. It was all removed again before she
+sailed, and sent to Chatham for use in the dockyard. In the
+following year we find Mr. Brunel in correspondence with his
+lordship on the question of steam navigation. Brunel wrote
+quoting evidence to the effect that paddlewheels could be made<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">229</span>
+of sufficient strength and stiffness to withstand the violence of
+seas and gales; to which Lord Melville replied that the Board
+deemed it unnecessary to enter, at that time, into the question
+of steam navigation generally, but desired his views on the
+application of steam to the towing of ships-of-war out of
+harbour against contrary winds and tides: which would be a
+matter of great advantage to his Majesty’s service. Brunel
+answered recommending that the steamer <i>Regent</i>, plying
+between Margate and London, be chartered during the
+winter and employed on this work, as a particular experiment.</p>
+
+<p>“From this period may be dated the introduction of steam
+navigation into the English navy. Lord Melville was now so
+fully convinced of the great utility which the naval service
+would derive from it, that he ordered a small vessel to be built
+at Deptford, by Mr. Oliver Lang, to be called the <i>Comet</i>, of the
+burthen of 238 tons, and to have engines of 80 horse-power.
+She was built accordingly and ready for sea in 1822.”<a id="FNanchor_146" href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">146</a> As a
+matter of fact, the first steamer actually brought into H.M.
+service was the <i>Monkey</i>, built at Rotherhithe in 1821; and she
+was followed by the more powerful <i>Sprightly</i>, built at Blackwall
+by Messrs. Wigram and Green in ’23. Gradually the use of
+these paddlewheel tugs extended, their tonnage and horse-power
+increased, and the Surveyor of the Navy and his master
+shipwrights began to divert their talents to a consideration of
+the small steamers.</p>
+
+<p>For the reason stated by Lord Melville, steamers were at this
+time tolerated only for towing and other subsidiary duties;
+authority poured cold water on the idea of utilizing them as
+ships-of-war; and if steam could have been dispensed with
+altogether, everyone would have been the better pleased.</p>
+
+<p>Even at this period the idea of using manual labour, applied
+in an effective manner, for towing and bringing into position
+sailing warships had not been altogether abandoned. In 1802
+the transport <i>Doncaster</i> had been propelled at a slow speed in
+Malta harbour by the invention of a Mr. Shorter: a screw
+propeller rigged over the stern. In 1820 experiments were
+made at Portsmouth with paddlewheels manually worked, and
+in ’29 Captain C. Napier took his ship <i>Galatea</i> out of Portsmouth
+Harbour by use of paddlewheels geared to winches<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">230</span>
+which were worked by the crew. One hundred and thirty men
+were able to give her a speed of 2½ knots, while the full crew
+of a hundred and ninety produced a speed of three. After
+this doubtful success another trial was held—a race between
+the <i>Galatea</i>, propelled by paddles, and the <i>Briton</i>, towed by
+boats—which <i>Galatea</i> won. Captain Napier’s paddlewheels
+afterwards did good work for his ship in other quarters of the
+world.<a id="FNanchor_147" href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">147</a> Nothing resulted, however, from his initiative in this
+connection; only was emphasized the enormous superiority
+of steam-propelled vessels as tugs, in which capacity they had
+already made their appearance, and from which they were
+destined to evolve, in the next decade, into fighting vessels of
+considerable force.</p>
+
+<p>By 1830 steam navigation had made significant strides along
+the lines of commercial development. In that year a service
+of steam mail boats started to run at regular intervals between
+Falmouth and Corfu, covering the distance in about one-fourth
+of the time which had been taken by the sailing packets;
+a Dutch government steamer, the <i>Curaçoa</i>, built in England,
+had since ’27 been running between Holland and the East
+Indies; and already the Indian Government had built an
+armed steamer, designed as the forerunner of others which
+were to connect Bombay with Suez and thus to place India
+in more direct communication with England.</p>
+
+<p>The navy was still represented only by paddle-tugs. With
+a change of administration, however, came a change in
+Admiralty policy. The new Board took a distinctly progressive
+view. It was agreed that, if foreign powers initiated the
+building of steam war-vessels, this country must build as well,
+and not only as well but better: a policy tersely summed up
+by Admiral Sir T. M. Hardy in his saying, “Happen what will,
+England must take the lead.” Certain objections to steam
+vessels as naval units which had hitherto held a vogue were
+now seen to be ill-founded or baseless. In particular it was
+discovered, not without surprise to many, that steamers
+could be manœuvred without difficulty. A paddlewheel
+steamer, the <i>Medea</i>, gained her commander considerable
+credit from the skill with which she was navigated from the
+Thames into the basin at Woolwich dockyard, which proved
+that steamers could be steered and manœuvred better than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">231</span>
+sailing ships. In ’33 the construction of steamers was placed
+in the hands of the Surveyor.<a id="FNanchor_148" href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">148</a></p>
+
+<p>But small progress was made. One reason alleged was that
+the shape of hull which the Surveyor had made peculiarly his
+own was ill-adapted for steam machinery. “Nothing more
+unpropitious,” observed a later writer, “for Sir William
+Symond’s mode of construction than the introduction of steam
+can be conceived. His sharp bottoms were the very worst
+possible for the reception of engines; his broad beam and
+short length the most unfavourable qualities that could be
+devised for steam propulsion. As much as he could, he
+adhered to his principles.... Rather than yield to the demands
+of the new power, he sacrificed the armaments of his vessels,
+kept down the size of their engines, and recklessly exposed the
+machinery to shot should they go into action.”<a id="FNanchor_149" href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">149</a> There doubtless
+was something in this criticism. And yet, as we have seen,
+experience in America led to a form of hull for paddle steamers
+in many respects approaching that condemned as being
+favoured by the Surveyor!</p>
+
+<p>Another and more valid reason for the slow progress made
+lay in the inherent unsuitability of the paddlewheel steamer
+as a substitute for the large sailing warship. Not only did the
+paddlewheels offer a large and vulnerable surface to destruction
+by enemy shot, but the wheels and their machinery could
+not be embodied in a ship design without interference with
+its sails and sailing qualities and, still more, without serious
+sacrifice of broadside armament. The machinery monopolized
+a large section of the midship space, the huge wheels covered
+the sides and interfered with the training of those guns for
+which room remained. The problem of arming steam-vessels
+was novel and difficult of solution. The guns must be few and
+therefore powerful. Hence it appeared that paddlewheel
+steamers, notwithstanding the advantages they possessed of
+speed and certainty of motion, could only sustain a small
+concentrated armament, consisting of the heaviest and most<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">232</span>
+powerful ordnance: guns of large calibre, which possessed
+large power of offence at ranges where the broadside cannon
+would be deprived of much of their efficiency. Hence in ’31 a
+10-inch shell gun of 84 hundredweight was expressly designed
+and cast for this purpose; and all the classes of steamers in
+early use in the navy were armed with it until, in ’41, it was
+displaced by the 68-pounder pivot gun, which then became
+the principal pivot gun of the service. Thus the development
+of paddlewheel machinery reacted on the development of
+artillery. The steamer was a stimulus to the development of
+large ordnance worked on the pivot system. And this form of
+armament in turn influenced the form of the ship. The main
+weights—those of the propelling machinery—were already
+concentrated in the waist of the vessel, and it was now possible
+so to place the few pivot guns that the ends of the vessel were
+left very lightly loaded. Thus it was possible to give unprecedentedly
+fine lines to the new steamers, a sharp and lengthened
+bow and a well-tapered run: an improved form of body by
+the use of which high speeds were obtained. In the case of
+commercial steamships the advantages of fine lines had already
+been recognized, and their designers had been free to give
+them a form which would allow of a high speed being attained;
+but in the case of war vessels designed to carry a broadside
+armament the limitations imposed by the heavily weighted
+ends had hitherto prevented other than bluff bows and sterns
+being given them. But now the subject of ship form came
+under general consideration, and the new conditions led to a
+more serious study of the laws governing the motion of bodies
+through water.</p>
+
+<p>Year after year the size of steamers grew.<a id="FNanchor_150" href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">150</a> And as with
+size the cost of construction and maintenance increased, the
+question pressed itself more and more clearly—what was the
+naval utility of such expensive and lightly armed vessels?
+Numerous attempts were made to produce a form of paddlewheel
+steamer which would carry a broadside armament comparable
+with that which a sailing vessel of the same burthen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">233</span>
+would bear. In 1843 the <i>Penelope</i>, 46 guns, was cut in halves
+at Chatham and lengthened by the addition of about 65 feet,
+in which space engines of 650 horse-power were installed. But
+the extra displacement failed to compensate for the weight of
+the machinery; the altered vessel drew more water than had
+been anticipated and, though various alterations were made
+to minimize the effects of this, the experiment was not a
+success and was not repeated. In ’45 a steam frigate called
+the <i>Odin</i> was built by order of the Board. “The results aimed
+at in constructing this ship were—capability of carrying
+broadside armament; diminished rolling, in comparison with
+any war steamers then built; and less draught of water in
+relation to the size. These objects were accomplished; but
+as the position of the machinery and boilers is partially above
+the water-line, and the propellers are exposed to danger in
+broadside fighting, the ship is necessarily imperfect in these
+two conditions, as well as in the position of the sails; for in
+this case the proper place of the mainmast was occupied by
+the boilers, and consequently the centre of effort of the wind
+on the sails is in a wrong place.”<a id="FNanchor_151" href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">151</a> In the same year the <i>Sidon</i>
+was laid down, the design being on the lines of the <i>Odin</i> but
+modified in accordance with the ideas of Sir Charles Napier:
+with greater depth of hold and with machinery below the
+water-line. Iron tanks were placed in the hold for carrying
+the coals; by filling these with water when empty the steamer
+was kept at a more or less constant draught, a matter of considerable
+importance to the efficient working of the paddlewheels.
+In other respects, however, the <i>Sidon</i> was unsatisfactory.
+She was so crank that the addition of ballast and a
+modification of her armament were necessary. Her engines
+were cramped, her boilers of insufficient power and of unsuitable
+design, and her coal capacity too small to give her a useful
+radius of action. For the attainment of all the properties
+specified it was subsequently calculated and shown that a
+much larger displacement was necessary. Just as Fitch had
+discovered and Fulton had discerned, increase in scale reduced
+many of the difficulties encountered in designing heavily
+weighted steam vessels. Hence the success of the <i>Terrible</i>.
+In the case of the <i>Terrible</i>, a large paddlewheel frigate of 1,850
+tons and 800 horse-power built in 1845, it was clear that an
+increase of size had given a partial solution to the problem of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">234</span>
+designing a war-vessel with heavy and spacious propelling
+machinery, with adequate armament, and with full sail-power
+and all the properties of a sailing ship.</p>
+
+<p>Still the steam war-vessel was not satisfactory. Her
+machinery usurped the weight and space required for armament,
+her cumbrous paddlewheels were far too exposed to
+damage by shot or shell. And how to surmount these difficulties
+and reconcile the conflicting requirements of artillery
+and motive power, was a problem which cost the country years
+of unsuccessful experiments and millions of money. “It
+was,” said Dahlgren, “the riddle of the day.”</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>The problem was solved by the adoption of the screw
+propeller.</p>
+
+<p>Since Archimedes’ day the screw had been known in the
+form of a pump, and in two familiar objects—the smoke-jack
+and the windmill—the principle of the driven screw had been
+for centuries widely employed. In connection with ship
+propulsion the screw appears to have been tried at an early
+date, like the Marquis of Worcester’s water-wheel, in the form
+of a mill. Among the machines and inventions approved by
+the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris between the years
+1727 and 1731 is one described as a screw, suspended in a
+framework between two boats, which when acted upon by the
+current was intended to warp the vessels upstream, the motion
+of the screw being transmitted to a winch barrel on which a
+tow-rope was wound. But so far as is known no attempt had
+been made at this date to use the screw directly as a propeller.
+In 1768 its use in this form was suggested in a work entitled
+<cite>Théorie de la Vis d’Archimede</cite>.<a id="FNanchor_152" href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">152</a> And shortly after, as we have
+already seen, Bramah in England and Bushnell in America<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">235</span>
+had patented, and the latter had actually put into use, the
+screw as a means of propelling vessels through water. We
+have seen, too, that Fulton successfully adapted the screw
+propeller, on a small scale, in one of his experimental steamboats.
+Sporadic attempts were made in the early days of the
+nineteenth century both in this country and in America to
+drive ships by means of screws, both manually and by the
+medium of steam, some of which were attended with a certain
+measure of success.<a id="FNanchor_153" href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">153</a> Yet some time was to elapse before
+screw propulsion gained recognition. Doubt as to the efficiency
+of a screw’s action, ignorance as to the shape of the vessel
+required and as to the best position for the propeller, difficulty
+in accommodating the early long-stroke steam engine to drive
+direct an under-water propeller shaft; inertia, prejudice and
+vested interest, all seem to have played a part in delaying the
+adoption of what, when it did come, was acknowledged to be
+the only suitable form of steam propulsion for war vessels.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_235" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 16.25em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p235.jpg" width="260" height="223" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">PETTIT SMITH’S PROPELLER</div></div>
+
+<p>In 1825 a premium was offered by the Admiralty for the
+best plan of propelling vessels without paddlewheels; and a
+plan proposed by Commander S. Brown, R.N., was deemed
+sufficiently promising for trial: a two-bladed screw propeller
+placed at the bow of a vessel and actuated by a 12-horsepower
+engine. But though exhibiting advantages this form
+of the invention did not survive.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">236</span>
+The history of the screw-propeller may be said to date from
+1836. In that year two capable inventors obtained patents:
+Mr. Francis Pettit Smith and Captain Ericsson. So little
+attention had, up to that time, been given to the subject that
+the two proposals “were presented to the public in the character
+of novelties, and as such they were regarded by the few
+who had curiosity enough to look at them.” Smith’s patents
+were for the application of the screw to propel steam vessels
+by fixing it in a recess or open space formed in the deadwood;
+and, says Fincham, “the striking and peculiar merit of Mr.
+Smith’s plan appears to consist, <em>chiefly</em>, in his having chosen
+the right position for it to work in.” Trials were carried out
+with Smith’s propeller in a 6-ton boat on the City and Paddington
+canal, and then between Blackwall and Folkestone, with
+encouraging success; the boat, encountering heavy weather
+off the Foreland, demonstrated the advantage derived from
+the absence of paddlewheels, and showed the new form of
+propelling machinery to place no limitations on her qualities
+as a sailing vessel. She returned to Blackwall, having run
+over 400 miles at a mean speed of 8 knots.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Ericsson, a Swedish army officer who had come to
+London and established himself as a civil engineer, had a
+contemporary success with a boat fitted with two large-bladed
+propellers each 5 feet 3 inches in diameter. So successful was
+he, indeed, that he invited the Board of Admiralty to take a
+trip in tow of his novel craft; a trip which had important and
+unexpected results on the subsequent progress of steam
+navigation. One summer day in ’37 the Admiralty barge, in
+which were the Surveyor and three other members of the
+Board, was towed by Ericsson’s screw steamer from Somerset
+House to Limehouse and back at a speed of 10 knots. The
+demonstration was a complete success, and the inventor anticipated
+some further patronage of his invention. But to his
+chagrin nothing was asked of him, and to his amazement he
+was subsequently informed that the proposal to propel warships
+by means of a screw had been pronounced impracticable.
+Never, perhaps, in the whole history of mechanical progress
+has so signally wrong a decision been made, never has expert
+opinion been so mistaken. Engineers and shipbuilders all
+failed to realize the possibilities of the screw. The naval
+authorities who, in the face of their personal experience, dismissed
+the project as impracticable (owing to some anticipated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">237</span>
+difficulties in steering ships fitted with screws) merely expressed
+the unanimous opinion of the time. “The engineering corps
+of the empire were arrayed in opposition to it, alleging that it
+was constructed on erroneous principles, and full of practical
+defects, and regarding its failure as too certain to authorize
+any speculations even of its success. The plan was specially
+submitted to many distinguished engineers, and was publicly
+discussed in the scientific journals; and there was no one but
+the inventor who refused to acquiesce in the truth of the
+numerous demonstrations, proving the vast loss of mechanical
+power which must attend this proposed substitute for the old-fashioned
+paddlewheel.”<a id="FNanchor_154" href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">154</a> Yet in five years’ time steamers
+designed for paddlewheels were being converted to carry
+screws, and a great screw-propelled liner, the <i>Great Britain</i>, had
+been launched for the Atlantic traffic!</p>
+
+<p>It was in America, we have seen, that progress in steam
+navigation was of the greatest interest to the public, and it
+was by Americans that the disabilities of the paddlewheel were
+most keenly appreciated. Two witnesses of the trial of
+Ericsson’s boat saw and admitted the advantages of the new
+method: Mr. Ogden, an engineer who had been U.S. consul at
+Liverpool for some years, and Captain Stockton, U.S.N. The
+latter appreciated the military advantages of screw propulsion
+and was soon its enthusiastic advocate. Under his influence
+and encouragement Ericsson threw up his engagements in
+London and went to America. “We’ll make your name ring
+on the Delaware,” said Captain Stockton to him at a dinner in
+his honour given at Greenwich. The prediction was fulfilled.
+In the course of time Ericsson saw his propeller applied on a
+large scale, not only to mercantile craft but in the American
+navy. Early in ’37 Captain Stockton had ordered an iron
+vessel to be built by Messrs. Laird, of Birkenhead, and fitted
+with a screw. In the following year she was launched, and in
+the spring of ’40, after giving demonstration on the Thames
+of the great towing power of her propeller, she left for America
+for service as a tug on the big rivers. On this work one of the
+great advantages of the screw was realized: the immunity
+with which the screw vessel could work in drift ice, when
+paddlewheel steamers were perforce laid up.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, fortunately, Pettit Smith’s successes had
+not been without their effect on opinion in this country. A<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">238</span>
+company was formed to exploit the screw, and a vessel, the
+<i>Archimedes</i>, was built amid a strange chorus of detraction,
+opposition and ridicule. She made her trials in October, ’39.
+Her propeller was at first in the form of a complete convolution
+of a helical screw of 8-foot pitch and of 5 foot 9 inches diameter;
+but subsequently this blade was replaced by two, each of
+which formed half a convolution, with the two halves set at
+right angles to one another. Comparative trials were ordered
+by the Admiralty in the following year to test the merits of the
+<i>Archimedes’</i> screw as compared with the ordinary paddlewheels
+applied to her Majesty’s mail packets on the Dover
+station. The results were inconclusive.<a id="FNanchor_155" href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">155</a> But a subsequent
+voyage round the coasts of Great Britain, during which the
+machinery of the <i>Archimedes</i> was laid open to the inspection of
+the general public, and a later voyage from Plymouth to Oporto
+which recreated a new record for a steam passage, went far to
+establish in public estimation the merits of the new propeller.
+But generally the invention was discouraged. Prejudice and
+vested interests, rather than a reasoned conservation, seem to
+have operated to oppose its progress. “A striking instance of
+prevailing disinclination to the screw propeller was shown on
+the issue of a new edition of the <cite>Encyclopædia Britannica</cite>, in
+which the article on steam navigation contained no notice
+whatever of the subject.”</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of all prepossessions against it the screw had
+won a decisive victory over its rival. So striking were the
+results recorded by the <i>Archimedes</i>, that a decision was made
+in December, 1840, to change the <i>Great Britain</i>, an Atlantic
+liner then under construction, from paddlewheel to screw
+propulsion. In two ways she was a gigantic experiment: she
+was the first large ship to be built of iron, and it was now
+proposed to fit her with a screw. Mr. Brunel took all the
+responsibility for advising the adoption of both these revolutionary
+features; the result was a splendid testimony to his
+scientific judgment, boldness of enterprise, and “confident
+reliance on deductions from facts ascertained on a small scale.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">239</span>
+Before the completion of the <i>Great Britain</i> the Admiralty
+had initiated experiments which were to furnish important
+information as to the power and efficiency of the screw
+propeller in its various forms, and to settle beyond cavil the
+question of its superiority over the paddlewheel for the propulsion
+of warships. The sloop <i>Rattler</i>, 888 tons and 200 horsepower,
+was fitted with screw machinery. Several forms of
+screw were tried during the winter of 1843–4. First the
+screw as used in the <i>Archimedes</i> was fitted: a screw of 9-foot
+diameter, 11-foot pitch, and of 5½ feet length, consisting of
+two half-convolutions of a blade upon its axis. Then a
+screw was tried of the same diameter and pitch but of only
+4-foot length; and then the length was again reduced to
+3 feet. The effect of cutting down the length was to give an
+increase of efficiency.<a id="FNanchor_156" href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">156</a> The screw was again shortened by
+2 feet, and finally to 1 foot 3 inches; with each reduction
+in length the slip diminished and the propulsive efficiency
+increased. Various other forms of screws were tried, and it
+was shown that Pettit Smith’s short two-bladed propeller was
+on the whole the most efficient.</p>
+
+<p>The best form of screw having been determined, it still
+remained to compare the screw propeller with the paddlewheel.
+Accordingly the <i>Alecto</i>, a paddlewheel sloop of similar
+lines to the <i>Rattler</i>, was selected as the protagonist of the older
+form of propulsion, while the <i>Rattler</i> herself represented the
+screw. Naval opinion was still completely divided on the great
+question, while in the competing sloops the utmost emulation
+existed, each captain advocating his own type of propeller.
+The speed trials took place, and showed the <i>Rattler</i> to have an
+undoubted advantage. The paddlewheel, however, laid claim
+to a superiority in towing power. So a further competition
+was ordered, as realistic as any, perhaps, in the history of
+applied science: nothing less than a tug-of-war between
+Paddle and Screw, those two contending forms of steam
+propulsion! Lashed stern to stern and both steaming ahead
+full power, one evening in the spring of ’45 the two steamers
+struggled for mastery. And as <i>Rattler</i> slowly but surely pulled<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">240</span>
+over <i>Alecto</i>, the question which had been for years so hotly
+debated was settled; the superiority of the screw was demonstrated.
+With the adoption of the screw the problem of
+disposing the armament was settled. The broadsides and the
+spaces between decks were once more free to the guns along
+the entire length; moreover the action of the screw was in
+complete harmony with that of the sails. With the screw as
+an auxiliary to sail power, and subsequently with the screw as
+sole means of propulsion, a change came over the character of
+the pivot armament. Whereas with the paddlewheel the pivot
+gun was the chief means of offence, when the screw was introduced
+the broadside was restored, and though the heavy pivot
+guns were retained (steam and the pivot gun had become
+associated ideas), yet by their comparatively limited numbers
+they became a subordinate element in the total armament.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_240" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 38.125em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p240.jpg" width="610" height="388" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p><i>RATTLER</i> <span class="smcap smaller">VERSUS</span> <i>ALECTO</i></p>
+
+<p class="smaller">From an aquatint in the South Kensington Museum</p></div></div>
+
+<p>External affairs now lent a spur to screw propulsion. In ’44
+the French navy came under the reforming power of the
+ambitious Prince de Joinville, and from this year onwards the
+attitude of France to this country became increasingly hostile
+and menacing. The thoughts of the French were turned
+toward their navy. No sooner had de Joinville been placed in
+command than schemes of invasion were bruited in this
+country; and the public viewed with some alarm the altered
+problems of defence imposed on our fleets by the presence in
+the enemy’s ports of a steam-propelled navy. Sanguine French
+patriots sought to profit by the advent of the new power. A
+pamphlet appeared in Paris claiming to prove that the
+establishment of steam navigation afforded France the very
+means by which she could regain her former level of naval
+strength. The writer, using the same arguments as Colonel
+Paixhans had used in ’22, reviewed the effect of steam power
+on the rival navies, and pointed to the Duke of Wellington’s
+warnings in parliament of the defencelessness of the English
+coasts and to his statement that if Napoleon had possessed
+steam power he would have achieved invasion. These cries of
+alarm, said the writer, should trace for France her line of policy.
+She should emulate the wise development of steam propulsion
+as practised by Great Britain. “We think, England acts; we
+discuss theories, she pursues application. She creates with
+activity a redoubtable steam force and reduces the number of
+her sailing ships, whose impotence she recognizes.... Sailing
+vessels have lost their main power; the employment of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">241</span>
+steamers has reduced them to the subaltern position of the
+siege artillery in a land army.” The writer praised English
+policy in the matter of steam development: its wise caution,
+its reasoned continuity. There had admittedly been some
+costly deceptions. Nevertheless the method was to be commended,
+and France should proceed in a similar manner: by a
+succession of sample units while steam was still in the experimental
+stage, by far-sighted single strides, and then by bold
+and rapid construction of a steam navy which would compete
+on more even terms with that of her hereditary rival.<a id="FNanchor_157" href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">157</a></p>
+
+<p>Faced with the probability that our rivals would pursue some
+such progressive and challenging policy as outlined by the
+pamphleteer, the Admiralty acted rapidly. Before the <i>Rattler</i>
+trials were complete a decision was made favourable to the
+screw propeller, and an order was made for its wide application
+to warships built and building. It was resolved, on the advice
+of Sir Charles Napier, that the screw should be regarded solely
+as an auxiliary to, and in no way as in competition with, sail
+power. The <i>Arrogant</i> was laid down, the first frigate built for
+auxiliary steam power; and screws driven by engines of small
+horse-power were subsequently fitted to other ships with
+varying degrees of success.</p>
+
+<p>Two important features were specified for all: the machinery
+was required to be wholly below the water-line, and the screw
+had to be unshippable. Engines were now required for Block
+Ships and for sea-going vessels. So the principal engineers
+of the country were called together and were asked to
+produce engines in accordance with the bare requirements
+given them. A variety of designs resulted. From the experience
+obtained with this machinery two important conclusions
+were quickly drawn: firstly, that gearing might be altogether
+dispensed with; secondly, that no complex contrivance was
+necessary for altering the pitch to enable engines to work
+advantageously under varying conditions, the efficiency of the
+screw varying very little whether part of the ship’s velocity
+were due to sail power or whether it were wholly due to the
+screw.<a id="FNanchor_158" href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">158</a></p>
+
+<p>And here it may not be amiss to note, in relation to a nation’s
+fighting power, the significant position assumed by naval
+material. In land warfare a rude measure of force could always<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">242</span>
+be obtained by a mere counting of heads. At sea man was in
+future to act, almost entirely, through the medium of the
+machine.</p>
+
+<p>However we may have deserved the eulogy of the French
+writer in respect of developing the paddlewheel war steamer,
+the development of screw propulsion in the next decade was
+marked by a succession of failures and a large outlay of money
+on useless conversions and on new construction of poor fighting
+value, most of which could have been avoided. Had our
+methods been less tentative and more truly scientific the gain
+would have been undoubtedly very great; we should have laid
+our plans on a firmer basis and arrived at our end, full screw
+power, by a far less circuitous route than that actually taken.
+In this respect France had the advantage of us.</p>
+
+<p>Although a decision had been made to maintain the full sail
+power of our ships and install screw machinery only as an
+auxiliary motive power, attempts were naturally made to
+augment so far as possible the power exerted by the screw;
+and within a short time new ships were being fitted with
+machinery of high power, in an endeavour to make the screw
+a primary means of propulsion. The results were disappointing.
+As the power increased difficulties thickened. The weight of
+the machinery grew to be excessive, the economy of the comparatively
+fast-running and short-stroke engines proved to be
+low, and the propulsive efficiency of the screws themselves
+grew unaccountably smaller and smaller. So poor were the
+results obtained, indeed, that in the case of a certain ship
+it was demonstrated that, by taking out the high-power
+machinery and substituting smaller engines an actual gain in
+speed was obtained, with the reduced displacement. The first
+screw ship in which an attempt was made to obtain full power
+with the screw was the <i>Dauntless</i>, of 1846. Although a frigate
+of beautiful lines she was considered a comparative failure.
+It was agreed that, equipped with paddlewheels and armed
+with guns of larger calibre, she would have constituted a faster
+and more powerful warship than, with her 580-horse-power
+engines, her 10 knots of speed, and her 32-pounder guns, she
+actually was.</p>
+
+<p>Part of the trouble was due to the unsuitability of our ships’
+lines for screw propulsion. It has already been noted that,
+owing to the carriage of heavy weights at their extremities,
+war vessels were always given very full bows and sterns. In<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">243</span>
+the case of the <i>Rattler</i>, whose records served as a criterion for
+later designs of screw ships, the lines of the stern were unusually
+fine: partly, no doubt, in imitation of the <i>Archimedes</i>. Also,
+since it had been necessary to allow space enough for a long
+screw to be carried (a screw of a complete convolution was
+thought possible) the <i>Rattler’s</i> short screw as finally adopted
+worked at some distance aft of the deadwood, and thus suffered
+no retarding influence from it when under way. But in the case
+of later ships these advantages did not obtain. They were built
+with the usual “square tuck,” a bluff form of stern which
+prevented a free flow of water into the space ahead of the
+propeller and thus detracted from its efficiency. It was not
+appreciated at this time that, for efficient action, the screw
+propeller demands to be supplied with a body of unbroken, non-eddying
+water for it to act upon, which with the square-cut
+stern is not obtained. At low speeds, and in the ship to which
+the screw was fitted as an auxiliary, the effect of the square
+tuck was not marked. But as power and speed increased its
+effect became more and more evident; the increase in power
+gave no proportionate increase in speed; and many, ignorant
+of the cause, surmised that there was a limit to the power which
+could be transmitted by a screw and that this limit had already
+been reached. The inefficiency of the square tuck was exposed
+by trials carried out in H.M.S. <i>Dwarf</i> at Chatham. As a result
+of these, future new and converted ships were given as fine a
+stern as possible.</p>
+
+<p>For several years, however, the policy of the Admiralty
+remained the same: the screw was regarded solely as an
+auxiliary. The French, on the other hand, took a less compromising
+line of action. After waiting for some time and
+watching our long series of experiments, they convened in
+1849 a grand <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Enquête Parliamentaire</i>: a commission which,
+primed with the latest information as to British naval material,
+was to decide on what basis of size, number, armament and
+means of propulsion future French warships should be built.
+For two years the commission sat sifting evidence. And then
+it recommended screw propulsion of the highest power for all
+new ships, as well as the conversion of some existing classes to
+auxiliary screw power. England had fitted her ships with
+screws capable of giving them small speed; France must fit
+hers with screws of greater power. Speed, said the commission,
+is an element of power. Superior speed is the only means by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">244</span>
+which the English can be fought with a good chance of success.
+Sails must be secondary, therefore, and full reliance must be
+placed on the screw. The recommendations of the commission
+were duly realized. In the following years a powerful force of
+fast screw battleships, frigates, transports, and despatch boats
+was constructed which by ’58 had brought the aggregate of the
+horse-power of the French fleet almost to a level with that of
+England.</p>
+
+<p>When the Crimean War brought the two navies together as
+allies in ’54 the full effect of the new policy of the French had
+not yet been made apparent. Some apprehension existed in this
+country as to the adequacy and efficiency of our navy, when
+compared directly with that of France. But from then onwards
+this country became aware of the increasing hostility of the
+French public and government; speeches were made, and letters
+appeared in the press of both countries, which tended to fan
+the flames of fear and suspicion.<a id="FNanchor_159" href="#Footnote_159" class="fnanchor">159</a> It was not till ’58, however,
+that general attention was drawn to the great strides which the
+French navy had made in recent years, and to the skilful way
+in which its position, relative to that of its great rival, had
+been improved. An article entitled “The Navies of England
+and France” appeared in the <cite>Conversations Lexicon</cite> of Leipsic,
+and caused a great sensation. Reprinted in book form, with a
+long analysis and with a mass of information about the French,
+English and other navies and arsenals,<a id="FNanchor_160" href="#Footnote_160" class="fnanchor">160</a> this notorious article
+brought apprehension to a head. Though written by no
+friendly critic, it was in most respects an accurate presentment
+of the respective navies and of their condition. The analysis
+of Hans Busk, while ostensibly exposing its bias and its
+inaccuracies, in effect confirmed the main contentions of the
+German article; in addition his book gave in spectacular
+columns a summary of the units of the rival navies, which gave
+food for thought. The article itself professed to show how
+much France had benefited by the bold and scientific manner
+in which she had handled the problem of naval construction
+since the coming of steam. Other factors were discussed, the
+forms of ships, the Paixhans system of armament, problems of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">245</span>
+manning and of education; but the factor which had caused
+the greatest accession of strength to France, by her wise
+divergence from the English policy, was (according to the
+critic) steam propulsion. In the case of paddlewheel steamers
+England, by her unscientific and ruinous experiments, had
+squandered millions of money and produced a series of crank
+and inefficient war vessels. In the case of screw ships
+England’s waste of exertions and money was even more
+surprising; the building of new ships and the conversion of
+others was carried out at an enormous cost with many galling
+disappointments. The French, on the other hand, took longer
+to consider the principle of the screw, but then, when their
+more scientific constructors had completed their investigations
+and analysed the new power, they acted thoroughly and
+without delay. From all of which the German critic inferred
+that England had good reason to watch with anxious eye the
+significant development of strength on the part of her neighbours
+across the Channel. “We must pronounce,” he concluded,
+“that with a nearly equal amount of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">matériel</i>, the
+French navy surpasses the English in capacity and in command
+of men. France need feel no hesitation in placing herself in
+comparison with England.... Never was the policy of
+England so yielding and considerate towards France as at the
+present day. And then, with respect to the vexed question of
+the invasion, it is certain that Napoleon III has the means of
+effecting it with greater ease and far greater chance of success
+than his uncle.”</p>
+
+<p>The means was steam power. But the much-talked-of
+invasion was never to be attempted. Other events intervened,
+other developments took place, which reduced the tension
+between the two great naval powers and removed for an
+indefinite time the danger, which the Leipsic article disinterestedly
+pointed out, of war under novel and unprecedentedly
+terrible conditions: with shell guns and wooden unarmoured
+steam warships.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">246</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_X" class="vspace">CHAPTER X<br />
+
+<span class="subhead">THE IRONCLAD</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> year 1860 marks the most dramatic, swift, and
+far-reaching change which has ever befallen war
+material: the supersession of the wooden ship-of-the-line
+by the modern battleship in its earliest form. What were
+the causes, suddenly realized or acknowledged, which impelled
+this revolutionary change, and what were the circumstances
+which moulded the new form of naval construction? This
+final chapter will attempt to show. Before descending to a
+detailed examination of this evolution, however, let us trace
+out the most striking features of the transition; their measure
+of accuracy can be estimated by the light of the subsequent
+narration of progress.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, then, we remark that, potentially, from the
+time when shell-throwing ordnance was introduced into the
+French, and then as a counter-measure into our own fleet,
+unarmoured wooden ships were doomed. Strange it seems
+that so long a time elapsed before this fact was realized;
+though it is true that with spherical shells and small explosive
+charges the destructive effects of shell fire were not greatly
+superior to those of solid shot, that fuzes were unreliable, that
+trials of artillery against material were rarely resorted to, and
+that, moreover, no opportunity occurred between 1822 and the
+outbreak of the Crimean War to demonstrate in actual sea-fighting
+such superiority as actually existed. Implicit trust
+was placed in our fine sailing ships. So long as solid shot were
+used, indeed, these timber-built ships were admirably suited
+for the line of battle; as size and strength increased and as our
+methods of construction improved the ship gained an increasing
+advantage over the gun, defence increasingly mastered attack,
+to such a degree that by the end of the long wars with France
+the ship-of-the-line had become almost unsinkable by gun-fire.
+But so soon as shell guns were established—even with spherical<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">247</span>
+shells fired from smooth-bore ordnance—wooden ships loomed
+easy targets for destruction. For a long time this disquieting
+conclusion was ignored or boldly denied; expert opinion with
+sagacity turned a blind eye to the portentous evidence presented
+to it of the power of shell. War came, but even then
+the full possibilities of shell fire were not developed. Enough
+proof was given, however, to show that in the special circumstances
+of that war unarmoured ships were of small value
+against shell fire. Armour was accordingly requisitioned,
+and, some few years after the war, was applied to seagoing
+warships.</p>
+
+<p>Another development now took place. At this period when
+disruptive and incendiary shell was proving itself a more
+powerful agent than solid shot of equal size, both shell and shot
+gained an enhanced value from the application of rifling to
+ordnance; moreover, ordnance itself was developing so
+quickly that each year saw an appreciable increase in the unit
+of artillery force. This variation in the unit profoundly affected
+naval architecture. No longer was there a unit of standard and
+unchanging value, which, when multiplied by a certain
+number, conveyed a measure of a ship’s offensive power. No
+longer was the size of a ship a rough measure of its fighting
+strength; by concentrating power in a few guns, offensive
+strength could be correspondingly concentrated, if desired, in
+a small vessel. On the other hand, in view of the sudden
+accession of offensive strength, the defensive capacities of a
+ship remaining as before, it was now true that size had become
+an element of danger, diminutiveness of safety. Hence warships,
+which had for centuries triumphed in the moral and
+physical effect of their height and size, suddenly sought to
+shrink, to render themselves inconspicuous, to take the first
+step towards total invisibility.</p>
+
+<p>An effect of the same development—of the increasing size of
+the unit gun, and therefore of the decreasing number of units
+which a ship could carry—was the mounting of every big gun
+so as to command as large an arc of fire as possible.</p>
+
+<p>As the final development we note that the steam engine, in
+endowing the warship with motions far more variable, certain
+and controlled than those of the sailing ship, called forth
+tactical ideas quite different, in many respects, from those
+which governed sea actions in the canvas period. The warship
+itself is the embodiment of tactical ideas. Hence the design of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">248</span>
+the steam-propelled warship evolved along a different line
+from that of the sailing ship.</p>
+
+<p>By the effect and interaction of these developments a complete
+revolution was compassed in naval architecture; by the
+progress of artillery and the steam engine, and by the improvement
+in mechanical processes in general, an entirely new unit
+of naval force was evolved from the old sailing ship: the
+mastless, turreted ironclad of the late ’sixties, the precursor
+of the modern battleship.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the shell gun given proofs of its destructive
+powers than experiments on the penetrative power of projectiles
+began to assume importance, and as early as 1838 trials
+were being made at Portsmouth against a hulk, the result of
+which, confirming the experiments made by the French with
+the <i>Pacificateur</i> some sixteen years previously, demonstrated
+the far-reaching effects of explosive shell against a ship’s side-timbers.
+Four years later the prime minister was apprised from
+New York that the Americans had discovered a suitable and
+adequate protection for ships’ sides; iron plates of three-eighths
+of an inch in thickness, riveted together to form a compound
+6-inch plate, were alleged to have been found ball-proof. On
+receipt of which intelligence the Admiralty instructed Sir
+Thomas Hastings, captain of the <i>Excellent</i>, to confirm or
+disprove by actual trial. Trial was made, but it was reported
+that no protection was afforded by such plates against the fire
+of 8-inch shell or 32-pounder shot, even at 200 yards’ range.
+No defensive remedy could be devised against shell fire, and
+the only counter-measures deemed practical were of an
+offensive nature, viz. to mount shell guns as powerful as those
+of the enemy, and to keep him at a distance by the employment
+of large and far-ranging solid-shot ordnance.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime iron, which was not acceptable as a protection,
+had been accepted as a constructive material for
+ships. For some years it had been increasingly used for
+mercantile shipping with satisfactory results. The scarcity
+of timber and its cost, as well as the positive advantages to be
+obtained from the use of the much stronger and more plentiful
+material, had decided the Admiralty in ’43 to build iron warships.
+Some small vessels were built and, in spite of adverse<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">249</span>
+criticism and alarming prediction, acquitted themselves
+admirably on service. In ’46 it was resolved, however, to put
+iron to the test of artillery. An iron steamboat, the <i>Ruby</i>,
+was used as a target by the <i>Excellent</i> gunners, and the results
+were unfavourable; the stopping power of the thin metal
+was small, and the balls which went clean through the near
+side wrought extensive damage on the opposite plates. In ’49
+trials were made with stouter plates with more promising
+results: a report favourable to iron as a protection for topsides
+was made. But in ’51, as the result of elaborate trials
+made against a “mock up” of the side of the <i>Simoon</i>, the
+previous conclusions were reversed. Iron was condemned
+altogether as unsuitable for ships of war. “The shot and
+shell,” reported Captain Chads, “on striking are shivered
+into innumerable pieces, passing on as a cloud of langrage
+with great velocity,” and working great destruction among
+the crew. Nor was a combination of wood and iron any better.
+In fact the report claimed that, as regards the suitability or
+the unsuitability of iron, these experiments might be deemed
+to set the question at rest. The experience of the French had
+apparently been somewhat similar to our own. In both
+countries the use of iron for warships received a sudden check
+and, in England at any rate, the idea of unarmoured wood
+was once again accepted. In both countries the opinion was
+widely held that iron was unsuitable either for construction or
+protection, and that the view of General Paixhans, that
+vessels might be made proof even against shells by being
+“cuirassées en fer,” was preposterous and impracticable.<a id="FNanchor_161" href="#Footnote_161" class="fnanchor">161</a></p>
+
+<p>Potentially, as it now seems, wooden sailing ships were so
+weak in defensive qualities that the new artillery, if only it
+could be adequately protected, had them at its mercy. Actually
+it required the rude test of war to establish the unpalatable
+truth. In November, 1853, such proof was given. At Sinope
+a squadron of Turkish frigates armed with solid-shot guns was
+almost blown out of the water by shell fire from a powerful
+Russian squadron; the latter were practically uninjured,
+while the Turkish fleet was set on fire and a terrible mortality
+inflicted among the crews in a short time. General Paixhans,
+who had lived to see his invention fulfil in actual warfare his
+early predictions, was able to emphasize, in the columns of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">250</span>
+the official <cite>Moniteur</cite>, the arguments against large ships and
+the advantages which would accrue to France especially
+by the subdivision of force and the substitution of small
+protected steamers armed with heavy guns for the existing
+wooden ships-of-the-line. The concentrated fire of a few such
+steamers would overpower the radiating fire of the largest
+three-decker.</p>
+
+<p>The type of naval warfare imposed on the allies in the
+Crimean War lent special force to Paixhans’ arguments. For
+the attack of fortresses and coasts whose waters were exceptionally
+shallow it was at any rate clear that the orthodox
+form of warship, unarmoured, of large size and of deep draught,
+was of very limited value. Some special form was necessary;
+France made a rapid decision. Napoleon III issued an order
+for the construction of a flotilla of floating batteries, light-draught
+vessels capable of carrying heavy shell guns and of
+being covered with iron armour strong enough to resist not
+only solid shot but the effects of explosive shell.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of armouring ships was, of course, not novel.
+Armour of sorts had been utilized from antiquity; in the days
+when the shields of the men-at-arms were ranged along the
+bulwarks of the war galleys; in the Tudor days when the
+waists of ships were protected by high elm “blinders,” and
+when Andrea Doria’s carrack was so sheathed with lead and
+bolted with brass that “it was impossible to sink her though
+all the artillery of a fleet were fired against her.” In the
+eighteenth century the French themselves had attempted to
+clothe floating batteries with armour, not indeed against
+shells but against red-hot shot. In 1782 they had devised,
+for the attack on Gibraltar, six wooden floating batteries
+which, with their armament, were protected by a belt of
+sand enclosed in cork and kept moist with sea water.
+But this experience had been disastrous. The sand-drenching
+apparatus failed to act, and the batteries were almost totally
+destroyed by fire.</p>
+
+<p>But now, although experiments with iron-plated ships had
+been the reverse of satisfactory, data were to hand which
+showed that, if used in sufficient thickness, iron plates <em>were</em>
+capable of withstanding the disruptive effects of shell. At
+Vincennes trials had been made, between 1851 and 1854, with
+various thicknesses and dispositions of iron; with plates four
+to five and a half inches thick, with compound plates, and with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">251</span>
+plates supported on a hard wood lining eighteen inches thick;
+of all of which the thick simple plates had proved the most
+effective. So the five floating batteries ordered for work in the
+Crimea were covered with 4-inch iron plates backed by a
+thick lining. Sixty-four feet long, 42 feet in beam, drawing
+about 18 feet of water, armed with sixteen 56-pounder shell
+guns and equipped with auxiliary steam machinery for
+manœuvring, their construction was hastened with all possible
+speed. By October, ’55, three of them, the <i>Dévastation</i>,
+<i>Tonnante</i>, and <i>Lave</i>, had joined the allied flags, and on the
+17th of that month they took a principal part in the bombardment
+of Kinburn. Their success was complete. Although
+repeatedly hit their iron plates were only dented by the
+Russian shot and shell. “Everything,” reported the French
+commander-in-chief, “may be expected from these formidable
+engines of war.” Once again the arguments of Paixhans for
+armoured war vessels had been justified; the experience
+gained with iron armour at Kinburn confirmed that gained
+with shell guns at Sinope. France at once proceeded to apply
+these lessons to the improvement of her navy proper.</p>
+
+<p>In England, on the other hand, no great impression was
+created either by shells or by iron protection. A comfortable
+faith in our fleets of timber-built ships persisted; and, with
+regard to policy, as it had been with shell guns, and with steam
+propulsion, so it appeared to be with armour; the national
+desire was to avoid for as long a time as possible all change
+which would have the effect of depreciating the value of our
+well-tried material. At the same time it is remarkable how
+small an effect was conveyed to expert opinion, both here and
+in America, by the events of the Crimean War. In the years
+immediately following the war some notable technical works
+were published: Dahlgren’s <cite>Shell and Shell Guns</cite>, Read’s
+<cite>Modifications to Ships of the Royal Navy</cite>, Grantham’s <cite>Iron
+Shipbuilding</cite>, Sir Howard Douglas’ <cite>Naval Warfare with Steam</cite>,
+and Hans Busk’s <cite>Navies of the World</cite>. From these works and
+from the press and parliamentary discussions of the day it is
+evident that, outside France, the impressions created were
+vague and conflicting. The main lesson conveyed was the great
+tactical value of steam propulsion. The reports laid no
+emphasis on shells, and so scanty was the information concerning
+them that it was very difficult to appraise their value.
+Their effect at Sinope was disguised by the overwhelming<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">252</span>
+superiority of the Russian force, which rendered the result of
+the action a foregone conclusion; on another occasion (at
+Sebastopol) shells fired at long range were reported to have
+failed to penetrate or embed themselves in a ship’s timbers.
+Commander Dahlgren was uncertain, in the absence of fuller
+information, whether shells had justified their advocates or
+not. Nor was Grantham impressed by the French floating
+batteries. “One only of these vessels,” he incorrectly says,
+“was thus engaged, but then not under circumstances that
+gave any good proof of their efficiency, as the fire was distant
+and not very heavy.”</p>
+
+<p>So no violent change in our naval material followed as the
+immediate result of the war. Only in the matter of light-draught
+gunboats and batteries tardy action was forced on
+the authorities by public opinion. Although iron had been
+condemned for warship construction iron ships had been built
+in the years preceding the war in considerable numbers for
+foreign governments; the firms of Laird and Scott Russell
+had built in 1850 powerful light-draught gunboats for Russia,
+and in the same year Russia had ordered from a Thames firm
+an iron gunboat whose novel design had been brought to the
+notice of the Admiralty. But these craft were intended for
+the defence of shallow waters, and nothing analogous to them
+was considered necessary for the British navy. The exigencies
+of the war demonstrated in the course of time the value of
+these light-draught vessels. Still there was long hesitation;
+though the French government pressed on us their advantages,
+and presented our minister with the plans of their own floating
+batteries. The disappointment of the Baltic expedition, however,
+and the realization that the powerful British fleet which
+in the summer of ’54 had set out to reduce Cronstadt had done
+nothing but prove the inherent unsuitability of large ships-of-the-line
+for the attack of fortresses in shallow waters, gave
+rise to a loud demand in the press that gunboats should be
+built. Several were accordingly laid down. The first of these
+were found to be too deep, but others of lighter draught were
+designed and by the autumn of ’55 sixteen were ready; and
+these, together with some dockyard lighters which had been
+fitted as mortar vessels, joined a flotilla of French floating
+batteries in the Baltic and effectually bombarded Sveaborg.
+As the war progressed the value of ironclad gunboats became
+more fully appreciated. A large number was ordered, but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">253</span>
+most of them were only completed in time to fire a grand
+salute in honour of the proclamation of peace.<a id="FNanchor_162" href="#Footnote_162" class="fnanchor">162</a></p>
+
+<p>Apart from the building of these gunboats innovation was
+avoided. Unarmoured wooden ships, equipped with a mixed
+armament of shot and shell guns, continued to be launched
+and passed into commission, and it was only after France had
+constructed, at Toulon in ’58, an iron-encased frigate, that
+England unwillingly followed suit, convinced at last that a
+reconstruction of her materials could no longer be averted.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Gloire</i>, the iron-belted frigate, was the direct result of
+the lessons gained from the floating batteries in the Russian
+war. After Kinburn the French naval authorities took up the
+study of how to apply armour to sea-going ships. Was it
+possible to embody in a fighting unit sea-going capacity, high
+speed, great offensive power, in addition to the defensive
+qualities possessed by the slow, unwieldy batteries? Could
+such a weight as iron armour would entail be embodied in a
+ship design without loss of other important qualities? It was
+concluded that, while it would be impossible to cover the sides
+completely, it would be possible to protect the surfaces near
+the water-line, under cover of which all the ships’ vital parts
+could be secreted. A great increase in defensive power would
+thus be obtained. Before developing a plan in detail it was
+decided to carry out further armour trials, and solid iron
+plates of 4½ inches thickness were fired at with English 68-pounders
+and French 50-pounders, with solid balls and with
+charged shells. The results were satisfactory, so these plates
+were adopted as the standard of armour protection. To the
+design of M. Dupuy de Lôme the first ironclad frigate was
+constructed from a fine two-decked ship, the <i>Napoleon</i>, which
+was cut down, lengthened, and armoured from stem to stern.
+The result was the celebrated <i>Gloire</i>. She was followed shortly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">254</span>
+afterwards by two sister vessels. And then, in order to obtain
+a direct comparison between timber-built and iron ships, an
+armoured <em>iron</em> frigate, the <i>Couronne</i>, was also built. The three
+wooden ships were given a complete belt round the water-line
+of 4½ inches of iron; the <i>Couronne</i> had compound armour—3-inch
+and 1½-inch iron plates separated from each other and
+from the iron stem-plating by wood lining 6 inches in thickness.
+The armament of all four frigates consisted of thirty-six
+50-pounder shell guns, carried low. They were given yacht
+masts and equipped with propelling machinery designed to
+give them 12 knots speed.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>The naval position of England at this time was the reverse
+of satisfactory. Comparing the material resources of the two
+great maritime rivals, it came to be noted with surprise that
+France, taking advantage of the development of steam propulsion
+during the decade, had actually drawn level with
+England in the numbers of steam warships available and in
+their aggregate motive horse-power. The French had submitted
+to great financial outlay on account of their navy. In
+this country a reaction, following the large and partially
+ineffective expenditure incurred in the Crimean War, had dried
+up the sources of supplies and stunted constructional development;
+there was little to show for the money spent on such
+works as the enlargement of docks and on the extensive new
+factories and docks established at Sheerness and Keyham.
+Apprehension was widespread when the intelligence of the
+building of the iron-sided ships was received, and this apprehension
+developed when whispers reached Westminster of a
+huge prospective programme meditated by France. To allay
+the panic a parliamentary committee was formed to inquire
+into the relative strength of the two navies; and their report,
+published in January, 1859, made bad reading. Comparing
+the steam navies—for, the committee reported, sailing ships
+could not be opposed to steamships with any chance of
+success—France and England each had afloat the same
+number of line-of-battle ships, viz. twenty-nine; and as regards
+frigates France had thirty-four to England’s twenty-six!
+This did not include the four <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">frégates blindées</i> laid down by
+France, which would be substitutes for line-of-battle ships,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">255</span>
+which were being built with the scantling of three-deckers,
+and which were to be armed with thirty-six heavy guns, most
+of them 50-pounders throwing an 80-pound hollow percussion
+shell. “So convinced do naval men seem to be in France,”
+note the committee, “of the irresistible qualities of these
+ships, that they are of opinion that no more ships-of-the-line
+will be laid down, and that in ten years that class of vessel will
+have become obsolete.” The position is bad enough; yet
+so bewildered are our experts by the radical developments of
+the rival navy, so difficult appears the problem of countering
+the French designs by any new and well-studied procedure, that
+all that the committee can recommend is the accelerated conversion
+of our remaining sailing ships to steam. The committee
+realize that naval architecture, and still more naval
+artillery, is in a state of transition, and that the late invention
+of Armstrong’s gun “may possibly affect even the size and
+structure of ships of war.”</p>
+
+<p>It is not possible, however, for a country desirous of maintaining
+its maritime supremacy to wait upon perfection in the
+manner implied as the policy of the parliamentary committee.
+Some drastic and immediate action was necessary, to redress
+the advantage accruing to France from the possession of the
+<i>Gloire</i> and her sister frigates. Such action was duly taken;
+but before proceeding to examine this action it will be necessary
+to revert for a moment to a consideration of iron. We have
+already sketched the evolution of iron as a protective covering
+for warships; we must now glance back and briefly trace its
+progress as a constructive material.</p>
+
+<p>Iron vessels had appeared on the canals of England in the
+latter part of the eighteenth century. In 1815 a pleasure boat
+of that material had sailed on the River Mersey, attracting
+crowds of people whose credulity had been severely strained
+by the statement that an iron ship would float. Admiral
+Napier had manifested an early interest in iron ships; in
+1820, in partnership with a Mr. Manby, he had constructed
+the first iron steamer, the <i>Aaron Manby</i>, and navigated it
+from London up the Seine to Paris, where in ’22 it attracted
+considerable attention. From this date onwards iron vessels
+increased in number. In ’39 the <i>Nemesis</i> and <i>Phlegethon</i> were
+built by Mr. Laird for the East India Company, and in the
+China war of ’42 these gunboats played a conspicuous and
+significant part. The grounding of the <i>Nemesis</i> in ’40 on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">256</span>
+rocks of Scilly afforded early evidence of the value of watertight
+bulkheads (a Chinese invention) when embodied in an
+iron hull.</p>
+
+<p>As the size of ships increased, the disabilities attaching to
+the use of timber became more and more evident. Though
+braced internally by an elaborate system of iron straps, knees,
+and nutted bolts in iron or copper, the large timber-built ship,
+considered as a structure, was fundamentally weak; in fact
+the presence of the straps and ties contributed in no small
+degree to its inability to withstand continuous stress. The
+fastenings did not accord with the materials which they
+fastened together, and the wood was relatively so soft that
+when a severe strain arose a general yielding took place, the
+boltheads sinking into the wood and causing it to give way
+to the pressure thrown locally upon it. As tonnage increased
+the metal fastenings grew more and more conspicuous, the
+ship became a composite structure of wood and iron, with the
+result that uniformity of elasticity and strength was lost and
+the stresses, instead of being distributed throughout the
+structure, tended to become localized at certain points. “The
+metallic fastenings of a timber-built ship act to accelerate her
+destruction so soon as the close connection of the several parts
+is at all diminished.” So in 1840 wrote Augustin Creuze, a
+graduate of the disbanded school of naval architecture and
+one of the most gifted and eminent men of his profession at
+that day.</p>
+
+<p>Iron ships, on the other hand, were found to be well adapted
+to withstand the racking stresses, the localized loads and the
+vibrations which were introduced by steam machinery; they
+were lighter than wooden ships, more capacious, more easily
+shaped to give the fine lines necessary for speed, cheaper and
+immeasurably stronger. In course of time the objections to
+them gradually vanished; by aid of the scientists the derangement
+of their compasses was overcome, the dangers from
+lightning were obviated, and the extent of the fouling to which
+their surfaces were liable was kept within limits. In course of
+time, in spite of natural preference and vested interest, and
+since the advantages of iron were confirmed by continuous
+experience, wood became almost entirely superseded by the
+metal for large mercantile construction. But in the case of
+warships, as we have seen, insuperable objections seemed to
+prohibit the change of material. No sooner had a step been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">257</span>
+taken by the Admiralty, in the ordering of a group of iron
+paddlewheel frigates in ’43, than an outcry arose; the wooden
+walls of England were in danger, the opponents of iron declared,
+and iron ships were wholly unsuitable for warlike
+purposes. More were ordered in ’46. Sir Charles Napier,
+whose opinion naturally carried great weight with the public,
+led the opposition, and when, in ’49, the artillery trial demonstrated
+the dangerous effects of shot and shell on thin iron
+plates, the advocates of iron were fain to admit the error of
+their opinions. The iron frigates were struck from the establishment
+and transformed—such of them as were completed—into
+unarmed transports.</p>
+
+<p>As experience with iron ships accumulated, the feeling grew
+in certain quarters that the artillery trials, the results of which
+had been claimed as being decisive proof of the unsuitability
+of iron for warships, might not have been the last word upon
+the subject. The events of the Crimean War tended to emphasize
+the doubt and uncertainty. A few there were who saw in
+that war clear proofs of the superiority of iron over wood;
+who argued that, though iron had proved to be dangerous in
+the form of thin plates in certain circumstances, yet it had
+shown itself to be impervious both to shot and shell, and
+indeed an indispensable defence in certain circumstances when
+applied in sufficient thickness; that thicker plates than those
+condemned as dangerous might therefore prove to be a great
+protection against shell fire; and that, even as regards thin
+plates, the splintering effect of shell against these was small,
+from all accounts, compared with the <em>incendiary</em> effect of shell
+against timber. And in what other respects were the advantages
+of iron contested?</p>
+
+<p>But, acting upon expert advice and influence, doubtless, by
+the remembrance of the <i>Birkenhead</i> and <i>Simoon</i> fiasco, the
+government still felt unable to sanction the use of iron, and it
+was not until news of the laying down of the <i>Gloire</i> reached
+England that a decision was made to adopt the new material,
+both as armour and for the hulls of warships.</p>
+
+<p>The high protagonist of timber-built ships, it was shortly
+afterwards revealed, was Sir Howard Douglas: the most
+strenuous advocate of iron was John Scott Russell. For years,
+it appeared, Sir Howard had been the influential and successful
+adviser of the government against the adoption of iron. “I was
+consulted by Sir Robert Peel,” he wrote in 1860, “on his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">258</span>
+accession to the government, as to the use and efficiency of a
+certain half-dozen iron frigates, two of which were finished,
+and four constructing by contract. I stated in reply that
+vessels wholly constructed of iron were utterly unfit for all the
+purposes of war, whether armed or as transports for the conveyance
+of troops.” In the same paper he stated the arguments
+on which he had tendered this advice; and these arguments
+appeared so fallacious, and the facts on which they were
+based so disputable, as to seem to call for some reply from the
+builders of iron ships. Sir Howard had certainly strayed far
+from science in his unsupported statements as to the calamitous
+effects of iron if used for warships; and unfortunately he had
+allowed himself to stigmatize the <i>Great Eastern</i>, as representative
+of iron ships generally, as “an awful roller,” and as
+never having attained anything like her calculated speed.
+Scott Russell made a violent reply. “After establishing that
+Sir H. Douglas’s conclusions are the reverse of the truth,” he
+began, “I shall proceed to establish that the future navy of
+England must be an iron navy. That its construction must be
+founded on facts and principles, which Sir H. Douglas’s writings
+ignore, and his deductions contradict; and I believe I shall
+prove that if iron ships had been introduced at the time when
+Sir Howard says he sedulously and systematically opposed
+their introduction, the money which has been spent on a
+wooden fleet about to become valueless would have given
+England a fleet greatly more powerful than the combined
+navies of the world.”<a id="FNanchor_163" href="#Footnote_163" class="fnanchor">163</a></p>
+
+<p>It may be conceded that in this public argument Scott
+Russell had the advantage: the architect of the <i>Great Eastern</i>
+had little difficulty in confuting the views of the artillerist.
+But by this time the battle between wood and iron had been
+fought and won. The Board of Admiralty, influenced by the
+arguments of Scott Russell and their own constructors, and in
+the presence of gigantic achievements in the form of iron-built
+liners, felt unable to agree with Sir Howard in his continued
+advocacy of timber; Sir John Pakington expressed his
+personal doubts to him in a correspondence. Expert opinion,
+naval officers and architects, leaned more and more in the
+direction of the new material, and, early in 1859, the decision
+was made to build an armoured frigate <em>of iron</em>. It was a
+momentous decision. The “wooden walls” had crumbled at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">259</span>
+last, and iron had won acceptance as alone able to cope with
+the new forces brought into existence by the progress of
+artillery and steam machinery. The opponents of iron could
+not sustain for long their arguments in favour of timber;
+experience was accumulating against them, and it was necessary
+to accept defeat. Chief among them was Sir Howard
+Douglas. There is, surely, something pathetic in the episode
+of his long-continued struggle against radical change; something
+tragic in the spectacle of this scientist, whose labours
+had done more, perhaps, than any other man’s for the efficiency
+of the nineteenth-century navy, in his old age casting the great
+weight of his influence unwittingly against the navy’s interest?
+How gamely the old general fought for his convictions is told
+us by his biographer, who with a natural warmth denounced the
+fierce criticism which Scott Russell had directed against a
+veteran of eighty-five winters, devoting his last hours to the
+service of his country. “His resistance to armour ships bore
+him down, his arguments met with unbelief, or elicited taunts,
+and ceased to influence the public. ‘All that I have said
+about armour ships will prove correct,’ he remarked, twenty-four
+hours before his death, toward the end of ’61. ‘How
+little do they know of the undeveloped power of artillery!’”</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>In June, 1859, some months before the launching of the
+<i>Gloire</i>, the reply was given: the <i>Warrior</i> was laid down. Up
+to this time the initiative, in the slow evolution of naval
+material, had rested mainly with France. From this moment
+England, having taken up the challenge, assumed the initiative
+and its responsibilities; and from now onwards, in spite of
+false moves, failures, and ineffective expenditures of money
+and labour, she regained more and more surely the preponderance
+in naval strength which she had possessed of old. At last
+a scientific era of naval architecture had opened. Up to this
+time the design and construction of warships had been treated
+as a mere craft: a craft hampered, moreover, by absence of
+method, reluctance to adopt new views, limitations as to size,
+interference and ever-varying decisions as to such factors as
+the extent of sail-power or the number of guns to be carried.
+By the official acceptance of scientific methods this was largely
+changed. By the raising of the old office of Surveyor to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">260</span>
+dignity of Controller of the Navy, by the institution of a new
+school of naval architecture to take the place of that suppressed
+in 1832 (whose most eminent graduates, fittingly enough, were
+the chief witnesses against the debased state and management
+of naval construction as it was prior to 1860), by utilizing the
+services of men trained in mathematics, the effect on naval
+architecture soon became apparent. Originality had scope,
+forethought and cleverness had full play; men of considerable
+technical knowledge were pressed into service, who proved
+well able to cope with the new developments.</p>
+
+<p>The outcome of this new orientation was the <i>Warrior</i>. It is
+usual to think of her as similar to the <i>Gloire</i>; like her she was
+designed to resist the 68-pounder unit of artillery, like her she
+carried a belt of iron armour 4½ inches thick, and was equipped
+with steam machinery to give her a high speed. Yet in important
+respects she differed from her French rival.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_260" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 37.875em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p260.jpg" width="606" height="409" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>THE <i>WARRIOR</i></p>
+
+<p class="smaller">From a photograph in the possession of Dr. Oscar Parkes, <span class="smcap smaller">O.B.E.</span></p></div></div>
+
+<p>Firstly, her size in relation to her armament caused general
+surprise. Admittedly the policy of restricting dimensions,
+pursued with such rigour from the seventeenth to the beginning
+of the nineteenth century, had operated to the detriment of our
+naval construction; admittedly the long and fine-shaped
+sailing vessels built during recent years were greatly superior
+to those of the older models; yet no reason presented itself for
+building a ship, of armament equal to that of the 5000-ton
+French frigate, which would displace over 9000 tons. Were not
+cost and tonnage directly related, and was there some real
+necessity forcing us to build ships of so large a size? Was it
+true that the basins at Portsmouth would require to be
+enlarged to take such a ship, and that her draught would be
+such that she could only be docked at certain tides? The
+question was debated vigorously by the Board itself. Three
+considerations, according to an authoritative statement made
+to parliament, prompted the decision to depart widely from
+the design adopted by the French: considerations one or
+more of which have influenced all subsequent construction in
+this country. Firstly, the world-wide duties of the British
+navy demanded a type of ship capable of making long and
+distant voyages either with steam or sail: in short, a fully
+rigged ship, a good sailer, and at the same time one with
+sufficient carrying capacity to enable her to keep the seas for a
+long time. Secondly, to ensure good sailing qualities and to
+avoid a defect which had been experienced in our own ships<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">261</span>
+fitted with heavy pivot guns, and which was predicted in the
+case of the <i>Gloire</i>, the extremities must be as lightly loaded as
+possible, and not weighed down with heavy armour. Thirdly—and
+this was more or less special to the period—since artillery
+was already in a state of rapid transition to higher power, any
+protective armour approved must sooner or later be insufficient
+and require to be augmented. These conditions, and the
+advantages which increase of length were known to give in
+reducing the propeller power necessary to obtain a certain
+speed, governed the specifications to which the <i>Warrior</i> was
+built. She was given a length of 380 feet, machinery for a speed
+of nearly 14 knots, full canvas, telescopic funnels, and waterline
+armour over her central parts: the ends being left
+unarmoured, but subdivided by watertight compartments. Of
+her forty-eight smooth-bore guns, twenty-six were behind
+armour and twelve were outside of the protective belt; the
+remaining ten were mounted on the upper deck, also without
+protection.</p>
+
+<p>In another respect the <i>Warrior</i> bore witness to the foresight
+of the Board. Hidden behind, and altogether disguised by, the
+shapely bow with its surmounting figure-head, was a stout iron
+ram-stem, worked to the knee and side-plates of the bow: an
+inconspicuous but significant feature. Ever since steamers had
+been established in the navy the possibilities of ramming had
+been discussed. The revolution in tactics resulting from the
+introduction of steam as motive power had been examined by
+authorities such as Bowles and Moorson, Douglas, Dahlgren
+and Labrousse, and all of them saw in the new conditions an
+opening for the use of the ram. In ’44 Captain Labrousse had
+suggested strengthening the bows of wooden ships for this
+purpose, and in England Admiral Sartorius had become the
+advocate of a special type of warship built expressly to ram.
+The circumstances of the naval warfare of the Crimea, in which
+slow-moving steamers operated in restricted waters, had
+displayed to naval men the advantages to be obtained from
+actual collision—from the use of their ship itself as a projectile
+against the enemy’s hull. In the case of the <i>Warrior</i> an
+additional argument was now to hand for providing a ram.
+The use of iron as armour had restored the equilibrium between
+defence and attack which had been disturbed by the adoption
+of shell fire; nay more, it had actually turned the scale against
+artillery, the 68-pounder being unable to penetrate the armour<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">262</span>
+of the ship in which it was carried. For this reason, that for the
+moment armour had the ascendancy over the gun, a ram was
+considered to be necessary as an additional means of offence;
+and a ram was accordingly embodied in the <i>Warrior</i>, to the
+strength of which her converging iron-plate structure aptly
+contributed.</p>
+
+<p>And now, leaving the <i>Warrior</i> for a moment, it will be convenient
+to glance ahead and note the part played by the ram and
+the value set upon it in connection with later types of warships.</p>
+
+<p>In 1860 no doubt was felt but that ramming would play a
+very important part in future warfare. The experiences of the
+American Civil War of ’62 seemed to supply a perfect confirmation
+of this opinion. “We fought the <i>Merrimac</i> for more than
+three hours this forenoon,” wrote the engineer of the <i>Monitor</i>
+to John Ericsson, “and sent her back to Norfolk in a sinking
+condition. Ironclad against ironclad, we manœuvred about
+the bay here (Hampton Roads), and went at each other with
+mutual fierceness.... We were struck twenty-two times, the
+pilot house twice, the turret nine times, the side armour eight
+times, deck three times.... She tried to run us down and
+sink us, as she did the <i>Cumberland</i> yesterday, but she got the
+worst of it. Her bow passed over our deck, and our sharp
+upper-edged side cut through the light iron shoe upon her
+stem, and well into her oak. She will not try that again. She
+gave us a tremendous thump but did not injure us in the least....
+The turret is a splendid structure....”</p>
+
+<p>On the preceding day the iron-covered <i>Merrimac</i> had sunk
+the wooden sailing ship <i>Cumberland</i> by ram alone, without the
+aid of artillery, the shots from her victim’s guns glancing off
+her iron casing “like hailstones off a tin roof.” She had then
+opened on the wooden <i>Congress</i> with shell fire, and in a short
+time the crowded decks of that ship had been reduced to a
+shambles. Then she had fought the inconclusive duel with the
+armoured <i>Monitor</i>. What lessons were at length driven home
+by these three single actions! What a novel warfare did they
+not foretell! The helplessness of the wooden ship when
+attacked by an ironclad was apparent, the terrific effects of
+shell fire were once again conclusively proved. The value of
+thick armour was once more shown, but, above all, the power
+of the ram, the new <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">arme blanche</i> of sea warfare, seemed to be
+indisputably demonstrated. On both sides of the Atlantic a
+revision of values took place: the wooden navies of the world<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">263</span>
+sank into insignificance, the <i>Warrior</i> and her type were seen
+to be the main support and measure of each nation’s naval
+power. “The man who goes into action in a wooden ship is a
+fool,” Sir John Hay was quoted as saying, “and the man who
+sends him there is a villain.” The ocean-sceptre of Britain
+was broken, thought an American writer forgetful of the
+limitations of monitors, by the blow which crushed the sides
+of the <i>Cumberland</i> and <i>Congress</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Four years later the battle of Lissa, in which the ironclad
+squadrons of Austria and Italy were engaged with one another,
+gave confirmation that the lessons of Hampton Roads were
+also applicable to blue-water actions. “Full speed. Ironclads
+rush against the enemy and sink him,” was the signal made by
+the Austrian admiral, Tegetthof. The ram was his chief
+weapon of offence, the gun being a useful auxiliary in gaining
+him the victory; gunfire, by disabling the steering gear of the
+<i>Ré d’Italia</i>, making her an easy prey for the ram of his flagship,
+<i>Ferdinand Max</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the factors influencing the evolution of naval material,
+the experiences and records of actual warfare are naturally
+considered to carry the greatest weight in council: they are,
+indeed, the only data whose acceptance is indisputable. The
+claims and achievements put forward in time of peace, however
+their excellence may have been attested by the most realistic
+experiments, are all referred to actual war for trial, and are
+accepted only in so far as they fit in with war experience. But
+sea actions between ironclads have been few and far between.
+It has been the more difficult, therefore, to draw from them
+the true lessons conveyed; the fixed points have been insufficient
+in number, so to speak, to allow of the true curve of
+progress being traced. Not only has this insufficiency been
+evident, but the restriction in the area of war experience has
+had another harmful effect, in that undue weight has been
+given to each individual experience. Difficult as it always is to
+strip each experience of its special circumstances and deduce
+from it the correct conclusion, errors have undoubtedly been
+made; and these errors have had a prominence which would
+not have been theirs if the number of experiences had been
+greater. On the other hand, an altogether insufficient weight
+has commonly been given to the experiences of peace-time.</p>
+
+<p>These remarks find one application in the ram, and in the
+value placed upon it in the ’sixties and ’seventies. During<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">264</span>
+this period artillery was undergoing a continuous and rapid
+improvement, eventually turning the scales against defensive
+armour; steam power was expanding and the manœuvring
+capacities of ships were being extended, so as to make ramming
+an operation more and more difficult to perform. Yet faith in
+the ram grew rather than decreased, influenced almost entirely
+by the evidence of the two sea-actions.</p>
+
+<p>What was the actual experience of ramming gained in
+peace-time? In ’68 Admiral Warden, commanding the
+Channel Fleet, reported: “So long as a ship has good
+way on her, and a good command of steam to increase
+her speed at pleasure, that ship cannot be what is called
+‘rammed’; she cannot even be struck to any purpose so
+long as she has room, and is properly handled. The use of
+ships as rams, it appears to me, will only be called into play after
+an action has commenced, when ships, of necessity, are reduced
+to a low rate of speed—probably their lowest.” As time progressed
+the chances of ramming certainly grew less. Yet Lissa
+and Hampton Roads continued to influence opinion to such a
+degree, as to lead to a glorification of ram tactics; in the press,
+and in the technical institutions which had now come into being,
+the ram retained a lustre which it no longer deserved. So long
+as artillery was feeble and gunnery of low efficiency, and so
+long as speeds of ships were slow and manœuvring power
+restricted, the ram was of great potential value. As these
+conditions changed, the value of the ram declined. But for a
+time it was actually in question which of the two forms of
+power, the steam engine or the gun, would ultimately exert the
+greater influence as a weapon in action. The subject of a
+Prize Essay for 1872 was, “The Manœuvres and System of
+Tactics which Fleets of Ships should adopt, to develop the
+powers of the Ram, Heavy Artillery, Torpedoes, etc., in an
+action in the open sea”; and it was the opinion of the prize-winner,
+Commander G. H. Noel, that the ram was at that time
+fast supplanting the gun in importance. “The serious part of a
+future naval attack,” wrote Captain Colomb, in <cite>Lessons from
+Lissa</cite>, “does not appear to be the guns, but the rams.” And
+the French Admiral Touchard described the ram as “the
+principal weapon in naval combats—the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">ultima ratio</i> of
+maritime warfare.” “There is a new warfare,” said Scott
+Russell in 1870. “It is no longer, Lay her alongside, but,
+Give her the stem, which will be the order of battle.” And he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">265</span>
+predicted fleets of high-speed vessels, equipped with powerful
+rams and twin-screw engines, in which both guns and armour
+were merely of secondary importance. And writers on tactics
+discerned future squadrons in action charging each other after
+the manner of heavy cavalry.</p>
+
+<p>The evolution of artillery falsified these expectations. With
+the growing advantage of artillery over the defence, and with
+the coming of the torpedo, fighting ranges increased and the
+use of the ram declined. With greater speeds and greater
+ranges the possibility of ramming became (as might be deduced
+mathematically) a diminishing ratio; before the end of the
+century it was sufficiently clear, and was confirmed by actual
+warfare, that the ram formed but a very secondary factor of a
+warship’s offensive power. But for some years ramming, and
+“bows-on” fighting in which ramming was intended to play
+an important part, influenced to a great extent the designs of
+warships.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the ram, first fitted in the <i>Warrior</i>. In her
+sister ship the ram was less pronounced and, before Hampton
+Roads had drawn attention to its possibilities, it was even in
+question to renounce it altogether. In the case of the <i>Warrior</i>
+the heavy figure-head so overhung the ram that many were
+dubious whether the latter would seriously damage an enemy;
+and, moreover, the wisdom of driving a fully rigged ship against
+another vessel, and risking the dismantling of her masts and
+rigging, was widely doubted. In other respects, except for her
+armour belt and for the material of which she was built, that
+vessel was not radically different from her predecessors; the
+first of iron-built ironclads was a handsome screw frigate not
+unlike previous British ships of her type, from whom she was
+lineally descended.</p>
+
+<p>Although on the whole she was a conspicuous success, it was
+soon apparent that the great length of the <i>Warrior</i> tended to
+make her difficult to manœuvre: in fact, made her deficient in
+that very quality—handiness—which was indispensable to her
+effective use as a ram. And this unhandiness was accentuated
+in the <i>Minotaur</i> class which was begun in 1861. These
+ships were given a belt an inch thicker than that of the
+<i>Warrior</i>, and, partial protection being considered objectionable,
+especially as leaving exposed the steering gear and a portion
+of the gun armament, the belt was made continuous over the
+whole length of the ship. This length, owing to the extra<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">266</span>
+weight of the armour, was 400 feet: 20 feet greater than that
+of the <i>Warrior</i> and a hundred greater than that of the longest
+timber-built ships. At first, five masts were fitted, in order to
+obtain a large sail-area while at the same time keeping the size
+of each sail within desirable limits; but these were afterwards
+reduced to three. Sail power and steam machinery were seen
+to be an imperfect combination in so large a vessel. The
+<i>Minotaur</i> class proved to be costly, unhandy and vulnerable
+ships, and signalled a return to smaller dimensions. It was
+found possible to design ships equally fast and equally well
+armed and protected, by the use of fuller lines and less length
+and an increased engine power. “Increased manœuvring
+power and reduction in prime cost,” wrote the designer of the
+new type, “more than make amends for the moderate
+addition to the steam power.”<a id="FNanchor_164" href="#Footnote_164" class="fnanchor">164</a></p>
+
+<p>Here we may briefly note the conversion of the timber-built
+fleet. In ’57 Captain Moorsom had submitted a scheme of
+cutting down ships to a short height above the water-line and
+using the weight thus gained to provide an armour belt. Sir
+Charles Napier had advocated a similar policy in parliament.
+As soon as the necessity for armour was accepted this policy
+was adopted; not only were the resources of the private ship-yards
+bent to the building of a fleet of new iron warships, but
+the best of the old navy was metamorphized in the royal
+dockyards by the process of the <em>razee</em>: the cutting down of
+two-deckers and their conversion into iron-belted frigates. By
+these exertions France was soon outstripped in the struggle.
+For a long time she clung to wooden ships, though in ’62
+she adopted iron for upper works; and of such ships, of
+wooden bottoms but of iron above the water-line, she built a
+fleet “possessing only one possible merit—uniformity; which
+the new English construction lacked.” The combination of
+heavy steam machinery and wooden hulls was the cause of
+continuous difficulties; the growth of artillery rendered the
+ships obsolete almost before they were built.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>By the time the <i>Warrior</i> and her sister ships were afloat the
+great struggle between armour and artillery was well in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">267</span>
+progress. It was a struggle which was to lead to unsuspected
+developments in naval architecture.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment, and in the presence of the new iron-built
+ironclads, the gun was at its lowest point of effectiveness. But
+rifling had conferred new powers on it, and the greatest efforts
+were being put forth to improve its position. As it grew
+rapidly in size and power, naval experts were faced with a
+succession of problems of extraordinary difficulty. Two things
+were in question: both the type and the disposition of gun
+best suited for a warship’s armament.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to type, the adoption of armour inevitably gave
+a set-back to the value of the shell gun. Shells, which would
+rend and set on fire a wooden ship, would not pierce armour or
+inflame iron plates; of which facts Hampton Roads afforded a
+demonstration. It seemed clear also from that incident, to
+experts in this country and in France, that no extension of the
+Paixhans principle was likely to compete with armour in the
+future. The system of shell fire of General Paixhans, like the
+shot system of the inventor of the carronade, had relied on low
+muzzle velocities and curved trajectories, to effect its purpose.
+His shells were for lodgment rather than penetration, and did
+not gain their effect by their kinetic energy; and in view of
+this their inventor had himself conceived the use of iron
+armour as the very means whereby they might be countered.
+Nevertheless the Americans had been strongly attracted by
+the Paixhans principle, and with their Dahlgrens and Columbiads
+had extended it in practice to embrace the use of guns
+of the largest calibres. The action between the <i>Monitor</i> and
+the <i>Merrimac</i> did nothing to shake their faith in this class of
+ordnance. Subsequent experiments appeared to confirm the
+national predilection; and one of their writers, in giving
+credit to the navy chiefs for adhering to the principle of the
+large smooth-bore gun, recorded that the small-bore-and-high-velocity
+theory had received its quietus by the utter demolition
+of a 6-inch plate by a ball from a 15-inch gun at Washington in
+February, 1864.<a id="FNanchor_165" href="#Footnote_165" class="fnanchor">165</a> In France and England it was held, and held
+rightly, that high velocities were necessary for the attack of
+armour.</p>
+
+<p>If shell guns were of small value, what was suitable? Were
+the old spherical solid shot still capable of beating the defence?<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">268</span>
+A serious effort was made in this country to bring them to do it.
+The Armstrong rifled breech-loading guns recently adopted
+had been proving defective and indifferent on service; a
+return was wisely made to muzzle-loading; and it was in
+question also to revert to spherical shot and shell. Spherical
+shot of hardest steel were tried by the <i>Excellent</i>, in the hope
+that they would penetrate 4½-inch plates. Experimental guns
+were also made, in 1864, to discharge 100-pound balls with
+charges of 25 pounds of powder; guns so heavy (6½ tons)
+that it was doubted at the time whether they could be
+efficiently worked on the broadside of a rolling ship. Should
+not increased power be obtained by persevering with rifled
+guns? The advantages possessed by the rifled gun in ranging
+power, accuracy, capacity of shell, were admitted; nevertheless
+the navy as a whole favoured the smooth-bore, with its
+simplicity, rapidity of fire, strength, and greater initial velocity,
+and thought that, at close ranges, the 100-pounder 6½-ton
+smooth-bore gun was the best and most suitable weapon for
+the service. But the rifled gun was advancing rapidly. “By
+May, 1864, the 7-inch muzzle-loading rifled shunt gun of
+6½ tons had been tried in the <i>Excellent</i>, and had a good deal
+shaken the position of the smooth-bore. Captain Key reported
+that it was more than equal to naval requirements.... It
+was admirably adapted for the naval service.”<a id="FNanchor_166" href="#Footnote_166" class="fnanchor">166</a> This fired a
+projectile 115 pounds in weight. By June of the following
+year the target of 9-inch plate representing the side of the
+<i>Hercules</i> had beaten the latest Armstrong achievement, a
+12½-ton 300-pounder. And on this pretext, and judging the
+defensive power of the whole ship by the defensive power of the
+thickest patch of its armour, a still more powerful gun was
+demanded for the navy by the inventor and by the press: a
+25-ton 600-pounder.</p>
+
+<p>So rapidly the power of ordnance grew. It has been observed
+that of this feverish evolution of armour and artillery the
+circumstances were doubly remarkable. Firstly, no foreign
+pressure existed which called for such overleaping and experimental
+advances. The Americans still clung to their smooth-bore
+system; the French, who like us had adopted breech-loading
+guns, retained the system in their service and suffered
+for some years from its continuous inefficiency. Secondly, the
+navy was itself “unwillingly dragged into the cul-de-sac of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">269</span>
+experimental construction induced by the clamour of public
+opinion.” The type, the size of the gun which was to be
+embodied in our latest warships, was decided mainly by forces
+outside the navy, and changed from year to year. Naval
+architecture changed with it. The adoption of the succession
+of increasingly powerful rifled guns set experts at their wit’s
+ends devising warships suitable for carrying them; entailed
+continuous alterations both in the armaments of new ships and
+in the design of the new ships themselves; but also, as it
+happened, had the effect of giving this country a mastery over
+naval material which it has never since surrendered.</p>
+
+<p>The type having been decided for each individual vessel,
+there remained the question of the disposition of the armament.</p>
+
+<p>Two main considerations guided the evolution of the ironclads
+of this period in respect of the disposition of their guns:
+one mainly tactical, the other mainly constructive. It appears
+probable that, from the date of Trafalgar onward, the limitations
+of merely broadside fire had been realized; that the
+end-on attack, such as had obtained in the supreme actions
+fought by Nelson and Rodney, had shown the weakness of the
+broadside ship in ahead fire and had made obvious the anomaly
+that, in all ships-of-the-line, the course of the ship, the
+direction in which the attack was made, was the very direction
+in which gunfire was least powerful, if not altogether non-existent.
+With the coming of steam and the consequent
+growth of the ram and ramming tactics, this anomaly was more
+and more apparent; and from the <i>Warrior</i> onwards each new
+type presented an enhanced effort to provide, particularly,
+ahead fire. The growth of the gun materially assisted this
+effort. Ahead fire increased, between the years 1860 and 1880,
+from zero to a large proportion of the total fire. The broadside
+ship was for a time abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>The constructive consideration was the requirement of a
+protected armament capable of the maximum effective fire in
+all directions. In the first half of the century an increased
+effectiveness had been obtained, with the old-fashioned truck
+guns, by adaptation of the ports or by use of specially designed
+carriages, to permit of as large an arc of training as possible.
+Even so the arc through which guns could be fired was
+small, and in the case of the 68-pounder of the <i>Warrior</i>
+was only thirty degrees before and abaft the beam. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">270</span>
+demand for greater utility was emphasized when, with the
+increase in size of the unit gun, the number of pieces carried
+by each ship was diminished.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, having regard to these two considerations,
+should a warship’s guns be disposed? Various methods were
+adopted. In the first instance, it was seen to be possible to
+augment the ahead fire of a ship, and to give a wide sweep of
+training to some of her guns, by indenting the sides; by so
+shaping the ship’s side-plating as to allow guns mounted in
+the forward part to fire in the direction of the ship’s longitudinal
+axis. At first, slight use was made of this method:
+with the fine lines given to iron ships it appeared practicable
+in only a small degree. Moreover, it was objected to as
+causing a “funnelling” effect to the path of fragments of
+enemy shell or shot; it was found that shrapnel shell, fired
+at indented embrasures at Shoebury, broke up, and the
+number of balls which entered the portholes was ten times the
+number which entered similar portholes on a straight side.
+But, after the <i>Minotaur</i> class, less length and greater beam
+were given to ships, and recessed ports and indented sides
+therefore became more feasible.</p>
+
+<p>As guns increased in weight and individual importance the
+advantages of concentration became apparent. It was now
+undoubtedly desirable to protect <em>all</em> the guns; yet, if they
+had been strung out along the whole length of the ship, the
+weight, both of the guns and their protective armour, would
+prove to be an excessive burden to the ship. Hence the advantage
+of the <em>central battery</em>. By concentrating the guns into a
+central area, an armoured box amidships, the weight of armour
+necessary to protect them could be kept within reasonable
+limits, protection was afforded not only to the guns but to the
+vital parts of the ship, while at the same time the extremities
+were left lightly loaded. The complete water-line belt of
+armour was retained, but, both in the French and in the
+English navy, the system of complete protection as embodied
+in the <i>Gloire</i> and <i>Warrior</i> was given up.</p>
+
+<p>This device of the central battery was at first used solely for
+broadside guns. But the desire for ahead fire from behind
+armour soon caused the adaptation of the battery to allow it.
+Ports were cut in the two transverse bulkheads, the ship’s
+sides were indented, suitable gun-mountings were provided
+whereby some of the battery guns could be shifted from one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">271</span>
+porthole to another; and in this way it was secured that a
+fair proportion of the armament could be fired either on the
+beam or parallel with the keel-line of the ship. A power of
+offence was given in all directions, and no “point of impunity”
+existed.</p>
+
+<p>Ingenious were the arrangements resorted to, to obtain the
+maximum effect from the new medium-sized artillery which
+superseded the original truck-guns of the <i>Warrior</i> and former
+warships. The armoured boxes, instead of being made with
+their sides respectively parallel, and at right angles, to the
+sides of the ship, were sometimes set diagonally, with their
+sides at forty-five degrees with fore-and-aft. Sometimes they
+were octagonal, sometimes with curved bulkheads, sometimes
+two batteries were superposed one on the other; but always
+the desire was to utilize each gun over as large as possible an
+arc of fire, and always the tendency was to augment the ahead
+fire. The central battery formed a powerful citadel covering
+the whole beam of the ship amidships. The guns of this
+citadel, by the power of manœuvring given by the adoption
+of twin-screw propelling machinery, could, it was argued, be
+brought to bear in any direction desired. Of all directions,
+“right ahead” was considered to be of the greatest importance.
+End-on fighting, it was assumed, would always be resorted to
+in future; and it was the power of keeping the ship end-on
+to the enemy which was the great military advantage conferred
+by twin screws.</p>
+
+<p>A further step in the direction of giving to each gun a large
+arc of fire was taken in the introduction of the sponson. By
+means of this circular platform, projecting from the vessel’s
+side, a gun could be carried so as to fire through an arc of 180
+degrees. The same system obtained largely in the French
+ships of this period; by mounting guns in overhung circular
+turntables, one at each corner of the central battery <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">en
+caponière</i>, a large effective arc was obtained for them.</p>
+
+<p>Only one step more was necessary: that which would allow
+each gun to command the whole sweep of the horizon, and to
+be available for duty upon either beam and any bearing: the
+adoption of the <em>centre-line turret</em>. But before tracing the
+evolution of the turret, let us recapitulate the typical ships
+built between 1860 and 1873 which composed our central-battery
+fleet.</p>
+
+<p>The germ of the central-battery idea may be seen, perhaps,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">272</span>
+in the belted <i>Minotaur</i>, in which, in order to allow the chase
+guns to be fought from behind armour, a transverse armour
+bulkhead was worked, at a distance of some 25 feet aft of the
+bow. Had foreign influence not exerted itself it may be
+supposed with reason that from the <i>Minotaur</i> the central
+battery would have been evolved. However this may be, the
+evolution was hastened by French initiative; for in each of
+the two wooden ships <i>Magenta</i> and <i>Solferino</i>, laid down in ’59,
+was found a complete two-decked central battery whose whole
+depth was faced with armour for the protection of fifty-two
+5-ton cannon, the rest of the ship’s water-line being protected
+by an armour belt much narrower than that of the <i>Gloire</i>.
+In imitation of this plan our own designs were prepared; and
+gradually, and only by a series of steps, we achieved what our
+rivals had obtained in a single stride.</p>
+
+<p>In ’63 Sir Edward Reed, at that time Mr. Reed, one of the
+graduates of the school which in ’48 had been established at
+Portsmouth Dockyard, was appointed to the office of Chief
+Constructor of the Navy. Possessed of broad and original
+views and gifted to an unusual degree in the arts of exposition
+and argument, he made himself responsible for designs of
+warships differing widely from their large and unwieldy
+precursors. The first of these was the <i>Bellerophon</i>, a short and
+easily manœuvred, fully rigged belt-and-battery ship, carrying
+ten 12-ton Armstrong guns for broadside fire in the battery,
+and two 6-ton guns for ahead fire in a small armoured battery
+in the bows. Not only in the disposition of her armament was
+the <i>Bellerophon</i> different from all former ships. She was a
+radical departure from existing practice in many important
+respects. Constructionally, she was built on a new “bracket-frame”
+system designed to give great girder strength for
+small expenditure of weight, already in vogue for mercantile
+shipping. The use of watertight compartments was extended
+as a defence against an enemy ram, the system of double
+bottoms was extended as a consequence of the introduction of
+the torpedo. A powerful ram was carried, but the bow took a
+new form; a U- instead of a V-section was adopted in order
+to give buoyancy and thus minimize the tendency to plunge
+which was inherent in a fine-bowed ship; the section near the
+water-line being fined away so as to form a cut-water. Steel
+was largely used instead of iron, with a consequent saving of
+weight. A novel trim was given her—six feet by the stern—to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">273</span>
+give a deep immersion for the powerful screw and to assist
+the ship in turning quickly on her heel under the action of the
+balanced rudder; an adjustment which experience showed to
+have a detrimental effect on the propulsive efficiency.</p>
+
+<p>Next came the <i>Enterprise</i>, a still smaller ship. In the
+<i>Bellerophon</i>, as we have seen, there was no bow fire possible
+from the central battery; in the <i>Enterprise</i> this was obtained
+by piercing the athwartship bulkheads of the battery with
+ports, and substituting movable for fixed bulwarks. The
+same arrangement was developed in the <i>Pallas</i> and <i>Penelope</i>,
+in which ships the arc of fire of the corner guns of the battery
+was further extended by the device of indented sides. Then
+came the <i>Hercules</i>, generally like the <i>Bellerophon</i> but with
+indented sides and, as a novelty, alternative ports in the
+battery armour by means of which the corner guns could be
+trained, on revolving platforms, to fire either on the beam or
+nearly in line with the keel; a system which presented an
+obvious disadvantage in requiring twelve ports for eight guns.
+In the <i>Kaiser</i> class, designed by Sir Edward Reed shortly
+afterwards for the German government, this disadvantage was
+obviated by the expedient of forming ports in facets of the
+battery set at forty-five degrees with the keel-line, and by
+muzzle-pivoting guns.</p>
+
+<p>Both in the <i>Bellerophon</i> and the <i>Hercules</i> axial fire had only
+been obtained by the provision of special batteries, at the bow
+and stern, of partially protected guns. Now, this accumulation
+of weight at the extremities was a feature viewed with disfavour
+by naval opinion; moreover, these bow batteries did
+not meet the ever-growing demand for a considerable ahead
+fire. So in the <i>Sultan</i>, which carried a central-battery armament
+similar to that of the <i>Hercules</i>, an upper deck armoured
+battery was embodied, superposed on the after end of the
+main deck battery and carrying guns which gave both astern
+and beam fire; while, for bow fire, two 12-ton guns were
+mounted in the forecastle, but without any protection.</p>
+
+<p>The central-battery system had now to sustain the greatest
+attack that had yet been made upon it by the advocates of
+centre-line turrets. The position of the central-battery school
+was already somewhat shaken; ordnance had grown to a
+weight and power which justified the main argument of the
+turret advocates; Lissa had just shown the importance of
+being able to concentrate on any one bearing a maximum of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">274</span>
+offensive power. Controversy raged hotly on the relative
+merits of turret and central battery.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances the Admiralty in ’68 determined to
+consider both types, with a view to embodying the best arrangement
+in the new class of vessels then projected. The principal
+shipbuilders of the country were invited to compete, and were
+presented with specifications for a first-class warship so widely
+drawn as to leave them the greatest latitude in design. Of the
+seven designs submitted, three were of the central-battery
+type, three were turret ships, and one a compound of the two.
+After comparison with an Admiralty design produced by Sir
+Edward Reed, it was decided to adopt this in preference to
+those of the private firms, and to build a whole class of six
+ships to it. The result was the <i>Audacious</i> class—of which the
+best-remembered are the <i>Iron Duke</i> and the ill-fated <i>Vanguard</i>.
+In this class a strong all-round fire was obtained by arranging
+two central batteries of the same size, one on the main and
+one on the upper deck. The main deck battery had only
+broadside ports for its six 12-ton guns, each gun training
+thirty degrees before and abaft the beam; the upper deck
+battery had four guns of the same calibre mounted at ports
+cut in armour facets at forty-five degrees with the keel-line,
+and training through ninety degrees. To allow axial fire from
+these guns the upper battery was made to project slightly,
+sponson fashion, over the sides of the ship, and the bulwarks
+forward and aft of the battery were set slightly back toward
+the centre line to enable the guns to fire past them.</p>
+
+<p>A final stage in the evolution of the central-battery ship
+was attained in the <i>Alexandra</i>, laid down in ’72. The type
+had proved tenacious of life, and, for masted vessels, still held
+its own up to this point against the turret system. The design
+for the <i>Alexandra</i> gave as complete an all-round fire as was
+attainable in a central-battery ironclad; for the first time, it
+was said, we really had a masted ship with satisfactory all-round
+fire. Generally like the <i>Audacious</i> class, the <i>Alexandra</i>
+possessed an advantage in that the two forward guns of the
+upper deck battery were 25 ton instead of 18 ton, and in
+having, in addition to the six broadside guns of the main deck
+battery, two additional 18-ton guns mounted so as to be
+capable of firing nearly ahead and on the beam as well. Designed
+to fulfil the requirements of “end-on” fighting, she
+made a heavy sacrifice of broadside fire to obtain a maximum<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">275</span>
+of bow fire; and at a later date, when a different valuation
+had come to be placed on axial fire, this sacrifice was noted
+against her. “She could only take her place at a disadvantage
+in any form of battle which was suited to the armaments of
+the ironclads that had gone before her.”<a id="FNanchor_167" href="#Footnote_167" class="fnanchor">167</a> Nevertheless she
+was a formidable vessel. Defensively, too, she was pronounced
+to be conspicuously successful; her armour belt, which attained
+a thickness of 12 inches at the water-line amidships, was
+carried down at the bow to cover and strengthen the stem,
+and to protect the vessel from a raking fire. For the protection
+of the stern against a raking fire, an armour bulkhead was
+worked across the after part, extending to a depth of 6 feet
+below the water-line.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Alexandra</i> was the last of the purely “central battery”
+ships.<a id="FNanchor_168" href="#Footnote_168" class="fnanchor">168</a> By the time she was launched experience had set the
+seal of approval on another type, to the evolution of which
+we must now revert.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to trace to its source the invention of the
+armoured gun-turret. The inventive Ericsson is said to have
+envisaged at an early age the idea of a protected gun carried on
+a mobile raft, “an idea probably inspired by his river-rafts in
+Sweden”; and it is known that at a later date he planned in
+detail a primitive monitor, the design of which at the outbreak
+of the Crimean War he offered to Napoleon III. Perhaps the
+idea, which M. Paixhans first developed in public, of applying
+iron armour to a sea-going ship, induced the idea of a pivot-gun
+protected by an armour shield. A protected armament was
+found, as we have seen, in the French batteries built for the
+assault of Kinburn: the armoured vessel and the armoured
+gun were first embodied in the same unit; and though these
+units were the first to be tried in actual war, yet some years
+previously, in 1842 or thereabouts, a Mr. Stevens of New York
+had proposed and made an armoured floating battery. But in
+neither of these instances was the gun in a turret. The turret<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">276</span>
+idea, like so many other inventions, had an independent
+development in Europe and in America. In each case war
+supplied the incentive. In America, in ’62, Ericsson himself
+produced in a national emergency the <i>Monitor</i>, the low,
+shallow-draft armoured vessel carrying two 11-inch Dahlgren
+guns in a steam-rotated turret which served to counter the
+Southern <i>Merrimac</i>, the rasée with the fixed penthouse armour
+roof over its guns which the Confederates had built by the light
+of French experience.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Monitor</i>, both in design and in the circumstances of its
+production, was a great achievement; its success gave sanction
+to the revolving turret as a form of structure by means of
+which a big gun could be carried and trained. Nevertheless it
+is doubtful whether it influenced to an appreciable degree the
+evolution of the sea-going turret ship on this side of the
+Atlantic. Already, when the <i>Monitor</i> fought her action with
+the <i>Merrimac</i>, the turret had been adopted in coast-defence
+ships ordered for European powers; and, dramatic though
+it was, the incident of Hampton Roads afforded merely a
+confirmation of the effectiveness of the turret form of gun
+mounting. It was to an episode of the Crimean War that
+the development of the sea-going turret ship was directly due.</p>
+
+<p>In the Sea of Azov, in the spring of 1855, Commander
+Cowper Coles, of H.M. steamer <i>Stromboli</i>, constructed in a
+single night, of barrels, spars and boards, a raft capable of
+bearing heavy artillery, which he named the <i>Lady Nancy</i>; by
+means of which he brought within range and destroyed by
+shell fire the Russian stores at Taganrog.</p>
+
+<p>The naval operations of this war had drawn general attention
+to the special problems in connection with the navigation of
+shallow waters by vessels with a heavy armament, and Commander
+Coles’ exploit immediately excited official interest.
+Models of armed rafts were submitted by him for Admiralty
+inspection, and shortly afterwards he was himself ordered home
+to give advice upon the requirements of this form of construction:
+in connection with which the necessity for armour
+protection for the gun or guns was a point early insisted on by
+him. In that same year he sketched a design for a belted
+shallow-draught vessel for the attack of stationary forts
+which he equipped with guns of the heaviest pattern, each
+working in a fixed hemispherical shield. From the fixed shield
+to a revolving turret was a small step. In a short time Commander<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">277</span>
+Coles made himself the enthusiastic exponent of
+armour-protected guns, mounted in cupolas or turrets on or
+near the centre-line of a ship so as to give a command over
+nearly the whole sweep of the horizon. By such a system, he
+argued, a vessel could be endowed with a concentrated offensive
+power on any bearing unapproachable by broadside armament,
+however designed; all guns were effective on almost any
+bearing without diverting the ship, their force required no
+evolution to elicit, existing as it did when the ship was at
+anchor, in dry dock or on a constant course. The height of the
+turrets gave them a plunging fire, an effect particularly useful
+now that ships’ sides were armoured and their decks alone
+remained penetrable.</p>
+
+<p>His advocacy of the turret system, aided by the technical
+assistance of Mr. Brunel, made a deep impression on a large
+section of the public and gained the interest of the Prince
+Consort. He did not profess the technical knowledge of a
+shipbuilder or designer; but in his insistence on the advantages
+to be derived from the method of mounting guns on the centre-line
+he wielded arguments of great natural force, and enlisted
+in his favour the professional sympathies of eminent builders
+and naval men. In 1860 he produced before the newly
+founded Institution of Naval Architects a plan of a sea-going
+ship carrying nine turrets, seven on the centre-line and
+two off-set so as to allow ahead fire from three turrets.
+In the following year he wrote to the Admiralty undertaking to
+prove that a vessel could be built on his principle of armament
+100 feet shorter than the <i>Warrior</i> and in all military respects
+her superior: “I will guarantee to disable and capture her in
+an hour; she shall draw four foot less water, require only half
+the crew, and cost the country for building at least £100,000
+less. I am ready to stand or fall on these assertions.”</p>
+
+<p>Such a pronouncement could not be lightly passed over.
+Moreover, coast-defence vessels embodying the turret system—light-draught
+vessels characterized by small tonnage, small
+cost and indifferent sea-going qualities, in combination with
+massive protection and a large offensive armament—were
+already being built by the private firms of this country for
+various foreign powers. In ’61, for instance, Denmark had
+ordered the <i>Rolf Krake</i>, a turret gunboat carrying a 4½-inch
+belt and four 68-pounder guns, a pair in each of two armoured
+turrets; which three years later proved her value in action<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">278</span>
+against a nominally superior force. Prussia had ordered her
+first ironclad, a turret ship. Holland, Italy, Brazil, Russia—all
+were known to be purchasing coast-defence vessels of the
+turret type. And two sea-going turret ships which had been
+ordered by the American Confederates, and which were
+building in this country—the <i>Wyvern</i> and <i>Scorpion</i>—had been
+seized and purchased by our government.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances the Admiralty, though there was a
+preponderance of official opinion against the idea, resolved to
+countenance the turret system and give it a trial. The
+<i>Royal Sovereign</i> was cut down from a three-decker of 120 guns,
+armoured with a 5½-inch belt and a 1-inch deck, and equipped
+with four turrets carrying a total of five 12½-ton guns—two in
+the foremost and one in the remaining turrets. At the same
+time the <i>Prince Albert</i>, also a four-turret ship, was laid down by
+the firm of Samuda to an Admiralty order. These ships were a
+distinct success so far as the armament was concerned. They
+were certainly not ocean-going ships. There were many faults
+and undesirable features to be found in them. But the
+disposition of the armament was found satisfactory, and the
+captain of the <i>Royal Sovereign</i> reported most favourably of his
+ship, describing her as the most formidable man-of-war; “her
+handiness, speed, weight of broadside, and the small target
+she offers, increase tenfold her powers of assault and
+retreat.”</p>
+
+<p>Time, and the progress of artillery, were on the side of
+Captain Cowper Coles. He saw, and the Admiralty advisers
+felt, that although it was possible to work existing guns on the
+broadside, yet increase in the size and weight of guns would
+sooner or later necessitate the mounting of them on accurately
+balanced turntables secured by central pivots on the centre-line.
+Only by such a method could the largest gun be worked
+and the full weight of metal be poured, as required, on either
+broadside. In fact the turret, the original object of which was
+purely defensive, was now regarded from a quite different point
+of view: as a convenient device by which guns of the highest
+calibre could be carried and worked. Was complicated
+machinery objected to? The common winch, the rack and
+pinion, were in constant use on every railway turntable, nor
+had the American turrets ever failed in action or caused a loss
+of confidence in their reliability. Reliance upon a central pivot
+was disliked? Yet the pivot was already in use for holding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">279</span>
+the broadside guns of our ironclads—a mere bolt 4 inches in
+diameter and itself exposed to gunfire.<a id="FNanchor_169" href="#Footnote_169" class="fnanchor">169</a></p>
+
+<p>The Admiralty constructors were insistent on the practical
+difficulties which lay in the way of designing a satisfactory sea-going
+turret ship. The advantages which had been claimed for
+turrets were obvious, said Sir Edward Reed; the larger and
+heavier the individual gun, the greater the gain of mounting it
+in a turret. But enthusiastic advocates of this method lost
+sight of the fact that turrets were incompatible with masts and
+sails, and with the forecastle and high freeboard necessary for
+good sea-going qualities. At that time, 1865, it was possible to
+protect and work eight of the largest guns, mounted on the
+broadside, with as little expenditure of weight as would be
+required to mount four of the guns two in a turret on the
+centre-line; while in the latter case they could only fire in two
+different directions at the same time, whereas in the former
+they could fire in eight.</p>
+
+<p>In order to allow both sides in the controversy to come to
+grips with the practical difficulties, a committee was formed
+at the Admiralty in May, ’65, and Captain Coles was asked to
+produce a turret-ship design by the aid of a draughtsman and
+with the drawings of the <i>Pallas</i> for guidance. His design, a
+vessel showing two 600-pounders each mounted in a centre-line
+cupola, was not considered suitable. So the Board resolved to
+build a ship to Sir Edward Reed’s design—a fully rigged and
+masted, high-freeboard ship, with an armour belt and protected
+bow and stern batteries, and with two centre-line turrets amidships
+mounted over a central battery, each carrying two
+25-ton 600-pounder guns. This was the <i>Monarch</i>. She was
+the first truly ocean-going turret ship, and her performances
+at sea in ’69 in company with central-battery ships like the
+<i>Bellerophon</i> and <i>Hercules</i> proved her to be a valuable and
+efficient unit; by this experiment it was demonstrated, said
+Mr. Brassey, “that it was practicable to design a thoroughly
+seaworthy turret ship, although for sea-going purposes a
+central battery presents great advantages over the turret
+system.”</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Captain Coles had protested vigorously
+against the design of the <i>Monarch</i> as representative of his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">280</span>
+system. The plan was not his; the turrets were mounted so
+high that there was a large area to protect and the ship, unlike
+the low-freeboard ships of his own design, presented a large
+target. But his chief objection was, that the presence of a
+forecastle and an armoured bow battery annihilated the whole
+advantage of turret guns by preventing ahead fire from them.
+After protracted negotiations he obtained Admiralty permission
+to have a ship built to satisfy his own views and
+independently of criticism from Admiralty officials. In ’69 the
+<i>Captain</i>, built by Messrs. Laird to his drawings, was launched
+at Birkenhead. The <i>Captain</i>, although generally similar
+to the <i>Monarch</i> (the growth of artillery limited the number
+of the turrets to two), differed from her in one important
+respect: her designed freeboard was only 8 feet as compared
+with 14; and, by some error in calculation, this dimension
+proved to be only 6 feet when the vessel was in sea-going trim.
+This low freeboard, in conjunction with her large sail-area,
+produced a condition of instability at large angles of heel
+which led to disaster and sealed the doom of the fully rigged
+turret ship.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the <i>Captain</i> ahead fire was not found possible.
+In the original plans she had the low freeboard favoured by her
+designer; but in the later plans poops and forecastles were
+added to give the necessary sea-going qualities, and ahead
+fire was thereby sacrificed. Complete mastage was given her:
+iron masts in the form of tripods to avoid the use of shrouds
+and to give as clear an arc of fire as possible. The rigging
+was all stopped short at, and worked from, a narrow flying
+deck which was built above the turrets. This flying deck
+provided a working space for the crew, who in a moderately
+rough sea would not be able to make use of the low upper
+deck.</p>
+
+<div id="ip_280" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 38em;">
+  <img src="images/i_p280.jpg" width="608" height="381" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p>THE <i>MONARCH</i></p>
+
+<p class="smaller">From a photograph by Symonds, Portsmouth</p></div></div>
+
+<p>On the night of September 6th, 1870, the <i>Captain</i> capsized
+in a heavy sea off C. Finisterre. In St. Paul’s Cathedral the
+memorial brass, erected in commemoration of this disaster,
+records that the <i>Captain</i> was built in deference to public
+opinion expressed in parliament and through other channels,
+and in opposition to the views and opinions of the Controller
+and his department; and that the evidence all tended to show
+that they generally disapproved of her construction.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">281</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>The difficulty of combining the turret system with a full rig
+of masts and sails had for a long time been recognized. Some
+eighteen months before the loss of the <i>Captain</i>, the Admiralty,
+in the presence of the increasing efficiency of steam machinery,
+had decided to construct a mastless sea-going turret ship.</p>
+
+<p>American experience greatly influenced this decision. In
+America, where the principle of machinery for propulsion and
+for working the guns had been accepted with a greater readiness
+than in Europe, the line of development had been more direct.
+From the original <i>Monitor</i> a whole series of derivatives had
+been produced, and from coast-defence vessels of a single
+turret advance had been made to ocean-going mastless turret
+ships of low freeboard, carrying the largest smooth-bore guns.
+These ocean monitors, lacking though they did some features
+which were considered indispensable in British warships, yet
+exerted an undoubted influence upon our own construction.
+Weakly designed in many respects, with small fuel capacity,
+and unsteady as gun platforms, they were regarded by some
+writers as the true progenitors of the class of warship which
+now superseded the masted vessels of the ’sixties.</p>
+
+<p>The problem of the naval architect henceforth was greatly
+simplified. Masts and sails, which had in the past proved
+such an embarrassment, were now frankly abandoned, with
+the result that a thousand difficulties which had beset the
+designer of the turret ship were swept away. No longer had
+the stability curve to conform to the conflicting requirements
+of the sailing vessel and the gun platform. The large weight
+gained by dispensing with masts and sails could be embodied
+as an addition to the armament or to the fuel carried. The
+single screw, which in the case of a ship intended to use sails
+had been almost a necessity, could be replaced by twin screws
+of greater power; and the change would remove the liability
+of complete disablement, and give a number of constructive
+advantages which it is unnecessary to enumerate. Indeed, it
+may be said conversely, that the adoption of twin screws so
+improved the reliability of the propelling machinery as to
+make practicable the abandonment of masts and sails.</p>
+
+<p>In April, 1869, the <i>Devastation</i> was commenced. Designed
+by Sir Edward Reed, she “forestalled, rather than profited<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">282</span>
+by, the dreadful lesson of the <i>Captain</i> and by her success gave
+proof of the judgment and initiative of the Board and their
+adviser.” Sir Edward Reed had recognized, more fully than
+his critics, the conflicting elements inherent in the rigged
+turret ship. And it is significant that, just at a time when the
+assured success of the <i>Monarch</i> must have been a gratification
+to her designer, he should record: “My clear and strong
+conviction at the moment of writing these lines [March 31st,
+1869] is that no satisfactorily designed turret ship with rigging
+has yet been built, or even laid down.”</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Devastation</i> design was a development of those of some
+previous mastless turret ships, the <i>Cerberus</i>, the <i>Hotspur</i>, and
+the <i>Glatton</i> class, which had embodied Sir Edward Reed’s
+ideas as to the requirements of coast-service vessels. At first
+given four 25-ton guns, the <i>Devastation</i> was ultimately armed
+with four M.L. guns each weighing 35 tons and carried in
+turrets on the centre-line, one at each end of a central breastwork,
+150 feet in length, built round the funnels.</p>
+
+<p>This central breastwork, raised above the upper deck and
+armoured along its sides with 10-inch steel, supported the two
+turrets and enabled the guns to be carried at a desirable height
+above the water-line. The upper deck itself was low. The
+sides, up to its level, were protected by a complete belt of
+armour 8 inches in thickness.</p>
+
+<p>The abolition of masts and rigging had a striking effect on the
+design. Compared with the <i>Monarch</i>, of nearly the same
+tonnage, she carried heavier guns, double the weight of
+armour, double the amount of fuel, and required little more
+than half the crew to work her.</p>
+
+<p>The loss of the <i>Captain</i>, confirming the doubts which
+experts had expressed as to the seaworthiness of rigged turret
+ships, caused an alarm for the safety of all turret ships, built
+and building. In the public mind, in consequence of the
+reported shortcomings of the American monitors and the
+known deficiencies of our coast-defence vessels, the belief was
+growing that the turret system was inherently unsafe. It was
+believed, also, that mastless ships, having no spread of sail to
+steady their motion, would be liable to excessive and dangerous
+rolling. To allay the uneasiness as to the safety of the <i>Devastation</i>
+and her type a Committee on Designs was formed. The
+Committee, composed of some of the most eminent of naval
+architects and officers, made a report in the spring of ’71<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">283</span>
+which, though it met with considerable opposition from one
+school, nevertheless “formed the groundwork upon which the
+English Admiralty determined to construct their policy for
+the future.” The Committee pronounced altogether against
+fully rigged ships for the line of battle; it was impossible, in
+their opinion, to combine in the same vessel great offensive
+and defensive power and a full spread of canvas. They considered
+the <i>Devastation</i> class as the most suitable type of
+armoured ship for future service, and found them to have
+sufficient stability for safety and to be in almost all respects
+a satisfactory design of warship. As regards the <i>Devastation</i>
+herself they recommended some minor alterations, the effect
+of which was to improve the stability of the ship and to give
+greater accommodation for the crew. The main alteration
+consisted in the carrying up of the ship’s sides amidships to
+the level of the central breastwork, and in continuing the
+breastwork deck outward to the sides, to form unarmoured
+side superstructures.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the <i>Devastation</i>, two others of the type were laid
+down shortly afterwards, the <i>Thunderer</i> and the <i>Dreadnought</i>.
+The three ships differed from each other slightly in dimensions,
+but embodied the same characteristic features. Of chief interest
+is the transition of the unarmoured side superstructures,
+in the <i>Devastation</i>, to an armoured central battery of the same
+width as the ship, in the <i>Dreadnought</i>. The influence of Sir
+Edward Reed, who had now given place to Mr. Nathaniel
+Barnaby as Chief Constructor at the Admiralty, was apparent
+in this evolution. In ’73 he stated publicly his objections to
+the carrying up of the <i>Devastation’s</i> sides, and pictured a shell
+entering the unarmoured superstructure and blowing up all
+the light iron structure in front of the guns. The result was
+seen in the <i>Dreadnought</i>, in which the breastwork was made a
+continuation of the ship’s side and armoured. More freeboard
+was also given to the forecastle and the after deck than was
+found in the <i>Devastation</i> and <i>Thunderer</i>, with the desire to
+make the vessel drier and more comfortable; and, owing to
+the height at which the turrets were carried, this was found
+possible without restricting the arcs of fire of the guns. The
+movement from the monitor type toward the modern battleship
+in respect of freeboard is clearly traced in these three
+ships of the <i>Devastation</i> class. Low freeboard, in spite of its
+effect in rendering inconspicuous the ship in which it was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">284</span>
+embodied, was gradually being abandoned. High freeboard
+was foreshadowed for future ships. The loss of the <i>Captain</i>
+had led to a serious study, by naval architects and mathematicians,
+of the stability of warships at large angles of rolling,
+and the advantages of high freeboard were by this time widely
+appreciated. High freeboard not only made a ship more
+habitable; by the form of stability curve it gave it allowed
+a vessel’s beam to be reduced with safety, and thereby contributed
+to a steadier and more easily propelled ship than
+would have been obtained without it.</p>
+
+<p>In other respects these three ships show the lines along
+which progress was being made. In the turrets of the <i>Devastation</i>
+the twin 35-ton guns had been loaded and worked by
+hand; but in the forward turret of the <i>Thunderer</i> the new
+hydraulic system of Messrs. Armstrong was applied with
+success to two 38-ton 12-inch guns; and this system was
+adopted for both turrets of the <i>Dreadnought</i>. The guns were
+loaded externally, the turrets being revolved by steam, after
+firing, till the guns were on the requisite bearing; they were
+then depressed by hydraulic power, and the 700-pound projectiles
+were rammed into their muzzles by a telescopic
+hydraulic rammer. In 1879 an accident occurred in the
+<i>Thunderer</i> which helped, it is said, to hasten the return to
+breech-loading guns. Simultaneous firing was being carried
+out; one of the guns missed fire without anyone either inside
+or outside the turret being aware of it. The guns were loaded
+again, and, on being discharged, one of them burst. Such
+double-loading, it was clearly seen, would not have obtained
+with breech-loading guns.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Devastation</i> had twin screws driven by independent
+engines, but these were non-compound engines of the trunk
+type working with a maximum steam pressure of 30 lbs. per
+square inch. In the <i>Dreadnought</i> an advance had been made
+to compound the three-cylinder vertical engines, working with
+60 lbs. per square inch in engine-rooms divided by a longitudinal
+watertight bulkhead.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>The evolution of the battleship was being forced along at a
+hot pace by the evolution of artillery. No sooner had the
+mastless turret ship received the sanction of the Committee on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">285</span>
+Designs as the standard type for warfare of the immediate
+future, than a sudden increase in the power of guns necessitated
+the consideration of new principles and brought into being a
+new type.</p>
+
+<p>So far, defence had managed to compete fairly successfully
+with offence; the naval architect, by devoting as much as
+25 per cent of the total of a ship’s weight to protective armour,
+had been able to keep level with the artillerist. But it was
+clear that he could not follow much further, by the existing
+methods. Armour could not be thickened indefinitely.
+Penetrable armour was no better than none; worse, in fact,
+since it was a superfluity, and in a ship a superfluity was
+doubly wasteful, implying a loss of strength in some other
+direction. Armour might have to go altogether? It seemed
+that, after all, the predictions of Sir Howard Douglas might
+well come true; that, just as gunpowder had forced the foot
+soldier, after burdening him with an ever-increasing weight, to
+dispense altogether with body-armour, so rifled artillery would
+render ship armour increasingly ineffectual and, eventually,
+an altogether useless encumbrance.</p>
+
+<p>The advance in artillery took place in connection with
+Italian construction. In 1872 Italy laid down the <i>Duilio</i>,
+and a year later the <i>Dandolo</i>, two mastless turret ships of a
+novel class, engined by Penn and Maudsley, and equipped
+with two diagonally placed turrets each designed to carry two
+60-ton Armstrong guns; guns which were afterwards changed
+to 100-ton guns of 17¾ inches bore. In the same ships the
+Italians introduced a solution of the armour difficulty. They
+abandoned vertical armour altogether, except for a very thick
+belt over the central portion of each vessel which was to
+protect the vital machinery and the gun turrets.</p>
+
+<p>The reply to these was the <i>Inflexible</i>, laid down in ’74.</p>
+
+<p>We have already seen how, in the last of the <i>Devastation</i>
+class, the central armoured breastwork was widened to the full
+beam of the ship. It had been proposed by Mr. Barnaby to
+take advantage of this arrangement to off-set the two turrets
+of the <i>Dreadnought</i> at a distance each side of the centre line of
+the ship, so as to allow a powerful ahead fire. Although not
+then approved, this suggestion was embodied in the <i>Inflexible</i>
+as her most distinctive feature. In this, however, she was
+forestalled by the Italians. Her two turrets, each weighing
+750 tons, were carried diagonally on a central armoured citadel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">286</span>
+plated with compound armour of a maximum thickness of
+24 inches. Forward and aft of this citadel the unarmoured
+ends were built flush with it, and along the centre line was
+built, the whole length of the ship, a narrow superstructure.
+This superstructure did not contribute anything to her
+stability; nor was such contribution needed in view of the
+comparatively high freeboard. But it rendered unnecessary
+a flying deck such as had been fitted in the <i>Devastation</i> class, and
+provided accommodation for the crew, without restricting to
+any appreciable degree the arcs of fire of the big guns.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Inflexible</i> was of over 11,000 tons displacement, the
+heaviest and most powerful warship that had ever been built.
+She was 320 feet in length and 75 feet broad at the water-line;
+this unprecedented beam being required, in spite of the high
+freeboard, on account of the height at which the turrets
+were carried. Nevertheless, so improved was her propulsive
+efficiency as compared with that of former ships, so great the
+gain resulting from Mr. Froude’s historic researches on ship
+form and the action of propellers, that a speed of 15 knots was
+obtained at a relatively small expense in horse-power.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of sails was not yet altogether dead. In deference
+to a strong naval opinion she was originally designed to carry
+two pole masts, with sails for steadying her motion in a seaway
+and as a standby in the event of her propelling machinery
+being disabled. But this scheme was modified owing to the
+possibility of falling masts and rigging interfering with the
+working of guns and screw in action. It was decided that
+she should be brig-rigged for peace service; and that, on
+an anticipation of war, she should be docked to allow the
+cruising masts to be removed and replaced by two short iron
+masts without yards for signalling and for carrying crows’
+nests.</p>
+
+<p>But it was in the bold abandonment of armour for the ends
+of the ship and its concentration on the sides of the citadel
+that the <i>Inflexible</i> design was most freely criticized. Armour,
+except in the form of an under-water protective deck, was not
+used at all forward and aft of the citadel. The ends of the
+ship were left unprotected, but subdivided; the compartments
+near the water-line formed watertight tanks filled with
+coals, stores, or—next to the side of the ship—cork. This
+criticism was directed from two directions.</p>
+
+<p>To many naval men the attempt to beat the gun by adding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">287</span>
+to the thickness of the armour was a game no longer worth the
+candle. The point of view, moreover, that the defensive power
+of a ship was accurately represented by the defensive power
+of an armour patch upon its side was condemned as altogether
+too partial and theoretical. The same fallacy was abroad in
+respect of guns. “Men were apt to think and speak as if the
+mounting of a single excessively heavy gun in a ship would
+make her exceptionally powerful, no matter what number of
+powerful, but still less powerful, guns were displaced to make
+room for it. The targets and guns at Shoeburyness were held
+to be real measures of the defensive and offensive powers of
+ships.”<a id="FNanchor_170" href="#Footnote_170" class="fnanchor">170</a></p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, experience was at this time bringing to
+light the inefficiency of heavy naval artillery. In ’71 a paper
+by Captain Colomb attracted attention, in which he analysed
+the effective gun power of the <i>Monarch</i>, and showed, by the
+light of experiments carried out by her against a rock off Vigo
+in company with <i>Captain</i> and <i>Hercules</i>, that “in six minutes
+from the opening of her fire on the sister ship at 1000 yards, she
+will have fired twelve shot, of which one will have hit and
+another may have glanced, and it remains an even chance
+whether the single hit will have penetrated the enemy’s
+armour.” In the following summer Mr. Barnaby was himself
+impressed with the difficulty which the <i>Hotspur</i> experienced in
+hitting the turret of the <i>Glatton</i> at a range of 200 yards in
+the smooth water of Portland Harbour: an experiment which,
+while confirming confidence in the reliability of a turret and its
+power to withstand shock, led him to question whether we were
+wise to put so much weight into the protection of turrets, and
+whether it might not be a better plan to stint armour on guns
+in order to add to their number and power.</p>
+
+<p>From another direction the criticism was more directly
+effective. In ’75 Sir Edward Reed, now a private member of
+parliament, made a pronouncement on his return from a visit
+to Italy in the following words: “The Italian ships <i>Duilio</i>
+and <i>Dandolo</i> are exposed, in my opinion, beyond all doubt or
+question, to speedy destruction. I fear I can only express my
+apprehension that the Italians are pursuing a totally wrong
+course, and one which is likely to result in disaster.” The
+Italian Minister of Marine indignantly refuted the assertion,
+based as it must have been (he said) on incomplete information;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">288</span>
+and the construction of the <i>Duilio</i> and the <i>Dandolo</i>
+proceeded. But the remarks of the ex-Chief Constructor
+applied with equal force to the <i>Inflexible</i>; and in the following
+session he stated as much in the House of Commons. It was
+possible, he insisted, that in an action the cork and stores
+which filled the unarmoured ends of the <i>Inflexible</i> might be shot
+away, and the ends riddled and water-logged; and that in
+such an event the citadel, though intact, would not have
+sufficient stability to save the ship from capsizing.</p>
+
+<p>The reply of the Admiralty was to the effect that Sir Edward
+Reed had assumed an extreme case, and that such a complete
+destruction as he had envisaged was, even if possible, never
+likely to occur in a naval action.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of both statements was to cause widespread
+anxiety in the public mind, and a lamentable loss of confidence
+in the projected warship. A decision was therefore made
+to appoint another Committee, of unquestioned eminence and
+freedom from bias, to investigate and report on the <i>Inflexible</i>
+design. In due course the Committee reported. They confirmed
+in a long statement the Admiralty point of view that
+the complete penetration and water-logging of the unarmoured
+ends of the ship, and the blowing out of the whole of the stores
+and the cork by the action of shell fire, was a very highly
+improbable contingency; they found that the ship, if reduced
+to the extremest limit of instability likely to occur, viz. with
+her ends completely riddled and water-logged, but with the
+stores and cork remaining and adding buoyancy, would still
+possess a sufficient reserve both of buoyancy and of stability;
+and, balancing the vulnerability of the citadel with its 24-inch
+armour and the destructibility of the unarmoured ends, they
+came to the conclusion that the unarmoured ends were as well
+able as the armoured citadel to bear the part assigned to them
+in encountering the risks of naval warfare, and that therefore a
+just balance had been maintained in the design, so that out of a
+given set of conditions a good result had been obtained. Except
+that a recommendation was made that the system of cork
+chambers should be extended, no structural alteration from the
+existing design was proposed.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Inflexible</i> was followed by its smaller derivatives, the
+<i>Ajax</i> and <i>Agamemnon</i>, <i>Colossus</i> and <i>Edinburgh</i>, and by the
+<i>Conqueror</i>, an improved <i>Rupert</i>, with a single turret. Movement
+was in the direction of smaller displacements and less armour;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">289</span>
+construction was influenced at this time more by Italian than
+by French practice.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>All through this transitional decade, 1870–80, experience and
+various new developments were imperceptibly causing a
+gradual change of opinion as to what constituted the best type
+of battleship. At no period, perhaps, was the warship more
+obviously a compromise, at no time were the limitations of size
+and weight more keenly felt. So many considerations interacted
+with one another, so conflicting were the claims made of
+the naval architect, that it appeared indeed almost impossible
+to embody them in a satisfactory design. (And yet nothing is
+more remarkable than the unanimity with which designers,
+given certain conditions, arrived at the same final result: the
+<i>Duilio</i> and the <i>Inflexible</i> are a case in point.) Whatever the
+design might be, it was open to powerful criticism. And the
+chief part of this criticism was directed, as we have seen, against
+the use and disposition of the armour.</p>
+
+<p>In ’73 Mr. Barnaby had questioned the wisdom of expending
+a large weight in the protection of turrets. Three years later
+Commander Noel, in a Prize Essay, was advocating unarmoured
+batteries, with a view to multiplying the number of
+battery guns, utilizing for offence the weight thus saved. In
+’73 Mr. Barnaby had argued that the stinting of armour on the
+hull in order to thicken it on the battery would drive the enemy
+to multiply his light and medium machine-guns. Within a
+few years warships were bristling with Gatling and Gardner,
+Nordenfelt and Hotchkiss guns, which by their presence gave a
+new value to armour, however thin. Mr. Froude, too, in his
+experiments in connection with the <i>Inflexible</i>, brought into
+prominence the advantage which thin armour on a ship’s ends
+conferred on her stability. The idea of substituting cellular
+construction for armour was proving attractive. While the
+French continued to favour the complete water-line belt, the
+Italians went to the limit in the <i>Italia</i> and <i>Lepanto</i>, in which
+the water-line was left entirely unprotected by side armour.
+Such armour as was carried was embodied in the form of a
+protective deck, a feature found above water and in conjunction
+with a side belt in our <i>Devastation</i> class, and under water
+and without side armour in the <i>Inflexible</i> and smaller contemporary<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">290</span>
+ships. The protective deck, which covered the
+vitals of a ship and deflected shot and shell from its surface,
+was a device which found increasing favour with naval
+architects. It was advocated by the Committee on Designs in
+’71 as possessing important advantages over a similar weight
+of side armour. If placed at some distance below water it
+formed the roof of a submerged hull structure which was
+immune from damage by gun-fire, the sides of this hull being
+protected sufficiently by sea-water. If, as was subsequently
+done, the protective deck were placed at a small distance above
+water, and if the sides of it were bent down so as to meet the
+ship’s sides at a distance below water beyond which a shot was
+unlikely to penetrate, the deck offered other advantages: the
+vital machinery, though now partly above water, was still
+protected, the sloping parts of the deck being able to deflect
+shots which would have penetrated a much thicker vertical
+plate; moreover, if the ship’s sides were riddled in action, the
+protective deck still preserved a large portion of the water-line
+area intact, and thereby secured her lateral stability.</p>
+
+<p>The ram was still in favour, but opinion was slowly changing
+as to the necessity for bow-fire. “It is my impression,” wrote
+Commander Noel in ’76, “that too great a value was attached
+by some of the authorities, two or three years ago, to bow-fire;
+and that the manœuvring of a fleet in action will be more for the
+purpose of using the ram effectually, and the guns in broadsides
+on passing the enemy.” The firing of the heavy guns in
+the approach to ram was considered undesirable, owing to the
+obscuring of the scene by smoke. In short, bow-fire was not
+of primary importance, and the disposition of armament which
+sought to obtain a concentration of bow-fire at the expense of
+broadside fire was based on a false principle. Commander Noel
+advocated a broadside ship, of moderate tonnage, with an
+unarmoured battery of moderate-size guns, with an armour
+belt round her water-line of 10-inch armour tapering to 5 inches
+forward and aft, and backed by wood and coal. Watertight
+subdivisions he proposed as a defence against the ram and the
+torpedo.</p>
+
+<p>As the decade progressed the navy and naval affairs were
+less and less a subject of public interest. The design of warships
+continued to be discussed by a small circle, but the
+Board, alive to the transitional nature of the citadel ships, and
+under the influence of a national movement for retrenchment<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">291</span>
+and economy, had almost ceased to build. In the three years
+’76, ’77, and ’78 England laid down only two armoured battleships,
+while France laid down a dozen. In ’78 four foreign ships
+building in this country were hastily purchased on a Vote of
+Credit. But by 1880 the French armoured navy was once more
+equal in strength to that of England.</p>
+
+<p>The gun, by its rapid evolution, was blocking design. The
+long debates over sails and steam had been settled; it was
+now the achievement of powerful breech-loading guns of large
+and small calibre which threw all existing ideas of warship
+design into the melting-pot. It became known that the French
+at last possessed efficient breech-loading guns; and artillerists
+showed that, in spite of the inconvenience of long-barrelled
+guns in ships, long barrels and slow-burning powder were
+necessary if greater powers were to be developed, and that our
+short-barrelled muzzle-loaders were already becoming obsolete.
+In the summer of ’79 public interest was aroused by the arrival
+at Spithead of some Chinese gunboats built by the firm of
+Armstrong. These gunboats each carried two 12-ton breech-loading
+guns mounted on centre pivots, one forward and one
+aft: guns so powerful and efficient compared with any mounted
+in the Royal Navy, that the possibilities of the diminutive craft
+were instantly appreciated. The contest between B.L. and
+M.L. was approaching a climax. The 100-ton M.L. gun was
+undergoing proof at Woolwich. In August a committee of naval
+officers visited Germany to witness and report upon the trials
+of Krupp’s new breech-loaders, and these trials, and those of
+Armstrong in this country, confirmed the formidable character
+of the new ordnance. Armour was also improving its power;
+compound armour (of combined steel and iron) was found to
+possess unexpected powers of resistance to penetration.</p>
+
+<p>The torpedo, moreover, in its growing efficiency was now
+beginning to have an effect, not only on the details of ship
+design, but on the whole nature of naval warfare. The
+influence of the torpedo in its various forms had been appreciated
+in the early days of the decade.<a id="FNanchor_171" href="#Footnote_171" class="fnanchor">171</a> The catastrophic but,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">292</span>
+happily, fictitious Battle of Dorking, fought in the pages of
+<cite>Blackwood’s Magazine</cite> in 1871, had been preceded by a naval
+action in which all but one of our fine ironclads had been sunk
+by torpedoes in attempting to ram the French fleet. The
+moral was obvious. From that time onwards the potential
+effect of the torpedo was seen to be very great. The ram
+seemed at last to have found a check. And it appeared that,
+in combating the ram, the torpedo had once more given the
+primacy to the fast-improving gun. Broadside actions of the
+old type, carried on at high range and speed, were predicted.<a id="FNanchor_172" href="#Footnote_172" class="fnanchor">172</a></p>
+
+<p>In 1880 a new type of battleship was evolved of sufficient
+permanence to form the basis of whole classes of future ships.</p>
+
+<p>An intimate account of the genesis of the <i>Collingwood</i> design
+is given us by the biographer of Sir Cooper Key, to illustrate
+the manner in which that prescient administrator succeeded in
+forecasting the trend of future construction. In ’66, he says,
+Captain Key had put on paper a résumé of his ideas on warship
+design which was clearly several years in advance of current
+opinion. Briefly, he had maintained that the specifications for
+our first-class battleships of the future should be drawn to
+cover the following features so far as possible:—moderate
+speed, small length and great handiness; perfect protection
+for vital parts and a complete water-line belt, rather than
+protection for personnel and above-water structure; a main-deck
+armament of broadside guns of medium calibre amidships,
+and of lighter calibre towards the ends, in combination with
+an upper-deck armament of four large guns in two unarmoured
+barbettes, one mounted before the foremast and one abaft the
+mizzen-mast; no sails. But for some years no approach was
+made to this ideal ship of Captain Key’s; the ideas it embodied
+were antagonistic to those held by the great majority of his
+brother officers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">293</span>
+“In 1878 there had been laid down by the French, at Toulon,
+a ship called the <i>Caiman</i>. She was 278 feet long, and had a
+speed of 14½ knots. She carried a single 42-cm. breech-loading
+rifled gun at the bow, and another at the stern, each mounted <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">en
+barbette</i>, and she further carried on each broadside, between the
+barbettes, two 10-cm. guns, besides machine-guns. She was
+heavily armoured by a water-line belt 19½ inches thick amidships,
+and tapering in thickness towards bow and stern. The
+middle part of the ship, between the barbettes, was further
+protected by a steel deck 2·8 inches thick. Evidently, there
+was in this ship some approach to that general ideal which had
+been in Sir Cooper Key’s mind in 1866—not, however, more
+than this. She gave a sort of hint to the constructors at the
+Admiralty, and, before Sir Cooper Key joined the Board, a
+new design, based indeed on the <i>Caiman’s</i> hint, but yet
+differing widely from her, and, by as much as she differed,
+approaching more nearly to Sir Cooper Key’s ideal, was in
+process of completion there. The ship was the <i>Collingwood</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Collingwood</i> was of 9150 tons displacement, 325 feet in
+length, 68 feet in breadth, and 15·7 knots speed. There was
+in her, for the first time in the navy, that particular disposition
+of guns which Captain Key had recommended in ’66: two
+guns at bow, two at stern, on turntables, and a strong broadside
+armament between them. In the end the adoption of a
+breech-loading system led to a larger barbette and a smaller
+battery armament: to 43-ton guns at bow and stern and only
+6-inch guns on the broadsides; and in this way the final design
+differed more than did the original from the ’66 ideal. “The
+bow and stern guns were protected by barbette and other
+armour, but Key had required that some protection should be
+given to the turntables and the machinery for working them.
+Hydraulics had greatly increased the quantity and importance
+of this machinery, and as by its means the crews of the guns
+were very much diminished, we can imagine the admiral
+concurring in the change as a natural development of his
+principle. So we can understand him as now definitely
+concurring in the abandonment of sail power for first-class
+battleships.” In ’78 he had flown his flag in the <i>Thunderer</i> at
+sea, and he had then experienced the reliability of the gun
+machinery and the difficulties attendant on the manœuvring
+of a modern fleet under sail.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">294</span>
+Both in armament and in disposition of armour the <i>Collingwood</i>
+was a great but a natural advance on the citadel ships of
+the <i>Inflexible</i> type. The symmetrical placing of the big gun
+turntables, one forward and one aft, proclaimed the advent of
+new tactical ideas—the recognition of the battleship as a unit
+which must take its place in the line with others, and the
+rejection of “end-on” methods of fighting which involved a
+concentration of bow-fire. The provision of the powerful
+secondary armament was a tribute to the growing efficiency
+of French torpedo craft, while at the same time serving,
+offensively, to force an enemy to protect himself against it:
+to spread his armour over as large a surface as possible in the
+attempt to preserve his stability in a protracted action. The
+concentration of armour on the fixed barbettes and on a partial
+belt over the central portion of the ship was in accordance
+with the <i>Inflexible</i> arrangement. But, in consequence of the
+strictures which had been passed on that vessel and on the
+exposure of her large unprotected ends, the <i>Collingwood</i> was
+given a longer belt, though not so thick. Fifty-four per cent
+of her length was covered with 18-inch compound armour, as
+compared with 42 per cent, and 24-inch armour, in the former
+ship. Although this longer belt appeared to confer greater
+longitudinal stability on the ship, its narrowness was such
+that it was of doubtful efficacy, as Sir Edward Reed was not
+slow to point out. So narrow was this belt, so big still remained
+the unarmoured ends, that the slight sinkage caused
+by their filling would bring the whole of the armour belt, he
+said, under water. Thus all the advantage arising from a
+longer citadel was more than destroyed by this lowering of
+the armour, and, so great was the consequent danger of the
+vessel capsizing, that he hesitated to regard the <i>Collingwood</i>
+as an armoured ship.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Collingwood</i> was laid down in July, 1880. But what was
+there to show that her design would be in any degree permanent?
+Was it safe to consider it sufficiently satisfactory to
+form the master-pattern for a number of new ships, urgently
+required?</p>
+
+<p>For a short time there was uncertainty. “The French type,
+where there were isolated armoured barbette towers generally
+containing single heavy guns placed at the ends and sides of
+the ships upon the upper deck, with broadside batteries of
+lighter guns, entirely unprotected by armour, upon the deck<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">295</span>
+below, did not commend itself to the English naval mind, yet,
+in the sort of despair which possessed us, the new Board
+turned somewhat towards the French system. The <i>Warspite</i>
+and <i>Impérieuse</i> were laid down in 1881, and were again a new
+departure in British design.... It was intended to adhere to
+sail power in these new types, and it was only after they were
+approaching completion that the utter incongruity of the
+proposal was realized, and sail power was given up in the last
+of the armoured ships to which it was attempted to apply it.”</p>
+
+<p>But the Admiralty still wished, without alarming the public,
+to regain as soon as possible a safe balance of armoured construction
+over that of France. “There was no design before
+the Board which was more likely to perpetuate itself than that
+of the unlaunched <i>Collingwood</i>. Suppose a bold policy were
+adopted? Suppose it were assumed that the time had come
+when diversities of type were to cease, would it be made less
+likely by the frank abandonment of sail power?”</p>
+
+<p>The bold step was taken. Four more ships to the <i>Collingwood</i>
+design were laid down in ’82, the five being thereafter
+spoken of as the “Admiral” class. “At the time, little note was
+taken of this very great step in advance. Even at this day
+it is scarcely remembered that this is the step which made
+possible, and led up to, our present great battle fleet, and that
+never before had so many as five first-class ironclads of a
+definite type been on the stocks together.... In the Admiral
+class there was the definite parting with sail power, the rejection
+of the tactical ideas brought to a climax in the <i>Inflexible</i>,
+and, above all, the definite adoption of the long-barrelled
+breech-loading rifled gun. Without question, we must say
+that we owe the Admiral class, and all that has followed, in
+great part to the enterprising and yet well-balanced mind
+that then governed the naval part of the Council at Whitehall.”</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">§</p>
+
+<p>At this point in the evolution of the ironclad it is convenient
+to bring our survey to an end. The <i>Collingwood</i>
+marks the final return (with one or two notorious exceptions)
+to the truly broadside ship, the ship with armament symmetrically
+disposed fore and aft, intended to fight with others
+in the line. From the Admiral class onwards the modern
+battleship evolved for years along a continuous and clearly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">296</span>
+defined curve of progression. It only remains to close this
+brief and necessarily superficial historical sketch with a few
+remarks upon the classification of warships.</p>
+
+<p>In tracing the types of ironclads which superseded each
+other in direct succession, no mention has been made of other
+than those which formed in their time the chief units of naval
+force. Other war-vessels there were, of course, subsidiary to
+the main fighting force, whose value and functions we now
+briefly indicate.</p>
+
+<p>So long as sails remained the sole motive power, warships
+retained the same classification as they had received in the
+seventeenth century. “Up to the time of the Dutch Wars,”
+says Admiral Colomb, “ships were both ‘royal’ and of private
+contribution; of all sorts and sizes and ‘rates.’ Fighting was
+therefore promiscuous. Fleets sailed in the form of half-moons,
+or all heaped together and, except for the struggle to
+get the weather gage, there were no tactics. Actions were
+general.” Then, in order to protect their fleets from the fire
+ship, the Dutch first introduced the Line of Battle: “in
+which formation it was easy for a fleet to leeward to open out
+so as to let a fire ship drift harmlessly through.” And so the
+efficacy of the fire ship was destroyed. “But now, with a
+Line, each ship had a definite place which she could not quit.
+Hence the diversities in sizes began to be eliminated. The
+weakest ships, which might find themselves opposite the
+strongest, were dropped for ships ‘fit to lie in the line,’ i.e.
+for what were afterwards called ‘line-of-battle ships.’ These
+ships would be individually as powerful as possible, only
+subject to the objection of putting too many eggs in one
+basket. Uniformity would thus be attained. The fleet of line
+ships, however, required look-outs or scouts, which could keep
+the seas and attend, yet out-sail, the fleet. Hence the heavy
+frigate. Lastly, there was the much lighter attendant on
+commerce (either by way of attack or defence), the light
+cruiser.”</p>
+
+<p>Although this differentiation of types was based ostensibly
+upon displacement or tonnage, in reality it was formed on a
+more scientific basis. Admiral Sir George Elliot demonstrated,
+in 1867, that the real basis was not a rule of size, but a <em>law of
+safety</em>, similar to that which operates in the natural world; a
+law so important that it should under no circumstances be
+disregarded. He showed that sailing ships conformed to this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">297</span>
+law. He showed that the reduction of a vessel’s size, for
+instance, endowed her with smaller draught and an increased
+speed; that the dispensing with one quality automatically
+gave another in compensation; and that thus the weakly
+armed vessel always possessed the means, if not to fight, to
+escape from capture.<a id="FNanchor_173" href="#Footnote_173" class="fnanchor">173</a></p>
+
+<p>With the coming of steam and armour, all this was
+changed. Size had now no inherent disability; on the contrary,
+the larger the ship the greater the horse-power which
+could be carried in her, the greater her probable speed and
+sea endurance. The small ship had no advantages. The old
+classification had clearly broken down. The first ironclads,
+the <i>Warrior</i> and her successors, although of frigate form,
+belonged to no particular class; they were of a special type
+intended to cope with the most powerful ships afloat or projected;
+and subsequent ships were designed with the same
+end in view. These ships being faster as well as more powerful
+than those of a smaller size, there was no object in attempting to
+build others of a frigate class for the purpose of outsailing them.</p>
+
+<p>As material developed, and as the warship became more
+and more obviously a compromise between conflicting qualities,
+differentiation of types was once more seen to be necessary.
+Attempts were made to classify on the bases of displacement,
+material, defensive and motive power, service, system of armament.
+In the end British construction divided itself into two
+categories: armoured and unarmoured vessels. And each of
+these categories was subdivided into classes of ships analogous
+to those of the old sailing ships.</p>
+
+<p>But, during the transitional period 1860 to 1880, when
+armour and iron ships, steam engines, rifled guns, and fish
+torpedoes, were all in their infancy and subject to the most
+rapid development, no such classification was recognized.
+The circumstances of the Crimean War, with the adoption of
+armour and the sudden and enormous growth in the unit of
+artillery force which took place soon afterwards, led to the
+first differentiation of ironclads, into ocean-going and coast-defence
+vessels. We have already noted this fact. We have
+seen how, especially to the lesser Powers, the turreted monitor
+appeared to offer an economical and effective form of naval
+force; and we have noted how, in America, the evolution
+proceeded in the opposite direction, viz. from coast-defence<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">298</span>
+monitor to ocean-going turret ship. This differentiation
+prevailed for many years. It prevailed even in the British
+navy, in spite of its being in full opposition to the offensive
+principle on which that navy had always based its policy.</p>
+
+<p>Later, although convinced that in any war involving this
+country and its colonies the chief combats must be fought in
+European waters, naval opinion saw the necessity for a type
+of ship designed primarily for the defence and attack of
+commerce: a speedy, lightly armed and protected type
+capable of overhauling and injuring a weaker, or of escaping
+from a more powerful enemy. The American War of ’62, in
+which no general sea action was fought, gave the impulse to
+the construction of the type which eventually became known
+as the <em>cruiser</em>. Vessels were built in ’63 expressly to overtake
+Confederate vessels and drive from the seas the Southern
+mercantile marine. These vessels were to annihilate the
+enemy’s commerce without being drawn themselves to take
+part in an engagement, unless in very favourable circumstances.
+Several such ships were built. The first, the <i>Idaho</i>,
+was a complete failure; the next attempt was little more
+successful; and those subsequently constructed, the <i>Wampanoag</i>
+class, the finest ships of the type which existed at the
+close of the war, which were designed for 17 knots and to
+carry sixteen 10- or 11-inch smooth-bore cast-iron guns on the
+broadside and a revolving 60-pounder rifle in the bows, suffered
+from miscalculations in design and from the weakness peculiar
+to long and heavily weighted timber-built ships. “These
+pioneers of the type,” says Brassey, “were followed, both in
+England and in France, by vessels believed by the builders of
+their respective countries to be better adapted for the work
+for which they were designed.”</p>
+
+<p>At first England and France had built and appropriated
+small ironclads to this secondary service; in France the
+<i>Belliqueuse</i>, in England the <i>Pallas</i>, were designed to this end.
+But in ’66 the first ship of the cruiser type was built for the
+British navy: the <i>Inconstant</i>, of Sir Edward Reed’s design,
+an iron-built, fine-lined vessel with a speed of 16 knots and a
+large coal capacity. She was followed by the corvettes <i>Active</i>
+and <i>Volage</i>, and then, in ’73, by the <i>Shah</i> and <i>Raleigh</i>. Experience
+with the early cruisers showed the advantages of
+large displacement. “The greater number of the American
+corvettes had now been launched. A trial of one of them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">299</span>
+showed that the high hopes which had been entertained of
+their performance were fallacious. It now appeared no longer
+necessary that the English corvettes should possess such
+extraordinary power and speed, qualities which necessarily
+required very large displacements. The Admiralty, however,
+still believing in the wisdom of the policy which they had
+previously adopted, decided to follow a totally different course
+from that which all other navies had been compelled by
+financial considerations to follow. So far from diminishing the
+size of their ships, increased displacement was given to the
+new designs.”<a id="FNanchor_174" href="#Footnote_174" class="fnanchor">174</a> Full sail power was still required, for the high-power
+steam engine used by the cruiser for fighting purposes
+was most uneconomical. The <i>Raleigh</i>, for instance, burned
+her six hundred tons of coal in less than 36 hours, at full speed.</p>
+
+<p>But after the <i>Raleigh</i> came a slight reaction. With a view
+to economy a smaller type of vessel was designed, the smallest
+possible vessel which could be contrived which would possess
+a covered-in gun deck in combination with other features
+considered essential in a frigate class; the result was the
+<i>Boadicea</i> or the <i>Bacchante</i> class. In the late ’seventies size
+again increased, and the <i>Iris</i> and <i>Mercury</i>, unsheathed vessels
+of steel, with coal-protection for their water-line and extended
+watertight subdivision of the hull, were laid down.</p>
+
+<p>From the unarmoured, unprotected cruiser was in time
+evolved, by the competition of units, the armoured cruiser.
+Russia led the way. Her <i>General-Admiral</i>, the first belted
+cruiser, was built to compete with the <i>Raleigh</i> and <i>Boadicea</i>.
+Then England designed the <i>Shannon</i>, partially belted and
+with protective deck and coal protection, to outmatch her.
+Eventually the cleavage came, and the cruisers were themselves
+divided into two or more classes, in accordance with
+their duties, size and fitness for the line of battle.</p>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<p>Of the development of torpedo craft this is not the place
+to write; although the torpedo was fast growing in efficiency
+and importance, it had not, before 1880, become the centre
+and cause of a special craft and a special system for its employment
+in action. But after that date the creation of torpedo
+flotillas began to exercise a marked and continuous effect
+upon the evolution of the ironclad. The fish-torpedo, improving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">300</span>
+at a phenomenal rate in the first years of its development,
+and at first esteemed as of defensive value and as a
+counter to the ram, became, after 1880, an offensive weapon
+of the first importance. The ram, already suspected of being
+placed too high in popular estimation, suffered a decline; the
+danger of its use in action was emphasized by naval officers,
+whose opinion alone was decisive: its use, as an eminent
+tactician explained, reduced the chances of battle to a mere
+toss-up, since there was “only half a ship’s length between
+ramming and being rammed.” The gun developed in power,
+in range, and accuracy; but not (up to the end of the century)
+at so great a rate as its rival, the torpedo. The steam engine
+affected all weapons by its continuous development. It depressed
+the ram, enhanced the importance of the gun, and
+endowed the torpedo with a large accession of potential value
+in placing it, in its special fast sea-going craft, within reach of
+the battleship; moreover, it enabled the cruiser to regain its
+old supremacy of speed over the line-of-battle unit. Armour,
+quick-firing guns, secondary armament, watertight construction,
+net defence, all influenced the development of the various
+types. But it was the torpedo, borne into action by the high-speed
+steam engine, which had the greatest effect on naval
+types in the last two decades of the century, and which at one
+time bid fair to cause a constructional revolution as great as
+that of 1860. The torpedo, according to a school of French
+enthusiasts, had destroyed the ironclad battleship and dealt a
+heavy blow at English sea power by paving the way for an
+inexpensive navy designed for a <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">guerre de course</i>. The ironclad
+was dead, they cried, and might as well be placed in the
+Louvre museum along with the old three-deckers! In Italy
+and Germany, too, the logic of facts seemed to point to a vast
+depreciation in the power of existing navies: the fate of the
+expensive ironclad seemed assured, in the presence of small,
+fast, sea going torpedo-boats. Still, it was noticed, England
+laid down battleships. True; this was quite in keeping with her
+machiavellian policy. Had she not resisted—“not blindly, but
+with a profound clairvoyance”—all the inventions of the century?
+Had she not successfully baulked the development of
+Fulton’s mines, steam navigation, the shell gun, and the
+ironclad itself? And, now that steam had made the blockade
+impossible and the torpedo had attacked the ironclad effectually,
+making sea-supremacy an empty term, could not the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">301</span>
+British Empire be destroyed by taking the choice of weapons
+out of England’s hands?</p>
+
+<p>The prospect was alluring. Yet the ironclad survived the
+menace and remained the standard unit of naval power. Expensive,
+designed with several aims and essentially complex,—a
+compromise, like man himself,—it could not be replaced
+by a number of small, cheap, uni-functional vessels, each constructed
+for one sole and special purpose, without loss of
+efficiency and concentration of power. Nor could it be supplanted
+by a type which, like the sea-going torpedo-boat, could
+only count on an ascendancy over it in certain moments of its
+own choosing—for example, at night-time or in a fog. To
+every novel species of attack the ironclad proved superior,
+calling to its aid the appropriate defensive measures.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">303</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter"><div class="footnotes">
+<h2 id="FOOTNOTES" class="nobreak p1">FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="fnanchor">1</a> Sir Harry Nicolas: <cite>History of the Royal Navy</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="fnanchor">2</a> The greatest authoritative works on ancient and medieval shipping, it
+should be mentioned, are the <cite>Archéologie Navale</cite> and the <cite>Glossaire Nautique</cite>
+of M. Jal, published in 1840 and 1848 respectively.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="fnanchor">3</a> Corbett: <cite>Drake and the Tudor Navy</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="fnanchor">4</a> Corbett.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="fnanchor">5</a> Oppenheim.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="fnanchor">6</a> Corbett.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="fnanchor">7</a> Navy Records Soc.: Edited by Sir John Laughton.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="fnanchor">8</a> Cases were known where ships, unfit for sea, completed their voyage in
+safety, to fall to pieces immediately on being taken into dock and deprived
+of that continual support which they derived from the water when afloat
+(<i>Charnock</i>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="fnanchor">9</a> Chief-constructor D. W. Taylor, U.S.N.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> Creuze: <cite>Shipbuilding</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="fnanchor">11</a> Manwayring.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="fnanchor">12</a> Navy Records Soc.: 1918. <i>Edited by</i> W. G. Perrin, Esq., O.B.E.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="fnanchor">13</a> Captain John Smith’s <cite>Sea Man’s Grammar</cite> also appeared in the early
+part of this century.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="fnanchor">14</a> Sir J. Knowles, F.R.S.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="fnanchor">15</a> Willett: <cite>Memoirs on Naval Architecture</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="fnanchor">16</a> It has been suggested that the restricted draught given to the Dutch
+ships, owing to the shallowness of their coast waters, had the result of necessitating
+a generous breadth, and therefore made them generally stiffer than
+vessels of English construction.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="fnanchor">17</a> Derrick in his Memoirs refers to this ship us having been built of burnt
+instead of kilned timber, and as having special arrangements for circulating
+air in all its parts.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="fnanchor">18</a> Charnock.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="fnanchor">19</a> Colomb: <cite>Sea Warfare</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="fnanchor">20</a> Creuze: <cite>Papers on Naval Architecture</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="fnanchor">21</a> Even the scientific Sir William Petty cast a veil of mystery over his
+processes. “I only affirm,” he writes, “that the perfection of sailing lies in
+my principle, <em>finde it out who can!</em>” (See Pepys’ Diary for 31st July, 1663.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="fnanchor">22</a> Creuze: <cite>Shipbuilding, Encycl. Brit.</cite>, 7th Edition, 1841. It should be
+mentioned that the work of Dr. Colin McLaurin, of Edinburgh, in giving a
+mathematical solution for the angles at which a ship’s sails should be set, had
+received considerable attention on the Continent.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="fnanchor">23</a> See a paper by Mr. Johns, R.C.N.C., in <cite>Trans. I.N.A.</cite> 1910.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="fnanchor">24</a> Willett: <cite>Memoirs on Naval Architecture</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="fnanchor">25</a> At the beginning of the eighteenth century the English first rates carried
+100 guns. The second rate comprised two classes: (1) a three-decker of 90;
+(2) a two-decker of 80. Ships of these rates were few in number and very
+expensive. The bulk of our fleets consisted of third rates: two-deckers of
+70 guns in war and 62 in peace time and on foreign stations (<i>Charnock</i>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="fnanchor">26</a> Sir C. Knowles: <cite>Observations on Shipbuilding</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="fnanchor">27</a> <cite>Letters of Sir Byam Martin</cite>: N.R. Soc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="fnanchor">28</a> Sir C. Knowles: <cite>Observations on Shipbuilding</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="fnanchor">29</a> In 1784 Thomas Gordon published a treatise entitled <cite>Principles of Naval
+Architecture</cite>, drawing attention to the work of the French scientists and
+advocating increased length and breadth, finer lines, and a more systematic
+disposition of materials, for improving the strength and seaworthiness of our
+royal ships. No notice was taken of his communications to Lord Sandwich,
+but there is no evidence that his predicted fate overtook him:
+“to be traduced as an innovator theorist, and visionary projector, as has
+been the fate of most authors of useful discoveries in modern times, particularly
+in Britain.”
+</p>
+<p>
+“The bigotry of old practice,” recorded Mr. Willett in 1793, “opposes
+everything that looks like innovation.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="fnanchor">30</a> Fincham says their armament was established as, thirty 32-pounders on
+the lower deck, thirty 24-pounders on the middle deck, thirty-two 18-pounders
+on the upper deck, and on the quarter-deck and forecastle eighteen 12-pounders.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="fnanchor">31</a> James: <cite>Naval History</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="fnanchor">32</a> <cite>Letters of Sir Byam Martin</cite>: N.R. Soc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="fnanchor">33</a> Sharp: <cite>Memoirs of Rear-Admiral Sir W. Symonds</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="fnanchor">34</a> Hannay: <cite>Ships and Men</cite>. This formula was known before, for Bushnell
+mentions it in his <cite>Compleat Shipwright</cite> of 1678.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="fnanchor">35</a> Sharp: <cite>Memoirs of Admiral Sir W. Symonds</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="fnanchor">36</a> E. J. Reed: <cite>On the Modifications to Ships of the Royal Navy</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="fnanchor">37</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="fnanchor">38</a> Lieut.-Col. H. W. L. Hime: <cite>The Origin of Artillery</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="fnanchor">39</a> In the <cite>Histoire d’Artillerie</cite> of MM. Reinaud and Favé long excerpts from
+Bacon are examined, from which it appears that he suggested the use of
+gunpowder in military operations. Gibbon says: “That extraordinary man,
+Friar Bacon, reveals two of the ingredients, saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals
+the third in a sentence of mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the
+consequences of his own discovery.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="fnanchor">40</a> Lieut. H. Brackenbury, R.A.: <cite>Ancient Cannon in Europe</cite>. Vol. IV and
+V of Proc. R.A.I.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41" class="fnanchor">41</a> Schmidt: <cite>Armes à feu portatives</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42" class="fnanchor">42</a> Sir Harry Nicolas, in his <cite>History of the Royal Navy</cite>, attributes the
+documents to the reign of Edward III: an error of more than seventy years.
+The mistake is exposed by a writer in Vol. XXVI of <cite>The English Historical
+Review</cite>, in an article on “Firearms in England in the Fourteenth Century.”
+The writer also gives the English records relating to the use of firearms at Cressy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43" class="fnanchor">43</a> Brackenbury.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44" class="fnanchor">44</a> The secrecy of the early writers of Italy on gunnery and kindred
+subjects has been remarked on by Maurice Cockle in his <cite>Bibliography
+of Military Books</cite>. He attributes it to two motives: fear that the Infidel
+(the Turk) might profit by the knowledge otherwise gained, and a desire
+to keep the secrets of the craft in the hands of their countrymen, whose
+knowledge and assistance the foreigner would then be forced to purchase.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45" class="fnanchor">45</a> <cite>The Great Cannon of Muhammad II</cite>: Brig.-Gen. J. H. Lefroy, R.A.,
+F.R.S. Vol. VI of Proc. R.A.I.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_46" href="#FNanchor_46" class="fnanchor">46</a> Ascribing the deliverance of Constantinople from the Saracens in the two
+sieges of <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 668 and 716 to the novelty, the terrors, and the real efficacy of
+Greek fire, Gibbon says: “The important secret of compounding and directing
+this artificial flame was imparted by Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in
+Syria, who deserted from the service of the caliph to that of the emperor.
+The skill of a chemist and engineer was equivalent to the succour of fleets and
+armies.”
+</p>
+<p>
+For the story of the manner in which its mystery was guarded at Constantinople,
+of its theft by the Infidel, and of the use he made of it against
+the Christian chivalry at the crusades, see Chapter <span class="smcap smaller">LII</span> of <cite>The Decline and Fall
+of the Roman Empire</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_47" href="#FNanchor_47" class="fnanchor">47</a> Grose: <cite>Military Antiquities</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_48" href="#FNanchor_48" class="fnanchor">48</a> Hayley’s MSS.: quoted by M. A. Lower.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_49" href="#FNanchor_49" class="fnanchor">49</a> Oppenheim.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_50" href="#FNanchor_50" class="fnanchor">50</a> Oppenheim.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_51" href="#FNanchor_51" class="fnanchor">51</a> Corned powder was graded in France in the year 1540 into three sizes
+by means of sieves which varied with the types of guns for which they were
+intended (see Hime: <cite>Origin of Artillery</cite>). By the end of the century the
+manufacture had evidently improved in this country. “Some do make
+excellent good corn powder, so fine, that the corns thereof are like thime
+seed,” wrote Thos. Smith in his <cite>Art of Gunnery</cite>, <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1600.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_52" href="#FNanchor_52" class="fnanchor">52</a> Oppenheim.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_53" href="#FNanchor_53" class="fnanchor">53</a> Bourne: <cite>The Art of Shooting in Great Ordnance</cite>, 1587.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_54" href="#FNanchor_54" class="fnanchor">54</a> Sir J. K. Laughton: <cite>Armada Papers, N.R.S.</cite></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_55" href="#FNanchor_55" class="fnanchor">55</a> Smith demolished, to his own satisfaction, a theory current that some
+molecular movement of the metal took place at the moment of gunfire. “I
+asked the opinion of a soldier, who for a trespass committed was enjoined to
+ride the canon, who confidently affirmed, he could perceive no quivering of
+the metal of the piece, but that the air which issued out of the mouth and
+touch-hole of the piece did somewhat astonish and shake him.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_56" href="#FNanchor_56" class="fnanchor">56</a> The advantages of large calibres had been appreciated in the previous
+century. Sir Richard Hawkins, in his <cite>Observations</cite>, printed in 1593, compares
+the armament of his own ships with that of his Spanish opponents, and
+says: “Although their artillery were larger, weightier, and many more than
+ours, and in truth did pierce with greater violence; yet ours being of greater
+bore, and carrying a weightier and greater shot, was of more importance and
+of better effect for sinking and spoiling.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_57" href="#FNanchor_57" class="fnanchor">57</a> Oppenheim.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_58" href="#FNanchor_58" class="fnanchor">58</a> A significant view of the attitude of these professionals toward any
+innovation in gunnery material is afforded by the entry of Mr. Pepys in his
+diary for the 17th April, 1669.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_59" href="#FNanchor_59" class="fnanchor">59</a> An anonymous writer in the <cite>Pall Mall Gazette</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_60" href="#FNanchor_60" class="fnanchor">60</a> Le Sieur Malthus, gentil-homme Anglois, Commissaire Général des Feux
+et Artifices de l’Artillerie de France, Capitaine General des Sappes et Mines
+d’icelle &amp; Ingeniéur és Armées du Roy, published his <cite>Pratique de la Guerre</cite> in
+1668. This notable but almost-forgotten artillerist introduced the use of
+mortars and bombs into France, in 1637. He was killed by a musket ball at
+the siege of Gravelines, as he elevated himself above the rampart of a trench
+in order to watch the effect of a bomb (St. Remy: <cite>Mémoires</cite>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_61" href="#FNanchor_61" class="fnanchor">61</a> This account is taken from <cite>Historical Notes on Woolwich</cite>, Lieut. Grover,
+R.E. (Proc. R.A.I., Vol. VI).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_62" href="#FNanchor_62" class="fnanchor">62</a> Le Blond: <cite>Traité de l’Artillerie</cite>, 1743.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_63" href="#FNanchor_63" class="fnanchor">63</a> Lieut.-Gen. Sir William Congreve, Bart., was, as Captain Congreve,
+appointed in 1783 to the control of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich. Sent
+in ’79 to Plymouth, to examine the gunpowders of H.M. ships in consequence
+of the complaints of Admiral Barington, he found only four serviceable
+barrels in the whole fleet. The gross frauds then brought to light led to the
+formation of the Government establishment at Waltham Abbey. His son
+was the inventor of the Congreve sight and rocket.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_64" href="#FNanchor_64" class="fnanchor">64</a> Gen. Sir Thomas Blomefield, Bart., who started his service career as
+a midshipman, commanded a bomb vessel under Rodney at the bombardment
+of Havre in 1759, and was present at Quiberon. After varied service abroad
+he was appointed, in 1780, Inspector of Artillery and of the Brass Foundry.
+“Never was the need of military supervision over military manufactures
+more apparent than at this period. The guns supplied to the naval and
+military forces had degenerated to the lowest point in quality. Bursts were
+of frequent occurrence, and would doubtless have been much more frequent
+if the roguery of contractors in gunpowder had not kept pace with the roguery
+of contractors in guns.... From this period dates the high character of
+British cast iron and brass ordnance.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_65" href="#FNanchor_65" class="fnanchor">65</a> Favé.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_66" href="#FNanchor_66" class="fnanchor">66</a> The author of the <cite>Études sur l’Artillerie</cite> places emphasis on the importance
+of the substitution of cast iron for stone projectiles, as augmenting the
+power of artillery. Stone balls broke to pieces on impact with masonry, and
+were of small destructive power except when in large mass, as projected from
+the largest bombards. He claims the introduction of iron shot, the use of
+trunnions for elevating, and the standardization of calibres, for the French
+artillery of Charles VIII, who in 1495 descended on Italy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_67" href="#FNanchor_67" class="fnanchor">67</a> Favé.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_68" href="#FNanchor_68" class="fnanchor">68</a> Lieut.-Col. Hime, R.A.: <cite>The Progress of Field Artillery</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_69" href="#FNanchor_69" class="fnanchor">69</a> Owen: <cite>Lectures on Artillery</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_70" href="#FNanchor_70" class="fnanchor">70</a> Whewell: <cite>History of the Inductive Sciences</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_71" href="#FNanchor_71" class="fnanchor">71</a> <cite>Encycl. Brit.</cite>, 11th Edition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_72" href="#FNanchor_72" class="fnanchor">72</a> This project, however, is mentioned of an engine called by him “a semi-omnipotent
+engine,” the subject of the 98th invention: “an engine so contrived,
+that working the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Primum mobile</i> forward or backward, upward or
+downward, circularly or cornerwise, to and fro, straight, upright or downright,
+yet the pretended operation continueth and advanceth, none of the motions
+above-mentioned hindering, much less stopping the other.”
+</p>
+<p>
+This engine is obviously not the same as that described as the sixty-eighth
+invention.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_73" href="#FNanchor_73" class="fnanchor">73</a> A well-known story, quoted at length in the Memoirs of Sir John Barrow,
+connected de Caus with the Marquis of Worcester in dramatic fashion. The
+Marquis was being conducted through the prison of the Bicêtre in Paris when
+his attention was attracted by the screams of an old madman who had made
+a wonderful discovery of the power of steam, and who had so importuned
+Cardinal Richelieu that he had been incarcerated as a nuisance.
+</p>
+<p>
+“This person,” said the insolvent Lord Worcester after conversing with
+him, “is no madman; and in my country, instead of shutting him up,
+they would heap riches upon him. In this prison you have buried the
+greatest genius of your age.”
+</p>
+<p>
+The fable, and its exposure by a French writer, M. Figuier, are described
+in Dirck’s book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_74" href="#FNanchor_74" class="fnanchor">74</a> Millington: <cite>Natural Philosophy</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_75" href="#FNanchor_75" class="fnanchor">75</a> Sir E. D. Lawrence: <cite>Steam in Relation to Cornwall</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_76" href="#FNanchor_76" class="fnanchor">76</a> Enouf: <cite>Papin, sa vie et son œuvre</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_77" href="#FNanchor_77" class="fnanchor">77</a> On the evidence of a picture purporting to represent the first Newcomen
+engine, in which mechanisms are shown for operating the cocks automatically,
+an attempt has been made to prove that the manipulated cocks were a figment
+and the story of Humphrey Potter a myth. The iconoclast has not been
+successful. The evidence that the first engines were hand-controlled is very
+general (see Galloway’s <cite>Steam Engine and Its Inventors</cite>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_78" href="#FNanchor_78" class="fnanchor">78</a> At this time the corpuscular theory of heat still held the field. “Caloric,”
+or the matter of heat, was supposed to be a substance which could be imparted
+to or abstracted from a body, which had the property of augmenting its bulk,
+but not its weight, by setting its particles at a greater or less distance from
+one another.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_79" href="#FNanchor_79" class="fnanchor">79</a> <cite>Encycl. Brit.</cite>, Eleventh Edition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_80" href="#FNanchor_80" class="fnanchor">80</a> A text-book published a few years before Robins’ birth (Binnings’
+<cite>Light to the Art of Gunnery</cite>, 1689) told how a certain profane and godless
+gunner, Cornelius Slime, was carried off by the devil before the eyes of the
+astonished onlookers!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_81" href="#FNanchor_81" class="fnanchor">81</a> Whewell: <cite>Hist. of the Inductive Sciences</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_82" href="#FNanchor_82" class="fnanchor">82</a> Dr. Halley: <cite>Phil. Trans.</cite>, 1686.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_83" href="#FNanchor_83" class="fnanchor">83</a> How strange and almost incredible this phenomenon appeared to people
+long after Robins’ time, may be seen from the manner in which Ezekiel Baker,
+one of the principal London gunmakers and the contractor who supplied the
+rifles with which the Rifle Brigade was equipped in the year 1800, poured
+gentle sarcasm on the account of this experiment. In his book on <cite>Rifle Guns</cite>,
+published in 1825, he can only assign the cause of the deflection to “some
+peculiar enchantment in the air.” “Or,” he continues, “with all my practice
+I have yet much to learn in guns, and the effects of powder and wind upon the
+ball in its flight.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_84" href="#FNanchor_84" class="fnanchor">84</a> Of the superstitious awe with which an iron field-piece was regarded by
+the highlanders in ’45, and of its small material value in the field, a note will be
+found in the appendices to Scott’s <cite>Waverley</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_85" href="#FNanchor_85" class="fnanchor">85</a> Mr. Patrick Miller, who is mentioned in a later chapter as builder of the
+first successful steam-propelled vessel, was also an enthusiastic artillerist.
+In a memorandum to the Select Committee of the House of Commons,
+appointed in 1824 to consider the claims of various inventors of steam-vessels,
+a Mr. Taylor gave the following evidence: “I found him (Mr. Miller) a
+gentleman of great patriotism, generosity, and philanthropy; and at the same
+time of a very speculative turn of mind. Before I knew him (1785) he had
+gone through a very long and expensive course of experiments upon artillery
+of which the carronade was the result.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_86" href="#FNanchor_86" class="fnanchor">86</a> On April 20th, 1669, Mr. Pepys recorded in his diary a visit to “the
+Old Artillery-ground near the Spitalfields” to see a new gun “which, from
+the shortness and bigness, they do call Punchinello.” Tried against a gun of
+double its own length, weight, and powder-charge, Punchinello shot truer to
+a mark and was easier to manage and had no greater recoil—to the great
+regret of the old gunners and officers of the ordnance that were there.
+</p>
+<p>
+The gallant inventor offered Mr. Pepys a share in the profits; there seemed
+great promise that the king would favour it for naval use. “And,” adds
+Pepys, “no doubt but it will be of profit to merchantmen and others to have
+guns of the same form at half the charge.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_87" href="#FNanchor_87" class="fnanchor">87</a> James: <cite>Naval History</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_88" href="#FNanchor_88" class="fnanchor">88</a> The carrying of <em>sham</em> guns among their armament was not unknown in
+the case of vessels which boasted a reputation for their superior speed and
+sailing qualities (vide <cite>Bentham Papers</cite>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_89" href="#FNanchor_89" class="fnanchor">89</a> Captain Simmons, R.A.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_90" href="#FNanchor_90" class="fnanchor">90</a> The carriage thus formed out of a baulk or trunk appears to have been
+known as a trunk carriage. Norton describes the cannon-periers as being
+mounted on “trunk carriages provided with four trucks.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_91" href="#FNanchor_91" class="fnanchor">91</a> Oppenheim.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_92" href="#FNanchor_92" class="fnanchor">92</a> It was evidently a practice at this period to vary the diameter of the
+trucks to suit the ship’s structure and the height of the gun-ports. “Be
+careful,” says Bourne in 1587, “that the trucks be not too high, for if the
+trucks be too high, then it will keep the carriage that it will not go close
+against the ship’s side.... And the truck being very high, it is not a small
+thing under a truck that will stay it, etc. etc. And also, if that the truck be
+too high, it will cause the piece to have the greater reverse or recoil. Therefore,
+the lower that the trucks be, it is the better.”
+</p>
+<p>
+Bourne also mentions, in the same book, the <cite>Art of Shooting in Great
+Ordnance</cite>, as a curious invention of a “high Dutchman” a gun mounting so
+devised as to allow the piece to rotate through 180° about its trunnions for
+loading.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_93" href="#FNanchor_93" class="fnanchor">93</a> Manwayring: <cite>Sea-Man’s Dictionary</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_94" href="#FNanchor_94" class="fnanchor">94</a> Oppenheim.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_95" href="#FNanchor_95" class="fnanchor">95</a> Hutchinson: <cite>Naval Architecture</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_96" href="#FNanchor_96" class="fnanchor">96</a> In the margin of the copy of <cite>The Art of Gunnery</cite>, Thos. Smith, <span class="smcap smaller">A.D.</span> 1600,
+in the library of the R.U.S.I. in Whitehall, is the following note, written in
+legible seventeenth-century script: “Some make a device to discharge at a
+distance by a long string, fixed to a device like a cock for a gun with a flint
+or like a musket cock with a match.”
+</p>
+<p>
+In the same work are instructions as to firing in a wind, when the train of
+powder might be blown from the vent before the linstock could be applied.
+The gunner was to form a clay rampart, a sort of tinker’s dam, on the metal
+of the piece on the windward side of the touch-hole.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_97" href="#FNanchor_97" class="fnanchor">97</a> On this Sir John Laughton remarked: “The exercise, so born, continued
+as long as the old men-of-war and the old guns—‘Ships passing on
+opposite tacks; three rounds of quick firing’” (<cite>Barham Papers</cite>, N.R. Soc.).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_98" href="#FNanchor_98" class="fnanchor">98</a> A form of sight for use with ordnance was described by Nathaniel Nye,
+in his <cite>Art of Gunnery</cite>, of 1674. It consisted of a lute-string and a movable
+bead, with a scale opposite the latter graduated in degrees and inches.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_99" href="#FNanchor_99" class="fnanchor">99</a> In Lloyd and Hadcock’s <cite>Artillery</cite> an extract from a letter written in
+1801 by Lord Nelson relative to a proposal to use gun-sights at sea is given.
+The letter is unfavourable to the invention on the ground that, as ships
+should always be at such close quarters with their enemies that missing
+becomes impossible, such appliances would be superfluous. But in this
+connection the observation is made that, with the degree of accuracy of guns
+up to the nineteenth century a rough “line of metal” aim was probably all
+that was justified, in the matter of sighting. In other words, with one element
+of the system (the gun) so very inaccurate, nothing was to be gained by
+increasing the accuracy of another element (the sight) to a disproportionate
+degree. With increasing accuracy of the gun, increasing accuracy of sight
+was called for.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_100" href="#FNanchor_100" class="fnanchor">100</a> In Vol. IV of the <cite>Proceedings of the Royal Artillery Institution</cite>, in an
+article by General Lefroy, an order is quoted showing that trials were made
+of firing shells horizontally by the Royal Artillery in Canada in 1776. The
+author also shows that the trials made by the French in 1784–6 were brought
+to the notice of Lord Nelson.
+</p>
+<p>
+In Vol. V is the following extract: “Experiments were made on Acton
+Common in 1760, to fire coehorn and royal shells from 12-and 24-pounders,
+in order to be applied to the sea service; but as the shells were found frequently
+to burst in the guns, it was thought too hazardous to introduce them
+on board ships of war.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_101" href="#FNanchor_101" class="fnanchor">101</a> The first public demonstration was given by Lieut. Shrapnel, R.A.,
+before the G.O.C., Gibraltar, in the year 1787.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_102" href="#FNanchor_102" class="fnanchor">102</a> Simmons: <cite>Effect of Heavy Ordnance</cite>, 1837.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_103" href="#FNanchor_103" class="fnanchor">103</a> James: <cite>Naval History</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_104" href="#FNanchor_104" class="fnanchor">104</a> A short review of both books is given in the <cite>Papers on Naval Architecture</cite>,
+edited by Morgan and Creuze, 1829.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_105" href="#FNanchor_105" class="fnanchor">105</a> See Hugo’s <cite>Toilers of the Sea</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_106" href="#FNanchor_106" class="fnanchor">106</a> “As for guns,” wrote Fuller in his <cite>Worthies of England</cite>, comparing the
+relative merits of the inventions of printing and gunpowder, “it cannot be
+denied, that though most behold them as instruments of cruelty; partly,
+because subjecting valour to chance; partly, because guns give no quarter
+(which the sword sometimes doth); yet it will appear that, since their invention,
+Victory hath not stood so long a neuter, and hath been determined
+with the loss of fewer lives.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_107" href="#FNanchor_107" class="fnanchor">107</a> At a later date this reduction in number of types of ordnance was
+extended to cover land artillery. In ’62 the French brought down the number
+of different calibres to four: one for the field, one for the siege, and two (the
+30-and 50-pounders) for the navy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_108" href="#FNanchor_108" class="fnanchor">108</a> Dahlgren: <cite>Shells and Shell-Guns</cite>, 1856.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_109" href="#FNanchor_109" class="fnanchor">109</a> By this time Denmark, Holland, Russia and Sweden had all recognized
+the possibilities of shell guns, and had adopted them in greater or less degree.
+By this time, too, France actually possessed more steam war-vessels than we
+had ourselves.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_110" href="#FNanchor_110" class="fnanchor">110</a> Simmons: <cite>Effects of Heavy Ordnance</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_111" href="#FNanchor_111" class="fnanchor">111</a> The crossbow was looked upon as a weapon unworthy of a brave man;
+a prejudice which afterwards prevailed with respect to fire-arms (Hallam:
+<cite>Middle Ages</cite>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_112" href="#FNanchor_112" class="fnanchor">112</a> The Hon. T. F. Fremantle: <cite>The Book of the Rifle</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_113" href="#FNanchor_113" class="fnanchor">113</a> <cite>Le Développement des Armes à Feu</cite>, 1870.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_114" href="#FNanchor_114" class="fnanchor">114</a> In this aspect of the origin of the grooves there is a curious analogy
+between the rifle-barrel and the drill used in machine tools. In the primitive
+drill the shank is appreciably less in diameter than the hole cut by the drill,
+so that the drillings can easily work their way out of the hole. When, however,
+it was desired to make the shank almost of the same diameter as the hole,
+so as to form a guide, it was necessary to flute it with two grooves or more
+to allow the drillings to get away. In the course of its evolution these
+grooves became spiral.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_115" href="#FNanchor_115" class="fnanchor">115</a> Quoted in <cite>The Book of the Rifle</cite> from Schmidt’s <cite>Armes à Feu Portatives</cite>,
+1889.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_116" href="#FNanchor_116" class="fnanchor">116</a> Delvigne: <cite>Notice historique des armes rayées</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_117" href="#FNanchor_117" class="fnanchor">117</a> Beaufoy: <cite>Scloppetaria</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_118" href="#FNanchor_118" class="fnanchor">118</a> A paragraph in Beaufoy’s <cite>Scloppetaria</cite> (1808) shows the complete misconception
+under which its author laboured as to the function of rifling. Just
+as the air turns a windmill or a shuttlecock (he says), so, after an indented
+ball quits its rifled barrel the air, forced spirally along its grooves, will cause
+the ball to turn. In short, he regarded the spiral grooves of a barrel as being
+of no further utility, with respect to the generating of the rotary motion, than
+as an easy way of giving the ball the requisite indentations.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_119" href="#FNanchor_119" class="fnanchor">119</a> Fremantle: <cite>The Book of the Rifle</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_120" href="#FNanchor_120" class="fnanchor">120</a> Captain A. Walker: <cite>The Rifle</cite>, 1864.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_121" href="#FNanchor_121" class="fnanchor">121</a> At the beginning of the century Ezekiel Baker had noted that “a wadding
+in the shape of an acorn cup placed on the powder, and the ball put on the
+top of the cup, will expand the cup and fill the bore—and of course the
+windage will be much diminished.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_122" href="#FNanchor_122" class="fnanchor">122</a> Mention must be made of an important prior development of the elongated
+bullet which had been carried out by General Jacob in India, quite
+independently of French research. General Jacob conducted, in an altogether
+scientific manner, experiments the successful results of which were communicated
+by him to the home government on more than one occasion.
+The importance of his discoveries remained unrecognized, and the value of
+his improvements was lost to this country.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_123" href="#FNanchor_123" class="fnanchor">123</a> In military circles the possibilities of the invasion of this country had
+for some time been under discussion, in view of the increasingly aggressive
+temper of the French. Interest in national defence became general with the
+warning letter of the Duke of Wellington which appeared in <cite>The Times</cite> on the
+9th January, 1847. In ’51 was held the Great Exhibition, and for a time
+opinion was less agitated. The Exhibition, it was thought and hoped by
+numbers of people, would inaugurate the millennium.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_124" href="#FNanchor_124" class="fnanchor">124</a> This advantage of the rifled gun hod been fully appreciated by Captain
+Norton. As early as 1832 he had conducted trials with one-pounder rifled
+cannon, to confirm his belief that the projectile would maintain its rotation
+during flight and hit the target point-first (<cite>Journal of R.U.S.I.</cite>, 1837).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_125" href="#FNanchor_125" class="fnanchor">125</a> Commander R. A. E. Scott, R.N.: <cite>Journal of R.U.S.I.</cite>, Vol. VI, 1862.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_126" href="#FNanchor_126" class="fnanchor">126</a> Tennant: <cite>The Story of the Guns</cite>. This book gives in detail the controversy
+which arose between the advocates of the Armstrong and the Whitworth
+systems.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_127" href="#FNanchor_127" class="fnanchor">127</a> <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>, 1859. Quoted by Sir E. Tennant.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_128" href="#FNanchor_128" class="fnanchor">128</a> The sudden and extraordinary development of rifled ordnance which now
+took place had a revolutionary effect not only on naval architecture and
+gunnery but on land fortification. In ’59 Sir William Armstrong, giving
+evidence before a committee appointed by the War Secretary, stated that he
+could attain with a specially constructed gun a range of five miles. The
+statement made a sensation; for in the presence of such a gun most of the
+existing defences of our dockyards and depots were almost useless. A Commission
+on National Defence was formed. It reported that new fortifications
+were necessary for our principal arsenals, the fleet alone being insufficient for
+the defence of ports. “The introduction of steam,” stated the report, “may
+operate to our disadvantage in diminishing to some extent the value of
+superior seamanship; the practice of firing shells horizontally, and the
+enormous extent to which the power and accuracy of aim of artillery have
+been increased, lead to the conclusion that after an action even a victorious
+fleet would be more seriously crippled and therefore a longer time unfit for
+service.” Thus the command of the Channel might be temporarily lost.
+As steam facilitated invasion, the immediate fortification of vital points on
+the South Coast was considered necessary. In short, faith in the mobile fleet
+was temporarily abandoned.
+</p>
+<p>
+The recommendations of the Commission were carried out almost in their
+entirety. In the case of Portsmouth, for instance, the reinforcement of the
+Hilsea Lines, decided on only two years previously, was suspended in favour
+of a defence of far greater radius—a circle of forts some of which were designed
+to prevent an enemy from gaining possession, from the land side, of Portsdown
+Hill, a ridge less than five miles from the Dockyard and therefore a
+position from which, with the new artillery, the Dockyard could be bombarded.
+A similar girdle of defences was given to Plymouth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_129" href="#FNanchor_129" class="fnanchor">129</a> Commander R. A. E. Scott, R.N.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_130" href="#FNanchor_130" class="fnanchor">130</a> Lloyd and Hadcock.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_131" href="#FNanchor_131" class="fnanchor">131</a> Woodcroft: <cite>Steam Navigation</cite>, 1848.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_132" href="#FNanchor_132" class="fnanchor">132</a> de la Roncière: <cite>La Marine Française</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_133" href="#FNanchor_133" class="fnanchor">133</a> Woodcroft: <cite>Steam Navigation</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_134" href="#FNanchor_134" class="fnanchor">134</a> Rigaud: <cite>Early Proposals for Steam Navigation</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_135" href="#FNanchor_135" class="fnanchor">135</a> Enouf: Papin; <cite>Sa Vie et Son Œuvre</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_136" href="#FNanchor_136" class="fnanchor">136</a> Quoted in Fincham’s <cite>Naval Architecture</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_137" href="#FNanchor_137" class="fnanchor">137</a> Mr. Taylor’s evidence to Select Committee, 1824. Quoted in Woodcroft’s
+<cite>Steam Navigation</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_138" href="#FNanchor_138" class="fnanchor">138</a> Miller is said to have approached the Admiralty twice upon the subject,
+and certainly he was keenly interested in naval affairs. A generous tribute
+has been paid him by a friend whose name is honoured in our naval annals:
+“I was unwearied,” says John Clerk of Eldin in the preface of his Essay on
+Naval Tactics, published in 1804, “in my attention to the many valuable
+experiments of the ingenious and liberal-minded Mr. Patrick Miller of Dalswinton;
+to whom, whether in shipbuilding or in constructing artillery,
+both musketry and great guns, his country is more indebted than has hitherto
+been properly acknowledged.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_139" href="#FNanchor_139" class="fnanchor">139</a> Dickinson: <cite>Robert Fulton, Engineer and Artist</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_140" href="#FNanchor_140" class="fnanchor">140</a> Colden: <cite>Life of Fulton</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_141" href="#FNanchor_141" class="fnanchor">141</a> <cite>M. Marestier’s Report on Steam Navigation in the U.S.A.</cite> (Morgan and
+Creuze, 1826).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_142" href="#FNanchor_142" class="fnanchor">142</a> <cite>Fraser’s Magazine</cite>, 1848.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_143" href="#FNanchor_143" class="fnanchor">143</a> In his book <cite>On Naval Warfare with Steam</cite>, published thirty years later,
+Sir Howard Douglas set out more clearly the case for the strenuous development
+of steam navigation by this country, and exposed one of the chief flaws
+in M. Paixhans’ argument. At that date it was still the all-but-universal
+opinion in foreign countries that the introduction of steam had rendered
+superiority in seamanship of comparatively little importance in naval warfare.
+Sir Howard Douglas showed that English superiority had spread to machine
+design, construction and manipulation, and that if this country chose to exert
+itself it could maintain its lead.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is curious to note that not one of these three writers emphasises the main
+disability under which France has actually suffered, viz. the unsuitability of
+French coal as warship fuel and the distance of her iron and coal mines from
+her chief shipbuilding centres.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_144" href="#FNanchor_144" class="fnanchor">144</a> Briggs: <cite>Naval Administrations</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_145" href="#FNanchor_145" class="fnanchor">145</a> A steam paddle-boat, named the <cite>Lord Melville</cite> in honour of the descendant
+of Charlotte Dundas, was then plying regularly between London Bridge and
+Calais.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_146" href="#FNanchor_146" class="fnanchor">146</a> <cite>Memoirs of Sir John Barrow, Bart.</cite></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_147" href="#FNanchor_147" class="fnanchor">147</a> Williams: <cite>Life of Sir Charles Napier</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_148" href="#FNanchor_148" class="fnanchor">148</a> In 1835 a new department, of Royal Naval Engineers, was formed: to
+consist of technically trained men to manage the machinery of steam vessels.
+A uniform button was designed for them, and they were given the rank of
+Warrant Officers. Up to this time the machinery had been in charge of men
+who, for the most part, were “mere labourers”; and, commanding officers
+being ignorant of mechanical engineering, extensive fraud and waste had been
+practised, especially in connection with the refitting of vessels by contractors
+(Otway: <cite>Steam Navigation</cite>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_149" href="#FNanchor_149" class="fnanchor">149</a> Reed: <cite>On the Modifications to H.M. Ships in the XIXth century</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_150" href="#FNanchor_150" class="fnanchor">150</a> The strategic value of steam power in warfare was first demonstrated
+by Lord John Hay in ’30. In the operations on the North Coast of Spain
+“the opportune arrival of a reinforcement of fifteen hundred fresh troops
+from Santander, by one steamer alone, despatched the previous day from
+San Sebastian, a distance of a hundred miles, for that express purpose, gave
+a decisive and important turn to the transactions of that day” (Otway:
+<cite>Steam Navigation</cite>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_151" href="#FNanchor_151" class="fnanchor">151</a> Fincham.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_152" href="#FNanchor_152" class="fnanchor">152</a> The author of this work, M. Paucton, in addition to discussing the possibility
+of replacing the oar by the screw, threw out the suggestion of its use
+for aerial flight. “Je sçais qu’on ne peut guère manquer de faire rire, en
+voulant donner des aîles à un homme. Je sçais que plusieurs personnes, qui
+out osé prendre l’effor dans les airs, n’ont pas eu un meilleur succès que
+l’imprudent Icare.” Nevertheless, it is incontestable that a man can lift
+more than his weight. And if he were to employ his full force on a machine
+which could act on air as does the screw, it would lift him by its aid through
+the air as it will propel him through the water.
+</p>
+<p>
+M. Paucton hastened to calm the incredulous reader by assuring him
+with an affectation of levity that he was not really serious. “Il est permis
+de s’égayer quelquefois.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_153" href="#FNanchor_153" class="fnanchor">153</a> A full account of these is given in Bourne’s <cite>Treatise on the Screw Propeller</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_154" href="#FNanchor_154" class="fnanchor">154</a> Weale: <cite>Papers on Engineering</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_155" href="#FNanchor_155" class="fnanchor">155</a> The <i>Archimedes</i>, with a 3-foot stroke engine which worked at 27 strokes
+per minute, was run against the <i>Widgeon</i>, the fastest paddlewheel steamer on
+the Dover station. Two points of importance were noted by the Admiralty
+representatives with reference to the propelling machinery of the <i>Archimedes</i>:
+the objectionable noise made by the spur-wheels, and their liability to damage
+and derangement. As, however, Mr. Smith proposed to obviate this objection
+“by substituting spiral gearing in lieu of the cogs” the representatives did
+not lay stress on these disadvantages.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_156" href="#FNanchor_156" class="fnanchor">156</a> A similar paradox was accidentally revealed in the case of the paddlewheel.
+It was at first thought that, the broader the floats the greater would
+be the pull. A certain steam vessel, however, being found to have too much
+beam to allow her to pass into a lock, was altered by having her floats and
+paddle-boxes made narrower. It was found that her speed had thereby been
+improved (Otway).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_157" href="#FNanchor_157" class="fnanchor">157</a> Note sur l’État des Forces Navales de la France, 1844.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_158" href="#FNanchor_158" class="fnanchor">158</a> Parliamentary Report on Screw Propulsion in H.M. Navy, 1850.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_159" href="#FNanchor_159" class="fnanchor">159</a> Sir Howard Douglas was instrumental in bringing to the notice of the
+Government the aggressive aims implied by the <cite>Enquête Parlementaire</cite>:
+His notes were printed confidentially in ’53 at the press of the Foreign Office.
+Vide his <cite>Defence of England</cite>, published in 1860.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_160" href="#FNanchor_160" class="fnanchor">160</a> <cite>The Navies of the World.</cite> Hans Busk, M.A., 1859.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_161" href="#FNanchor_161" class="fnanchor">161</a> The details of these trials against iron plate will be found in Sir Howard
+Douglas’ <cite>Naval Gunnery</cite>, third and subsequent editions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_162" href="#FNanchor_162" class="fnanchor">162</a> The rapid construction of over two hundred gunboats and their steam
+machinery revealed the enormous industrial capacity of this country, and
+constituted a feat of which the whole nation was rightly proud. For instance
+of successful organization, Messrs. Penn of Greenwich contracted to build
+eighty sets of main engines in three months—a proposition ridiculed as
+impossible. By the rapid distribution of duplicate patterns throughout the
+country the resources of all the greatest firms were utilized, and the contract
+was fulfilled almost to the day!
+</p>
+<p>
+Some seven or eight years later, when the building of ironclads was being
+debated in parliament, the government was able to recall this achievement
+as an argument for not building too many ships of a new and probably
+transitional type. If we liked, it was said, we could soon produce a fleet of
+ironclads far greater than all the other Powers of Europe besides.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_163" href="#FNanchor_163" class="fnanchor">163</a> J. Scott Russell: <cite>The Fleet of the Future: Iron or Wood?</cite> 1861.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_164" href="#FNanchor_164" class="fnanchor">164</a> Reed: <cite>Our Ironclad Ships</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_165" href="#FNanchor_165" class="fnanchor">165</a> Boynton: <cite>The Navies of England, France, America, and Russia.</cite> New
+York, ’65.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_166" href="#FNanchor_166" class="fnanchor">166</a> Colomb: <cite>Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_167" href="#FNanchor_167" class="fnanchor">167</a> Colomb: <cite>Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_168" href="#FNanchor_168" class="fnanchor">168</a> In parenthesis, for she is of no special interest as a type, we may note
+here the <i>Temeraire</i>, built at Chatham and completed in 1877: a compromise
+between the central-battery and the turret ship. Generally like the <i>Alexandra</i>
+in disposition of armament, she carried in addition, in order to give all-round
+fire, two open barbettes, one at each end of the upper deck, each containing a
+25-ton gun hydraulically operated.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_169" href="#FNanchor_169" class="fnanchor">169</a> The freedom of the <i>Royal Sovereign’s</i> turrets from any liability to
+jam was demonstrated at Portsmouth by subjecting them to the impact of
+projectiles fired from the 12-ton guns of the <i>Bellerophon</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_170" href="#FNanchor_170" class="fnanchor">170</a> Colomb: <cite>Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_171" href="#FNanchor_171" class="fnanchor">171</a> Hitherto the torpedo had been used in warfare only in the form of a
+stationary mine, or motion had been given to it either by letting it drift on a
+tide or by attaching it rigidly to the bow of a vessel. After the American
+Civil War, in which conflict three-fourths of the ships disabled or destroyed
+were so disposed of by torpedoes, efforts were made to give motion to it,
+either by towing or by self-propulsion. In ’69 Commander Harvey, R.N.,
+brought to the notice of the Admiralty his invention of a torpedo or sea kite
+which was so shaped that, when launched from the deck of a steamer and
+towed by a wire, it diverged from the steamer’s track and stood away at an
+angle of 45°. It could be exploded either electrically or by contact. The
+possibilities of this weapon were illustrated in a volume published in ’71,
+one picture of which showed luridly “an ironclad fleet surprised at sea by a
+squadron of torpedo craft armed with Harvey’s sea torpedoes.”
+</p>
+<p>
+The towed torpedo was overshadowed by the fish or self-propelled torpedo.
+In ’70 Mr. Whitehead came to England and, prosecuting experiments under
+the eyes of naval officers, with a 16-inch torpedo successfully sank an old
+corvette anchored in the Medway at 136 yards’ range. The result was the
+purchase by the Admiralty of his secret and sole rights. In ’77 the first
+torpedo-boat was ordered.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_172" href="#FNanchor_172" class="fnanchor">172</a> Colomb: <cite>Attack and Defence of Fleets</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_173" href="#FNanchor_173" class="fnanchor">173</a> Vice-Admiral Sir G. Elliot: <cite>On the Classification of Ships of War</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p class="fn3"><a id="Footnote_174" href="#FNanchor_174" class="fnanchor">174</a> Brassey: <cite>The British Navy</cite>.</p></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="chapter"><div class="index p4">
+<h2 id="INDEX" class="nobreak">INDEX</h2>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Active</i>, the, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Agamemnon</i>, the, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Ajax</i>, the, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Alarm</i>, the, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Alecto</i>, the, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Alexandra</i>, the, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Anderson, Robert, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Anson, Lord, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Archimedes, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Archimedes</i>, the, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Argyle</i>, the, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Armada, the Spanish, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Armstrong, Lord, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Armstrong gun, the, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Atwood, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Audacious</i>, the, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Bacon, Lord, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bacon, Roger, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Baker, Ezekiel, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Baker, James, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Baker, Matthew, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Balchen, Admiral, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Barnaby, Sir N., <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Barrow, Sir J., <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Battery, central, ships, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bawd, Peter, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Beaufoy, Colonel, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Beaufoy, Corporal, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Belleisle, siege of, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Bellerophon</i>, the, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bentham, Sir S., <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Berghen-op-Zoom, siege of, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bernouilli, Daniel, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bernouilli, John, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Berthold the Friar, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Birkenhead</i>, the, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Blake, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Blomefield, General, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Board of Ordnance, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bold, Charles the, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bonaparte, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Borda, the Chevalier, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bossut, Abbé, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bouguer, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Boulton, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bourne, Robert, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Boyle, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Boynton, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brackenbury, General, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bramah, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bridgewater, the Duke of, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Briggs, Sir J., <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Broke, Sir P., <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brown Bess, rifle, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brown, Commander, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brunel, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brunswick, rifle, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Buckhurst, Lord, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Burrell, Andrew, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bushnell, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Busk, Hans, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Byng, Admiral, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Cabots, the, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Caiman</i>, the, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Caledonia</i>, the, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Captain</i>, the, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Caus, Solomon, 95–<a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cawley, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Cerberus</i>, the, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Chads, Captain, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Chapman, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Charles I, King, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Charles II, King, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Charles V, Emperor, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Charlotte Dundas</i>, the, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Charterhouse, garden, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Chatfield, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Chesapeake</i>, the, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Chinese gunboats, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Clerk of Eldin, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Clermont</i>, the, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cloyne, Bishop of, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cockle, Maurice, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Collingwood</i>, the, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Colomb, Admiral, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Colossus</i>, the, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Columbus, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Comet</i>, the, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Commerce de Marseille</i>, the, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Compass, discovery of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Condorcet, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">304</span></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Congo</i>, the, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Congress</i>, the, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Congreve, General, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Congreve, Sir W., <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Conqueror</i>, the, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Consort, Prince, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Constantinople, siege of, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Corbett, Sir Julian, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Couronne</i>, the, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cowper Coles, Captain, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Creuze, Augustin, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cruiser, type, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cumberland, Earl of, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Curaçoa</i>, the, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Dahlgren, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Dandolo</i>, the, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Dauntless</i>, the, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Deane, Sir A., <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Delvigne, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Demologos</i>, the, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Denny, Messrs., <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Derrick, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Desaguliers, Dr., <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Desblancs, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Devastation</i>, the, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dirck, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Doncaster</i>, the, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Douglas, Sir C., <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Douglas, Sir H., <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Dreadnought</i>, the, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Duckworth, Sir J., <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Duilio</i>, the, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Duke</i>, the, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dundas, Lord, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dunkirk privateers, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dupuy de Lôme, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dutch ships, characteristics of, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Dwarf</i>, the, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Elliot, Admiral, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Enfield rifle, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Enterprise</i>, the, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ericsson, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Essex</i>, the, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Euler, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Excellent</i>, the, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Ferdinand Max</i>, the, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fincham, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Finsbury Field, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fitch, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Forbin, Count, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Formidable</i>, the, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fortifications, land, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fournier, Abbé, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Frederick the Great, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fremantle, Hon. T. F., <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Frigate, origin of, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Froissart, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Froude, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fuller, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fulton, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Furring of ships, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Galatea</i>, the, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Galileo, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Galleasse, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Galleon, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Galley, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gama, Vasco di, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Garoy, Blasco de, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gautier, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Genoese, the, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gibbon, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gibraltar, siege of, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Girdling of ships, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Glatton</i>, the, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Gloire</i>, the, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gordon, Thomas, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Grace à Dieu</i>, the, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Great Britain</i>, the, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Great Eastern</i>, the, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Greek fire, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Greener, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gribeauval, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gunpowder, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gustavus Adolphus, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Haddock, Sir R., <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Halley, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hampton Roads, battle of, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hannay, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hardy, Sir T. M., <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Harvey torpedo, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Harwich</i>, the, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hastings, Captain, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hastings, Sir T., <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hautefeuille, J. de, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hawke, Admiral, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hawkins, Sir J., <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hawkins, Sir R., <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hay, Lord John, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Hébé</i>, the, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Henri II, King, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Henry VIII, King, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Henry, Prince, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Hercules</i>, the, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hero of Alexandria, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Hibernia</i>, the, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">305</span></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hime, Colonel, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hogue, battle of La, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Honourable Artillery Co., <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Horse artillery, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hoste, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Hotspur</i>, the, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Howard, Lord, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hugo, Victor, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hulls, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hutton, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Huyghens, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Impérieuse</i>, the, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Inconstant</i>, the, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">India, East, Company, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Inflexible</i>, the, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Inman, Dr., <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Invincible</i>, the, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Iron Duke</i>, the, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Italia</i>, the, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Jacob, General, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Jal, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">James I, King, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">James II, King, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">James, the historian, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Joinville, Prince de, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Jouffroi, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Juan, Don G., <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Kaltoff, Caspar, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kempenfelt, Captain, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Keppel, Lord, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Key, Admiral Cooper, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Keyham, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kinburn, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Knowles, Sir C., <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Krupp, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kuper, Admiral, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Lady Nancy</i>, the, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Laird, Messrs., <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Laputa, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Laughton, Sir J. K., <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lepanto, battle of, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Lepanto</i>, the, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lefroy, General, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Leibnitz, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Leipsic lexicon, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lissa, battle of, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Livingstone, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Louis XI, King, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Magenta</i>, the, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Malthus, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Manby, Aaron, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Manwayring, Sir H., <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Marestier, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Mars</i>, the, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Marshall gun carriage, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Marsilly gun carriage, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Mary Rose</i>, the, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Massé, Colonel, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Maudsley, Messrs., <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Maure</i>, the, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">McLaurin, Colin, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Medea</i>, the, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Melville, General, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Melville, Lord, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mercier, Captain, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Merrimac</i>, the, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Metacentre, discovery of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Middleton, Sir C., <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Miller, Patrick, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Minié, rifle, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Minotaur</i>, the, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Monarch</i>, the, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Monitor</i>, the, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Monkey</i>, the, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Monro, Colonel, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mons Meg, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Moore, Sir Jonas, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Moorfields, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Moorsom, Captain, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Morland, Sir S., <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Muller, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Murray, Mungo, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Nancy Dawson</i>, the, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Napier, Sir C., <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Napoleon III, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Navarino, battle of, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Nelson, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Nemesis</i>, the, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Newcomen, 102–<a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Newton, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Nicolas, Sir H., <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Noble, Captain, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Noel, Commander, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Normans as shipbuilders, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Norton, Captain, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Norton, Robert, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Nye, Nathaniel, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Oak, English, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Odin</i>, the, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Oppenheim, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Orient</i>, the, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Otway, Commander, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Pacificateur</i>, the, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">306</span></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Paixhans, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pakington, Sir J., <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Pallas</i>, the, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Palliser, Major, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Papin, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pardies, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pascal, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Peake, Sir H., <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pechell, Captain, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Peel, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Pembroke</i>, the, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Penelope</i>, the, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Penn, Messrs., <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pennington, Sir J., <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pepys, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Perrin, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pett, Peter, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pett, Phineas, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Petty, Sir W., <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Phœbe</i>, the, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Phœnix</i>, the, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pickard, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pitt, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Plat, Sir H., <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Point-blank defined, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Porta, della, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Potter, Humphrey, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Prevesa, battle of, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Prince Albert</i>, the, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Prince Royal</i>, the, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Princessa</i>, the, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Proof of guns, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Punchinello, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Rainbow</i>, the, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Raleigh, Sir W., <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Raleigh</i>, the, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ram tactics, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ramelli, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Rattler</i>, the, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Ré d’Italia</i>, the, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Reed, Sir E., <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Richelieu, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Riders in ships, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Rob Roy</i>, the, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Robins, Benjamin, 112–<a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Robison, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rodney, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Rolf Krake</i>, the, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Romme, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Roncière, de la, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ross, Sir J., <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Royal George</i>, the, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Royal Katherine</i>, the, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Royal Society, foundation of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Royal Sovereign</i>, the, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Royal William</i>, the, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Ruby</i>, the, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rumsey, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Rupert</i>, the, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rupert, Prince, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Russell, Scott, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Samuda, Messrs., <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sartorius, Admiral, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Savannah</i>, the, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Savery, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Schalk, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Scharnhorst, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Schmidt, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Scloppetaria, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Scott, Commander, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Scourge of Malice</i>, the, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Seppings, Sir R., <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sewell, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Shah</i>, the, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Shannon</i>, the, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sheathing, introduction of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sheerness, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Shish, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Shovell, Admiral, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Shrapnel, Lieutenant, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Sidon</i>, the, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Simmons, Captain, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Simoon</i>, the, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sinope, battle of, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Slingsby, Sir R., <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Smith, Pettit, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Snodgrass, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Solferino</i>, the, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Sovereign of the Seas</i>, the, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Spitalfields, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Sprightly</i>, the, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stanhope, Lord, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stevinus, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stockton, Captain, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Stromboli</i>, the, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Sultan</i>, the, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Surveyors, abilities of, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sussex, iron mines, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sutherland, T., <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sveaborg, bombardment of, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Symington, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Symonds, Admiral, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Tactics, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tartaglia, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Taylor, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tegetthof, Admiral, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">307</span></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Temeraire</i>, the, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tennant, Sir E., <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Terrible</i>, the, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Thames</i>, the, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">“Thieves, Forty,” the, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Thouvenin, Colonel, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Thunderer</i>, the, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Torelli, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Torpedo, evolution of, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Torricelli, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Touchard, Admiral, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Trades Increase</i>, the, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Trafalgar, battle of, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Treuille de Beaulieu, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Trim, definition of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Trinity House, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Trollope, Captain, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tromp, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Trunnions, evolution of, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Truss frames, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tunnage, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Turgot, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Turret, the evolution of, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Types, differentiation of, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Upnor Castle, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst"><i>Vanguard</i>, the, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Vauban, Marshal, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ventilation, study of, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Victory</i>, the, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Villani, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Vincennes, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Volage</i>, the, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Walker, Captain, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wallis, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Walter, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Waltham Abbey, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Warrior</i>, the, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Warspite</i>, the, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Watt, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, 105–<a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Waymouth, Captain, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wellington, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Whelps</i>, the, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Whitehead, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Whitworth, Sir J., <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Willett, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Woodcraft, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Woolwich, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Worcester, Marquis of, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wynter, Sir R., <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Zöllner, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+</ul>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="chapter"><div class="transnote">
+<h2 id="Transcribers_Notes" class="nobreak p1">Transcriber’s Notes</h2>
+
+<p>Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
+preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
+Archaic spellings have not been changed; the spelling of
+non-English words has not been changed.</p>
+
+<p>Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
+quotation marks retained.</p>
+
+<p>Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences
+of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.</p>
+
+<p>Pages with Plate-illustrations included printer’s information
+regarding the pages the plates should face. That information
+has been removed in this eBook, as those illustrations are
+positioned as close as possible to those pages.</p>
+
+<p>The spelling and grammar of French text has been reproduced
+here as it was printed in the original book.</p>
+
+<p>The publication information of a few citations was italicized,
+but as that is not the style in most of the book, those
+words and dates are shown here unitalicized.</p>
+
+<p>Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of pages, have been
+collected and placed just before the Index of this eBook.</p>
+
+<p>Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_5">5</a>: “tunnage” was printed that way and is in the Index,
+but the other pages to which the Index entry refers spell
+the word as “tonnage”.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_23">23</a>: “remonstance” was printed that way.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_47">47</a>: “to their rates, And” was printed that way.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_72">72</a>: “the King’s feedmen” was printed that way,
+probably should be “freedmen”.</p>
+
+<p>Illustration on page <a href="#ip_86">86</a>: The original illustration was damaged.
+In the original book, it was on page 87.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_265">265</a>: “Give her the stem” was printed that way.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of Naval Armament, by 
+Frederick Leslie Robertson
+
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author	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-02-08 01:51:26 -0800
committer	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-02-08 01:51:26 -0800
commit	700f29806f18e819a74e6b4779ec8d512e251ff2 (patch)
tree	338cbc58319a47af9b65f8543e9b5e71d4e83606