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Title: The Evolution of Naval Armament

Author: Frederick Leslie Robertson

Release date: March 18, 2018 [eBook #56777]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
EVOLUTION OF NAVAL ARMAMENT ***

THE EVOLUTION OF
NAVAL ARMAMENT

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
C O N S TA B L E & C O M PA N Y LT D
10 ORANGE STREET LEICESTER SQUARE WC
1921

PREFACE

T
he 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

T
o 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
1
important advantages. 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
2
this time to have excelled. 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
3
‘cage works’ or protected castles were destroyed by gunfire.” 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
4
appearance of a half moon.” 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
5
English ships so much more handy than their Spanish antagonists.” 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
6
far.” 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
7
do. The Armada Papers 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
8
the vessel.
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
9
between wooden members.” 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
10
not injurious.” 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
11
which the various masts were raked. In the Sea-Man’s Dictionary 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
12
published. 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.
13
The opinions expressed by the above writers 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
14
designer. No better form, said a later critic and constructor 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
15
suitable for work among the shallow waters of the coast of Holland. 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
16
enabled them to hold a better wind, they were weathered and out-fought.
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
17
guardship, which post she filled till early in the nineteenth century.

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,
18
the English always sought to match individual ships. 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
19
that more complete differentiation of force 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
20
it, rejected all the benefits of experiment and of sea experience.”
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
21
between Holyhead and Dublin, had drawn public attention to his theories.
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
22
dockyard.” 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
23
of the country on this matter by the institution of the above Society.
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
24
sea-boats.”
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
25
the brunt of most of this century’s warfare. 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
26
whole, of poor design. Naval opinion confirmed it.
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.
27
Seppings.”
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
28
more than four times her breadth.”
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
29
lines.
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
30
ships were established with 32-pounder guns for their main deck. 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
31
into the Tagus.”

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
32
followed, and the efforts of the civil departments were rewarded.”
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.

Length
Establishment (gun- Keel Breadth Depth Tonnage
deck)
1706 } 171′ 9″ 139′ 7″ 49′ 3″ 19′ 6″ 1809
1719 } 100-
175′ 0″ 140′ 7″ 50′ 3″ 20′ 1″ 1883
gun ships
1745 } 178′ 0″ 145′ 2″ 52′ 0″ 21′ 6″ 2091
Commerce de 208′ 4″ 172′ 0″ 54′ 9″ 25′ ½″ 2747
Marseille

(120)
Caledonia
205′ 0″ 170′ 9″ 53′ 8″ 23′ 2″ 2616
(120)

§
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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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
33
than eight or nine knots.”
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
34
square of the beam, divided by 94. 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
35
procuring the best native models. 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
36
frigate; and then, in ’32, the Surveyorship of the Navy.”
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
37
is retained, except certain practical improvements which he introduced.”

‘Victoria’ ‘Vernon’
Breadth = 59′ 2″ Breadth = 52′
Length = 204′ Length = 176′

‘Caledonia’ ‘Barham’
Breadth = 53′ 6″ Breadth = 47′ 10″
Length = 205′ Length = 173′ 8″

Fig: 1. 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.

A TUDOR SHIP OF PERIOD 1540–50
From a Cottonian MS. in the British Museum

CHAPTER II

THE SMOOTH-BORE GUN

O
n 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
38
explosive material, says a recent authority, 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
39
Bacon, who in A.D. 1249 committed to paper an account of its properties.
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
40
the British Museum.”
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
41
in Ghent and exported to England. 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
42
chambers.
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
43
compared with the flights of arrows.”
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
44
mechanical engines, could no longer be considered impregnable.
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
45
Constantinople in the year 1870. 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....”

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
46
same great power. The invention of the Christians 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
47
fawconets, falcons, minions, sakers and other pieces.” 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
48
pounds, or three tons a-piece.”
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
49
of the armament of the Henry Grace à Dieu, of 1514, it appears 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
50
respectively 3300 lbs., 2500 lbs., and 2000 lbs.”
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
51
powders coming into use, 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
52
broadside in the same deck space.” 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
53
less liable to entangle and interfere with the tackles of the sails.
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
54
artillery “an ignoble arm.” 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
55
the siege of Edinborough Castle, to two experienced gunners.” 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,
56
with its sixty-six pound shot and its eight thousand pounds of metal.
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
57
thieves, a vent for the transport of ordnance.”
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
58
purpose, they discharge them for their exercise.” 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
59
carry on the long traditions of the spot.”
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
60
risen in the French service to be Director of their Artillery, 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
61
“Royal George” in 1840.

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.

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
62
spherical chamber was abandoned.
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
63
was progressive in the whole realm of gunnery: Generals Congreve and
64
Blomefield. 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.

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
65
houses.” 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-
66
iron balls against foe or crumbling masonry, a new power had arisen. 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
67
first order—the hand-grenade and the bomb.”
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
68
Artillery.”
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,
69
and almost simultaneously it appeared in the British army.
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

T
he 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
70
and most unorthodox description. 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
71
effect.” 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
72
and intended to have a model of it buried with him. 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
73
been shown by Solomon de Caus, 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.
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 Steam from Boiler.
afterwards, which I shall thus prove,” etc. SAVERY’S ENGINE
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
74
only in the libraries of the curious.” 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
75
were invalidated by the Marquis of Worcester’s prior patents.”
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
76
piston, borrowed ten years later by Newcomen, that was wholly Papin’s.”
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).

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
77
engine which he was employed to work at Wolverhampton.
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
78
heat, 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
79
organs, but gauges its power in health.”

§
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.”
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, CONNECTIN
most wonderful contrivance of the brain and hand of man, G ROD
presented itself for embodiment in the navy, by the From Otway
personnel of which it was regarded, not without reason, as
an unmitigated evil.

CHAPTER IV

“NEW PRINCIPLES OF GUNNERY”

W
e 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
80
mystery. The gunner, that honest and godly man, 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
81
mathematicians, Newton and Leibnitz being the two protagonists. 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
82
weighty bombs, be very safely neglected.”
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
83
this, upon trial, did most remarkably happen.”
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-
84
Pans in Scotland. 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.

TUDOR SHIPS UNDER SAIL
From the same MS. as plate facing page 60

CHAPTER V

THE CARRONADE

A
t 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,
85
ship, shell, and carcass shot, etc. First used against French ships in 1779.”
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
86
in the defence of merchant ships. 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
87
four to a dozen carronades.
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.

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
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carry. 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;—
89
and these, as was pointed out by an eminent writer on artillery, 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

F
rom 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
90
the truck carriage of the succeeding centuries.
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

91
large bombards, upon “scaffolds” of timber. 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,
92
capsquares, beds, quoins, axle-trees, and trucks. 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
93
chiefly in foul weather.
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
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office acquired “an unenviable reputation for sloth and incapacity,” 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
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breaking loose of her great guns in a gale.

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
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slow match and linstock, 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
97
at every passing Frenchman before he could bring a gun to bear in reply.
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
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point of efficiency. By this time the advantage of gun-sights 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
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regulation of the Service.”
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.

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

T
he 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.

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.

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
100 101
lines. Nor was Lieutenant Shrapnel’s contemporaneous invention, 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
102
Britain.”
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
103
board the Spartiate, one of the ships captured on the first of August!”
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.
104
In these works 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
105
superiority in seamanship. The accursed English “devil boat,” 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,
106
therefore, further development of arms be a positive benefit to humanity?
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
107
mounted in their fleets.
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.

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,
108
but amid all the excitement and hot haste of battle.”
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
109
ship armament. 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
110
uselessness. The adoption of hollow shot, he showed, 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.

THE SPEAKER, A SECOND-RATE OF THE COMMONWEALTH
From Fincham’s Naval Architecture

CHAPTER VIII

THE RIFLED GUN

W
hile 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
111
was introduced its use was forbidden except under special conditions.
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
112
bow.”
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.
113
“Smooth-bore guns,” says Schmidt, “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
114
more than compensated for by the annihilation of windage.
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
115
with marksmen armed with similar weapons for special prizes.”

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
116
l’imperfection inévitable de l’arme à canon lisse.”

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
117
little less than magic.”

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
118
by experience. 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
119
deviated considerably.”

§
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
120
bear any amount of hard usage.
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
121
action when under the pressure of the powder gases. 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.
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
MINIÉ BULLET 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
122
occasioned misgiving and surprise. In ’51
some Minié rifles were purchased and issued, as a
temporary expedient, to our army. And, interest in
123
the question now becoming general, 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 “CARABINE À TIGE”
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.
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
WHITWORT ordnance, designed to recover the loss of its ascendancy.
H In France, where the logical consequences of the progress
RIFLE in small arms were officially noted on several occasions,
BULLET 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
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projectile coming first in contact with the ground or target. 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
125
decimated the cavalry as they formed for the attack.”
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
126
1855.”
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
127
forefathers.” 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
128
threw a shot to a distance of 9,688 yards!
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
129
smashing armour plates.”
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
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discoveries and great progress in powder quite altered conditions.” 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

N
o 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.

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
131
is mentioned. 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,
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was not impressed with its value. 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
133
to other purposes.” 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
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Newton, and that on his advice no further action was taken.
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
135
le premier bateau à vapeur toute sa fortune.” 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
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produce a rotary motion.
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
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years.” 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
138
or impracticable —to develop its advantages and to secure an undisputed
lead in the new application of steam power.

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
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small boat.”
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
140
off which, in the night, have a very brilliant and beautiful appearance.”
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
141
efficient.

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