THE RIFLED GUN
While the evolution of smooth-bore ordnance owed little if anything to
the prior development of small arms, the evolution of rifled ordnance
which took place in the middle of the nineteenth century followed
closely on that of rifling as applied to the musket. Experience
with the rifled musket supplied the information necessary for the
application of rifling on the larger scale. In tracing the development
of rifled ordnance, therefore, the development of the rifled musket
must first be considered: the two evolutions are historically linked
together. In this chapter an endeavour is made to trace these two
evolutions in their natural sequence, and to describe the circumstances
in which each took place, the objects aimed at, the difficulties
encountered and the results achieved. We shall see how the smooth-bore
musket was replaced by the rifle firing a spherical ball; how the
spherical ball gave place, in the course of time, to an elongated
bullet; and how, when the elongated bullet had been evolved, the
principle of the rifle was extended to field and to heavy ordnance. A
complete survey of the whole process can be obtained only by stepping
back, past the days of the primitive rifled fire-arm, to the age when
the longbow was still “the surety, safeguard, and continual defence
of this realm of England and an inestimable dread and terror to the
enemies of the same.”
§
The might of England, avouches the historian, stood upon archers. The
prowess of the archer, the dreadful precision of the longbow, and the
athletic arm by which it was strung, form the constant and animated
theme of ancient British story. In battle and the chase, we are told,
the power of the archers always prevailed, and the attainment of that
power was an object of incessant anxiety, in all ranks of people,
from their earliest infancy. The longbow was thus, as described in
the above-quoted act of Henry VIII, a continual defence of the realm.
Over all other countries England had this advantage, that against the
exigencies of war she had, not only her race of splendid seamen, but
armies of the most skilful archers in the world. In peace she was thus
well prepared. Good use was made by legislation to maintain the skill
and stimulate the ardour of the bowmen, and the statute book bears
witness, reign after reign, to the importance attached to archery from
its military aspect. At one time every man between the ages of fifteen
and sixty had to possess a bow equal in length to his own height. Every
township had to maintain its butts, each saint’s day had its shooting
competition. The churchyard yew gave its wood for staves, the geese on
the green their best wing feathers; and a goose’s head was the orthodox
and inconspicuous target. No man under the age of twenty-four was
allowed to shoot at any standing mark, and none over that age at any
mark of eleven score yards or under. Restraint was laid on the exercise
of sports which might interfere with archery, and when the mechanically
strung crossbow was introduced its use was forbidden except under
special conditions.[111] Honours and prizes were awarded the best
marksmen. The range and accuracy achieved by them was without doubt
prodigious. Much of their power lay in their strength of arm; but one
of the chief secrets of their craft lay in the way in which they set
their arrow-feathers at the requisite angle to give the arrows a spin
which would ensure a long, a true and a steady flight.
With the advent of gunpowder the shooting competitions declined. An
embargo was put on fire-arms; instead of being pressed to possess
them the people were forbidden their use except under conditions. The
military character became a separate order in society. Encouragement
was no longer given to the individual to own and master the unwieldy
fire-arm. The English peasant, enthusiasm evaporating as his skill
declined, no longer gave the State the military value which his
forefathers possessed. The clumsy mechanism of the English musket, the
uncertainty of its action (especially in wet weather), its slow rate
of fire, its gross inaccuracy, and its inability to penetrate armour
under all conditions, were factors which kept fire-arms for long years
in disfavour in this country.
Abroad, on the other hand, the development of fire-arms was actually
encouraged and skill in their use patronised. The rivalry which already
existed with bow and arrow was extended to the new medium, and in
Sweden and Switzerland, Germany and France, shooting competitions
continued in vogue and proficiency with musket and arquebus was
honoured and substantially rewarded. In Switzerland and Southern
Germany especially, shooting was very popular. The character of the
people, their skill in making delicate mechanisms, the nature of the
country, all tended to promote an interest in musketry which did not
exist among our own people. As a result England has little to claim in
the early stages of the development of portable fire-arms.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries smooth-bore weapons
firing spherical lead balls were the only kind known and used. But in
the early part of the sixteenth century a development took place which
was to prove of the first importance to fire-arms; which was to make
the primitive weapon in the course of time “the most beautiful, and at
the same time the most deadly instrument of warfare ever devised by the
ingenuity of man.” The value of rifling was discovered.
How, when, or where this discovery was first made, appears to have
defied the researches of investigators. As to the manner in which
the development took place and the effects which it was intended to
produce by its means there is an assortment of evidence; and this is so
various and so interesting as bearing on the action of the rifle and
its evolution, that we reproduce it in some detail. On one point there
appears to be small doubt: _The earliest rifling had no twist in it_.
“It seems to have been generally accepted by writers on the subject,”
says the author of _The Book of the Rifle_, “that the earliest
barrels had straight grooves, the object of which was to give a space
into which the fouling of previous shots might stow itself without
obstructing the process of loading with a well-fitting ball, and that
spiral grooving was merely an accidental variation of this, afterwards
found to possess special advantages.” Nevertheless, he himself inclines
to the opinion that the straight groove was not necessarily a prior
form of the spiral. The collections in museums contain examples of
spiral grooving older than the oldest straight-grooved barrels. In any
case, it is antecedently more probable, he considers, that the spiral
grooving was not a variation of the straight groove, but that it was “a
deliberate attempt to find a means of giving to the bullet the spiral
spin which was well known as having a steadying effect on the javelin,
or on the arrow or bolt discharged from the bow.”[112]
But in this view he is in a minority. Whereas the invention of helical
grooving is generally attributed to Augustin Kutter, a gunmaker of
Nuremburg who died in A.D. 1630, straight grooving had been known
since 1480, and is ascribed to one Gaspard Zöllner, a gunmaker of
Vienna. “Smooth-bore guns,” says Schmidt,[113] “had the disadvantage of
fouling, and with the poor powder could only be recharged by leaving a
comparatively large space between the ball and the barrel. This windage
prejudiced straight shooting. To overcome this deficiency the practice
was adopted of cutting grooves, more or less numerous, in the barrel,
and in wrapping the ball in a rag greased with suet. In this way the
windage was reduced, and as the greased rag cleaned the barrel, the
weapon could be recharged for a large number of rounds. At first these
grooves were made straight.”
A theory propounded in a well-known treatise published in the year
1808, entitled _Scloppetaria_, was to the effect that grooving had its
origin in the habit which the early huntsman had of gnawing or biting
the balls before putting them into the piece, with a view to causing
the wound inflicted by them to be rendered more severe. This habit gave
rise to the idea that the barrel itself might be made to do the work
of jagging or indenting the bullet. “These grooved or sulcated barrels
appear to be of great antiquity, and are said to have existed in Russia
long before their introduction among the civilized nations of the
south.”
According to Hans Busk, straight grooving was adopted for the reason
given by Schmidt: i.e., purely for the purpose of facilitating loading,
and for assisting to dislodge the products of combustion left in the
bore. “No doubt the adoption of this plan was calculated to increase
the efficiency and accuracy of the arm from the steadiness it imparted
to the bullet in its passage through the barrel.”
And that is a view which, it is suggested, might be expanded to give a
motive or combination of motives which may well have operated to induce
the early gunmakers to cut grooves in their musket-barrels. Thus: the
variations in the flight of spherical lead balls fired from smooth-bore
guns were chiefly due (though these causes were not clearly appreciated
till a much later date) to the incalculable effect of windage and to
the varying axis about which spin took place. If by any means windage
could be reduced, and if the ball could be made to assume a central
position in the bore and spin about a definite axis in its flight, a
large increase in accuracy would be attained. Suppose, for instance, a
single groove or gutter were filed along the barrel parallel with its
axis. The effect surely would be, by creating a rush of powder-gases
along this groove, to cause the ball, under the tangential impulse of
the gases, to rotate always in the same plane as it passed through the
bore. And thus by the cutting of this single groove a uniformity of
flight of the ball would be attained which was unattainable without the
groove. The same effect, in fact, was produced by Robins when he bent
the musket barrel. He demonstrated that the result was to make the ball
roll on a definite part of the barrel and thus to deviate during flight
in a definite direction. He might have shewn, as another result of his
experiment, that by giving the ball a uniform spin he had endowed it
with a regularity of flight, or accuracy, many times greater than it
before possessed.
Or suppose that, instead of one groove, two or more grooves were filed
in the same way. While the above advantage derived from the single
groove would be less fully obtained, another would result. By providing
a space on each side into which fouling might spread, and into which
the plastic metal of the ball might be intruded by the pressure of the
ramrod, their presence would certainly allow of a tight-fitting ball
being used. The loss in efficiency of discharge due to friction between
ball and barrel would be more than compensated for by the annihilation
of windage.[114]
Suppose, however, that the grooves were augmented in number until they
became a series of triangular serrations all round the interior of
the barrel. The value of this formation might lie, not so much in the
grooves, as in the ends or points of the serrations which supported the
ball and held it in a central position on the true axis of the gun. In
short, the prime idea of the gunmaker may have been, not so much the
provision of grooves, as the provision of internal ribs for holding the
ball truly in the musket.
Whatever the cause or motive which led to its adoption, the rifling
of musket barrels became a common practice in the sixteenth century.
Two significant quotations will suffice to show the period of the
invention. The first is an edict issued by the Swiss Government in 1563:
“For the last few years the art of cutting grooves in the
chambers of the guns has been introduced with the object of
increasing the accuracy of fire; the disadvantage resulting
therefrom to the common marksmen has sown discord among them.
In ordinary shooting matches marksmen are therefore forbidden
under a penalty of £10 to provide themselves with rifled arms.
Everyone is nevertheless permitted to rifle his military weapon
and to compete with marksmen armed with similar weapons for
special prizes.”[115]
The second is a recipe from a book by Sir Hugh Plat, written in 1594.
“How to make a pistol whose barrel is two feet in length to
deliver a bullet point blank at eight score. A pistol of the
aforesaid length and being of petronel bore, or a bore higher,
having eight gutters somewhat deep in the inside of the barrel,
and the bullet a thought bigger than the bore, and is rammed
in at the first three or four inches at the least, and after
driven down with the skowring-stick, will deliver his bullet at
such distance.”
So at some date not long after that at which straight grooving was put
into common practice, the evolution of the rifle made a further advance
by the introduction of spiral grooving. This gave all the advantages
of the straight grooving, and in addition, spin in a definite plane to
a definite degree; so that it entirely superseded straight grooving
in all countries where fire-arms were in common use. Experience
amply confirmed the superiority of the twisted rifling. With the
accession of accuracy the skill of the marksman naturally increased,
enthusiasm grew, and the shooting competitions gained in popularity and
importance. “Le goût de tir des armes rayées de précision est poussé
jusqu’à la passion: passion qui excite l’amour-propre en ne laissant
pas à la maladresse l’excuse si facile de l’imperfection inévitable de
l’arme à canon lisse.”[116]
[Illustration: BULLET MOULD]
Yet in spite of improvements the rifled musket remained unrecognized
as a military weapon for another two hundred years. Its use was
confined to sporting purposes; though far less in common use than the
smooth-bore it became, for its increased accuracy, the favourite weapon
of the deer-stalker and the chamois hunter. In England it was little
known before the nineteenth century; and when, in 1746, Robins made his
famous prophecy, the possibilities inherent in rifled fire-arms, even
such as were then in existence, were unrealized by the people of this
country.
It is to be noted that it was only in increased accuracy of flight that
the rifled gun had a superiority over the smooth-bore; no increase in
ranging power was possessed by it. And yet this claim is constantly
made by old writers, that, probably (as they say) owing to the fact
that increased resistance of the ball to initial motion gave time for
all the charge to be thoroughly ignited, the rifled gun carried further
than the smooth-bore. As a fact, the contrary was true; other things
being equal, the range of the rifle was actually less than that of the
smooth-bore. The explanation of the paradox was given by Robins. “It is
not surprising,” he said, “that those habituated to the use of rifled
pieces gave way to prepossessions like these; for they found that with
them they could fire at a mark with tolerable success, though it were
placed at three or four times the distance to which the ordinary pieces
were supposed to reach: and therefore as they were ignorant of the true
cause of this variation ... it was not unnatural for them to imagine,
that the superiority in the effect of rifled pieces was owing either to
a more violent impulse at first, or to a more easy passage through the
air.” The true value of the spiral grooving resided, of course, in the
spinning motion which it gave the ball. By making this spin uniform two
variable factors determining the trajectory were thereby transformed
into constants: first, the effect just mentioned, the influence of the
varying resistance of the air on the parts of the ball which met it at
different speeds, some parts moving forward relatively to its centre
and some parts retreating; secondly, the effect of eccentricity of mass
and irregularity of exterior surface, which were both almost nullified
by the rotation. The importance of this second effect may not at first
sight be apparent. It must be remembered, however, that the balls used
in those days were of the roughest description; cast in hand moulds,
“drawn” in cooling to such an extent that in a large proportion an
actual cavity was left in their interior, which could be revealed only
by cutting them open; their burrs removed with pincers, their surface
rough and broken, their shape distorted by the ramrod’s blows.
The superiority of the rifle in accuracy was generally admitted; and
this advantage not only counterbalanced such deficiency in ranging
power as may have accrued from the use of grooving, but actually led
to a general but mistaken belief that the rifle carried farther than
the smooth-bore. The reverse was the case. Moreover, it was not safe to
use with a rifle the very large charges of powder which could be used
with safety with a smooth-bore musket. On account of the resistance to
motion of the ball which had been forced by ramrod, sometimes even by
mallet, down the grooved barrel of the rifle, high chamber pressures
resulted, and not infrequently the barrels burst. Hence in spite of the
thicker metal of which they were generally made, rifles could only be
used with moderate charges, and so could not compete on equal terms, in
this respect, with the smooth-bores for superiority of range.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century events occurred which drew
attention to the utility of the rifle for military purposes. In spite
of its slow rate of fire--to load it carefully took from one and a
half to two minutes--it showed itself to be a very effective weapon
in the hands of French tirailleurs, Swiss, Austrian, and Tyrolese
_Jägers_, Hottentots and American Indians. In the War of Independence
the superior accuracy of their rifles, and their capacity for hitting
at ranges beyond the 200 yards which were about the limit of the
smooth-bore musket, placed the American backwoodsmen at such an
advantage over the British troops that riflemen were recruited on the
Continent and sent across the Atlantic to counter them. New military
tactics came into vogue at this time, their inception influenced by the
gradual improvement in fire-arms and artillery. Bodies of riflemen,
“a light erratic force concealing itself with facility and forming an
ambuscade at will,” were formed in the continental armies to act in
concert with the masses of infantry as skirmishers or sharp-shooters,
their object being to surprise and demoralize the enemy by the accuracy
of their long-range shooting. Rifles were now looked on, too, as the
natural counterpart of the now flying or horse artillery, “which,
from the rapidity of its motions, the execution of cannon-shot in all
situations, appears to be the effects of little less than magic.”[117]
[Illustration: RIFLEMAN PRESENTING
(From Ezekiel Baker’s _Rifled Guns_, A.D. 1813.)]
In 1800 a rifle corps was raised by the British government from the old
95th Regiment. As the result of competitive trials the rifle made by
Ezekiel Baker, a gunmaker of Whitechapel, was adopted: taking spherical
balls of twenty to the pound, and having a barrel 30 inches long,
rifled with two grooves twisted one-quarter of a turn. This degree of
twist was certainly much less than that used in French, German and
American rifles, which as a rule had three-quarters or a whole turn in
them; but Baker found that so great a twist caused stripping of the
balls; so, as the accuracy of the lower twist was as great as that of
the higher up to a range of 300 yards, and as it required a relatively
smaller charge, gave smaller chamber pressures and caused less fouling
of the barrel than its competitors, it was accepted. There was a strong
opinion at the time in favour of the larger twist as universally used
by the more expert foreign marksmen; and this opinion was justified by
experience.[118] The quarter-turn twist might give sufficient accuracy
at low ranges, but as the skill of the riflemen increased longer ranges
were attempted; and then it was found that sufficient accuracy was
unattainable with the approved weapon. Rifles having a larger twist
were therefore made by rival gunmakers and, the results of shooting
matches giving incontestable evidence of their superiority, a demand
arose for their supply to the army riflemen. Accordingly in 1839 the
Brunswick rifle was adopted for the British army. The new weapon had
two deep grooves twisted a whole turn in the length of the barrel,
in which grooves studs, cast on the ball and designed to prevent
stripping, were made to engage.
This was the last stage of the evolution of the rifle firing a
spherical ball. So long as the spherical ball was retained, spiral
grooving offered relatively small advantages over straight grooving;
straight grooving offered small advantages over the best smooth-bore
muskets. The tedious loading of these rifles and the inefficiency of
the system by which windage was eliminated by the force of ramming, are
sufficiently set forth by the various writers on early fire arms; and
there is small wonder that the value of rifles as military weapons was
seriously questioned by the highest professional opinion of the time.
The charge of powder had to be carefully varied according to the state
of the weather and the foulness of the piece. Care had to be taken
that all the grains of the charge poured into it went to the breech
end and did not stick to the sides of the barrel. Patches of leather
or fustian were carried, in which the ball was wrapped on loading, to
absorb windage, lubricate the rifling, and prevent the “leading” of
the barrel and the wear which would ensue if a naked ball were used.
“Place the ball,” says Ezekiel Baker, “upon the greased patch with the
neck or castable, where it is cut off from the moulds, downwards, as
generally there is a small hole or cavity in it, which would gather
the air in its flight.” The ball, a good tight fit, had to be rammed,
in its surrounding patch, right down to the powder: for, if not rammed
properly home, an air-space would be left and the barrel would perhaps
burst on discharge; at the least, would give an inaccurate flight to
the ball. If the barrel were at all worn, double or treble patches were
necessary. To loosen the filth which collected in the barrel, and which
sometimes prevented the ball from being either rammed or withdrawn,
water had to be poured down; not infrequently urine was used.
All sizes and shapes of groove were given to the early rifle, and
their number depended largely upon caprice or superstition. Seven,
for instance, was a number frequently chosen on account of its mystic
properties; in _Scloppetaria_ an attempt is made to prove that an
odd number has an advantage over an even. So, also, various degrees
of twist were used. But in respect of this the evolution followed a
definite course. The pitch of the twist necessarily bore a certain
relationship to muzzle velocity. With the earliest rifles a fairly
rapid twist was given, being rendered possible by the small muzzle
velocities employed, and indeed being rendered necessary to ensure
stability to the flight of the ball. Then, with the endeavours made, at
the end of the eighteenth century, to use higher charges and thereby
to extend their range, higher muzzle velocities came into use, and the
danger of stripping was then only prevented by the use of low twists.
Special devices enabled a return to be made, in the Brunswick and other
patterns, to the more rapid twists originally used.
Whatever devices were adopted to prevent stripping, however perfect
the design and material of the equipment employed, two factors stood
in the way of any further advance in the evolution of the rifle firing
the spherical ball. First, the unsuitability of the sphere itself
for projection through a resisting medium, by reason of the large
surface which it offered to the air’s resistance and the relatively
small mass by means of which it could maintain its flight. Second, the
gyroscopic action of the spinning sphere, which limited its effective
range in a manner which was probably unrealized until after it had
been completely superseded. The sphere, unlike the elongated bullet,
which always keeps its axis approximately tangential to its trajectory,
maintained throughout flight its spin on its original axis. This did
not matter much when ranges were short and trajectories flat; but as
greater ranges and loftier trajectories came into use the effect on
accuracy of aim became very important. During its descent through the
latter part of the trajectory the rifle ball rotated in a plane no
longer normal to its direction of flight; “it tended more and more to
roll upon the air, and deviated considerably.”[119]
§
The old Brown Bess, the ¾-inch smooth-bore musket which our armies
carried at Waterloo, in the Peninsula, and even at the Crimea,
differed in no great respect from the muskets borne by British troops
at Ramillies, whose inefficiency was such that it was seriously
questioned whether, without the invention of the bayonet, they would
have permanently superseded the crossbow of the Middle Ages. The
inefficiency of Brown Bess was indeed remarkable. Its standard of
accuracy was so low that a trained marksman could only depend on
putting one shot in twenty into an eighteen-foot square target at two
hundred yards, at which range it was supposed to be effective. Its
windage was so great that bullets flew wild from the muzzle; and it
is not very surprising that, armed with such a weapon, our infantry
should often have been impelled “to resort to the strong and certain
thrust of the bayonet, rather than rely for their safety on the chance
performances of the clumsy and capricious Brown Bess.” Writers on
fire-arms are able to give dozens of tragic and laughable instances
of its erratic shooting. In the Kaffir war, for example, our troops
had to expend no fewer than eighty thousand rounds to kill or cripple
some twenty-five naked savages. After Waterloo a musket was sent down
to Woolwich, to ascertain whether its ball would penetrate a French
cuirass at two hundred yards’ range. The cuirass was mounted on a
pole, the musket aligned and held firmly in a vice; but it was found
impossible to secure a hit until, at last, a random shot fired by one
of the officers present did take effect! Nevertheless, Brown Bess
remained in favour for a number of years after Waterloo. It had a flat
and raking trajectory, owing to the very high muzzle velocity imparted
to it by the large charge of powder used; from its great windage it
loaded easily; and, although rather too heavy for long marches, it was
strong enough to bear any amount of hard usage.[120]
So long as the rifle used a spherical ball it could not claim to rival
Brown Bess for general service. As soon as the elongated projectile
was developed the supersession of the smooth-bore was a matter of
time alone. It is strange, however, in view of the enthusiasm of the
Victorian rifleman and the ease with which the fire-arm lent itself
to novel experiments, that the evolution of the elongated projectile
covered so long a period as it did.
Apart from the fact that cylindrical bars and shot had often been fired
from ordnance, it was known that Benjamin Robins himself had tried the
experiment of firing egg-shaped projectiles from a rifle with a certain
amount of success. The inefficiency of the loose sphere, in the case
of the smooth-bore, and of the tightly rammed sphere, in the case of
the rifle, were both recognized in the early days of the century. And,
while no solution could be found, the problem was generally agreed to
be: how to drop the projectile loosely down the barrel, and tighten it
so as to absorb the windage when already there.
Two or three English inventors made proposals. In 1823 a Captain
Norton, of the 34th Regiment, submitted an elongated projectile with
a base hollowed out in such a way as to expand automatically when the
pressure of the powder-gas came on it, and thus seal the bore. The
idea came to him from an examination of the arrow used by the natives
of Southern India with their blow-tube: an examination which revealed
that the base of the arrow was formed of elastic lotus-pith, which by
its expansion against the cylindrical surface of the tube prevented the
escape of air past it. In 1836 Mr. Greener submitted a pointed bullet
having a cylindrical cavity in its base in which a conical plug was
fixed, expanding the base by a wedging action when under the pressure
of the powder gases.[121] Had either of these ideas been considered
with the attention which it deserved, the development of the rifle
in this country might have been more rapid than it was. “By blindly
rejecting both of these inventions the authorities deprived England of
the honour of having initiated the greatest improvement in small arms.”
It was in France that the elongated projectile waged an eventually
successful struggle against the spherical ball, its ancient rival.
The French, troubled by the superiority of their Arab enemies in
shooting at long range, founded a School of Musketry at Vincennes. In
1828 Captain Delvigne, a distinguished staff officer of that school,
established the two main principles on which all succeeding inventors
were obliged to rely: one, that in muzzle-loading rifles the projectile
must slip down the barrel with a certain windage, so as to admit of
easy loading; two, that only elongated projectiles were suited to
modern rifles.
Before coming to these two conclusions Delvigne had made important
efforts to render the spherical ball as efficient as possible. He
had, in particular, proposed to make that part of the barrel near the
breech which formed the powder-chamber of slightly smaller diameter
than the rest of the barrel; so that a spherical ball, rammed down
on it, became indented against its ledge and flattened sufficiently
to fill the rifling grooves. By this device quick loading was
obtained and the accuracy of aim, it was found, was doubled. Certain
practical disadvantages, however, were associated with it: the chamber
fouled rapidly, and the ball was frequently distorted and jagged
by over-ramming. So in ’33 the Delvigne system, as it was called,
was modified by the wrapping of the ball in a greased patch and the
attaching of the patch to a “sabot” or wad of wood which was interposed
between the ball and the shoulders of the powder-chamber. Rifles thus
loaded did good work in Algeria in ’38.
In the meantime Delvigne, admittedly inspired by the writings of
Robins, was urging on the authorities the superiority of the elongated
ball. He was insistent on the advantages which would accrue from
augmenting the mass of the projectile while at the same time making
it present to the air during flight its smallest surface. The shape
he proposed was that of the present-day rifle bullet, considerably
shortened: a bullet with a flat base, cylindrical sides and ogival
head, somewhat resembling the form which had been proposed by Sir
Isaac Newton as a “solid of least resistance.” After a succession of
disappointments and refusals, the inventor had the satisfaction of
seeing his bullet accepted. Its advantages over the spherical ball
had been made manifest on the proving-ground. It was accepted in
combination with the _carabine à tige_, a rifle invented by a Colonel
Thouvenin, in which the Delvigne shouldered chamber was replaced by a
small central pillar or anvil, projecting from the breech-end of the
bore, against which the bullet was rammed. The powder, when poured into
the barrel, collected in the annular space around the pillar. By this
arrangement the necessity for the sabot was obviated and the charge of
powder, protected by the pillar, was not in danger of being crushed
or mealed. In ’46 the new bullet proved its high accuracy and ranging
power on active service in Algeria. But the pillar was found liable to
bend and distort; and the difficulty in keeping the space round it free
from fouling proved to be another of its inherent disadvantages.
[Illustration: “CARABINE À TIGE”]
[Illustration: MINIÉ BULLET]
And then, in 49 the Minié compound bullet, self-expanding, of the same
shape as the Delvigne and utilizing the same principle of an expansive
bore as that embodied in Greener’s bullet, was produced. The full value
of the rifle was at last obtained. By virtue of the elongated bullet
the mass of the projectile could be increased to a large extent without
any increase in the cross-sectional area exposed to air resistance.
With such a projectile, impelled by a charge whose combustive effect
could be accurately gauged owing to the absence of all windage losses,
great speed and accuracy were possible. As to power, the only limit
imposed was the strength of the barrel and the capacity of the marksman
to withstand the reactionary blow due to the projectile’s momentum.
But now, not only was rifling advantageous: with the elongated bullet
rifling was an absolute necessity. “Rotation,” it was said, “is the
soul of the bullet.” Rotation was necessary to impart stability, and to
keep the projectile, by virtue of the initial spin acquired, true in
its flight throughout the whole trajectory.
In England, where the two-grooved Brunswick still marked the limit
of development, the discovery of the Minié weapon and its powers
occasioned misgiving and surprise.[122] In ’51 some Minié rifles were
purchased and issued, as a temporary expedient, to our army. And,
interest in the question now becoming general,[123] it was resolved
to take under government control the future manufacture of military
small arms. A commission of officers visited America for the purpose
of inspecting the ingenious tools and appliances known to be employed
there in the manufacture of rifles; and the features of the various
European and American weapons were seriously studied. A government
factory was established at Enfield, and with the products of this
factory certain of our regiments were armed for service when the
Crimean War broke out. The Enfield rifle, as it was called, combined
the best features of the Minié with those of other types. It had a
three-grooved barrel with a half-turn twist in its length of 39 inches.
It was .577 inch in the bore, and fired a bullet whose recessed base
was filled with a boxwood instead of an iron cup or plug.
The nation soon obtained value from the new development. The efficiency
of the Enfield rifle at the Alma and at Inkerman was attested by the
correspondent of _The Times_, who reported that “it smote the enemy
like a destroying angel.” Three years later the Indian Mutiny afforded
a still more conclusive proof of the value of this weapon. Though,
from the greased cartridges which were used, it served as one of the
pretexts for the mutiny, it proved in the sequel a powerful military
instrument, and demonstrated both to friend and foe its superiority
over the smooth-bore musket with which the rebels were armed. In
fact, with the adoption of the Enfield rifle, England found herself
in advance even of France; the French, partly perhaps from motives
of economy, partly from a desire for symmetry, had retained in their
Minié rifle the same calibre as that of their old smooth-bore: indeed,
the greater part of the French army rifles were merely converted
smooth-bores. In the Enfield a wise reduction of calibre had been
made; whereby, while the weight of the rifle was reduced, its strength
and the size of the permissible charges, and therefore the range and
penetrating power of the projectile were all considerably augmented.
Having once gained the lead, England now took another rapid move
forward in the development of the rifle. Though the new standards set
by the Enfield were high, expert opinion aimed at something still
higher; the Enfield gave variations in range and direction which could
not be accounted for by errors in manufacture, nor did the range and
penetrative power of the bullet come up to expectations. In these
circumstances the government sought the advice of a man whose name was
destined to loom large in the story of the subsequent development of
ordnance: Mr. Whitworth. Mr. Whitworth was described as the greatest
mechanical genius in Europe at that time. Certain it is that, although
in the realm of ordnance his name may have been overshadowed to a
certain extent by that of his great rival, yet on the broad ground of
the influence his inventions exerted on the progress of mechanical
science generally, his fame now grows with time. He it was who first
swept away the medieval conception of measurement which hitherto had
obtained in factories and workshops, and introduced a scientific
precision into the manufacture of machines and mechanisms. The true
plane surface, as we know it to-day, was unattained before his time;
and his contemporaries marvelled at plates of metal prepared by him of
so true a surface that, by their mere adhesion, one could be lifted by
means of the other. The micrometer was a similar revelation. Men whose
minimum of size had hitherto been the thickness of a chalk-line or a
simple fraction of an inch, were taught by him to measure the inch
to its ten-thousandth part, and even to gauge the expansion of a rod
caused by the warmth imparted by the contact of a finger.
Such was the man who made modern artillery possible. To Mr. Whitworth,
who knew nothing himself of guns or of gun-making, the government went
for advice on the shortcomings of the Enfield rifle. At their request
he promptly began an analytical inquiry into the principles underlying
the action of rifles and the flight of their projectiles, resolved
and urged to discover the secret of the very partial success so far
attained. The results of this inquiry, published in ’57, had a great
influence on the future of rifled fire-arms and ordnance. Briefly, he
discovered that the amount of twist hitherto given to the rifling of
gun-barrels had been wholly insufficient to maintain the projectile
in its true direction during flight; the weight of the projectile,
relatively to its diameter, had been insufficient to give it the
necessary momentum to sustain its velocity against the resistance
of the air; lastly, the accuracy of manufacture of rifles had been
inadequate to the ensuring of a good fit of the bullet in the bore. To
prove the truth of these assertions a Whitworth rifle was produced by
him which gave better results than any other hitherto made. The form
of rifling which the inventor adopted was considered objectionable,
and the rifle itself, with its polygonal barrel, was not approved by
the authorities; but, instead, the valuable results of Whitworth’s
experiments were embodied in the Enfield, to its obvious improvement.
[Illustration: WHITWORTH RIFLE BULLET]
The muzzle-loading rifle had now reached the limit of its development.
The rifle was the accepted arm of all the great military powers. But
in the case of one of them, Prussia, the principle of breech-loading
was already in favour, and it was not long before the progress in
mechanical science enabled this principle to prove its superiority
over the ancient principle of muzzle-loading. Although in the Prussian
needle-gun great difficulties were encountered; although in service its
reputation suffered from such defects as the rusting of the needles
which pierced the percussion cartridges, the failure of springs, the
escape of gases at the breech; yet it was recognized that none of these
defects was necessarily inherent in the breech-loading system, and its
merits were admitted. With the breech-loader a greater rapidity of fire
was always attainable, there was less difficulty in preventing fouling,
and, above all, there was the certainty that the powder-charge would be
fired to its last effective grain.
In 1864 breech-loading rifles were recommended for the British army,
and shortly afterwards they were introduced in the form of converted
Enfields.
§
We have seen how the development of field ordnance stimulated the
development of the rifle. In turn the attainment of superior range
and accuracy by rifled small arms led directly to a corresponding
development of field ordnance, designed to recover the loss of its
ascendancy. In France, where the logical consequences of the progress
in small arms were officially noted on several occasions, Napoleon
III, himself an authority on artillery, took the initiative to restore
field ordnance to its former relative position. It was in the Crimean
War that the enhanced effects of rifle regiments were first seriously
felt. Convinced by the protraction of the operations before Sebastopol
of the inadequacy of smooth-bore guns, the Emperor caused bronze pieces
to be rifled, and these, being sent to Algeria on active service, gave
conclusive proof of their increased efficiency. On report of which, all
the bronze field pieces in the French army were rifled in accordance
with the plans which a M. Treuille de Beaulieu had submitted in 1842,
viz. with six shallow rounded grooves in which engaged zinc studs
carried on two bands formed on the cylindrical projectile. The gain in
power obtained by rifling ordnance was greater even than that obtained
from rifling as applied to small arms. For not only did rifling confer
the advantages of a more massive projectile more suitably shaped for
flight through a resisting medium, but it allowed a large increase
in the number of balls which could be discharged in the form of case
or shrapnel, and a large increase in the powder-charge which could
be carried inside a common shell. An advantage was also gained in
respect of that important detail, the fusee or fuze; the rotation of
the projectile about a definite axis made it possible to use fuses
whose action depended on one definite part of the projectile coming
first in contact with the ground or target.[124] All these advantages
were found to be present in the French field pieces when rifled on the
above plan. “And thus,” said an English writer, “at slight expense
but too late for use in the Crimean War, France was put in possession
of an artillery which, consuming its usual powder and using either
round ball or elongated projectiles, proved of immense value in the war
against Austria in 1856, when, at Magenta and at Solferino, the case
shot from their rifled field-pieces ploughed through the distant masses
of opposing infantry and decimated the cavalry as they formed for the
attack.”[125]
In England an almost simultaneous development took place, but on
entirely different lines. Let us tell it in the words of Sir Emerson
Tennant:
“The fate of the battle of Inkerman in November, 1854, was decided
by two eighteen-pounder guns which by almost superhuman efforts were
got up late into the field, and these, by their superior range, were
effectual in silencing the Russian fire. Mr. William Armstrong was
amongst those who perceived that another such emergency could only be
met by imparting to field-guns the accuracy and range of the rifle; and
that the impediment of weight must be removed by substituting forged
instead of cast-iron guns. With his earliest design for the realization
of this conception, he waited on the Secretary for War in December,
1854, to propose the enlargement of the rifle musket to the standard of
a field gun, and to substitute elongated projectiles of lead instead
of balls of cast iron. Encouraged by the Duke of Newcastle, he put
together his first wrought-iron gun in the spring of 1855.”[126]
The manufacture of this gun marked a new era in ordnance. Repeated
trials followed its completion; with the result that in 1858 the
Armstrong gun was officially adopted for service in the field,--the
epoch-making Armstrong gun: a tube made of wrought-iron bar coiled in
a closed helix and welded at a white heat into a solid mass; turned
to a true cylinder and reinforced by outer tubes shrunk on to it;
rifled with a large number of grooves; breech-loading, a powerful screw
holding a sliding vent-piece tightly against the face of the breech;
firing a lead-coated projectile in whose plastic covering the rifling
engaged as soon as it started its passage through the bore; and mounted
on a field-carriage in such a way that the gun could recoil up an
inclined slide and return by gravity, and in such a way that its motion
both for elevating and for traversing was under the accurate control
given by screw gearing.
The coming of the Armstrong gun at once revolutionized artillery
practice and material in this country. The sum of all the improvements
embodied in it was so great that existing material scarcely bore
comparison with it. Its accuracy as compared with that of the
smooth-bore field piece which it displaced was stated in parliament to
be in the ratio of fifty-seven to one. And the effect of its inventor’s
achievement was, “that from being the rudest of weapons, artillery has
been advanced to be nearly on a par mechanically with the steam engine
or the power-loom; and it differs as essentially from the old cast-iron
tube dignified with the name of a gun, as the railway train of the
present day differs from the stagecoach of our forefathers.”[127] A
revolutionary invention it certainly was. Yet, like most revolutionary
inventions, it relied for its grand effect more on the aggregate
effect of the small improvements in its various elements than on the
materialization of some new-born idea. The building up of guns in coils
was not a new discovery, polygroove rifling was already in use abroad,
breech-loading, lead-coated projectiles, elevating screws--all had
been known for years. Nor does this fact detract in the least from the
fame of Mr. Armstrong in this connection. His greatness lay, surely,
in the insight and initiative with which he made use of known forms
and combinations, summoning to his aid the new powers placed at his
disposal by Whitworth, Nasmyth, Bessemer and their contemporaries in
order to evolve a system incomparably superior to anything hitherto
achieved.
In England, too, an independent development was at the same time taking
place in yet another direction. Mr. Whitworth, having satisfactorily
established the principles governing the design of rifles, felt
confident of extending them to field and heavy ordnance. Adhering to
the muzzle-loading principle and to his hexagonal form of rifling he
manufactured, between the years 1854 and 1857, several guns which
fired projectiles of from six to twenty-four pounds’ weight with
great accuracy and to ranges greater than any yet attained. Events
occurred which caused him to be given every encouragement by the
government. The attitude of the French in these years was suspicious
and unfriendly. Schemes of invasion were openly discussed in their
press, and war vessels of various types equipped with armour plate
were designed and actually built. Reports of their plans, following
closely on the exposures of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny,
rendered the country increasingly restless and apprehensive as to the
value of our offensive and defensive armaments. And then, although the
new Armstrong gun was acclaimed as eminently suited for service in the
field, doubts had been cast as to whether the principles of its design
could be applied satisfactorily to the heaviest ordnance. Other rifled
artillery had certainly failed to give the results expected from it.
The Lancaster rifled gun, a muzzle-loading gun with a twisted bore of
a slightly oval section, had failed lamentably at the Crimea owing
to the tendency, according to one account, of the oval projectile to
wedge itself against the slightly larger oval of the bore; according to
another account, owing to the flames from the powder gases penetrating
the interior of the welded shells which had been supplied for it. The
breech-loading ordnance of Cavalli had failed the Italians. In Sweden
several accidents had occurred with Wahrendorf’s breech-loading pieces.
The French system, which had been copied by the majority of the powers,
was that which appeared to be giving the least unsatisfactory results.
In these circumstances every encouragement was given Mr. Whitworth to
develop ordnance on his own lines. In ’58 a committee on rifled guns
was appointed by parliament to examine and report on the relative
merits of the various systems in use. The committee quickly set to
work. No difficulty was found in eliminating all but two, on which
attention was soon concentrated: the Armstrong and the Whitworth.
The result of the final investigation was a report in favour of the
Armstrong gun, which, as we have already seen, was adopted in the same
year for field service. Mr. Armstrong, who had handed over his rights
in the gun for the benefit of the nation, was knighted and his services
were subsidized for the improvement of rifled ordnance generally. The
title of “Engineer to the War Department” was conferred on him, and
later he received the further appointment of “Superintendent of the
Royal Gun Factory” at Woolwich.
§
The revolution in field guns was closely followed by a corresponding
revolution in heavy ordnance. The experience of the Crimean War proved
two things: that the development of the shell gun necessitated the
provision of armour to protect the flanks of warships; and that the
development of armour necessitated a heavy ordnance of a greater power
than existing smooth-bore cannon. The shell gun, in fact, induced a
rifled ordnance.
The French, who had already found a cheap and sufficiently effective
rifled field artillery in the conversion of their smooth-bores on the
de Beaulieu principle, merely had to extend this conversion to their
heavier pieces. By 1860 they had converted their 30- and 50-pounder
cannon in this way, thus enabling them to be used for the discharge of
either spherical or elongated projectiles.
Britain, on the other hand, found herself committed to an entirely
new and experimental system which could not be applied to existing
ordnance; a large outlay of money was thereby involved for new plant
and guns; our vast establishment of smooth-bore cast-iron cannon was
in danger of being reduced to scrap material. At the same time doubts
were expressed whether this new system, whose success as applied to
medium pieces was generally admitted, would be found satisfactory
when applied to the largest size of ordnance. It was natural, then,
that great interest should be centred in what was regarded as a less
experimental alternative to the Armstrong system, in case the latter
failed. The results obtained by Mr. Whitworth in the manufacture
of solid cannon, rifled hexagonally, muzzle-loading and capable of
firing hexagonal bolts or, in emergency, spherical balls, were such
as to give promise of competing successfully with those obtained from
the ordnance officially patronized. To the public the simplicity of
his system strongly appealed. Mr. Whitworth himself, far from being
deterred by the decision given in favour of his rival, was now an
enthusiastic exponent of the constructive principles which he had
made his own. Trial succeeded trial, piece after piece was made and
tested to destruction. By 1860 a very successful ordnance was evolved
at Manchester by him: guns made of homogeneous iron, forged in large
masses, and formed of cylindrical tubes forced one over another by
means of a known hydraulic pressure--not, as in the Armstrong system,
by heating and shrinking. And on the sands at Southport a series of
public trials were carried out with these guns, the results of which
proved a great advertisement for the Whitworth system. The accuracy of
flight of the projectiles was unprecedented, and all records in ranging
power were broken by one of the pieces, a 3-pounder, which threw a shot
to a distance of 9,688 yards![128]
Even if the new Whitworth system were adopted, the utilization of the
old smooth-bore cannon which formed the existing national armament
of ships and fortresses was not secured. Neither the Armstrong nor
the Whitworth system provided an expedient for converting to rifled
ordnance the thousands of cast-iron guns in which the defence of the
country was invested. Efforts were therefore made to reinforce the
old pieces so that, when rifled, they would be sufficiently strong to
withstand the greater stresses entailed. Greater stresses in the metal,
due to higher chamber pressures of the powder gases, were almost a
necessary concomitant of rifling. For, apart from the increase in the
size and mass of the projectile and its greater initial resistance
to motion, pressures tended to increase in a greater ratio than the
size of the pieces themselves; the mass of the projectile increased
as the cube, the propulsive force of the gases as the square, of the
diameter of the bore; hence to attain a given velocity, the larger the
bore the higher the pressure required to propel it with a given type
of powder,--other things being equal. No limit, therefore, could be
assigned to the strength and power required of heavy ordnance. Moreover
a struggle had begun in ’59, with the building of the _Gloire_ and
_Warrior_, which was already foreshadowing tremendous developments both
of guns and of armour.
The experiences of America in this connection were not encouraging.
The civil war served as an incentive to the Americans to rifle all
their large calibre guns as quickly as possible. In ’62 large numbers
of cast-iron cannon were rifled and reinforced by external hoops of
iron. The results were deplorable. A great number of pieces burst; and
experience made it clear that “a gun made up of a single homogeneous
casting soon reaches a limit of resistance to internal pressure beyond
which the addition of extra metal has little or no effect.” Two
improvements must be mentioned as having more than a passing effect on
the progress of ordnance in America: first, the adoption of compressed
and perforated powder which, by prolonging the combustion period,
caused a more even distribution of stresses over all sections of the
barrel; second, the casting of guns hollow and the chilling of their
interiors, so as to form on the inside of the piece a hardened stratum
on which the outer parts of the casting contracted as they slowly
cooled, thus giving it support. But in spite of these inventions it
became apparent that cast iron was in its nature unsuited as a material
for rifled ordnance.
In England a safer method of conversion was followed. Guns were bored
out, on a scheme proposed in ’63 by Major Palliser, and accurately
turned tubes of coiled wrought iron were fitted in them, which
were afterwards rifled. The resulting pieces consisted, then, of a
wrought-iron inner tube, supported by a surrounding cast-iron jacket
against which, on firing, the inner tube expanded. Thus converted, the
old smooth-bores were enabled to develop an energy far in excess of
their original limit, and so to prolong for some years their period of
usefulness.
The conversion of the cast-iron guns was seen to be only a temporary
expedient. Just as the smooth-bore cannon, after a last effort
to overcome iron plates with spherical solid shot of the largest
calibre, withdrew from the competition; so, as the thickness of
armour increased, the converted cast-iron cannon, with its special
armour-piercing shot of chilled iron, soon reached the limit of its
power and gave place to the rifled artillery of wrought iron or steel.
And now, rifled ordnance having definitely supplanted the smooth-bore,
a new struggle arose between the various systems of gunmaking, and
more especially between the two rival methods of loading: by the
breech and by the muzzle. The prognostications of those who had
doubted whether the latter method was suitable for large ordnance were
seen to be partially justified. Other nations had already relapsed
into muzzle-loading, impressed by the complexity and weakness of the
breech-loading systems of Cavalli, Wahrendorf and other inventors.
Besides ourselves only the Prussians, the originators of the
breech-loading rifled musket in its modern form, continued to trust in
breech-loading ordnance. The Italians, following the example of the
French and Americans, abandoned the system. “Thus,” said an English
authority in ’62, “while, after more than four centuries of trial,
other nations were giving up the moveable breech, ... we are still
going from plan to plan in the hope of effecting what will, even if
successful in closing the breech, be scarcely safe with the heavy
charges necessary for smashing armour plates.”[129]
In the following year, ’63, the committee appointed to carry out the
competitive trials between Whitworth and Armstrong guns, reported that
the many-grooved system of rifling, with its lead-coated projectiles
and complicated breech-loading arrangements, entailing the use of tin
caps for obturation and lubricators for the rifling grooves, was far
inferior for the general purposes of war to both of the muzzle-loading
systems tried. This view received early and practical confirmation
from a report sent to the Admiralty by Vice-Admiral Sir Augustus
Kuper, after the bombardment of Kagosima. In that action several
accidents occurred owing to the Armstrong guns being fired with their
breech-blocks not properly screwed up. The guns were accordingly
withdrawn from service and replaced by muzzle-loaders. In 1864 England
reverted definitely to muzzle-loading ordnance, which, in the face of
violent controversy and in spite of the gradual reconversion of her
rivals to the breech-loading principle, she maintained for the next
fifteen years. Whitworth’s system was adopted in the main, but the
hexagonal form of bore and projectile was avoided. Studded projectiles
were approved, the pieces being rifled with a few broad shallow grooves
not unlike those used by the French. England at last possessed a
muzzle-loading sea ordnance, characterized by ease and rapidity of
loading, accuracy, cheapness, and capacity for firing, in emergency,
spherical shot as well as rifled projectiles.
What was the effect of this retrogression upon the status of our naval
armaments?
It seems frequently to have been held that, in view of the eventual
victory of the breech-loading gun, the policy of reverting to
muzzle-loading was wrong, and that this country was thereby placed at
a serious disadvantage to her rivals. Several good reasons existed,
however, for the preference given to muzzle-loading ordnance at that
time. The accidents with removable breeches had been numerous and
demoralizing. Muzzle-loading guns, besides the advantages which they
possessed of strength, solidity and simplicity of construction, offered
important advantages in ease and rapidity of loading--particularly
in the case of turret or barbette guns, where “outside loading” was
a great convenience. On the other hand the principal deficiency of
the muzzle-loader, namely, the large windage required with studded
projectiles, was now eliminated by the invention of the cupped “gas
check,” a copper disc attached to the rear of the projectile which, on
discharge, expanded automatically and sealed the bore.
Expert opinion confirmed the wisdom of the government policy.
Experience, in the Franco-Prussian war and elsewhere, confirmed the
views of the experts. “Reviewing the action of the artillerists who
decided to adopt muzzle-loaders, with the greater experience we now
possess it seems that they were right in their decision at the time it
was first made; but there was too much hesitation in coming back to
breech-loaders when new discoveries and great progress in powder quite
altered conditions.”[130] In fact, once having abandoned the disparaged
system, the country was with difficulty persuaded by the professionals
to retrace its steps. In the end, ordnance followed small arms; the
researches of Captain Noble at Elswick proved conclusively to the world
at large the necessity for a reversion to breech-loading; and in 1880
the muzzle-loading gun was finally superseded by a greatly improved
form of breech-loader.
In 1880 the state of knowledge and the conditions under which ordnance
was manufactured were certainly altered from those of ’64. The struggle
between guns and armour begun with the _Gloire_ and _Warrior_ had
continued. In the presence of the new powers of mechanical science,
artillerists and shipbuilders had sought to plumb the possibilities of
offensive and defensive elements in warship design. Guns influenced
armour, armour reacted on guns; both revolutionized contemporary naval
architecture. It was in the effort to aggrandize the power of guns
that Noble discovered that, with the existing powders and with the
short muzzle-loading gun, a natural limit of power was soon reached.
Better results could only be obtained, he showed, by the adoption of
slow-burning powder and a longer gun; by the avoidance of the sudden
high chamber pressure which resulted from the small-grained powder,
and the substitution for it of a chamber pressure which would rise
gradually to a safe maximum and then suffer only a gradual reduction as
the gases expanded behind the moving projectile. The work done by the
gases on the projectile could by this means be enormously increased.
But, for this result, larger powder-charges were required; and these
larger charges of slow-burning powder were found to require much
larger chambers than those embodied in existing guns; in short, the
new conditions called for a new shape of gun. Long guns, having powder
chambers of larger diameter than that of the bore, were necessary, and
these could not conveniently be made muzzle-loading.
So a return to the breech-loading ordnance became inevitable, and the
change was made. The old Armstrong moveable vent-piece was avoided,
however, in the new designs; of the two alternative breech-closing
systems in use, viz. the wedge system of Krupp and the “interrupted
screw” system of the French, the latter was adopted. A steel tube,
rifled on the polygroove system, formed the body of the piece, and this
was strengthened by hoops of iron or steel shrunk on its exterior. The
new gun yielded a very great increase of power. Muzzle-loading guns
were at once displaced, in the projected programme of new battleships,
for the new type of ordnance, and a further series of revolutionary
changes in ship armament at once took place. Other nations had already
augmented the length and power of their guns. By the adoption of the
improved breech-loading ordnance, Great Britain, who for the last few
years had been falling behind her rivals, not only drew level with them
but definitely took the lead in the power of her heavy ordnance: a lead
which from that time to this she has successfully maintained.