The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-01 00:00:00

Experiments at Shoeburyness,

The military experimental season at Shoebury
may be said to t e drawing to a close. Of course,
experimental fit ing will not cease—it never does at
Sh)ebary ; the Armstrong and Whitworth compe-
tioii, too, is sere to drag its slow length along, till
even science itself grows weary of the endless task '
of comparing minute shades of range and aecu- '
:racy at a distance of four miles. These trials are
a ure to go forward as usual, but the great '
summer course of experiments may be said to be
disposed of when the present week's trials
are ended. Early on Wednesday next the
last of a most important series of experiments
with various descriptions of steel shot by 12 differ-
ent manufacturers will be made against iron plates.
O n Thursday Professor Pole's target, which closely
resembles in all its leading features of construction
these on which the French frigate La Gloire is built,
will be tested as our own targets are tried. On
Friday a floating Warrior target will be anchored
out 2,000 yards off Shoebury, and on this " Big
Will," the 600-pounder, will have to prove its ac-
curacy and penetration at that range. No other
targets will then remain to be tried till winter,
when the value of Mr Chalmers' system as a pro.
tection to forts and embrasures will be tested side
by side with an ordinarily-built granite fort covered
with armour-plates. This little granite fort has
been a long time in course of erection, and we
venture to think a great deal of money is being
most needlessly thrown away in facing the surface
of the stone with ornamental tooling, which must,
of course, be all covered in with the iron armour
when completed. As far as the competition with
-various kinds of steel shot has gone, and there is
nothing yet to come which seems likely to affect the
broad general results already obtained, —Mr
Krupp's metal has been the best; John Brown and
Co.'s shot have been the next beat, and close upon
Mr Krupp's, and Mr Attwood's have been the next
beat to Mr Brown's. There has been, however, a
wider margin between the performance of Mr.
Brown's and Mr Attwood's shots than there has
between Mr Brown's and Mr Krupp's. Mr Brown's
metal has been very close indeed upon the excels
lencies of Mr Krupp, though Mr Krupp's price per
ton is, it is stated,nearly double that of Mr Brown's
—a difference of cost which is in no way justified
by the difference in performance. Mr Brown is
supplying his steel shots to the committee at £3O
per ton, while the cost of Mr Krump's metal is
stated at £so—a difference of nearly 70 per cent.
in price, when there is certainly not a difference of
10 per cent. in effectiveness. Judging from what
Krupp, Brown, and Attwood have each accom-
plished, there is no reason to doubt but that the
steel of the last-named maker, at even £4O per
ton, would be to the full as cheap for this country
as Mr. Krupp's at £5O. It must also be borne in
mind that the manufacture of steel shot has only
just been commenced in this country, and that even
during the last few months it has been improved
with such rapidity as to justify those most expe-
rienced in the subject in believing that before
another twelvemonth has elapsed Mr. Krupp's will
in this country be equalled in quality and sur-
passed in cheapness of production. It will be impos-
sible, however, to arrive with any degree of certainty
at the merits of the various shot till the committee
give up their present practice of allowing each com-
petitor a plate to himself, and then taking as their
basis of calculation that each plate is precisely alike
iii its powers of resistance. Nothing can be wider
from the fact than the inference of an uniform
standard of resistance being offered by all the
pates alike; for no two of the best plates made by
the best firms are ever found under fire at Shoebury
to be equal in strength. To have a fair trial of the
steel shot, Krupp, Brown, and Attwood should each
fire their projectiles at the same plate, when it
could at once be seen which was the best projectile,
and whether it is true that the undoubted excellence
of Mr. Krupp's metal has in these experiments been
aided to a certain extent by his having to fire
against a plate which is said to have been more
brittle than the rest. In the face of the enormous
differences which are known to exist in the resist-
ance offered by armour-plates of the same thick-
ness, it seems impossible to arrive at a satisfactory
conclusion on this subject till the rival competi-
tors are made to fire at the same target. One
important fact, however, has been ascertained by
these trials—that even Sin, plates unsupported
by backing are insufficient to keep out steel shot
when fired from the Armstrong breech-loader with
a 131 b. charge of powder. Though the competition
bet ;yeah the Scott, the French, and the Lancaster

gun. is still going forward and likely to continue for
BOCGD time, its general results may be summed up
even now. The French gun does not shoot well,
and blows the studs off its shot before it leaves the

muzzle. The grave defect is supposed to arise from
their not being properly fitted to the projectile, and
partly from the excessive charges (251 b.) used in the
gun. Commander Scott's gun has a shade the better
of Mr Lancaster's in range, and Mr Lancaster has on
the;whole a superiority in accuracy. All three, how-.
ever, are decidedly and undoubtedly inferior in both
range and accuracy to either the shunt gun or the
Whitworth. This inferiority, therefore, may be said
to at once settle the claims of any one of the three to
be introduced into the service—not that the trial has
therefore been useless; on the contrary, its results
have been most valuable as affording additional
proof of the immense value and importance of the
system of construction of rifled guns which Sir W.
Armstrong has introduced—the steel barrel with
the welded coils round it. Strange as it may seem
to the general public who hear so constantly of the
competition of rifled ordnance, it is nevertheless true
that nothing has been easier from the first than to
get a good system. of rifling, and it is just because
the difference between the shooting of good guns
rifled on different systems is so slight that these
competitions are never-ending. The real problem has
been to manufacture guns which would bear rifling.
Range and accuracy are attainable with almost
any good rifled guns—it is their endurance which
has to be tried—the wear of their projectile on the
rifling, the destructive effects of their shell on men,
and thefr shots on amour, and, above all, their
capacity to fire spherical shot, which must be used
on many occasions, as well as the long conical rifled
projectile.
Daring the past week the trials with the 600.
pounder have been continued at 5 dcg. elevation
with live and blind shell to test the value of diffe-
rent kinds of fuses, especially those of Sir William
Armstrong and Colonel Boxer, with time and per-
cu.ision of each. The Boxer shell, which has been
designed especially by Colonel Boxer for the Whit-1
worth gun, which until now has been without one
of env kind, has apparently some slight want of
Completeness in its percussion arrangement of fuse.
It was this defect, and probably the sometimes un-
certain ricochet of Mr Whitworth's shot after its
first graze, which induced the Armstrong and
Whitworth Committee to allow many of the shells
with percussion fuse experiments to be made
against Wooden screens. These screens through
which the perCussiou fuses were fired were
Aef course special novelties which could not,
ander any circumstances, be expected in actual
warfare, and their use could only be defended on
the ground that the fall results of Col. Boxer's shell
could be obtained in no other manner. At any
rate, these trials are not considered so conclusive
fee service purposes as to warrant the abandonment
f a still more extensive series of experiments which
aye ee be made with the Armstrong and Boxer shell
and fuses. Some of these have been made with the
60,3epetander, which, having to get through its 150
p:oolrocnds, might as well be used for this
purpose
as carols firing its charge blindly over the sands.
It is impossible to speak definitely of these as yet
small results I,oyond saying that some matters of
detail in Cal. Borer's percussion arrangements ap.
pear to require the careful adjustment which can
onlv",be developed and ascertained by practice.
There is not the slightest doubt that the same
ingenuity and skill which enabled Col. Boxer
to design this shell will easily enable him, with
the knowledge to be derived from this and
other artillery practice, to overcome the slight dee
feels in its percussion fuse. Oae of Col. Boxer's
time-fuse sheile, Litt; d with his percussion arrange-
ment, burst in the 600 pounder with 131 b. of
powder, and, might have been eNpected with a

wrought-iron gun it cut and indented some portions
of the barrel more or less. One impression was
nearly the size of a florin and almost thrice as thick.
Had this wrought-iron gun been lined with a steel
barrel, as Sir William wished, it would have made
little or no mark at all, and, as it is, the mere fact
of a wrought-iron gun bearing the explosion of a
shell loaded with 131 b. of powder in its barrel in
addition to its firing charge of 701 b., speaks loudly
in favour of the strength of this welded principle
of construction. The same gun was also fired to
test its velocity, and gave almost indenti-
cal results with those previously obtained
from other tests of the same kind. The
shot left the muzzle at an average velocity of
1,250 ft. per second, diminishing, as might be ex-
pected from its enormous weight, very slightly at
500 and 1,000 yards, and alighting on the target
at 1,500, with a speed of from 1,090 to 1,085. The
deviation from the true line of firing daring these
experiments was something marvellously slight.
Now that the men have 'got accustomed to this
piece its loading is conducted with such rapidity
that during a considerable part of one day there
was only an interval of 31 minutes between fire and
fire, including all the delays of cleaning, training
the carriage, and getting the precise elevation.
The impressions recently taken of this gun's bore
sho wno perceptible increase either in width cr
depth of the minute openings in the coils we have
before spoken of, except that instead of being all
in the direction of the coils, there are indications
of their appearing longitudinally. It may and
will no doubt be a long time before these affect
the durability of the gun, but there can be
no question but that when once these insidious
fissures make their appearance, it is a mere matter
of arithmetic to ascertain how many rounds the
gun will stand before the gases find their way
through the inner coil and then instantly ruin the
piece. That it will fire its 150 proof rounds there
is no question, but it is much to be hoped that after
this heavy trial is over it may before further expe-
riments are entered on be returned to Woolwich to
be lined with a steel barrel.

The Armstrong and Whitworth competition pro-1
per is not expected to be resumed till towards the
end of this month. Without at all wishing to de-
tract from the value of the labours of this Commit-
tee, we may still venture to express an opinion that
no great importance attaches to what remains to do
in this long contest. The minds of the Committee
must have been long since made up as to the value of
each gun as a military weapon ; they now know
their endurance, can appreciate their destruc-
ti geness, estimate the cost of their production, and
the facility with which each is likely to be pro-
duced when urgently wanted. What remains to try
may be most valuable as a scientific experiment ;
it may be interesting to know which gun at four
miles drops its shot so many feet more or less to
the right or left of the true line of fire, bat beyond
illustrating long-range theories by actual practice
there is nothing which concerns the character of
each gun as a weapon of war that is not already
well known. As we have said throughout, the
trial has been a delusive one in limiting the size of
the competing guns to 70-pounders, which are ad-
mitted to be too light to be of any effect against
armour-plates—the only use for which rifled guns
are wanted now. There are several 150-pounders
of Sir William's at Shoebury, and there is one of
Mr Whitworth's also, which was built on Sir Wil-
liam's eoil system at Woolwich. If these guns are
tried, some really good and definite result may be
obtained in return for the very large sum this com-
petition will cost the public. Unless such trials
are made, scientific artillerists will regard a cora-
petive trial of 70.pounciers as of very little worth.