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

Exi 'el iments at Shoeburyness,

The milite a.y experimental season at Shoebury
may be said 1 obe drawing to a close. Of course,
experimental firing will not cease—it never does at
Shoebury ; tht 3 Armstrong and Whitworth compe-
tion, too, is mu .3 to drag its slow length along, till
even science its elf grows weary of the endless task
of comparing minute shades of range and accu-
racy at a dist; ante of four miles. These trials are
sure to go forward as usual, but the great
summer tours e 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.
On 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
cut 2,000 yards off Shoebury, and on this " Big
Will," the 600-pounder, will have to prove its ac-
cuxacy 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 best, and close upon
Mr Krupp's, and Mr Attwood's have been the next
best to Mr Brown's. There has been, however, a
wid.3r 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 excel-
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 grump'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 «40 per
ton, would be to the full as cheap for this country
as Mr. Krupp's at «50. It must also be borne in
mind that the manufacture of steel shot has only
.just been commenced in this country, and that even
daring 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
in its powers of resistance. Nothing can be wider

from the fact than the inference of an uniform

standazd of resistance being offered by all the
plates alike; for no two of the best plates made by
the bEisc 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 c‘l3 eir 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
:nporranz, fact, however, has been ascertained by
t !nese trials—that even Sin. plates unsupported
by backing are insufficient to keep out steel shot
vhen fired from the Armstrong breech-loader with
rr 10Ib. charge of powder. Though the competition
between the Scott, the French, and the Lancaster

gun is still going forward and likely to continue for
some time, its general results may be summed up
0 van now. The French gun does not shoot well,
d 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 their shots on tumour, 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 deg. 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-
cussion of each. The Boxer shell, which has been
designed especially by Colonel Boxer for the Whit-
worth gun, which until now has been without one
of any 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 percussion fuses were fired were
of course special novelties which could not,
under any Circumstances, be expected in actual
warfare, and their use could only be defended on
the ground that the full results of Col. Boxer's shell
could be obtained in no other manner. At any
rate, these trials are not considered so conclusive
for service purposes as to warrant the abandonment
of a still more extensive series of experiments which
are to be made with the Armstrong and Boxer shell
teed fuses. Some of these have been made with the
GOO-pounder, which, having to get through its 150
proof rounds, might as well be used for this purpose
as merely firing its charge blindly over the sands.
It is imposei'ole to speak definitely of these as yet
leeyond saying that some matters of
sro ail resulte
detail in Col. Boxer's percussion arrangements ap.psar to reo 'lire the careful adjustment which can
onlybe dt,,,,,-:top?ti 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 alight de.
'
frets in its percussion fuse. One of Col. Boxer s
time-fuse sheils, fitted with his percussion arrange-
ment, burst in the 600 pounder with 131 b. of
powder, and, as might have been expected with P.