The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-21 00:00:00

EXPERIMENTS AT SUOEBURYNESS•

The 9 inch muzzle-loading gun made at the Royal
Gun Factories, Woolwich, and rifled on the plan
proposed by Mr. Lynall Thomas, was tried yesterday
at Shoeburyness, with somewhat unsatisfactory
results.

This gun, which carries a 3001 b shot, closely re-
sembles an ordinary muzzle-loading Armstrong in
outward appearance, the muzzle, however,. being
more prolonged. Mr. Lynall Thomas's invention
consists in substituting a series of ribs for the usual
grooves. The shot are made with grooves coated
with soft alloy to fit the ribs of the gun, and are
similar in form to those used in the" Armstrong, but

appear to be slightly longer.
employed by Mr. Lynnll Thomag.
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projectiles was ascertained in the case of those fired
at 2 deg. elevation by Maj or Navez's electro-ballistic
apparatus. It was intended to repeat the experi-
ments with cast-iron shells, but Mr. Thomas ob-
jected to those upon the ground of being too long;
a similar objection to the shot was also urged by
him during the course of the experiments. He also
stated that the ribs were finished too abruptly at
the spot where they join the chamber of the gun.
It seems a pity, however, that as the gun, shot, and
shell were made at Woolwich, under Mr. Thomas's
directions, he did not make these objections during
the progress of the work, Tho velocity and range
of the shots fired are very unequal. This is
accounted for by Mr. Thomas by the facts mentioned
above, and by the powdernot being always rammed
home to exactly the same mark. Whether the latter
circumstance has any weight or not is doubtful, as
in other rifled guns the ramming home of the pow-
der to the same place within a few inches does not
seem to affect materially the flight of the shot.
Notes were taken at each round of the exact depth
to which the charge was rammed ; it will therefore
be seen hereafter whether this circumstance really
has any influence on the projectile or not. If it
should turn out that it has, it would be, we imagine
a serious defect in the gun. The exact lateral de-
viation of each shot has not yet been correctly cal-
culated; it was stated, however, to be irregular.
Gen. St. George, Col. Lefroy, and Capt. Heath
were present during the experiments on the part
of the Ordnance Select Committee.
While the experiments were being made with
Mr. Thomas's gun Mr. Randall and a party of men
were busily engaged in taking off a series of impres-
sions of the inside of Sir William Armstrong's
monster gun, to ascertain if the rifling had sustained
any injury during Thursday's trial, but not a flaw
of the size of a pin's head could be detected over the
whole of " Big Will's" interior. In our impression
of yesterday it was stated that the bore of this gun
was 13ft. 3in. in diameter—a very obvious typogra-
phical error for 13.3 inches. It is intended shortly
to try the gun upon a massive floating target, which
will be moored about 2,000 yards from the firing
point. The experiments yesterday were again
favoured by calm, warm, sunny weather.
It is not known at present when Mr. Thomas's
gun will be tested with shell.