The Sun.
London, England, 1859-05-13 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, MAY 13, 1859.

this, too, at a saving to the nation of no less than £6
per ton. Just now this department is unusually ac-
tive, and is turning out shot and shell at the rate of
26,000 rounds per week. Working overtime and
during the night the weekly total can be raised to
nearly 40,000 rounds. That this quantity is ample
with the many hundred thousand rounds already in
store to meet all emergencies can easily be seen by
contrasting the weekly rate of production at Wool-
wich with the rate of consumption during the siege
of Sebastopol, as shown by official returns, made to
the Board of Ordnance as follows:—in the first
bombardment commencing October 17, 1854, there
were 72 siege guns employed, which fired in all
21,881 rounds ; in the bombardment commencing
April 9, 1855, there were 123 guns, and 30,633
rounds ; in that commencing on the 6th of June,
155 guns and mortars fired 32,883 rounds ; in
that commencing on the 17th of June, 166 guns
used 22,684 rounds. The attack of August 17
was by 196 guns, and 26,270 rounds were fired ;
and in the final bombardment of September 8,
207 guns and mortars consumed 28,476 rounds
of shot and shell. These numbers, with 88,646
rounds fired casually or to repel night attacks, and
405 rounds of carcases and " light balls," give a
total of 251,872 rounds of shot and shell fired by
the English during the whole siege, from first to
last. This, in the whole course of operations, gives
an average weekly consumption of 6,000 rounds of
shot and shell, or less than one-sixth of the amount
which could be supplied weekly by Woolwich
Arsenal alone. In a naval war, however, the ex-
penditure of iron ammunition would average nearly
double the amount required for the siege of the
Euxine's great mistress. Thus in the combined
attack by the fleets on the sea forts during the land
bombardment of the 17th of October the Agamem-
non in the course of four hours or so fired away
upwards of 3,000 rounds of shot and shell, and the
Rodney, Sanspareil, and Bellerophon expended
nearly the same enormous quantity.
Close by the new gun factory at Woolwich a
newer one still is about to'be erected for the manu-
facture of Sir William Armstrong's breech-loaders.
The intended edifice will not be a very large build-
ing, as the large range of foundries erected at a
cost of some £250,000 sterling for the manufacture
of the worthless Lancaster guns and shot are now
to be given over, with all their plant, to assistin
making Armstrong's artillery. The Lancaster fac-
tory machinery, containing 13 large furnaces and
nine steam hammers, will now at last be put to
some good use, and before this time twelve months
Woolwich ought to be able to turn, out at the very
least, 300 of these splendid guns per annum. We,
of course, could not think of saying that the mili-
tary authorities of this country ever seem ridiculous,
but if there is one occasion more than another when
they go very near to assuming that undignified ap-
pearance, it is when they make a great parade of pos-
sessing a secret invention which is never to be di-
vulged. Thus it has been with the Armstrong
cannon, which has been watched, hidden, and
guarded, as if every lounging civilian who cast his
eye on it was certain at once not only to divine the
whole process of its most intricate manufacture, but
instantly therefrom to be able himself to make any
number offhand for foreign potentates. With Arm-
strong's gun there is literally no secret worth pre.
serving at all, save that one which can neither be
sold nor divulged--our manufacturing superiority.
If an Armstrong's gua was presented to each arse-
nal in Europe, their engineers might and would
undoubtedly try to make them, but their efforts
would only result in long delay, immense expendi-
ture, and in their sending over to have them made
here after all. It is a popular, but, nevertheless, a
very great error to suppose that the weapons which
are made here, if seen, can at once be made to any
extent in the arsenals of France, Russia, Austria,
or Prussia. As a proof of this we have only to look
at the Minie rifle, which, long as its paramount
advantages have been known, is, nevertheless used
entirely by no army in the world but our own. Our
readers may be surprised, but it is still strictly true,
that the armies of France, Russia, Prussia, and
Austria, with the exception of about 5 per cent. of
their entire numbers, who are armed as sharp-
shooters, have no better weapon than the discarded
Brown Bess. Nine-tenths of the small proportion
of rifles to be found in the Austrian, Russian, and
Prussian armies are made at Liege, where they can
be manufactured at the rate of about 500 a week.
The French make their own, but very slowly, and a
heavier or more awkward weapon to use than their
Chasseurs possess, it would be hard to devise as a fire-
arm, though in range and accuracy it is nearly equal
to the Minie. These facts at least show that there is
no fear either of the eagerness of foreign Powers to
secure improvements for their armies, or of their
capacity of adopting them even when their value
is well and widely known. The Emperor of the
French made a great mystery of his rifled field
pieces, yet, great as are his means for securing
secrecy, our Government have information of every
gun he has made. We believe we are right in
stating that not 100 have yet been constructed, and
these are only very light guns rifled in four grooves,
and made to fire cylindrical shot cased with lead to
fit the rifling. This is certainly an improvement
on the ordinary field piece, but as inferior to Arm-
strong's gun as a pocket-pistol is to the Enfield
rifle. But, to return to the Armstrong weapon.
The principle on which it is made and its mode of
manufacture are well known in the neighbourhood
of Sir William's works at Newcastle, and, if we are
not much mistaken, good working drawings of the
invention are already at Paris and St. Petersburg,
although they might as well be here for all the
practical use that is likely to be made of them just
now in those countries. 200 guns are to be made
this year by Sir William Armstrong—all of them
9, 12, and 18 pounder field guns, a number quit*
sufficient to supply all our field artillery batteries.
Before long, however, we hope to see guns of
50 cwt. which will throw a 901 b. or 1001 b. ball a
distance of five miles. Each gun is made in about
three feet lengths, and on much the same principle
as the twisted gun barrels. _ Thin bars of the best
wrought iron, about two inches broad, are heated
to a white heat, and in this state twisted and welded
together in spiral rolls round a steel bar or core,
smaller in diameter than the bore of the gun.
Over this, when cold, another twist of the same
kind is made with the spiral running in a contrary
direction, and so, until three or four layers have
been put on, according to the calibre of the gun and
the thickness required. The whole is then reheated
and welded together for the last time under the steam
hammer. The edges of the three feet lengths are next
planed down so as to admit their joining and
lapping over, and over these edges are forced on
thick wrought iron ring., which, being welded
down at a white heat, of course contract so ai to
make the joint almost stronger than if made in one
piece. In the breech an opening is cut down into
the chamber ; but the breech itself is separate from
the gun, and is worked backwards by a powerful
screw. When the gun is to be loaded, the breech
is worked back and a wedge-shaped piece, fitting
into the opening of the gun, lifted out, but not to
admit the introduction of the charge, which is
pushed forward with a ramrod at the back, work-
ing through the large screw in which the breech
turns into the chamber, where the rifling begins.
The wedge is then replaced, the breech screwed
close by a single turn of a lever handle, and the gun
fired. The operation of loading and firing can be
performed, we believe, three times in one minute.
Apart from the simple but effective mechanism of
the breech, the great merit of this gun consists in
the manner in which it is formed in spirals of
metal bands, which give it such an enormous in-
crease of strength that one half the thickness of
iron can be dispensed with. Thus, an ordinary
long 32-pounder weighs 57 cwt., and requires 101 b.
of powder to throw a ball to its utmost effective
range, 3,000 yards. Sir W. Armstrong's 32-poun-
der only weighs 26 cwt., and a charge of 51b. of
powder throws its shot E5l miles, or nearly 10,000
yards. In a 32-pounder of this latter kind there
are no less than 44 rifle grooves, having one pitch
in 10 feet, or making one complete twist round the
inside, in a gun of that length. A greater pitch
would no doubt give greater impetus to the shot,
but the risk of " stripping" the lead was so great
that it could not be attempted. The shot used are
iron and cylindrical, and at first were completely
coated over with lead ; but this plan has just
been altered, and the shot have now only two
rings of lead I inch thick, and 11 inches broad, one
at the shoulder and one at the base of the cone.
Both these rings are dovetailed, so to speak, into
the iron shot, so as to leave about one-tenth of an
inch to fit the rifling. Thus, when the cartridge is
ignited the ball is forced forward from the chamber
into the narrow bore, which it fills so closely, being
actually too large for it, that there is no windage
whatever, and ever portion of the explosive force is
applied to projecting the ball. The gun on which
the Government experimented for months at Shoe-
buryness before adopting it was actually fired 3,500
times, and yet is now as serviceable as the day it
left the foundry.. So perfect is the weapon as to
accuracy that it is said that at 4,000 yards a target
10 feet square could be hit 90 times out of 100 by a
good artilleryman.

So much 'for the artillery preparations at the
Arsenal. With regard to small arms everything is
in an "equal state of readiness. There are between
80,000,000 and 90,000,000 rounds of IVlinie ammu-
nition in store, and the Minie bullet machines are
turning out the conical balls at the rate of 2,000,000
rounds per week, a number which can always be
increased to 3,000,000 by keeping the machines
going during the night as well as day. Of percus-
sion caps we should be afraid to say how many mil-
lions there are ready, or how many hundred thou-
sands could be manufactured per; day if necessary.
On the whole, even from this brief summary of the
Preparations at Woolwich, our readers will be able