The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-27 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 27, 1861.

THE AR.II.ISTRaNG G U.NS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir,—l ended a letter which I had the honour of
addressing to you last month by declining further
controversy on the subject of the new rystem of
ordnance. My time is too much limited to permit
of my involving myself needlessly in controversial
warfare, and it is not reasonable to expect that I
should continually have to defend my gun in the
columns of the press, through all the stages of its
progress and development, against incessant attacks
by opponents usually ill-informed as to their facts.
In the long run the best weapon must win the day,
whether it be mine or another's, and I am as sure
that my gun cannot be written up into success as I
am that if successful it will never be written down.
On reconsideration, however, I think it possible
that my refusal to engage in controversy may have
been misconstrued. The public are not in the same
position as I am. They have not the means of know-
ing those broad facts which are known to Govern-
ment and myself, and they have a right to be
anxious on a matter so intimately concerning public
expenditure and national defenco. Before retiring
from a discussion of the subject I will therefore let
your readers know all that I can tell them on points
lately raised, and they shall judge for themselves.
A brief statement and a few statistics (which I trust
will be to the purpose) will lead them to view with
tranquillity the strange storms of criticism to which
the gun finds itself so frequently subjected.
I. First, as to the guns themselves.
_ _

My shortest course will be to exhibit, in a tabu-
lated form, the number of my guns which have been
proved and issued for use, the number which have
been returned from service for repair; and a few
other particulars, all of which I have obtained from
official sources; I must crave the patience of your
readers for this portion of my letter, which I fear
will be too statistical for general interest.

in the imagination of Capt. Halsted, Two casualties
which happened on hoard the Excellent, and were
at the time described as of this nature, were not in-
stances of vent-piece being blown out, but of the
handles being blown off from neglect in screwing
up the breech. The truth is that no vent-piece ever
would have been blown away had the gunners
known their drill from the first. The accidents
aroso simply from the neglect of uninstructed gun-
ners to drop the vent-piece fairly to the bottom of
the slot. A wider knowledge of drill seems almost
to have put an end to the occurrence, and, as an
additional safeguard, all the vent-pieces lately made
have been furnished with a alight projection, by
which the mishap is rendered almost, if not altoge-
ther, impossible.

I take next the vent-pieces registered above as
unserviceable.

I ,have already remarked that, the principle of
steel having been definitively abandoned,, instances
of injuries to steel are of minor importance. But
even the number of steel failures entered by me
above must be taken with much reservation. Six of
the 12-pounder vent-pieces, for instance, under this
head failed at Shoeburyness, where from 21 12-
pounders 12,433 rounds have been fired. The
other two are reported by the Marine Artillery,
who have fired I don't know how many rounds. The
three 25-pounder vent-pieces failed during experi-
ments. Of the nine steel 40-pounders, four went in
some experiments on board the Trusty, to which I
shall presently refer ; two others became unser-
viceable in the course of 2,001 rounds from 40-
pounder guns at Shoeburyness ; ono more failed
on board the Cambridge in the course of
1,003 rounds from 40-pounders ; one on board the
" Cochin" gunboat, and the remaining one on board
the Edgar flagship of the Channel Fleet during a
number of rounds unknown to me. I have only-now
to speak of the four steel 100-pounder vent-pieces.
These all failed at Shoeburyness in the course of
1,172 rounds, but two of them yielded only to extra
oharges of 181 b. of powder.
As to the failures of the wrought-iron vent-
pieces. In the case of the 100-pounders they
are limited to the single instance of a vent-piece
slightly bulged, which had not been reported when
I last addressed you. Beyond this we have but
seven to account for. As I have above said, all
these seven occurred to one class of gun, whose
pattern of vent-piece will in consequence now be
changed. But, what is more remarkable, all
these seven (together with the four vent-pieces
mentioned above) failed on board the Trusty in
the course of a single experiment from Captain
Cole's cupola shield, during only 142 rounds
from only two guns. The gun in which eight of
the 11 vent-pieces thus failed was brought to
Woolwich for investization. It there exhibited
none of the destructive qualities it had shown on
board the Trusty, but was fired 58 rounds with the
same pattern vent-piece as before, yet could make
no impression on it. Failures so singularly
localized can only have arisen from some special
cause. At the same time the strengthened pattern
will meet even such contingencies as these.

It only remains for me to add two more casualties,
which, as they happened during an experiment at
Woolwich, by the Ordnance Select Committee, for
testing a carriage, are not included in the report.
On that occasion one steel 40 pounder vent-piece
was broken, and one of wrought iron cracked.
During the same experiment the copper ring of two
vent-pieces became loosened—an injury quickly
remedied by pressing on a new one, and having
nothing to do with the strength of the vent-piece.
No other failure has occurred to the service pat-
terns, even during experimental practice.
. . The above statistics are taken from official reports
before me, from the Ilorseguards and Admiralty,
dated respectively 1.140 7th inzt- Ars ex-
tracts as to broken or injured vent-pieces would,
however, be incomplete if I did not carry my infor-
mation further. No failure of this kind has ever
taken place at any artillery station except Shoebury-
ness. None is reported from Shorncliffe, where
there is constant practice, nor from any of our 36
batteries of field artillery at home or abroad. None
has occurred in Now Zealand. None happened in
China during 3,800 rounds. None in the Channel
Fleet, in all the rounds they must have fired, ex-
cept one steel 40-pounder vent-piece on board the
Edgar. None on board the Excellent gunnery ship
and her tender, in 2,455 rounds. None on board the
Cambridge gunnery ship and her tender, except
one steel 40-pounder, in 3,523 rounds. These facts
speak for themselves. Casualties to some extent
necessarily attend a new system on its introduction,
and their number will naturally every day grow
less.

The above account, which takes in a period of
nearly three years, is drawn from authoritative re-
ports framed by Government servants, and I have
added all that my own knowledge supplies. Rare
as have been the cases in which the success of the
gun has not been complete, I take more pleasure
still in the fact that a new system of rifled artillery,
with its new projectiles, fuses, and accessories, has
been introduced, and so far perfected, without loss
of either life or limb, or even injury to a single in-
dividual. The truth is, that the guns are of unpre-
cedented strength. Your readers will be interested
in an account of some official tests of endurance to
which one 100-pounder, two 40-pounders, and two
12-pounders not long ago were submitted. The facts
have been in some measure made public, but will, I
think, bear repetition.
The 100 pounder (weighing only 8t cwt.) was
fired 100 consecutive rounds with the full service
charge of 141 b. The projectile for the first ten
rounds was of 1001 b, weight, and was increased by
100 lb. every ten rounds after ; so that from the 90th
to the 100th round it weighed 1,0001 b., and pro-
jected two feet from the muzzle. The gun, after
sustaining this extraordinary test without injury,
might have been merely passed into the service, but
was taken for the severe duty of proving vent-pieces,
and daily endures a repetition of full-proof or double
service charges of 281 b.
The two 40 pounders (weighing 32cwt. each) were
loaded with full service charges of 51b., and fired,
like the 100-pounder, for 100 consecutive rounds.
In the first instance the projectile was 401 b., and it
increased in the same manner every ten rounds up
to 4001 b. Both guns remained uninjured; and at
the close of the experiment it was determined to
try one of them still further. It was fired for 30
more consecutive sounds, but this time with double
charges of 101 b. The projectile ranged as before
between 401 b. and 4001 b., every third round receiv-
These two guns,
and are still, for
ilanilkgl
elatnkhneaodfwodri:ntiinoenrraoelng4euo,l
alabieuiusnen.wi
nejiugrheta.,
The two 12-pounders have nearly the same story
to tell. I will not, therefore, weary you with the
details at length. Both withstood the hundred
consecutive rounds, with proportionately increasing
projectiles and full-service charges of 111 b. Both
were submitted to the double proof charges of 30
rounds more. One remained perfectly serviceable
and sound, the other failed near the muzzle, after
the sixth increase in weight of the projectile—that
is to say, after throwing a cylinder of 841 b. with
double the service charge. But I must observe that
in choosing these two 12-pounders for this ordeal,
one was purposely selected which had actually been
rejected at proof as defective; and it was this de-
fective one which finally succumbed to the treat-
ment I have described.
But, after all, special examples of endurance
are hardly of more value than the general experience
gained in ordinary use. I select from the list be-
fore me some returns of the number of rounds
fired by individual guns which are still in con-
stant practice. Of heavy guns, I see that one
40-pounder has fired 721 rounds, another 671. Of
the 12-pounders, one has fired 1,720 rounds,
another 1,832, another 2,817 rounds. Even my
original experimental 18-pounder gun, submitted
to the querpment in the year 1071 hae fired

between 2,000 and 3,000 rounds, and is still in
perfect condition. Nor need I remind the public
that this ordnance has been tried against
every kind of object, comprising ships, forts, earth-
works, mai tello towers, and targets representing
bodies of troops, with an effect never attained
by any other system. Its complete success in
China was recorded by your own correspondent,
and authoritatively pronounced by Ministers in
Parliament. Add to this that the experience of the
gun has been of a very complicated kind. Ido not
know whether your readers are aware that I had to
introduce with the gun an entire new system of
fuses and projectiles :-
1. A time fuse, which burns during flight, and
which can be set so as to explode the shell at any
given number of yards, or, as case shot, at the gun's
mouth.

2. A percussion fuse, which is incapable in its
original state of exploding the shell, though dropped
from a great height, but which acquires by the act
of firing so delicate a sensibility that it explodes
the shell thenceforward at the lightest touch.

3. The sea-service percussion fuse, which, like
the last-mentioned, has no sensibility before it is
fired, never has sufficient sensibility to explode the
shell by impact on the water or by ricochet, but
takes effect on a ship's side, whether it strike it point
foremost er otherwise, and bursts the shell in the
very act of passing through the timber.
4. The solid shot for battering, the common shell
for explosive effect, and the segment shell for use
against troops or the crews of ships,—three pro-
jectiles, the destructive power of two of which is on
a scale hitherto unknown.

Each of my field-service projectiles contains the
first and second of these fuses. A slight adjustment
only is required, at the very moment of loading, to
determine whether it shall act as solid shot, shrap-
nell shell, case shot, or percussion shell. Each bat-
tery of field artillery under this system goes into
action not merely with a gun of less weight than
formerly, and using half the weight of powder,
but, what is more important, carrying many kinds
of shot in one. Surely then I have a right to say
that our experience of the gun, in all its varieties
of size and with all its accessories, ranges over a field
so wide that greater hindrances and more mischances
might reasonably have been looked for than have
actually occurred ?
After the ample statistics I have given I might
close my letter here, but I will first shortly notice
some specific strictures on my guns which have
lately appeared in the public newspapers, and as I
prefer an opponent, however uncompromising, who
has the manliness to avow his name, Capt, Halsted
shall have the precedence.
Captain Halsted commences a letter which lately
appeared in your columns by instancing four large
guns which, he says, successively broke down after
a very few rounds ; and he impugns generally the
safety and endurance of the guns made upon my
principle.
I might oppose to such a conclusion the clear
proofs to the contrary which I have given above, but
I will meet his examples more closely still. He re-
fers in the first place to an 80-pounder gun, thefirst
heavy gun I made, and only an experimental one.
de says it was used against the Trusty in 1859, and
had a defect in the interior. I answer, that it had
no defect whiCh in the slightest degree affected either

its safety or efficiency. The slight flaw of which
Capt. Halsted speaks was readily cut out without
damaging the gun. It was one of the four guns sub.
sequently used against the martello tower at East-
bourne, and has been employed on various occasions
since.

His three remaining examples are 100-pounders
which ho asserts were successively disabled on board
the Stork gunboat and condemned as " dangerously
e," after• firing an insignificant number of
rounds. I reply that two of these 100 pounder guns
were returned, not as condemned, but only for exa-
mination and report. After such examination they
were declared fit for use, and one of them was sent
to Shoeburyness for continued firing. It there fired
363 rounds, and was then forwarded to Woolwich,
where to remove all doubt of its safety it was proved
a second time, and then returned to Shoeburyness
for general use. Capt. Halsted, who admits the
fact of the gun being subsequently used at Shoe-
buryness, qualifies the admission by saying that it
was there only considered as capable of cautious
use. So far from this being the case, it was indis-
criminately employed for firing shot of 2001 b.
weight against experimental iron targets. The
second 100-pounder, which was precisely in the
same condition as the former, and the character of
which might have been re-established in the same
way, underwent a different treatment. Advantage
was taken of the existence of the flaw to test the
efficacy of a brass lining introduced into the powder
chamber, after which the gun fired 50 rounds with
extra charges of 181 b., and remains perfectly ser-
viceable. I feel it necessary hero to remark that
from the novelty of these guns they were naturally
and very properly regarded in the first instance
with a degree of suspicion approaching to timidity,
and the slightest indication of flaw became an ob-
ject of apprehension. Capt. Hewlett, the com-
manding officer of the Excellent gunnery ship, to
which the Stork is attached, in a letter which I have
recently received, says that he had known the guns
at first as well as he does now, he would not have
deemed it necessary to change the couple of guns
last mentioned. Ho adds, "We knew very little
about the guns at first, and were startled at the
slightest appearance of flaw." The third 100-
pounder referred to by Capt. Halsted is still on
board the Stork. It has been ordered to Woolwich
for examination, but until it has arrived and been
tested I shall not suppose it to be a solitary in-
stance of dangerous defect,;but take it on trust that
its flaw will prove as little important as those of the
other two.
But there is yet a very important remark to make
on these guns. The fact is that the particular 100-
pounders referred to by Capt. Halsted are part of
a batch of guns which were not made purely on my
principle. Before the difficulties of manufacture of
the heavy guns were fully mastered, and during the
first pressure of the demand for them, I was com-
pelled for a time to make the inner tube—contrary
to my principle—from a solid forging, instead of
from coiled iron, and the result has proved the in-
feriority of the plan. But this circumstance, instead
of being an argument against my mode of construc-
tion, only proves its superiority over the alternative
system of making wrought-iron guns out of solid
blocks of that material. The manufacturing diffi-
culties, I am happy to say, have been for some time
past overcome ; and all the more recent guns being
on the coil principle throughout, are not liable to
those defects which in the instances named have
excited suspicion.
Captain Halsted asserts, that " up to the present
time the 100-pounder gun has never been subjected
to any representation of real action by 50 consecu-
tive rounds of rapid fire." This is incorrect. All
descriptions of my guns have been fired 50 rounds
at a time continuously, with various degrees of
rapidity.
Capt. Halsted next remarks on the liability of the
guns "to choke up their shallow grooves with the
lead covering of their missiles." Ho is quite wrong
in supposing that in any case the grooves become
choked with lead. He would have been justified in
saying that in cases where the guns are neither
sponged nor properly lubricated the grooves will be-
come clogged with a deposit from the powder. But
this never happens when an efficient lubricator is
used, such as that recently produced by Col. Boxer.
With that lubricator 50 rounds at a time have been
repeatedly fixed without any sponging, and the gun
has remained as clear in the grooves at the end of
the experiment as at the first round.
With regard to the failure of the vent-pieces on
board the Trusty, which, of course, forms a promi-
nent part of Ce.pt. Halsted's remarks, I refer to the
detailed partly wars which are given in the early