BOOKS.
THE REAL STORY OF THE GUNS.*
Sin EMERSON TENNENT has here called public attention to the very important question of great guns and iron plates. In his book, written with an elaborate profession of fairness, but being, in fact, a production almost of the nature of a puff; he has endeavoured to exalt Mr.. Whitworth into a great artillerist at the expense of. Sir William Armstrong. The method of dealing with evidence employed by him for this end we do not propose to speak of here. Our object to-day will be to state what Mr. Whitworth has really done. After all the noise that he and his friends in the press have made, we take it that most readers will be no little astouished to find that hitherto this has been simply nothing. He is a very eminent mechanic, and his company turn out small arms of great precision, although the better opinion seems to be that his rifles will be useless as weapons for. war. Let him have all the credit due to him for these things, and now let us consider his claims as a scientific artillerist.
To put the thing plainly and shortly, Mr. Whitworth has been attempting for years past to jockey—we can use no milder term—the public into believing• that he is the inventor ,of a system of artillery which England will do well to adopt, the real fact being that he is simply the inventor of a method of rifling which he will not allow to be fairly tested, and which, so far as it has been tested, does not answer for big guns. It is, to say the least, very doubtful whether he can even claim to be more than the adopter of this polygonal method of rifling. The late Mr. Brunel had a rifle made for him upon this system, which rifle is admitted by Mr. Whitworth to have been examined by him, and left in his custody for experiments, before the date of his patented claim for polygonal rifling.
Now there are many things which go to form a system of artil- lery. The most important of these is construction. If you are to use rifling at all your guns must be made strong. The only test of strength worth anything is, what charge of powder your gun will stand. The finest system of rifling ever dreamt of will be worse than useless if the guns to which it is applied burst. Now Mr. Whitworth has no system of construction whatever ; for he has virtually abandoned the only one he ever set up, -that of strengthening guns by wrought-iron or steel hoops, and, in the case of the only guns of his which have ever been successful —and which we will enumerate presently—he has adopted the coil system, as used by Sir William Armstrong.
Second amongst the requisites to a system of artillery comes
• The Story of the GUM. By Sir Emerson Torment. London : Longman.
ammunition. Here Mr. Whitworth's claims rest on his steel pro- jectiles. Now he has no claim to the merit of having first used steel, as Sir William Armstrong furnished the Government with a steel shell a year and a half before Whitworth's was heard of, and Sir William himself was not, we believe, first in the field. The flat head Mr. Whitworth can indeed claim, but the Iron Plate Committee have reported that flat-headed projectiles pos- sess no superiority in penetrating power. As yet Mr. Whitworth has not oven produced a fuse for his own shells, so that, except against iron, they are comparatively useless. Sir William Arm- strong, on the other hand, found the service using three different forms of projectiles, and has given them one, which can be used either without a fuse-as solid shot, with a time fuse as an ordi- nary shrapnell shell, with a percussion fuse as a shell bursting on impact, or lastly (by a special arrangement of either fuse), bursting at the muzzle of the gun with the effect of ordinary grape or canister.
Next in importance, after construction and ammunition, comes rifling. We are not the least desirous of pressing the late Mr. Brunei's claim to the invention of the polygonal-groove method patented by Mr. Whitworth. But assuming that method to be fairly his, what is it worth? So far as the evidence as yet goes, it must be held at least doubtful whether it is not inferior to several other methods in use. His deep grooves are said to wear out the gun without giving a fair equivalent in increased accuracy and range. Sir William Armstrong's system of rifling is founded on the principle that the further you depart from the cylindrical form the more you injure your barrel and reduce the effective power of your projectile, and by giving every facility to the proper authorities for testing, he has proved that his system combines great accuracy with lasting and penetrating power. Mr. Whitworth also obtains great accuracy, but his exceeding chariness of allowing such of his guns as have been at all suc- cessful to be fired, and the mishaps which have overtaken almost every heavy gun of his, lead naturally to the suspicion that guns rifled on his system will not wear. There are other requisites to a system of artillery, such as a fixed rule of proportions between the parts of the piece, which we only refer to for the purpose of saying that Mr. Whitworth has not yet disclosed what his views are upon them.
And now, to look at the question of what Mr. Whitworth has actually done in detail, In 1851, his attention as well as that of Sir William Armstrong and other eminent mechanicians, was turned to the subject of rifled ordnance. He started, as one of the first mechanics in the country, with every appliance for manufacturing guns. His first attempts (in contrast to Sir William Armstrong's) were in rifling existing ordnance. For this purpose Government furnished him with gun-blocks of brass and cast-iron, which he rifled. The first was a brass 12-pounder, rifled by him in June, 1856 ; 4 other brass guns were rifled by him in that and the following year, and in 1858, 2 32-pounders and one 68-pounder cast-iron blocks were also bored by him. The brass guns have fired about 550 rounds. The cast-iron guns burst on the 2nd, 3rd, and 7th rounds respectively. With the above guns Mr. Whitworth competed with Sir William Arm- strong in 1858 before the Rifled Cannon, which reported in favour of Sir William, then Mr., Armstrong, and not in Government employ.
Late in 1859, Mr. Whitworth first produced guns of original construction. They were a 3-pounder and a 12-pounder field-gun, both breech-loading, of solid homogeneous metal, the former of which has not been submitted to the Government. Out of the latter, which has been bought by the Government, about 300 rounds have been fired. As a breech-loader, Mr. Whitworth himself now disapproves of it ; nor, to use the words of the Duke of Cambridge, in April, 1863, have we any shell at all for Mr. Whitworth's field-guns. This gun has been compared with a slight advantage with Sir William Armstrong's 12-pounder as to range ; but as it is 20 inches longer, 1 cwt. heavier, and carries, therefore, a heavier charge, and as, on the other hand, at this same trial a considerable advantage in accuracy was obtained by the Armstrong 12-pounder, the balance as to range and accuracy remains with the latter piece. This is the gun which was adopted on the report of the Ordnance Select Committee in 1858 for service in the field, and has since proved its value in every climate under all sorts of usage. His next essay was an 80-pounder breech-loading steel gun, bound with hoops of cast-iron, the barrel of which split at the twenty-first round fired on the Government trial. It had fired forty-three rounds previously, making in all sixty-four. Mr. Whitworth at this period seems to have become a convert to the coil system of Sir William Armstrong, for the next guns furnished nominally by him were four 70-pounders. For two of these the Government supplied him with wrought-iron coil casings and trunnions of the Armstrong pattern, into which he inserted steel barrels. One of these burst at proof, out of the other, which was strengthened with extra coils after proof, 271 rounds have been fired, and it is probably a thoroughly good gun. But so far is Mr. Whitworth himself from having confidence in it, that he would never allow it to ba tested agaiust a plated target, and has actually applied to Government to substitute a coil barrel for the steel one. This gun weighs seventy-six cwt., only five cwt.
less than the Armstrong 100-pounder. The other two 70-pounders were rifled as well as made at the Government factory. The coil system was here used throughout, the rifling only being on Mr. Whitworth's system. One of these has never been tried. From the other, seven rounds have been fired in all. It was this gun that penetrated the iron plates in 1862. The construction being Sir William Armstrong's and the rifling Mr. Whitworth's, it has yet to be decided to whom the credit of its performance is due. One more gun completes the list. Mr. Whitworth has had made for him, on the coil system, in the Royal Gun Factory, a wrought- iron gun rifled on his plan ; it was of seven-inch bore, and weighed seven and a half tons. This gun; with no charge of more than twenty-seven pounds, fissured after firing seventeen rounds. The seven-inch gun of Sir William Armstrong, weigh- ing only four tons, has fired 313 rounds, with a charge of twenty- eight pounds of powder, after having been previously tested for 100 rounds, with shot increasing in weight every ten rounds up to 1,000 pounds, when the projectile after loading stood out beyond the mouth of the piece. It is curious that the Armstrong construction never seems to fail, except when his guns are rifled on Mr. Whitworth's plan.
So far as the evidence as yet before the public enables us to judge, it would seem that Mr. Whitworth holds that guns built upof homogeneous iron and bored on his system will be ultimately found superior to all others. Sir William Armstrong, on the contrary, contends,—and, so far, experience has borne him out,— that the homogeneous metal has yet to be found which can be safely trusted for heavy guns, that it is doubtful whether such metal can be produced in England in sufficiently large blocks, and that, meantime, his coil system will infallibly produce guns of the largest calibre which will pierce any target yet invented. In support of his contention we have the fact of his successful ex- periments against all armour plating yet made, culminating at Shoeburynees in December, 1863, when, at the distance of 1,000 yards, he succeeded in destroying with one shell a Warrior target, measuring 12 feet by 10.
Mr. Whitworth's complaints of the delay of the Government in testing his guns are quite unfounded. The only delays have arisen from his own neglect to furnish guns and ammunition of his own for trials, and from his refusal to allow such coil guns as have been rifled on his system to be searchingly or repeatedly tried by the proper authorities. In this matter of alleged delay the following simple fact will enable the public to put the saddle on the right horse :—fn December, 1862, the Government granted a trial of the comparative merits of Sir William Armstrong's and Mr. Whitworth's 12 and 70-pounders, believing, it seems, prema- turely, that Mr. Whitworth had some guns of his own to try. The guns and ammunition were ordered in January, 1863, and the necessity for expedition was urged on both manufacturers. Sir William Armstrong was ready in April ; Mr. Whitworth, although repeatedly urged to send in his guns and ammunition during the summer and autumn of 1863, has not yet done so. It is easy to raise a cry in England against " Government delay," " official prejudice against independent manufacturers," "red-tape routine," and what not ; but in the end no cause will be served by unscrupulous charges of this kind, out of which the bottoms fall (as the Yankees say) the moment they come to be tested, and Mr. Whitworth will be well advised to confine himself in future to bare fact in his endeavours to secure the adoption by the nation of what be, no doubt, believes will prove, whenever it shall come into existence, to be the best ordnance hitherto invented by man.
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