1Sir Harry Nicolas: History of the Royal Navy.

2The greatest authoritative works on ancient and medieval shipping, it should be mentioned, are the ArchÉologie Navale and the Glossaire Nautique of M. Jal, published in 1840 and 1848 respectively.

3Corbett: Drake and the Tudor Navy.

4Corbett.

5Oppenheim.

6Corbett.

7Navy Records Soc.: Edited by Sir John Laughton.

8Cases were known where ships, unfit for sea, completed their voyage in safety, to fall to pieces immediately on being taken into dock and deprived of that continual support which they derived from the water when afloat (Charnock).

9Chief-constructor D.W. Taylor, U.S.N.

10Creuze: Shipbuilding.

11Manwayring.

12Navy Records Soc.: 1918. Edited by W.G. Perrin, Esq., O.B.E.

13Captain John Smith’s Sea Man’s Grammar also appeared in the early part of this century.

14Sir J. Knowles, F.R.S.

15Willett: Memoirs on Naval Architecture.

16It has been suggested that the restricted draught given to the Dutch ships, owing to the shallowness of their coast waters, had the result of necessitating a generous breadth, and therefore made them generally stiffer than vessels of English construction.

17Derrick in his Memoirs refers to this ship us having been built of burnt instead of kilned timber, and as having special arrangements for circulating air in all its parts.

18Charnock.

19Colomb: Sea Warfare.

20Creuze: Papers on Naval Architecture.

21Even the scientific Sir William Petty cast a veil of mystery over his processes. “I only affirm,” he writes, “that the perfection of sailing lies in my principle, finde it out who can!” (See Pepys’ Diary for 31st July, 1663.)

22Creuze: Shipbuilding, Encycl. Brit., 7th Edition, 1841. It should be mentioned that the work of Dr. Colin McLaurin, of Edinburgh, in giving a mathematical solution for the angles at which a ship’s sails should be set, had received considerable attention on the Continent.

23See a paper by Mr. Johns, R.C.N.C., in Trans. I.N.A. 1910.

24Willett: Memoirs on Naval Architecture.

25At the beginning of the eighteenth century the English first rates carried 100 guns. The second rate comprised two classes: (1) a three-decker of 90; (2) a two-decker of 80. Ships of these rates were few in number and very expensive. The bulk of our fleets consisted of third rates: two-deckers of 70 guns in war and 62 in peace time and on foreign stations (Charnock).

26Sir C. Knowles: Observations on Shipbuilding.

27Letters of Sir Byam Martin: N.R. Soc.

28Sir C. Knowles: Observations on Shipbuilding.

29In 1784 Thomas Gordon published a treatise entitled Principles of Naval Architecture, drawing attention to the work of the French scientists and advocating increased length and breadth, finer lines, and a more systematic disposition of materials, for improving the strength and seaworthiness of our royal ships. No notice was taken of his communications to Lord Sandwich, but there is no evidence that his predicted fate overtook him: “to be traduced as an innovator theorist, and visionary projector, as has been the fate of most authors of useful discoveries in modern times, particularly in Britain.”

“The bigotry of old practice,” recorded Mr. Willett in 1793, “opposes everything that looks like innovation.”

30Fincham says their armament was established as, thirty 32-pounders on the lower deck, thirty 24-pounders on the middle deck, thirty-two 18-pounders on the upper deck, and on the quarter-deck and forecastle eighteen 12-pounders.

31James: Naval History.

32Letters of Sir Byam Martin: N.R. Soc.

33Sharp: Memoirs of Rear-Admiral Sir W. Symonds.

34Hannay: Ships and Men. This formula was known before, for Bushnell mentions it in his Compleat Shipwright of 1678.

35Sharp: Memoirs of Admiral Sir W. Symonds.

36E.J. Reed: On the Modifications to Ships of the Royal Navy.

37Ibid.

38Lieut.-Col. H.W.L. Hime: The Origin of Artillery.

39In the Histoire d’Artillerie of MM. Reinaud and FavÉ long excerpts from Bacon are examined, from which it appears that he suggested the use of gunpowder in military operations. Gibbon says: “That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of the ingredients, saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals the third in a sentence of mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the consequences of his own discovery.”

40Lieut. H. Brackenbury, R.A.: Ancient Cannon in Europe. Vol. IV and V of Proc. R.A.I.

41Schmidt: Armes À feu portatives.

42Sir Harry Nicolas, in his History of the Royal Navy, attributes the documents to the reign of Edward III: an error of more than seventy years. The mistake is exposed by a writer in Vol. XXVI of The English Historical Review, in an article on “Firearms in England in the Fourteenth Century.” The writer also gives the English records relating to the use of firearms at Cressy.

43Brackenbury.

44The secrecy of the early writers of Italy on gunnery and kindred subjects has been remarked on by Maurice Cockle in his Bibliography of Military Books. He attributes it to two motives: fear that the Infidel (the Turk) might profit by the knowledge otherwise gained, and a desire to keep the secrets of the craft in the hands of their countrymen, whose knowledge and assistance the foreigner would then be forced to purchase.

45The Great Cannon of Muhammad II: Brig.-Gen. J.H. Lefroy, R.A., F.R.S. Vol. VI of Proc. R.A.I.

46Ascribing the deliverance of Constantinople from the Saracens in the two sieges of A.D. 668 and 716 to the novelty, the terrors, and the real efficacy of Greek fire, Gibbon says: “The important secret of compounding and directing this artificial flame was imparted by Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in Syria, who deserted from the service of the caliph to that of the emperor. The skill of a chemist and engineer was equivalent to the succour of fleets and armies.”

For the story of the manner in which its mystery was guarded at Constantinople, of its theft by the Infidel, and of the use he made of it against the Christian chivalry at the crusades, see Chapter LII of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

47Grose: Military Antiquities.

48Hayley’s MSS.: quoted by M.A. Lower.

49Oppenheim.

50Oppenheim.

51Corned powder was graded in France in the year 1540 into three sizes by means of sieves which varied with the types of guns for which they were intended (see Hime: Origin of Artillery). By the end of the century the manufacture had evidently improved in this country. “Some do make excellent good corn powder, so fine, that the corns thereof are like thime seed,” wrote Thos. Smith in his Art of Gunnery, A.D. 1600.

52Oppenheim.

53Bourne: The Art of Shooting in Great Ordnance, 1587.

54Sir J.K. Laughton: Armada Papers, N.R.S.

55Smith demolished, to his own satisfaction, a theory current that some molecular movement of the metal took place at the moment of gunfire. “I asked the opinion of a soldier, who for a trespass committed was enjoined to ride the canon, who confidently affirmed, he could perceive no quivering of the metal of the piece, but that the air which issued out of the mouth and touch-hole of the piece did somewhat astonish and shake him.”

56The advantages of large calibres had been appreciated in the previous century. Sir Richard Hawkins, in his Observations, printed in 1593, compares the armament of his own ships with that of his Spanish opponents, and says: “Although their artillery were larger, weightier, and many more than ours, and in truth did pierce with greater violence; yet ours being of greater bore, and carrying a weightier and greater shot, was of more importance and of better effect for sinking and spoiling.”

57Oppenheim.

58A significant view of the attitude of these professionals toward any innovation in gunnery material is afforded by the entry of Mr. Pepys in his diary for the 17th April, 1669.

59An anonymous writer in the Pall Mall Gazette.

60Le Sieur Malthus, gentil-homme Anglois, Commissaire GÉnÉral des Feux et Artifices de l’Artillerie de France, Capitaine General des Sappes et Mines d’icelle & IngeniÉur És ArmÉes du Roy, published his Pratique de la Guerre in 1668. This notable but almost-forgotten artillerist introduced the use of mortars and bombs into France, in 1637. He was killed by a musket ball at the siege of Gravelines, as he elevated himself above the rampart of a trench in order to watch the effect of a bomb (St. Remy: MÉmoires).

61This account is taken from Historical Notes on Woolwich, Lieut. Grover, R.E. (Proc. R.A.I., Vol. VI).

62Le Blond: TraitÉ de l’Artillerie, 1743.

63Lieut.-Gen. Sir William Congreve, Bart., was, as Captain Congreve, appointed in 1783 to the control of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich. Sent in ’79 to Plymouth, to examine the gunpowders of H.M. ships in consequence of the complaints of Admiral Barington, he found only four serviceable barrels in the whole fleet. The gross frauds then brought to light led to the formation of the Government establishment at Waltham Abbey. His son was the inventor of the Congreve sight and rocket.

64Gen. Sir Thomas Blomefield, Bart., who started his service career as a midshipman, commanded a bomb vessel under Rodney at the bombardment of Havre in 1759, and was present at Quiberon. After varied service abroad he was appointed, in 1780, Inspector of Artillery and of the Brass Foundry. “Never was the need of military supervision over military manufactures more apparent than at this period. The guns supplied to the naval and military forces had degenerated to the lowest point in quality. Bursts were of frequent occurrence, and would doubtless have been much more frequent if the roguery of contractors in gunpowder had not kept pace with the roguery of contractors in guns.... From this period dates the high character of British cast iron and brass ordnance.”

65FavÉ.

66The author of the Études sur l’Artillerie places emphasis on the importance of the substitution of cast iron for stone projectiles, as augmenting the power of artillery. Stone balls broke to pieces on impact with masonry, and were of small destructive power except when in large mass, as projected from the largest bombards. He claims the introduction of iron shot, the use of trunnions for elevating, and the standardization of calibres, for the French artillery of Charles VIII, who in 1495 descended on Italy.

67FavÉ.

68Lieut.-Col. Hime, R.A.: The Progress of Field Artillery.

69Owen: Lectures on Artillery.

70Whewell: History of the Inductive Sciences.

71Encycl. Brit., 11th Edition.

72This project, however, is mentioned of an engine called by him “a semi-omnipotent engine,” the subject of the 98th invention: “an engine so contrived, that working the Primum mobile forward or backward, upward or downward, circularly or cornerwise, to and fro, straight, upright or downright, yet the pretended operation continueth and advanceth, none of the motions above-mentioned hindering, much less stopping the other.”

This engine is obviously not the same as that described as the sixty-eighth invention.

73A well-known story, quoted at length in the Memoirs of Sir John Barrow, connected de Caus with the Marquis of Worcester in dramatic fashion. The Marquis was being conducted through the prison of the BicÊtre in Paris when his attention was attracted by the screams of an old madman who had made a wonderful discovery of the power of steam, and who had so importuned Cardinal Richelieu that he had been incarcerated as a nuisance.

“This person,” said the insolvent Lord Worcester after conversing with him, “is no madman; and in my country, instead of shutting him up, they would heap riches upon him. In this prison you have buried the greatest genius of your age.”

The fable, and its exposure by a French writer, M. Figuier, are described in Dirck’s book.

74Millington: Natural Philosophy.

75Sir E.D. Lawrence: Steam in Relation to Cornwall.

76Enouf: Papin, sa vie et son oeuvre.

77On the evidence of a picture purporting to represent the first Newcomen engine, in which mechanisms are shown for operating the cocks automatically, an attempt has been made to prove that the manipulated cocks were a figment and the story of Humphrey Potter a myth. The iconoclast has not been successful. The evidence that the first engines were hand-controlled is very general (see Galloway’s Steam Engine and Its Inventors).

78At this time the corpuscular theory of heat still held the field. “Caloric,” or the matter of heat, was supposed to be a substance which could be imparted to or abstracted from a body, which had the property of augmenting its bulk, but not its weight, by setting its particles at a greater or less distance from one another.

79Encycl. Brit., Eleventh Edition.

80A text-book published a few years before Robins’ birth (Binnings’ Light to the Art of Gunnery, 1689) told how a certain profane and godless gunner, Cornelius Slime, was carried off by the devil before the eyes of the astonished onlookers!

81Whewell: Hist. of the Inductive Sciences.

82Dr. Halley: Phil. Trans., 1686.

83How strange and almost incredible this phenomenon appeared to people long after Robins’ time, may be seen from the manner in which Ezekiel Baker, one of the principal London gunmakers and the contractor who supplied the rifles with which the Rifle Brigade was equipped in the year 1800, poured gentle sarcasm on the account of this experiment. In his book on Rifle Guns, published in 1825, he can only assign the cause of the deflection to “some peculiar enchantment in the air.” “Or,” he continues, “with all my practice I have yet much to learn in guns, and the effects of powder and wind upon the ball in its flight.”

84Of the superstitious awe with which an iron field-piece was regarded by the highlanders in ’45, and of its small material value in the field, a note will be found in the appendices to Scott’s Waverley.

85Mr. Patrick Miller, who is mentioned in a later chapter as builder of the first successful steam-propelled vessel, was also an enthusiastic artillerist. In a memorandum to the Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1824 to consider the claims of various inventors of steam-vessels, a Mr. Taylor gave the following evidence: “I found him (Mr. Miller) a gentleman of great patriotism, generosity, and philanthropy; and at the same time of a very speculative turn of mind. Before I knew him (1785) he had gone through a very long and expensive course of experiments upon artillery of which the carronade was the result.”

86On April 20th, 1669, Mr. Pepys recorded in his diary a visit to “the Old Artillery-ground near the Spitalfields” to see a new gun “which, from the shortness and bigness, they do call Punchinello.” Tried against a gun of double its own length, weight, and powder-charge, Punchinello shot truer to a mark and was easier to manage and had no greater recoil—to the great regret of the old gunners and officers of the ordnance that were there.

The gallant inventor offered Mr. Pepys a share in the profits; there seemed great promise that the king would favour it for naval use. “And,” adds Pepys, “no doubt but it will be of profit to merchantmen and others to have guns of the same form at half the charge.”

87James: Naval History.

88The carrying of sham guns among their armament was not unknown in the case of vessels which boasted a reputation for their superior speed and sailing qualities (vide Bentham Papers).

89Captain Simmons, R.A.

90The carriage thus formed out of a baulk or trunk appears to have been known as a trunk carriage. Norton describes the cannon-periers as being mounted on “trunk carriages provided with four trucks.”

91Oppenheim.

92It was evidently a practice at this period to vary the diameter of the trucks to suit the ship’s structure and the height of the gun-ports. “Be careful,” says Bourne in 1587, “that the trucks be not too high, for if the trucks be too high, then it will keep the carriage that it will not go close against the ship’s side.... And the truck being very high, it is not a small thing under a truck that will stay it, etc. etc. And also, if that the truck be too high, it will cause the piece to have the greater reverse or recoil. Therefore, the lower that the trucks be, it is the better.”

Bourne also mentions, in the same book, the Art of Shooting in Great Ordnance, as a curious invention of a “high Dutchman” a gun mounting so devised as to allow the piece to rotate through 180° about its trunnions for loading.

93Manwayring: Sea-Man’s Dictionary.

94Oppenheim.

95Hutchinson: Naval Architecture.

96In the margin of the copy of The Art of Gunnery, Thos. Smith, A.D. 1600, in the library of the R.U.S.I. in Whitehall, is the following note, written in legible seventeenth-century script: “Some make a device to discharge at a distance by a long string, fixed to a device like a cock for a gun with a flint or like a musket cock with a match.”

In the same work are instructions as to firing in a wind, when the train of powder might be blown from the vent before the linstock could be applied. The gunner was to form a clay rampart, a sort of tinker’s dam, on the metal of the piece on the windward side of the touch-hole.

97On this Sir John Laughton remarked: “The exercise, so born, continued as long as the old men-of-war and the old guns—‘Ships passing on opposite tacks; three rounds of quick firing’” (Barham Papers, N.R. Soc.).

98A form of sight for use with ordnance was described by Nathaniel Nye, in his Art of Gunnery, of 1674. It consisted of a lute-string and a movable bead, with a scale opposite the latter graduated in degrees and inches.

99In Lloyd and Hadcock’s Artillery an extract from a letter written in 1801 by Lord Nelson relative to a proposal to use gun-sights at sea is given. The letter is unfavourable to the invention on the ground that, as ships should always be at such close quarters with their enemies that missing becomes impossible, such appliances would be superfluous. But in this connection the observation is made that, with the degree of accuracy of guns up to the nineteenth century a rough “line of metal” aim was probably all that was justified, in the matter of sighting. In other words, with one element of the system (the gun) so very inaccurate, nothing was to be gained by increasing the accuracy of another element (the sight) to a disproportionate degree. With increasing accuracy of the gun, increasing accuracy of sight was called for.

100In Vol. IV of the Proceedings of the Royal Artillery Institution, in an article by General Lefroy, an order is quoted showing that trials were made of firing shells horizontally by the Royal Artillery in Canada in 1776. The author also shows that the trials made by the French in 1784–6 were brought to the notice of Lord Nelson.

In Vol. V is the following extract: “Experiments were made on Acton Common in 1760, to fire coehorn and royal shells from 12-and 24-pounders, in order to be applied to the sea service; but as the shells were found frequently to burst in the guns, it was thought too hazardous to introduce them on board ships of war.”

101The first public demonstration was given by Lieut. Shrapnel, R.A., before the G.O.C., Gibraltar, in the year 1787.

102Simmons: Effect of Heavy Ordnance, 1837.

103James: Naval History.

104A short review of both books is given in the Papers on Naval Architecture, edited by Morgan and Creuze, 1829.

105See Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea.

106“As for guns,” wrote Fuller in his Worthies of England, comparing the relative merits of the inventions of printing and gunpowder, “it cannot be denied, that though most behold them as instruments of cruelty; partly, because subjecting valour to chance; partly, because guns give no quarter (which the sword sometimes doth); yet it will appear that, since their invention, Victory hath not stood so long a neuter, and hath been determined with the loss of fewer lives.”

107At a later date this reduction in number of types of ordnance was extended to cover land artillery. In ’62 the French brought down the number of different calibres to four: one for the field, one for the siege, and two (the 30-and 50-pounders) for the navy.

108Dahlgren: Shells and Shell-Guns, 1856.

109By this time Denmark, Holland, Russia and Sweden had all recognized the possibilities of shell guns, and had adopted them in greater or less degree. By this time, too, France actually possessed more steam war-vessels than we had ourselves.

110Simmons: Effects of Heavy Ordnance.

111The crossbow was looked upon as a weapon unworthy of a brave man; a prejudice which afterwards prevailed with respect to fire-arms (Hallam: Middle Ages).

112The Hon. T.F. Fremantle: The Book of the Rifle.

113Le DÉveloppement des Armes À Feu, 1870.

114In this aspect of the origin of the grooves there is a curious analogy between the rifle-barrel and the drill used in machine tools. In the primitive drill the shank is appreciably less in diameter than the hole cut by the drill, so that the drillings can easily work their way out of the hole. When, however, it was desired to make the shank almost of the same diameter as the hole, so as to form a guide, it was necessary to flute it with two grooves or more to allow the drillings to get away. In the course of its evolution these grooves became spiral.

115Quoted in The Book of the Rifle from Schmidt’s Armes À Feu Portatives, 1889.

116Delvigne: Notice historique des armes rayÉes.

117Beaufoy: Scloppetaria.

118A paragraph in Beaufoy’s Scloppetaria (1808) shows the complete misconception under which its author laboured as to the function of rifling. Just as the air turns a windmill or a shuttlecock (he says), so, after an indented ball quits its rifled barrel the air, forced spirally along its grooves, will cause the ball to turn. In short, he regarded the spiral grooves of a barrel as being of no further utility, with respect to the generating of the rotary motion, than as an easy way of giving the ball the requisite indentations.

119Fremantle: The Book of the Rifle.

120Captain A. Walker: The Rifle, 1864.

121At the beginning of the century Ezekiel Baker had noted that “a wadding in the shape of an acorn cup placed on the powder, and the ball put on the top of the cup, will expand the cup and fill the bore—and of course the windage will be much diminished.”

122Mention must be made of an important prior development of the elongated bullet which had been carried out by General Jacob in India, quite independently of French research. General Jacob conducted, in an altogether scientific manner, experiments the successful results of which were communicated by him to the home government on more than one occasion. The importance of his discoveries remained unrecognized, and the value of his improvements was lost to this country.

123In military circles the possibilities of the invasion of this country had for some time been under discussion, in view of the increasingly aggressive temper of the French. Interest in national defence became general with the warning letter of the Duke of Wellington which appeared in The Times on the 9th January, 1847. In ’51 was held the Great Exhibition, and for a time opinion was less agitated. The Exhibition, it was thought and hoped by numbers of people, would inaugurate the millennium.

124This advantage of the rifled gun hod been fully appreciated by Captain Norton. As early as 1832 he had conducted trials with one-pounder rifled cannon, to confirm his belief that the projectile would maintain its rotation during flight and hit the target point-first (Journal of R.U.S.I., 1837).

125Commander R.A.E. Scott, R.N.: Journal of R.U.S.I., Vol. VI, 1862.

126Tennant: The Story of the Guns. This book gives in detail the controversy which arose between the advocates of the Armstrong and the Whitworth systems.

127Edinburgh Review, 1859. Quoted by Sir E. Tennant.

128The sudden and extraordinary development of rifled ordnance which now took place had a revolutionary effect not only on naval architecture and gunnery but on land fortification. In ’59 Sir William Armstrong, giving evidence before a committee appointed by the War Secretary, stated that he could attain with a specially constructed gun a range of five miles. The statement made a sensation; for in the presence of such a gun most of the existing defences of our dockyards and depots were almost useless. A Commission on National Defence was formed. It reported that new fortifications were necessary for our principal arsenals, the fleet alone being insufficient for the defence of ports. “The introduction of steam,” stated the report, “may operate to our disadvantage in diminishing to some extent the value of superior seamanship; the practice of firing shells horizontally, and the enormous extent to which the power and accuracy of aim of artillery have been increased, lead to the conclusion that after an action even a victorious fleet would be more seriously crippled and therefore a longer time unfit for service.” Thus the command of the Channel might be temporarily lost. As steam facilitated invasion, the immediate fortification of vital points on the South Coast was considered necessary. In short, faith in the mobile fleet was temporarily abandoned.

The recommendations of the Commission were carried out almost in their entirety. In the case of Portsmouth, for instance, the reinforcement of the Hilsea Lines, decided on only two years previously, was suspended in favour of a defence of far greater radius—a circle of forts some of which were designed to prevent an enemy from gaining possession, from the land side, of Portsdown Hill, a ridge less than five miles from the Dockyard and therefore a position from which, with the new artillery, the Dockyard could be bombarded. A similar girdle of defences was given to Plymouth.

129Commander R.A.E. Scott, R.N.

130Lloyd and Hadcock.

131Woodcroft: Steam Navigation, 1848.

132de la RonciÈre: La Marine FranÇaise.

133Woodcroft: Steam Navigation.

134Rigaud: Early Proposals for Steam Navigation.

135Enouf: Papin; Sa Vie et Son Œuvre.

136Quoted in Fincham’s Naval Architecture.

137Mr. Taylor’s evidence to Select Committee, 1824. Quoted in Woodcroft’s Steam Navigation.

138Miller is said to have approached the Admiralty twice upon the subject, and certainly he was keenly interested in naval affairs. A generous tribute has been paid him by a friend whose name is honoured in our naval annals: “I was unwearied,” says John Clerk of Eldin in the preface of his Essay on Naval Tactics, published in 1804, “in my attention to the many valuable experiments of the ingenious and liberal-minded Mr. Patrick Miller of Dalswinton; to whom, whether in shipbuilding or in constructing artillery, both musketry and great guns, his country is more indebted than has hitherto been properly acknowledged.”

139Dickinson: Robert Fulton, Engineer and Artist.

140Colden: Life of Fulton.

141M. Marestier’s Report on Steam Navigation in the U.S.A. (Morgan and Creuze, 1826).

142Fraser’s Magazine, 1848.

143In his book On Naval Warfare with Steam, published thirty years later, Sir Howard Douglas set out more clearly the case for the strenuous development of steam navigation by this country, and exposed one of the chief flaws in M. Paixhans’ argument. At that date it was still the all-but-universal opinion in foreign countries that the introduction of steam had rendered superiority in seamanship of comparatively little importance in naval warfare. Sir Howard Douglas showed that English superiority had spread to machine design, construction and manipulation, and that if this country chose to exert itself it could maintain its lead.

It is curious to note that not one of these three writers emphasises the main disability under which France has actually suffered, viz. the unsuitability of French coal as warship fuel and the distance of her iron and coal mines from her chief shipbuilding centres.

144Briggs: Naval Administrations.

145A steam paddle-boat, named the Lord Melville in honour of the descendant of Charlotte Dundas, was then plying regularly between London Bridge and Calais.

146Memoirs of Sir John Barrow, Bart.

147Williams: Life of Sir Charles Napier.

148In 1835 a new department, of Royal Naval Engineers, was formed: to consist of technically trained men to manage the machinery of steam vessels. A uniform button was designed for them, and they were given the rank of Warrant Officers. Up to this time the machinery had been in charge of men who, for the most part, were “mere labourers”; and, commanding officers being ignorant of mechanical engineering, extensive fraud and waste had been practised, especially in connection with the refitting of vessels by contractors (Otway: Steam Navigation).

149Reed: On the Modifications to H.M. Ships in the XIXth century.

150The strategic value of steam power in warfare was first demonstrated by Lord John Hay in ’30. In the operations on the North Coast of Spain “the opportune arrival of a reinforcement of fifteen hundred fresh troops from Santander, by one steamer alone, despatched the previous day from San Sebastian, a distance of a hundred miles, for that express purpose, gave a decisive and important turn to the transactions of that day” (Otway: Steam Navigation).

151Fincham.

152The author of this work, M. Paucton, in addition to discussing the possibility of replacing the oar by the screw, threw out the suggestion of its use for aerial flight. “Je sÇais qu’on ne peut guÈre manquer de faire rire, en voulant donner des aÎles À un homme. Je sÇais que plusieurs personnes, qui out osÉ prendre l’effor dans les airs, n’ont pas eu un meilleur succÈs que l’imprudent Icare.” Nevertheless, it is incontestable that a man can lift more than his weight. And if he were to employ his full force on a machine which could act on air as does the screw, it would lift him by its aid through the air as it will propel him through the water.

M. Paucton hastened to calm the incredulous reader by assuring him with an affectation of levity that he was not really serious. “Il est permis de s’Égayer quelquefois.”

153A full account of these is given in Bourne’s Treatise on the Screw Propeller.

154Weale: Papers on Engineering.

155The Archimedes, with a 3-foot stroke engine which worked at 27 strokes per minute, was run against the Widgeon, the fastest paddlewheel steamer on the Dover station. Two points of importance were noted by the Admiralty representatives with reference to the propelling machinery of the Archimedes: the objectionable noise made by the spur-wheels, and their liability to damage and derangement. As, however, Mr. Smith proposed to obviate this objection “by substituting spiral gearing in lieu of the cogs” the representatives did not lay stress on these disadvantages.

156A similar paradox was accidentally revealed in the case of the paddlewheel. It was at first thought that, the broader the floats the greater would be the pull. A certain steam vessel, however, being found to have too much beam to allow her to pass into a lock, was altered by having her floats and paddle-boxes made narrower. It was found that her speed had thereby been improved (Otway).

157Note sur l’État des Forces Navales de la France, 1844.

158Parliamentary Report on Screw Propulsion in H.M. Navy, 1850.

159Sir Howard Douglas was instrumental in bringing to the notice of the Government the aggressive aims implied by the EnquÊte Parlementaire: His notes were printed confidentially in ’53 at the press of the Foreign Office. Vide his Defence of England, published in 1860.

160The Navies of the World. Hans Busk, M.A., 1859.

161The details of these trials against iron plate will be found in Sir Howard Douglas’ Naval Gunnery, third and subsequent editions.

162The rapid construction of over two hundred gunboats and their steam machinery revealed the enormous industrial capacity of this country, and constituted a feat of which the whole nation was rightly proud. For instance of successful organization, Messrs. Penn of Greenwich contracted to build eighty sets of main engines in three months—a proposition ridiculed as impossible. By the rapid distribution of duplicate patterns throughout the country the resources of all the greatest firms were utilized, and the contract was fulfilled almost to the day!

Some seven or eight years later, when the building of ironclads was being debated in parliament, the government was able to recall this achievement as an argument for not building too many ships of a new and probably transitional type. If we liked, it was said, we could soon produce a fleet of ironclads far greater than all the other Powers of Europe besides.

163J. Scott Russell: The Fleet of the Future: Iron or Wood? 1861.

164Reed: Our Ironclad Ships.

165Boynton: The Navies of England, France, America, and Russia. New York, ’65.

166Colomb: Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key.

167Colomb: Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key.

168In parenthesis, for she is of no special interest as a type, we may note here the Temeraire, built at Chatham and completed in 1877: a compromise between the central-battery and the turret ship. Generally like the Alexandra in disposition of armament, she carried in addition, in order to give all-round fire, two open barbettes, one at each end of the upper deck, each containing a 25-ton gun hydraulically operated.

169The freedom of the Royal Sovereign’s turrets from any liability to jam was demonstrated at Portsmouth by subjecting them to the impact of projectiles fired from the 12-ton guns of the Bellerophon.

170Colomb: Memoirs of Sir Cooper Key.

171Hitherto the torpedo had been used in warfare only in the form of a stationary mine, or motion had been given to it either by letting it drift on a tide or by attaching it rigidly to the bow of a vessel. After the American Civil War, in which conflict three-fourths of the ships disabled or destroyed were so disposed of by torpedoes, efforts were made to give motion to it, either by towing or by self-propulsion. In ’69 Commander Harvey, R.N., brought to the notice of the Admiralty his invention of a torpedo or sea kite which was so shaped that, when launched from the deck of a steamer and towed by a wire, it diverged from the steamer’s track and stood away at an angle of 45°. It could be exploded either electrically or by contact. The possibilities of this weapon were illustrated in a volume published in ’71, one picture of which showed luridly “an ironclad fleet surprised at sea by a squadron of torpedo craft armed with Harvey’s sea torpedoes.”

The towed torpedo was overshadowed by the fish or self-propelled torpedo. In ’70 Mr. Whitehead came to England and, prosecuting experiments under the eyes of naval officers, with a 16-inch torpedo successfully sank an old corvette anchored in the Medway at 136 yards’ range. The result was the purchase by the Admiralty of his secret and sole rights. In ’77 the first torpedo-boat was ordered.

172Colomb: Attack and Defence of Fleets.

173Vice-Admiral Sir G. Elliot: On the Classification of Ships of War.

174Brassey: The British Navy.