46 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



In action, where time is everything, the train would he enormous; and owing 

 to this, and to the simplicity of its other details, the guns could no doubt easily 

 he fired two or three times in a minute, and their execution must necessarily 

 prove immense. Each of them is fitted with the necessary screws for shifting 

 their aim, and a few turns of a handle brings them instantaneously to bear 

 upon any given point with the utmost nicety, the whole being easily within 

 the management of a single man. 



Some experiments with Whitworth's guns, of different calibres, are thus 

 described in the London Times : The three-pounder, which looks more like 

 an elegant telescope than a deadly instrument of destruction, was first fired 

 at three degrees of elevation, and its shot then fell somewhat short of a mile, 

 varying from 1,600 to 1,500 yards, but in no instance deviating more than two 

 yards from the true line of fire. Two shots out of nine actually fell on the 

 line, and five only half a yard on one side. When the three-pounder was 

 raised to twenty degrees of elevation, its range was about 6,f>00 yards ; and 

 out of three shots fired, two fell precisely on two parallel lines, within six 

 feet of one another. The experiments with the twelve-pounder were equally 

 remarkable. At twenty degrees of elevation it ranged from 6,818 to 6,339 

 yards; at five degrees of elevation, it averaged 2,300, and threw all its shot 

 within two and a half yards of the true line of fire. 



Perhaps the most beautiful part of the performance was that in which 

 Mr. Whitworth showed how capitally his bolts could be made to rico- 

 chet. The spectators were ranged on the sandy ridges about a hundred 

 yards from the shore. More than a mile and a half away might be descried 

 a little group gathered around the guns; presently came a flash, then an 

 interval of a few seconds, then the rumble of the report, and almost at the 

 same time the sand in front was ploughed up and dashed away right and 

 left, and the bolt might be heard rushing high overhead with a sort of w r ild 

 scream, and presently marking the spot of its final fall by a tiny splash in 

 the far distance. 



Subsequent trials at Southport, with three, twelve, and eighty-pounders, 

 according to the Times, surpassed the most sanguine expectations. "The 

 accuracy of fire," it says, " and length of range obtained from trifling charges 

 of powder were so totally beyond what has eyer yet been attained, that it is 

 evident we are upon the eve of another revolution in all relating to scientific 

 gunnery, and that even the greatest results which have ever been obtained 

 from the Armstrong gun are likely to be in turn surpassed by Mr. Whit- 

 worth's ordnance." 



In the firing with the twelve-pounder field-gun, the range was marked out 

 by tall thin poles placed 1000 yards apart for a total distance of 10,000 yards 

 (about six miles), having short sticks placed in the road at every hundred 

 yards between the chief poles. AYith a twelve-pounder, no experiments hav- 

 ing been made expressly to test the range, a six-feet target with a two-feet 

 bull's-eye was hoisted at 1000 yards, to show the accuracy of its fire. Two 

 shots were allowed to lay the gun and find the range, the second of which 

 passed between the target and the pole which held it. Of the eight which 

 were then fired, all went through the target within a space of four feet 

 square, and two through the bull's-eye, which, from the place where the 

 gun was fired, looked scarcely bigger than a man's hand. In this result 

 there was nothing astonishing to those who have seen the Armstrong fired, 

 or even the very best practice made now and then with smooth-bored field 

 artillery. 



