158 Jlfmnfting uf Naval Ordnance, 



"Very little practice is required to work " To work a gun smartly in different 



the gun with the greatest celerity in all directions requires very great practice 



cases ; a luiitbrm proficiency in naval and skill, and to keep up a brisk fire for 



gunnery may, therefore, throughout his any length of time, very exhausting 



Majesty's service,be more easily attained/' pifprts." ;, ,; ( 



The sixth and last section, of the work under our notice, 

 ■refers to the application of the proposed new system of 

 tnounting naval ordnance to steam-vessels, gun-boats and 

 merchant ships, and particularly to those of the latter de- 

 scription belonging to the East India Company. We cannot 

 aiford the space to enter into these particulars ; but there is 

 an interesting subject brought forward in the same section 

 with regard to restoring, the author says, the Congreve ffun 

 to the service of his Majesty's ships, from which they have 

 *^ lately been discontinued" on account of " the unsteady and 

 unsafe action of these guns upon their carriages." 



We cannot help thinking that Commander Marshall must 

 here labour qnder some misinformation, and that it is hardly 

 possible for those who have the management of our naval 

 ordnance to have contemplated such a line of conduct, much 

 less to have put it in, execution, and thereby throw away the 

 services of nearly one thousand pieces of ordnance eminently 

 calculated by their powers * and properties for sea service. 

 These guns armed the upper deck of the Queen Charlotte at 

 Algiers, and were supposed to have fired at least one hundred 

 rounds a piece. In this severe trial we are told that not the 

 least failure or disappointment occurred whatever. Their ex- 

 cellence was so completely confirmed by experiment, as to 

 induce the Admiralty to adopt them very largely in the arma- 

 ment of our three decked ships of the line, and in the 46-gun 

 frigates. As we cannot imagine that the decease of their 

 talented inventor could have invested these guns with any new 

 properties or have neutralized their powers, we naturally infer 

 that their now discovered bad properties depend not on the gun, 

 but on some defect in the mode of mounting. As they did 

 not show any disposition to unsafe action at Algiers in 1816, 

 why should they do so now in 1830 ? If, from having been 

 mounted on improper carriages, they are found to develope 

 such bad symptoms, an alteration should be made to correct 

 them. Any gun mounted upon too short a carriage will 

 evince a disposition to upset, and it is a well-known fact that 

 carronades, when mounted on short and comparatively high 

 carriages with four trucks, will do so. Here then the remedy 



• From official experiments made in 1813, on Sutton Heath, it appeared that 

 the point blank range of Congreve's 24-pounder of 41 cwt. and 7^ feet long was 

 505 yards, and that of the long 24-pounder of 50 cwt. and 9;^ feet long was 368 

 yards. — Fide the " Concise Account" of the Congreve 24-pounder gun. 



