MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 53 



A week subsequent to the date of tfee above experiments, addi- 

 tional trials were made with a view of seeing whether the powers of 

 Mr. Whitworth's gun and its flat-fronted steel shot would prove 

 equally effective in the case of heavier ordnance, increased charges, 

 and longer ranges. The gun used to settle these questions was a 

 muzzle-loader, manufactured at Woolwich, on Sir W. Armstrong's 

 wrouglit-iron coil principle, but with the hexagonal bore of Mr. 

 Whitworth's mode of rifling. Its weight was seven tons and eight 



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hundred pounds, its length about twelve feet, and its calibre a 

 120-pounder, though, in fact, capable of and quite equal to throwing 

 shot of at least double that weight with perfect safety. It was placed 

 on a platform, at a distance of six hundred yards from a target, twenty- 

 one feet long by fifteen feet high, constructed of four-and-a-half-inch 

 iron plates, eighteen inches of teak beams laid transversely, and an 

 inner skin of iron five-eighths of an inch thick, supported by massive, 

 upright angle-irons, at intervals of eighteen inches apart. The first 

 experimental shot was fired with a charge of twenty-three pounds of 

 powder and a solid hexagonal shot weighing one hundred and twenty- 

 nine pounds, the piece being laid at half a degree of elevation. It 

 struck the left centre of the target within an inch almost of the white 

 spot at which it was aimed, and at the instant of the tremendous con- 

 cussion of the metals a bright sheet of flame was emitted, almost as if 

 a gun had been fired from the target in reply. This shot passed 

 completely through the armor-plate, shattering the teak beyond into 

 minute splinters, and fell full upon one of the massive vertical angle- 

 irons we have mentioned, which it tore in halves as if it had been 

 paper, sending its screw-bolts and rivets in all directions. The shot, 

 however, did not pass through the target, but remained buried in the 

 teak, with its flat head resting against the broken angle-iron. But 

 the fracture it made was much worse than a mere penetration. It 

 was a smash, not a hole, and the inner skin of the target was bulged 

 and torn wide in many places, so that in the case of an actual vessel 

 such a shot striking on the water-line would have made a leak which 

 nothing could have stopped. As regarded the effect of these flat- 

 fronted shot on iron ships, the experiment was conclusive. Such a 

 missile against a wooden ship would have gone through both sides, 

 making a clean hole and doing little damage ; but the iron, without 

 protecting, offered only sufficient resistance to make the fracture, if 

 below the water-line, an irremediable mischief. The next experi- 

 ment was with a live shell loaded with three pounds and eight ounces 

 of powder. The total weight of this projectile was one hundred and 

 thirty-one pounds, and it was fired at the same range and elevation 

 with a twenty-five pound charge of powder. The effect of this shot, 

 says the reporter of the London Times, astounded every one. The 

 previous solid shot, at six hundred yards, was for Whitworth nothing 

 very extraordinary ; but to get a shell through the target at the same 

 range was regarded as almost an impossibility. Yet the shell went 

 completely through everything, bursting apparently when it encoun- 

 tered the last resistance of the inner skin, which the explosion blew 

 completely away, lighting for a moment the timbers at the back which 

 supported the target, and sending the bits of shell onward and over 



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