1872.] Mediaval and Modern Ordnance. 347 
in 1833, the effect of horizontal shell fire from guns of 
very large bore was only fully appreciated by the British 
authorities in 1855, in the early part of which year two 
experimental malleable-iron guns of 13-inch bore were 
ordered of Mr. Nasmyth, but the idea was given up and the 
guns counter-ordered. In the following year Messrs. Hors- 
fall, of the Mersey Ironworks, Liverpool, completed the first 
wrought-iron 13-inch gun of 22 tons weight, length 15 feet 
10 inches, which projected with great success solid shot 
each weighing 280 Ibs. to a range of 6000 yards, with a 
charge of 50 lbs. of powder at a point-blank elevation. This 
famous piece, the first of its kind, was presented to the 
nation, and is now mounted at Tilbury Fort. But slightly 
subsequent in date to the last-mentioned piece, come 
Mr. Mallet’s monster 36-inch mortar, which if not the 
heaviest pieces of ordnance ever built, may certainly claim a 
pre-eminent position among all pieces either ancient or 
modern (the great gun of Moscow not excepted) as regards 
the weight of their projectiles, which when filled weigh 
nearly 3000 lbs. a-piece. These mortars, only two of 
which were forged and built together, owe their origin to 
the energy developed by Great Britain during the Crimean 
War. Mr. Mallet’s original design was completed prior to 
October, 1854, and the manufacture, due solely ‘to the 
personal responsibility of Lord Palmerston, commenced in 
1855 by Messrs. Mare and Co., of the Thames Ironworks, 
Blackwall, who contracted to supply them at the rate of 
£140 per ton within ten weeks; they each weighed about 
Ao tons, and consequently cost £5600 a-piece. Mr. Mallet 
thus revived the old principle of constructing built-up guns, 
and next to Professor Treadwell, who first demonstrated the 
superiority of coiled wrought-iron over steel barrels in 1842, 
may be looked upon as the modern inventor of the “‘ vinged 
structure” in guns. ‘The fact that an enormous accession of 
strength could be attained by external rings with initial 
tension being suggested to him by Mr. Clarke’s work on the 
Britannia Bridge in 1850. 
The mortar may be shortly described as composed of a 
massive cast-iron base about 73 tons, in which is fitted a 
wrought-iron breech piece in which is bored the chamber 
proper, strengthened externally by two layers of wrought- 
iron hoops and one heavy ring. On this rests the chase in 
* The Story of the Thirty-Six Inch Mortars of 1855 to 1858. By Major- 
General Lerroy, C.B., F.R.S., R.A. ‘Proceedings of Royal Artillery 
Institution, Woolwich,” vol. vii., No. 4, 1871. 
