RIFLED ORDNANCE. 



RIFLED ORDNANCE. 



armed with a Sharp's (breech-loading) carbine, and also some, we 

 believe, with Wertley Richards's. 



Mr. Joseph Whitworth, the eminent machine manfacturer of Man- 

 chester, has invented and patented an admirable rifle : a section of the 

 barrel i represented in jig. 11 ; and the bullet, with a plan of base, in 

 /</. 12. The bore is a hexagon in plan, or rather in cross section, with 

 the angles rounded off, the diameter of inscribed circle being only '45 

 inch. The bore is described by this hexagonal section moving from one 

 end to the other, and rotating uniformly round the axis of the piece, 

 o as to complete one rotation while passing along 20 inches ; that is, 

 that the grooves, if we may so term them, make one turn in 20 inches. 

 The pickets are either of the form shown in fy. 11, or as shown in 

 Jiy. 13, that is, cylindrical, and of a rather less diameter than the 

 inscribed circle, when they are expanding. The former have the 

 advantage of allowing the use of a hard metal (9 parts lead, 1 part 

 tin), and consequent great penetration. By casing off the edgt* that 

 bear in loading, the former description of bullet is easily rammed 

 down, whilst, as the bearing is thrown on the other edges as it U being 

 driven out, almost all windage is stopped. 



A trial took place in April, 1857, between these rifles and the 

 Enfield, at Hythe School of Musketry; the experiments have been 

 objected to on various grounds, but it may be as well to give the 

 result* : 



Flf. II. 



The figure of merit is the mean radial distance in feet from their centre 

 of 10 shots fired from a rest table. A Whitworth bull.-t, with the service 

 charge of 2) drachma of powder, penetrated thirty-three 4-inch planks 

 of elm, and was only stopped by a solid balk of timber behind them. 

 Mr. Lancaster's rifle, which has before been mentioned, has a gaining 

 twist ; the section of the bore U an ellipse ; the bore is formed by this 

 ellipse moving along the axis of the piece at the same time that it 

 rotate* round it, rotating, not uniformly, but more rapidly as it come* 

 toward* the muzzle. The rifles with which the Royal Engineer* are 

 armed, on this principle, take the same ammunition a* the Enfield, 

 and make good practice up to 1000 yard*. 



The last rifle we need mention i* that invented 

 by Oenenl Jacob. The form of bullet i* seen in 

 jiff. 14. The groove* we of considerable depth, four 

 in number, and are a* wide as the lands. The 

 diameter of the bore is the 32 gauge. The picket is 

 olid, and ha* four projection* to fit the groove*. The 

 grooves make one turn in 36 inches. General Jacob 

 made many experiment* with shells from his rifle*. 

 These shell* had been invented many yean ago by 

 Captain Norton, and having improved upon them, 

 Oeneral Jacob made a most formidable weapon, ex- 

 ploding ammunition waggon* at 1600 and 1 800 yards 

 distance. The picket i* cast with a cylindrical cavity 

 hi it* conical end, into the cavity i* inserted a copper 

 tube, filled with fine-grain powder, and primed at the 

 point with a detonating composition. These shells 

 may be very useful, though they have never yet been 

 tried on service, but they have been found very effective against 

 Urge game in India and Africa. 



KIKI.KI) OKDSANVK. In the year 1774, Captain Blair proposed 

 the formation of rifled guns of iron, to be used as field artillery. 

 Agreeably to the old practice, they were to be made hollow in the act 

 of being cast, and hi the same operation the grooves were to be formed. 

 The ball* were to be of lead, with knobs on them to fit the grooves, 

 and they were to weigh not 'more than two pounds. About the 

 beginning f this century, the French attempted to introduce into 

 their service cannon-shut of a cylindro-spberical form, the cylindrical 

 part being in contact with the charge of powder, and a ring of lead 

 surrounding the shot near its middle, so as to render this port rather 

 greater than the bore of the gun. The circumference of the ring being 

 scraped down by the edge of the muzzle when the shot was forced 

 he gun, became in close contact with the surface of the bora, 

 and thus no windage was left. By this contrivance it was expected 

 that most of the advantage* of a rifled gun would be obtained, though 

 no rotatory motion took place in the shut. The result of the trials 

 wa* thought to be favourable with respect to the direction anil range 

 of the shot ; but the labour and time required to load the gun wrre 

 great, and this circumstance probably prevented the invention from 



In 1846, Major Cavalli, of the Sardinian Artillery, invented a rifled 

 run ; and about the same time another was proposed by Baron 

 Wahrendorff, a Swede. Both were two-grooved breech-loading pieces, 

 [n 1850 these guns were experimented with at Shoeburyness against 

 Jie service 32-pounder of 56 cwt. The weight of the elongated pro- 

 jectile for both guns was about 64 or 65 Ibs. Space does not permit 

 jf our entering into a description of them ; but some remarks of Sir H. 

 Douglas on the result of the experiments may be quoted : " At 

 the efficient service elevation of 5", with charges of 8 Ibs., the ranges, 

 and also deflections, of the different projectiles were nearly equal to 

 one another ; and the like is true with charges of 10 Ibs. At elevations 

 of 10, the ranges of the foreign guns exceeded those of the English 

 82-pounders, with charges of 8 Ibs., by 380 yards, and with charges of 

 10 [be. by 690 yards; and at elevations of 15 the excess was, with 

 charges of 8 Ibs., about 790 yards, and with charges of 10 Ibs. about 

 1100 yards." The deviations, which were always in the direction of 

 the rotation of the projectile, were so variable that no allowance could 

 be made for them. The Wahrendorff gun had considerable advantages 

 in length of range over the 32-pounder at high elevations, but the 

 practice was then very uncertain. After four rounds, the Cavalli gun 

 became unserviceable by the copper ring embedded in the metal of the 

 gun at the bottom of the bore being damaged. The attempt to repair 

 this was unsuccessful, for, on a further trial, the whole breech was 

 blown away. The Wahrendorff gun, however, stood welL 



The next rifle gun invented waa that by Mr. Lancaster. It was 

 tried at Shoeburyness in 1851. The principle was similar to that 

 of the rifle [RIFLE] an elliptical bore, with a gaining or increasing 

 twist. In fact it was a two-grooved rifle, with the angles of the grooves 

 chamfered off. The friction in the bore was so great that' it was 

 necessary to make the projectile, which waa cylindro-conoidal with 

 an elliptical section, of wrought iron. This was the first rifled cannon 

 ever used in war, and was employed by the English in the Crimea, 

 both on board the gun-boats and in the batteries, against Sebastopol. 

 Though good results had been obtained in 1852 at Shoeburyness, with 

 spheroidal projectiles from these guns, they did not succeed well on 

 service. The trial was certainly hardly a fair one, many of the guns 

 being light 8-inch, bored up ; and these burst. Some of the heavy 

 8 inch Lancaster guns, however, also burst with the elongated pro- 

 jectile, we believe. Those who worked the guns had in many cases 

 not been instructed in their use ; and Mr. Lancaster has accounted for 

 the shells constantly bursting in the bore by the welding of the two 

 piece* of wrought iron with which they were made not being a perfect 

 joint, and the explosion of the gun communicating to the interior of 

 the shell. But it is most probable that the shell jammed in the bore, 

 which it was very likely to do from its form and the increasing twist. 

 Certain it is that the practice was very uncertain, 'and the result not 

 satisfactory. 



Under the head* of GI-NXKRV and RIFLE we have considered the 

 points to be attended to in the formation of rifle arms and projectiles. 

 These are equally applicable to ordnance. But when we come to the 

 manufacture of very large guns, either smooth bore or rifled, we meet 

 with a difficulty in making them sufficiently strong to resist the effect 

 of the explosion of the charge. Thi* difficulty arises as we increase 

 the diameter of the bora much sooner in rifled pieces than in smooth 

 bore*, because in the former there is a greater resistance to the motion 

 of the projectile in the bore, while at the same time the elongated pro- 

 jectile employed is of greater proportional weight. It has been how- 

 ever found very difficult to make solid shot guns that is, when heavy 

 charge* are employed of a greater diameter of bore than 8 inches 

 (the o'8-pounder) ; and in the war with Russia it was found that the 

 13-inch mortars, even the immensely heavy sea service ones, constantly 

 l.ur.-t after heavy firing, as at Sweaborg. 



This can be easily understood when we remember that, in guns of 

 the ordinary construction, it is useless to increase the thickness of 

 metal beyond a certain limit, and that to produce equal initial velo- 

 cities in two similar projectile* of different diameters as, for instance, 

 two spherical shot of 2 and 4 inches diameter the pressure or strain 

 on the metal of the gun increases in a ratio much higher than the ratio 

 of the surfaces of the bores. To make the first point clear, if we take 

 the transverse section of a gun, which is an annulus, we may consider 

 it composed of a series of concentric rings, and the strain of the 

 explosion a statical force, though it is of the nature of impact. That 

 the metal of the gun is, as might be supposed, extended by the action 

 of the powder at the moment of explosion (some portion of which 

 extension, from want of elasticity, is permanent), may be proved 

 experimentally ; that is to say, the diameter of the annulus or trans- 

 verse section is increased, but the area of the annulus must remain 

 the same, and therefore the width of tho annulus must diminish, or, 

 which is the same thing, the circumference of the inner circle must 

 increase in a greater ratio than the outer. Hence the greater the 

 distance of any of the rings composing the annulus from the centre 

 or axil of the gun, the less will it be stretched, and the less will be the 

 strain on it, and the resistance to a pressure of any two rings will be 

 inversely as the squares of their distances from the axis. 



Now iron extends with a tensile strain, and the extension is more 

 than proportionate to the strain ; that is, the resistance to extension is 

 only at first nearly proportionate to the extension. It is found, by 

 experiment, that for wood and wrought-iron the resistance to exten- 



