244 



Popular Science Monthly 



muzzle of his gun is elevated, depressed or 

 turned laterally by an electric motor 

 through gearing. 



The spar deck of the Constitution car- 

 ries twenty-two thirty-two-pound carro- 

 nades, the muzzles of which project 

 through square ports. The cannons are 

 mounted upon massive wooden carriages 

 running on chunky iron wheels. The re- 

 coil carried the cannon back to a point 

 determined by the length of a heavy 

 hawser or rope. For reloading, the pins 

 were removed from the loops in the ends 

 of the rope and the gun carriage rolled back 

 nearly to the center line of the deck. The 

 policy of discharging alternate broadsides 

 was to enable the gun crews to reload while 

 the ship was turning. 



Contrasts in Actual Construction 



Aside from the vastly different methods 

 of placing the guns, perhaps the most 

 striking contrast between the naval archi- 

 tecture of a century ago and that of to- 

 day is seen in the actual structure of the 

 hull and superstructures. The warship 

 of today has not a piece of wood visible, 

 with the possible exception of the deck, 

 which is wood over a steel foundation. 

 Stripped for action, the modern fighting 

 craft presents a positively naked appear- 

 ance with every movable object cast over- 

 board or stowed away. The Constitution, 

 on the other hand, presents a bewildering 

 array of rigging and spars, and she is 

 wholly constructed of wood. A single 

 modern shell exploding under or on her 

 deck would do as much damage, probably, 

 as an entire broadside from a ship similar 

 to the Guerierre. This vast change in the 

 design is, of course, due in large measure 

 to the introduction of steam as a means 

 of propulsion. Following this the all- 

 steel hull was introduced. 



The gun deck of the Constitution stirs 

 the imagination perhaps still more than 

 does the spar deck. Topped by a low 

 ceiling which makes one want to stoop as 

 he walks, this deck savors of a prison 

 dungeon. Glancing at the row of long 

 twenty-four-pounders, thirty in number, 

 one can readily picture the smoke-filled 

 atmosphere, the terrible din, the sweat- 

 ing, half-naked figures straining to reload 

 the clumsy pieces of ordnance, and ever 

 and anon a shot crashing through the 

 futile wooden wall sending splinters in 

 all directions. Stepping from the gun 

 deck and the turrets of the Rhode Island 



to this old-time chamber of horrors, the 

 visitor cannot fail to wonder how in her 

 famous engagement the Constitution suf- 

 fered a loss of but seven killed and seven 

 wounded out of a crew of four hundred 

 and fifty-six officers and men. Perhaps 

 the answer is found in the inaccuracy of 

 the guns and poor marksmanship of the 

 gunners; more likely, however, it is due 

 to the fact that the explosive shell had not 

 then been invented. Aside from the 

 splinters, a twenty-four-pound shot through 

 the hull stood little chance of doing really 

 great damage unless it struck a mast, a 

 gunner or the gun carriage itself. 



The guns of the Constitution's day 

 had an effective range of possibly a mile, 

 although history tells us that the real 

 execution was done at ranges of from one 

 to three hundred yards. Think of the 

 engagements of the present European war, 

 wherein naval duels are fought at ten miles' 

 range and where the opposing ship is actu- 

 ally out of sight from the gun deck and 

 barely visible from the fighting tops ! 

 Think of guns aimed with the aid of mathe- 

 matics! What marvelous strides science 

 has made in times of peace and in the short 

 space of a hundred years! 



As an interesting comparison of the guns 

 of to-day with those of 1812, we may call 

 attention to the fact that while the total 

 broadside discharge of the Constitution's 

 battery would amount to six hundred and 

 eighty-four pounds of metal, a single 

 projectile from one of our coast defense 

 mortars weighs half a ton. 



Comparison of Projectile Force 



Even more striking is the fact that 

 the projectile from a modern fourteen- 

 inch piece of ordnance such as that carried 

 by the super-dreadnoughts, weighs prac- 

 tically as much as one of the big guns of 

 the Constitution; in other words, instead 

 of hurling a small ball of iron at its enemy 

 the modern fighter of the seas could actually 

 throw one of the Constitution's cannons 

 itself at the opponent were the cannon of 

 suitable shape and form. And, further- 

 more, the explosive charge in the projectile 

 would be greater by far in power than the 

 entire charge used to fire the old cannon. 

 This means that the modern engine of 

 destruction actually takes a mass of steel 

 equal in weight to the old gun, loaded 

 with high explosive, and lands this entire 

 mass on the deck or inside the hull of 

 the enemy's ship, where it explodes. 



