ANCIENT ACTIONS 3 



of our drop-down guns of to-day, which are consequently some 

 centuries old in principle, and had it not been for the absence 

 of detonators there would have been nothing left for the nine- 

 teenth century to invent. 



It has been said that the Prussians were first to take up the 

 principle of the breech-loader for war, but that refers only to 

 the detonated modern breech-loader. Some of the soldiers in 

 the American War of Independence were armed with the 

 breech-loader already mentioned, in which the trigger guard 

 unscrewed the opening into the breech ; but although this 

 invention was possibly the soundest in joining of all the old 

 ones, it was slow, and probably was not much used for that 

 reason. 



The Venetians had ships armed with cannon as early as 

 1380 A.D., and in Henry VIII.'s reign the wrecked Mary Rose 

 carried ^m^-loaders, designed on a principle which may 

 possibly have suggested the wire guns of the present. The 

 tube of iron or brass (for both were used) was surmounted by 

 rings of iron which had evidently been slipped over the tube 

 and hammered on while red-hot. These then contracted upon 

 cooling, and pinched the bore smaller, so that, intentionally or 

 not, the bore was made to expand to its original size upon an 

 explosion occurring before any stress was put on the metal of 

 the internal surface by the powder-gas. That is to say, all the 

 first part of the strain went to expand the rings on the outside 

 of the gun before the inside had reassumed its natural dimen- 

 sions ; or, in other words, the tension between the external big 

 circumference and the internal small one was equalised, just 

 on the same principle as it is in the latest big guns. This is 

 known, because some of the Mary Roses big guns were got up 

 from the sea about half a century ago. She was over-weighted, 

 and it is quite probable that her loss had a good deal to do with 

 teaching the nation that before everything a warship must be 

 handy, so that, when the Spaniards sent their great ships to 

 fight Elizabeth, her smaller craft, and Britain's uncertain weather, 

 between them sank or squandered the whole Spanish fleet. 



