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TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 933 
Vessels of lower rates (I refer to the screw steam frigates of the period just 
anterior to the Crimean war) were both in construction and armament so closely 
analogous to the line-of-battle-ships that I will not fatizue you by describing them, 
and will only allude to one other class, that of the paddle-wheel steam frigate, of 
which I may take the Terrible as a type. This vessel had a length of 226 feet, a 
breadth of 43 feet, a displacement of about 3,000 tons, and an indicated horse-~ 
power of 1,950. Her armament consisted of seven 68-pounders of 95 ewt., four 
10-inch guns, ten 8-inch guns, and four light 32-pounders. 
It will be observed that in these armaments there has been a very considerable 
increase in the weight of the guns carried. As I have said, the heaviest, guns carried 
by the Victory were the 42-pounders of 75 ewt., but in these later armaments the 
68-pounder of 95 cwt. is in common use, and you will have noted that the carro- 
nades have altogether disappeared. But as regards improvements in guns or 
mounting, if we except the pivot-guns, with respect to which there was some faint 
approach to mechanical contrivance to facilitate working, the guns and carriages 
were of the rude description to which I have alluded. 
In one respect, indeed, a great change had been made. Shell-fire had been brought 
to a considerable state of perfection, and the importance ascribed to it may be 
traced in the number of 10-inch and 8-inch shell-cuns which entered into the arma- 
ment of the Duke of Wellington and the other ships I have mentioned. Moor- 
‘som’s concussion fuse and other similar contrivances lent great assistance to this 
mode of warfare, and its power was soon terribly emphasised by the total destruc- 
tion of the Turkish squadron at Sinope by the Russian fleet. In that action shell- 
fire appears to have been almost exclusively used, the Russians firing their shell 
with rather long-time fuses in preference to concussion, with the avowed object of 
there being time before bursting to set fire to the ship in which they lodged. 
It is curious to note in the bygone discussions relative to shell-fire the 
arguments which were used against it ; among others it was said that the shell 
would be more dangerous to those who used them than to their enemies, There 
was some ground for this contention, as several serious catastrophes resulted from 
the first attempts to use fused shells. Perhaps the most serious was that 
which occurred on board H.M.S. Theseus, when seventy 36 and 24-pounder shells 
captured from a French store ship and placed on the quarter-deck for examination 
exploded in quick succession, one of the fuses having by some accident been 
ignited. The ship was instantly in flames; the whole of the poop and after-part of 
the quarter-deck were blown to pieces. The vessel herself was saved from de- 
struction with the greatest difficulty, and forty-four men were killed and forty-two 
‘wounded. 
This accident was due to a neglect of obvious precautions, which would hardly 
occur nowadays, but I have alluded to the circumstance because the same argu- 
ments, or arguments tending in the same direction, are in the present day reproduced 
against the use of high explosives as bursting charges for shells. To this subject I 
myself and my friend and fellow labourer, Mr. Vavasseur, have given a good deal 
of attention, and the question of the use of these shells and the best form of explo- 
sive to be employed with them is, I believe, receiving attention from the Govern- 
ment. The importance of the problem is not likely to be overrated by those who 
have witnessed the destruction caused by the bursting of a high explosive shell, 
‘and who appreciate the changes that by their use may be rendered necessary, not 
only in the armaments, but even in important constructional points of our men-of- 
war. 
Shortly before the termination of the long period of peace which commenced in 
1815, the attention of engineers and those conversant with mechanical and metal- 
‘lurgical science seems to have been strongly directed towards improvements in 
war material. It may easily be that the introduction of steam into the navy may 
haye had something to do with the beginning of this movement, but its further 
progress was undoubtedly greatly accelerated by the interest in the subject 
awakened by the disturbance of European peace which commenced in 1854. 
Since that date—whether we have regard to our vessels of war, the guns with 
which they and our fortresses are armed, the carriages upon which those guns are 
mounted, or the ammunition they employ—we shall find that changes so great 
