307 
Captain Blakely, in his verbal reply, announced a new claim to pri- 
ority of his knowledge of the general principles or method of ringed con- 
struction never previously mentioned by him, and which attempted to 
carry back the date to September, 1854. His written statement upon 
this part of the matter is, however, very different from what he then 
actually stated. What he said was, ‘“‘ That in the year 1854—it must 
have been about September’’—he proposed to certain authorities in 
Turkey to strengthen the old bronze kamerlicks of the Dardanelles, and 
fit them to throw 27-inch shells into Sebastopol, by lapping them round 
with wire-rope rigging, or, he hesitatingly added, with iron rings; and 
upon this he left it to be inferred that his claim to knowledge of this 
principle dated from that time, and so before my design for the 36-inch 
mortars was first made and brought forward, viz., in October and De- 
cember, 1854. To that statement I replied that so crude and unpracti- 
eal a project argued nothing whatever as to any knowledge of the principle 
of ringed construction with initial tension; that it would occur to any 
one who proposed to apply those kamerlicks to vertical fire that they 
must be strengthened in some way, and lapping round with wire rope, 
just as the Chinese wooden guns are wrapped round with silk, might be 
to any one a very obvious mode of attempting this without any know- 
ledge of the principles in question ; that the method itself was practically 
useless and valueless, as the wire rope would get ‘‘ open-jawed”’ at the 
first discharge, and cease to grip the outside of the kamerlick; and that, 
as to the wrought-iron rings, I must express my doubt that any man upon 
the spot, and having seen those old pieces of ordnance, could have pro- 
posed them, as the construction of the kamerlicks rendered it impossible 
to apply iron rings shrunk on hot, even if the rings themselves could have 
been obtained, and to the exact size, from England,—the whole idea, also, 
as described, being that of the use of extemporaneous stores then upon the 
spot, i. e., the old Turkish kamerlicks, and the wire ropes of the English 
ships of war in the Bosphorus. 
Now, Captain Blakely’s written version cautiously avoids repeating 
everything that suggested those difficulties: It merely alleges that ‘‘in 
September, 1854, he made proposals on this subject to Government,” 
and ‘‘immediately afterwards’ went out to Constantinople and Bala- 
klava, and communicated with the Ambassador, &c.; ‘(and had guns 
been then strengthened on the plan he suggested, he feels confident,” 
&e., &e. He writes nothing as to what his “‘ proposals’ were; he does 
not even give the meagre details he uttered on the 11th instant; but 
flourishingly concludes: ‘“‘So much for priority of suggestion to the - 
authorities.”” It is a curious fact, in relation to the date (September, 
1854) assigned to this ‘“‘suggestion’”’ by Captain Blakely, that in his 
later pamphlet (‘‘ An Improved New Method of Constructing Cannon,”’ 
&c., Ridgeway, London, 1858) his chapter iii., p. 37, commences with 
the following words :—‘‘ Having early in January, 1855, informed the 
Minister of War that I knew of a mode of constructing cannon whereby 
howitzers could be made large enough to bombard Sebastopol,” &. The 
proposals seem really the same; how is it the dates so differ ? 
