46 , War Science. * [January, 



be shown than by referring to the improvements which have 

 just now been effected in the construction of gun-carriages 

 and slides, an illustration being here afforded of the manner 

 in which necessities are met, and designs carried out in those 

 cases where modifications are urgently called for. 



It will be remembered that for the past ten years efforts 

 have been continually made by those learned in gunnery to 

 increase to the utmost the weight and calibre of modern 

 ordnance, until at the present moment we possess weapons 

 capable of throwing projectiles weighing as much as five and 

 six hundredweights. In regarding such monster productions 

 the casual observer is so occupied with the grandeur of their 

 proportions and capabilities, that he is apt to overlook alto- 

 gether the question of mounting and working them, for to 

 his mind probably, the whole of the difficulty to be overcome 

 lies simply in the manufacture of the gun. This is, how- 

 ever, a great mistake, for without a suitable carriage and 

 machinery, it would simply be a matter of sheer impossibility 

 to work the gun at all ; the difficulty of handling or training 

 a mass of metal weighing some five-and-twenty tons, or 

 more, — irrespective of the circumstance of its powerful 

 recoil on firing, — rendering the employment of ordinary 

 appliances useless ; this is more particularly the case when 

 such guns are worked on board ship (indeed, these larger 

 cannon are mostly for the navy) and require to be run in 

 and out of the portholes, when, mayhap, the vessel is rolling 

 and pitching in a heavy sea, and the gun-slides are inclined 

 at a considerable angle. Under these circumstances, it will 

 be easily understood that, unless a ready means were devised 

 for working such heavy guns securely and rapidly in 

 unfavourable weather, their employment in the navy would 

 be altogether impracticable. When these big Woolwich 

 cannon, then, were first designed, a serviceablcslide or carriage 

 became an imperative necessity, and the authorities cast 

 about among professional men to obtain a solution of the 

 difficulty. Many plans and propositions were brought 

 forward, and, eventually, Captain R. A. E. Scott, R.N., 

 whose name as a military inventor was already well known, 

 communicated a method of construction which has since 

 proved so efficient and simple that it has been almost 

 universally adopted, and, in truth, there is now hardly a gun 

 in the Royal Navy which is not worked by the aid of that 

 officer's invention. Without the assistance of diagrams it 

 would be difficult to convey a perfect idea of this clever 

 system, but it may be briefly described as a low frame or 

 gun-carriage, planted upon a long metal slide, so that the 



