549 
THE DEVELOPMENT OE ARMOUR 
DURING THE YEARS 1898-98. 
BY 
CAPTAIN C. ORDE BROWNE, late R.A. 
Continued from No. 10, page 521. 
Progress in Projectiles during the Years 1893 to 1898. 
The adoption of Harveyed plates and others with hardened faces 
could not fail to tell on the manufacture of projectiles. Finding that 
the attack was defeated by fracture of shots point, makers naturally 
sought means to counteract this. As seen already this has been in a 
measure effected by placing on shots , points caps made either of soft 
iron, soft steel or hard steel. Such caps would vary in their action, 
but all would probably succeed in the measure in which they saved 
the shots point on first impact on the hardened surface of the plate. 
Once through the hardened face or skin, the point would probably 
stand up to its work. Against compound plates, caps were found to 
offer no advantage. This was concluded to be the case when caps 
were first tried at Shoeburyness, 1877, and trials made by the Com¬ 
mittee on Ordnance in 1896 confirmed the conclusion. The conditions 
are altered because the steel shot of the present day hold together 
much better than the Palliser projectiles and while the existence 
afloat of compound armour makes it necessary to try the effect of 
capped shot on such a defence, the result is only what would have 
been certainly looked for by anyone who, like the writer, believes the 
action of the cap as simply a protection to the point—not a sort of 
lubricant as held by some in America. A shot whose point does not 
break against compound armour when unprotected can gain nothing 
by having a cap on it. As noticed already Mr. Hadfield has 
obtained considerable success by modifying the form of point. Only 
actual experiment can show whether its better to employ a cap or use 
a blunter point. 
Up to the time of the introduction of Harvey armour, that is to say 
up to about 1892, Holtzers projectiles were generally regarded as the 
best extant and his 6-inch steel shot were used in England, America, 
Russia and France as a sort of standard projectile which offered the 
advantage of facilitating comparisons between the results obtained in 
different countries. In late years rival shot of improved quality have 
been made and this state of matters no longer obtains. The writer 
saw Carpenter 12-inch shot behave much better than Holtzer 8-inch 
11. VOL. XXV 
