348 
THE 80-TON- GUN. 
length were obvious necessities; the railways, wherever the gun was 
intended to travel, required strengthening; the bridge over the canal 
was almost reconstructed; while the additions to the Proof Butt “ made 
Ossa like a wart.” 
The carriage deserves special mention. It was designed to suit the 
new method of firing heavy guns recently introduced at the Royal 
Gun Factories, by which the travelling sleigh forms also the firing 
carriage, and on the discharge of the gun recoils along the rails up a 
slope arranged so as to gradually check the speed, and to enable the 
gun to run up again of itself to the firing place, where it is stopped by 
powerful breaks. The body of the carriage consists of two vast cheeks, 
composed chiefly of wrought-iron, and fastened together by strong tran¬ 
soms. The trunnions rest on a box containing layers of india-rubber, 
below and behind, to act as buffers. Two bogies, each having six 
wheels (the centre ones without flanges), support this massive frame¬ 
work. Vertical wrought-iron pins, 9 ins. in diameter, act as pivots on 
which the carriage turns in going round curves, and indeed form, 
its sole attachment to the bogies. Over the axles are more buffers, 
consisting, as before, of plates of india-rubber, which material is also 
employed for the same purpose in the driving buffers. The whole 
mass, including bogies, weighs 40 tons; so that when the gun is 
mounted the rails have to support a load of 120 tons, distributed over a 
length of 14^ ft. Considerable experience had been already gained by 
the Royal Carriage Department in the construction of these running 
proof sleighs as used for guns of from 12 to 38 tons; and it may be at 
once stated that the new carriage, as far as the trials have at present 
gone, has proved very successful, having sustained the shock of firing 
without any material damage whatever. 
The motion of the ponderous mass up the slope after firing is mar¬ 
vellously steady, and indeed graceful. The apparent docility of by far 
the most powerful piece of ordnance in the world impresses the beholder 
with the idea that it cannot be so very deadly after all; but an inspec¬ 
tion of the sandbank at the Butt, where the projectile has cut its way 
in and tossed the resisting heap to the right and left, speedily dispels 
the illusion. 
When the gun is mounted on its carriage and pointed at the velocity 
screens in front of the Proof Butt, the muzzle is about 7 ft. from the 
ground; a derrick is therefore required to raise the cartridge and pro¬ 
jectile for loading. This derrick is fixed on a light travelling stage, 
which runs on the rails, and which conveys the shot from the pile to 
the gun. The gear of the derrick enables one man to raise a ton. 
The cartridges required to feed so large a piece look something like 
sacks of coal, and their great weight and length rendered it necessary 
to provide a bronze cradle on wheels, which should run over a bridge 
out of the window of the filling room into the ammunition cart. The 
cradle is then conveyed to the travelling loading stage, on to which it 
runs out under the derrick. 
All the projectiles fired into the Butt are cylinders of cast-iron, 
studded in the usual manner to suit the rifling. In the case of the 
80-ton gun in its 14^-in. calibre each cylinder weighed 1260 lbs., 
