216 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
Fig. 4. 
Middle exterior ring ply, lowest segment of chase, broken 18th December, 1857. 
The section containing the defective ring, which weighed nearly 7 tons 
6 cwt., was again removed, and Lord Panmure sanctioned its repair, at Black- 
wall, at a cost of £156. He sanctioned also the casting of twenty lighter 
shells, of about 2400 lbs. each, in the Loyal Laboratory, at a cost of £11 
each. 
This is the place to remark that the great weight of some of the shells 
first fired was not intended, and arose altogether out of the unusual density 
of the Lowmoor iron—a fact not familiar to Mr. Mallet when he designed 
the shells. A curious illustration of it was presented when the Loyal Gun 
Pactories first began to make cast-iron 68-pr. guns in 1858. They mostly 
turned out to be 2 cwt. lighter than the Lowmoor patterns. (See the 
Report of the Ordnance Select Committee, dated 29th December, 1860, on 
this subject. No. 1339.) 
The practice was resumed for the second time on 21st July, 1858, and 
nothing unusual occurred except the fracture of one of the wedges, or cotters, 
at the second discharge, and a crack in the slot, or keyway, through which 
another of them passed. These damages having been repaired in the Loyal 
Gun Factory, and a wrouglit-iron cotter substituted for the broken steel 
one, the practice was, for the fourth and last time, resumed on the 28th July, 
1858. 
At the second discharge, charge 60 lbs., another steel cotter broke, and 
was replaced by a wrouglit-iron one, driven home forcibly by an extemporised 
ram. At the third discharge, charge 7 0 lbs., two other cotters were found 
bent and loose; it took thirty-five minutes to tighten them. 
At the fourth discharge—charge intended to be 80 lbs., but perhaps only 
70 lbs., as the range was not increased—one of the six longitudinal ties 
broke short off through the cotter hole, and started forwards 10*25 ins. 
This caused necessarily a discontinuance of the practice. 
16. Mr. Mallet urged the repair of this injury and a renewal of the 
practice, at least so far as to ascertain the greatest practicable range of these 
shells; but “a King had arisen who knew not Joseph." General Peel had 
succeeded Lord Panmure as Minister for War, and although his estimate 
for the repair and the practice asked for was only £150, General Peel 
refused to sanction any further expenditure. A year later Mr. Sidney 
Herbert—who had in the meantime succeeded to office—directed the 
Ordnance Select Committee to reconsider the question, and the Loyal Gun 
Pactories furnished an estimate amounting to £214 for a complete repair, 
