Curiosities of Civilization

by Andrew Wynter

It now undergoes the most delicate process of all, that of being “viewed.” The viewer, who is a highly-skilled workman, with an exceedingly accurate eye, puts himself opposite a gas-lamp, about thirty feet distance, and which has a dark shade on its upper side. Towards this object he directs the barrel so as to bring the dark edge half-way across his sight as he looks through the bore. By this device he is enabled to direct a ray of light with a defined edge down the tube, and by turning the barrel round, instantly detects the slightest deviation from the straight line. As the smoothest-looking sea is discovered to be a mass of dimpling ripples—(the Greek poet’s “infinite laughings of the sea”)—when the setting sun throws a golden shaft across its bosom, so the mathematically straight lines of light gauge the inequalities of the rifle bore in a more exact manner than any instrument that has yet been invented. When any irregularities are discovered, the viewer taps the barrel with a fine hammer on a small anvil, and repeats the operation until the tube is perfectly true. Upon this depends the correct shooting of the gun, inasmuch as the least crook near the end of the bore would send a bullet far on one side of the mark long before it had attained the full range of 800 yards, to which the Enfield rifle is sighted. The rifling of the barrel in three groves is performed by fixing it in a lathe, and driving the cutter through it in a spiral direction.

In entering the finishing room, a noble apartment, 200 feet square, the visitor cannot fail to be struck with astonishment at the scene this vast workshop presents. He looks through a mass of wheels, levers, cranks, and shafts, which fill the space from wall to wall, every foot alive with iron and human limbs, and the whole superficies seeming to writhe and wrestle like a cluster of worms. Although confusion looks triumphant to the casual eye, the utmost order prevails. On one side of the room, at regular intervals, small inclosed offices, with glazed fronts, are placed against the wall, a little above the level of the floor. These are devoted to the foremen of the different divisions into which the work is separated. Each of these functionaries from his eyrie rakes the long avenues or streets of machines, with their attendant workmen, which run in parallel lines across the room. The first avenue is devoted to bayonets; then come in the following order the divisions allocated to furniture, screw, sight, lock, and stock. The work is so managed that all the different parts keep pace together, and are finished in the required proportions; or in other words, those pieces which are but slowly produced have allotted to them a greater number of machines. By this arrangement all the requisite items are brought at the same moment to the workmen who put them together in the finished article. The fifty-six pieces of which the rifle is composed work their way up one street of machinery and down another, constantly following on from right to left on their way towards the top of the room. Many of these pieces are passed through upwards of twenty different machines, each one performing some simple and definite action, by which means an accuracy is obtained that the most skilful gunmaker could never equal by hand.

The diversity of cutting-tools in these different machines strikes the observer with astonishment; the oddest shapes, the most unlikely-looking forms, proving admirably adapted for the purposes they are intended to accomplish. Many of these work automatically—that is, they engage and disengage themselves; setting to work only when they are fed with material, and, when their rodent-like teeth have gnawed away as much metal as is requisite, they stop of their own accord. The effect of this is so extraordinary, that it almost seems as if those bright limbs of iron, which stop and move on without human agency, must be directed by some sort of metallic brain. The most common form of tool employed is what is termed the circular cutter or milling-tool, which is constructed to fit every class of work. These cutters will continue serviceable for months without requiring to be sharpened, in consequence of each being restricted to its own limited sphere. The amount of thought employed in the construction of many of these machines must have been immense, and when they were completed, two-thirds of the manufacturing difficulty was overcome, and the musket more than half made. A most ingenious machine, the parent of a numerous progeny, was, many years ago, invented by an Englishman, and applied to copying the fine lines of statuary, and transferring them to ivory and other materials. The applicability of this instrument to the production of the irregular forms in the gun trade was first perceived by our cousins across the Atlantic, and for many years they have employed it for the rapid and true production of many parts of the musket, whilst our own manufacturers in London and Birmingham have been content to execute the same work, laboriously and expensively, by hand labour. The copying machines now at Enfield have been imported direct from America. They are principally employed in fashioning gun-stocks. They convert the rough slabs of walnut-wood, just outlined in the proper form, which come from France, Belgium and Italy, into the finished article, with all its grooves, holes, and beddings for lock and barrel. This extraordinary apparatus may be said to work with two hands: the one feeling the outline of the pattern to be copied, the other directing a tool uniformly with it and cutting the object to the required form. Let us, for example, take the machine that hollows out the lock-bedding in the stock. Not only are the outlines of the most irregular form, but they are sunk to three different levels, and it would almost seem impossible that a machine should excavate so complex a bedding with minute accuracy. Nevertheless, it is done in a few minutes by an apparatus, which revolves and brings, one after the other, some new tool into play according to the work to be done. Whilst the operation is going on, a little blower clears out the chips as cleverly as though the machine had human breath. The different portions of the gun completed, they are, for the last time, gauged, and passed on to the extreme end bench of the factory, near the west door, where the “assembler,” as he is termed, receives them in different bins, from which he takes the part he requires and sets up the gun. As there is no necessity for special fitting, this process is performed with remarkable rapidity, seven minutes being sufficient to combine all the different parts, which have never been near each other before—lock, stock, ramrod, and bayonet—into the complete weapon. They now pass out of the western door, packed in cases, and are taken to the proving-ground, where they are tested with high charges and their range and accuracy duly examined; and so perfect is the finish, that not one in a thousand fails to stand the trying ordeal. They are now transferred by water to the Armoury at the Tower, ready for service in the field.

The Enfield rifle was adopted for the public service in the year 1853, and is at the present moment the best infantry musket in Europe. There is still room, however, as Mr. Whitworth has shown, for improvement in the barrel. His rifle propels a bullet both farther and with greater accuracy, in consequence of the greater care he bestows upon the barrel, which, instead of being welded, is bored, at a great cost, out of the solid metal. Its diameter also being smaller, the bullet encounters a less resistance in the air during its flight. There is no reason why the smaller bore should not be substituted for that of the Enfield rifle, when this arm would be perfect. The difficulty the ablest minds experience in getting out of an old groove was exemplified by the late Duke of Wellington with respect to this question of the size of bore. His Grace was obstinately wedded to Brown Bess, whose crushing fire, so superior to that of the enemy, he had witnessed in his Peninsular campaigns, and which he erroneously ascribed to the excellent quality of the arm instead of to the steadiness of the men—mistaking, in fact, a moral for a physical excellence. The longer the Commander-in-Chief lived, the firmer his faith in the large smooth bore, and the necessity for making a big hole in the enemy. When the rifle-musket of 1851 replaced this old arm, the large bore was still retained, and the consequence was, that the bullet, being elongated, was heavier than when round, and the soldier had to carry a missile of 696 grains weight, instead of 490 grains. The bore of the Enfield rifle pattern of 1853 was very properly reduced, and the Prichett expanding bullet, of 530 grains, now carries its deadly weight in its length. Though the wound it gives is not so large as that inflicted by the old ball, it makes up for deficiency by its power of penetration. An officer who was at the taking of the rifle-pits in the quarry before Sevastopol informs us that a brother-officer was shot through the side by a Russian Minié bullet, which afterwards passed through an ass, and his two panniers of water, and did not stop in its career till it had broken a man’s arm at some distance off! Its deadly aim at vast distances, which made it the dread of the sepoys, who termed it “the gun that kills without making any sound,” contrasts strangely with the performances of Brown Bess of old, which at any range beyond a hundred yards was so uncertain in its aim that it has been calculated that the soldier shot away the weight in lead of every man that he hit.

Before the breaking out of the war, our stores were hampered with small-arms of all sizes and patterns. There were, at home and abroad, no less than 109,725 flint-lock muskets, of fifteen different patterns, and 107,000 smooth-bore, percussion-lock muskets, of eight different patterns. Very many of these were in service a few years ago; and as their bores were all dissimilar, it often happened that the soldiers were provided with cartridges that would not fit their guns. In peace little difficulties of this kind are of no moment, but they are of the utmost importance in the time of war. At the battle of Waterloo, the Brunswickers, who held Hougoumont, were, for a short time, rendered helpless, in consequence of cartridges having been sent to them that did not fit their muskets. A battle, which, according to Professor Creasey, ranks among the six decisive combats of the world, might thus have been lost on account of the misfit of a cartridge. The necessity of preventing the possible recurrence of such mischances induced the authorities, at the breaking out of the Russian war, to make the bore of all muskets used by the different branches of the service uniform with that of the Enfield rifle. A thousand of these weapons can at present be completed in a week—a number which appears large, but which is in reality far beneath the real wants of the army. The private manufacturers of small-arms in Birmingham denounced the establishment of this factory, on the plea that Government were not warranted in fabricating goods which the private trade of the country were capable of producing—an assertion which the Crimean war totally disproved, as the authorities were so pressed for rifles that they had to go to France,[26] Belgium, and the United States for supplies, and at one time contemplated giving an order for 350,000 rifles at Liége. The military rifle, like the shell, being a special article required only by the army, the demand for it in large numbers is not constant, and hence the low condition of the mechanical power brought to bear upon it by the trade. The gunmakers of Birmingham have depended upon skilled labour for the production of the different parts of a musket, and thus labour, in times of pressure, becomes exorbitantly costly, to the embarrassment and loss of the public service. It was this which led the Government to introduce machinery into the manufacture—a thing the trade declared impossible, but which they now see is not only possible but profitable, since the same musket for which they charged 4l. 10s. is now made of a superior quality by the Government for 3l. 15s. The experiment must be of the greatest importance to the Birmingham gun trade, which, through its own inherent vices, was fast yielding to the superior ingenuity of America and Belgium, and which can only regain its old position by taking a lesson from the organized mechanical resources of the Enfield Lock manufactory. The private manufacturers need not fear that Enfield will monopolize even Government work, the demands of the service being far beyond its productive powers. As the Ordnance supplies rifles to our army in India, as well as to the home and colonial force, no less than 400,000 are required for the infantry and marines alone: a number which has to be replaced every twelve years, even in times of peace. In active service the destruction is immense; and now the cycle of war has returned, the annual 50,000 rifles turned out by the royal factory will prove but a small instalment of the vast store of arms that England will require.

At Waltham Abbey, not half an hour’s walk from Enfield Lock, is situated the only establishment for the manufacture of powder which the Government possesses. Here dispersion, instead of concentration, is the order of the day. The necessity for complete isolation causes the factories to be distributed over a very large space of ground, and the visitor has to walk from workshop to workshop through groves and avenues of willow and alder, as though he were visiting dispersed farm-buildings rather than the different departments of the same manufacturing process. There are not perhaps more than a dozen detached buildings in the whole establishment, yet these are scattered over upwards of fifty acres of ground. To such an extent do meadows and woods and meandering canals predominate, that the idea of being in a powder-mill is entirely lost in the impression that you are walking in a Dutch landscape. The visitor who enters the great gates of the mill, impressed with a belief in the dangerous nature of the ground he is treading, is somewhat startled on finding a steam-engine at work on the very threshold of the factory, and a tall chimney smoking its pipe in what he supposed to be the vicinity of hundreds of barrels of gunpowder; but in reality these boilers and furnaces are placed many hundred feet from the mixing-houses. The English Government powder is composed of seventy-five parts of saltpetre, fifteen parts of charcoal, and ten of sulphur. The ingredients, being thoroughly powdered, prepared, and purified, are submitted to the action of a machine, which completely mixes them. The product is then conveyed by a covered boat, very much like an aldermanic gondola in mourning, some hundred yards along the canal to the incorporating houses, where the most important process of the manufacture is carried on, and where the danger of an explosion first commences. The incorporating machine is nothing more than a couple of runners or huge wheels, weighing four and a half tons each, which revolve one after another on their edges in a bed of metal supplied with a deep wooden rim, which gives it much the appearance of a huge kitchen candlestick. Into this dish the black powder is placed, together with a little water, which varies in quantity, from four pints in winter, when the atmosphere is charged with moisture, to ten in the summer, when the desiccating quality of the air is very great. For four hours this pasty mass is crushed, ground, and mixed by the action of the runners. The precautions taken against explosion teach the visitor the dangerous nature of the ground he is treading. Before he puts his feet across the threshold he must encase them in leathern boots huge enough to fit Polyphemus, and guiltless of iron in any form whatever; even his umbrella or stick is snatched from him, lest the ferrule should strike fire, or accidentally drop among any part of the machinery whilst at work. The machinery is even protected against itself. In order to avoid the possibility of the linch-pins which confine the cylinders to their axles falling down, and by the action of “skidding” the runner, producing so much friction as to cause an explosion, receptacles are formed to catch them in their fall. As small pieces of grit, the natural enemy of the powder-maker, might prove dangerous if mixed with any of the “charges,” the axle sockets of nearly all the wheels are constructed to expand, so as to allow any hard foreign body to pass through just in the same manner in which the fine jaws of the larger serpents are loosely hinged, to enable them to get over at one gulp such a bulky morsel as a full-grown rabbit.

Accidents will happen, however, in the best-regulated mills, and provision is made for rendering an explosion when it occurs as innocuous as possible. The new incorporating mills are constructed with three sides of solid brickwork three feet thick, and the fourth side and roof of corrugated iron and glass lightly adjusted. As they are placed in a row contiguous to each other, the alternate ones only face the same way, so that the line of fire, or the direction the explosion would take through the weakest end, would not be likely to involve in destruction the neighbouring mill. It does occasionally happen, however, that the precautions are not sufficient to prevent danger spreading. In the great explosion which took place in 1842 a second house was fired at a couple of hundred yards distance from the spot where the original explosion took place. There is now a further security against the houses going one after another, like houses of cards. Over each mill a copper tank, containing about forty gallons of water, is so suspended that on the lifting of a lever it instantly discharges its contents and floods the mill. This shower or douche bath is made self-acting, inasmuch as the explosion itself pulls the string, the force of the expanding gas lifting up a hinged shutter which acts like a trigger to let down the water. “But,” it may be said, “as the water does not fall until the explosion has taken place, this contrivance is very like locking the stable door when the steed is stolen!” And this is the case with respect to the mill where the original mischief took place; but the lever first acted upon discharges the shower-bath over the heads of all the others also, and by this means the evil is limited to the place where it originated. From the incorporating mills the kneading powder, or “mill cake,” as it is termed, is taken by another funeral-looking gondola to small expense-magazines, where it is allowed to remain for twelve hours before being taken to the breaking-down house. Here the hard lumps of mill cake are ground into fine powder by the action of fine-toothed rollers made of gun-metal, which revolve towards each other and crush the cake which falls between them to dust. The broken-down mill cake once more travels between pleasant meadows fringed with willow until it reaches the press house, where the meal is subjected to hydraulic pressure between plates of gun-metal, and is thereby reduced to dense plates about half an inch thick. These plates are allowed to remain intact for a couple of days, by which time they become as hard as a piece of fine pottery. Very many advantages are gained by this pressure. The density of the powder is increased, which enables it to be conveyed without working into fine dust; its keeping qualities are improved, as it absorbs less moisture than if it were more porous; and lastly, a greater volume of inflammable gas is produced from a given bulk.

The pressed cake is now transferred to the maw of one of the most extraordinary machines we have yet witnessed. The granulating house, where the important process of dividing the powder into fine grains takes place, is removed very far away from the other buildings. The danger of the operation carried on within is implied by the strong traverse fifteen feet thick at the bottom, which is intended to act as a shield to the workmen in case of an accident. It was here an explosion took place in 1843, by which eight workmen lost their lives—in what manner no one knows, as all the evidence was swept away. To render the recurrence of such lamentable accidents as rare as possible, the machine is made self-acting. At certain times of the day it is supplied with food in the shape of fifteen hundredweight of “pressed cake.” This is stuffed into a large hopper or pouch, and the moment the monster is ready, the men retire beyond the strong traverse and allow it slowly to masticate its meal, which it does with a deliberation worthy of its ponderosity and strength, emptying its pouch by degrees, and by a triturating process performed by two or three sets of fine rollers, dividing it into different-sized grains. These grains it passes through a series of wire sieves, separating the larger ones fitted for cannon powder from the finer kind required for rifles, and depositing them in their appropriate boxes, which, when full, it removes from its own dangerous proximity, and takes up empty ones in their place. All the larger undigested pieces it returns again, like a ruminating animal, to its masticating process until its supply is exhausted. Then, and not till then, like Mademoiselle Jack, the famous elephant, it rings a bell for some fresh “cake.” The workmen allow it about five minutes’ grace to thoroughly assimilate the supply already in its maw, when the machine stops, and they enter with another meal. The floors of all the different houses are covered with leather neatly fastened down with copper nails, and the brush is never out of the hands of the workman: even while you are talking to him, he sweeps away in the gravest manner in order to remove any particles of powder or grit that maybe on the floor; this he does mechanically, when not a particle of anything is to be seen, just as a sailor in a crack ship always holystones the deck, clean or dirty, the moment he has any spare time.

The powder thus separated into grains is still damp and full of dust. To get rid of this it is taken by water to the dusting-house, where it is bolted in a reel like so much flour. It has now to be glazed, a very important operation, performed by placing it in large barrels, which revolve with their load thirty-two times a minute for three hours together. By the mere friction of the grains against each other and the sides of the barrel, a fine polish is imparted to the surface of the grain, which enables it to withstand the action of the atmosphere much better than when it is left unglazed. It is now stoved for sixteen hours in a drying-room heated by steam pipes to a heat of 130° Fahrenheit, and is then finally dusted and proved. There are many methods of proving, but the simplest and most efficacious is to fire the powder from the weapon it is intended to serve. Thus cannon powder is proved by firing a 68-pound solid shot with a charge of two ounces of powder—a charge which should give a range of from 270 to 300 feet. If the powder passes the test, which it generally does, it is packed in barrels holding 100 lbs. each, marked L. G. (Large Grain), and F. G. (Fine Grain), as the case may be, and carried to the provisional magazine. When 500 barrels have accumulated they are despatched in a barge to the Government magazine at Purfleet, near the mouth of the Thames, the Lea forming the connecting link of water between the canals of the works and that river.

The produce of this establishment, which had fallen so low as 4,500 barrels per annum in 1843, is now so increased by improved machinery that 20,000 barrels a year can be manufactured, and of the very best quality. Even this supply is far below the consumption during a time of war, and contractors have, and always will have, to furnish a portion of the required supplies; but it seems that a model mill is useful for the double purpose of keeping up a due standard of quality,[27] and of keeping down price. On the uniform strength of the powder depends the accuracy of artillery fire: hence the necessity of having some known standard of quality from which contractors should not be allowed to depart. The improvements which have taken place in the manufacture are very marked. About the year 1790, when powder was supplied to Government wholly by contract, the regulation weight of charge for a cannon was half the weight of the ball; it is now less than one-third: therefore two barrels are now used instead of three, a reduction of bulk which economizes stowage on board ship as well as in the field. Formerly powder had a range of 190 feet only; the range is now increased to 268 feet! This vast improvement is simply the consequence of the care with which the powder is worked, and the attention bestowed on every detail of the mills since their direction fell into the hands of Colonel Tulloh, Colonel Dickson, and Colonel Askwith, the present Superintendent.