To preserve the connection of the subject, it may be as well here to notice the successive changes of ordnance and carriages up to about the present time, instead of referring to each as the record of the regiment reaches the date of its occurrence. The object is rather to give a general idea of the carriages and guns in use at different eras, and to mark the strong, rather than to note the more minute and trifling, changes which are always taking place. To do the latter would require more space than can be afforded, and after all the reader might rise from the perusal, his mind crowded with a heap of minutiæ, leaving no other impression than that at different times a carriage had been shortened in one direction and lengthened in another, the wheels heightened or lowered—now all of the same height, and then those of the limber reduced—a hook added from the front or taken from the rear. This is not our object, we wish to shew the principal features of the subject, so as to point out the stages through which our present excellent matériel has been attained.
The galloper-gun and ammunition-carriages, as well as those in use with the foot artillery at the beginning of the century, were destined to be superseded by the Gribeauval pattern, about 1810, one carriage answering for horse and foot, with the exception of some difference in the limber. The carriage was a double-cheek one, limbered up on a moveable pintle on the bottom of a limber, with two low wheels; the foot artillery limber had an arched axle with the pintle on the top. [Plates Nos. 10 and 11.]
These carriages had a tendency to overturn, on any but the smoothest ground; the low wheels made the draught heavy, and were also difficult to keep in order; yet this pattern held its position as the standard until 1823, when a thorough reform in the ordnance department took place.
Early in the century, the French “caisson” was introduced as the ammunition-carriage, and continued with slight changes until superseded by the royal pattern. It was a long waggon with low wheels in front, on the axle of which a pintle was fixed, working in a socket in a compartment of the body of the carriage, and enabling the front wheels to turn. This formation caused many accidents; the powder getting shaken out of the cartridges, came in contact with the pintle, and an explosion ensued; the construction was therefore altered by fixing the pintle to the carriage and the socket on the axle-bed. [Plate No. 12.]
The faults of this carriage were the liability to overturn; the danger from explosion, the whole ammunition being in one large box; and the inconvenience, when embarking on board ship or crossing rivers, of having to unpack it all.
An attempt to remedy this was made in 1801 by the partial introduction of “Hardwicke’s pattern” ammunition-carriage, consisting of two tumbrils connected by a bent iron perch. It proved, however, a perfect failure, and never came into general use, so that the caisson continued as the standard until superseded by the royal pattern; the last, probably, which existed in use was in Captain Wood’s troop, 1st company 3rd battalion, at Meerut, us late as 1828.
In 1801, on its formation, the experimental horse artillery was armed with two 3–pounders and four 6–pounders; the 3–pounders in 1806 gave place to two 5½-inch howitzers, and two of the 6–pounders were at a later period (when the number of troops had been increased) withdrawn, and their place supplied by 12–pounders of a pattern proposed by General Horsford of 8¾ cwt. The lines of this gun were drawn at Woolwich, but, at the same time, it was said that a gun of such light metal must prove insufficient.
The armament of troops and field-batteries continued of these three calibres until the new arrangements, introducing the 9 and 6–pounder guns and 24 and 12–pounder howitzers, in 1828 and the following years.
The breaking out of hostilities with Nepal in 1814 called for a new species of carriages adapted to carry 3–pounders and 4⅖-inch howitzers in a hilly country. Lightness, strength, and a facility of being taken to pieces and put together were the points sought to be combined in the “mountain-train” carriages planned by Sir J. Horsford. They were not, however, much used during the war, for in general it was found that elephants could convey 6–pounders in the hills easier than men could the smaller pieces; and the former, being so much more effective, were, nearly in all cases, used. The mountain-train carriages were found too slight, and quite unequal to bear the rough usage artillery meets with even from the hands of its friends; they required a degree of petting which appears not always to have been shewn them. During a retreat in the Nepal country, several which had, for convenience and from the loss of their bearers, been limbered up to other carriages drawn by cattle, went to pieces in crossing the terrain at the foot of the hills. The fault was laid on the officers in charge, and not on the weakness of the carriages, by Sir John Horsford; but there will always be great difficulty in preventing these carriages experiencing the same treatment, if put together before entering the hills.
No. 14 is a sketch of the mountain-train pattern, which has remained unaltered up to the present day, excepting some changes introduced by Major Backhouse in the mountain-train of the late Shah Sujah, but which have not been made generally known. Some changes are now probable, as a mountain-train 12–pounder howitzer has been substituted for the old 4⅖-inch howitzer. This new piece weighs 3 cwt., and its lines are drawn on the principles of the 12–pounder howitzer; the charge is 12 oz. of powder (an increase of 4 oz.), which, with the increased length, makes it a much more effective piece.