From St. Remy’s Mémoires
In respect of design, the newly acquired knowledge of the true principles governing internal ballistics began gradually, in the latter part of the century, to show its effect. Hitherto, ever since gunpowder had been in military use, pieces had been cast in masses of varying size and shape and ornamented to please the fancy of the founder. Cannon had been made with double or triple reinforces of metal, so that their exterior surface was stepped longitudinally from muzzle to breech. Experience probably pointed out on many occasions the bad design of a piece whose sections showed sudden alterations in shape; but it was not till after the middle of the eighteenth century that this consideration was discussed by a professional. “Since powder acts uniformly and not by starts it is hard to judge from whence this ridiculous custom has arisen.... There should be no breakings in the metal.” The piece, continues Muller, should be of cylindrical bore, and its outer contour should be a curve slightly concave, corresponding presumably to the curve of the powder pressure. But as this curve would be difficult to find, he recommends a sloping straight line from breech to muzzle as sufficiently exact for practical purposes.
Innumerable experiments were made in the first half of this century with a view to improving the efficiency of combustion in guns, and much argument centred round such subjects as the shape of the chamber and the position of the vent. In France pieces were adopted having spherical chambers: it being proved that, with the charge concentrated in a spherical cavity, as much power could be obtained as from a larger and heavier flush-chambered gun. But such pieces were dangerous. Not only was their recoil so violent as to break their carriages, but many good gunners lost their arms while charging chambers in which smouldering debris lay hidden. The spherical chamber was abandoned.[62]
It may be said that the design and manufacture of guns has now entered the scientific stage. Art there still is, but it lies below the surface. The old “vain ornaments” preserved by tradition are thrown away: the scrolls, mouldings, and excrescences which broke the surface of the metal; the ogees, fillets, and astragals which ran riot over the products of some foundries; the muzzle swells which by their weight caused the chase to droop; the grotesque cascabels. All mouldings, said Muller, should be as plain and simple as possible; the trunnions should be on the axis of the piece; the windage of all types of guns should be smaller, and there should be more moderation in the charges used.
In time all these improvements came. The smooth-bore gun, strengthened and simplified, preserved its establishment in the navy far into the nineteenth century, as will later appear. For the present we must confine ourselves to noting that, in the final stages of its evolution it received improvement in form from two distinguished artillerists whose influence was progressive in the whole realm of gunnery: Generals Congreve[63] and Blomefield.[64] There is yet another eminent officer of this period to whom the navy owes a debt incalculable: Who can assess the value of the work done by General Sir Howard Douglas in his classic treatise on Naval Gunnery?
To the foregoing survey of the evolution of heavy ordnance we now append a few notes on the evolution of the material of purely land artillery: from which it will be seen that, while the intensive competition of great armies resulted in much of this latter evolution originating among the continental powers, the share of this country in initiating improvement was, in the latter years, by no means negligible.
§
It will be noted by the student of European history as significant, that superiority of artillery material has almost invariably marched with national power. Thus in the past the evolution of artillery has been the monopoly of no one nation; it has been progressed by each in turn; each in turn has attained superiority, and each has contributed something of importance to it, in the day of its greatness.
Two ancient and preventable practices seem to have operated in chief measure to retard the progressive development of a mobile land artillery: first, the custom of setting the trunnions of a gun at an appreciable distance below the horizontal plane of the gun-axis; second, the custom of making small pieces relatively longer than those of larger calibre.
