The friction of the trucks on the deck was also affected, however, by another feature of the design: the position of the trunnions relatively to the axis of the gun. How important was this position as influencing the history of land artillery, we have already seen. Truck guns were nearly always “quarter-hung,” or cast with their trunnions slightly below their axis, so as to cause the breech to exert a downward pressure on firing, and thus augment the friction of the rear trucks on the deck and check the recoil. The position of the trunnions was studied from yet another point of view: namely, to give the minimum of jump to the gun and ensure a smooth start to the recoil. With this object they were so placed that the two ends of the gun were not equally balanced about the trunnion axis, but a preponderance of about one-twentieth of the weight of the gun was given to the breech-end, thus bringing a slight pressure, due to deadweight alone, upon the quoin.
As for this quoin or primitive wedge by which the gun was roughly laid, this had a great advantage over the screw (which gained a footing, as an alternative, when the carronade came into use) in that it allowed of rapid changes of elevation of the gun. Hence, though the quoin was liable to jump from its bed on gunfire and do injury to the crew, it kept its place as an accessory almost as long as the truck carriage itself survived.
There was one advantage possessed by the truck carriage which was perhaps the most important of all: its superior transportability. The gun equipment was easily transferable, and what this meant to the seaman may be gathered from the accounts of the way in which, in sailing-ship days, ships’ armaments were continually being shifted. The armament, we have noted, was not embodied, as it is to-day, as an integral part of the design of the ship. The guns and their carriages were in the nature of stock articles, which could be changed in size, number and position according to the whim of the captain or the service of the ship. And there was every reason why all parties concerned, and especially the ordnance people, should tend to standardize the forms of guns and carriages, to keep them self-contained and as independent as possible of the special requirements of individual ships or positions. The shifting of guns was constantly going on in a commissioned ship. At sea they were lashed against the sides so as to leave as clear a deck as possible. In chase a shifting of guns, among other heavy weights, was resorted to in order that the vessel should not lose way by plunging heavily. If she set sail on a long voyage some of the guns were struck down into the hold, to stiffen her and give her an increased stability. And on her return to harbour the guns might be removed for examination and repair by the ordnance officials, the ship being laid alongside a sheer hulk for the purpose. In the days before the sheathing of ships’ bottoms was successfully practised, and in the absence of docks, it was constantly necessary to careen ships for the repair of their ground-timbers, for the cleaning of their sides and the caulking of their seams. This, again, necessitated a shifting or complete removal of most of their stores and ordnance. Great advantages were offered, therefore, from having gun-carriages compact, self-contained, and capable of being quickly removed from one place to another.
§
Having inspected the truck carriage in some detail, let us now briefly glance at the development of its use which took place in the last hundred years of its service, between the middle of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth centuries.
The stream of improvement in naval gunnery began to flow strongly under the administration of Lord Anson. New methods of firing, experiments with priming tubes to replace the primitive powder horns and trains of vent powder, and gun locks to replace the dangerous and unreliable slow match and linstock,[96] were under trial in the fleets commanded by Admiral Hawke, but with results not altogether satisfactory. The locks supplied were lacking in mechanical precision, and the tubes—“very pernicious things” they were voted—were apt to fly out and wound the men. But that the unsatisfactory results obtained were not due to defects inherent in the new devices was soon clearly proved. Twenty years later an eminent gunnery officer, Sir Charles Douglas, by perseverance and an enthusiastic attention to mechanical detail, succeeded in making both locks and priming tubes a practical success, greatly enhancing by their aid the rate and effectiveness of fire of the great guns. Flint-locks of his own design he bought and fitted to the guns of his ship at his private expense. Flannel-bottomed cartridges, to replace the parchment-covered cartridges which had caused so much fouling, and goose-quill priming tubes, were provided by him, and to him is certainly due the credit for initiating the series of improvements in material which, trivial as they may seem in detail, yet in the aggregate had the effect of placing our gunnery at a relatively high level in the ensuing wars.
In addition to introducing improvements in methods of firing, Sir Charles Douglas did much to improve the efficiency of the truck carriages themselves. On his appointment to the Duke in 1779 he at once began to put his schemes in hand. To ease the recoil of the guns and to save their breechings he devised and fitted steel springs in some way to the latter; with such surprising good effect (he reported) that even with a restricted length of recoil no breeching, not even that of a 32-pounder weather gun double-shotted and fired over a slippery deck, was ever known to break. The recoil he further eased by loading the truck carriage with shot, which he slung on it, thereby augmenting the recoiling mass. He also proposed and tried another apparatus having the same effect: suspended weights, secured to the carriage by ropes reeved through fairleads, which on recoil the gun was made to lift. Which weights also had an effect in helping to run the gun out again which he calculated to be equal to that of two extra men on the tackles.
Perhaps the principal improvements due to Sir Charles Douglas were those which had as their object the firing of ships’ guns on other bearings than right abeam. He realized the importance of possessing a large arc of training for his guns; and with this object he cleared away all possible obstructions on the gun decks of the Duke, removing and modifying knees, standards and pillars to allow his guns to be pointed a full four points before and abaft the beam: a degree of obliquity hitherto unknown in the navy for broadside armament. To traverse the carriages quickly to the required line of bearing he had eyebolts fitted in line between the guns for attachment to the tackles; and to shorten and control the recoil and thus allow of firing on an extreme bearing in a confined space, and also to improve the rate of fire, he shod the carriage-trucks with wedges designed to act as drags. “We now dare to fire our guns without running them out,” he wrote to Lord Barham, “and so as to admit of the ports being shut, with certain impunity, even to the obliquity of three points before or abaft the beam. A wedge properly adapted is placed behind each truck, to make up for the reduction of space to recoil in, in firing to windward or in rolling weather. The gun first ascends the wedges by rotation, and when stopped, performs the remainder of her recoil as a sledge, so feebly as scarce to bring her breeching tight. The bottoms of the wedges, to augment their friction against the deck, are pinked, tarred, and rubbed with very rough sand or with coarse coal dust. This method has also, I hear, been adopted in the Union.”
It was also adopted in the Formidable, in which ship Sir Charles fought as first captain to Admiral Rodney in the great fight which took place three years after the above was written. At the Battle of the Saints not a single goose-quill failed in the Formidable, nor did a gun require to be wormed so long as the flannel-bottomed cartridges held out. Of the hundred and twenty-six locks fitted in the Duke, only one failed; with this exception a single Kentish black flint served for each gun throughout the whole engagement. The oblique fire which our ships were enabled to employ so shattered the enemy by the unexpectedly rapid and concentrated fire poured into him, that victory was not left long in doubt; the toll of his killed and wounded was enormous. The Duke, it was reckoned, fired twice as many effective shots as would have been possible under the old system. The Formidable reported that two, and sometimes three, broadsides were fired at every passing Frenchman before he could bring a gun to bear in reply.[97] If all the ships of the fleet, it was said, had been able to use their guns as they were used in these two, very few of the enemy would have escaped. The advantage accruing to the British fleets from the improvements initiated and developed by Sir Charles Douglas and other captains of his time was palpable and undisputed. It is possible, however, that the total effect produced by all these developments in gunnery material, both in this action and in those of the following war, may have been insufficiently emphasized by historians?
It is to the war which broke out with the United States of America in 1812 that we must turn to see the truck equipment working at its highest point of efficiency. By this time the advantage of gun-sights[98] for giving accuracy of aim has been seized by a few individual officers, and sights of various patterns have been fitted by enthusiasts. No official encouragement is given, however, to experiments with sights and scales and disparting devices, and once again it is left to private initiative and expense to make a further advance toward efficiency. Applications for gun-sights are rejected during the war on the ground that these novelties are “not according to the regulation of the Service.”[99]