It follows, then, that an artificial increase of range could be obtained by placing the sphere with its centre of gravity above the centre of figure? This is precisely what was done; and by many a measured eccentricity was considered a desideratum, as giving a higher range than could be obtained without it. With such a system, however, the deviations still remained large and flights still more irregular. And the best opinion held that the most satisfactory solution lay in reducing the errors of flight as far as possible by the use of perfectly concentric shells. This ideal was difficult of attainment. Sir Howard Douglas has described at length experiments with shells the axis of whose eccentricity was found by floating them in mercury: experiments which revealed that not one shell in a hundred of those supplied was perfectly balanced. For this reason misgiving was felt as to the effectiveness of shell fire when carried out at considerable ranges against solid shot, and efforts were continuously made to correct all shell before issue.
Nor were the Americans inclined to view the shell gun with much favour; remembering, doubtless, what they owed to their long and powerful guns when they were opposed to our light guns and carronades in the war of ’12 and ’13. America was more cautious even than this country. But in ’41 the 8-inch shell gun appeared in American ships as an auxiliary to the long guns: four or so on each gun deck. And four years later the types of guns in their ships were limited to 8-inch shell guns, in combination with 32-pounder long guns of various patterns; in fact, their system of armament was assimilated to that of the French and British.
Whatever the relative value of shell and solid shot might be, experience showed that increase in size favoured the former. Though medium-sized solid shot might be more efficient than medium-sized shells, yet it was widely accepted that large solid shot would probably be of less value than large shell. Strong tendencies were at work, making for such increase in the size of artillery. It was in 1837 that a writer already quoted showed the direction in which the arguments of M. Paixhans were leading. Citing Sir Howard Douglas on the advantages of large calibre and the inefficiency of random broadsides, Captain Simmons put forward the argument that, if these statements were accepted, it followed that all ships of war should be armed with a few long guns of the maximum calibre and giving the maximum muzzle energy which the ship could safely carry, with other guns on other decks of the same calibre but of varying weight and range. “Instead of determining the armament of a ship from the length of her decks and crowding as many guns together as possible; determining the number by the extent of the battery, and subjecting their nature to their number—making, in fact, the weight and type of gun depend, not on the service demanded, but on the quotient arising from dividing the total deck-weight by the number, previously fixed on; it might be safer to place on board a few of the most powerful guns which her construction would admit, and then regulate the total number carried by their aggregate weight—making the number and not the nature of the guns depend on what is inevitably fixed: the capacity of the vessel?”
The English writer went farther than M. Paixhans had gone. His argument foreshadowed the evolution which was so largely influenced by the coming of the steam vessel, with its large paddle-wheels and small crew, and with its deck space necessitating the concentration of its armament into a few guns of the largest calibre; it foreshadowed the supersession of the broadside by the pivot gun, and the enormous expansion in the size of ordnance which took place after the Crimean War.
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The evolution of the shell gun was at this partial stage when the Crimean War broke out. In 1854 both types of projectiles were still struggling for ascendancy, though large shell guns were by this time acknowledged as the superior armament for steam vessels. Both friend and foe were now literally “stormed at by shot and shell”—of which the shell proved on the whole the more effective missile. No decisive superiority could be claimed, however, by one type over the other; and, as we shall see later in surveying the evolution of the ironclad, it was only gradually that the inherent superiority of the shell gun came to be recognized.
Soon after the close of the war a new step in the evolution of armament made its supremacy decisive. The rifled cannon at last materialized. The cylinder superseded the sphere. The increase in volume gained by the adoption of this form of projectile, and the enhanced range and striking velocity which it was possible to impart to it, set all doubts at rest as to the military value of the Arme Nouvelle.
THE SPEAKER, A SECOND-RATE OF THE COMMONWEALTH
From Fincham’s Naval Architecture