[83] How strange and almost incredible this phenomenon appeared to people long after Robins’ time, may be seen from the manner in which Ezekiel Baker, one of the principal London gunmakers and the contractor who supplied the rifles with which the Rifle Brigade was equipped in the year 1800, poured gentle sarcasm on the account of this experiment. In his book on Rifle Guns, published in 1825, he can only assign the cause of the deflection to “some peculiar enchantment in the air.” “Or,” he continues, “with all my practice I have yet much to learn in guns, and the effects of powder and wind upon the ball in its flight.”
[84] Of the superstitious awe with which an iron field-piece was regarded by the highlanders in ’45, and of its small material value in the field, a note will be found in the appendices to Scott’s Waverley.
[85] Mr. Patrick Miller, who is mentioned in a later chapter as builder of the first successful steam-propelled vessel, was also an enthusiastic artillerist. In a memorandum to the Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1824 to consider the claims of various inventors of steam-vessels, a Mr. Taylor gave the following evidence: “I found him (Mr. Miller) a gentleman of great patriotism, generosity, and philanthropy; and at the same time of a very speculative turn of mind. Before I knew him (1785) he had gone through a very long and expensive course of experiments upon artillery of which the carronade was the result.”
[86] On April 20th, 1669, Mr. Pepys recorded in his diary a visit to “the Old Artillery-ground near the Spitalfields” to see a new gun “which, from the shortness and bigness, they do call Punchinello.” Tried against a gun of double its own length, weight, and powder-charge, Punchinello shot truer to a mark and was easier to manage and had no greater recoil—to the great regret of the old gunners and officers of the ordnance that were there.
The gallant inventor offered Mr. Pepys a share in the profits; there seemed great promise that the king would favour it for naval use. “And,” adds Pepys, “no doubt but it will be of profit to merchantmen and others to have guns of the same form at half the charge.”
[87] James: Naval History.
[88] The carrying of sham guns among their armament was not unknown in the case of vessels which boasted a reputation for their superior speed and sailing qualities (vide Bentham Papers).
[89] Captain Simmons, R.A.
[90] The carriage thus formed out of a baulk or trunk appears to have been known as a trunk carriage. Norton describes the cannon-periers as being mounted on “trunk carriages provided with four trucks.”
[91] Oppenheim.