Like all inventors of war material of increased efficiency, he believed that the more destructive the weapons and explosives the more improbable would war become, until it should be rendered impossible.
“Were it not that the increased destructiveness of war must tend to shorten its duration and diminish its frequency—thus saving human life—the invention of my projectiles could hardly be justified; but believing in the really pacific influence of the most powerful means of defence, these long projectiles I call the anti-war shell.” But Sir Joseph Whitworth was disappointed, and the millennium has not dawned yet.
His own summary of what he accomplished, however, shows how one step after another has been taken in the production of weapon after weapon. The progress has been maintained by one inventor and scientist after another, until the remarkable guns with their 25-miles range which now are carried have been made possible.
“In 1857 I proved for the first time that a ship could be penetrated below the water-line by a flat-headed rifled projectile.
“In 1860 I penetrated for the first time a 4½-inch armour-plate with an 80-lb. flat-headed solid steel projectile. In 1862 I penetrated for the first time a 4-inch armour-plate with a 70-lb. flat-headed steel shell, which exploded in an oak box supporting the plate. In 1870 I penetrated with a 9-inch bore gun three 5-inch armour-plates inter-laminated with two 5-inch layers of concrete. In 1872, with my 9-pounder breech-loading gun and a flat-headed steel projectile, I penetrated a 3-inch armour-plate at an angle of 45 degrees. All these performances were the first of their kind and were made, with one exception, with flat-headed projectiles, which alone are capable of penetrating armour-plates when impinging obliquely, and which alone can penetrate a ship below the water-line.”
The Brazilian Government began a series of experiments in 1871 which convinced them that better guns were produced in this country than on the Continent. The Bessemer steel process was improved by Sir Joseph Whitworth for gun-making, and having adopted breech-loading guns, he obtained results superior to those obtainable with any form of muzzle-loading weapon. The Brazilian Government gave permission for him to offer to lend to the British Admiralty a 7-inch breech-loading steel gun he had made for the former, and a 35-ton muzzle-loading gun, in order that comparative tests might be made, but the British Government declined; it had no love for breech-loaders.
Having produced a type of gun capable, as he believed, of penetrating any armour then in existence, Sir Joseph Whitworth set about producing an armour-plate which should be able to beat the gun. Using his compressed steel, he invented what he called “impregnable armour-plating,” built in hexagonal sections, each of which was constructed of a series of concentric rings arranged round a central circular disc, this method preventing a crack caused by the impact of a projectile from passing beyond the ring in which it occurred. A Palliser shell of 259 lb. fired from a 9-inch gun with a charge of 50 lb. of pebble powder, which would have smashed an ordinary 12-inch iron armour-plate, was itself smashed against this new armour, and the target itself was forced 18 inches back into the sand and was only slightly dented.
A great deal of reliance was placed in America on the gun invented by Mr. Rodman, after whom it was named. Several of the American monitors were armed with these weapons. One, bought by the British Government and tested at Shoeburyness, weighed 19 tons and had a smooth bore 15 inches in diameter, and fired a round shot of 453 lb. with a charge of 100 lb. of American powder. It pierced the 8-inch plates of the Warrior type of target, but as in other experiments it was less successful, the Americans claimed that it was used in such a way as not to show its full capabilities. Even if it had been, it could only have had a very short career, as the breech-loading gun was steadily making its way in foreign navies, and any form of smooth-bore muzzle-loader, whether American or English, would have proved singularly ineffective against ships carrying rifled breech-loaders. The Mackay gun, an English invention doomed to early supersession, was an attempt to combine the simplicity of the smooth-bore with the penetrating force of the rifled gun, and in experiments made with this weapon on the Agincourt target, in 1867, the gun fully demonstrated its usefulness.
HEAVY GUN UNMOUNTED.