The Stores, again, are remarkable only for the quantity of material stowed away ready for use. For instance, there are ten thousand complete sets of harness for guns and baggage wagons always kept in stock. But when the visitor has just walked once through these storehouses, he will probably have seen all that he cares to see there.
It is, however, when we come to the Gun Factory that the special interest of the Arsenal begins. Imagine a huge mass of steel welded—for casting would not give sufficient strength—into the form of the trunk of a large fir-tree, and you have the first stage of a gun's existence. This solid mass is to form the tube of a cannon, and the solid core has to be removed by ingenious and powerful machinery. It takes a week or two to bore the interior of some of the larger guns. Some of the machines are constructed to bore a hole which is continually enlarged by successive tools; while others actually cut out a round solid mass from the interior. The tube has also to be subjected to the process of being turned both within and without, and it is then fit for the next process, which is that of cutting the grooves within it which give the required spin to the projectile, commonly called rifling. This is a delicate and intricate process, for the utility of the gun of course depends largely on the accuracy with which the grooves are made. The actual cutting is performed by a machine which travels up the tube at the required spiral; but as the work proceeds, the man in charge carefully examines the grooves along their whole length with the aid of a candle fixed at the end of a long rod which he pushes up the tube.
But when the tube has been bored, turned, and rifled, the gun is by no means finished. The tube by itself would be far too delicate for the large charges of powder employed; and, consequently, it has to be fitted at the breech end with two or three outer cases or jackets, the outside one of which bears the trunnions on which the gun rests. At last the gun is completed; and the next thing is to subject it to a severe test by firing from it a charge of powder proportioned to its size. For this purpose, it has to be taken to Plumstead Marshes, a portion of which forms the testing-ground and powder-magazines connected with the Arsenal. Lines of railway run down to the marshes, and the gun is mounted on a truck and dragged off by a locomotive to the place appointed for its trial. It may be mentioned that lines of railway run in all directions through the Arsenal, one of narrow gauge being introduced into most of the workshops, so that the visitor has to keep a lookout lest a tiny locomotive with a train of what may almost be called toy trucks should bear down upon him as he is walking along.—But to return to the gun. When it has been finally tested, cleaned, polished, and stamped, it is coated with a particular varnish, and is fit for service.
The next most interesting place to the Gun Factory is the Laboratory, where shells and bullets are manufactured. Shells are cast rough, and then finished off in a lathe. A band of copper now usually takes the place of the copper studs which were formerly inserted to enable the shell to fit into the rifled grooves. This band is expanded by the force of the explosion when the gun is fired, and fills up the grooves, so as to give the necessary spin to the shells. Shells are charged with their interior bullets at the Laboratory; but the powder is added down at the marshes. A shell when completed has become a very expensive article, especially if it is a large one. Some of those projectiles are so heavy that the guns from which they have to be fired are provided with small cranes for lifting them up to the breech. The shells are, like the guns, beautifully finished off and varnished, and then sent off to the stores.
Perhaps the most interesting place in the Laboratory department is the Pattern Room, which is a sort of museum where shot and shells of all sorts are to be seen, from the old-fashioned chain-shot, made of round balls fastened together, to the most perfect specimens of modern shells. Here, also, are to be seen those strange weapons of modern warfare called torpedoes, amongst them the famous 'fish torpedo,' which with its complicated mechanism may be almost described as an under-water ship. It is so constructed that it finds its way unseen and unheard, with its terrible charge of dynamite, to the side of a hostile vessel.
THE ENFIELD SMALL-ARMS FACTORY.
It is at Enfield, on the river Lea, some twelve miles down the Great Eastern Railway, that small-arms are manufactured, almost entirely, as required by our army.
Enfield Factory has not, like Woolwich Arsenal, an ancient history of its own. In the days of Henry VIII. and of Elizabeth, of the Duke of York and his faithful secretary, Samuel Pepys, Woolwich was famous for the production both of ships and of guns; but the small-arms factory on the borders of Essex dates only from the early part of this century. Its site seems to have been chosen regardless of any peculiar advantages for manufacturing purposes. It is simply a collection of workshops built in the flat meadows through which run the various branches, natural and artificial, of the lazy Lea; and the nearest town, about a mile and a half distant, is quiet and remote little Waltham, chiefly known for its Abbey Church, the burial-place of King Harold, which rises in its midst.
The situation of the Enfield Factory is, however, advantageous in this way: the canals form a safe means of water transit for the gunpowder which is manufactured in the adjacent mills at Waltham, and which is required at Enfield for use in the proving of the barrels of firearms; while the far-stretching marshes provide an apparently interminable range for carrying out the necessary experiments and trials with regard to the accuracy of the weapons manufactured.