“That your memorialist has, after considerable trouble and expense, discovered a method by which the facility of loading all rifles, muskets, and other small fire-arms will be much increased, as well as a considerable additional force or range of the projectile be obtained, even with a less quantity of powder than at present used. Your memorialist has frequently loaded one of his Majesty’s rifles by this method, as quickly as any soldier could load the plain musket, and the balls when fired have received the same or greater effect from the action of the grooves of the rifle. Your memorialist’s plan simply consists in the manufacture of a more ready kind of cartridge, which will answer for all fire-arms as at present constructed, and will also be a considerable saving to his Majesty.
“Your memorialist being aware, from former communications with your Honourable Board, that in no case is any sum of money allowed for travelling expenses, &c., and your memorialist being very far from rich, is unable to attend any committee, either at Woolwich or elsewhere, your memorialist, therefore, suggests that if it meet the approbation of your Honourable Board to issue an order to the officer commanding the depot of his Majesty’s 1st Brigade 60th Rifles, at present stationed in this town, or to any other regiment or detachment in the neighbourhood, to appoint a squad of men to fire 100 rounds of memorialist’s and 100 rounds of the cartridges now in use, and to compare their respective merits, the whole to be provided at your memorialist’s expense.
“And memorialist, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
“William Greener.”
The success of the experiments far surpassed the expectations of the military men present; and that they fully established all the points claimed, will be evident from the following secret report made by Major Walcott to the Board of Ordnance:—
“I then examined Mr. Greener’s ammunition, and found he had not made it up into complete cartridges, but that his ball was separate from his powder. I then examined the ball, which being less than the barrel of the rifle, went down very easily—indeed slided down, and is thus formed. The ball is cast with a hollow in it, to which a plug of the same metal is inserted, but not going home. The force of the charge is said by Mr. Greener so to act on this hollow ball as to expand it, filling up the whole barrel, preventing all windage, and so truly keeping its flight that the head of the plug first striking the object fired at, is then driven home; the ball becomes a solid, and as such is equal to the present mode, as well as having more force and with a less quantity of powder than at present used.
“A detachment of the 60th was then ordered to load with Mr. Greener’s, and an equal number with his Majesty’s practice ammunition. The first certainly had the advantage in quickness of loading, but this may be accounted for by Mr. Greener’s ball being put in separate from the cartridge; for I am by no means certain (it being necessary that his plug should be exactly in the centre,[346] either next the cartridge or from it) whether, when made into a complete form, should the plug have shifted from its position, it would not cost the soldier more time to place it right; neither am I certain whether the plug might not be liable to become jammed in the soldier’s cartouch-box.
“After firing several rounds, at 200 yards, at the target, we succeeded in obtaining some of Mr. Greener’s balls, one of which that had struck the target and did not go through I send (marked) as the most favourable specimen of the day’s practice, the plug being driven hard into the ball, the others having lost their plugs. Mr. Greener, whose wishes I complied with in every way I could, then proposed firing a number of rounds into a sandbank, to show that the plugs did not quit the ball. A great many rounds were fired; in many the plugs were out, in many loosely fixed and easily removed, and in a part firm. Not having the advantage of the target I had desired him to bring, a number of rounds were fired at the rifle’s extreme range, 350 yards, as the best means left of ascertaining the difference of range; the only result of which was, that it appeared invariably to me and others on the slightest resistance from the first the plug quitted the ball, and therefore must have lessened its force from loss of weight. The balls from both charges, Mr. Greener’s and his Majesty’s, went home to the target, but only one of the latter went through. I had then fired most of Mr. Greener’s cartridges and balls, and fifty rounds of the practice ammunition of the 60th. I beg to submit with the greatest deference that in so great a change as this proposed, even should it be considered worthy any other trial, that the specimens I shall send up by the earliest opportunity may have competent examination—for, although the balls of Mr. Greener bear the impress of the grooves of the rifle, I am not able to state whether such may not equally well be produced by the action of being forced from the rifle as by the expansion Mr. Greener states to take place—should the Master-General deem it necessary that any further experiment be made by me and with cartridges properly made up.”
The immediate result was a very pithy epistle from the Secretary to the Board, saying, that “in consequence of the bullet I had submitted being ‘a compound,’ it was totally unfit for his Majesty’s service, and no more trials could be allowed.”