Curiosities of Civilization Part 15

Out of this hole the metal is driven in the form of a continuous rod of lead, which, as it issues forth, rolls itself upon iron reels as though it were so much cotton! The reels are then attached to a machine which draws the metal between its teeth, bites it off to the required size, moulds the cone, depresses the cup, and condenses the ma.s.s at the same moment. These wonderful bullet-makers, when in full work, turn out five hundred elongated bullets a minute, or upwards of a quarter of a million daily. To complete the missile, the cup has to be filled with a boxwood plug to ensure its proper expansion whilst in the act of leaving the gun. Here again a partially self-acting apparatus is called into play, one lad being sufficient to feed several machines with square rods of wood, the ends of which are embraced by a circular hollow cutter, which instantly reduces them to the right conical form, and then cuts them off. These little plugs are produced at the same rate as the bullets.

An equally interesting operation is the manufacture of percussion caps.

The first process in this light and delicate work is the stamping of sheet-copper into pieces of the required form to make the caps. For this purpose the copper is placed beneath the punch of the machine, and immediately it is put in action, small crosses of metal are seen to fall from it into a box in a continual stream, whilst the sheet itself is transposed by the punching process into a kind of trellis-work. These crosses of equilateral arms are now transferred to another machine, which instantly doubles up the four arms, and at the same time so rounds them, that they form a tube just the size of the gun-nipple, and by a third operation of the same machine a kind of rim is given to the free end, which makes the cap take the form of a hat. This rim marks the difference between the military and the ordinary percussion cap--the soldier, in the hurry and confusion of battle, requiring this guide to enable him to apply the proper end to the nipple. The metal portion of the cap completed, it is transferred to a man who fills it with detonating powder.

As this is a very dangerous process, the artisan upon whom the duty devolves sits apart from the boys, who perform all the other work, for fear of an accidental explosion. To fix the fine dust in the cap, a very pretty machine is employed, which gets through its work with extreme rapidity. The caps are placed in regular rows in a frame-work, to which is attached a lever, armed with as many fine points as there are caps in a single row. The motion given by the hand alternately dips these fine points into a tray of varnish, and then into each succeeding line of caps.

When the varnish is dry, the powder is fixed and effectually protected from the effects of damp. The caps are now finished, and are ready for the boy who counts and packs them. Machinery is even employed to perform the part of c.o.c.ker, and with one gentle shake does the brain-work of many minutes. A frame is constructed, into which fit a number of small trays, each tray being pierced with seventy-five holes. Upon this frame the boy heaps up a few handfuls of caps, and then gives the whole machine a few jerks, and when he sees that every hole is filled with a cap, he lifts out each separate tray and empties it into appropriate boxes. In this manner he is enabled, with extreme rapidity, to count out his parcels of seventy-five caps, the regulation number served to each soldier with sixty rounds of ball-cartridge--the excess of fifteen being allowed for loss in the flurry of action. The British soldier's clumsy fingers are by no means well calculated for handling and adjusting such light articles.

Equally curious with the production of caps is the manufacture of cartridge-bags. The visitor, as he mounts the stairs to the upper floor of a large building close at hand, is made aware by the hum and collision of shrill young voices that he is approaching a hive of children, and as he rears his head above the banisters, he finds that he is in the midst of a little army of urchins, varying from eight to fourteen years of age, seated at long benches rolling up paper cartridge-bags. This process requires some little nicety, as each bag is made up of three distinct papers of different sizes and shapes, which have to be neatly adjusted round a roller one upon another. By long practice some of these little fellows complete the operation in a surprisingly short s.p.a.ce of time--rolling, twisting in the end, tying, and drawing it from the rod almost as quickly as you can look at them, the swaying of the body during the operation giving to the entire ma.s.s of eight hundred children a most extraordinary aggregate movement as the room is surveyed from one end to the other. Some boys are infinitely more nimble-fingered than others, and the sharpest earn eight or nine shillings a-week at the work.

Nimble as their little fingers ply, however, the hands of machinery laugh them to scorn. In the room below we note as we descend strange wheel-like frames revolving horizontally, and others working up and down into tanks of paper pulp. These are the new machines destined to supplant the little children over-head, and to hush the ceaseless hum of their human labour.

Throughout the entire range of the a.r.s.enal there is no sight more interesting than is exhibited by these machines, the _modus operandi_ of which is extremely simple. Circles of bra.s.s tubing have short upright tubes inserted into them at regular distances. These upright tubes, or fingers, are pierced with fine holes, and the whole apparatus is attached to an exhausting-pump. Worsted mittens are fitted to the fingers, and when all is ready, the Briarean hand is dipped into the bath of pulp, the air in the tubes is withdrawn, the liquid necessarily rushes towards the fingers, and the water pa.s.sing through, leaves the pulp adherent to the mitten. The process is instantaneous, hand after hand drops into the trough, gloves its fingers with pulp, and rises with a thousand cartridges in its grasp, quicker than one of the boys up stairs has finished a single bag. The process is not complete, however, until they are dry. Each mitten is removed from its metal finger, and placed on a similar one heated with steam. In ten minutes the desiccating process is finished, and the cartridge-bag is removed, a far more perfect instrument for its deadly purpose than that which is made up stairs by hand. The hint for this beautiful machine was taken from the apparatus employed for making conical seamless sugar-bags without the intervention of the paper maker--so diverse are the developments which may spring from the same idea. Of these small-arm cartridge-bags, 400,000 can be manufactured in a day of ten hours; but as each cartridge is composed of a double envelope, one fitting within the other, in order to separate the conical ball from the powder, the product furnishes 200,000 cartridges--an enormous quant.i.ty, but scarcely equal to the demand of such campaigners as Havelock, whose men, day by day, consumed their sixty rounds per head. At first sight it seems strange to find the Government turned paper makers, and the visitor may think that these bags could be obtained, as the sugar-bags are by the grocers, from the private manufacturer, but it is absolutely necessary that they should be produced side by side with their deadly contents. They are far more delicate things to maintain in their integrity than even wafer-biscuits, which they very much resemble, and they are required in such enormous numbers, that any mechanical impediment, such as crushing, interposed to the filling of them with powder and ball, would add immensely to the expense. The pressure in packing necessary to convey them to the a.r.s.enal would flatten, and hence destroy them.

But where, asks the visitor, is the small-arms factory for the construction of those far-famed rifles which prevented a disaster at Inkermann, and at once doubled the effective power of the steadiest infantry of Europe? And well may he ask the question, for what more natural place for this important manufacture than in connexion with kindred Government establishments? When the War Office decided upon erecting a factory to meet the sudden demands of the war, it was proposed by the Inspector of Machinery to plant it within the walls of the a.r.s.enal; but the authorities, for some reason best known to themselves, decided otherwise, and it was accordingly taken to Enfield Lock, which is twelve miles from London on the Eastern Counties Railway, and where they had before a small establishment for the repair and manufacture of a limited number of muskets. The traveller who gets out at the factory station finds himself at once in a road which leads him into a flat country laced with streams, where Paul Potter might have found a study at every turn.

Here, amid flocks and herds peacefully grazing, or standing in the shadows of the pollard willows, he espies the tall chimneys of the Enfield factory, looking like a stray fragment of Manchester that had wandered out of its way. In all England a more absurd spot for it could not have been chosen.

The establishment, however, is so worthy of a minute inspection, that we will proceed to give a general view of the whole. The threshold of the manufacturing process is the smithery, where the foreman presides to deliver out the raw material and receive in return the work done. To each smith is issued the particular size of bar iron or steel required for the article he works upon. Opening out of this shop is the smithery itself, with its fifty-five forges, together with steam hammers, hoppers, rider hammers, and other contrivances by which our modern Vulcan economises labour. In this department all the iron and steel work of the lock and stock are moulded, for the ordinary method of forging conveys a very inadequate idea of the manner in which the material is here manipulated.

Every sportsman knows that the lock of a gun is made up of many small pieces of irregular form. To forge these with the hammer alone would be far too expensive a process, as it would require highly-skilled labour, nor even then would it be possible to produce the different pieces of exactly the same size, so that any one may fit into any other with perfect accuracy when the gun is ultimately put together. To accomplish this end, the essential principle of the manufacture, each smith with his helper takes in hand a particular piece of work. One man, for instance, makes hammers, or c.o.c.ks, as sportsmen call them. The irregular form of this part of the lock would seem to preclude the possibility of its being made by the hundred-thousand, each one being the counterpart of its brother to the thousandth of an inch. Yet this is done, and with an ease that appears astonishing to the beholder. Let us watch the brawny smith before us. He draws a rod from the fire at white heat, lays it upon an indented part of his anvil, and, together with his mate, deals alternate blows in half a dozen different directions, and produces in a few seconds an irregular ma.s.s, which we see bears a resemblance to the indentation in the anvil, which, on closer inspection, we find to be a rude matrix of a gunc.o.c.k.

This is the first process, called swaging. These two men go on from one year's end to another, giving alternate light and heavy blows and taps on all sides of the metal. These blows, though sometimes delivered through a swinging circle of eight or ten feet, fall upon exactly the same spot, for practice so nicely co-ordinates the muscles as to produce a motion as exact as that which draws from the bow of a Paganini the same delicate note for any number of times in succession. The c.o.c.k thus swaged, the smith stamps his initials upon it, and transfers it to another smith, who works with a steam-hammer, on which is a steel die of the exact form it is required to take. A single blow of this instrument gives it its final form, leaving the superfluous metal in the shape of a thin film, where it has been squeezed into the opening between the dies, which is cut off by a subsequent stamping process. By this method of swaging and stamping, the lock-plate, bridle, c.o.c.k, sear, trigger, sightleaf, breech-screw, and swivel are formed so perfectly, that the tool is scarcely required to touch them afterwards.

Those parts of the lock made of steel, such as the mainspring, searspring and tumbler, are simply swaged, the stamping process being omitted on account of the sudden blow tending to break the grain and thus destroy the elasticity of the metal.

A curious operation of the smithery is the bayonet forging. The bars for bayonet-work are never forged of such uniform width as to allow the smith to cut off to a nicety the length he requires. In order to rectify this difficulty, and enable him to tell how much will serve his purpose, he is provided with a water-gauge, or tube filled with a given quant.i.ty of water; into this the rod is plunged, and withdrawn when the fluid reaches the top of the gauge. By this expedient the iron, however irregular in form, is measured accurately by the displacement of the water. When the bar is withdrawn, the smith cuts it off at the watermark, and his mate thrusts it into the forge fire. Whilst this is going on, the visitor becomes conscious of a strange machine close at hand, which perpetually gnashes together a mouthful of hardened steel teeth; this is that useful instrument called the rider hammer. These teeth bear upon their upper and under surfaces grooves of the form the iron bar is required to take. The short white-heated bit of bar is thrust in, and by a series of nabs is instantly lengthened a couple of inches; the next tooth still further attenuates it, the third forces it into the triangular form, and a fourth and fifth reduce it to the graduated length required: thus the blade of this terrible weapon is rough-drawn. The ring by which it is attached to the barrel of the musket is forged separately, and welded to the shank at right angles. These are the first of at least seventy-six distinct operations before the weapon is fitted to fulfil its appointed design, that of making the ugliest and most irreparable wound possible in the human corpus. The work done, it is returned to the foreman, whose first duty is to see that the material with which the man has been debited has wrought into the requisite number of pieces; if it falls short the waste is charged to him. The next scrutiny is into the quality of the work, and the last and not the least important inquiry is, does it gauge? Unless the work pa.s.ses all these ordeals it is rejected, and the person in fault is known by the distinguishing mark of the smith who prepared it. In some cases, as in the making of the bands which bind the barrel to the stock, this mark is ground off in pa.s.sing through one of the presses; but is immediately restored, that the work may be traced to the artisan who constructed it. The effect of thus fixing the responsibility of every single thing manufactured upon the maker is immense, and induces habits of carefulness such as are seldom seen in ordinary workmen. The foreman now issues the different pieces to the finishers, who convey them to the annealing room, where they are rendered soft for working by heat, and cleaned of their scale or oxide, which would otherwise injure the tool, by means of dilute sulphuric acid.

The barrel is welded and finished in a separate factory. The piece of metal out of which the gradually tapering tube is ultimately fashioned seems to bear no relation to such a form. You see the smith take a small plate of quarter-inch iron, about a foot long by a few inches wide, heat it to a welding heat, and then place it between the lips of a rolling mill, with grooved instead of flat rollers, and in an instant it comes out a tube. It has next to be drawn out to the requisite length and tapered, which is done by pa.s.sing it through a series of mills, each succeeding one being grooved smaller than the preceding. The bore is kept hollow during the operation by a central iron rod. The breech piece is welded on by a single blow of a steam-hammer, and the process of turning the bore begins.

Four barrels are acted upon by one lathe, and the first operation is performed in fifteen minutes. Only a slight cutting is made each time, and the barrel has to be submitted to the action of many different boring instruments until the exact size, 577 of an inch, is attained. The outside is now turned, the tool taking off the superfluous metal in one continuous ringlet of iron.

It now undergoes the most delicate process of all, that of being "viewed."

The viewer, who is a highly-skilled workman, with an exceedingly accurate eye, puts himself opposite a gas-lamp, about thirty feet distance, and which has a dark shade on its upper side. Towards this object he directs the barrel so as to bring the dark edge half-way across his sight as he looks through the bore. By this device he is enabled to direct a ray of light with a defined edge down the tube, and by turning the barrel round, instantly detects the slightest deviation from the straight line. As the smoothest-looking sea is discovered to be a ma.s.s of dimpling ripples--(the Greek poet's "infinite laughings of the sea")--when the setting sun throws a golden shaft across its bosom, so the mathematically straight lines of light gauge the inequalities of the rifle bore in a more exact manner than any instrument that has yet been invented. When any irregularities are discovered, the viewer taps the barrel with a fine hammer on a small anvil, and repeats the operation until the tube is perfectly true. Upon this depends the correct shooting of the gun, inasmuch as the least crook near the end of the bore would send a bullet far on one side of the mark long before it had attained the full range of 800 yards, to which the Enfield rifle is sighted. The rifling of the barrel in three groves is performed by fixing it in a lathe, and driving the cutter through it in a spiral direction.

In entering the finishing room, a n.o.ble apartment, 200 feet square, the visitor cannot fail to be struck with astonishment at the scene this vast workshop presents. He looks through a ma.s.s of wheels, levers, cranks, and shafts, which fill the s.p.a.ce from wall to wall, every foot alive with iron and human limbs, and the whole superficies seeming to writhe and wrestle like a cl.u.s.ter of worms. Although confusion looks triumphant to the casual eye, the utmost order prevails. On one side of the room, at regular intervals, small inclosed offices, with glazed fronts, are placed against the wall, a little above the level of the floor. These are devoted to the foremen of the different divisions into which the work is separated. Each of these functionaries from his eyrie rakes the long avenues or streets of machines, with their attendant workmen, which run in parallel lines across the room. The first avenue is devoted to bayonets; then come in the following order the divisions allocated to furniture, screw, sight, lock, and stock. The work is so managed that all the different parts keep pace together, and are finished in the required proportions; or in other words, those pieces which are but slowly produced have allotted to them a greater number of machines. By this arrangement all the requisite items are brought at the same moment to the workmen who put them together in the finished article. The fifty-six pieces of which the rifle is composed work their way up one street of machinery and down another, constantly following on from right to left on their way towards the top of the room.

Many of these pieces are pa.s.sed through upwards of twenty different machines, each one performing some simple and definite action, by which means an accuracy is obtained that the most skilful gunmaker could never equal by hand.

The diversity of cutting-tools in these different machines strikes the observer with astonishment; the oddest shapes, the most unlikely-looking forms, proving admirably adapted for the purposes they are intended to accomplish. Many of these work automatically--that is, they engage and disengage themselves; setting to work only when they are fed with material, and, when their rodent-like teeth have gnawed away as much metal as is requisite, they stop of their own accord. The effect of this is so extraordinary, that it almost seems as if those bright limbs of iron, which stop and move on without human agency, must be directed by some sort of metallic brain. The most common form of tool employed is what is termed the circular cutter or milling-tool, which is constructed to fit every cla.s.s of work. These cutters will continue serviceable for months without requiring to be sharpened, in consequence of each being restricted to its own limited sphere. The amount of thought employed in the construction of many of these machines must have been immense, and when they were completed, two-thirds of the manufacturing difficulty was overcome, and the musket more than half made. A most ingenious machine, the parent of a numerous progeny, was, many years ago, invented by an Englishman, and applied to copying the fine lines of statuary, and transferring them to ivory and other materials. The applicability of this instrument to the production of the irregular forms in the gun trade was first perceived by our cousins across the Atlantic, and for many years they have employed it for the rapid and true production of many parts of the musket, whilst our own manufacturers in London and Birmingham have been content to execute the same work, laboriously and expensively, by hand labour. The copying machines now at Enfield have been imported direct from America. They are princ.i.p.ally employed in fashioning gun-stocks. They convert the rough slabs of walnut-wood, just outlined in the proper form, which come from France, Belgium and Italy, into the finished article, with all its grooves, holes, and beddings for lock and barrel. This extraordinary apparatus may be said to work with two hands: the one feeling the outline of the pattern to be copied, the other directing a tool uniformly with it and cutting the object to the required form. Let us, for example, take the machine that hollows out the lock-bedding in the stock. Not only are the outlines of the most irregular form, but they are sunk to three different levels, and it would almost seem impossible that a machine should excavate so complex a bedding with minute accuracy. Nevertheless, it is done in a few minutes by an apparatus, which revolves and brings, one after the other, some new tool into play according to the work to be done. Whilst the operation is going on, a little blower clears out the chips as cleverly as though the machine had human breath. The different portions of the gun completed, they are, for the last time, gauged, and pa.s.sed on to the extreme end bench of the factory, near the west door, where the "a.s.sembler," as he is termed, receives them in different bins, from which he takes the part he requires and sets up the gun. As there is no necessity for special fitting, this process is performed with remarkable rapidity, seven minutes being sufficient to combine all the different parts, which have never been near each other before--lock, stock, ramrod, and bayonet--into the complete weapon. They now pa.s.s out of the western door, packed in cases, and are taken to the proving-ground, where they are tested with high charges and their range and accuracy duly examined; and so perfect is the finish, that not one in a thousand fails to stand the trying ordeal. They are now transferred by water to the Armoury at the Tower, ready for service in the field.

The Enfield rifle was adopted for the public service in the year 1853, and is at the present moment the best infantry musket in Europe. There is still room, however, as Mr. Whitworth has shown, for improvement in the barrel. His rifle propels a bullet both farther and with greater accuracy, in consequence of the greater care he bestows upon the barrel, which, instead of being welded, is bored, at a great cost, out of the solid metal. Its diameter also being smaller, the bullet encounters a less resistance in the air during its flight. There is no reason why the smaller bore should not be subst.i.tuted for that of the Enfield rifle, when this arm would be perfect. The difficulty the ablest minds experience in getting out of an old groove was exemplified by the late Duke of Wellington with respect to this question of the size of bore. His Grace was obstinately wedded to Brown Bess, whose crushing fire, so superior to that of the enemy, he had witnessed in his Peninsular campaigns, and which he erroneously ascribed to the excellent quality of the arm instead of to the steadiness of the men--mistaking, in fact, a moral for a physical excellence. The longer the Commander-in-Chief lived, the firmer his faith in the large smooth bore, and the necessity for making a big hole in the enemy. When the rifle-musket of 1851 replaced this old arm, the large bore was still retained, and the consequence was, that the bullet, being elongated, was heavier than when round, and the soldier had to carry a missile of 696 grains weight, instead of 490 grains. The bore of the Enfield rifle pattern of 1853 was very properly reduced, and the Prichett expanding bullet, of 530 grains, now carries its deadly weight in its length. Though the wound it gives is not so large as that inflicted by the old ball, it makes up for deficiency by its power of penetration. An officer who was at the taking of the rifle-pits in the quarry before Sevastopol informs us that a brother-officer was shot through the side by a Russian Minie bullet, which afterwards pa.s.sed through an a.s.s, and his two panniers of water, and did not stop in its career till it had broken a man's arm at some distance off! Its deadly aim at vast distances, which made it the dread of the sepoys, who termed it "the gun that kills without making any sound," contrasts strangely with the performances of Brown Bess of old, which at any range beyond a hundred yards was so uncertain in its aim that it has been calculated that the soldier shot away the weight in lead of every man that he hit.

Before the breaking out of the war, our stores were hampered with small-arms of all sizes and patterns. There were, at home and abroad, no less than 109,725 flint-lock muskets, of fifteen different patterns, and 107,000 smooth-bore, percussion-lock muskets, of eight different patterns.

Very many of these were in service a few years ago; and as their bores were all dissimilar, it often happened that the soldiers were provided with cartridges that would not fit their guns. In peace little difficulties of this kind are of no moment, but they are of the utmost importance in the time of war. At the battle of Waterloo, the Brunswickers, who held Hougoumont, were, for a short time, rendered helpless, in consequence of cartridges having been sent to them that did not fit their muskets. A battle, which, according to Professor Creasey, ranks among the six decisive combats of the world, might thus have been lost on account of the misfit of a cartridge. The necessity of preventing the possible recurrence of such mischances induced the authorities, at the breaking out of the Russian war, to make the bore of all muskets used by the different branches of the service uniform with that of the Enfield rifle. A thousand of these weapons can at present be completed in a week--a number which appears large, but which is in reality far beneath the real wants of the army. The private manufacturers of small-arms in Birmingham denounced the establishment of this factory, on the plea that Government were not warranted in fabricating goods which the private trade of the country were capable of producing--an a.s.sertion which the Crimean war totally disproved, as the authorities were so pressed for rifles that they had to go to France,[26] Belgium, and the United States for supplies, and at one time contemplated giving an order for 350,000 rifles at Liege.

The military rifle, like the sh.e.l.l, being a special article required only by the army, the demand for it in large numbers is not constant, and hence the low condition of the mechanical power brought to bear upon it by the trade. The gunmakers of Birmingham have depended upon skilled labour for the production of the different parts of a musket, and thus labour, in times of pressure, becomes exorbitantly costly, to the embarra.s.sment and loss of the public service. It was this which led the Government to introduce machinery into the manufacture--a thing the trade declared impossible, but which they now see is not only possible but profitable, since the same musket for which they charged 4_l._ 10_s._ is now made of a superior quality by the Government for 3_l._ 15_s._ The experiment must be of the greatest importance to the Birmingham gun trade, which, through its own inherent vices, was fast yielding to the superior ingenuity of America and Belgium, and which can only regain its old position by taking a lesson from the organized mechanical resources of the Enfield Lock manufactory.

The private manufacturers need not fear that Enfield will monopolize even Government work, the demands of the service being far beyond its productive powers. As the Ordnance supplies rifles to our army in India, as well as to the home and colonial force, no less than 400,000 are required for the infantry and marines alone: a number which has to be replaced every twelve years, even in times of peace. In active service the destruction is immense; and now the cycle of war has returned, the annual 50,000 rifles turned out by the royal factory will prove but a small instalment of the vast store of arms that England will require.

At Waltham Abbey, not half an hour's walk from Enfield Lock, is situated the only establishment for the manufacture of powder which the Government possesses. Here dispersion, instead of concentration, is the order of the day. The necessity for complete isolation causes the factories to be distributed over a very large s.p.a.ce of ground, and the visitor has to walk from workshop to workshop through groves and avenues of willow and alder, as though he were visiting dispersed farm-buildings rather than the different departments of the same manufacturing process. There are not perhaps more than a dozen detached buildings in the whole establishment, yet these are scattered over upwards of fifty acres of ground. To such an extent do meadows and woods and meandering ca.n.a.ls predominate, that the idea of being in a powder-mill is entirely lost in the impression that you are walking in a Dutch landscape. The visitor who enters the great gates of the mill, impressed with a belief in the dangerous nature of the ground he is treading, is somewhat startled on finding a steam-engine at work on the very threshold of the factory, and a tall chimney smoking its pipe in what he supposed to be the vicinity of hundreds of barrels of gunpowder; but in reality these boilers and furnaces are placed many hundred feet from the mixing-houses. The English Government powder is composed of seventy-five parts of saltpetre, fifteen parts of charcoal, and ten of sulphur. The ingredients, being thoroughly powdered, prepared, and purified, are submitted to the action of a machine, which completely mixes them. The product is then conveyed by a covered boat, very much like an aldermanic gondola in mourning, some hundred yards along the ca.n.a.l to the incorporating houses, where the most important process of the manufacture is carried on, and where the danger of an explosion first commences. The incorporating machine is nothing more than a couple of runners or huge wheels, weighing four and a half tons each, which revolve one after another on their edges in a bed of metal supplied with a deep wooden rim, which gives it much the appearance of a huge kitchen candlestick. Into this dish the black powder is placed, together with a little water, which varies in quant.i.ty, from four pints in winter, when the atmosphere is charged with moisture, to ten in the summer, when the desiccating quality of the air is very great. For four hours this pasty ma.s.s is crushed, ground, and mixed by the action of the runners. The precautions taken against explosion teach the visitor the dangerous nature of the ground he is treading. Before he puts his feet across the threshold he must encase them in leathern boots huge enough to fit Polyphemus, and guiltless of iron in any form whatever; even his umbrella or stick is s.n.a.t.c.hed from him, lest the ferrule should strike fire, or accidentally drop among any part of the machinery whilst at work. The machinery is even protected against itself. In order to avoid the possibility of the linch-pins which confine the cylinders to their axles falling down, and by the action of "skidding" the runner, producing so much friction as to cause an explosion, receptacles are formed to catch them in their fall. As small pieces of grit, the natural enemy of the powder-maker, might prove dangerous if mixed with any of the "charges," the axle sockets of nearly all the wheels are constructed to expand, so as to allow any hard foreign body to pa.s.s through just in the same manner in which the fine jaws of the larger serpents are loosely hinged, to enable them to get over at one gulp such a bulky morsel as a full-grown rabbit.

Accidents will happen, however, in the best-regulated mills, and provision is made for rendering an explosion when it occurs as innocuous as possible. The new incorporating mills are constructed with three sides of solid brickwork three feet thick, and the fourth side and roof of corrugated iron and gla.s.s lightly adjusted. As they are placed in a row contiguous to each other, the alternate ones only face the same way, so that the line of fire, or the direction the explosion would take through the weakest end, would not be likely to involve in destruction the neighbouring mill. It does occasionally happen, however, that the precautions are not sufficient to prevent danger spreading. In the great explosion which took place in 1842 a second house was fired at a couple of hundred yards distance from the spot where the original explosion took place. There is now a further security against the houses going one after another, like houses of cards. Over each mill a copper tank, containing about forty gallons of water, is so suspended that on the lifting of a lever it instantly discharges its contents and floods the mill. This shower or douche bath is made self-acting, inasmuch as the explosion itself pulls the string, the force of the expanding gas lifting up a hinged shutter which acts like a trigger to let down the water. "But," it may be said, "as the water does not fall until the explosion has taken place, this contrivance is very like locking the stable door when the steed is stolen!" And this is the case with respect to the mill where the original mischief took place; but the lever first acted upon discharges the shower-bath over the heads of all the others also, and by this means the evil is limited to the place where it originated. From the incorporating mills the kneading powder, or "mill cake," as it is termed, is taken by another funeral-looking gondola to small expense-magazines, where it is allowed to remain for twelve hours before being taken to the breaking-down house. Here the hard lumps of mill cake are ground into fine powder by the action of fine-toothed rollers made of gun-metal, which revolve towards each other and crush the cake which falls between them to dust. The broken-down mill cake once more travels between pleasant meadows fringed with willow until it reaches the press house, where the meal is subjected to hydraulic pressure between plates of gun-metal, and is thereby reduced to dense plates about half an inch thick. These plates are allowed to remain intact for a couple of days, by which time they become as hard as a piece of fine pottery. Very many advantages are gained by this pressure. The density of the powder is increased, which enables it to be conveyed without working into fine dust; its keeping qualities are improved, as it absorbs less moisture than if it were more porous; and lastly, a greater volume of inflammable gas is produced from a given bulk.

The pressed cake is now transferred to the maw of one of the most extraordinary machines we have yet witnessed. The granulating house, where the important process of dividing the powder into fine grains takes place, is removed very far away from the other buildings. The danger of the operation carried on within is implied by the strong traverse fifteen feet thick at the bottom, which is intended to act as a shield to the workmen in case of an accident. It was here an explosion took place in 1843, by which eight workmen lost their lives--in what manner no one knows, as all the evidence was swept away. To render the recurrence of such lamentable accidents as rare as possible, the machine is made self-acting. At certain times of the day it is supplied with food in the shape of fifteen hundredweight of "pressed cake." This is stuffed into a large hopper or pouch, and the moment the monster is ready, the men retire beyond the strong traverse and allow it slowly to masticate its meal, which it does with a deliberation worthy of its ponderosity and strength, emptying its pouch by degrees, and by a triturating process performed by two or three sets of fine rollers, dividing it into different-sized grains. These grains it pa.s.ses through a series of wire sieves, separating the larger ones fitted for cannon powder from the finer kind required for rifles, and depositing them in their appropriate boxes, which, when full, it removes from its own dangerous proximity, and takes up empty ones in their place.

All the larger undigested pieces it returns again, like a ruminating animal, to its masticating process until its supply is exhausted. Then, and not till then, like Mademoiselle Jack, the famous elephant, it rings a bell for some fresh "cake." The workmen allow it about five minutes' grace to thoroughly a.s.similate the supply already in its maw, when the machine stops, and they enter with another meal. The floors of all the different houses are covered with leather neatly fastened down with copper nails, and the brush is never out of the hands of the workman: even while you are talking to him, he sweeps away in the gravest manner in order to remove any particles of powder or grit that maybe on the floor; this he does mechanically, when not a particle of anything is to be seen, just as a sailor in a crack ship always holystones the deck, clean or dirty, the moment he has any spare time.

The powder thus separated into grains is still damp and full of dust. To get rid of this it is taken by water to the dusting-house, where it is bolted in a reel like so much flour. It has now to be glazed, a very important operation, performed by placing it in large barrels, which revolve with their load thirty-two times a minute for three hours together. By the mere friction of the grains against each other and the sides of the barrel, a fine polish is imparted to the surface of the grain, which enables it to withstand the action of the atmosphere much better than when it is left unglazed. It is now stoved for sixteen hours in a drying-room heated by steam pipes to a heat of 130 Fahrenheit, and is then finally dusted and proved. There are many methods of proving, but the simplest and most efficacious is to fire the powder from the weapon it is intended to serve. Thus cannon powder is proved by firing a 68-pound solid shot with a charge of two ounces of powder--a charge which should give a range of from 270 to 300 feet. If the powder pa.s.ses the test, which it generally does, it is packed in barrels holding 100 lbs. each, marked L. G. (Large Grain), and F. G. (Fine Grain), as the case may be, and carried to the provisional magazine. When 500 barrels have acc.u.mulated they are despatched in a barge to the Government magazine at Purfleet, near the mouth of the Thames, the Lea forming the connecting link of water between the ca.n.a.ls of the works and that river.

The produce of this establishment, which had fallen so low as 4,500 barrels per annum in 1843, is now so increased by improved machinery that 20,000 barrels a year can be manufactured, and of the very best quality.

Even this supply is far below the consumption during a time of war, and contractors have, and always will have, to furnish a portion of the required supplies; but it seems that a model mill is useful for the double purpose of keeping up a due standard of quality,[27] and of keeping down price. On the uniform strength of the powder depends the accuracy of artillery fire: hence the necessity of having some known standard of quality from which contractors should not be allowed to depart. The improvements which have taken place in the manufacture are very marked.

About the year 1790, when powder was supplied to Government wholly by contract, the regulation weight of charge for a cannon was half the weight of the ball; it is now less than one-third: therefore two barrels are now used instead of three, a reduction of bulk which economizes stowage on board ship as well as in the field. Formerly powder had a range of 190 feet only; the range is now increased to 268 feet! This vast improvement is simply the consequence of the care with which the powder is worked, and the attention bestowed on every detail of the mills since their direction fell into the hands of Colonel Tulloh, Colonel d.i.c.kson, and Colonel Askwith, the present Superintendent.

There is a department at the Woolwich a.r.s.enal to which we must now return, of which the establishments at Enfield and Waltham Abbey may be considered but outlying offshoots. Beyond the ca.n.a.l, at the extreme end of the ground, lie the establishments devoted to the more dangerous portions of pyrotechnic manufacture, such as the filling of rockets, of friction-tubes, the driving of fuses, &c. These ticklish operations used to be conducted in ill-built sheds in the laboratory square, where a sad explosion took place during the war, and Captain Boxer, determining to reduce the risk of accidents, transferred the whole of them in 1854 to this open s.p.a.ce, far away from the neighbourhood of fire. The sixteen houses used for fuse-driving and friction-tube-making are isolated from each other much in the same manner as the incorporating mills at Waltham Abbey: we need not therefore describe them. The rocket manufactory is also so carefully arranged that accidents can rarely happen. The method of driving the composition into these frightfully destructive implements of war was, until lately, not only barbarous but dangerous in the extreme, being forced in by a "monkey," or small pile-driver, worked by eight men.

The pressure of water now does the work silently, effectually, and safely.

The rocket is so fixed while it is being filled, that in case of an accident the discharge will fly through the roof; grit and iron are as carefully excluded as in the powder mills; open s.p.a.ces around the buildings are covered with turf and planted with shrubs, and a raised causeway of wood keeps the communications between the different magazines free from all substances likely to produce friction. The visitor may no more enter one of these carefully-guarded buildings with his shoes on than he could walk into the mosque of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, similarly shod. With equal care the process of greasing the bullet end of the small-arm cartridges is carried on in this portion of the a.r.s.enal. For a long time no lubricating material could be found that remained unaffected in all climates--a very important desideratum, considering the manner in which our stores of war are moved about from the depths of arctic waters to the burning summers of the torrid zone. Captain Boxer, however, in a happy moment, thought of the little busy insect that builds a store-house warranted to keep in all temperatures, and adopted bees' wax, which, added to a little fat, makes a compound which answers the purpose perfectly. The cartridges are dipped about an inch deep into a receptacle of this liquid kept fluid by the heat of gas. As we watched the process going on, we could not avoid reflecting from what insignificant causes great events arise, and that a rebellion which well-nigh s.n.a.t.c.hed India from our grasp sprung from this very cauldron seething with "h.e.l.l-broth thick and slab."

The different departments of the Royal a.r.s.enal are separated by large open s.p.a.ces, in which the rougher materials of war are deposited. The roadways, laid with iron trams, which greatly facilitate the transfer of heavy guns, are lined here and there with pyramids of shot and sh.e.l.l, lackered and shining in the sun. These missiles are continually circulating along the shoots from one spot in the a.r.s.enal to another, pa.s.sing at one time underfoot, at another overhead, the action of gravity being pressed into the service with other labour-saving contrivances, to remove 13-inch sh.e.l.ls and 98-pounder solid shot, sometimes to very considerable distances. Vast as are the stores of these warlike implements, and far as the vistas of pyramids stretch (and there are no less than 688,000 in the a.r.s.enal at present), they would speedily be drained by a short return of war, in which artillery now plays so prominent a part. At the siege of Sebastopol alone, which scarcely occupied eighteen months, no less than 253,042 shot and sh.e.l.l of all sizes were fired from our batteries, a number which the enemy surpa.s.sed, in one attack alone, if we are to believe the evidence afforded by some of the ravines, in which this iron rain descended so thickly that it paved the ground and prevented the gra.s.s from springing up. The French were even more prodigal of these projectiles; for, according to the report made to the Emperor, 1,100,000 of them were sent by our allies into the doomed city.

The neighbourhood of each department is generally indicated by the cla.s.s of war stores to be seen at hand. We may be sure we are near the great-gun foundry, for instance, when we see the long files of iron guns of all sizes and patterns, from the light 32-pounders to the truly formidable 98-pounders of the naval service, flanking the road, compared with which the light bra.s.s field-pieces that fringe the wall of the building itself seem the merest toy-guns. Here and there trim gra.s.s-plots are seen with a neat edging of three hundred 13-inch mortars, and at the grand entrance of the foundry itself enormous sh.e.l.ls, a yard in diameter, prepared for Mallett's mammoth mortar, are planted, as if to show how daring are the ideas of modern war, which proposes to throw such t.i.tanic missiles at the enemy. Here too may be seen veterans which have seen service--avenues of wounded guns from the Crimea. These are the picked specimens of the eighty-eight pieces of ordnance either disabled by the enemy or worn out by their own fire in that ever-memorable siege. One, a 68-pounder, was shattered by a singular accident; just as it was being discharged a sh.e.l.l fired by the enemy exploded in its mouth, and destroyed it after it had fired no less than 2,000 rounds. Another gun, which is split in the muzzle, was. .h.i.t thirteen times. There appears to have been luck in this mystic number, however, for by the aid of an iron band the mishap was repaired, and it went on doing duty until one of its trunnions was knocked off, and even then, like the gallant Widderington, at Chevy Chase, it fought upon its stumps; for, on being sunk into the ground, and fired at a high elevation, it was kept at work up to the end of the siege. Some of these guns are pitted with cannon-shot even as far back as the breech, and one or two are hit in their very stern-most parts. These wounds are the result of ricochet firing, a kind of practice which enables a shot to drop in the most unexpected places.

In the mounting yard, as it is termed, which lies between the gun and carriage factories, the field-pieces are mounted upon their carriages and fitted up for service previous to their removal to the depot of artillery near the Common. Since the war the captured cannon from Sebastopol have been stored here preparatory to their being either broken up or distributed as trophies to the various towns of the United Kingdom. Of these guns 1079 are of iron and 94 of bra.s.s. They are of admirable metal, and would have proved very serviceable, except that unfortunately their bore does not suit any of our shot. Gun-carriages rent by the bursting of guns, or so unscientifically constructed as inevitably to destroy themselves, like the iron carriages taken from the enemy at Kertch, are kept as lessons for the Captain Instructor to dwell upon, when he takes round his bevy of young artillery cadets. This official performs the essential duty of giving the future artillery officer a clear insight into the method of constructing and repairing all the more essential engines and tools he will have to work with--such as guns, gun-carriages, &c., and of obtaining a general notion of the relative strength of metals, and of the value of the various materials out of which the munitions of war are formed. The vast workshops of Woolwich afford an admirable field for the acquisition of this kind of knowledge.

The neighbourhood of the a.r.s.enal to the chief Military Academy in the kingdom gives these embryo artillery officers an opportunity of witnessing the experiments which are constantly going on in the Marshes, either for the purpose of testing new guns, or of practically examining the capabilities of new inventions. The extraordinary energy with which projectors of all kinds (clergymen among the number) devoted themselves to the task of inventing new implements of destruction during the Russian war entirely belied that lamb-like spirit attributed by Mr. Cobden to his fellow-countrymen. No less than 1976 new projects were submitted to the Select Committee of Ordnance with respect to artillery alone. Of this number a large proportion were of the most imbecile kind--such as proposals to fill sh.e.l.ls with Cayenne pepper, chloroform, and cacodyle, the latter a most virulent material which has the property of poisoning the air around it. The asphyxiating ball of the French was the true parent of the whole brood. Only forty-three of the propositions were favourably reported on, and of this number only thirty have been adopted into the service. First and foremost among these is the plan of filling sh.e.l.ls with liquid iron. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the destructive effect of this new application of an old material. At the second shot fired in the Marshes against a perfectly new b.u.t.t which cost 200_l._, it set it on fire and entirely destroyed it. The engines of the a.r.s.enal and the old expedient of heaping earth against the burning wood were of no avail, the molten iron having penetrated in all directions deep into the timber. It is hard to believe that any ship will be able to resist the destructive effect of these sh.e.l.ls, or that ma.s.ses of men will be found courageous enough to withstand their devastating effects; for immediately the percussion sh.e.l.l comes in contact with any object, it explodes and throws the molten metal in all directions--splashing and striking objects that are completely out of the way of the contents of ordinary sh.e.l.ls, and proving far more deadly both to animate and inanimate substances than the famous Greek fire of old. This very invention was brought to the notice of the authorities as early as 1803 by a workman in a London iron-foundry; but the suggestion was so contrary to all the current notions of the time, that it was rejected, and not heard of again until a new war brought into play more advanced ideas.

The new guns that were brought forward were innumerable, and many of them, such as the Mersey steel gun, and the great mortar, are still under trial.

If this mortar, which is built up of a series of rings 9 inches broad and 3-1/2 inches thick, laid over one another, and fitting tightly, so as to form a barrel, should ultimately prove capable of resisting the full charge of 70 lbs. weight of powder, it will be the most destructive implement yet invented for the purpose of crushing fortified places. In some of the trials which have taken place in the Marshes, it threw its 36-inch sh.e.l.l, weighing 26 cwt., upwards of two miles; and when the missile fell, it buried itself in the ground to so considerable a depth, that after digging down 12 feet, and probing for 15 feet more, it still remained undiscovered. The artillerymen say jestingly that it has dropped down to Australia, No casemate at present in existence could withstand the crushing weight of its fall, and its bursting charge of 200 lbs. of powder.

After contemplating this vast establishment for the manufacture of arms, with its sixty steam-engines, which through the agency of upwards of three miles of running shafting, give motion to upwards of a thousand machines, we must not omit to mention the human labour which directs this enormous manufacturing power. During the height of the Crimean war, upwards of 10,000 men and boys were employed in the a.r.s.enal, an army of workers engaged upon the production of the materials of destruction equal to the entire force encamped at Aldershot, and double the number of men that besieged and took Delhi. When such ma.s.ses of men as this have to be dealt with daily, it is obvious how necessary it must be to possess an organized system by which the loss of what might otherwise be considered mere fractions of time is noted. Let us suppose, for instance, that every man and boy in the a.r.s.enal lost only five minutes per day, and it would amount in the aggregate to the loss of the labour of one man for twelve weeks to the Government.

The next problem to be solved is how to pay 10,000 men in any reasonable time. It would be clearly impossible to calculate each man's wages at the time of payment, even if a little army of clerks were employed. It is therefore done beforehand by a staff of men employed for this purpose. The amount due to each person having been ascertained, the money is laid out on boards divided into part.i.tions numbered consecutively. A corresponding number for each man, with the amount to be given to him, is distributed previously to the payment taking place, on what is termed a "pay ticket."

On pay-day the artisans take their places in single file, arranging themselves according to their numbers, and, pa.s.sing in front of the pay-boards, receive their wages, and surrender their tickets, which are receipts for the money. No money is exchanged if not brought back before the man reaches a certain point, and in this s.p.a.ce there are persons stationed to watch that no exchange is made of bad money for good. To search every man as he left would be impossible, yet it is highly necessary to have some means of checking petty depredations of metal, &c.

Formerly peculations of this kind were constant, and the aggregate loss must have been immense. When it was first determined to put a stop to it, the men were told only a few minutes before leaving work that they would be searched as they went out. The effect of this announcement was that the whole a.r.s.enal was strewed with small pilfered articles thrown hastily away. Now a couple of policemen at the gate touch indiscriminately a certain per-centage of the men as they are going, and these have to pa.s.s through a side lodge to be searched. As no man can tell whether or no he will be touched, the whole ma.s.s is kept honest. The mere lodging of such a body of men was at first a difficulty, even in so large a town as Woolwich: the demand, however, soon produced supply, and the means taken to insure the fall of Sebastopol caused the rise of a new town of at least two thousand houses in the immediate neighbourhood of the a.r.s.enal.

Complete as we have shown the organization of the a.r.s.enal to be, both as regards its mechanical resources and its staff, it is generally understood that the Government do not intend to depend upon it wholly for the supply of the munitions of war. In the case of small-arms, its powers, as we have seen, are wholly inadequate to the task. In those branches, however, where the manufacturing power is ample, they will not attempt to push it to the point of excluding the private manufacturer from a share in the business.

This is, we think, a wise decision; for, however excellent may be the present arrangements now everything is new and the broom is fresh, it cannot be denied that the tendency of this and all other Government establishments is to go to sleep, since they neither possess the stimulus of private gain to teach them economy, nor that unity of direction which gives such vigour to private enterprises. The principle of compet.i.tion ought therefore to be kept up, and we should run the private manufacturer against the public one in order to keep down price, and pit the Royal Factory against the trade in order to keep up quality. Another great gain will accrue from the determination of the Government, which is, that the private manufacturers will not lose the art of making certain stores of war--an art which can not be learned in a day. It would be unwise for the authorities to put all their eggs into one basket, and this they would most a.s.suredly do by entirely depending upon their own powers of production, and in disa.s.sociating themselves from the great and fertile manufacturing power of England, which generally knows so well how to economize and progress.

If the Government have shown judgment and foresight upon this point, we cannot say as much for their inexcusable neglect to provide for the security of this enormous establishment, which contains within its walls not only the princ.i.p.al depot of warlike stores in the island, but also the means of producing them. We do not believe that our neighbours are going to sail up the Thames quite as easily as the Dutch did, or that any foreign army marching from Dover could destroy the a.r.s.enal on its way to the capital without our having ample notice of their approach.

Nevertheless we cannot think that the sole a.r.s.enal of England, placed as it is in a very accessible part of the island, should be left entirely without the means of defence. The place itself could not be fortified, as it is commanded by the heights of Shooter's Hill; but the neighbourhood is admirably adapted for the purpose. In the opinion of military engineers, it would not be necessary even to erect the requisite works until the moment their services were required. Half a dozen earth batteries, mounted with heavy guns, would command all the land approaches; and a few flats, posted so as to sweep the reaches of the river, would effectually prevent the approach of any hostile force by water. The scheme of these batteries should, however, be settled beforehand in all their details, so that in the moment of danger they could be completed almost in the presence of the enemy, in case an invader should give the Channel Fleet the slip some misty morning, and succeed in making good his footing upon our sh.o.r.es.

SHIPWRECKS.

There is no n.o.bler or more national sight in our island than to behold the procession of stately vessels as they pa.s.s in panoramic pride along our sh.o.r.es, or navigate the great arterial streams of commerce,--to witness the deeply-laden Indiaman warped out of the docks, or to see the emigrant ship speeding with bellying sails down Blackwall Reach, watched by many weeping eyes, and the depository of many aching hearts. It would, however, spoil the enjoyment of the least-interested spectator if the veil could be lifted from the dark future; if that gallant Indiaman could be shown him broadside on among the breakers; or that stately vessel, with bulwarks fringed with tearful groups looking so sadly to the receding sh.o.r.e, were pictured by him foundering in mid ocean--gone to swell the numbers of the dismal fleet that yearly sails and is never heard of more. Sadder still would be his reflections if another pa.s.sing ship could be shown him, destined perhaps to circle the globe in safety, and when within sight of the white cliffs of Albion, full of joyful hearts, suddenly, in the dark and stormy night, fated to be dashed to atoms, like the _Reliance_ and _Conqueror_, on a foreign strand. If such dramatic contrasts as these could be witnessed, we should without doubt strain every nerve to prevent their recurrence. As it is, the sad tale of disasters at sea comes to us weakened by the lapse of time and the distance of the scene of the catastrophe: instead of having the harrowing sight before our eyes, we have only statistics which raise no emotion, and even rarely arrest attention. In connection with these annual returns there is published a fearful-looking map termed a wreck chart, in which the sh.o.r.es of Great Britain and Ireland are shown fringed with dots,--the sites of wrecks, collisions, and other disasters. From this we perceive how all the dangerous headlands and sandbanks on the coast are strewn with--

"A thousand fearful wrecks, A thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon; Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels-- All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea."

Strange to say, these dismal finger-posts to marine disasters are generally found grouped around the sites of lighthouses. If we a.n.a.lyze the chart for the year 1857, we perceive at a glance the relative dangers of the three seaboards of triangular England, and that a fatal pre-eminence is given to the East coast. Out of a total of 1,143 wrecks and casualties which took place in this year, no less than 600, or more than one-half, occurred between Dungeness and Pentland Frith. Along this perilous sea, beset with sands, shoals, and rocky headlands, no less than 150,000 vessels pa.s.s annually, the greater part ill-constructed, deeply-laden colliers, such as we see in the Pool, and wonder how they manage to survive a gale of wind. The South coast, extending from Dungeness to the Land's End, is comparatively safe, only 84 wrecks having taken place in 1847; whilst from the Land's End to Greenock, where the influence of the Atlantic gales is most sensibly felt, the numbers rise again to 286, and the Irish coast contributes a total of 173.

If we take a more extended view of these disastrous occurrences by opening the wreck chart attached to the evidence of the select committee on harbours of refuge, given in 1857, containing the casualties of five years from 1852 to 1856, both inclusive, we shall be better able to a.n.a.lyze their causes. Within this period no less than 5,128 wrecks and collisions took place, being an average of 1,025 a year. According to the evidence of Captain Washington, R.N., the scientific and indefatigable hydrographer of the Admiralty, these casualties consisted of

Vessels.

Total losses by stranding or otherwise 1,940 " " collisions 244 Serious damage having to discharge 2,401 Collisions with serious damage 543 ----- 5,128

The total losses from all causes, therefore, amounted to 2,184 vessels, or to an average of nearly 437 in each year. The destruction of life consequent upon these casualties was 4,148 persons, or, upon the average of five years, nearly 830 in each year. In 1854 no fewer than 1,549 persons were drowned.