Part 9 (2/2)
Statisticians inform us that the entire loss of life in wars between so-called civilised countries from the year 1793 down to 1877 had reached the enormous amount of four million four hundred and seventy thousand. To many persons these figures convey a sad and salutary lesson. But, leaving the sentimental part of the subject aside, all will readily unite in admiring the wonderful mechanism which makes the Maxim Machine Gun an engine of terrible destructiveness. Stanley provided himself with this formidable weapon, to be used defensively in the expedition on which he started for the relief of Emin Bey. It obtained a gold medal at the Inventions Exhibition, and has been approved of, if not actually adopted, by many governments.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Rifle-calibre Maxim Gun.]
Its rate of firing--770 shots a minute--is at least three times as rapid as that of any other machine gun. It has only a single barrel, which, when the shot is fired, recoils a distance of three-quarters of an inch on the other parts of the gun. This recoil sets moving the machinery which automatically keeps up a continuous fire at the extraordinary rate of 12 rounds a second. Each recoil of the barrel has therefore to perform the necessary functions of extracting and ejecting the empty cartridge, or bringing up the next full one and placing it in its proper position in the barrel, of c.o.c.king the hammer, and pulling the trigger.
As long as the firing continues, these functions are repeated round after round in succession. The barrel is provided with a water jacket, to prevent excessive heating; and is so mounted that it can be raised or lowered or set at any angle, or turned horizontally to the left or to the right. The bore is adapted to the present size of cartridges; and the maximum range is eighteen hundred yards. The gun can therefore be made to sweep a circle upwards of a mile in radius.
Nor is the gun excessively heavy, its total weight being only one hundred and six pounds, made up thus: Tripod, fifty pounds; pivot (on which the gun turns and by which it is attached to the tripod), sixteen pounds; gun and firing mechanism, forty pounds. The parts can be easily detached and conveniently folded for carriage, and may be put together again so quickly that, if the belt containing the cartridges is in position, the first shot can be delivered within ten seconds. It would therefore be extremely serviceable in preventing disaster through a body of troops being surprised. Reconnoitring parties, too, would deem it prudent to pay greater deference to an enemy's lonely sentry on advanced outpost duty if the latter were provided with this new Machine Gun, instead of the ordinary rifle.
Immediately below the barrel of the gun, a box is placed, containing the belt which carries the cartridges. The belts vary in length. Those commonly used are seven feet long, and capable of holding three hundred and thirty-three cartridges; shorter ones hold one hundred and twenty cartridges; but the several pieces can be joined together for continuous firing. Single shots can be fired at any time whether the belt is in position or not--in the former case by pressing a b.u.t.ton, which prevents the recoil; in the latter, by hand-loading in the ordinary way. To start firing, one end of the belt is inserted in the gun, the trigger is pulled by the hand once, after which the movement becomes continuous and automatic as long as the supply of cartridges lasts. At each recoil of the barrel, the belt is pushed sufficiently onward to bring the next cartridge into position; the mechanism grasps this cartridge, draws it from the belt, and pa.s.ses it on to the barrel. Should a faulty or an empty cartridge find its way in, and the gun does not go off in consequence, there is of course no recoil to keep up the repeating action, and the mechanism ceases to work until the obstruction is removed.
To devise and adjust the necessary parts of the machine with such precision that each part performs its proper function at the exact moment pre-arranged for it--to do all this while the gun fires at the enormous rate of six hundred rounds a minute, must have cost an immensity of thought, of labour, and of time.
The 'Colt Automatic Gun,' a new machine gun manufactured by the Colt Firearms Company, of Hartford, Connecticut, promised in 1896 to be a rival to the Maxim, as it fired 400 shots a minute.
Hiram S. Maxim was born in the state of Maine in 1840, and in his fourteenth year was apprenticed to a carriage-builder. From his father, who had a wood-working factory and mill, he learned the use of tools and derived his inventive turn of mind. After some experience in metal-working in his uncle's works at Fitchburg, he was in turn a philosophical instrument maker, and on the staff of some ironworkers and s.h.i.+pbuilders. About 1877 he became a consulting electrical engineer, a branch of science which he studied and became master of in a short time.
Some of the earliest electric lights in the States were devised and erected by him. He was in England and Europe in 1880 in order to investigate electrical methods there. He was back in London in 1883, and after that visit, like Siemens, he made it his headquarters. What leisure he now had (1883-4) on hand he devoted to inventing his automatic machine gun, which should load and fire itself, and the British government was the first to recognise its merits and adopt it.
The making of it has been taken over by the Maxim-Nordenfelt Gun Company, which has a capital of about two millions sterling.
Like Edison he has taken out about a hundred different patents, some of which are connected with oil motors and smokeless gunpowder. His flying-machine, as described in his paper at the British a.s.sociation in 1894, burns oil fuel, which developed three hundred and sixty horse-power. It was driven at sixty miles an hour horizontally, and the machine contained an aeroplane sloping six degrees to the horizon. The weight to be lifted was eight thousand pounds. After running nine hundred feet, the machine exerted an upward thrust of two thousand pounds greater than its own weight. The machine, after one thousand feet, broke loose; the steam was shut off, and it fell. The experiments have been conducted at Bexley, in Kent, where Mr Maxim had a light track of railway laid down, sixteen hundred feet long, on which the machine moved. The back part of the machine having been liberated from the check-rail too soon caused the accident at the experiment, and sent the whole machine off the track. There is sufficient evidence that it did rise from the ground, and Lords Rayleigh and Kelvin have become believers in its possibilities. This machine, as described at the time, with its four side sails and aeroplanes set, is over one hundred feet wide, and looks like a huge white bird with four wings instead of two.
It is propelled by two large two-bladed screws, resembling the screw-propellers of a s.h.i.+p, driven by two powerful compound engines.
IRONCLADS.
A modern ironclad is an enormous piece of complicated mechanism. In order to protect this mechanism from hostile shot, the greater part of it is placed under water and covered by a thick steel deck; the remainder above water being protected by vast armour-plates varying from eight to twenty-four inches in thickness. From the exterior, an ironclad is by no means a thing of beauty; one writer has described it as 'a cross between a cooking apparatus and a railway station;' but in place of this ingenious parallel, imagine a low flat-looking ma.s.s on the water; from the centre rises a huge funnel, on either side of which are a turret and a superstructure running to the bow and stern; two short pole masts, with platforms on the top for machine guns, complete an object calculated to bring tears to the eyes of the veteran sailor who remembers the days of the grand old line-of-battle s.h.i.+p, with its tall tapering masts and white sails glistening in the sun. A stranger going on board one of our newest types of ironclads would lose himself amid the intricacies and apparent confusion of the numerous engines, pa.s.sages, and compartments; it is a long time, in fact, before even the sailors find their way about these new s.h.i.+ps; and the Admiralty allow a new ironclad to remain three months in harbour on first commissioning before going to sea, in order that the men may become acquainted with the uses of the several fittings on board, each ironclad that is built now being in many ways an improvement on its predecessor.
Those who have not been on board a modern ironclad can form no idea of the ma.s.siveness and solidity of the various fittings; the enormous guns, the rows of shot and sh.e.l.l, the huge bolts, bars, and beams seem to be meant for the use of giants, not men. Although crowded together in a comparatively small s.p.a.ce, everything is in perfect order, and ready at any moment to be used for offensive or defensive purposes. It is not, perhaps, generally known that the captain of a man-of-war is ordered to keep his s.h.i.+p properly prepared for battle as well in time of peace as of war. Every evening before dark the quarters are cleared and every arrangement made for night-battle, to prevent surprise by a better prepared enemy. When at anchor in a harbour, especially at night, the s.h.i.+p is always prepared to repel any attempts of an enemy to board or attack with torpedoes or fires.h.i.+ps. In addition to the daily and weekly drills and exercises, once every three months the crew are exercised at night-quarters, the time of course being kept secret by the captain, so that no preparations can be made beforehand, the exercise being intended to represent a surprise. In the dead of night, when only the officers of the watch and the sentries posted in the various parts of the s.h.i.+p are awake, the notes of a bugle vibrate between the decks; immediately, as if by magic, everything becomes alive; men are seen scrambling out of their hammocks, and lights flash in all directions; the huge sh.e.l.ls are lifted by hydraulic power from the magazines, placed on trucks, and wheeled by means of railways to the turrets; men run here and there with rifles, boarding-pikes, axes, cases of powder and ammunition; others are engaged laying fire-hose along the decks, others closing the water-tight doors; while far down below, the engineers, stokers, and firemen are busy getting up steam for working the electric-light engines, turrets, &c. At the torpedo ports, the trained torpedo-men are placing the Whiteheads in their tubes; others are preparing cases of gun-cotton for boom-torpedoes. In ten minutes, however, all is again silent and each man stands at his station ready for action. The captain, followed by his princ.i.p.al officers, now walks round the quarters and inspects all the arrangements for battle, after which various exercises are gone through.
A bugle sounds, and numbers of men rush away to certain parts of the s.h.i.+p to repel imaginary boarders; another bugle, and a large party immediately commence to work the pumps; another low, long blast is a warning that the s.h.i.+p is about to ram an enemy, and every man on board stretches himself flat on the decks until the shock of the (supposed) collision takes place. After a number of exercises have been gone through, the guns are secured, arms and stores returned to their places, the men tumble into their hammocks again, and are soon fast asleep.
[Ill.u.s.tration: One of the 'Wooden Walls of Old England.' _The Duke of Wellington_ Screw Line-of-Battle s.h.i.+p. One hundred and thirty-one Guns.]
It would be interesting to glance at some of the princ.i.p.al offensive and defensive capabilities of a modern ironclad. The first-cla.s.s line-of-battle s.h.i.+p of fifty years ago carried as many as a hundred and thirty, what would be called in the present day, very light guns; in contrast to this, her Majesty's armour-plated barbette ram _Benbow_ carries _two_ guns weighing a hundred and ten tons each. These enormous weapons are forty-three feet eight inches long, and are capable of sending a shot weighing three quarters of a ton to a distance of seven miles. The effect of a sh.e.l.l from one of these guns piercing the armour of a s.h.i.+p and bursting would be very disastrous, and there are few, if any, s.h.i.+ps whose armour, when fairly hit at a moderate distance, could withstand such a blow.
Guns, however, although terrible in effect, are now supplemented by other and more deadly means of offence. Foremost amongst these stands the Whitehead or Fish Torpedo. This infernal machine can be discharged from tubes in the side of a s.h.i.+p to a distance of a thousand yards under water at a speed of twenty-five miles per hour. Armed with its charge of gun-cotton it rushes forth on its mission; and, if successful in striking the s.h.i.+p against which it is aimed, explodes, and rends a large hole in her side, through which the water pours in huge quant.i.ties. In order to protect a man-of-war from this danger, she can be surrounded at short notice with thick wire-nettings, hanging from projecting side-spars, against which the torpedo explodes with harmless effect.
These nettings are, however, princ.i.p.ally intended for use when s.h.i.+ps are at anchor in harbour at night; they could not well be employed in action with an enemy, as they offer such resistance to the water as to reduce the speed of the s.h.i.+p by four or five knots, and so enc.u.mber her as to render her liable to be rammed by a more active opponent.
All large ironclads now have two or three torpedo boats. These craft are constructed of steel one-sixteenth of an inch thick, and steam at a speed of sixteen knots, some of the larger kind reaching twenty or twenty-one knots an hour. Carrying two Whiteheads, they are valuable auxiliaries to the parent s.h.i.+p; their rapid movements, together with their dangerous freight, distracting the attention of an enemy.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The _Majestic_.]
Machine-guns, however, form a very effective remedy for them; a single torpedo boat attacking an ironclad would, directly she got within range, be riddled with Gardner and Nordenfelt shot, and sunk in about fifteen seconds. It is only when three or four approach in various directions, or during night attacks, that they become really dangerous. The electric search-lights, with which most large men-of-war are now provided, will show a torpedo boat at the distance of a mile on the darkest night; but there is of course always a chance of their getting close enough to a s.h.i.+p to discharge a torpedo before they are discovered.
The bow of many of our ironclads is constructed for the purpose of ramming (running down and sinking) an antagonist. To use a ram requires great speed and facilities for turning and manoeuvring quickly; for the latter purposes, short s.h.i.+ps are better than long ones. It would be a comparatively easy thing for a s.h.i.+p steaming fourteen knots to ram another that could only steam ten; a small s.h.i.+p might also outmanoeuvre and ram a long one; but it would be extremely difficult, in fact almost impossible, for a s.h.i.+p to ram another vessel of equal speed and length. To secure facilities in turning and manoeuvring, all our modern s.h.i.+ps are built as short as possible, and have two screws, each worked by entirely separate sets of engines, so that one can go ahead whilst the other goes astern. If one set of engines is disabled, the other can still work independently, and a fair speed be maintained.
We always think that two s.h.i.+ps at close quarters trying to ram one another, must be like a game at chess, requiring the closest observation of your opponent's movements and the nicest judgment for your own, a wrong move being fatal to either.
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