Page:The Development of Navies During the Last Half-Century.djvu/212

 to rest. Then forcing water into the cylinder pushes the piston or ram and the gun out again. The same principle is employed to raise the breech and extract the breech piece when too cumbrous to be withdrawn by hand. Objection has been raised that the system is too complex, and that the gun may be disabled by the rupture of a small pipe. This is true, but the same result may ensue through the destruction of some portion of hand-worked ordnance. It is impossible to have simplicity with any modern gun. It is legitimate, however, to argue that guns should not be mounted afloat which, in the event of anything happening to the hydraulic machinery, cannot be worked by hand.

The 38-ton gun thus loaded and controlled gave great satisfaction. Several of our turret ships are still armed with it, but in time a breech-loading gun will take its place. In 1873 the struggle between guns and armour produced what was then considered likely to prove the climax in each. To equip the ’Inflexible,' carrying 24 in. of armour, with equally powerful ordnance, guns of 80 tons weight were designed. They were originally intended to be of 14½-in. calibre, but were finally bored to 16 in. This gun was given a length of 18 calibres; the charge of powder was 450 lbs. and the projectile weighed 1700 lbs. At 1000 yards it could penetrate 23 in. of wrought-iron, and its initial velocity was 1600 ft. per second.

The following table gives a general idea of the advance made in the size of guns from the time we discarded the 68-pounder smooth bore to the