Page:The Development of Navies During the Last Half-Century.djvu/228

 of time. We must have satisfactory tests in this respect before we can confidently admit it into our ships.

No review of the progress of ordnance would be complete without notice of the great development of what are now called quick-firing guns. They have grown out of the mitrailleuse, first used in the Franco-German War, which consisted in a cluster of rifle barrels automatically fed with cartridges and fired by turning a handle, as sound is produced from a barrel-organ. At first discredited by defective mechanism, which caused stoppage of the action at critical moments, they have since been greatly improved in the systems of Gatling, Gardner, Nordenfelt, and Maxim. The last named has brought to considerable perfection a gun in which the energy of recoil is utilised to perform all the operations of extracting the fired cartridge, reloading, and firing without human interference. Set to operate in this way the gun will continue to fire until its ammunition is exhausted. Against bodies of men the machine rifle—as it might be more fitly termed—can work great execution, but to stop torpedo boats requires a heavier projectile, so that Mr Hotchkiss and Mr Nordenfelt designed a machine gun of larger calibre. In that of the former the barrels revolve, while in Mr Nordenfelt's gun they are stationary. Both are effective weapons. Then came a demand for a single-barrel gun which could throw shot of about 6 lbs. weight and fire several rounds a a minute. The ammunition was to be made up like a rifle cartridge instead of, as formerly with small guns,