The New Student's Reference Work/Arsenal

Ar'senal, a government establishment for the manufacture, storing and issue of arms, gunpowder and other munitions of war for land and marine forces. In the .United States those naval arsenals which provide for the construction and repair of war vessels, are called navy yards. In the Old World, where the term is more familiar and is equivalent to our navy yard, the most notable is the Royal English arsenal at Woolwich, a borough of the metropolis, with its great gun-factories, military carriage and transport departments, laboratories and establishments for the manufacture of ordinance and war stores, and the seat also of the Royal Military Academy for the education of cadets for the artillery and engineer service. Besides Woolwich, there are also in England notable naval dock-yards at Portsmouth, Chatham, Sheerness, Millwall and the West India docks at London, together with naval stations abroad at Gibraltar, Malta, Ascension, Bermuda, Cape of Good Hope, Sydney, Bombay and Weihaiwei. Other Old World arsenals embrace those of France at Cherbourg, Brest, Toulon, and Le Orient; those of Germany at Wilhelmshaven, Kiel and Dantzic; those of Russia at Kronstadt, Reval and Sevastopol; besides Antwerp in Belgium, Cartagena in Spain and Venice and Spezia in Italy. In the United States the home navy yards, are at Brooklyn, N. Y., Charlestown, Mass., Kittery, N. H., Washington, D. C., League Island, Pa., Portsmouth, Va., Mare Island, Cal. and Puget Sound, Wash. Besides these, there are naval stations at Charleston and Port Royal, S. C., Key West, Fla., Algiers, La., Pensacola, Fla. and at North Chicago, Ill., for the Great Lakes service; together with torpedo and training stations at Newport, R. I., and a training station at Yerba Buena Island, Cal. In foreign parts the United States have naval stations at Tutuila, Samoa; at the Island of Guam; San Juan, Porto Rico; Culebra, W. I.; Guantanamo, Cuba; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Cavite, Philippine Islands. At home, Springfield, Mass., has from the Revolutionary era been the seat of the small-arms manufacture; Harper's Ferry at an early era also became important as an arsenal, with others, later on selected, at Watertown, Mass., Watervliet, N. Y. and Rock Island, Ill., besides a powder depot at Dover, N. J. and a proving ground at Sandy Hook, N. J. During the Civil War, there were arsenals at Springfield, Boston, Washington and elsewhere, but then, as now, for powder, small-arms and war supplies, the United States chiefly depended and depends on private factories, and on the larger manufacturing firms; also for the heavy guns used by the army and navy.