Originally published in Saint Pauls (Virtue & Co.) vol.1 #4 (Jan 1868).
On the north side of the Thames' mouth, subtended by the Nore and Sheerness, and imbedded in the Essex flat, stretches the dreary waste of marsh, sand, and turf of which few of our readers can fail to have heard under its now famous name of Shoeburyness. Nowhere along the indented and extended coast-line of the British Isles can a spot naturally more desolate be found. Neither to agriculturist, botanist, ornithologist, conchologist, nor entomologist does the vicinity of Shoeburyness offer any of those congenial attractions which the sea-coast elsewhere commonly boasts. During three-fourths of the year a searching and penetrating sea-wind sweeps over the inhospitable surface of the waste, and lops the heads of the marsh grass as it were with the blade of a knife. Here, and perhaps here alone, in the county of Essex, Mr. Mechi would forswear his optimist views as to the possibility of raising a profitable crop. Not a page would Mr. Philip Henry Gosse here add to his "Manual of Marine Zoology," or to his elaborate "History of British Sea Anemones." Let Mr. Hewitson's ardour in collecting shells and birds'-nests be what it may, there is nothing which would tempt him to linger long at Shoeburyness in the hope of adding fresh specimens of butterflies or lepidoptera to his already unrivalled collections. Nor would the indefatigable patience and investigating zeal of Mr. George Henry Lewes long fortify him in his search for eye of newt and toe of frog, against the disenchanting influences which would here surround him.
Nevertheless, the very unfitness of Shoeburyness for other avocations and recreations has led to its selection as the spot where the great duel between the attacking and defensive forces of modern times should be fought out. Be our shortcomings in guns and armour-plates what they may, no other nation has hitherto expended one-tenth of the money in gunnery experiments, and in testing the power of resistants, which, with true wisdom and economy, we have already devoted at Shoeburyness to these tentative rehearsals of war. In spite of the bloody and exciting stimulation supplied to them by four unparalleled years of strife, our Transatlantic cousins did not commence their experiments with heavy guns against various kinds of armour-plated fortifications until long after the actual fighting had ceased. It is now about fourteen months since a Board of United States army officers, of which Generals Barnard, Gilmore, and Brewerton were the chief members, commenced their experiments at Fortress Monroe. In their gunnery practice of 1866, which was of an incomplete character, the Americans fastened plates of wrought iron in front of the section of a fort, and discharged guns of a heavy calibre at these iron plates. To quote the words of the Times' accurate American correspondent, "nearly every shot penetrated, and some went entirely through the protecting plates of iron 4 inches thick, and only a few shots were fired before the granite wall behind the plates, varying from 8 feet to 12 feet in thickness, and strengthened with stout iron girders and bolts, became a crumbling ruin." It is worthy of remark that, as we shall presently show, our own experiments of the resisting power of granite are singularly in harmony with the American experiments of 1866 at Fortress Monroe. Much more extensive preparations have been made for the American experiments of 1867, and it is possible that before these words meet the public eye, detailed accounts of the results attained will have been transmitted across the Atlantic. But we observe with satisfaction that the same professional jealousy which recently induced our own Royal Engineers to conceal a demolished target behind a thick tarpaulin is at least as rife among the Americans as among ourselves. Strict orders have been issued by the American Government that no information on the subject of the gunnery trials shall be communicated to the public in advance of the official report which is expected by their War Department. Nevertheless, nothing would surprise us less than to find that some American journal is no less outspoken and accurate about the Fortress Monroe experiments than was our own Standard in the description which its correspondent, although forbidden to be present, gave of the trial to which one of Colonel Inglis's iron shields was subjected at Shoeburyness.
The value of the experience which we have gained at Shoeburyness has, as we have already said, not been thrown away upon the Americans. The additional care and expense which they have bestowed upon their Fortress Monroe experiments of 1867 are well worthy of notice, and demand a few words of further comment. In addition to the combinations of stone, brickwork, and iron upon which they experimented in 1866, they have erected sections of three forts for trial in 1867. These sections of forts represent three casemates, one belonging to Fortress Monroe, a second to Fort Carroll, and a third to Fort Wool,—the last two forts being situated near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay,—and have been selected for trial because they are portions of the three strongest works upon the North American continent. The casemates have been constructed with the greatest accuracy, and the varieties of stone and cement employed in the original works have been reproduced in the imitations. The walls vary from 7 feet to 12 feet in thickness, and the average breadth and height of the surfaces exposed to the guns are about 24 square feet. Plates of wrought iron 4 inches thick coat the whole exterior face. No estimate of the outlay expended upon this work has ever entered into the calculation of its constructors, who, with true American magnificence, take more heed to secure valuable results than to count the cost of the operation. Targets to ascertain the exact range of the guns, and electric facilities for gauging the initial velocity of the shots, are not wanting. Moreover, in addition to these artificial casemates, a heavy cemented stone wall has been erected, with a cushion of sand, some 18 feet thick, strapped in front of it. We have recited enough about the intended experiments at Fortress Monroe to demonstrate that, before long, another trial-ground will claim as much attention, and be as pregnant with instruction for artillerists, as Shoeburyness itself.
Meanwhile, the visitor, if curious about guns and shields, will find plenty to repay him for his journey from the metropolis to the mouth of the Thames. Here may be seen, ranged out at sea, or in a line parallel to the coast, targets of iron varying in thickness, backed by all kinds of support, riddled with shot, bulged, cracked, riven, and penetrated, and altogether in seemingly deplorable plight. Separated from these targets, sometimes by a distance of 70 yards, sometimes of two miles, stand guns of every description, from the old-fashioned 68-pounder smooth-bore, recently esteemed the most formidable weapon that forts or ships could carry, up to the Armstrong rifled 600-pounder, or the huge American Rodman smooth-bore, 15 inches in calibre. Stretched across between the target and the gun when a trial takes place may be seen fine gossamer wires, placed at even distances from each other, which, being lacerated by the shot in its passage, record through the marvellous agency of electricity the precise velocity at which it speeds upon its way, and thus enable us to calculate the force of the crushing blow which the target will receive. Mark that granite ruin which stands as a perpetual monument of the explosion of a theory which, until the 15th and 16th of November, 1865, had gained a firm footing in the minds of the Iron Plate and Ordnance Select Committee, and of the favoured engineers attached to the War Department itself. Previous to that date it was believed that a combination of granite and iron was the Eureka which would give security to our land forts. At a cost of £8,000, the War Department erected at Shoeburyness a structure embodying their most approved notions of the latest development of military engineering. It consisted of two artificial granite casemates with two embrasures let into them, and protected with iron shields. The granite casemates were, in substance, a solid stone wall 14 feet in thickness, and with 2 feet of brickwork behind the granite. Of the two embrasures, the eastern or larger was fitted with a built-up shield, and the western or smaller with a solid plate of iron 18} inches thick. The built-up shield, invented by Mr. Chalmers, had a front plate of 4 inches thick, and a backing of thin iron plates 8 inches deep. With. their habitual precipitation, our Royal Engineers, before testing this granite structure, jumped to the conclusion that all our great national defences were to be constructed on this plan, and that the works at Spithead, Plymouth, and all over England, to say nothing of our colonies, were to consist of iron strapped upon granite. Extensive contracts for granite, with a view to pushing on our defensive works all round the globe, were hastily entered into. Unfortunately, the combination-of-iron-with-granite theory received, upon the 15th and 16th of November, 1865, its final sentence of doom. The casemates were rendered untenable after the first ten rounds, and when eighty rounds had been discharged at them with projectiles none of which reached 300 pounds in weight, the whole work became a disintegrated ruin. From that moment it became abundantly apparent that, in conformity with the already declared opinions of Todleben, Brialmont, and Niel, nothing but solid iron was available for employment in first-class permanent forts, and in sites too straitened to admit of the construction of earthworks, or exposed to the wash of the waves.
The subject of our fortifications, ventilated as it has been in the public press, is one which has excited very general interest, not only in the army and navy, but also in both Houses of Parliament, and in the country at large. Nothing is more unfounded than the belief, inculcated by some shallow and short-sighted military engineers, that the science of military engineering is one concerning which civilians of ordinary intelligence are incapable of forming an opinion. It is beyond a peradventure that there are in these islands scores of civilians whose whole lives have been spent in managing iron foundries, and who understand the manipulation, texture, and adaptation of wrought and cast iron far more thoroughly than Sir John Burgoyne, or Sir William Denison, or any of their professional underlings. Nothing is so much to be desired in the true interest of the nation at large as that it shall be conceded that the whole question of our national fortifications is not to be the monopoly of military men. Our Royal Artillerymen are the first to exclaim against our Royal Engineers when it is found that casemates and shields, designed to protect gunners, are, in fact, nothing but man-traps. Such being the case, it is impossible that public attention can be too forcibly drawn to the paramount importance of enlisting in the service of the State the best talent, both military and civilian, which is available for the purpose of rightly directing the large outlay upon permanent fortifications which the House of Commons has sanctioned.
From the moment in which it became possible, through the aid of steam flotillas, to throw large armies upon our shores at different points within a few hours, instead of within a few days, the subject of our coast defences has assumed increasing importance. The introduction of the new rifled cannon, the knowledge that the city of Charleston was riddled with projectiles discharged from guns situated four and a half miles from the spot where their shells burst, and the formidable power of iron-plated ships carrying the heaviest guns, while they are themselves absolutely invulnerable at 400 yards to the strongest ordnance designed for any of our forts, lend to this whole question of our national defences an almost dramatic interest. In old times we did not consider ourselves safe unless our navy was at least a match for all the fleets of the great Powers combined. In these days of iron-clads it is scarcely possible for us to keep armoured ships to be pitted against all the other armoured ships which France, the United States, and Russia, if in combination, might bring against us. For these reasons, it is quite clear that if, in time of war, the enemy could obtain command of the Channel for even 100 hours, we might have to meet on our own shores several foreign armies perfectly equipped, the aggregate of which would far outnumber all our regular soldiers and militia combined. If it were possible to fortify the whole of our coast so that an enemy could nowhere land without considerable delay, we might be considered in a secure position. But when it is remembered that the southern and eastern coast-line of England stretches for 750 miles from the Humber to Penzance, including 350 miles in the aggregate where a landing may be effected, it is obvious that such a series of fortifications cannot be seriously contemplated. The whole subject was referred by Lord Palmerston's Government, in 1859, to a commission of distinguished officers, who made an elaborate report, which was presented to Parliament in 1860. In it they recommended that vital spots along the coast, such as our arsenals and dockyards at Portsmouth, Plymouth, Pembroke, Sheerness, and elsewhere, should be protected, not only by permanent fortifications covering them from an attack by sea, but also by land forts, covering them from an attack en revers by land, conducted by an enemy who had disembarked at some unprotected spot. It was obviously the design of the Royal Commissioners of 1859 to protect, let us say, Portsmouth from being shelled by ships at sea, or by siege guns erected upon Portsdown Hill. The recommendations of this report, although costly, were sensible, if viewed in the light which then illuminated its authors, and, having been warmly championed by Lord Palmerston, they were adopted by Parliament to the tune of nearly £11,000,000.
It appears from a Parliamentary Return of 26th March, 1867, that up to January 1st, 1867, seventy-one works of different kinds had actually been commenced, and an outlay of nearly £7,000,000 up to that time incurred. Few less cheering or reassuring studies await any patriotic Englishman than an investigation as to what portion of those seven millions has been profitably, and what portion unprofitably, spent. It is hardly necessary to remark that, since the Report of 1860 was made public, vast advances have been made in the power of guns, and in the density of iron armour-plates. Further commissions and committees have consequently become necessary, and have reconsidered the same subject in all its bearings, with the advantage of the new lights obtained from experiments at Shoeburyness and in actual war. A body of scientific officers, called the Iron Plate Committee, have tested the new guns, with their multiform projectiles, against the constantly increasing strength of the targets devised by our skilled workers in iron. The American war, with all the lessons taught by the original conflict between the Monitor and Merrimac, and with all the experiences gained at Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Mohile, New Orleans, Galveston, and Vicksburg, has been studied with interest, though not with close attention, and its teachings have been more or less utilised. The battle of Lissa has contributed a valuable chapter of experience. Under the strong momentum imparted to public opinion by the American and German wars, and by the sense of our own insecurity, there is little to surprise us in the fact that giant strides have been made both in the powers of offence and defence. Some idea may be given of the prodigious force with which massive bolts are now hurled, when it is recorded that a shot of 150 pounds has been fired at a velocity of 2,010 feet per second, or, in other words, at the rate of 22 miles in a minute. The intensity of the shock with which a chilled projectile driven at this velocity must strike upon a given object needs not to be enforced. Sir William Armstrong has constructed a rifled gun which carries a shot about 500 pounds in weight, while the Americans are busy with a smooth-bore which is to deliver a projectile weighing more than 1,000 pounds. There is little doubt that we shall soon possess ordnance which will pierce the 9 inches of the Hercules at close quarters, and will riddle the 44 inches of the Warrior at a distance of nearly 2 miles. On the other hand, Sir John Brown has successfully rolled armour-plates up to 15 inches of solid iron, and his example will soon be followed by other firms. It will thus be seen that we have neither ascertained the limit of the force which a projectile may attain, nor have we gauged the ultimate thickness of the defensive armour which is to coat our land forts. The only clearly-defined limit which we appear to be approaching is the weight of iron armour which the flotation of our sea-going broadside ships will enable them to carry.
The recommendation of the Royal Commissioners in 1860, that the defence of our dockyards against sea-attack should be confided to a combined system of forts and floating batteries, has been fiercely assailed by several distinguished officers, who advocate the employment of floating batteries alone. Two additional Reports, emanating from fresh commissioners, have, however, confirmed the wisdom of the views enunciated in 1860. The plan which is at present being carried out, is to erect advanced forts, invulnerable to attack, and self-supporting, which may command the sea to such a distance as to preclude an enemy's ship from lying within shelling range of a dockyard. In case the outer forts should be passed, other forts are being constructed within, which are to continue the fight. These outer and inner forts, being built either upon land or at least upon solid foundations, admit of being coated with armour of any weight, and of carrying guns of any conceivable calibre. In spite of tho famous dictum of Vauban that never yet was fort constructed which could not be taken, these forts are, in fact, intended to be impregnable. They are to be assisted by floating batteries, with a steam power of from 8 to 10 knots, mounting the heaviest guns and the heaviest armour, and somewhat resembling the American Monitors. These are intended to force an enemy's ship, should it pass the outer forts, to assume a position in which it will have to sustain such a concentrated fire from forts and floating batteries as will suffice to secure its destruction. This system, deliberately adopted by several consecutive commissions, and approved by Sir John Burgoyne, Inspector-General of Fortifications, seems not ill calculated to attain the object desired. But before it had been matured, a vast amount of money had already been spent, of which there can be little doubt that the larger proportion has been as recklessly wasted as the huge sums expended upon Cherbourg by the French, or upon Alderney by ourselves.
There is a certain type of mind which, if our foreign critics and detractors are to be believed, is habitually prevalent among Englishmen, and which leads men to think that, if there is danger to be faced, the best way of meeting it is by spending money. To this class the minds of Lords Palmerston and Herbert, enriched as they were with many valuable attributes, eminently belonged. Lord Palmerston never could be made to regard this question of erecting permanent fortifications along the British coast in any other light than as an insurance to be effected upon valuable property, or as money spent by the owner of an estate in draining and subsoil ploughing it. He seemed unable to discern that to spend money in erecting weak and faulty fortifications is very much worse than to spend no money at all. The value of the money wasted is the least important item to be considered. The mischief of such forts as are now being erected upon the No Man and Horse Shoals at Spithead and at Gilkicker Point is, that artillerymen are taught in times of peace to place implicit confidence in works which will crumble in fragments about their ears in times of war. There never yet existed an officer who had much experience in war but was prepared to maintain that it is far more dangerous to place artillerymen, and especially inexperienced artillerymen, behind shields and mantlets which will immediately go to pieces under fire, than it is to bid them fight their guns en barbette, or with open traverses dividing gun from gun. Buoy men up with a false promise of security, and they will no longer quit themselves like men when they find that they have been bubbled. The forts upon which Lords Herbert and Palmerston, and their professional advisers, were swift to lavish premature millions, are, to quote Lord Macaulay's simile, like that sea-mirage in which the mariner sees false cliffs and imaginary headlands, and which is far more dangerous than midnight darkness itself. The experience of Fort Sumter is pregnant with warning to all who are willing or able to learn. Standing in the throat of Charleston harbour, half-way between Morris and Sullivan Islands, and raising its triple tier of guns and its frowning casemates of brickwork proudly aloft, Fort Sumter was held before the American war to be, like Corinth, "a fortress form'd to Freedom's hands." Identified with the opening scene which heralded the bloodiest strife known within half a century, Fort Sumter, from its blood-stained and dislocated ruins, preaches a lesson more deserving the attention of military engineers than any that its upright walls and unmutilated casemates once conveyed. Rent, torn, riven by Federal shot, its barbette guns all dismounted, its embrasures knocked together in battered masses, Fort Sumter appeared "per damna, per cædes ab ipso Ducere opes animumque ferro." Again and again the crenelated heaps of crumbling brickwork, supplemented and knit together with gabions and sandbags, resumed their old attitude of defiance. In spite of tons upon tons of iron poured into the ruin from the Federal mortars, planted only 1,200 yards off on the extremity of Morris Island, for well-nigh four years the young flag of the Confederate States and the palmetto-tree of South Carolina floated insolently from Fort Sumter's twin flagstaffs; nor were they ever lowered before the direct fire of the enemy, or until the successful march of Sherman from Atlanta to Savannah sealed the doom of the rebellion.
The heroic resistance of Fort Sumter, eclipsing, as it does, such famous passages of history as Sale's defence of Jellalabad against the Affghans, or Havelock's obdurate tenure of the Residency at Lucknow, teaches that fortifications suddenly improvised to meet the exigencies of an attack, are like Todleben's earthworks at Sebastopol, of more account than acres of brickwork and masonry elaborately prepared in time of peace. It was not until July, 1863, more than two years after the commencement of the war, that Fort Sumter, weak and vulnerable as its defenders knew it to be, melted away before the fire of the rifled Parrot guns established by the Federals on Morris Island. It was at this moment that General Beauregard's chief engineer, Colonel Harris, remarked to Major Elliot, the officer in command of Fort Sumter, "There is a brigadier-generalship in those shapeless old ruins yet, if you know how to make use of them." In what fashion Major Elliot secured this generalship has already been recorded in history. But we who, being in possession of abundance of heavy guns, and of an unlimited supply of spade-labour, are told that there is no safety for Portsmouth and Plymouth unless defended by towering, permanent castles of brickwork or masonry coated with iron, may be excused if we point to Fort Sumter, more formidable in its ruins than in its integrity,—to the "scientific sandhills" which for three and three-quarter years successfully defended the mouth of the Cape Fear River and the approach to Wilmington,—to the mounds of earth which for more than two years controlled the Mississippi at Vicksburg, and which for four years defied the whole power of the Federal navy at Drewry's Bluff, and closed the James River and the approach to Richmond against the Monitors of the enemy.
Some of our readers will learn with surprise that out of the seventy-one works commenced in conformity with the recommendation of the Royal Commissioners some seven years ago, not one has as yet received its armament. If it be urged that it is scandalous that, after wasting seven years, and spending seven millions of money, we should be totally unprepared for the enemy, it must be confessed, on the other hand, that the revelations of the last few weeks ought to lead us to congratulate ourselves that no forts have been actually armed or completed. For the late trials, which have weighed in the balance not only the Malta shields, but also, as has been well pointed out by Lord Elcho, the men who are responsible for their construction, clearly establish that the War Office is unequal to the task which it has taken in hand, and that its employés are either unconscious of their incapacity, or determined to reject the assistance of competent advisers, even at the expense of failure.
It appears that towards the close of 1866, and at the commencement of 1867, the idea was conceived that it was desirable to protect the embrasures of forts at Plymouth, Malta, Gibraltar, and Bermuda with iron shields. Contracts were at once entered into for twenty of these devices, and fifteen more were subsequently added,—each of the thirty-five shields being contracted for at the cost of £1,000. These shields are 12 feet long by 8 feet high. The outside plate, or plank of iron, is 54 inches thick, 12 feet in length, and 4 feet in breadth. Behind the outer plate is another of the same length and breadth, and 5 inches in thickness. In the rear of all is a skin-plate 1½ inches in thickness. It will thus be seen that the total thickness of the shield is 12 inches. The port-hole for the gun is 4 feet 1 inch high by 2 feet 10 inches wide. Below the port-hole there are four girders, called H girders, and three above the port-hole, all riveted to the inner skin-plate. The plates are kept upright by a buttress of plate and angle iron, leaning against their back at either end of the shield, and fastened with screw-bolts, which pass through the front and middle plates and the skin. The aggregate thickness of 12 inches of iron is, as we have shown, attained by fastening three plates together upon what is called the laminated or plank-upon-plank system. Incredible as it may appear, these thirty-five shields, although condemned by every scientific civilian cognizant of the nature of their structure, have all, with the exception of one or two, been shipped off untested to their distant destinations, and, unless wiser counsels prevail, are to be erected as a challenge to the American fleet at Bermuda, and paraded as the best specimens of military engineering that England can produce before the scrutinising gaze of foreign men-of-war cruising in the Mediterranean. Fortunately for the credit of England, these shields have not escaped the vigilance of some private members of Parliament, who have, by repeated speeches and questions, attracted to this important question the attention of the House of Commons and of the entire country. Lord Elcho, General Dunne, and Mr. O'Beirne have been conspicuous in their onslaught upon Sir John Pakington, and have shown incontestably that the shields have not only been shipped off without any model target having been made in imitation of them, and subjected to trial, but also that the laminated principle upon which they are constructed was emphatically condemned after trial by the Iron Plate Committee in 1862. "It appears then,"—we are quoting from the Iron Plate Committee's Report,—"that even a shield 15 inches in thickness, if constructed in three layers of 5 inches, could not long resist such a gun as the 300-pounder with large charges of powder; the initial velocity of the shot and the work done being so great that nothing less than 7½ inch solid iron will resist it. Probably, therefore, plates or planks 8 inches thick are the least that should be used for a coast battery."
Yielding to an attack which could neither be flanked nor confronted, Sir John Pakington promised to detain one of the shields,—the last left in England, if we mistake not, out of the thirty-five,—and to have it fairly tested. He also promised that a target exactly representing or being a section of the Plymouth Breakwater Fort, now in course of construction, should be set up at Shoeburyness, and subjected to the fire of the largest guns, English and foreign, now in our possession. At the latter end of last October the Malta shield was accordingly tested at Shoeburyness. Contrary to all precedent, sentries forbade the representatives of the press to approach the trial-ground, and none but the military officials concerned in the trial were permitted to be present. Immediately after the firing the battered target was closely veiled by a tarpaulin covering. The piece of ordnance employed was the 9-inch rifled gun, and the trial was inductive,—that is to say, the gun was stationed 70 yards from the target, and fired with a reduced charge, which, by induction, was believed to produce effects equal to those of a full battering charge at 400 yards. Only two shots were fired. The first shot pierced the front plate, bulged out the middle and back plates, breaking the girders and all the bolts in the vicinity. The second shot tore through the structure, breaking away several feet of the back plate, and smashing so many bolts as to make the shield a wreck. When it is remembered that this havoc was wrought in two shots by a gun which is far from being the most formidable weapon at Shoeburyness, a more fatal exhibition of the faultiness of the shield could not be desired. Fortunately we now know their worth in time to prevent our soldiers from being immolated behind structures which, if stricken by two or three shots, would scatter their bolts, as deadly as a shower of grape-shot, among all who stood behind them. Within a few days after the opening of the November session of Parliament, General Dunne elicited from Sir John Pakington a confession that the Gibraltar shield had utterly failed to hold its own against the 9-inch rifled gun. In answer to a pertinent series of questions with which he was subsequently plied by Mr. O'Beirne, the War Minister reluctantly promised that all future trials should be open to the press, and to foreign officers who applied for permission to witness them. Nothing, however, could be more patent than the unwillingness with which Sir John Pakington, as the mouthpiece of the department over which he presides, conceded to the public a permission to be present, which, as he well knew, it was not within his power to withhold. The able correspondent of the Standard, although excluded from the trial-ground upon October the 25th, inferred what its result would be, and described the shield in its wrecked and battered condition as though his eyes were resting upon it as he wrote. But in another portion of his answer to Mr. O'Beirne, the War Minister condescended to employ some special pleading, which, though in all probability put into his mouth by his professional advisers, can scarcely have imposed upon the credulity of any who listened to him. He contended that if the shields sent to Bermuda, Gibraltar, and Malta were admittedly faulty, they could easily be strengthened by adding another layer to them on the spot. It is not denied that if a solid plate 10 inches in thickness were added to the outside of these shields, they would be likely to resist the impact of the 9-inch rifled gun's projectiles. But is it not equally true that a 10-inch plate would resist a 250 shot with or without one of Colonel Inglis's shields to support it? As well might Sir John Pakington plead, when the Warrior's target is perforated, that it would triumphantly resist the same shot if the Hercules' target were placed in front of it. Nor will it be readily credited by any one who knows the resources which Malta, Gibraltar, and Bermuda boast, that, even if 10-inch plates were sent out from England, it would be possible to attach them to the Inglis shields, as Sir John Pakington would have us believe, "on the spot."
We pass by another palliation of these shields on the ground of their cheapness which has been attempted by the friends of their inventor. Nothing which is worthless can, under any circumstances, be economical. The Minister for War has promised that there shall be no more secrecy as regards the trials; that a section of a fort veritably representing that which is in course of erection at Plymouth shall be submitted to test; and that this whole subject shall be investigated by a committee,—of which, indeed, the members' names have already unofficially appeared,—specially appointed for this purpose. These promises, so far as they go, are good; but if the public vigilance as regards the good faith with which they are kept is relaxed, it were better that they had never been made at all. Nor can the day be far distant when it shall be seriously debated in Parliament whether it is not desirable to appoint a permanent mixed and standing committee, whose province it shall be to determine how the money voted is to be laid out in detail, and to prevent contracts being made, until it has been thoroughly ascertained that the materials contracted for are actually wanted.
As the necessity for our having forts at all is fiercely combated by many officers of ability, and as the experience of the American war pronounces loudly in favour of sand and earth-works, it may not be unprofitable to rehearse at this moment the reasons which have guided the commissioners in their expressed determination, which, as is well known, is favourable to the erection of land forts. Inasmuch as our great means of defence will, after all, be our navy, it is of undoubted importance that our ships should be released from the necessity of keeping guard over vital spots upon our own coast, and should be free to act wherever it is advantageous to injure the enemy. If our naval arsenals are altogether unprotected, a great many ships must be detained from active service to guard them. Assuming that it shall be found possible to construct advanced forts in such positions as to keep the enemy more than four miles off from our dockyards, we shall have gained the obvious advantage of setting our fleet at liberty. But nothing is more certain than that each of these forts must be impregnable, for, in the absence of our fleet, they may, each or any of them, have to stand a concentrated fire poured into them by a hostile armada specially prepared for the express object which it takes in hand. A greater disaster than the loss of such a fort as is now being constructed at Plymouth it would be difficult to conceive. In addition to possessing themselves of all that Plymouth, Devonport, and Keyham now contain, the enemy would have a harbour of refuge capable of holding any number of his ships, and would hold in his hands all the network of railroads which traverse the west of England. It will thus be seen what folly we shall be guilty of if we trust such a centre as Plymouth to the protection of any fort which is not able to withstand far greater power of attack than any which could at present be brought against it. Men who idly conceive that they are accomplishing all that is necessary by barely defying the gun of the present day, and take credit to themselves for preferring a weak to a strong shield, because it costs £500 less, are so utterly unable to appreciate the duty which the country demands from them as to stand self-convicted of presumptuous incapacity.
Now the Plymouth Fort stands close behind the breakwater, which is sunk in water deep enough to be safely approached by the largest ships now sent to sea. Although the fact has been stated without contradiction in the House of Commons, will it be credited by our readers that, in spite of the memorable annihilation of the granite casemates at Shoeburyness in 1865, Sir John Pakington's professional advisers proposed to place Colonel Inglis's shields upon the top of an unprotected granite foundation, 14 feet thick, and standing 16 feet above the water-line? No one is more ready to extol the advantages which we derive from our experiments at Shoeburyness than the War Minister of the day, especially when he calls upon the House of Commons to make liberal grants for their continuance. But of what account are they when, in the teeth of the warnings which Shoeburyness itself utters, a naked granite base is exposed to the action of projectiles which we know will crumble it all to pieces before 100 shots have been fired? And, as we write, the contractors are still busily engaged in constructing this Plymouth Fort, while laughing in their sleeve at the fatuity of its designers all the time that the work grows under their hands.
We have said enough to show that the promised Committee, however composed, has abundant work cut out for it to do. But, in the judgment of all impartial observers, no good will be effected by it unless the determination to make it a mixed body of civilians and military men be carried out. We shall be greatly surprised if it be not made manifest that we have to thank military jealousy and exclusiveness, and the dogged determination of professional military engineers to resent any interference or advice emanating from men not in the service, for the lamentable imbecility which has been displayed, and for the reckless expenditure of many millions of the nation's funds which has been incurred. And here it may not be unprofitable briefly to report what Russia, the craftiest among the nations of Europe, is herself doing. It may be premised that the wily Muscovite, knowing that we Englishmen are the greatest workers in iron that can anywhere be found, takes care, in times of peace, to enlist in his service the best civilian talent that London, Newcastle-on-Tyne, or Glasgow can afford. In 1864 the Russians erected, at Cronstadt, an iron shield consisting of two layers of armour, the one 15 inches and the other 6 inches in thickness. We understand that they have in contemplation another shield consisting, again, of two layers,—the one 15 inches and the other 9 inches in thickness, with an additional skin of 1½ inch at the back. All these shields are made and to be made in England. It may well be asked whether it is to be endured that we, who are the most skilful artificers in iron that the world contains, should furnish foreign nations with invulnerable forts, while our own shores, and the strong places in our vast colonial empire, are nominally defended by shields which are admitted by all, except, perhaps, Sir John Pakington and their inventor, to be miserable shams. We have at this moment more than one firm in England which can roll iron plates 15 inches in thickness. Such plates as these are to coat the exterior of some of our Spithead forts, and, if properly backed, are well calculated to protect the embrasures of such forts as the Royal Commissioners have twice recommended for outworks, and will defy, not only the guns of the present, but also all artillery that is likely to be invented for half a century to come.
We have left ourselves but scanty space to descant upon the remarkable "eccentricities," as they have been indulgently termed by the Times, which mark not only the nascent Plymouth Fort, but also the triple lines of fortifications which bristle around the dockyard and arsenal at Portsmouth, and in the advance works at the east and west ends of the Isle of Wight. It has been proudly boasted that no nation ever embarked in times of peace upon so magnificent a work as is disclosed in the great scheme for the Defence of our Dockyards and Naval Arsenals,—a scheme for which, in the main, we have to thank Lord Palmerston and Colonel Jervois. This system of works, imposing enough in the eyes of those who have never seen war on a large scale, is calculated to inspire more terror in the breast of any experienced Englishman who surveys it than in the breasts of the many foreign critics who have been admitted to a sight of it. There are few more impressive views to be seen anywhere on earth than that which awaits the spectator who takes his stand upon the highest elevation of Portsdown Hill, and gazes down upon the vast panorama of the harbour and city of Portsmouth, upon Spithead and the Solent, upon the Isle of Wight and Southampton Water, which lie delineated upon the mighty map stretched out at his feet. Beneath him lie scores upon scores of acres of land and water, studded with forts of every conceivable colour, shape, and material,—forts of iron, granite, Runcorn stone, Portland stone, concrete, chalk, mud, and sand,—forts which every Englishman who gazes upon them instinctively feels will never fire a gun in anger. Nor can it be denied that nothing is more to be deprecated than that either Southwick, Widley, or Nelson.—the three central forts on Portsdown Hill,—or Brockhurst, Rowner, or Grange,—the three principal works of the second line,—should ever be tested by the rough and unmasking experience of war. No one can gaze into the deep chalk ditches which surround the Portsdown Hill forts without seeing that the scarp walls are already gliding in great slices into the ditch, and without imagining what would be the fate of the whole structure if a rapid and angry fire were sustained from 600-pounder guns standing upon the elevated terre-plein of Forts Widley or Nelson. As to the miserably weak caponnières which flank these deep-cut chalk ditches, it will be sufficient to say that they belong to a system already as obsolete as the 68-pounder smooth-bore guns which these forts were originally intended to carry. But coming next to Forts Brockhurst, Rowner, and Grange, it should never be forgotten that Sir Roderick Murchison warned our military engineers many years ago that it would be impossible to build forts in the spongy soil which has here been selected for their foundation. Neglecting any precautionary measures, disregarding the condition of the site on which their forts were to be raised, our military engineers set to work to pile earth and brick-work upon the top of a quaking morass,—and with what result it is not difficult to imagine. These forts,—for which, by-the-bye, Colonel Jervois is not responsible,—carry guns which, although too small in calibre to be of serious annoyance to an enemy, would be quite big enough, if fired, to lay Forts Brockhurst and Rowner prostrate upon the ground. We have little heart to enlarge upon other grievous errors which the works around Portsmouth and upon the Mersey exhibit,—errors which no advance in the power of artillery, and no improvements in projectiles, can excuse. The Hilsea lines, for example, which cover the only approach to the island of Portsea by road from the mainland, have been years upon years in course of construction, and have already swallowed up more money than it would be delicate to mention in Mr. Gladstone's presence. These lines, nearly 3,000 yards in length, and mounting embrasures for 90 guns, are, in substance, long curtains of earth with casemated batteries on the flank of each curtain. It has now been discovered that the embrasures have been placed so close together that the guns cannot be worked, and every alternate embrasure will have to be built up. Not that even thus would these embrasures, although reduced from 90 to 45, be rendered available for use in their present condition. The falling earth, intended to cushion the brick-face of the casemates, has choked up the mouths of the embrasures, and, viewed in conjunction with the great fissures which have already rent the casemates, leaves upon the mind of the spectator an appalling impression of waste, folly, and decay.
Let us turn, in conclusion, to the contemplation of one branch of this extensive subject which it is possible for us to survey without dismay. In the competitive examination of guns which we have for years been conducting at Shoeburyness, it may, we think, be claimed without arrogance that our rifled guns equal, if they do not surpass, those of any other nation. The Americans have succeeded wonderfully in their construction of large smooth-bore guns, in which the excellent quality of their cast iron specially contributes to their superiority. One of these huge Rodman guns, 15 inches in calibre, weighing 19¼ tons, and carrying a round shot of 450 pounds weight, has been recently purchased by our Government, and by reason of its huge bulk attracts no slight attention at Shoeburyness. The Rodman gun is a cast-iron tube without hoops or strengthening bands of any kind, and is calculated to bear a charge of 60 pounds of powder. It has, however, been repeatedly fired at Shoeburyness with 100 pounds of powder, and at 70 yards it penetrated a target of 8 inches of solid iron; and in addition to its penetration, it demonstrated its "racking" power by driving a huge piece of the punched plate through in front of it. The initial velocity of its shot was 1,535 feet per second, or at the rate of 18 miles per minute. This gun, however, not being rifled, is like all other smooth-bores subject to a very rapid decline in the initial velocity of its shot, and it is calculated that at 500 yards, even though fired with 100 pounds of powder, it would altogether fail to penetrate the 8-inch armour-plate. The Americans have, as we are informed, constructed a very much larger gun with a 20-inch bore, and designed to carry a spherical shot of more than 1,000 pounds weight. No one can deny that, constructed as it is of the incomparable American cast iron, this is a very formidable weapon, especially if it be true that its projectile has attained an initial velocity of 1,400 feet per second. Other guns 30 inches in bore are in course of manufacture on the other side of the Atlantic, but hitherto the Americans have not succeeded in rifling any of their heavy ordnance, and consequently the power of penetrating iron possessed by their guns is very much restricted. What results they might attain if they applied what is known as the Lancaster system of rifling guns to their heavy smooth-bores it is not for us to say.
The largest gun, on the other hand, which is possessed by us, and which is called a 600-pounder, is rifled. This gun weighs 22 tons, has a bore of 13 inches, and carries a shot of about 490 pounds. Its power far exceeds that of the American Rodman, as it has penetrated a 9-inch armour-plate, while it retains its initial velocity for a distance five or six times greater than that of the American gun. We have not, however, succeeded in making any gun of this size which has stood the discharge of 100 rounds without being injured. We have guns, respectively, of 7-inch, 8-inch, 9-inch, and 10-inch bores, all rifled, and carrying projectiles varying from 100 to 300 pounds in weight; the last two being of sufficient power to penetrate the 8-inch target. These guns are intended for our first-class ships, and beyond them we do not at present think it safe to go. The superiority of the rifled gun over the smooth-bore consists, not only in the enormously increased power conferred upon it by its long maintenance of its original initial velocity, but also in the fact that its accuracy of flight far surpasses that of the smooth-bore, even over a very moderate distance, and is retained by it until the end.
These few remarks, disjointedly and superficially thrown together, will not have been written wholly without advantage if they awaken in a few readers some thoughtfulness about the magnitude of these questions, which await solution at the hands of a few military engineers, who are, for the most part, men without actual experience of war. Nothing that we have written is designed to bear hardly, or reflect disadvantageously, upon poor Sir John Pakington. Like most of his predecessors, the present Secretary of State for War does but syllable in the House of Commons the words put into his mouth by others. A more sensitive or a more penetrating man than Sir John Pakington might, indeed, be apt to resent the indignity to which he is subjected when he is made to stultify himself by making such utterances from his place in Parliament as that "the forts on the banks of the Mersey were abandoned in order that the money with which it had been intended to construct them might be expended upon the Spithead forts." During his recent visit to Liverpool, Sir John Pakington probably discovered for what reasons the forts upon the banks of the Mersey were discontinued. It would be no slight gratification to the public to learn that either his own amour propre, or zeal for the public service, had induced our present Minister of War to administer a rap over the knuckles to the officials who mocked him by putting such words into his mouth. But, be this as it may, nothing is more certain than that the only hope of securing for the future a better administration of public funds than has disgraced the past depends upon the sustained and unremitted vigilance of private members in the House of Commons, and of well-informed writers in the public press. Much credit is already due to Lord Elcho, Mr. O'Beirne, and other members of Parliament, and also to the zeal and acuteness with which the Standard and the Army and Navy Gazette have kept the facts connected with the Malta shields before the public eye. Nothing but advantage can result from an unabated continuation of this discriminating supervision. In the interest of all concerned we can promise that the unquestioning forbearance with which for many years the explanations vouchsafed by Lord Palmerston and the War Department were received by the country will be exchanged henceforth for suspicious and inquisitorial scrutiny, which, and which alone, has been found potential in securing that the honour and safety of England shall be regarded by many of her own servants to be something better than an empty name.