malleable iron?” asked one of the audience. The inventor simply folded it, and double folded it, and laid it again on the table in answer.
Representative men of the iron-master mould were present, some of whom denied that there was anything novel in the process, and others asserted that it was too costly to be of any use. Others inquired why it was that Mr. Bessemer chanced to be successful now, having failed of commercial success at the outset.
“I expended 7,000l.” said one, “and lost forty per cent. of iron in the process.”
“I,” replied Mr. Bessemer, “sometimes lost a hundred per cent., but I persevered. I found that experimenting with heavier charges of metal, gave a decided improvement, and I found that all ores were not equally suited to my process. Blaenavon pig at 9l. 10s., was not so good as Swedish pig, nor as the red hematite of Cumberland, of which class of ores nearly a million tons are raised annually, yielding upwards of sixty per cent. of metal.”
“The process melted down the lining of our furnaces,” said another.
“So it did mine,” replied Bessemer, “till I established myself as a steel manufacturer at Sheffield, and got to use the Sheffield road-drift. In short, when I began my experiments, I was an amateur iron-master, and two years of consecutive work have converted me into a practical man.”
Most engineers present felt that they were in the presence of a benefactor, who had immeasurably enlarged the sphere of their operations, whether in bridges, rails, locomotives, or ships. It was the triumph of a simple-minded man, earnest of purpose, and frank of nature, with nothing to conceal, but with the instinct of unsealing every mystery of nature so far as he could, and giving it to man’s uses. And, verily, that man had toiled and ranged through matter for twenty years, and at last gave to the world a process of which the results are incalculable;—homogeneous iron and steel without limit as to size.
Upon projectiles and projectile weapons these results must have an enormous effect; the process of welding iron together for barrels of small arms and for great guns may now be dispensed with. A short, thick, hollow cylinder being cast, may be at once rolled out direct between rollers into a musket or rifle barrel of any desired form; and great guns may be cast hollow, and put under the operation of a tilt or steam hammer, if needed, to consolidate the metal. And these malleable iron guns can be procured at one-third the cost of the ordinary cast-iron guns; and, what is very important, the malleable steel is even cheaper in cost than the malleable iron. The class of guns described in the last number to be borne on wheels without horses, might be produced with little labour and cost, very rapidly to any amount.
With regard to monster guns, they may be regarded as useful only for two purposes—to mount on forts for defence, and to place in vessels. They are not otherwise transportable weapons of offence. This question is yet in embryo; but if armoured ships are to obtain, this question must obtain also. For shot that are to pierce armoured vessels, it is quite clear that the Bessemer malleable steel will prove a most important material, as it can easily be tempered to any required hardness to act as a punch, and can be more easily manufactured than the wrought-iron shot that have replaced fragile cast-iron.
Before constructing monster guns we have yet to settle the question of the form, proportion, and weight of the shot we are to use for given distances with a given destructive power. This ascertained, there will be no difficulty in the construction of the gun itself. But it should be a gun so proportionably heavy as to be absolutely without recoil; so long as to expend expansively the minimum amount of powder required to obtain the longest possible range; so dense in the material as not to fracture; and so solid as not to spring and temporarily enlarge its diameter with the explosion. A maximum-sized gun of this kind would probably weigh 100 tons, and if used for forts would require machinery to move it and aim it. If used in vessels it would be placed fore and aft with only a vertical movement, and the vessel itself would serve as a stock to it, lateral movement being given by the screw and rudder. Fitted to an armoured vessel, with the bows thoroughly protected, such a gun would be able to batter down everything in the shape of a stone wall at such a distance as to render being hit from the fort almost an infinitesimal chance. It would be like shooting at the edge of the east wind.
Long-range rifles, it may be remembered, were more than a match for the fort-mounted artillery at Bomarsund and in the Crimea, killing off the artillerymen. This will become more and more the rule as guns are improved. Monster guns are not calculated to pick off skirmishers, and it therefore becomes needful to protect their gunners. With the large embrasures of the ordinary kind which would be required for monster guns, the risk to the gunners would be much increased. It therefore is well to inquire whether there is any reason why the gun should not be closely covered in. With the ordinary mode of mounting on trunnions this seems scarcely practicable. But it would be very practicable to mount the gun on a sphere or ball working in a socket and capable of radiating in any direction. If the radius of the gun were only required to be small, as in a moving vessel, the ball might be placed at the muzzle, and in such case little sound or vibration, and no smoke whatever should come into the vessel, and no damage could be done to the gun save by shot striking exactly in the muzzle. This is so perfectly practical an arrangement, that nothing but the fact of a ship’s sides being too weak to sustain the recoil of guns so attached ought to keep it out of use. Our sailors are too precious a commodity to have them wasted in working muzzle-loading guns at open ports. The steam ram now constructing is perfectly adapted to this arrangement, and a properly constructed gun should be free from recoil. Even in our present state of knowledge, muzzle-loading guns must be regarded as things of the past, matching with “Brown Bess” and other Tower antiquities. Into the details of construction it is not desirable to enter; and although the improvements indicated give these advantages chiefly to nations with manufacturers widely spread and of