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With regard to armament, our field artillery were able to assist with their 4.2 inch howitzers, but the 18-pounder field guns, with their flat projectory, were, at this stage, found to be of little use.

The next shop, devoted to 18-pounder field-guns, was "green fields fifteen months ago," and the one adjoining it, a fine shed about 400 feet square, for howitzer work, was started in August last, on a site "which was a bog with a burn running through it." Soon "every foot of space will be filled with machines, and there will be 1,200 people at work here, including 400 women.

To the British Navy were also added two classes of sloops of war; the largest, of about 430 tons, mounted 18 32-pounder carronades on the main-deck, and 6, 12, or 18-pounder carronades on the quarter-deck and forecastle, with two long sixes, making a total of 26 guns, with 121 men and boys. The second-class was the 18-gun brig-sloop.

She proved to be an 18-pounder 38-gun frigate, with a flush upper-deck fore and aft, which presented a beautifully spacious appearance to us who had been accustomed to the cramped look of the "Juno's" upper-deck, cut into by the poop and topgallant-forecastle.

I had my company in shelters under a bank, clear of the village but immediately in front of a battery of 18-pounder guns, whose incessant firing, added to the evil whistle of the German shells, deprived the nights of comfortable sleep. But passive experiences were due to give place to active. Events of moment were in store.

Each of the boats named possessed, as part of her fighting equipment, a gun mounted in the bows upon fore-and-aft slides, those belonging to the launch and yawl being 18-pounder carronades, while the first and second cutters each mounted a 12-pounder.

Meanwhile during this year and the next additional contracts were given the Cunard Company for carrying the mails between Halifax, New York, and Bermuda, on the North American side, in small steamers, fitted with space for mounting an 18-pounder pivot-gun, subsidy ten thousand six hundred pounds a year; and for a monthly mail conveyance between Bermuda and St.

A high velocity gun, with a flat projectory, like our 18-pounder, has two disadvantages in mountain warfare. When the gun is firing from behind a steep hill, the shell, on leaving the gun, is liable to strike the hill in front instead of clearing the crest.

At this time, a desperate character, named Cayatano Aragonez, commanded a schooner called the Zaragonaza, of 120 tons, carrying a long swivel 18-pounder, 4 long 9-pounders, and 8 swivels, with a crew of between 70 and 80 men. Hearing of the way his friends had been treated, looking upon it as an ungenerous act, he vowed to take fearful revenge on all the English he could capture.

The drone of the gas shells passing overhead, and the knowledge of this device on the part of the British artillery, was very reassuring to the waiting troops. For a few minutes before zero all was tranquil, and the men were quietly waiting. Zero was at 3-50 a.m., at which hour it was quite dark. Suddenly there was heard the firing of an 18-pounder battery.