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They plant mines, put up telegraph and telephone lines in the field, tear down or build up bridges, sling from a ship and set up or land guns as big as 5-inch for their advance base work. It is a belief with marines that the corps can do anything. Right in New York City is a marine printing plant with a battery of linotypes and a row of presses.
Forward and aft are the two barbettes, each carrying a pair of long 12-inch 50-ton guns, firing 850-pound shot, capable of penetrating 28 inches of wrought iron at a range of two miles. The secondary armament of 6-inch or 7.5-inch guns is mounted in "casemates," or armoured chambers, so disposed that two of them can also fire straight ahead, and the other two straight astern.
With such a storm of large and small projectiles it would seem to be rather a question of who would be left alive rather than who would be killed. The guns in use in the United States navy are the 13-inch, 12- inch, 10-inch, 8-inch, 6-inch, 5-inch, 4-inch, 6-pounders, 3- pounders, 1-pounder, Hotchkiss 37 mm. revolver cannon, and the machine guns.
For this reason a battleship needs other protection than that imparted by its cellular subdivision. This is given by its "torpedo defense battery" of minor guns of about 5-inch calibre. By reason of the great vulnerability of all ships to attack below the water-line, the torpedo was invented and developed.
Armor, protected deck, 2 inches to 4-3/4 inches. Guns, main battery, four 8-inch, ten 5-inch, rapid-fire; secondary battery, rapid-fire, fourteen 6-pound, seven 1-pound, four Gatlings, one field gun and five torpedo tubes. Captain Charles V. Gridley. Baltimore Protected cruiser, 4,400 tons. Speed, 20.1 knots. Complement, 386. Armor, 2-1/2 inches to 4 inches.
We estimated that we could make one of four cylinders with 4-inch bore and 4-inch stroke, weighing not over two hundred pounds, including all accessories. Our only experience up to that time in the building of gasoline motors had been in the construction of an air-cooled motor, 5-inch bore and 7-inch stroke, which was used to run the machinery of our small workshop.
The artillery included the 32nd Field Battery R.A. of six 15-pounders under Major Williams; the 37th Field Battery R.A. of six 5-inch howitzers under Major Elmslie, and two 40-pounders R.A. Armstrong guns under Lieut. Weymouth. The ten Maxims, or at least six of them, were mounted upon galloping carriages drawn by horses.
I. Cannon proper, from 16 to 28 caliber, of 8.5-inch bore and 12 feet in length, firing 65-pound shot. The demi-cannon, which was the largest gun carried on ships of the time, was 6.5 inches by 9 feet and fired 30-pound shot. II. Culverins, 28 to 34 caliber long guns, 5 inches by 12 feet, firing 17-pound shot. Demi-culverins were 9-pounders.
But, in for a penny in for a pound, and I have fired off the following protest to a really disastrous cable from the War Office saying that the New Army is to bring no 4.5-inch howitzers with it; no howitzers at all, indeed, except sixteen of the old, inaccurate 5-inch Territorial howitzers, some of which "came out" at Omdurman and were afterwards the whole category found so much fault with in South Africa.
Were we all to be set down in the West to-morrow with our shattered, torn formations, they'd put us back into reserve for a month's rest and training. As for the guns, they'd scrap the lot. They don't want ancient 15-prs. and 5-inch hows. out there.
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