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Updated: June 7, 2025
During the afternoon which I spent among the Boers in their camp behind Bulwana Hill I had exchanged a few words with an Englishman whose name is of no consequence, but who was the gunner entrusted with the aiming of the big 6-inch gun. He was a light-hearted jocular fellow outwardly, but I was not long in discovering that his anxieties among the Boers were grave and numerous.
Captain Austin, R.A., who shared the humidity of my truck, and who had been in charge of a 6-inch field-gun trained on Magersfontein at eight thousand yards, told me that he could see through his glasses the whole working of the enemy's admirable system.
She was launched in November, 1906, and had a water-line length of 443 feet; beam, 57 feet; draft of 21-1/ feet, and a speed of 21 knots. She carried two 8-inch, eight 6-inch, twenty-two 12-pounders, four 3-pounders, and two torpedo tubes. Seven inches of Krupp armor protected the vessel amidships and four inches forward.
The U. S. S. Baltimore, protected cruiser, 4,600 tons, speed, 20.09 knots. Battery: four 8-inch, six 6-inch rifles, four 6-pounder, two 3-pounder rapid-fire guns, two 1-pounder rapid-fire cannon, four 37-millimetre Hotchkiss cannon, and two Gatlings. The U. S. S. Boston, protected cruiser, 3,189 tons, speed, 15.6 knots.
The laminated iron core of the armature, formed of thin iron disks, was 33 3/4 inches long, and had an internal diameter of 12 1/2 inches, and an external diameter of 26 7/16 inches. It was mounted on a 6-inch shaft.
Early in the first hours of January 24, these two forces, unknown to each other were steaming head on, the Germans taking a course leading northwest and the English a course leading southeast. At twenty minutes past seven in the morning the Aurora first sighted the enemy and engaged him immediately with her two 6-inch guns, sending at the same time word of her discovery to Admiral Beatty.
As the vessels steamed away their aft guns were used, but only a few shots were fired. The Morrill’s 6-inch gun was elevated for four thousand yards, and struck the earthwork repeatedly. The Vicksburg discharged only three shots from her 6-pounder. The Spaniards continued to fire shot and shell for twenty minutes, but none of the latter shots came within one hundred yards.
In the former district the gas rushes with such velocity through a 6-inch pipe, extending perhaps 20 feet above the surface, that it does not ignite within 6 feet of the mouth of the pipe. Looking up into the clear blue sky, you see before you a dancing golden fiend, without visible connection with the earth, swayed by the wind into fantastic shapes, and whirling in every direction.
It must be remembered that a gun varies as the cube of its calibre. A 12-inch piece is not twice as powerful as a 6-inch. It is eight times as powerful. The howitzer could now fire from an immense distance. The circumference on which it worked was very much larger; its opportunities for finding suitable steep cover far greater.
Its main battery consisted of ten 11-inch guns, mounted in pairs in five turrets. Its secondary battery contained twelve 6-inch guns. Twelve 24-pounders and four torpedo tubes completed its armament. The Moltke was 610 feet long over all, with a beam of 96-3/4 feet, and cost $12,000,000. With the Moltke three German cruisers and seven torpedo boats, all unnamed, were destroyed.
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