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Updated: June 1, 2025
She might have been wrong in some respects, but surely she was right in the main. "This man," said Mr. Colton, pointing to Kauffman, "is known to me as a munition expert. He bears the endorsement of the Secretary of War and is the inventor of the most effective shells we now manufacture. What you have mistaken for a bomb is his latest design of projectile for an eight-inch gun.
Cochrane," she said professionally. "I'll strap you in this first time. You'll do it later." Cochrane lay down in a contour-chair with an eight-inch mattress of foam rubber. The stewardess adjusted straps. He thought bitter, ironic thoughts. A voice said: "Mr. Cochrane!" He turned his head. There was Babs Deane, his secretary, with her eyes very bright.
On the fifth evening of the bombardment a German eight-inch shell registered a direct hit on the billet and wiped out ten men who were asleep in the supposedly bomb-proof cellar. They were buried the next day and I attended the funeral. From this conversation I learned that we were to bombard the German lines for eight days, and on the first of July the "Big Push" was to commence.
Again, on the 16th, the naval brigade guns were engaged in the attack on Secundra Bagh, when Lieutenant Salmon, RN, was severely wounded, and Martin Abbot Daniel, midshipman, was killed by a round shot in the head. In writing to his father, Captain Peel says: "It was in front of the Shah Najeef, and in command of an eight-inch howitzer, that your noble son was killed.
The following days till Sunday were spent in unloading powder and shell. The six and eight-inch charges of powder and the shell were lifted by hand and slid down chutes to the barges alongside. To handle the powder and shell for the thirteen-inch guns, steam was called into service; the thirteen-inch charges being lowered into the waiting boat, by the aid of the cargo boom and steam winch.
Now that Captain Gray's industry had lined the river-shore with batteries armed with twenty-four, thirty-two, and sixty-four pound guns, and eight-inch howitzers and columbiads, sufficient to blow out of the water any unarmed steamer that should venture to cross, the task was impracticable with his present resources.
While the shelling was as nothing compared to bombardments we went through later, still it gave us an opportunity to make the acquaintance of the various kinds of shells from "whizz-bangs" up to something of about eight-inch caliber. The first casualty in the battalion was a scout named Boyer who was killed on his initial trip into No Man's Land the first night in the trenches.
The ships of the blockading fleet, however, saw her coming out about midnight, turned their big guns upon her, and sank her with six-and eight-inch projectiles before she could get into position.
With this mental picture before me, my thoughts touched upon other happenings of that boyhood voyage the long, tedious beat through the straits against light head winds and a continuous head tide; the man-killing log windlass, round which we hove, and lightened, chain of an eight-inch link; the natives, with their welcome fruit in exchange for trinkets; and, lastly, the white-haired old pilot, who came forward to visit me one evening on anchor watch.
General Cullum, Halleck's chief of staff, who was stationed at Cairo and had immediate charge and supervision of sending reinforcements and supplies to the armies in Halleck's department, not finding rifled thirty-twos, obtained three twenty-four-pounders and one eight-inch howitzer.
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