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They were so much lighter that we could jump them across a rough country where the teams could hardly move a Napoleon. We could subdue our adversaries' fire with them, when their smooth-bores could not reach us.
It is believed by some authorities that elongated shot can be sufficiently well balanced to be projected accurately from smooth-bores; still, it is stated by Whitworth and others that a spinning motion is necessary to keep an elongated shot on end while passing through armor. On the whole, so far as penetrating armor is concerned, the theory and practice favor the spherical shot.
The monitor, which lay about a mile from the fort, was of the original single-turret form, armed with the large-calibre smooth-bores, which were fired with great deliberation and with surprising accuracy. I could not see how any rifled guns could have improved on their practice.
His lordship, then governor of Virginia, was full of energy, and proved himself a competent military manager. The settlers were organized; the rude log forts were garrisoned; forays were made against the Indian villages as far away as Muskingum, and an army of nearly three thousand backwoodsmen, armed with smooth-bores and clad in fringed buckskin hunting-shirts, was put in the field.
In a general way, however, he must have known that the guns of the United States fleet were mainly smooth-bores, with but moderate penetrative power upon iron-plating such as the Tennessee's; and during the morning's encounter he had acquired experimental knowledge of their impotence against her sides, unless by a continuous pounding such as he was now about to invite.
The men were armed somewhat indiscriminately, one company with Chassepots, another with Remingtons; there were carbines, and percussion rifles, and smooth-bores, and even a few flint-locks; but I failed to discern a single specimen of the trabuco, the bell-mouthed blunderbuss we are accustomed to associate with the Spanish knight of the road.
The comparative test of solid and laminated armor has already been mentioned. The best 4-1/2-inch solid plates, well backed, are practically proof against the guns of English iron-clads, namely, 68-pounder smooth-bores and Armstrong 110-pounder rifles, the service charge of each being 16 pounds. Rifling and Projectiles.
I rode up to you and advised that you should expose yourself no further, but should dispose your troops so as to retire from Shiloh Church in good order." Colonel Whittlesey, in his report, states: "There being signs of a retreat farther to the south, Lieutenant Thurber was directed to sweep the ground in front, which he did with his two howitzers and three smooth-bores in fine style.
Vertical shot-proof bulkheads joining the side armor form a box or casemate in the middle of the vessel, in which the 26 casemate-guns, mostly 68-pounder smooth-bores, are situated and fired through port-holes in the ordinary manner. Their speed on trial is about 14 knots, at sea, about 12.
I was sent first to the James Adger, a passenger-steamer then being converted in New York for blockade duty, for which she was very fit; but in ten days more I was moved on to the Pocahontas, a ship built for war, a very respectable little steam-corvette, the only one of her class if such a bull as a class of one may be excused. She carried one ten-inch gun and four 32-pounders, all smooth-bores.
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