The London Quarterly Review Volume 88 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1851 Excerpt: ...advantage. We admit that quick firing, within certain limits, and in particular circumstances, is of great importance; but steady and deliberate firing is infinitely more so. Common sense indeed tells us that the gaining a few secouds in loading can give no practical increase of steadiness and accuracy of firing. The more haste the worse speed. We would prefer one ounce of coolness to a ton of hurry. Again--'In the late war, as soon as the captain of a gun, often enveloped in smoke, gave the word fire the sailor, whose duty it was to execute the command, after perhaps turning his quid, put the burning end of a rope of slow-match, which often required blowing, to the powder priming, which in due time igniting, off went the gun, aud away went the shot in whatever direction the rolling and pitching of the vessel might at the moment combine to ordain. Many years after the peace of 1815 flint locks, which had long been applied m shore, were used meaning taken into use for the first lime by our navy.'--p. 171. We cannot imagine where Sir Francis could have found even a colour for this statement. A little serious inquiry would have informed him, first, that locks used not to be, and, we believe, are not yet applied on shore: and secondly, that probably no man now alive ever saw a ship without them. The French go so far as to claim the application of locks to cannon as early as 1728--a date that we doubt; but it is certain that locks were experimentally issued to some of our own ships in 1748, in 1757, and in successive instances between 1763 and 1780; when they were more extensively introduced by that ingenious as well as gallant officer Sir Charles Douglas (the father of Sir Howard) into the Duke, 98, of which he was Captain, and then into the Formidable, Rodney...