THE SKETCHER. AROUND WOOLWICH ROTUNDA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2528, 27 August 1902, Page 65

THE SKETCHER. AROUND WOOLWICH ROTUNDA.

{By Eknest R. Stfffling, in Chambers's • Journal.) In the very prettiest corner of Woolwich Common, nearly hidden by fine forest trees, anel where one would least expect to find it, stands a building which is unique among the public edifices of the world. It is called the Rotunda ; but, unlike other places with similar appellations, it has a history and a purpose all its own.

In 1 1814, when peace was proclaimed — premature peace, as Quatre Bras and Waterloo the following year proved — a grand gathering was held in London in a gigantic pavilion, many crowned heads being present, including the Czar of Russia, the King of Prussia, and others, together with a galaxy of the great men of all nations ; and there Wellington and Blucher stood side by side, surrounded by hundreds of persons entitled to wear diadem and coronet.

- Such -a brilliant gathering the world has seldom seen, and there was little wonder that the -nation was anxious to preserve the canvas pavilion which for a brief hour contained the cream of the regal, military, diplomatic, and scientific power of Europe. With that view the pavilion was erected in a little space of ground between two wooded glens in a corner of Woolwich Common.

During his stay in Antwerp +he great Napoleon, when gazing upon the wondrous beauty of Antwerp Cathedral tower, remarked : "It is lacework in stone ! It is too fine a production to stand bare to the spite and indiscrimination of the elements. It deserves a glass case.'' With this in mind, those who wi&hed to preserve the canvas pavilion, and make it at once ufeful as well as ornamental, erected it in a dry spot, and built over it an outer casing of brick, timber, and Jead ; and so we see itat the present day : canvas walls within brick walls, and a canvas canopy within a lvaden roof of i-übstantial structure, rising to a cupola and vane over 100 ft above the ground.

The outside circumferenc2 of the Rotunda is nearly 400 ft. and at the back it has a small annexe. The curator and his two assistants, all military men, are indefatigable in explaining to visitors the uses and capabilities of the hundreds of items with which the museum is crammed. As a military museum it is in no way inferior iii interest to either the collection at the Tcwer of London or that in the United Service Museum in Whitehall.

Before entering the Rotunda itself we will glance at a few of the many interesting objects strewn broadca-st in the grounds surrounding the building. Guns, mortars, bombards, howitzers, shells, aimour-plates, and strange weapons of all countries lie around everywhere. We will briefly mention a few of these.

Here is a cannon or bombard u.scd at the siege of Constantinople in 1453. It is an immense weapon, being 17ft long and about 4ft in diameter ; its calibre is 25m, and its weight 18 tons 13cwt. We have guns at the present day weighing upwards of 100 ton«, but with a bore of only 17in This Turkish gun is cast in two pieces, which screw together, the pieces being left asunder for the inspection of visitors. The gun being almost entirely of copper, its present value as old metal would he very :onpiderable. Near it i« a pile of the stone balls which were the missiles of the day, each -weighing about 6GOlb. Tj ulv, ■when we remember that artillery was in 1453 only about a century old, this was a very formidable weapon.

Two centuries ago the military mind fra.s alive to the fact that the gunner who could fire twice while the enemy filed only once had a great advantage ; and to .attain this end we perceive in a pair of beautifully Hiade brass guns the means which the artillerists of the period adopted. Instead of the repeating guns of modern days, a plan was adopted of casting three barrels in one mould, so as to form a tuplicate cannon, each with a .separate vent. Such are the guns we now refer to. Despite the apparent gain, the weapon doe« not seem to have been adopted by any European nation, but only by the Chinese, who adhere to anything curious and likely to strike terror into the breasts of their adversaries, however ineffectual the particular article or weapon may be — as, for exampl«, the hideous face«< on their shields and Hags. The pair of triplicate guns btfore us vme captured bj tbe Duke of

Marlborougb. at Malplaquet in 1709, and were made only five years previously.

Next we have a fine French 12-pounder field-piece taken at Waterloo, and complete with its limber. It was, for the period, a very fine weapon — strong, mobile, and efficient. One wonders when gazing at this gun and at Napoleon's private fieldoven — which stand hard by and are both covered with lead-coloared paint — that two such valuable curiosities should be aHowed to stand in the open air. the sport of wind and weather. Surely curios which cannot be replaced should be kept under cover.

Now we inspect a 32-pounder gun from the Victory, which helped Nelson to win the great "naval fight off Trafalgar ; and near it, and like as one pea to another. is a 32-pounder whicE, after a fighting career on the Orion, was transferred to the Reynard (a vessel which unfortunately was lost on the Prata shoals in the China Sea), and found in the Taku forts when they were captured by the allies in 1860. It was smart of the yellow men to dredge up our guns and use them against us ! In 1545 England boasted of a very fine ship-of-war called the Mary Rose, which was sunk off Spithead by the French admiral Annebant. carrying with her Sir George Carew and 700 men. There she still lies ; but many of her guns- were recovered by divers in 1836, and four of them lie side by side before us little the woise for being" submerged for 291 years. One gun has the respectable lereth of lift, a bore of 5.26 in, and a weight of 43cwt ; so we see that guns in those days were anything but the toys we imagine them to have been Near the Marr Rose guns is cne from the Royal George, which sank in 1782, also at Spithead, when Admiral Kempenfelt rmd 800 men perished. This also was recovered by divers whilst at work off Spithead in 1836.

Burst guns lie around in all directions, silent witnesses of many a dreadful tragedy. One we notice is a Chinese gun, which was apparently made in a great hurry, for the component parts were not allowed sufficient time to fuse and melt into one liquid mass, as half-melted metal can be seen in various parts of tke fracture. One wonders at the havoc such a burst must have wrought !

We come now to an historic gun. Up to 1716 the Royal Gun Foundry had been ai- Moorfields, in London ; but inattention to duty caused both founders and foundry to be removed. The story is told that a Swiss founder paid a visit to the Royal Moorfield Works, and whilst looking on he noticed the careless methods of the workmen. "Why, friend." he said to the foreman, "thy mould is damp ! This casting must needs prove a failure." Heedless of the practical warning, the casting was carried out ; and it proved a- failure, as the visitor had predicted, the steam from the damp mould having forced a hole in the side of the cannon. That cannon now Le? at the Rotunda for the visitor's inspection.

Luckily certain persons "were present v ben the Swiss founder expressed his opinion, and this was the «-equel: the Swiss vi-'itor, Andrew Schalch, was interviewed, and finally, after many inquiries ast to his abilities, etc., he was made head of the Royal Foiindry, with power to select a site within ten miles of London for a new foundry. He chose Woolwich Warren, as it was then called, and there i« situated the National Ordnance Foundry to this day ; but it is now cjJI -d Woolvich Arsenal. Many fine guns mad-e by St-halch between 1720 and 1740 lie near' the burst cannon of 1716, as memorials of the ability of the foreigner. He was master-founder for 60 y years.

Having for the present seen enough big guns, we will more forward and enter the Rotunda. Before entering we notice two huge spheres of iron flanking the portal on both sides. Thc?e are 36-inch shells made about the time of the Crimean war ; bu f it was found they were too large for ust 1 . Each shell had a loaded weight of {'•om 21cwt to 26cwt, and required a mortar weighing 42 tons. The conveyance of such weapons and shells ov^r rough roads was too arduous for the force of artillery available. As an experiment, one of these shells, weighing 23951b (over a ton), was fired with 801b of powder, and travelled the respectable distance of 2759 yards befoie it buried n«elf deeply in the eaith. What would be the result of the explosion of such v firl ie 1 1 charged with lyddite one can hardly imagine Not m,Tny were ca«t, and of the number several are dotted about Woolwich Common as posts and dumb sentinels at important doorways, warranted not to desert then pubts on av.y calculation t\ hatever.

We now enter the gro^t Rotunda; and. face to face ■« ith it 5 - \as-i wealth e>i furious weapons and invention--, we pause in wonder as to how we can inspect everything here in a «ing!e afternoon Then .it the vtry outset we give up the iiope of accomplishing so much.

We appioadi a set of life-aize effigies of warriors of da\s gon« by. There are a dozen of them, a mounted figure wearing n fire suit of aimour of <h*e fifteenth century being veiy coi.spiciioiis. It js the cap-a-pie aivneiur of a knight, and thatknight, it is said, was no other than the great French mediaeval wairior the Chevalier de Bayard. Sir Samuel Meynck, the jneat authority on armour, whilst not denying the accuracy of this statement, points to the fact that no ack-iow ledged authority can be cited to prove that> this .suit once

belonged to the clmalrous Bayard. However, it is a very fine suit, and undoubtedly of Bayard's period, if not actually worn by him.

Another figure in complete fifteenth-cen-tury orniour stands by the light side of Bayard's charger — which, by the way, is a model of Wellington's horse Copenhagen ; j-nd on the left is a man of ihe period of

Charles I in d^mi -armour and buff-leather continuations Peih.tps the ivro figures that will claim most attention sro an artilleryman of the time of Crecy and a loiigbowman oi the period of Agmcourt. We vill take the latter fiz>t-. The figure rej/rpsenis a stalwart bowman accoutred in

T the actual armour of the period. On his | head is a helmet of somewhat globular foim, coming we'll down over the neck, and known as a salade ; the body is clothed in pliable leathern jerkin laced up the front, and with plate-armour covering only the loins and stomach, leaving the upper part of the body and arms free to get the necessary pull and swing at the powerful 1 bow. In modern archery the bow is only half-round ; but the true English yew-stave v. as quite round, and measured about four and a-half inchas in circumference at the thickest part. Tight -fitting long-hose and -•riuare-toed laced boots complete the costume. When m action the cloth -yard arrows were either stuck in the ground at the archer's right side, if the ground was soft, or placed on the ground under his left or forward foot if it was hard. Such was the English boy, man of King Edward's time, who could probably have held his j own "with tl a flintlock men of WelhngI ton's army. We will now look at the ni-=t artilleryman and his gun. His helmet is similar to that of the archer, but hi* bod\ it, more iuvulnerabl^ to sword and arrow by reason , of a coat of mail worn over his short tunic !of homespun lineu. His neck is guarded with a leather gorget laced in front, and j hi.-> legs, in their coloured long-hose, are • guarded by a thick leather api-on like that iof a blacksmith, only longer. In his right i hand he carries an implement for discharging his piece — one well known to modern folks — a red-hot poker ! The cannon — or, as it was then termed, ', bombard — which the figure is supposed to I hi about to fire, is of the early fifteenth century, probably about 1410-25, and was j brought from Bodihnm Castle, Kent, after ! being for many years at Battle Abbey. It | is a remarkable weapon, about 3ft long, | and has a bore of some lOin ; but the I diameter of the gun suddenly contiacts ( and runs back into a powder chamber 14in deep and of 4in bore As the .gun is much decayed, it gives us a capital idea of its manufacture. The inner tube is of castiron, and outside there are lateral plates of wrought-iron to strengthen the gun, with j vvrought-iron rings shrunk on round these, I b : nding all closely together, and making a j weapon quite capable of withstanding the force of tli2 poor powder of the period. Probably the powder in use wa& of the

coarsest and worst description, similar to the trading powder now sold to 'baibarians, and gave more flame, smoke, and soot than propelling power ; hence the leathern gorget and apron of the artilleryman, and the hand thrown up to protect his face from the flame and fume* which flew from the large vent at each discharge of the bombard. Shakespeare in his day, nearly 200 years later, refers to powder as "villainous saltpeirs" ; he may hava been present a,t a "review." There is another ennnon which should not b-2 overlooked — one of the famous leathern guns of Gnstavus Adolphus, and a very fine, light weapon, too, for the period when powder was weak. It is 6.5 ft long, has a calibre of 2 17in, and weighs only 1191b. The cylinder or lining is of copper, increasing in substance towards the brtcch, and is firmly covered with tough leather, and tightly bound with hempen cord about as thick as ordinary blind-cord, the whole being covered with vornMi or some resinous compound as protection from the weather. Fi'oh w-'re the "leathern ;acks" which frightened the enemies of Adolphus. On every side are cannou. many of them unique and uf very great value. For example, a large Japanese gun, near the centre of the Rotunda. i& made of a composition the chief ingredient ni which is platinum, a metal far above gold in value. Ask any of your friends the question, "When was the system of breechloading for tither cannon or hand-guns invented?" Nine out of ten will answer, "I do not quite know : but it was certainly within the past 40 years " A visit to the Rotunda would show them their error. In racks beside the central support of th° building will be seen a fine collection of muskets, and among them a fowling-piece of this time of James 11, which is not only a breechloader, but, minibile dictu, its breech mechanism is closed with the supposed new invention of an "interrupted screw" ! In a glass case is a Chinese revolving gun with four chambers-, several centuries old : and on every hand we find ancient mechanical contrivances appertaining to weapons w hic-h modem gunsmiths fondly inj.igine they have invented during the deyears of the imieieeuth century. An upright cas-e contains a Mooiish revol\er and a mu^kt-t of the fifteenth century! Did Moncneff invent the system on which "tie worked hi* gun> ior the purpose of loading and sighting? Niarcely, for the Rotuiida posseb&es examples of weapons of the kind which were in existence many years before he was bom ' Many of us appeal to associate the invtution of brcethl >ddm^ Laniion with the mmc oi Armstrong und hi^ contemporaries; but th" Rotund-.i ha- a pin of Venetian brass cannon datuitj from the sixteenth century •■which \uie loaded from the bieedi; w'nle another e\tn older specimen js bhmri work ins; on the vei v- Mine pi.ri'.iple. and made us e.uh as the mgn of Edward IV (1442 85)' The mode adopted was extremely .simple. On the upper portion of the breech .i broad slot was made — that is. a slice was taken out of the gun &oine nine inches long and Sour niches broad (ihe -width of the bore), and into this was dropped the breech-block cast m brass and ;n sh-ipe- and size like a quart ptwter-pot. but of very thick metal. To load, the bieech -block \va,' removed by its handle and filled with powdei by a guiinei. At the same time a round-shot was dropped into the breech and pushed forward ; then the filled breech-block was dropped in place, a. wedge dipped in behind it, and the gun via*, ready for firing, a* we have mentioned, by means of a red-hot poker. Rifled arms date, not, ar. is commonly supposed, from the eighieeiih centuiy, but trout the sixteenth. 11l looking ai tin* vast coTectinn of military curiosities one cannot help Tt-peating Solomon's words thai, tliert js> •■uolliiag new

under the sun." So it would seem when one's precoaceived notions are thus upset at every turn.

A case of very handsome petronellcs should command some attention, if only for the beauty of their workmanship and the wonderfully fine ivory inlaying of their stocks. The petronelle was the weapon of the fine gentlemaj of the seventeenth century, and was never used by troopsrs. It was a cross or link between the musket and the pistol, being from 2ft to nearly 3ft in hngth. and was fired from the breast, not f)om\he shoulder or at arms-length.

This Jirticle might be jirolongod indefinitely in describing the warlike wonders of the past ages ; but probably enough has been written to whet the appetite of visitors to the metropolis who are of an inventive or curious turn of mind ; if so, they should certainly not neglect to visit that little-known museum of military curiosities, Woolwich Rotunda.