GREAT GUNS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 3254, 2 March 1885, Page 3

GREAT GUNS.

In some way or other (says a writer m a contemporary) the Secretary of War overlooked me when m London. His eagle eye failed to notice that I had arrived, a quite excusable oversight, however, when it is taken into consideration that scores and scores of great men reach London daily ; but it was only necessary to drop him a line at his headquarters m Pall Mall to receive a prompt reply m the shape of a formal document notifying me that the War Department had ordered the Woolwich Arsenal authorities to admit me to that establishment at 2 p.m. on Tuesday. The ride down the river m a penny boat — passing under London bridge, over the tunnel and by Billingsgate, Greenwich and Blackwall — took about an hour. Reaching the massive iron gate of the arsenal, a committee of reception, composed of five as handsome policemen as ever snored against a lamp-post, had thoughtfully been provided, one of whom led me into an oflice, where I was invited to sign my autograph — a simple request that I always accede to. Once inside, the hundred acres of magazines, and foundries surround the visitor m bewildering profusion. Here and there odd little trains of cars drawn by odd little engines went winding among the shops on narrow gauge tracks. To the right of the main roadway was the cap factory, the Bhining explosives pouring m streams from the swiftly-working machines like wheat from a fanning mill. Adjoining stood the bullet department, where thousands of leaden pills of all shapes and sizes were being fashioned, scores of boys manipulating the moulds. In succession came the laboratory for making cartridges and projectiles, the gun carriage and wagon departments, each occupying immense long buildings. Workmen m large squads were everywhere, m fact about 10,000 are employed m the works. The centre of attraction m the Gun Factory, established nearly 200 years ago by a German. What monarchs of mechanism were being fashioned by the hand of man !— enormous tritons, destined for a death-dealing service. From the glowing cauldron of fire — a hissing shrine — the swarthy workmen, with distended sinews and powerful muscles, carried the illsh.ipen wrought iron masses, simmering with a heat as condensed as that from which it came, and laid them on an iron bed. The building trembles as the mighty triphammer — the largest m the world — descends and solidifies and shapens the cooling metal. At last a solid piece of iron of the requisite length and thickness is complete and is then removed to another foundry on powerful trucks where, resting m a semi-circular bed, large borers slowly, but surely chisel out the centre, while the exterior is rounded and smoothed by immense knives. Finally it is placed among its comrades m the yard where literally thousands of others — field pieces and mortar 3, howitzers and smooth-bores, eighteen-pounders and eighty-one-tonners — lay strewn around — a vast armament giving one a startling idea of the horrors of " grim-visaged war." The eighty-one ton infant, stretching to a length of twenty-seven feet, lay peacefully at the entrance to the gun foundry, as docile and harmless m his metal grandeur as a stranded whale. But let that gaping ominous mouth once speak ; let it but utter a single hissing syllable, and death and destruction are the result. A trial of the great gun was made at Dover. Four men rammed down a gigantic charge of 450 pounds of powder. At a given signal a dense volume of smoke, preceded by a blinding flash, startled the assembled crowd. A few moments after and the projectile, weighing 1700 pounds, struck and ploughed up the water at a calculated distance of four miles. The recoil of the gun carriage was no les3 than seven feet. The doors and windows of the surrounding houses rattled ; others shook to their very foundation ; the large panes of glass m the lighthouse were blown out — and the grim old monster subsided. I wandered for an hour or more among the warlike derelicts, huddled together by the hundred m out-of-the-way corners among pyramids of cannon-balls, chain shot, rockets and shrapnels. Some had seen service — old veterans, rusty, smokebegrimed and crippled. In a solitary corner lay a group of Florentine guns of 1750 ; near by was a long, slender cannon cast m 1677, while beyond it were seen several pieces of ordnance from India and the Crimea. One of the latter looking up casually caught my attention. " I say sir, what's the time of day ? I've been sleeping. Kind of lost track of things, you know." " Three-thirty, old fellow," I answered. " There's another question I want to ask you. D'you see that fancy-rimmed old Frenchman over there ? Well, he told me the last time I was awake that I was going to be cremated. What does that mean ! Does it mean the Black Sea again ? " Poor old chap ! I hadn't the heart to tell him frankly the fate that apparently awaited him m the molten furnace, but merely told him to prepare for a very melting scene and at once turned the conversation. " Seen service, eh, I suppose V I asked. " Service ? See that piece chipped off my mouth ? See the hole mmy side big enough to put two of your fingers m ? See where the rain's leaking through around the vent '\ Seen service, did you say ? Why, my friend, whoever you are, you remember hearing about Sebastopol, of course. There was a dozen of us m a row and the way we blazed away off and on for eleven months was something to see ! Before I got the smoke mmy eyes so badly I laid out 423 of those Russians, and I don't know how many after. One afternoon I caught sight of a whole company standing m line with my aim, and at once told my gunner to touch me off. I'm telling you the truth when I Bay there weren't four whole legs or a half-dozen pairs of arms m the crowd after I got through. Another day, when old Todleben, the Russian General, was making it unpleasant for hs, I fired at Fort St. .Nicholas so often that my mouth got hot enough to melt." Famous and war-tried cannon are treated with great respect. The White Tower m London is surrounded with a curious collection of old cannon, some of very heavy calibre and highly decorated. One was cast at Malta m 1773, with exquisite reliefs on the barrel, and two brass guns taken by General Wolfe, at Quebec, are among the number. Mounted high on the parapet of old Edinboro' Castle — the King's Bastion — and overlooking the wonderful panorama of city and country and sea, lies Mons Meg, the famous piece of ordnance which is said to havo been forged at Mons m Belgium m 1476. James IV. employed it at the siege of Dumbarton m 1489. It burst when firing a salute m honor of the Duke of York m 1682 ; was removed to the Tower of London m 1754, and was restored to Scotland through the intervention of Scott m 1829.