THE STORY OF THE CANNON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7297, 9 January 1902, Page 4

THE STORY OF THE CANNON.

Thanks to the now prolonged warfare with " our brother Boer " we have all be-' come (with the assistance of the daily and pictorial Press) military experts, and are generally prepared to define and discriminate between 4.7 guns, "Long Toms," "pompoms," Maxims, and field-pieces. But of the gradual process of the evolution pi these wonderful and almost perfect weapons we are, most of us, profoundly ignorant and but little concerned. And yet the story of the progress of gun-making and explosives from the far-away period of 618 B.C.', in which year the Chinese profess to have used a gun. bearing the inscription, "I hurl death to the traitor and extermination to the rebel," down to the day on which they turned modern European guns of the latest type upon the hard-pressed garrison of the Pekin Legations, abounds in incident and curious and: ingenious invention and contrivance. . The popular story of the invention of gunpowder is that it waa discovered by one Friar Bacon, an. honour that he divides in the estimation of the readers of rthe ordinary school histories with the German monk Bartholdus Schwartz, who, pounding saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal in a mortar, blew himself up, or, rather, was astonished to; see iris pestle blown to a considerable distance 'by its unioreseen explosion. There may be a modicum of truth in this story, but as far as invention goes, if the learned ecclesiastic did invent gunpowder and cannon, he can, only be said to have don© so locally, for there is little doubt that both were known in various parts of the world, even in, Europe, long, long before 1320, the yearin whibh Schwartz performed with his pestle and mortar. Friar Bacon, writing in 1270, mentions, a powder of similar ingredients as being a well-known composition used for firework displays, and there are many indications in old writings that gunpowder, at any rate, was in use many centuries previous to this, or, if not exactly what we understand by the term, yet a composition, having precisely similar properties. Not only does it seem to have been known from remote ages in China and India, but traces of its. use have even been found in prehistoric lake dwellings m Switzerland, while it would appear not at all unlikely that it was known to the Romans and other celebrated nations of antiquity. There is a hazy idea among old writers, on the subject that Alexander the Great found cannon of some sort, or at any rate explosives, accompanied with noise and fire., t > opposed to -him during his expedition to India ; while Archimedes is said to have had an engine at the siege of Syracuse which "with a terrible noise did shoot forth great bullets of stone. " • Then there is an account of a sea-fight between the Phoenicians and Ibernians in the year 1100 n.p., just eighty-four yiars previous to the siege of Troy, in which there are indications of the use of artillery, in the modern sense of the word. The Phceneoians tiberi occupied Cadiz, or, as.it was then called, Gades, and, seeing the Iberian fleet coming down the coast from the North,, put to sea to meet :it. . The Iberians, so says the story, imagined- that they saw brazen lions on the prows of The Phoenician ' galleys, and that these beasts poured out flashing rays of flame which setfire to their ships, and so led to their defeat. And it is further stated that these "lions" were long copper tubes, out of which, was projected a species of Greek Sre, by the aid of some explosive composition. The mention of Greek fire, that terror of the Crusaders., suggests the idea that sometimes the old chroniclers may have got rather •... confused between- this composition and gunpowder, -though they were entirely different in nature. Yet both were spouted or fired from tubes of one kind or another ; and as most monkish writers wrote from hearsay, it is very possible that the history of eunpowder has been rendered more difficult to trace from having at times been : confounded with Greek fire. - The latter, it may be noted in passing, was an unctuous and sticky compound, highly inflammable, and of a nature to stick to anythinsr it struck, when, "with a pernicious stench and livid flame, it consumes even flint and iron, nor could it be extinguished by water." In all probability the first cannon was invented in China. a.tsomeveiy remote period indeed. In the Greit Wall, which was completed about the year 211 8.C., there were embrasures which were evidently intended for artillery, and it is stated by various historians that it was used there in the rear 85 A.D., and that in 757 A.T). a gentleman rejoichitr in the name 'of Li-Kouanq-Pi constructed 1 12-nounder <cn-ns which threw stone projectiles to a. distance of 300 paces. From the Celestial Kingdom t,hf> gun seems to have travelled westward by way of India, and the North of Africa, its first appearance in Europe, stranpe to say, beinpr in Spann. wheTe it was used by the Moors in attacking Sarugossa in the year 1118. The Spaniards soon adopted th« invention, and it is on record that in 1132 they built a. culverin throwing four-pound shot, which they termed " Salamonica." "Built" is written advisedly, for the earlier cannon were all built — as indeed are our modern ones — in contradistinction to being cast, as they generally were during the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and largest half of the nineteenth centuries. ... The first iron cannon cast in England were made by a man of the name of Hogp, or Howe, who had his foundry at Buxted, in Sussex. According to one account this was in 1543, and it is stated that the house in which Hoerg cast his guns is still in existence, and is to be seen near the church. It is said to have the figure of a hog carved over the door, with the date 1581. Another version states that the following inscription, cut on stone, is still txtant in the village of Buxted : — I. John Howe and' my man John, We two cost the first cannon. Hogg or Howe, we may take it for granted that cast-iron cannon date from the middle of the sixteenth century.