Your ShelfYour Projects

TWELVE-INCH RIFLE GUN

14%

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 12, 1877

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 50, No. 3.

Read the full edition

TWELVE-INCH RIFLE GUN.

By Wm. H. Mills

The New York Herald, of June 2, 1877, thus speaks of this large gun, the first of the kind ever made for the United States:—
“The weight of this piece of ordnance when finished will be about 90,000 pounds, and it will carry a projectile weighing about 700 pounds. The ordinary charge of powder in firing it will be from 110 to 140 pounds, with which the projectile will pierce a solid mass of iron from twelve to fifteen inches thick at a distance of 1000 yards.
“The gun will be made of cast iron, lined with a wrought-iron cored tube, and when finished will be sent to the proving ground at Sandy Hook to be tested, and if found to be satisfactory will be mounted in one of the fortifications in New York harbor. General Benet, Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, Colonel Brisbin, the Ordnance Constructor, and other prominent ordnance officers will witness the casting on Wednesday.
“This gun will be made on a system which has been thoroughly tested in this country on guns of smaller calibre, which have been found to equal any guns made abroad. The work upon it was commenced nearly a year ago, and the greatest care has been taken to select proper metal to be used in its construction.”
The same paper of a later date says that this gun was successfully cast at the South Boston Foundry, May 30, and the week following it was to be taken from the pit in which it was cooled to the lathe. “The wrought-iron tube for this gun is now on its way from England, and it is expected that the gun will be finished early in August. It will then be sent to the proving ground at Sandy Hook to be tested. Five hundred rounds will be fired from it to test its merits.”
If the time is ever coming when swords and spears will be turned into plowshares and pruning-hooks, and nations shall learn war no more, it seems like a great waste of time, money, and ingenuity, to spend them in bringing weapons of warfare to such perfection. Wm. H. MILLS.