Gunpowder and Ammunition, Their Origin and Progress

“Il n’y avoit rien qui épouvantait davantage les assiégés (in Wachtendonck) que de certaines grosses boules de fonte creuses, et remplies de poudre et d’autres matiéres inextinguibles, qui étant poussées en l’air avec de gros mortiers, accabloient par leur pésanteur tous les lieux sur qui ils tombaient, et en même tems, comme le feu s’y prenoit par des buses qui y étoient attachées, ils rompoient en se crévant et embrasoient tout ce qui étoit à l’entour, sans que l’eau le put éteindre.

“Cette sorte de boulet, que nous avons vû ajoûter aux grenades, aux pots à feu, &c. ... fut, dit on, inventée un peu devant le siége de Wachtendonck par un artisan de Venloo.... Je sais que quelqu’un (i.e. Reyd) a ecrit qu’une pareille expérience avait été faite a Berg-op-Zoom ... avec un pareil succès par un Italien deserteur des troupes d’Espagne. Au reste, le Comte Mansfeld se servit de cette machine qui fut inventée à Venloo et faisoit dans Wachtendonck une déstruction des maisons et des hommes aussi inévitable qu’elle étoit inopinée.”

These passages possess at least one quality of good evidence—they differ about details and agree on the main points; and it is difficult to see how they can be gainsaid or overlooked. We may take it, then, until further evidence (which may possibly exist) is produced, that explosive shell were first used in large numbers and with good effect in 1588.

CHAPTER XV

IGNITERS

Charges of incendiaries and explosives confined in guns, shells, mines, &c., are not fired directly: for convenience and safety they are ignited by means of some intermediate agent, or agents, such as priming powder, fuzes, &c., which are themselves in turn ignited by some other agents. These collective agents are here called Igniters.

Hot Wires, Priming Powder, Matches, and Portfires.

The small early guns, whose recoil was insignificant, seem to have been fired directly by thrusting a hot wire into the powder through the vent.584 When guns grew bigger, this method had to be abandoned and priming powder came into use.585 For centuries priming powder consisted of serpentine, or some slow-burning mixture, which was at first laid in a train from some convenient spot to the vent, and was afterwards simply poured on the vent. The advantage of the former proceeding, in securing the safety of the gunners, is pointed out in a very old French book:— “vous pourrez retirer affin que vostre baston (gun) ne vous face dommage.”586 In the latter case, the priming was ignited in various ways:—by a hot wire; by a match fixed in a lint-stock, which was “a staffe of a yard or two yards long;”587 and later by a portfire attached to a portfire-stick.588

The objection to priming powder was its liability to be wetted by rain, or blown away by wind.589

TABLE XII.

Matches.

Tubes.

Priming powder was ultimately replaced by small tubes, full of combustible matter, which fitted into the vents of guns. Of the multitude of these tubes only a few can be mentioned here. Tubes filled with quickmatch, and primed with mealed powder and spirits of wine, are said to have been in use in the first half of the eighteenth century.594 In 1778 Captain Sir Charles Douglas, R.N., invented the gun-flint-lock. It was simply a flint-and-steel apparatus, fastened to the ventplate of the gun and worked by a lanyard, which ignited a tube placed in the vent. Captain Douglas introduced this lock into his ship, the Duke, at his own expense, and it worked so well that it was officially adopted for the Navy in 1790.595 It was owing, apparently, to the personal intervention of General Sir Alexander Dickson that this lock was at length adopted for the Artillery in 1820.596 In a letter to Sir Howard Douglas (son of Sir Charles), 18th April 1818, Sir Alexander gives his reasons for advocating the change:—“By the employment of slow match only, the fire is frequently retarded, and nothing can be more dangerous than lighted portfires in a battery ... I have ever prevented, as much as in my power, the use of portfires.”597

A percussion tube, invented by Mr. Marsh, of the Royal Arsenal Surgery, was approved for the Navy in 1831: the Artillery was not supplied with a similar tube until 1846.

In 1841 Lieutenant Siemens, of the Hanoverian Army, laid a friction tube before the officials of Woolwich Arsenal, which was tried and, owing to whatever defects, was rejected. Just ten years later Mr. Tozer, of the Royal Laboratory, made the copper friction tube now in use. It was officially adopted in 1853.598

In 1860 there were no less than six tubes in the service:—(1) the Common Quill Tube; (2) the Dutch Paper Tube; (3) the Common Metal Tube; (4) the Percussion Tube; (5) the Friction Tube; and (6) the Galvanic Tube.599

Time Fuzes.

Nothing can be less satisfactory than Hassan er-Rammah’s allusions to igniters, of which he possessed two—the rose and the ikreekh (اكريج). The latter word strictly means a duct, channel, or tube; but just as we frequently use fuze for fuze composition, so the Arabs often use ikreekh for the composition it contained. Hassan, for instance, speaks of “the sulphur with which one makes ikreekhs.”600 It is quite clear, however, from Reinaud and Favé’s Plate II., fig. 24, that the ikreekh was of the nature of a fuze-case. Whether the composition given here in column 1 of Table XIII. was used in the ikreekh or the rose, I do not know. In fact our knowledge of these two igniters may be summed up in the statement that they were used together in the same (incendiary) shell, and that it was the rose which was lighted.601 The ikreekh possibly contained the fuze composition proper, and the rose corresponded to our priming matter.

Judging from the plates of Kyeser’s Bellifortis reproduced by Herr von Romocki (i. 169), the igneous projectiles of 1405 were ignited by some slow-burning composition, which was put on the top of the charge, and filled up the loading hole flush with the exterior of the missile. The breech-loading quill fuze of the second Berlin Firebook, mentioned in the section on “Explosive Shell,” seems to have been only the abortive proposal of an inventor.

The foregoing Arab and German igniters were for use in machine and hand projectiles, and we now reach cannon fuzes.

The first igneous gun-missiles were incendiary, at once hand-grenades and cannon-balls, and were ignited by means of some slow-burning mixture, without a case, which was put into the shell on the top of its charge. When the missile is “neere full (of good come pouder),” says Bourne, “take some receite of soft fire worke that will not burne too hastily and fill up the rest of the ball.”602 That the fuze-hole was originally placed next the cartridge is shown by Boillot’s repeated directions to turn it towards the muzzle603—directions which would have been superfluous had it not been previously customary to place it next the cartridge; and by many other indications. By this mode of loading the ignition of the fuze composition was ensured before the projectile left the piece. There was perhaps no absolute necessity for the use of this soft, slow-burning mixture, with incendiary shell so placed; but it was probably found very useful in confining the charge within the missile during flight.

The need of an explosive projectile to blow up earthworks, &c., was more and more felt as time rolled on, and the use of such missiles was clearly impossible with such igniters so placed. But the best way of mending matters was by no means so clear. If an explosive shell was placed in the bore with an igniter of soft, caseless composition next the cartridge, there was in the great majority of rounds a burst in the bore. If the shell was reversed, with the igniter towards the face of the piece, either the composition did not ignite and the shell was blind, or the soft composition set back into the shell from the shock of the explosion604 and again there was a burst in the bore. Furthermore, in firing against works it was before all things necessary that the shell should enter the revetment, &c., before it exploded, and it was extremely difficult in practice to put into the shell the exact amount of composition that would burn just longer than the time of flight. To prevent the gases of the explosion from forcing their way into the interior of the shell, it was necessary to have the fuze-hole towards the muzzle when the shell was home. To prevent the soft composition from setting back, and to ensure that it was sufficient in quantity to burn longer than the time of flight, a fuze-case was necessary. To ensure the ignition of the fuze (in its new position) it was necessary to light it from the muzzle just before the piece was fired, and this condition restricted the use of explosive shell for centuries to mortars and (afterwards) howitzers. No one would have dared to thrust a lit match down the bore of a gun which had been loaded with loose powder by means of a ladle, and cartridges were not in general use when the question of explosive shell arose. Bourne says in 1587: “It is a great deal better for to charge a peace in time of service with a cartredge than with a ladell,”605 and he presently proceeds to give his reasons for thinking so at great length.606 In the beginning of the following century, Diego Ufano only allows the use of cartridges when a ladle is not at hand.

Such were the steps of the evolution of the fuze, as partially explained by Hanzelet and Thybovrel in their Receuil de plusieurs Machines Militaires, published in 1620: “Le souspirail de l’amorce (the funnel of the priming = the fuze-case) est long ... et creux.... Ainsi ce canal éstant emply de composition lente, il ne permet que le feu se prenne qu’il nait (n’ait) lentement consumé la matière mise audit canal, et par ce moyen le feu ne peut toucher la poudre grainée (the bursting charge) qu’il ne soit arrivé jusques au fond de la ditte grenade. Cela sert pour avoir loisir de la jetter à la main, ou de l’allumer et la mettre dans le mortier ou canon” (l. iv. c. 6).

One of the first indications of a fuze with a case is afforded by a passage in Stow’s “Annals” for the year 1543, where he speaks of “hollow shot of cast-yron, to be stuffed with fireworks or wild fire; whereof the bigger sort had screwes of yron to receive a match” (p. 584). Stow was evidently describing something which he did not understand, but his meaning is made clear by Boillot. The fuze-case was a hollow, cylindrical male screw which fitted a female screw in the fuze-hole, and when fixed extended across the cavity of the shell: “En laquelle (the shell) laisserez un trou ... auquelle ferés faire une viz pour le bien boucher, laquelle sera de la longeur de la grenade” (p. 163). Further on he speaks of the case as “un tuyau de fer blanc ou cuivre ... bien adjousté au dit trou,” and directs it to be filled “bien massif de pouldre sans graine.” It was lighted from the muzzle of the mortar by a quick-match or hand-fuze,607 as Nye directs half a century afterwards—light the fuze first, “and then with great speed give fire to the touch-hole” (chap. v.).

Diego Ufano describes experiments carried on during the latter years of the sixteenth, or the early years of the seventeenth century, with cased fuzes of a new patterns608 proposed by the (then) Governor of Genappe. The fuze, which was filled with moist powder or one of several mixtures given by Ufano, was placed next the cartridge.609 The first shell fired burst at the muzzle, the second burst short. Two rounds were then fired from an English 60-pr. (carthaunen), both of which burst in the air and damaged houses and walls in their neighbourhood. A third shell lodged in the ground at a distance of 250 yards,610 and on bursting sent its fragments back towards the gun, damaging a guard-room611 which stood 150 yards in rear of it. The experiments then ceased, on the urgent representations of an Artillery officer about the risk they were all running. The earlier fuzes implicitly referred to by Ufano were doubtless the “buses” which, Father Strada tells us, were employed at Wachtendonck in 1588. Their name, buses = tubes or pipes, is sufficient proof that they were fuzes with cases. In his “Gunner,” 1628, p. 156, Norton speaks of a “pype primed with slow receipt” for exploding shell. We find the very same word applied to fuzes in Danish official documents in 1644: “piber til Granater,” pipes for shell.612 Writing three years afterwards, Nye, Master-Gunner of Worcester, speaks familiarly of fuzes which were conical in shape, for he compares them to “faucets for a spigot.”613 He says: “The match doth ofttimes fail, but fuzes are very certain to give fire.”

There were no means of regulating the time of burning of these pipes, which were generally metallic. The composition had a constant (and unalterable) length, corresponding roughly to that required for the maximum range at which shell could be fired. Whatever the range, the oblong bombs were fired with a fuze that burned some fourteen seconds, answering to about 1000 yards range; the spherical grenados with a fuze that burned some twenty seconds, answering to about 2100 yards range.614 In firing against works, &c., it was essential that mortar shell—and until the siege of Gibraltar, 1779, all shell were mortar or howitzer shell615—should not burst before impact. A shell which burst in flight was a shell wasted, but it mattered little whether it burst on impact or a few seconds afterwards.616 But it was occasionally necessary to use shell against troops, and it was then that the radical defect of the tube became fully manifest. In this case it was desirable that the fuze should fire the bursting charge the instant the shell touched the ground,617 and this was impracticable with the primitive pipe. While the long fuze was burning down to its end, the explosion might be prevented, or its effects might be neutralised in many ways. The shell might be thrown bodily into a pond or the sea;618 the fuze might be extracted;619 or it might be extinguished with water.620 But in the vast majority of cases the explosion of the shell was neutralised in a much homelier and less heroic way; those near whom it fell waited for no command to quit its neighbourhood in all haste.

It was long before any real progress was made in the adjustment of fuzes to burn a certain time, chiefly because the early gunners had no timekeeper. A striking illustration of this fact is found in the Artis Magnæ Artilleriæ, &c., of Siemienowicz, published in 1650. Wishing to give his readers an idea of the action of a certain fireball, he explains that it burned in the time one takes to recite deliberately the Apostles’ Creed.621

The first, so far as is known, who urged the adjustment of fuzes was Sebastian Hälle,622 in 1596, and he fared as fare most of those who see further than their fellows. The many failed to see the object which he saw clearly; therefore (they said) the object did not exist, and he was a dreamer. A century after his death, however, gunners began to discover that his dreams were substantial enough; and in 1682 Zeug-Lieut. Buchner dilates upon the advantages of a fuze that will burn ein gewiss Tempo623—a certain time. The mere fact that there were at least three different kinds of fuze in use towards the close of the seventeenth century—paper, wood, and iron624—proves that the search for a serviceable fuze was going actively forward. The excellent plates given by Buchner and Mieth show clearly that their fuzes were bored. In both cases the rate of burning was tested with difficulty, owing to the want of a practical timekeeper. Buchner recommends the use of a pendulum, or very careful beating time (or counting);625 Mieth alludes to the pendulum, but evidently put little trust in it, for he adds, “The correct time can be only found by trial shell.”626

By the middle of the eighteenth century we had beechwood fuzes, which were cut. The rate of burning was determined “by burning two or three, and making use of a watch or string by way of pendulum.”627 It was observed about this period that when fuzes were cut very short, either the flame failed to reach the bursting charge and the shell went blind, or the thin disc of fuze composition set back into the shell from the shock of the discharge and the shell burst in the bore. To obviate this Muller proposed to provide special fuzes, with a quicker-burning composition than usual, for use at short ranges.628 This plan was temporarily adopted, for we find that there were three different fuzes in our service in 1779, one that burned an inch in 5 seconds, a second that burned an inch in 4.5 seconds, and a third that burned an inch in 4 seconds. It is evident, however, from a remark made by the Inspector of the Royal Military Academy, Captain George Smith, R.A., in his “Universal Military Dictionary” (from which these details have been taken) that the standard of shell fire in the year 1779 was a low one. “When the distance of the battery from the object is known, the time of the shell’s flight may be computed to a second or two.” Extreme regularity of burning, then, was not expected: an error of “a second or two” in the time of flight was of trivial importance. But an event happened in Gibraltar in this very year which suddenly raised the standard to a height that no one could have foreseen—the adoption of Captain Mercier’s method of shell-fire from guns, with short fuzes. This system ended with the siege; it was never resorted to, probably, outside the gates of Gibraltar; and, more probably still, when the siege was over things fell gradually back into the unruffled quiet of routine. But the calm was only momentary, for in 1803 appeared Shrapnel shell, and with them reappeared Captain Mercier’s forgotten system of “calculated fuzes.”

From the first moment it was beyond all doubt that the ultimate success of Shrapnel could be only assured by the use of what no Artillery then possessed—a thoroughly good time-fuze. Writing to Major (afterwards General Sir Thomas) Downman, R.A., on the 29th Feb. 1804, Shrapnel remarks that in firing at short ranges the fuze composition “gives way into the shell once in ten times,”629 thus producing a burst in the bore; and as a remedy he suggests cutting all fuzes 1¼″ long and then sawing a cut through the bottom of the fuze, in a plane passing through its longer axis, up to the desired length. However, notwithstanding all precautions, of the 1090 shell fired during the Woolwich experiments with Shrapnel in 1819, 74 burst in the bore, 71 burst in the butt, and 111 were blind, i.e. 23.4 per cent. were failures.630 No efforts were spared to improve these fuzes or replace them by better ones, and a large number were proposed, or constructed, during the second quarter of the last century. In 1850 there were no less than nineteen time-fuzes in our service: three of metal and sixteen of wood. Of the latter, ten were Shrapnel fuzes, viz. an 8″, a 5½″and a 1″ fuze, which were uncut; and seven fuzes which were cut ready for use, and lettered A for .1″, B for .2″,—G for .7″.631 This medley of fuzes was gradually superseded by a wooden time-fuze proposed in 1849 by an officer who had a genius for ammunition, Captain (afterwards General) E. M. Boxer, R.A., and adopted in 1850. In the final pattern of this fuze, adopted early in 1854, England possessed probably the best fuze in Europe.

TABLE XIII.

Time-Fuze Composition.

Percussion and Concussion Fuzes.

The earliest proposal for igniting the bursting charges of shell by percussion appears to have been made in 1596 by Sebastian Hälle.639 A similar proposal was made in 1610 by Graf Johann von Nassau in a MS. now in possession of the Royal Library, Berlin (MS. Germ. fol. 4), where two hand-grenades are described which explode on being let fall on the ground. The second differs from the first in having a safety apparatus to prevent premature explosions, but both are based on the same principle as Hälle’s: flints and steel so arranged as to strike together on impact with the ground.640 In 1650 Siemienowicz gives a description (with plates) of similar grenades, without a safety arrangement,641 which Mieth regarded as “curiosities” specially adapted to hurry those who meddled with them into the next world.642 Yet Buchner mentions them in 1682,643 and Anderson in 1691,644 without any (expressed) misgivings of their danger. We may rest assured that these man-traps were never used on actual service.

The use of percussion powder to ignite the bursting charges of shells was first definitely proposed, I believe, by Johann Jürgenson von Trachenfels in 1655;645 just seven years after Glauber had drawn attention to such mixtures in his Philosophischen Öfen.646 Trachenfels’ proposals were never put into practice, and no attempt was made to apply percussion powders to military purposes for more than a century. Fulminating silver, discovered by Berthollet towards the close of the eighteenth century, could not be utilised owing to the violence of its detonation. After Howard’s discovery of fulminating mercury in 1800, a number of percussion mixtures were made; but seven years passed before Rev. Alexander Forsyth proposed to use them for the priming of firearms,647 and eleven years more elapsed before it occurred to Colonel Peter Hawker to enclose percussion priming in a copper cap.648 The percussion musket did not make its appearance until 1842.

The first English concussion fuze649 was invented by Quartermaster Freeburn, R.A., in 1846; the first percussion fuze by Commander Moorsom, R.N., in 1850.

CHAPTER XVI

SIGNALS

The following tables tell their own tale:—

TABLE XIV.

Signal Rockets.

TABLE XV.

Fixed Lights.

TABLE XVI

Fireworks.

FOOTNOTES: