THE THOUVENIN RIFLE

37

ramming (fig. 5). There was, however, no great advantage in this alteration so long as the spherical bullet, insisted upon by the military authorities, was

retained.

The round bullet, as has been shown, had several disadvantages. It was impossible to give it sufficient velocity of rotation to maintain its speed for a long distance, because the grooving could only catch hold of quite a small section of the bullet's surface, however well it might fit the barrel. If the velocity of projection was high, the pitch of the spiral had to be very slight. Otherwise the bullet stripped, passing over the grooves instead of along them. The rotation was thus insufficient to keep the bullet true for a long distance. Another drawback here comes in. The range for accurate shooting with the round bullet was further limited by the fact that its axis of rotation retained the original direction even when, owing to the curve of the trajectory, the bullet was moving at a very different angle. With the long bullet of modern days, which keeps its point in the direction of the curve of the trajectory, the tendency to deviate from the proper line of flight does not increase so long as the spin is maintained. The round ball, on the other hand, when beginning to fall, no longer cuts the air with its spinning end, so to say, but with the side, and consequently, instead of opposing to the resistance of the air a symmetrical axis, tends, as the range becomes longer, more and more to roll upon the air. Mr. Baker, who only a hundred years ago thought it necessary to try careful experiments to prove that a side wind does affect the flight of

IG. 5

the bullet, speaks of 200 yards as the greatest range he could fire at to any certainty'; and adds that at 300 yards he has fired very well at times, when the wind has been calm, and that at 400 and 500 yards he has frequently fired, and sometimes struck the object. But he was evidently very hopeless about making good practice at so great a distance. The third drawback of the spherical bullet was the very much larger surface presented to the air in penetrating it than that of the elongated bullet. It is not too much to say that an entire revolution was effected by the adoption of the long bullet instead of the round one.

The notion of using bullets of an elongated shape was not new. Mr. Boucher, in his book published in 1860, says that as far back as the time of Henry V., in 1413, ' elongated shot of three and four calibres in length were fired from small cannon.' It is natural enough that something of the kind should have been tried, since the crossbow was made to discharge bolts and similar short, heavy projectiles, but it cannot be supposed that shot of this shape were a success, and their failure is proved by the fact that their use was not continued in smooth-bored guns. Robins, in the eighteenth century, had recommended an egg-shaped ball. In the year 1823 Captain Norton produced an elongated hollow projectile (figs. 6 and 7) on the expansion principle,

making the hollow in the bullet contain the powder charge. In 1824 he submitted it in an improved form to the Select Committee on Firearms, but this Committee, having a most conservative objection to novelties, refused to have anything to do with it, and begged the

question neatly by saying that a spherical ball was the only shape of projectile adapted for military purposes.' In 1841 M. Delvigne had included the use of a cylindro-conical bullet, an old idea of his, in a supplementary patent. Mr.

PICKET BULLETS

39

Chapman, in 1848, says that in America, while the use of a round bullet was general, a round-ended picket' bullet (fig. 8) was occasionally used before the introduction of the pointed bullet with a flat base, known as a 'flat-ended picket.' The 'picket' bullet was evidently a 'peaked' bullet, as distinguished from a round one; the writer knows a field in the Midlands called locally the 'picked-piece,' because it runs into a sharp point. The type of the first flat-based conoidal bullets may be fairly judged, and also their great drawback, that they had little (if any) cylindrical part to centre them truly in the bore, from Mr. Chapman's illustrations of what was liable to happen with them, which we reproduce (figs. 9 and 10).

FIG. 8

Yet, so far, no bullet had been made with the

distinguishing feature of modern projectiles--a flat or hollow base, with a cylindrical part next to it, then coming gradually to a point.

The long, pointed bullet, which is more accurately described as cylindro-conoidal, was a long time before it arrived. at the perfection which it has in the present day. Delvigne found almost at once, when he had given the bullet a large hollow in the base to throw the centre of gravity forward, that the force of the powder behind it was enough to expand

it into the grooves during its passage up the barrel. How far this was properly and effectually accomplished naturally depended upon several factors. The rapidity of ignition of the powder, the degree of softness of the bullet, the depth of the grooving, all bore their share in the result. In the days of which we are speaking, one of the greatest difficulties was to obtain powder of even make and of proper power. The deficiencies of the powder had formed one of the great difficulties of the early investigators, and it was not until a date later than that we are now speaking of that the manufacture of black powder was brought to the perfection it afterwards attained in the hands of Messrs. Curtis & Harvey and other makers.

It would seem that the first really successful application of the long bullet to the rifle was made by Captain Minié, of the Chasseurs d'Orléans, the Rifle Brigade of France. His name marks an epoch in the history of rifle developement. His first bullet was like Delvigne's, with a solid, flat base, and an ogival head (fig. 11). The form of this bullet had been almost precisely anticipated by Colonel Davidson, who used it in India in 1832. Similar bullets of his design are said also to have been used by the Edinburgh Rifle Club about 1840 (fig. 12). Minie's bullet was expanded in the ordinary way by using the Thouvenin rifle with the steel pillar. About the same time various various improvements were made in the manufacture of the barrel. The long, pointed bullet required a ramrod with a countersunk end of the same shape as the point of the bullet, in order that the violent ramming of it should not disfigure the point (fig. 5). In 1849 Minié introduced the use of a hollow-based pointed bullet, with an iron cup in the base (fig. 13), with a flat-breeched rifle having no device for expanding the bullet by ramming it, and this is the first rifle in which the principle

FIG. 11

FIG. 12