make Armstrong guns for the British government under Armstrong’s supervision. Accordingly over three thousand guns were manufactured by the new company between 1859 and 1863. At the latter date the British armament was the finest in existence. But there was then a reaction in favour of the superior simplicity of muzzle-loading guns. The breech-loading mechanism required accurate fittings and careful use. Breech-loaders are unfit weapons for imperfectly instructed gunners, and out of place when exposed to weather or drifting sand. Armstrong recognised the invincibility of official obtuseness and prejudice, and gave up his official appointment during 1863, when the government greatly reduced the orders they placed with the Elswick Ordnance Company, and practically returned to muzzle-loaders. To that form of ordnance the authorities so obstinately adhered for the next fifteen years that England not only lost her supremacy in respect to her artillery but fell dangerously behind the rest of the world.
Owing to the withdrawal of government support in 1863, the Elswick Ordnance Company passed through a serious crisis, but Armstrong was equal to the situation. The ordnance company and its works were incorporated with Armstrong’s engineering company and its works. Blast furnaces were added, and the ordnance company, being released from the obligation to make guns exclusively for the British government, was largely employed by foreign governments. Great benefit resulted to the financial position of the combined ordnance and engineering company.
Meanwhile Armstrong improved his breech-action, and carefully investigated the best method of rifling, and the most advantageous calibre of the bore and structure of the cylinder, so as to obtain the greatest accuracy in shooting and the longest range with the minimum weight. At an early period of his gunnery researches he had recognised the desirabiiity of building up guns with thin metal bands instead of large hoops, but circumstances interposed a long delay before he carried out that principle in practice. The plan may have been first suggested to him by Captain Blakeney’s proposal, published as early as 1855, to substitute wire wound at high tension round the core for hoops or jackets. The same idea had occurred independently to Brunel, who gave Armstrong a commission for a gun made on this principle. The order could not be executed, because it was found that Longridge had taken out a patent for this method of construction, though he had never carried it into execution. After the patent had expired Armstrong redirected his attention to the subject. In 1877 he made preliminary trials with small wired cylinders, and in 1879 he commenced a 6-inch breech-loading gun of this construction, which was finished in the beginning of 1880. Results obtained with this gun were so satisfactory that at last even the British ordnance authorities acknowledged the folly of continuing to manufacture unwieldy muzzle-loaders; and before the year was out, by Armstrong’s persistent pressure, they were persuaded once more to adopt breech-loading guns with polygroove rifling.
Armstrong’s strenuous work at his hydraulic machines and his celebrated guns by no means exhausted his energies or interests. At the same time he found opportunity to give thoughtful consideration to problems of the highest importance to every practical engineer in connection with the economical use of fuel. In 1855 Armstrong, with two other engineers, was entrusted, with the award of the 500l. premium offered by the Northumberland Steam Collieries Association for the best method of preventing smoke in the combustion of Hartley coal in marine boilers. Three reports (1857 and 1868) were founded on a long series of elaborate experiments. His attention having been thus attracted to the wasteful use of our natural fuel, he took advantage of his election to the presidency of the British Association, when it met at Newcastle in 1863, to discuss at length, in his presidential address, the probable duration of our coal supply. He pointed out how ‘wastefully and extravagantly in all its applications’ to steam-engines, or metallurgical operations, or domestic purposes, coal was being burnt. He calculated that in doing a given amount of work with a steam-engine only one-thirtieth of the energy of the coal is utilised. Assuming a moderate rate of increase in coal production, he came to the conclusion that before two centuries have passed ‘England will have ceased to be a coal-producing country on an extensive scale.’
There followed a royal commission to inquire into the duration of British coalfields (1866), of which Sir W. G. Armstrong was a member, and before which he also appeared as a witness. His evidence was among the most valuable information collected by it. He twice returned to the subject, once in his presidential address to the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers in 1873, and again in his presidential address to the mechanical section of the British Association at York in
