French canals and thence as close to the firing line as possible. In 1917, speed of transport of material becoming extremely urgent, it was decided to establish a train-ferry service; it came into operation at the end of that year, and the hoisting of cargoes by cranes into barges was largely superseded. Three ferries plied incessantly between Richborough and Calais and Dunkirk, connecting railhead in England with railhead in France. In all, 4,000 barge loads of ammunition, 17,818 guns and limbers, and over i| million tons of other stores were sent across.
The ferries, specially designed and built at the works of Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. of Elswick, were of 363 ft. overall length, 61 ft. beam and 3,654 tons displacement. Four lines of rails on deck gave accommodation for 54. ten-ton wagons carrying an average load of 900 tons. A lifting bridge at the wharf-end, which the ferry approached stern on, enabled accurate connection of rails at all stites of the tile, the process of embarking a train requiring ordinarily not more than 15 minutes.
For the protection of the base, a monitor was stationed in Pegwell Bay, and searchlight? and heavy and anti-aircraft guns were mounted at many points. Repeated air-raids took place in the vicinity and there were several bombardments from the sea, but Richborough itself was never seriously damaged, the low-lying, featureless ch r- acter of the marshland probably affording its best protection, more especially at night.
For a year after the Armistice, Richborough continued to deal with vast quantities of material returned from the western front. After the sale and disposal of the surplus military stores and equipment, the port, with the remaining equipment and the fleet of ferries and barges, was sold by the Disposal Board for 1,407,000 (plus the cost up to 40,000 of acquiring the land by the Government) to the Queenborough Development Co., who thus acquired 1,500 ac. of land including 250 ac. that were reclaimed from the swampy foreshore. In 1921, the company proposed to work Richborough as a barge and train-ferry port, ancillary to Queenborough, both centres to serve the requirements of a comprehensive scheme of industrial development in the surrounding districts including the Kent coal-fields.
RICHMOND, SIR WILLIAM BLAKE (1842-1921), English
painter (see 23.307), died at Hammersmith Feb. u 1921.
RICHTER, HANS (1834-1916), Hungarian musical conductor (see 23.312), died at Bayreuth Dec. 5 1916.
RICKETTS, CHARLES (1866- ), English artist, was born at Geneva Oct. 2 1866, and was educated in France. In 1889 he became joint editor with Charles Shannon of the Dial. In 1896 he founded the Vale press, the output of which was a series of beautifully designed and printed books. Of his pictures, "The Plague " (1911) is in the Luxembourg at Paris, and " Don Juan " (1916) in the National Gallery of British Art. He published The Prado and its Masterpieces (1003), Titian (1906) and Pages on Art (1913).
RICOTTI-MAGNANI, CESARE (1822-1917), Italian general (see 23.316), died at Novara Aug. 4 1917.
RIDDELL, GEORGE ALLARDICE RIDDELL, 1ST BARON (1865- ), British newspaper proprietor, was born in London May 25 1865 and educated privately. He became a solicitor in 1888 and settled in practice at Cardiff. There he acquired an interest in the Western Mail, and he eventually turned his energies mainly to newspaper management. He went to London and obtained control over the Sunday paper, the News of the World, which he developed on popular lines, so that it obtained a huge circulation during the first decade of the 2oth century and made its proprietor a very wealthy man. He gradually extended his newspaper connexions, becoming a director also of George Newnes Ltd., Country Life Ltd., and C. Arthur Pearson Ltd., etc. By the year 1909, when he received a knighthood, he had become one of the most influential personalities in the London press, and he took an active part in giving a more efficient organization to various forms of press work, by way of collective action between proprietors themselves and their organs. He was a prominent member of the Newspaper Proprietors' Association at the outbreak of the World War, and owing to his intimate relations with Mr. Lloyd George he gradually became the principal liaison between the Press and the Government so far as aH matters of publicity were concerned. In this capacity he represented the British Press at the Peace Conference in 1919 and at all the important Allied conferences subsequently. He was created a baronet in 1918, and raised to the peerage as Baron Riddell of Walton Heath in 1920.
RIDGEWAY, SIR WILLIAM (1853- ), British archaeologist, was born in Ireland Aug. 6 1853 and educated at Portarlington, Trinity College, Dublin, and at Caius College, Cambridge, where he was fifth in the classical tripos. In 1880 he was elected fellow of Caius College, Cambridge, and in 1883 became professor of Greek at Queen's College, Cork. In 1892 he returned to Cambridge as professor of archaeology and in 1907 became also Brereton reader in classics. He was made a fellow of the British Academy, and president of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1908-9). He was knighted in 1919. Amongst his publications are The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards (1892); The Early Age of Greece (1901); The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse (1907); Who were the Romans? (1907); The Oldest Irish Epic (1907), etc. His views on early Greek civilization are described in 12.442; those on the origin of the Romans in 23.616, and those on the horse in 13.717.
RIFLES AND LIGHT MACHINE-GUNS (see 23.323 and 17.237). Since 1910 there have been few important changes in the design of the military bolt-action rifle. The adoption by many countries of the pointed bullet in lieu of the round-nosed (see 23.328) has led to some strengthening of parts so as to withstand increased chamber pressures. Modifications in the patterns of sights used have also been made here and there. 1 The military rifle had practically reached its zenith before 1914, and the opening of the World War found all armies equipped with rifles of practically equal merit. With the exception that the French continued to use the tube-magazine Lebel rifle and the British and Americans had adopted a shorter barrel than the rest, it might be said that the military rifles of the world were not only equal in merit but similar in design.
This initial equivalence of the opposed rifles continued through- out the war period. Further changes of detail were made. Special rifles were sometimes brought into use for snipers, and fittings were added to the standard service rifle to adapt it as a grenade-thrower and as a sniper's weapon to be used from a deep trench. A heavy single-loader was designed in Germany as an anti-tank weapon, and many changes were made in the ammuni- tion. But the rifle itself, the rifle of the average infantryman, was practically the same at the end of the war as it had been for the past 1 5 years, or, setting aside the change of bullet type, for twenty-five. The German army of 1918 carried the 1898 rifle, the French the Lebel model 1886-93, the Italians the Mannlicher-Carcano of 1891. The Russian three-line (-3-in.) rifle of 1900 was only a modification of the earlier Moussin and Nagant models. The most modern patterns were the British and the American, and these were characterized by hav- ing a relatively short barrel, experience in the S. African War having brought " snap shooting " and the consequent need of handiness into relief. Otherwise the elements and their functions were the same, and the dimensions of the same order, in all rifles except the French.
This standstill of progress, in a time when the design of every other kind of weapon was developing at an unprecedented rate, is very remarkable and indicates clearly enough that the military rifle of the conventional type had reached its zenith. As a type, it was not capable of much further development. Designers had already by 1914 produced the first practical models of automatic and semi-automatic arms. Governments were unwilling to re-arm their troops and re-stock their armouries with new models of an obsolescent class. Even the French, whose rifle was not only the oldest but also possessed a type of magazine long discarded by others, made no attempt to replace it by a weapon of the class of the British and American rifles. When war came, all Powers were waiting on events.
In the war itself the machine-gun proper very soon and decisively asserted itself, driving the simple rifle into the back-
1 For further information see AMMUNITION and SIGHTS.
