and was not practised, from the hurry to throw the sails aback. The hint may, therefore, be useful to some young officer, or to an amateur in yacht sailing.

It is, perhaps, needless to add, that, in all cases, the quick dispatch of the boat is a point of the greatest importance. I may remark, that what has been said about putting about on the other tack, in the supposed case, is more particularly applicable to fore and aft rigged vessels, from the greater facility with which it can be done.

After these observations, it can do no harm to repeat a maxim which has been suggested elsewhere, viz. that an officer should frequently, in his watch, or any other charge, exercise his mind by suggesting to himself the occurrence of the possible accidents in which he may be called upon to act promptly, and in considering what steps should be taken in them, that he may not be unprepared, but ready to suppress the alarm of those around him, and give confidence by his coolness.

REPLY TO COLONEL MACERONE'S OBSERVATIONS
ON RIFLE SHELLS.

IN the Number of the United Service Journal for August I observe a Treatise by Colonel Macerone, an officer formerly A.D.C. to the celebrated and chivalrous Murat when King of Naples.

In many of this gentleman's observations, which are penned on the whole with considerable ability, I certainly concur, but in many others of the most material importance I must beg to differ from him, as being decidedly complicated and Utopian. There is no doubt but that the rapid rotation on the axis of its flight gives the rifle bullet more precision than one discharged from the plain cylinder of a common musket, provided it is kept clean and unfurred, otherwise the aberration will be greater than that of a plain barrel, as any gunmaker will demonstrate. As that most destructive of all firearms discharged from the shoulder, I mean the rifle, is now so generally adopted by all tirailleurs, yägers, or sharpshooters, belonging to modern armies, probably you will allow me to discuss the period when it appears to have been first used with any great effect by modern belligerents.

It is perhaps not generally known, that about sixty years ago rifle barreled cannon were cast in Russia; but it does not appear that any great use was made of them, and they seem to have shared the fate of the French triple-barrelled_six-pounders, used at the battle of Ramillies, that is, of being consigned to oblivion. It was not till the year 1775, so momentous as the grand epoch of the unnatural contest which severed Great Britain from her American colonies, that we hear of the rifle being adopted in actual warfare to any great extent; the first experiments seem to have been tried at the sanguinary business at Bunker's Hill, when the skill and precision of the American marksmen enabled them at first to pick off a great proportion of our officers, distinguished as they were by their glaring clothing and gaudy equipments from the privates, but not however to prevent their entrenchments from being ultimately stormed, and carried by the grenadiers with their bayonets fixed.

It is nevertheless a fact, that in September 1759, at the first battle of Quebec, the French had several tirailleurs in their army provided with rifles,

One of them is now to be seen in the Tower of London with its three barrels perfect.

and it was commonly reported that the heroic Wolfe received his death wound from one of these marksmen, who it appears was recognized to be a deserter, in a French coat, from one of our regiments, and who was a serjeant who had been severely reprimanded by Wolfe on the parade for striking a private, a thing strictly forbidden by that officer, who threatened to reduce him to the ranks for his indiscretion. This irritated the man, and was the cause of his ultimately deserting. He was hanged for his crime. Be that as it may, there were two French rifles with square barrels preserved in the arsenal at Quebec, till it was burnt in 1815.

In the affair of Saratoga, October 1777, Gen. Burgoyne's army, notwithstanding their valour, suffered most materially from the enemy's riflemen, and previously to this, in the action at Freeman's farm near Stillwater, great numbers of them took post on his flanks, many on high trees in the rear of the whole line, and there was seldom a minute's interval of smoke without officers being taken off by single shot. At Baltimore in 1814, many of the American marksmen who had ascended trees for the same purpose, were shot on their perches in the woods. But more of this

anon.

In the Gentleman's Magazine for June 1776, we find the following notice of moment, relating to the gallant and lamented Major Ferguson of rifle celebrity, who afterwards fell in the action at King's Mountain (7th October 1780) in Carolina, while in command of a small party of loyalists and partisans, who were attacked by 1600 mounted backwoodsmen and overpowered after forty-seven minutes' contest, and treated with great barbarity."

"Saturday June 1. This morning some curious experiments were tried at Woolwich before the principal officers of Ordnance with a rifle gun, the invention of Capt. Ferguson of the 70th regiment, when that gentleman fired in four minutes sixteen shot at a target two hundred yards' distance. In one minute he fired six shot. He fired four shot a minute advancing at the rate of four miles an hour. And lastly, he poured a bottle of water into the pan and barrel of his piece, when loaded, so as to wet every grain of the powder, and in less than half a minute, without extracting the ball, fired again as readily as before. He hit the bull's eye in the target, lying on his back at one hundred yards distance, and only missed the target three times in all his experiments, though it rained and the wind and weather was very much against him."

From the circumstance of the water poured into the pan and barrel, it would appear that the rifle here used was one made to unscrew and load at the breech, which was also a favourite plan with the American riflemen at the time, who are said to have carried among other implements a gimlet, to rest their pieces on in the woods, while in want of rest, the gimlet being bored into the side of a tree. In December following, we find, a patent passed the seal to Capt. Ferguson, for an invention in fire-arms, whereby they are rendered more sure in execution and more quickly charged than those in common use-most probably made to unscrew at the breech.

The American rifleman knows better how to tree himself and fire with precision from behind his tree than any other marksman, and he is only equalled in bush-fighting by the native Indians, who are unrivalled in turning an ambuscade to advantage, and giving the foeman his death wound from the tangled covert; witness the exploit of Tecumseh near Brownstown in July 1812, when with seventy Indians he lay in wait for 200 Americans, and directed his fire on them with such success as to kill twenty of them, including four captains, and wounded nine, driving the rest seven miles off: also the defeat of Colonel Dudley's detachment of 400 men in the sortie on Gen. Proctor's batteries from Fort Meigs on the 5th May 1813. It was on its march to attack the British camp, but was drawn into an ambush, and the

Vide Col. Tarleton's Campaigns, p. 164. Also Stedman's Hist. Am. Rev. War in loco.

ON RIFLE SHELLS.

Colonel fell, as well as the greater part of his men, by the hand of Tecumseh and his devoted-warriors.

Colonel Macerone is perfectly right in what he states concerning the bore of the American rifles being too small, carrying balls of thirty-two to the pound; while those of the Canadian huntsmen, it is known, are more efficacious, and that the elk and other wild animals do not so easily get away when struck by their larger balls. In the travels of Major Z. M. Pike (by order of the United States Government) in the western part of North America and Louisiana, 1811, numberless instances occur of the animals shot at "getting away from the circumstance of his rifle being too small in the bore.' Not less than nine shots were fired at elks in one day, and all the animals escaped although wounded. The same evil attended the pursuit of deer, one of which, although struck in the head, was able to rise and bound off when the hunters came up to him, and, in fact, Pike and his companions were without food for two days, till at last they succeeded in killing a single deer, which ran some way after being wounded. Colonel Macerone seems to be as bigoted to the percussion system as most of the dandy sportsmen of the present day-but his plan will never do for the army. He says that it is as superior to the flint as the latter is to the old pyrites wheel lock of former centuries. Now, it is well known, that the old caliver, or Spanish musket, as well as the lighter harquebuze, was fired by a match, fixed by a kind of tongs in the serpentine or cock, which by pulling the trigger was brought down with great quickness upon the priming in the pan, over which was a sliding cover, drawn back by hand at the time of firing; that it required great care and nicety to fit the match properly and blow the ashes from the coal, and a great deal of time was lost in taking it out of the cock and returning it between the fingers of the left hand at every firing, besides the inconvenience of wet weather, which often rendered the match useless. He certainly does not mean to convince us that the difference he speaks of is tantamount to this, or to the wheel-lock used for pistols and carbines, Let us see what this wheel-lock invented in Germany about 1586.

was.

It was composed of a solid steel wheel with an axis, to which was fastened a chain, which being wound round it drew up a very strong spring ; on pulling the trigger, the spring acting whirled the wheel about with great pan and velocity, and the friction of its edge, which was a little notched, produced the fire against a hard pebble-stone, the wheel being partly in the touching the priming. (vide Luigi Collado's Treatise of Artillery, Venice 1586.) Now, I will ask any infantry officer who has been on a common parade, at drill, or at a review, whether the comparison is fair; when the great rapidity of firing, either by subdivisions, companies, or battalions, is considered, and the immense disparity that must strike him between the present mode of loading and firing and that of those ancient days, when locks were inconvenient and took time to wind up.

There is little doubt but that in certain cases percussion rifles might answer, but I will ask, how are the caps to be transported with the ammunition of an army? how are they to be guarded against that friction which must needlessly blow them up, and if they become wetted, or intercepted by the enemy, how are you to obviate the danger of your ammunition becoming perfectly useless for want of percussion caps? Your rifle brigade is then hors-de-combat, and forced to surrender at discretion. Flints are always to be procured, but you cannot always command an apothecary's shop in the vicinity of your army, to make the Rev. Mr. Joyce's caps for you at a moment's warning-Tallow and rosin round the bottom of the caps!! Oh, ye shades of Dundas and Torrens! are we come to this? Formerly the soldier's head was well saturated with tallow and flour; but now their fingers

Afterwards Gen. Pike, blown up along with 260 of his men, at the taking of York, Upper Canada, by the explosion of a powder magazine, 27th of April 1813. -Vide James' Hist. Mil. Occ.

and pouches are to be properly daubed with grease and rosin-leave the first to the Russian boors, the latter to Paganini for his fiddle. Would not a little tar round the base of the nipple (as dandy men-killers they are to be, and no man is to be shot out of the fashion) do as well and not require so much preparation? Supposing the nipples to fill up, as I have often seen them do, or to break off, what becomes of your nitrate of mercury or your super-oxygenated muriate of potash ?-Bah! The French, whose troops are noted for keeping up a fire with prodigious celerity and vivacity, were not to be duped on a late occasion when the Londoners wanted to put them off with detonators, instead of giving them good flint guns which would go off when wanted. The broad and convex screw of the gallant Colonel's opening passage into the chambers would, most probably, blow out in time, and if applied to infantry in line, be very apt to give the right hand man a quietus, at least for a season in its convex parabola, tending to the concave! After all, give me the common plug in the musket breeching; it is the cheapest and best calculated for rough usage, dirt and neglect, it fires as well as any, and can never be stopped up. The best flint, I repeat, will not miss fire once at least out of nine shots—if there is any miss-fire, it is the fault of the hammers being too soft. It is well known, that at drills and ordinary parades our men always use snappers, which are small square bits of bone substituted for the unnecessary tear and wear of the flints. In the course of time the hammers become, if I may use the expression, so softened and leadened that the flint will not produce any fire at all on their surface. It is then the business of an armourer serjeant to fresh harden these hammers, or they will prove nearly useless. He should also take more pains with the mechanism of the locks when they get out of order, and greatly strengthen the mainsprings; but the truth is, that so lucrative is the repairing of locks in the items that come round to captains of companies for keeping the locks of their men in order, that the armourers, if not well looked after, are very apt not to do all they are bound to do in keeping those locks in proper order; this I know from actual experience. But the greatest objection to the use of detonators in the army would be the following, viz. that detonating powder is very liable to miss fire after being long in contact with any salt or damp; such as a strong pressure on the elastic fluid of gunpowder; being all night in boats or exposed to the spray of the sea when sailing. Colonel Hawker expressly says in his book-"In a word, although detonating powder may be put in water and then fired off, yet it frequently misses fire after being long in the damp, and particularly when shooting on salt water. Take a piece of biscuit, or crisp gingerbread, dip it in water for a short time, and it will nevertheless remain hard enough to crack before it will bend; but if, on the other hand, you lay it in a damp cellar all night, it will not be found crisp in the morning. So it is with detonating powder and with the substance in the caps, by long continued damp it loses its crispness and will no longer crack or fire by percussion." How would your armies have managed, encamped in the swamps of Walcheren, bivouacked in muddy ploughed fields in the Peninsula, amid incessant rain, with this trumpery invention? Or look to the late contest in America, when Gen. Drummond's army was for a long time encamped in a muddy rice swamp while laying siege to Fort Erie, and the rain poured in torrents. How would they have used their muskets in repelling the sortie that was made from the fort by 3000 Yankees, on the 17th of September 1814, who had got temporary possession of their batteries, and must have occasioned them, unprovided with flints, a heavier loss, till they could have felt the bayonets of the Royal Scots, of the 89th on the right, or of the 6th and 82nd, which ultimately drove them across the glacis of Fort Erie into their own works? Or at the unpropitious business of New Orleans, when the troops were wet all day and froze all night, and when, it is well known, that they were for

several days rowing in open boats from their ships to the shore by reason of the shallow draught of water after they left that marshy spot, Ile aux Poix, what state would the dandy detonators have been in?

The doctrine alluded to about arming the infantry with pikes, was a favourite reverie of old Saxe's, and long exploded. Simplicity should be the ground-work of the education of a soldier. Vide Puysegur, Folard, &c.

The heavy musket and rest, used so late as the beginning of the civil wars, (vide Colonel Bariffe's Young Artillery-man, 1643,) would be just as portable to the modern soldier; and we would advise Colonel Macerone to revive Lord Viscount Wimbledon's plan of 1637, to recommend the practising of a new exercise of the musket and half-pike together, and call up the spon toon from the days of Culloden and Dettingen, in lieu of the sword exercise now taught to infantry officers. I am pleased to see the heavy and cumbrous halbert, alike useless and graceless, exploded from the infantry, and replaced by the more useful and portable fuzee. The Colonel's plan of magazine locks to mounted officers or dragoons, on Forsythe's plan, is worse, too complicated, and therefore useless; for to any one who has really been on service, it will appear that pistols are but of very secondary use in action; that the execution done by a rapid charge of cavalry is by the weight of their horses and the cutting of their sabres; that a common flint horsepistol is quite good enough to break a Frenchman's head with; and that the small carbine carried by our light cavalry is a sort of popgun, that may do very well for your videttes to give an alarm with, but is of little use in actually reaching an enemy's body till you really see, (as in gull-shooting,) the white of his eye. It is almost impossible to load at a moment's notice on horseback, like the Persians or Arabs at full speed; our dragoons are not trained to such speedy manoeuvres. My idea of the magazine moveable lock, (such a one as I saw affixed to a wild-fowl gun in Grierson's shop,) was that of a heavy engine travelling on a rail-road, or a large saw for cutting timber, which it greatly resembles. As we are now to kill our foes secundum artem, as fashionable sportsmen do partridges and snipes, why not exclude the pouch altogether under the percussion system, and carry a certain number of steel chargers to the field in something like the old-fashioned bandelier, containing the copper caps loose in little cases, and the balls separate in a havresack? Let the Campi Doctores be instructed to teach the tiros a new exercise, the old manual and platoon to be utterly exploded by this terrific march of copper (not bear-skin) caps: for I will then defy any private soldier to perform the present exercise, with any degree of precision, or without the danger of losing his caps from the nipples of his firelock.

Glorious times! There will be no more "turning the body a quarterface to the right on both heels, with the side brass touching the hip, elbow close pressed in front of the hip." No more necessity for "opening the pan by closing the elbow." No, only "handle cartridge; 'bout!" The adjutants and serjeant-majors will have quite a sinecure. What would the great Colonel Boone, "back woodsman of Kentucky," have said, if you had sent him copper caps into the forests, to shoot the deer at his deerlick, out of those rifles, which though very true were not made for trifles?" The Kentucky sharp-shooters are such excellent shots, that they will hit a crown-piece with single ball, at the distance of one hundred yards with ease. And there is a story of an American who, for a wager, shot at a stool between his friend's legs at a long distance off, and lodged the ball in its centre. Would not such shots laugh at the paltry drug-merchant's oxymuriates and gum Arabic? In his note at the end of the essay, Colonel Macerone allows, that it is unavailing for the percussion powder in the cap to be water-proof, as the water,

The American rifles are generally loaded in action with a couple of buck-shot besides the ball, and the musket cartridges contain nine buck-shot besides the ball on top of the cartridge.