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Page 11
None of these crafts are obsolete (to use the popular expression of
the day). All are theoretically better than any which have stood the
test of battle; but each excels its predecessor in some particular
feature. The use of high explosives is the direct cause of the very
latest transformations in marine architecture, and is destined to work
still greater changes; but it will require a war between the most
civilized nations of the world, and a long war, to either confirm or
condemn the many theoretical machines and methods of destruction that
modern science has produced. I say a war between the most civilized
nations, since it is only they that can supply the educated intellect
that is necessary to both attack and defense. Under other
circumstances false conclusions as to weapons and results are certain
to be drawn.
At the bombardment of Alexandria, the English armorclads, with their
rifled guns, were not nearly as efficient against the feeble chalk
fortifications as our wooden ships would have been with smooth bore
guns. On the other hand I saw on shore after the bombardment hundreds
of torpedoes and miles of cable that the Egyptians did not understand
how to use. The French war with China was equally unsatisfactory from
a military point of view. The Chinese at Foochow were annihilated
because the French opened fire first, and the only shell that
penetrated a French ironclad was filled with lamp black instead of
powder. The national riots that we are accustomed to hear of in South
America are likewise of little instructive value; they buy their
weapons of more civilized people, but there is always something
fatally defective about the tactics pursued in using them. It may be
said in general terms that in these days of extreme power in fighting
machines, the greater the efficiency the less the simplicity and the
more knowledge required in the care of the weapons. When powder was
merely powder the advice of the old adage to "trust in God and keep
your powder dry" was ample to maintain the efficiency of the powder
for all purposes; but nowadays if you keep your powder dry you will
burst your gun, and if you keep your gun-cotton dry you are liable to
blow up your ship.
It is rather difficult to-day to define what high explosives are, in
contradistinction to gunpowder. Thirty years ago we could say that
powder was a mechanical mixture and the others were chemical
compounds; but of late years this difference has disappeared.
The dynamical difference, however, still remains. Gunpowder in its
most efficient form is a slow-burning composition, which exerts a
relatively low pressure and continues it for a long time and to a
great distance. High explosives, on the contrary, in their most
efficient form, are extremely quick-burning substances, which exert an
enormous pressure within a limited radius. Ordinary black gunpowder
consists of a mechanical mixture of seventy-five per cent. of
saltpeter, fifteen per cent of charcoal, and ten per cent. of sulphur.
The most important of the high explosives are formed by the action of
nitric acid upon organic substances or other hydrocarbons, the
compound radical NO2 being substituted for a portion of the
hydrogen in the substance. The bodies thus formed are in a condition
of unstable equilibrium; but if well made from good material, they
become stable in their instability, very much like Prince Rupert's
drops, those little glass pellets which endure almost any amount of
rough usage; but once cracked, fly into infinitesimal fragments.
The power exerted by these nitro-substitution products is due to the
fact that they detonate, i.e., they are instantaneously converted into
colorless gas at a very high temperature, and in addition they have
almost no solid residue. Nitro-glycerine actually leaves none at all,
while gunpowder leaves sixty-eight per cent. The first departure in
gunpowder from the old-time constituents of black powder just
mentioned was for the purpose of obtaining less pressure and slower
combustion than could be produced by mere granulating or caking. This
was accomplished by using underburned charcoal, together with sugar
and about one and one-half per cent. of water. This is the brown
powder most generally used at present and with satisfactory results;
but the abstraction of its moisture increases its rapidity of
combustion to a dangerous degree, besides which the underburned
charcoal is itself unstable.
The next change demanded is smokelessness, and to accomplish it
recourse is had to the high explosive field, mechanically mixing
various substances with them to reduce and regulate their rapidity of
action. Just now some form of gun-cotton is most in use mixed with
nitrate of ammonia, camphor and other articles. The tendency of these
mixtures is to absorb moisture, and the gun-cotton in them to
decompose, and there is no smokeless powder which can to-day be
considered successful. Such a powder, however, will undoubtedly be an
accomplished fact in the near future. Military men seem to be a great
deal at variance as to its value in the field, but there can be no
doubt of its value for naval purposes; it is a necessity forced upon
us by the development of torpedo warfare.
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