The Naval and military magazine Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1827 edition. Excerpt: ...the cap up to the percussion powder at the extremitv, but only so much as to form a slight lining of wax around its inner base. This will suffice to cause the cap to close hermetically over the nipple; so that, provided it be not cracked, and the gun have no lateral vent hole (which it ought not to have), the loaded piece may be put over the lock into a pail of water, without affecting either the cap or the charge. It is sufficient to have a few such prepared caps in store for wet weatirer. require. These conditions I think I can ensure by the most simple means; at least, I can vouch for having, in my own person, accompanied by four officers of my own training, run, or leapt, or scrambled--over field, and ditch, and wood, and rock, for the space of six miles--alternately, and without stopping, assuming now the carbine, and then the lance--and without experiencing any hindrance or inconvenience from the one or the other. Ordnance.--I had prepared some observations, in proof of the great advantages which would accrue from the substitution of iron instead of brass ordnance, both for battering and field service. I was prepared to prove, that the change would save nine-tenths of the cost, furnish more than ten times the amount of service, and give to the attack or defence of a fortress more than three times the vigour and effect: The memoranda which I have made and collected on the subject of the speedy destruction of brass ordnance, and my calculations and proofs of the fitness and superiority of iron, would, I flatter myself, have established the correctness of the foregoing propositions. In this demonstration, however, I find myself anticipated by an excellent little work I have just met withf, to which any thing that I could add The gallant author...