Royal Arsenal, Woolwich

“ The shouts of the different groups of spectators attended his progress along the road to Greenwich, until the royal standard floating over the Hospital announced his arrival. Thousands of voices hailed him as the yacht departed with a favourable breeze; and as he passed Woolwich a royal salute was fired, and the regiment on duty at the Arsenal presented arms. At Tilbury Fort, Southend, and Sheerness he met with lively demonstrations of loyalty. ”

“ The shooting of this gun directed attention to the oval-bore system, and in the succeeding experiments made at Woolwich Lancaster assisted the war department, and for some time superintended the production of the guns in the Royal Arsenal. ”

“ The enemy knows Woolwich, where and what it is, therefore there can be no danger of revealing secrets. But though the vast Arsenal is at our own doors few of us who sleep in London, under the broad shadow of its wings, have any real sense of its colossal presence, its immense significance, the tremendous force it stands for. Its origin dates back to the days of other wars, but when the present war began its workers were only fourteen thousand in all, without a woman of their number. Now there are nearly seventeen thousand women within its high walls, and fifty thousand men besides. ”

“ Founded in the closing years of the eighteenth century, the modern Arsenal of Woolwich is one of the most extensive and interesting institutions of the {89} kind in the world. Exclusive of the outlying powder magazines in the marshes, the present buildings cover considerably more than three hundred acres, the ordinary staff of workpeople numbers some ten thousand, that is increased to forty thousand or fifty thousand in time of war. ”

“ To the E. lies Plumstead, with the Plumstead marshes bordering the river to the N., and in the S. of the borough is Eltham. A large working population is employed in the Royal Arsenal, which occupies a large area on the river-bank, and includes the Royal Gun Factory, Royal Carriage Department, Royal Laboratory and Building Works Department. The former Royal Dockyard was made over to the War Office in 1872 and converted into stores, wharves for the loading of troopships, &c. ”

“ Of course, we cannot see everything at Woolwich Arsenal. There are certain buildings in the immense area where strangers are never permitted to go. In these various experiments are being carried out, various new inventions tested, and for this work secrecy is essential. It would never do for a rival foreign Power to get even small details of a new gun, or explosive, or other warlike device. ”

“ The large force of Artillery always at Woolwich, the manufacturing departments, and the numerous Regimental establishments, such, for example, as the Royal Artillery Institution, and the Department of Artillery studies, conspire at the present day to render Woolwich more than ever the centre of the Regiment's intellectual and domestic life. ”

“ The security of our great arsenal of Woolwich demands (independently of any plea of metropolitan defence) that this important position should be occupied by a work of considerable strength. Such a fortress would answer three purposes, each of them of paramount importance! In the first place, it would remedy the extremely insecure state, and to an enemy the most tempting defencelessness, of our greatest military manufactories and arsenal; secondly, it would, by means of its outworks, effectually bar the Thames from any gun-boat attack ”

“ There were faces in Woolwich which grew very long, and fossil old gentlemen whose remaining hairs stood on end, at such a perversion of the old order of things; but Lord Wellington supported the captains of companies in a measure which on service gave them a powerful engine for discipline. So, time after time, does the reader find the real Artillery unit asserting itself. ”

“ In 1755 he was selected to command a detachment of royal artillery ordered to Ireland, which formed the nucleus of the royal Irish artillery, but the adjutancy at Woolwich falling vacant at the same time, he purchased it under the system then in force, and held it until promoted to a company in 1759. In April of that year he proceeded with his company to Germany, and commanded the heavy brigade of British artillery in the campaigns of 1759–60. ”

“ He had ever a warm heart for Woolwich, where he had been born and brought up. He often returned to it, sometimes to carry his mother a share of his week's wages while she lived, and afterwards to refresh himself with a sight of the neighbourhood with which he had been so familiar when a boy. He liked its green common, with the soldiers about it; Shooter's Hill, with its out-look over Kent and down the valley of the Thames; the river busy with shipping, and the royal craft loading and unloading their armaments at the dockyard wharves. ”

“ The British Fleet, by a carefully calculated plan, had disappeared. It was then that the Nation had to depend upon its second line of defence—the Army.
The enemy, although somewhat depressed at the losses they had sustained, attempted to land, and of course were successful. The picked batteries from Woolwich, consisting of the Royal Horse Artillery, opened fire, but without the smallest effect. On the following morning the main force of the enemy appeared in front of Margate, the recently fortified port. ”

“ We can never be sufficiently grateful for what the great towns of the country have done towards the output of munitions. But it is only as it should be that London, which is the soul of the Empire, is its right arm also. Let us try to form an idea of what the women of the Metropolis are doing for the war by making a rapid tour of some of the associate factories which feed the great Arsenal of Woolwich. ”

“ Some delay occurring in extending the King’s beneficence to the Ordnance corps with respect to the increase of pay, the royal artillery at Woolwich, impatient to obtain it, exhibited unmistakable symptoms of discontent and insubordination. “More pay; less drill!” were their constant complaints, and hundreds stood by their arms ready to use them in compelling attention to their claims. ”

“ As children we watched the blacksmith at his anvil, attracted and yet half-terrified by the spark-showers flying from a white-hot horseshoe. And even the adult, long used to startling sights, might well be fascinated and dismayed by the terrific blows dealt on glowing ingots by the mechanical sledge.
A steam hammer at work in Woolwich Arsenal, forging a steel ingot for the inner tube of a big gun. It delivers a blow equivalent to the momentum of a falling mass weighing 4000 tons. ”

“ A party of eighty of the same regiment is lying at the gun house, near the long gun in St. James's Park. An extra guard was ordered at the Magazine in Hyde Park yesterday morning. Orders were also sent to Woolwich to have the artillery in readiness, should occasion require their presence in the metropolis. The troops in Hounslow barracks are also in a state for immediate service. Large quantities of ammunition have been delivered out to the troops at their respective barracks and quarters, and even the recruits at the recruiting house are under arms. ”

“ I have it on good authority this morning that a number of bombs were exploded on the works at Woolwich, but, even if true, this only goes to show that Britain’s great arsenal, if not less, is at least not more vulnerable than the non-military areas.
If possible, London took this latest raid even more calmly than the previous one, and the level-headed practicality of the remark of the [Pg 94] bus conductor I have quoted—“We’ve got a war to fight. ”

“ After a time the 5th Dragoon Guards went past in splendid order, and then the two troops of Royal Horse Artillery and the battery, which did just what they are wont to do when his Royal Highness Saxe-some-place-or-other visits Woolwich, moving like one man, wheeling as if men, horses, and guns formed part of one machine, sweeping{53} the plain with the force and almost the speed of steam engines, unlimbering guns, taking them to pieces, putting them together, and vanishing in columns of dust. ”

“ When it was decided to revert to muzzle-loading for new guns the Woolwich system was adopted. This consisted of a steel barrel with a series of wrought-iron coils shrunk over it by being put on when heated. They thus tightly gripped the inner tube, and enabled it to sustain the explosion of a heavy charge without rupture. The strength of the gun was considered to lie in the outer coils; the steel tube gave a hard surface to the bore and a homogeneous material for the rifling process. This tube was made from a solid ingot of steel, turned and then bored out to the required diameter. ”

“ In December, 1855, there were lying in the arsenal at Woolwich several of the heaviest sea mortars, which had recently been used at the bombardment of Sweaborg, and the continuous firing on that occasion had split them into two nearly equal portions from muzzle to breech, a trunnion being with each half.
Heavy guns for garrisons, sieges, &c., are made of cast iron; guns for field purposes, where lightness is required, are made of gun metal. ”

“ To foreigners visiting this country, there are no more interesting sights than the camps of Aldershot and the Curragh; and the arsenal at Woolwich has been visited by thousands of distinguished individuals from every country and clime. ”

“ But there were more pleasing subjects of correspondence between Woolwich and the out-stations than recruiting or promotion. There was a genuine desire springing up in the hearts of the more thoughtful officers for a more scientific training, a desire which was daily acquiring strength, and whose mere existence ensured success; for those who sought it for others, endeavoured by their own exertions to secure it for themselves. ”

“ Along the Traitor’s wall was an erection of sand-bags with openings for firing, and on the roof of the barracks, banquettes, to enable the troops to play on the mob in the rear near to the Mint, were formed of scaffolding and military forms. The old bricked-up embrasures facing Tower Hill were also rendered ready for the reception of guns by picking out the bricks and clearing away the debris, which for years had been accumulating there. Fortunately no outbreak occurred, and the company returned to Woolwich on the 14th of April. ”

“ In the Civil War the main works were constructed, and they ran day and night for four years, making nearly eight hundred thousand rifles for the Union armies. The Arsenal, a large building on the western side of the quadrangle, contains two hundred and twenty-five thousand arms, tastefully arranged, and rivalling the collection at the Tower of London. 168 This armory is the chief industrial establishment of Springfield, and Longfellow has thus described its great Arsenal:
"This is the Arsenal. ”

“ Have we fortified Woolwich, the general arsenal of the empire, and Chatham, and our other naval depots, hitherto undefended? Have we cleared out the glacis of Portsmouth and Plymouth, so as to give free range to the guns of the works, and established a great central fortification at Weedon, or some other central point in England, whither our troops might retire, if obliged to evacuate London, and where the new levies, raised in haste, might receive the elements of discipline, without the risk of being assailed, while yet in the awkward squad state, by the enemies' cuirassiers? ”

“ After the embarkation of the French army, the charge of the arsenal at Hamburgh was given to Commander Banks; and Lieutenant Woollnough was sent with some gun-boats to Gluckstadt, to claim the brass guns and mortars belonging to that fortress, and to equip and bring away the late Danish flotilla. ”

“ The making of machine guns to-day as compared with 1915 has increased twenty-fold, while the supply of small-arm ammunition has become so abundant that the necessity for importation has ceased altogether. In one Government factory alone the making of rifles has increased ten-fold, and the employees at Woolwich Arsenal have increased from a little less than eleven thousand to nearly seventy-four thousand, of whom twenty-five thousand are women.
Production of steel, before the war, was roughly seven million tons ”

“ The mission being formed of artillery, engineers, and artificers, in all seventy-six persons, under Brigadier-General Koehler, of the royal artillery, embarked in the ‘New Adventure’ transport in February, but did not sail from England till April. The military artificers, selected by Major Holloway, royal engineers, from the Woolwich company, numbered one sergeant—Edward Watson—two corporals, nineteen 122artificers, and two labourers ”

“ In 1804, the number of guns per troop having being reduced to 6, H Troop was formed at Woolwich, and the command given to Captain A. Macdonald, a smart officer, who subsequently had the good fortune to command the Horse Artillery of the Cavalry Division at Waterloo. On the reduction to 6 guns, the strength of each troop was, 14 non-commissioned officers, 75 gunners, 46 drivers, and 142 horses. ”

“ At the trial of the 81-ton gun, at Woolwich Arsenal, a 1,250-pound ball was fired with a charge of 170 pounds of powder. This shot penetrated 45 feet of sand, and the recoil of the gun was 23 1/2 feet. A second shot was fired with a charge of 190 pounds. The penetration-distance was now over 50 feet, and the recoil 32 feet. It is intended gradually to increase the charge to 300 pounds. ”