Woolwich Arsenal

“ 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. ”

“ 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 royal arsenal is the main attraction of Woolwich; and the principal part of the inhabitants derive their support from Government in some shape or other. The admission is by ticket; and the visitor is accompanied in his tour of inspection by policemen. The days of admission are Wednesdays and Fridays.
There are generally about 12,000 men employed at the arsenal; but the ordinary visitor is not allowed to walk into the workshops where ammunition is being made. He is restricted to the paved footpaths, from whence he can see the various artificers at work. ”

“ Erith is passed;—and soon Woolwich is in sight.
And now the cannon roars from the English arsenal: the volumes of white smoke sweep over the bosom of the Thames;—the artillery salutes the royal standard of Castelcicala.
The troops are drawn up in front of the barracks to do honour to their heroic fellow-countryman, who retains his almost sovereign rank until the moment when he shall resign it into the hands of that Prince on whose brow he has come to place a diadem. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Woolwich grapeshot will sweep clear all streets, blast into invisibility so many thousand men: but if your Woolwich grapeshot be but eclipsing Divine justice, and the God's-radiance itself gleam recognisable athwart such grapeshot,—then, yes then is the time come for fighting and attacking. All artillery-parks have become weak, and are about to dissipate: in the God's-thunder, their poor thunder slackens, ceases ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Military service at home in time of peace is naturally of a less interesting character than travels and occasional expeditions in distant lands; and the training of young soldiers at Woolwich, which fell to my lot for some time after my return to England, did not present incidents of a striking character. At one period, I remember, there was a considerable dearth of recruits, especially of drivers for the horse artillery, partially due to the frequent changes in war office regulations as to the height and dimensions of the men enlisted. ”

“ The Government, it was contended, was now able to profit by the experience which foreign nations had gained, and intended to improve upon the guns which were in use abroad. But whatever may have been the official view, the fact remains that the Admiralty was years behind other nations, that Woolwich, in spite of official claims, discovered nothing that had not been known to be possible a decade earlier at least, and that the Navy was armed with out-of-date muzzle-loaders. ”

“ Nearly every kind of gun is made at Woolwich, from the light field-piece to the guns which form a siege-train. Every gun, after being cast, undergoes a proof process, the strength of heavy ordnance being tested by the fire proof. The guns being laid on the ground in front of a target, or butt, with their muzzles towards it, slightly elevated, they are loaded with the regulation proof charges, and fired by means of a galvanic battery, which is placed in a bomb-proof building, and the current of electricity conveyed to the tubes in the guns through copper wires. ”

“ But this gun, despite its unrivalled ballistic power, was rejected by the ordnance board in 1865 in favour of the Woolwich pattern, whereby the progress of improvement in British ordnance was retarded for nearly twenty years. ”

“ We have taken more than 4000 guns, destroyed their fleet, immense stores of provisions, ammunition, etc. (for from the explosions they did not appear to be short of it) , and shall destroy the dockyard, forts, quays, barracks, storehouses, etc. For guns, Woolwich is a joke to it. The town is strewn with our shell and shot, etc. We have traced voltaic wires to nearly every powder [Pg 28] magazine in the place. What plucky troops they were! When you hear the details of the siege you will be astonished. The length of the siege is nothing in comparison with our gain in having destroyed the place. ”

“ Once cross the threshold of the places I have attempted to describe, and there can be no test for the workers but one test—capacity. Capacity to fight this mighty battle with natural forces, and compel them to obey man's will; capacity to turn out the largest number and most perfect specimens of guns and shells. Man-power for the field, yes; but manpower for the forges also. To forget that in this hour would be fatal.
But Woolwich has a world of operations that are entirely suitable to women, and in a few minutes more we are in the midst of them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wellington estimated the enemy at about 80,000 or 90,000 men, after deducting their loss in the two battles just fought. He informed the fire-eating old Blücher of his victory over Marshal Ney, and that he would accept battle with the conqueror of Europe on the plains of Waterloo, if he (Blücher) would only promise to support him with one or two corps. The dauntless old hero at once promised to support His Grace, not with one or two corps, but with his whole army; that he would be on the field, on Napoleon’s flank, by one o’clock, and that the two armies would crush the restless tyrant. ”