THE DEVASTATION.

Waikato Times, Volume IV, Issue 223, 14 October 1873, Page 2

THE DEVASTATION.

Tins great Monitor, under the command of Captain Hewitt, V C , steamed on the morning of the 16th July to a position, TOiith-pdbt of the Islo of Wight, where she could obtain a range for the trial of her enormous 36-ton gum without damage to ships passing up or down Channel south of the Islo of Wight Cuptain Boys, commanding the Excellent Gunnery Establishment at Portsmouth, was on board to conduct the trials ; the other officers on board who might be considered as being present officially, included Captain A. Hood, C.8., Director of Naval Ordnance at the Admiralty ; Captain Herbert, commanding the Gunnery Establishment nt Devonport ; and Colonel Field, of the Gun Carriage (War Department) Committee. The Monitor left Spithead soon after 10 am., and in about an honr afterwards had reached the desired position south-east of the Isle of Wight, with stanchions all down and cleared for action. The weather was very suitable for the day's work, the wind hardly reaching a force of 4, and the sea being, as it always has been when the Devastation is under steam, quite smooth. The real trials of the day with the guns were preceded by two trial shots from the guns in the after turret, fired with the ordinary full charge of the gun's powder service, for the purpose of scaling the guns and adjusting compressors, ice. These were succeeded by 16 shots fired at different anglei of elevation, depression, and direction, and the whole was wound up with two shots at a target — a small flagstaff and flag floated on a boat's water breaking at 1,600 and 1,800 yards' distance The first remarkable result observed was the small — the very small — amount of concussion felt from the discharge of the guns, singly or in pairs, when fired right ahead, or right astern, or on either beam, either on the flying or the hurricane deck inside the turrets, or within the armoured walls of the brenstwork inclosing the coses of the turrets, although the projectiles fired weighed, each 691b, and the pounder charge was in the greater number of instances llOlbs. of pebble powder to each shot. In training the turrets forward and aft to get a fire as nearly as wns possible to the ship's line of keel, the amount of concussion felt was sensibly increased on the flying deck, inside the turrets, and in the stockholes and cabins below ; but still, even under lliese severe conditions of trial, the actual amount of appreciable concussion was wonderfully small, and no damage was done beyond the breaking of a few panes of glass, the dislocation of one of the turret staybolts, and a shaking of the light plating under the gun ports, fixed there to protect the oaken deck planking from the flame on the gun's discharge. There was one other piece of damage, which may be, perhaps, considered as due to the concussion, and this was of a rather curious character. Down in a store-room in the after part of the bottom of the ship some of the officers' wine is stored, and some bottles of this were broken. No doubt they were broken at the time when a pair of guns were fired together at extreme elevation. The deck in many parts bore scoring marks from the pebble powder, aud gave indisputable evidence that the 35-ton gun of the Navy, grand weapon as it undoubtedly is, is much too short in the tube to burn at each discharge the whole of itt enormons powder charge. Two or three deeper scorings in the deck also furnished evidence that studs bad been detached from the shot as soon as, or rather before, the latter had got olear of the mouth of the gun. In one instance of firing along the superstructure deck and underneath the flying deck the whaler gig, which hung at long and outer davits from the flying deck, jumped in its slings from the wave of concussion thrown outward and upward by the flanging side of the flying deck, and threw overboard its mast and sail, three out of its five oars, and one of its gratings. The boat itself was not damaged. Some of the hammock cloth coverings round the edgo of the flying deck were split at the same time ; but from first to last, ro iron or wood work, beyond the trifling matters already mentioned, in any part of the ■hip's structure, on deck or below, was found to have keen injured in tho slightest degree by the day's firing.