Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Artillery and Explosives: Essays and Lectures Written and Delivered at Various Times; With Diagrams and Illustrations
Some apology is certainly due for the republication of the Papers and Lectures which appear in this volume, but I have been asked so Often, chie?y by foreign friends, for papers which were out of print that I at last thought it better to republish.
But here again I was placed in a position of some difficulty, for the Papers, having been published at intervals during a period of nearly fifty years, had necessarily from their nature a good deal of repetition, and I soon found that, were I to attempt to remove this defect, I should have practically to rewrite the whole volume.
I, therefore, decided that it was better to republish the Papers precisely as they were written or delivered, and it may be that this decision has certain advantages.
Extraordinary as has been the advance in every department of Science during the long reign of Queen Victoria, the progress in Naval and Artillery Science has been no less remarkable.
When I entered the Service, the line-of-battle ships were all sailing vessels, and their armaments and appliances differed but little, except as regards size, from those in use in the days of Henry VIII. And of Queen Elizabeth. Mechanical contrivances the older Officers would not hear of, and I have heard more than one declare that no contrivance should be allowed on board a man-of - war which could not be handled and repaired by the Blue Jackets, who had proved the efficiency both of men and material in so many victorious actions.
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