PROGRESS IN MODERN ARTILLERY AND FORTIFICATION.

II. PATENT PROJECTILE-BUFFER AND IMPACT-CUSHION FOR

FORTS.

ALL our old masonry forts, with walls from five to eight feet thick, became obsolete in 1862. Soon after that it was supposed that the walls of the fortifications of New York harbor were to be clad or armored with iron. Not long after it was realized that guns continued to grow, and when they reached the weight of a hundred tons it was found that their projectiles, at the distance of over half a mile, would pierce iron of a thickness of twenty-two inches and steel of sixteen.

The military engineers had to cudgel the brain of the whole corps again. The ordnance corps and artillery were too penetrating and possessed too much muzzle energy for them, and they were obliged to abandon the desire to ironclad the old masonry forts. Next, the engineer mind decided that the earthwork was to be their panacea, and, notwithstanding the fact that such works antedated the building of the first temple, the engineers were prone to refer to the success of Todleben in using them at the recent pyrotechnic display at Sevastopol as if he made the earth.

But the ordnance and artillery kept on feeding up their progeny so high that it seemed as if the guns would never stop growing. They promised to reach such calibre and weight that engineers might well be apprehensive lest an old fort like Schuyler or Lafayette would hardly suffice even for a safe platform for a single modern monster gun.

To construct low parapets, with a thickness sufficient to insure safety against the penetration of projectiles which promised to attain the size of the largest steam-boiler, thrown from such guns as Vulcanic demigods like Krupp and Armstrong might be reasonably in time expected to construct, would apparently require a considerable proportion of the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island to be wheelbarrowed to New York to fortify its harbor.

To provide for future possible penetrating power, a thickness of parapet of a hundred feet might become necessary. Who could say it might not in time have to be increased to two hundred feet?

The problem was surely sufficiently perplexing as it stood without any new element of resistance being added, or the introduction of any new unknown quantity. It fairly made General Wright sick. He knew well enough what earthworks were made of, and he had stormed too many of them with the old Sixth Corps to be fooled about the thing at all. There was no problem-from a"-b" to the resultant of the impact of an irresistible force on an immovable object—that he had not worked out and mastered without employing a civil engineer to do it. When he was indisposed the whole engineer body, through sympathy of the parts, felt badly indeed.

Soon followed the Hotchkiss gun, and it was known that when this little thing became spitefully active in the "top" of an ironclad, low earthworks would not do. Then Wright felt better. His spirit returned unto him, and he was glad he had not been in too much haste, and did not have on his hands the job of wheeling the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island back again from New York harbor.

Still, the effect was bad on Wright individually. It drove him to the alarming goal of sixty-four about twenty years before he ought to have been retired. There never was a younger, heartier, more efficient, or more retiring man than he was at sixty-four. He was a conspicuous example of the absurdity of making years and birthdays the sole reason why the nation should be deprived of the services of so vigorous a man of science, and so chivalrous and accomplished a soldier as General Wright. He was as valuable to the country on his sixty-fourth birthday as he ever was, and bade fair to continue so for twenty years longer.

General Newton succeeded General Wright, and the engineers, after all the changes were made which could be hoped for under the new administration, and they were settled down in their new quarters, looked around them again, and took observations and bearings of the artillery and ordnance and angles of threatening vertical fire, and their confidence revived.

General Newton's prestige furnished a firm foundation on which hopes were to be built. He had already knocked the bottom out of the gates of hell, and honey-combed the underpinning.

It was evident, considering the antics which machine-guns in ships' tops might undertake to develop, that low earthworks would not do. So the theory of high relief was embraced, even at the risk of calling for more States in the requisitions for the increased quantities of earth. This appeared to be the remedy now by which the science of fortification was to escape from the long-enduring dilemma.

It is true that the national nautical barnacle attempted to quiet the apprehensions of theorists of the defense by announcing a dawn of revolutionary improvement in naval construction. Ships were not going to have any tops hereafter-they were to be all bottom, and submerged at that; so the machine-guns in tops need no longer to be con

sidered. But the land forces had too long been in the habit of assuming that the navy could not do anything until after it had actually done it, to be lulled into security by anything that the remains of the briny-deep profession might say they were going to do. Therefore, the gopher scientists refused to accept as infallible the prediction that ships were henceforth to be all bottom.

Besides, Commander Goodrich had not as yet made any report, nor expressed an opinion as to the relative merits of an exclusively allbottomed or a top-heavy navy.

If Captain Gorringe were only alive, his decision would not be questioned by the spade and wheelbarrow men-it would be final. But unfortunately he is no more. So a high-relief, earthen parapet of flexible thickness was about to be adopted, and estimates for appropriations for the purchase of additional barrows to be ready for the new Congress in December were being prepared, when the young artillery lieutenant unexpectedly came forward with his invention of the "boomerang-spanker," and knocked the engineers out of time again. High relief and low crest no longer enter as elements to offset this new and unanticipated terror.

The situation of the corps-de-génie was miserably perplexing, and this attack in the rear was demoralizing. The infantry might try to sit down on it; the ordnance might bewail the lost time which had been given to large calibres and muzzle energies; and the engineers might attempt an interior countervallation to intercept the spanker projectiles, but it was evident that the young artillery lieutenant had moved on the communications, and occupied the line by which the forces of the banquette would naturally wish to retire.

The remedy to which the engineers have now resorted is perhaps the only one available to them, and will enable them again to smile unconcernedly upon the ordnance, artillery, and nautical remains.

A mass-meeting of the corps was recently held, and, in order to be secure against the intrusion of newspaper reporters and spies of the ordnance and artillery, it assembled in the night on a scow, between Hell-Gate and Willet's Point. Plans were submitted, not only by officers of the corps, but also by those on the retired list who formerly belonged to it; and of the whole fifty odd, it is remarkable that no two of them were in the least degree similar, although many bore evidences of being simmered down or scum from old text-books. The consequence was that every project that was voted upon received only one "aye” and an uncounted number of "noes."

It appeared as if the meeting was about to dissolve, like the railroad committee meetings in New York, without accomplishing any result, when a little dug-out, containing only a single figure, suddenly emerged from the darkness and came alongside.

Apprehension at once seized the whole crowd through fear that it

might be Captain Boynton again; a vision of poor Captain Hand, before a court-martial at Halifax, passed before the imagination; a panic was about ensuing, with hasty preparations for swimming; each one was to enjoy a sauve qui peut on his own individual hook! Suddenly a young gentleman vaulted lightly on board, with a step which indicated training in the ball-room and on Shanghai-drill. He was accoutered in a gray bob-tail coat, covered with about a peck of bullet buttons, and there was a document which disclosed itself from the breast, in the manner the adjutant loves to exhibit the order of the day which is about to be published on dress-parade.

With heels together and on a line, right elbow at the height of the shoulder, and hand at visor, he announced himself as of the class of 1885, that his standing would be about No. 41, and that he intended, on graduating, to apply for the engineers! Not a word was spoken, but, with high and lofty mien, each one present silently, but gracefully, waved the intruder towards the chief, to whom the young man handed his paper, and was immediately piped over the side by the officer who was nearest to his sixty-fourth birthday. Then this senior, disentangling his lips from the whistling pucker, requested all present to resume their garments and come to order.

The paper, on being read, proved to be an announcement from the young chrysalis, who intended to be a second lieutenant of engineers, that he had filed a caveat for his recent invention of a shield or armor for masonry fortifications, which would not only perfectly protect the old walls against anything known, but would also return projectiles to the party who presented them.

The new invention was called the "Projectile-Buffer, or ImpactCushion for Fortifications," and the specifications were "herewith enclosed."

In view of the light which was shining from the high places at the "Gate," the effect of the announcement was electrical. The shock was so sensible that each man needed a tonic before he felt able to digest this new course so irregularly added to the repast. A jug, which had come on board from the medical purveyor's office in charge of an ancient of days of the quartermaster's department, long ago retired, who happened to be on from Washington, was accordingly passed around, and each one, as he brought it, with a peculiar motion, expertly to his right shoulder, muzzle to the front, uttered, in a dignified tone, the word "how!" After this the new plan was thoroughly discussed, digested, and finally unanimously adopted.

The "projectile-buffer, or impact-cushion," is a simple shield or armor with which to cover the entire masonry-work of fortifications. It consists of a plating of iron or steel, twenty-five or twenty inches thick, as the case may be, with a backing composed of a combination of volute, pneumatic, and vulcanized rubber springs. This combina

tion armor is secured directly against the masonry. It receives the projectiles without damage either to the walls or the buffer, which latter, by its reaction, delivers them back again on board the vessels which present them.

It was at first objected that the attacking force would be too easily supplied with ammunition by this action; but, after a short philosophical argument, it was admitted that the projectiles would return on board with too much enthusiasm and impetuosity to be with safety caught by the crew for second-hand use.

An old officer present, in exemplification of this, related the unpleasant experience of one of Napoleon's Waterloo veterans of the Young Guard. In advanced years this imperial guardsman found himself a soldier in the front ranks of General Taylor's army at Palo Alto, in May, 1846. Whilst the army of Ampudia, in plain view of the open prairie, was cannonading our line, our troops were kept lying down in the grass. Seeing an 8-pounder copper round shot, nearly spent, gently bowling towards him, he was ambitious to secure it and show his officers the calibre of the enemy's guns. So old a campaigner ought to have known enough to give that projectile the right of way. He placed his knee in position to stop it, and succeeded perfectly, but died that night.

As we understand the matter now, the final decision is to put an armor of the projectile-buffer and impact-cushion on all the forts in New York harbor, and also on Stone Pasha's Liberty Frontispiece, and to let the Connecticut and Rhode Island dirt alone.

POINT BLANK,

Late Major-General U. S. Volunteers.