Curiosities of Civilization Part 14

The busiest time at the market is about six o'clock, when the costermongers surround Covent Garden with their barrows, and hundreds of street hawkers, with their hand-baskets and trays, come for their day's supply. The same system of purchase is pursued here as at Billingsgate--the rich dealers buy largely and sell again, and the poorer club their means and divide the produce. The regular street vender who keeps his barrow, drawn by a donkey or a pony, looks down with a certain contempt upon the inferior hawkers, princ.i.p.ally Irish. They only deal in a certain cla.s.s of vegetables, such as peas, young potatoes, broccoli, or cauliflowers, and have nothing to do with _mere greens_. Another cla.s.s of purchasers are the little girls who vend watercresses. Such is the demand for cresses, that they are now largely cultivated for the market, the spontaneous growth proving quite inadequate to the demand. They are produced princ.i.p.ally at "Spring Head," at Walthamstow, in Ess.e.x, and at Cookham, Shrivenham, and Faringdon, on the line of the Great Western, which brings to town no less than a ton a week of this wholesome breakfast salad. The best, however, come from Camden Town. Most people fancy that clear purling streams are necessary for their production; but the Camden Town beds are planted in an old brick-field, watered by the Fleet Ditch; and though the stream at this point is comparatively pure, they owe their unusually luxuriant appearance to a certain admixture of the sewerage. A great many hundreds of bunches are sold every morning in Covent Garden; but the largest share goes to Farringdon Market. The entire supply to the various metropolitan markets cannot be less than three tons weekly.

Rhubarb is almost wholly furnished by the London market-gardeners. It was first introduced by Mr. Miatt forty years ago, who sent his two sons to the Borough Market with five bunches, of which they only sold three. From this time he continued its cultivation, notwithstanding the sneers at what were called his "physic pies." As he predicted, it soon became a favourite, and now hundreds of tons weight are sold in Covent Garden in the course of the year. It would be impossible to give any precise account of the fruit and vegetable produce that is poured day by day into London; for the authorities themselves only know how many baskets arrive, not how much they contain. The railway returns give us the quant.i.ty brought from a distance, and we find that the seven lines transmit annually somewhere about 70,000 tons of vegetables and soft green fruit. This is irrespective of dried fruit, oranges, &c.--a business of itself, involving great interests, and employing an immense capital, and of which we will say a few words.

The foreign-fruit trade has its head-quarters in the city. The pedestrian who walks down Fish Street Hill would a.s.suredly never surmise that at certain seasons a regular fruit exhibition is kept up within those dull brick houses, before which the tall column lifts its head. All the world knows the Messrs. Keeling and Hunt, whose effigies seem to stand, in the public eye, upon a vast pyramid of pine-apples. This firm hold sales of various kinds of fruit in their auction-rooms in Monument Yard. On these occasions the long apartments make a show, before which, for quant.i.ty at least, that of Chiswick pales. Pine-apples by thousands, melons, forbidden fruit, and mangoes, fill the room from end to end; so famous indeed is the display, that there are lithographic engravings of it, in which the salesmen are seen walking about as perplexed, apparently by the luscious luxuriance around them, as Adam might have been in his own happy garden.

The pine-apple market is of modern date. The first cargo was brought over about twenty years ago, and since that time the traffic has rapidly increased, and at the present moment 300,000 pines come yearly into the port of London, of which nine-tenths are consigned to Messrs. Keeling and Hunt, the original importers. They are princ.i.p.ally from the Bahamas, in the West Indies, where they grow almost spontaneously; but of late years they have been more carefully cultivated, and grafts of our best hothouse pines have been taken out to improve their quality. There is a fleet of clippers appropriated to the carriage across the sea of this single fruit.

The melons come from Spain, Portugal, and Holland. Spain is known to abound in melons, for Murillo's beggar-boys are perpetually eating them; but we believe it will be news to most Englishmen that the land of d.y.k.es supplies London with fragrant cargoes of an almost tropical fruit. The largest foreign-fruit trade, however, by far, is that in oranges. We shall perhaps astonish our readers when we tell them that upwards of 60,000,000 are imported for the use of London alone, accompanied by not less than 15,000,000 lemons. Any time between December and May the orange clippers from the Azores and Lisbon may be seen unloading their cargoes in the neighbourhood of the great stores in Pudding and Botolph Lanes. There are 240 of these fast-sailing vessels engaged in the entire trade, and of this fleet seventy at least are employed in supplying the windows of the fruiterers and the apple-stalls of London. All these fruits, together with nuts and walnuts, apples, plums, pears, and some peaches, &c., are disposed of weekly at the auction sales in Monument Yard to the general dealers, the majority of whom are located in Duke's Place, close at hand, and are mostly Jews. Indeed we are informed that many of them are the identical boys grown up to manhood that used some twenty-five years ago to sell oranges about the streets, and whose old place has gradually been taken by the Irish. They act as middlemen between the importers and the tribe of peripatetics who, at certain times of the day, resort hither to fill their baskets and barrows. Covent Garden also supplies retailers with oranges and nuts, especially on Sunday mornings, when the place is sometimes crowded like a fair. The following bill of quant.i.ties, drawn up by Mr. Keeling, is derived, we believe, from the Custom House returns:--

_Fruit._

Apples 39,561 bushels.

Pears 19,742 "

Cherries 264,240 lbs.

Grapes 1,328,190 Pine-apples 200,000 Oranges 61,635,146 Lemons 15,408,789

_Nuts._

Spanish nuts} 72,509 bushels Barcolena } Brazil 11,700 "

Chestnuts 26,250 "

Walnuts 36,088 "

Cocoa-nuts 1,255,009 "

Of the amount of bread consumed in London we have no specific information, but there are data which enable us to approximate to the truth. Porter, in his "Progress of the Nation," gives us the returns of eight schools, families, and inst.i.tutions, containing 1,902 men, women, and children, each of whom ate on the average 331-1/16 lbs. of bread per annum. Now if we multiply this quant.i.ty by the number of the inhabitants of the metropolis--2,500,000, or thereabouts--we have a total of 413,700,000 half-quartern loaves of 2 lbs. weight each. The flour used in puddings, pies, &c., we throw in as a kind of offset against the London babies under one year old. Some of this bread is a contribution from the country, and one Railway--the Eastern Counties--brought last year 237 tons 12 cwts. to town.

Now let us see how much sack goes to all this quant.i.ty of bread--with what rivers of stout, &c., we wash down such mountains of flesh. According to the excise returns, there were 747,050 quarters of malt consumed in London in the year 1853 by the seventeen great brewers. As each quarter of malt, with its proportionate allowance of hops, produces three and a half barrels of beer, we get at the total brew of last year 1,614,675, or pretty nearly a thousand million tumblers of ale and porter. On countless sign-boards of the metropolis this last is advertised by the t.i.tle of "entire," and it is thus that the liquid and its name arose. Prior to the year 1730, publicans were in the habit of selling ale, beer, and twopenny, and the "thirsty souls" of that day were accustomed to combine either of these in a drink called half-and-half. From this they proceeded to spin "three threads," as they called it, or to have their gla.s.s filled from each of the three taps. In the year 1730, however, a certain publican, named Horwood, to save himself the trouble of making the triune mixture, brewed a liquor intended to imitate the taste of the "three threads," and to this he applied the term "entire." His concoction was approved, and, being puffed as good porters' drink, it speedily came to be called porter itself. Of the seventeen great London breweries, the house of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, and Co. stood in 1853 at the top of the list, having consumed 140,000 quarters of malt, and paid to the excise 180,000_l._, or enough to build two ninety-gun s.h.i.+ps, at the usual cost of a thousand pounds per gun. The visitor in proceeding through this establishment realizes, perhaps better than in any other place, the enormous scale on which certain creature-comforts for the use of the town are produced. As he walks between the huge boilers in which 1,600 barrels are brewed nearly every day, or makes the circuit of the four great vats, each containing 80,000 gallons of liquor, or loses himself amid the labyrinth of 135 enormous reservoirs, which altogether hold 3,500,000 gallons--he begins to fancy himself an inhabitant of Lilliput, who has gone astray in a Brobdignagian cellar. There is a popular notion that the far-famed London stout owes its flavour to the Thames water: this, however, is a "vulgar error." Not even the Messrs. Barclay, who are upon the stream, draw any of their supply from that source, but it is got entirely from wells, and those sunk so deep, that they and the Messrs. Calvert, whose brewery is half a mile distant upon the opposite side of the river, find they are rivals for the same spring. When one brewery pumps, it drains the wells of the other, and the firms are obliged to obtain their water on alternate days. Whether it is owing to the increase of the great breweries and of other manufactories, which alone consume millions of barrels of water yearly, we know not, but it is an ascertained fact, that the depth of water in the London wells has for the last twenty-five years been diminis.h.i.+ng at the rate of a foot a year. "It is comforting to reflect,"

said one of the great brewers, "that the reason simply is, because the water which used to be buried underground is now brought up to fill the bodies, wash the faces, and turn the wheels of two millions and a half of people."

If the underground stock of water is shrinking, it has increased vastly on the surface. The seven companies which supply the metropolis bring in between them 44,000,000 gallons daily--a quant.i.ty which, large as it is, could be delivered in twenty-four hours by a brook nine feet wide and three feet deep, running at the rate of three feet per second, or a little more than two miles per hour.

The inability of figures to convey an adequate impression to the mind of the series of units of which the sums are composed renders it impossible to give more than a faint idea of the enormous supplies of food required to victual the capital for a single year. But the conception may be somewhat a.s.sisted by varying the process. Country papers now and then astonish their readers by calculations to show how many times the steel pens manufactured in England would form a necklace round their own little town, or how many thousand miles the matches of their local factory would extend if laid in a straight line from the centre of their market-place.

Let us try our hand on the same sort of picture, and endeavour to fill the eye with a prospect that would satisfy the appet.i.te of the far-famed Dragon of Wantley himself.

If we fix upon Hyde Park as our exhibition-ground, and pile together all the barrels of beer consumed in London, they would form a thousand columns not far short of a mile in perpendicular height.

Let us imagine ourselves on the top of this tower, and we shall have a look-out worthy of the feast we are about to summon to our feet. Herefrom we might discover the Great Northern road stretching far away into the length and breadth of the land. Lo! as we look, a mighty herd of oxen, with loud bellowing, are beheld approaching from the north. For miles and miles the ma.s.s of horns is conspicuous winding along the road, ten abreast, and even thus the last animal of the herd would be 72 miles away, and the drover goading his shrinking flank considerably beyond Peterborough. On the other side of the park, as the clouds of dust clear away, we see the great Western road, as far as the eye can reach, thronged with a bleating ma.s.s of wool, and the shepherd at the end of the flock (ten abreast) and the dog that is worrying the last sheep are just leaving the environs of Bristol, 121 miles from our beer-built pillar. Along Piccadily, Regent-street, the Strand, Fleet-street, Cheapside, and the eastward Mile-end road line, for 7-1/2 miles, street and causeway are thronged with calves, still ten abreast; and in the great parallel thoroughfares of Bayswater-road, Oxford-street, and Holborn, we see nothing for nine long miles but a slowly-pacing, deeply-grunting herd of swine. As we watch this moving ma.s.s approaching from all points of the horizon, the air suddenly becomes dark--a black pall seems drawn over the sky--it is the great flock of birds--game, poultry, and wild-fowl, that, like Mrs. Bond's ducks, are come up to be killed: as they fly wing to wing and tail to beak they form a square whose superficies is not much less than the whole enclosed portion of St. James's Park, or 51 acres. No sooner does this huge flight clear away than we behold the park at our feet inundated with hares and rabbits.

Feeding 2,000 abreast, they extend from the marble arch to the round pond in Kensington Gardens--at least a mile. Let us now pile up all the half-quartern loaves consumed in the metropolis in the year, and we shall find they form a pyramid which measures 200 square feet at its base, and extends into the air a height of 1,293 feet, or nearly three times that of St. Paul's. Turning now towards the sound of rus.h.i.+ng waters, we find that the seven companies are filling the mains for the day. If they were allowed to flow into the area of the adjacent St. James's Park, they would in the course of the 24 hours flood its entire s.p.a.ce with a depth of 30 inches of water, and the whole annual supply would be quite sufficient to submerge the city (one mile square) ninety feet. Of the fish we confess we are able to say nothing: when numbers mount to billions, the calculations become too trying to our patience. We have little doubt, however, that they would be quite sufficient to make the Serpentine one solid ma.s.s. Of ham and bacon again, preserved meats, and all the countless comestibles we have taken no account, and in truth they are little more to the great ma.s.s than the ducks and geese were to Sancho Panza's celebrated mess--"the skimmings of the pot."

Such, then, is a slight sketch of the great London larder. It may be imagined that many of these stores come to the metropolis only as to a centre for redistribution, and are again scattered over the length and breadth of the land. This, however, is not the case. The only line that takes food in any quant.i.ties out of London is the North-Western. This railway speeds into the midland counties, but especially to Birmingham, 350 tons of fish consigned to the country dealers, and to the n.o.bility and gentry. As we have before seen, van-loads of fruit are often despatched in the same direction. The South-Eastern conveys large quant.i.ties of grain down the line, and the London and Brighton and South Coast takes annually to Brighton twenty-six tons of meat and 1,100 cattle; and here all the food carried _out_ of London in bulk ends. A constant dribble of edibles, it is true, is continually escaping by the pa.s.senger trains, of which the railways take no notice in their goods-department traffic; but it must be remembered that a much larger quant.i.ty is perpetually flowing unheeded into the London commissariat through the same channels. Of the stout and porter brewed in the metropolis by the great houses, again, one-seventh perhaps finds its way abroad--a drop in comparison to that which must be contributed by the 2,482 smaller brewers of the town, and the great contingent supplied by Guinness, Allsopp, and other pale-ale brewers. This simple statement will suffice to make it evident that in the foregoing picture we have given anything but "heaped measure."

The railways having poured this enormous amount of food into the metropolis, as the main arteries feed the human body, it is distributed by the various dealers into every quarter of the town, first into the wholesale markets, or great centres, then into the sub-centres, or retail tradesmen's shops, and lastly into the moving centres, or barrows of the hawkers, by which means nourishment is poured into every corner of the town, and the community at large is supplied as effectually as are the countless tissues of the human body by the infinitely divided network of capillary vessels. According to the census of 1851, these food-distributors are cla.s.sified in the following manner:--

_Males._

Grocers 6,475 Cowkeepers and milksellers 3,372 Cheesemongers 2,156 Butchers 7,428 Poulterers 551 Fishmongers 2,238 Other dealers in animal food 1,376 Greengrocers 3,325 Bakers 9,841 Confectioners 1,806 Other dealers in vegetable food 1,303 Brewers 2,499 Licensed victuallers and beer-shop-keepers, &c. 6,843 Wine and spirit merchants 1,915 Other dealers in drinks 3,805 Saltmakers 37 Water-providers 428 Innkeepers 433 ------ 56,601

_Females._

Grocers 676 Innkeepers 93 Innkeepers' wives 217 Cowkeepers 1,158 Butchers 205 Butchers' wives 3,086 Fishmongers 151 Others dealing in animal food 283 Greengrocers 941 Bakers 480 Confectioners 542 Other dealers in vegetable food 939 Licensed victuallers and beer-shop-keepers 970 Wives of ditto 4,440 Wine and spirit merchants 15 Other dealers in drinks 457 ------ 14,653

If to this total of 71,254 we add the wandering tribe of costermongers, hawkers, and stall-keepers, estimated at 30,000 persons, we shall have an army exceeding 100,000 persons; and, as indirectly there must be quadruple this number of persons employed, the merest pauper among the population has hundreds of invisible hands held out to provide him with the necessaries and comforts of life. The smooth working of this great distributive machine is due to the principle of compet.i.tion--that spring which so nicely adjusts all the varying conditions of life, and which, in serving itself, does the best possible service to the community at large, and accomplishes more than the cleverest system of centralization which any individual mind could devise.

WOOLWICH a.r.s.eNAL.

In the year 1716 the bra.s.s guns which Marlborough had taken from the French were being recast in the royal gun foundry in Moorfields, when a young Swiss named Andrew Schalch, who was accidentally present, remarking the dampness of the moulds and foreseeing the inevitable result, warned Colonel Armstrong the then Surveyor-General, against being too close a spectator of the operation. As Schalch foretold, an explosion took place, and many workmen were killed. "It's an ill wind that blows n.o.body good,"

says the old proverb, and the bursting of the gun was the making of the young foreigner's fortune; for in a few days an advertis.e.m.e.nt appeared in one of the public papers requesting him to call upon Colonel Andrews, "as the interview may be for his advantage." Andrew Schalch attended accordingly, and was at once intrusted with the duty of seeking out a better locality for the casting of the royal ordnance. He selected a rabbit-warren at Woolwich, as the best site within twelve miles of the metropolis, for the threefold reason that it was dry, near to the river, and in the immediate neighbourhood of loam for the moulds. Strangely enough, it has since been proved that the great nation of antiquity with whom the British possess so many qualities in common, had been here before. The Romans, whose second station on the Watling Street out of London is supposed to have been at Hanging Wood, close at hand, seem to have appropriated the sloping ground on which the original gun factory stands for the purposes of a cemetery, for on digging the foundations of some new buildings urns of their manufacture were discovered in large quant.i.ties, and a very beautiful sepulchral vase, which is now in the museum of the Royal Artillery Inst.i.tution. Thus, where the conquerors of the old world lay down to their last rest, we, the Romans of the present age, forge the arms which make us masters of an empire beyond the dreams of the imperial Caesars.

As the visitor enters the great gate of the a.r.s.enal he finds no difficulty in tracing the whereabouts of the labours of Andrew, for straight before him, with a stately solemnity which marked the conceptions of its builder, Vanbrugh, stands the picturesque gun factory, with its high-pitched roof, red brickwork, and carved porch, looking like a fine old gentleman amid the factory ranges which within these few years have sprung up around. It is impossible to contemplate this building without respect, for forth from its portals have issued that victorious ordnance which since the days of George II. has swept the battle grounds of the old and the new world. Up to as late a date as the year 1842 the machinery within these stately old edifices was almost as antiquated in character as themselves. The three great boring-mills, moved by horses, which had been imported in 1780 as astonis.h.i.+ng wonders from the Hague, were the only engines used in England in making her Majesty's ordnance till eighteen years ago. Such was the state of efficiency of the oldest of the three great manufacturing departments of the a.r.s.enal! The more modern departments, known as the Royal Carriage Factory and the Laboratory, have flourished during the present century in an unequal degree. For fifty years the former of these branches of the a.r.s.enal has been more or less in a high state of efficiency, through the introduction of machinery from the workshops of Messrs. Bramah and Maudslay, and of the contrivances of Bentham and Sir I.

Brunei. The improvements which were due to their inventive genius rendered this department highly efficient during the French war, on the conclusion of which a long period of inactivity followed; and it was not until 1847 that symptoms were manifested of renewed life under the able superintendence of General Gordon, and still later of Colonel Colquhoun.

The Laboratory during the same period appears to have remained entirely stationary, and up to the year 1853 was far inferior to that of any third-rate power. The backward condition of the sole a.r.s.enal of England during the long interval of peace seems at first sight remarkable, when we consider the amount of mechanical ingenuity which had penetrated into every factory in the kingdom; but when we remember that the instruments and munitions of war are special articles, wanted only for special periods, occurring at uncertain intervals of time, the wonder ceases.

Private manufacturers had no interest in forging instruments of destruction, and the State having conquered "a lasting peace," Vulcan was allowed to fall into a profound sleep--a sleep so unbroken, that the nation listened for a moment to the voice of those Manchester charmers who would fain have persuaded us the time was come when our swords could with safety be turned into pruning-hooks. In the midst of this amiable delusion the Northern Eagle attempted to seize upon the sick man, and Britain instinctively flew to arms. This sudden spasm of war following upon a forty years' peace at once disclosed the fact that we were totally unprepared to wage it. There were not sh.e.l.ls enough in the a.r.s.enal to furnish forth the first battering-train that went to the East, and the fuses in store were of the date of Waterloo. A fourth part of the money which we joyfully expended when the wolf was at the door would have been thought the demand of a madman, when Europe was supposed to be one big sheepfold. Economy prevented efficient progress; and though the authorities had latterly originated reforms, their exertions were limited by their scanty resources. As the war proceeded, the Ordnance were at their wits' end for coa.r.s.e-grained gunpowder, which, as it was not an article of commerce, had to be specially made for them. Small arms were wanted in haste, and could only be constructed at leisure. In these straits the private manufacturers of the country were applied to; but in many cases they had to learn a new art. Do what they would, with the power of charging fabulous prices for shot and sh.e.l.l, ammunition, and small arms, their powers of production were totally inadequate to meet the strain of the great siege, the proportions of which grew larger day by day. All the mills in England could not make powder at the rate at which it was shot away--a rate which consumed 100,000 barrels before Sevastopol was taken; nor could all the armouries of London and Birmingham make rifled muskets and sabres fast enough for our men; consequently we were obliged to go to Liege for 44,000 Minie guns, 3,000 cavalry swords, and 12,000 barrels of powder, and to the United States for 20,000 barrels more.

It may seem pa.s.sing strange that England, whose manufacturing power is so enormous, should have to resort to foreign manufacturers for the arms wherewith to fight. Money in such a country, it is often said, can procure anything, and money in this case was no object. The want of suitable machinery was the cause of the difficulty. The manufacturers could only make the articles demanded of them by skilled labour, which is a thing that must be acquired before it can be hired. Old machines can be put to extra duty; fresh machines can be readily supplied; but skilled labour is a fixed capital which cannot be suddenly increased. The result was a lamentable slowness of production and an extraordinary dearness of price--the munitions of war in some cases more than doubled in value. It is calculated that the sh.e.l.ls for the Baltic fleet alone, which were fabricated entirely by private manufacturers, cost upwards of 100,000 more than they would have done had they been made by the new machinery lately introduced into the a.r.s.enal. A still stronger case, to show the extraordinary prices which the Government had to pay contractors when the demand was imperative and supply confined to two or three houses, was that of the six-pounder diaphragm sh.e.l.ls. They were charged by the contractors at 73_l._ per ton, whilst the very same article is now made in the Royal Laboratory at 14_l._ 19_s._ 2_d._ per ton. These exorbitant demands and the rapid drain of the stores led the War Department to consider whether it would not be better to organize a government establishment on the most extensive scale, and on the most improved system; and it was ultimately determined to adopt a plan by which it would be possible to expand or contract the productive power, according to the exigencies of the service, by means of machines which could be tended by untutored labourers and boys. Accordingly, a very large number of the most ingenious machines were procured from the United States, where the Springfield and Harper Ferry a.r.s.enals have long been famous for their admirable contrivances to save human skill; while others were procured from the Continent and at home by Mr. Anderson, the superintendent of machinery. In a very short time a powerful factory of the munitions of war sprung into life, verifying, for the ten-thousandth time, the truth of the proverb that necessity is the mother of invention, or at least, as in this case, of improvement.

The introduction of machinery on a large scale put to flight the old traditions of the a.r.s.enal, and the manufacturing spirit had to be subst.i.tuted for the military organization under which the establishment had been conducted before. Such was the energy and rapidity with which the old a.r.s.enal reformed itself, that we question if any private factory in the kingdom is conducted upon a better system than is already at work there. Within these three years factories have sprung up on every side, and the whir of wheels, and the measured stroke of the steam-engine, can now be heard over the whole of its immense area.

The three manufacturing departments into which the Woolwich a.r.s.enal is divided are as follows:--The Royal Gun Factory, the Royal Carriage Department, and the Royal Laboratory Department. Through these factories we will conduct our readers, and endeavour to give them an idea how human ingenuity has perfected the means to destroy human life. The gun factories, by right of age, take precedence, although in point of interest they present the least attractive features to the spectator. The fact which most strikes him as he threads his way amid the Cyclopean machinery is the slow, inevitable manner in which the different processes are carried on. Here you see a large lathe turning the outside of an eighteen-pounder, revolving as noiselessly and as readily as though it were only turning a bra.s.s candlestick--a fixed tool cutting off its thin shavings of metal with as much ease as if it were box-wood. In the next machine a gun is being bored, the drill twisting its way down the fixed ma.s.s, and a dropping shower of bright chips proving how resistlessly its tooth moves on towards its appointed goal. A third machine cuts off the "dead head" of a cannon. All guns are cast in the pits in a perpendicular position, breech downwards, and are made at least one-third longer than they are intended to be when finished. The reason for this is, that the superinc.u.mbent metal forming the "dead head" of the piece may by its weight condense the portion below it which is to form the true gun--the extraordinary pressure of the powder requiring the metal to be extremely close in order to withstand the strain. Besides these lathes, which do the more ordinary work of the factory, there are what are termed exceptional machines, to finish those parts of the gun which the lathe cannot touch, such as the projecting sight, the trunnions, and that portion of the barrel which lies between them. No increase has taken place in the size of the Bra.s.s Gun Factory, although, through the energetic action of Colonel Wilmot, its produce has been doubled since the breaking out of the war: fourteen pieces of bra.s.s ordnance--six, nine, and eighteen pounders--can be turned out weekly. Bra.s.s is used for field-pieces on account of its resisting power being greater than that of iron. Experiments which have lately been made, however, tend to show that steel is a far lighter and better material even than bra.s.s for this purpose. A German, named Krupp, has produced some steel pieces which bear an enormous charge; in fact, when well made, it is almost impossible to burst them. The Emperor of the French has already ordered 350 of these guns to be introduced into the service, and probably we shall have to follow suit.

The fine building[25] recently erected in connection with this department is intended for the manufacture of iron ordnance, which has. .h.i.therto been produced exclusively by private manufacturers. The experience of the late war, however, determined the Government to furnish at least a portion of these stores themselves. A thoroughly reliable gun must be worth any price that its efficient manufacture demands; for the failing of a single piece may lose a battle, and bring with it consequences which would be cheaply averted by a park of artillery cast in gold. In the late campaign we were prevented from striking a great blow through this very cause alone. At the bombardment of Sweaborg no less than seventeen of the thirteen-inch mortars were destroyed through a want of tenacity in the iron of which they were composed. Many of these ponderous engines split after a few rounds, and may now be seen on the wharf of the a.r.s.enal cleft in twain as clean as Tell's apple. Yet these mortars were made by the Carron and Low Moor Companies, the most celebrated private manufacturers of such articles in England. Had they stood the strain, we should have utterly destroyed the fortifications of this stronghold, instead of burning a few sheds, which made a great blaze without doing much mischief; and had we possessed a sufficient number of these formidable engines, the destruction of Cronstadt and Sevastopol would only have formed the work of a few days.

Though ours is a land both of iron and manufactures, our guns are of inferior quality to those of other nations. The cannon captured at Sevastopol are of better iron than the cannon we brought against them.

Several thousand tons weight of the guns dismounted from Cronstadt, in order to make way for pieces of heavier calibre, were bought, we understand, the other day by an English firm with the intention of converting them into cranks and boilers, which require the very best material. The Americans insist upon a tenacity of cast-iron for their ordnance equal to a pressure of 34,000 lbs. on the square inch, and sometimes obtain it equal to 45,000 lbs., whilst we, the greatest manufacturers of iron in the world, have hitherto seldom obtained it of a strength equal to 20,000 lbs. This great difficiency Government hope to remedy by the inst.i.tution of a series of experiments on all cla.s.ses of iron both foreign and indigenous. There is a curious machine in the Gun Factory specially invented for the purpose of testing the tenacity of each sample, its capacity of withstanding compression, its transverse strength, and its power of resisting torsion. It is curious to see this iron-limbed Samson wrestling with mighty bars of metal, and twisting and tearing them across the grain like bits of stick. The fractured remnants of the specimens and of the guns rent in the testing process in the Marshes and at s...o...b..ryness are collected in a museum, the history of each specimen being minutely given. Thus a curious and instructive record is gradually being acquired, which will prove of infinite use in the manufacture of heavy ordnance. It has been already ascertained that guns are universally strengthened by having wrought iron rings put round them--a fact which was discovered during the course of experiments with the heavy cannon bored with an oval rifle to receive the Lancaster sh.e.l.l.

Several of them having burst at the muzzle, this simple expedient was tried, and the guns so girded now bear the most extraordinary charges without flinching.

The new building for casting, boring, and finis.h.i.+ng iron guns, is both externally and internally the most imposing-looking of all the structures erected to meet the exigencies of the Crimean war. These s.p.a.cious factories present more the appearance of first-cla.s.s railway termini than of ordinary workshops. They are lighted with what are termed saw-roof lights, having a northern aspect; for the Vulcans who can work all day in the burning blaze of furnaces do not, it appears, like to be distracted with the confusing rays of the sun! The number of turning, boring, finis.h.i.+ng, planing, shaping, drilling, slotting, and punching machines that revolve, thump, and slide here in ponderous grandeur is prodigious, and there can be very little doubt that it will be the most perfect and powerful factory in the world of its kind. Travelling-cranes, which run upon railways poised in air overhead, command every inch of the factories, so that cannon of the heaviest calibre for both land and sea service--98-pounders weighing many tons can be slung from machine to machine with the greatest ease. When the machinery is completed, the foundry will be capable of turning out ten guns of the largest size per week.

The most interesting portion of the gun department is the factory devoted to the construction of Lancaster sh.e.l.ls. This odd-looking missile has a form very similar to a champagne bottle, and, unlike the ordinary sh.e.l.l, is made out of a single sheet of wrought iron. The slab of metal having been welded into a cylindrical form, is submitted to an ingenious lathe, which, acting upon it simultaneously with a dozen different tools inside and out, speedily reduces it to a given weight and a perfectly uniform thickness. The cylinder, about eighteen inches in length and ten in diameter, is then made red hot, and whilst in this state is placed in the grip of a powerful machine, which by a series of blows, equally distributed over every part, converts it into the likeness of a French bottle in less than five minutes, without the slightest sign of crumpling in any portion of the surface. The operation can only be compared to the manner in which a potter shapes a vessel upon the wheel. No less than forty machines are employed on this special manufacture, and upwards of a hundred sh.e.l.ls can be turned out daily. The expense incurred in producing with extreme accuracy and speed these curious missiles for the first rifled gun adopted by the service, is an earnest of the determination of the authorities to carry the manufacture of artillery to the same perfection of finish as their small arms. Lancaster guns will in all probability play a very important part in the next war, if war there should ever unhappily be, as those in use in the Crimea made most splendid practice, firing with nearly the accuracy of a rifle, and attaining a range of 5,000 yards, or very nearly three miles. As these sh.e.l.ls cost about 25_s._ each, the expense of "pa.s.sing the bottle" to the enemy is rather a serious affair.

By far the largest department of the Royal a.r.s.enal is devoted to the construction of carriages and packing-cases for moving artillery, baggage, and the various munitions of war. At the present moment the carriage department employs no less than three thousand hands, together with three hundred machines, moved by twenty-three steam-engines, which do the work of an additional twelve thousand men! The bulky nature of the material dealt with, and the store-houses required for stowing it away, together with the numerous workshops called into existence by the Crimean war, have caused this department to burst its old bounds and to invade 250 acres of the adjoining marsh--the area of the workshops alone covering 255,152 superficial feet, and the entire ground occupied being no less than 1,445,440 feet. This immense amount of elbow room has enabled Colonel Tulloch, the superintendent of the department, to systematize the manufacture, and cause the timber to pa.s.s along in one unbroken progress from the time when it is landed upon the wharf to the time when the finished articles are delivered over to the storekeeper. If we follow this stream from stage to stage, we shall catch a flying view of the operations of this department, whose province it is to provide package and carriage for the British army at home and abroad.

The timber which forms the princ.i.p.al raw material employed is brought by s.h.i.+ps to the mouth of the ca.n.a.l which runs along the eastern side of the a.r.s.enal; here it is transferred to lighters which convey it some distance inland to the quay in the immediate neighbourhood of the timber field. By means of powerful derrick cranes, which can make a long or a short arm at pleasure, it is next unloaded and swung upon the trucks of the railway which ramifies through every portion of the premises, and forms the means of communication between its different points. The trucks, when full, immediately start with their burthen for the contiguous timber field, a square s.p.a.ce covering 20 acres. Here the huge logs are deposited in long lines, which extend from one end of the field to the other, having roadways between them laid with rails. Over each line or row of timber strides a powerful travelling crane which, with a slight impulse given by one man, is made to traverse from end to end of the row, depositing or taking up in its way logs of oak or teak of many tons weight as easily as Gulliver could have picked up the Lilliputians he bestrode. Before the introduction of this powerful machinery, from fifty to one hundred pairs of horses were employed in this department alone, all of which are now dispensed with, and a saving effected of 6,000_l._ a-year.

The usual store in the timber-field amounts to 60,000 loads in various stages of seasoning. The varieties of climate in which the British army has to serve are so many, that foreign woods have been introduced to supply the place of oak, which cannot be found in quant.i.ties equal to the demand. Thus we find in the timber-field sabicu, a dense East-Indian wood which is used for the heavy blocks of gun carriages; pedouk, from the same country, which is employed for a similar purpose; and iron bark, an Australian wood. Of English timber, such as ash, elm, and beech, there is a very large store. What is called wheel timber, on the soundness and proper adaptation of which depends the safety of the artillery and transport service, is entirely composed of the most graceful trees of our woodlands; the spokes being made of oak, the naves of elm, the felloes or rims of ash. Beech is also largely used for the fuses of sh.e.l.ls and the woodwork of saddles. When any particular logs are required, they are selected by the timber-master, picked up by the travelling crane, hoisted into the railway truck, and conveyed at once to the saw-mills close at hand. On the threshold of the largest mill the logs meet with a grim reception from an immense circular saw 66 inches in diameter, which at once attacks the huge log and separates it as expeditiously as your Eastern soldier divides with his scimitar a floating handkerchief. This formidable instrument traverses a s.p.a.ce of 30 feet, and is thus enabled to fix its teeth upon the log at whatever part of the entrance it may chance to lie. This transverse section performed, the divided portions are drawn up by machinery into the saw-frames, the largest of which is capable of receiving a log 4 feet square. Once within the mill's maw, as many saws are put in as are necessary to divide the wood into slabs of the required thickness, and a few minutes suffice to reduce it to planks. From the mills the timber is removed again upon the railroad to the seasoning shed, which covers 4 acres of ground. Here it is allowed to remain for years, so stacked that the air fairly circulates through every portion of the immense ma.s.s. The seasoning shed is to the timber master what his wine-cellar is to a _bon vivant_. Here he treasures his bins of nine years old oak as though it were wine of a famous vintage. This he keeps as carefully as a young whist-player keeps his best trumps to the end of the game, but with far more judgment, for old oak is precious beyond price, and cannot be got for love or money at a moment's notice. In the dim shadow of this monster store are also piled the completed articles of land-transport that improve by age. That perpendicular wall of finished woodwork contains the bodies of a thousand carriages which were prepared to remove the British army from the pleateau of Sevastopol in antic.i.p.ation of an inland campaign; the round towers at the corners are their wheels built up and left to season. Upon the thorough preparation of this part of the carriage its safety depends. The wheels of omnibuses are always allowed to remain two years before they are used, and by permitting them this grace they behave well when at work, generally running over 43,000 miles of ground before they are worn out. The wheels of gun-carriages require to be even better prepared and seasoned, as they have to bear the weight of enormous guns, and have often to run over the roughest ground, without being in any way relieved from sudden shocks by springs.

Upon this store of mellow wood the different factories draw; and the railway which traverses every portion of it speedily conveys the raw material to the benches of the workmen. As the visitor pa.s.ses up the main avenues of these splendid shops he is bewildered with the activity of the swarms of artizans, the whirling of shafting, and the grating sounds of circular saws. Clouds of sawdust are flying about, and in a moment cover the intruder from head to foot. The immense amount of work sometimes required to be performed at a brief notice has necessitated the introduction of machinery into this branch of handicraft, which heretofore was entirely carried on by manual labour. Let us take the ammunition and powder cases for instance; these have to be provided by the hundred thousand in time of war, and accordingly we find machinery employed in every direction to shorten the work. Circular saws cut the planks into the required size to form the sides and tops and bottoms of the cases; as these issue from the different machines, they are conveyed away upon a circular band of canvas, placed at right angles, to a broader band which runs from one end of the factory to the other: down this band, as on a broad stream, the various pieces sail until they reach the receptacle, from which they are again conveyed to the machinery which is to put them together. Here the drilling, mortising, and dowelling processes are carried on by wholesale with an exact.i.tude and speed which would astonish the joiner of the old school. Upwards of a thousand ammunition boxes formed of cedar, for repelling the wood-eating white ants of the East, are now being prepared daily for the use of the Indian army. The powder-boxes for the navy are made of a hexagonal form, to enable them to fit into the s.h.i.+p's hold like cells of honeycomb. They are carefully lined either with pewter or copper, and when filled are hermetically sealed with wax. The limber-boxes for the field artillery are also made here in large quant.i.ties. These receptacles are of a far more elaborate character than the powder-cases, as they are fitted to take all the stores requisite for immediate action, which are stowed away in their different compartments, as neatly as the articles in a gentleman's dressing-case. The common cartridge barrels are shaped out of the solid wood almost as fast as you can look. One machine cuts the oak into staves, curved to the right form; another cuts the edges, so that they may fit in a circle; a fourth turns the head; a fifth receives the staves, which are placed by the attendant on end in the form of a barrel, within the grip of a hydraulic press, claps a hoop on the top and bottom, and with one squeeze completes the operation. By such appliances a piece of solid oak plank is converted within five minutes into a finished barrel. The total produce of carefully-prepared powder-cases during the financial year 1856 was 25,331, and of boxes for ammunition, sh.e.l.l, &c., no less than 287,171. How many barrels can be made at a pinch we do not know, for the machinery is only just put up, but the number must be enormous, and when the visitor witnesses the nimble fingers of machinery galloping over the work, he wonders how the business was ever got through in the old time of the chisel, gouge, hammer, and plane.

In the shops devoted to the manufacture of the gun-carriages and trucks for the land and sea service, skilled artisans are employed, except in the wheel department. The vast strength requisite to support and withstand the recoil of 56, 64, and 98-pounders, necessitates the most solid construction and the best workmans.h.i.+p. Some of these platforms for traversing cannon, made of teak, and bolted and finished at the ends with bright copper bands, look like handsome pieces of furniture rather than s.h.i.+p's gun-carriages. Compared with these ponderous articles, the light constructions fitted for the field-artillery seem like children's playthings. Here they may be met with in every variety and in every stage of progress, so substantially put together that the marvel is that they ever wear out. The sort of succession of earthquakes, however, to which they are subjected in a campaign tells even upon those solid joints, and but few of the gun-carriages employed in the Crimea, although new when they went out, returned fit for further service.

The wheel department is one of the most interesting sights in the a.r.s.enal.

Here the most ingenious machinery has been brought together to insure sound and speedy production. Formerly the wheels were made entirely by hand; now they are turned out without the aid of a single skilled wheelwright. What is called the copying process, produces the nave and spokes of the wheel, three or four of which are seen working side by side, and the whole batch under the care of only one man. The circular rim of the wheel, or felloe, is cut out of the solid block by an ingenious ribbon-saw, imported from France. This saw is merely a narrow band of steel, toothed on one edge and running over a wheel like an ordinary leathern band attached to shafting. The exquisite manner in which it fas.h.i.+ons the most intricate patterns from thick slabs of wood is really surprising. The felloes, after being thus roughly formed, are stacked to season in a shed by themselves, where they are piled one upon the other in vast pillars, down vistas of which the visitor pa.s.ses, full of amazement at their number. There are at present in store some sixty thousand of these felloes and an equal number of naves, with their due complement of spokes.

As wheels are required, their component parts are brought to the shop, finished and mortised by machinery, and then lightly adjusted to each other. They are immediately placed within the grip of six hydraulic presses, which are so arranged as to thrust towards a common centre.

Directly the wheel is adjusted within them, you hear the hiss of the resistless engines, whose motive power is only a few pints of water; the solid timbers groan, the joints painfully accommodate themselves to each other, and in less time than the process takes to describe, the wheel is lifted out solidly jointed, and only awaiting the tire to travel at once under its superinc.u.mbent gun. The wheels of gun, limber, and ammunition carriages are all made of exactly the same size, in order that they may be interchangeable in case of accident.

The effect of the sudden outbreak of the late war was, perhaps, more beneficially felt upon the laboratory department of the a.r.s.enal than any other. Sh.e.l.ls, of all the stores of war, were most deficient when the army left for Varna, and the want increased as soon as actual campaigning commenced. The authorities accordingly permitted Captain Boxer to erect a model manufactory of sh.e.l.ls in the autumn of 1855. This he did with surprising rapidity, and proved to their satisfaction that these formidable missiles could be manufactured five pounds a ton cheaper than they could be procured from the contractors--an important saving on an article of which several hundred tons had to be supplied per day. The success of this experiment led to the erection of the splendid sh.e.l.l-foundry which is now attached to the a.r.s.enal, and which is capable of turning out sufficient sh.e.l.ls for all the armies of the world. Here may be seen the process by which the old sc.r.a.p iron of the establishment is transformed into the finished shot and sh.e.l.l, and transferred by its own weight to the transport ready to convey it to the seat of war. The smelting process is carried on in a dozen enormous cupola furnaces, into which the iron and coal are heaped indiscriminately. The fierce heat generated by the blast rapidly melts the iron, which is then allowed to flow into the sh.e.l.l-moulds. From the moment the metal enters these moulds, the sh.e.l.l, in war time, never touches the ground till it is landed at its port of debarkation! The rough sh.e.l.ls, after they have cooled a little, are forwarded by railway to the cleaning-room, where they are placed in a revolving iron barrel, seven feet long and seven feet in diameter. This machine circulates with rapidity, and the friction of the contained sh.e.l.ls speedily cleanses them of all sand and dirt. From this point they roll through all the succeeding stages of their manufacture. A slightly-inclined plane receives them at the cleaning-drum, and conducts them one by one to the machinery fixed in the great room of the laboratory department. Upwards of ten thousand sh.e.l.ls per day pa.s.sed through this apartment during the late war, and were, on their pa.s.sage, drilled and "bushed," or fitted with the socket made to receive the fuse. This simple fact will alone serve to show how energetically the work was carried on to meet the wants of the great siege. The sh.e.l.ls, having rolled through the labyrinth of successive machines which operate upon them, now move onward to the painting department, where they receive a coating of black varnish, which prevents oxidation. Hence they continue their journey right across the open ground of the a.r.s.enal to the pier, under the platform of which they keep their course inside an iron tube which leads immediately into the barge alongside the transport in the river. From this barge, into which they sometimes shoot with a considerable impulse, they roll again, through the open port of the s.h.i.+p, to their appointed place in the hold.

The chief factory of the laboratory department is the great sight of the a.r.s.enal, as here the visitor witnesses twenty or thirty most curious operations, the more important only of which he can stop to examine amid the whirlwind of machinery that everywhere meets his sight and vibrates on his ear. The manufacture of elongated bullets for the rifles affords perhaps the most startling novelty of all. The rifle itself is not a greater advance upon old Brown Bess than is the Minie bullet upon the old one-ounce ball. The apparatus now employed to produce it contrasts as forcibly with the simple bullet-mould formerly in use. Instead of heating the lead to a fluid state, it is simply warmed, in which condition it is subjected to hydraulic pressure in a large iron vessel, which has but one small aperture at the top, of the size of the intended elongated bullet.