Changes in Weaponry: Science & Technology, 1790-1918 (Edexcel A Level History: Paper 3 Options): Revision Note

Carronades and the Navy in the 1790s

• In 1790, the main method of attack by Royal Navy battleships, known as ships of the line, was to simultaneously fire all of the guns placed along the side of their hulls

  • This was known as a broadside

  • Most British ships of the line carried around 74 guns

    • The heaviest, on the lower deck, fired a 14.5 kg (32-pound) cannonball

  • Broadsides could be devastating, and Royal Navy seamen could fire one every minute and a half

  • This was much faster than enemy fleets

• However, the positioning of the guns meant they were unable to attack from the front (bow) or back (stern) of the ship

  • The introduction of the carronade helped to change this

  • The carronade, first made by the Carron Company in Falkirk in the 1770s, was a short, light gun that fired heavy shot at close range

    • A new boring technique made them lighter than long guns of the same calibre

    • This meant ships could mount heavy-calibre guns on their upper decks

  • They were placed on mounts that enabled them to swivel

  • Carronades could be loaded quickly and could fire grapeshot

  • Positioning carronades on the forecastles and sterns of ships enabled devastating attacks on enemy sailors and marines positioned on decks

  • However, their short range meant an enemy ship could stay at a distance and fire on them with long guns

• Carronade use continued to develop, and from 1830 the gunnery school HMS Excellent trained crews in accurate fire

A brig of war’s 12-pounder carronade, illustration from E. Keble Chatterton, Ships and Ways of Other Days (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1913). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

• Other developments in naval weaponry included:

  • The replacement of slowmatches with gunlocks

    • Slowmatches required gun captains to hold the lit piece of rope in the firing pan and hope the gunpowder it contained ignited and fired the cannon

  • Gunlocks involved the gun captain pulling a lanyard at the precise moment he wanted to fire

    • Gunlocks enabled broadsides to be fired faster and more accurately

Congreve's rockets, 1806

• The army of Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore in southern India, had used iron-cased gunpowder rockets against British forces in the 1790s

  • British forces captured some of these, and William Congreve studied them at Woolwich

  • He adapted and improved them, increasing their range from 550 m to 2700 m

• Congreve's rockets were first used in action in October 1806, when the Royal Navy attacked the French invasion fleet at Boulogne

• They were cheap to produce and light in weight compared to cannon

  • This meant large numbers could be carried into battle easily

  • Merchant ships could also carry them without it affecting the amount of cargo they could carry

• Congreve's rockets were very effective against certain large, flammable targets, such as when the Royal Navy attacked Copenhagen in 1807

• They were later used at Leipzig (1813) and against the USA at Fort McHenry (1814)

  • However, they were highly inaccurate, which made them unpopular with many commanders

William Armstrong's new artillery, 1859–60

• In the late 1850s, William Armstrong developed an artillery piece that had a rifled barrel and was loaded at the breech rather than the muzzle

  • Although he patented his design, he gave it to the British government free of charge

  • Armstrong's gun was much more accurate than the current smoothbore muzzle-loading guns being used

  • As a result, Armstrong's guns were adopted by the Army in 1859

The Armstrong 20-pounder gun and limber, wood engraving from Alexander Lyman Holley, A Treatise on Ordnance and Armor (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1865). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

• Armstrong guns were first used in combat in China in 1860, during the Second Opium War

  • The Royal Navy also adopted them, but breech failures during the bombardment of Kagoshima, Japan, in 1863 damaged their reputation

• The government stopped ordering Armstrong's breech-loaders in 1863

• From 1865 the Army switched to rifled muzzle-loading (RML) guns

  • This was because they were cheaper and simpler to use, more durable and could fire the heavy charges needed to pierce armour

  • Britain did not return to breech-loading artillery until c. 1880

The Vickers machine gun, 1914–18

• The first fully automatic machine gun was invented in 1884 by Hiram Maxim

  • Although the armies of every major country adopted it, most people did not realise the impact it was going to have on the battlefield

  • The Maxim gun was heavy and complex

    • It was also vulnerable to overheating and jamming

  • British forces used Maxim guns in colonial wars, for example at Omdurman in 1898

• The British Army adopted the Vickers machine gun in 1912

  • The Vickers gun was a lighter, improved version of the Maxim gun, and it was seen as sturdy and reliable

  • It could fire 500 rounds a minute but was heavy and required a crew of six to eight men to operate it

  • The barrel was encased in a water jacket that stopped it overheating

Vickers machine gun (YORCM : CA78ac), York Museums Trust, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

• In October 1915, the British Army also adopted a lighter machine gun known as the Lewis gun

  • The Vickers guns passed to the new Machine Gun Corps (formed October 1915) and were reclassified as 'heavy machine guns'

  • The Lewis gun was issued to infantry units

• In 1914, each British infantry battalion had only two machine guns

  • By 1916, Machine Gun Corps teams were using Vickers guns to fire long-range barrages over the heads of attacking troops

The development of the tank, 1915–18

• The devastating effect of the machine gun on infantry charges led to the search for alternative ways to attack

  • One way was the creation of armoured and armed tracked vehicles that could attack enemy lines whilst keeping their crew protected

  • These vehicles became known as tanks

  • Caterpillar tracks and a rhomboid shape let them cross trenches and barbed wire, but crews had no effective way to communicate with other tanks

• In 1915, the Admiralty's Landships Committee, backed by Winston Churchill, funded the first designs, which led to the Mark I tank

• Tanks were first used at Flers-Courcelette, during the Battle of the Somme, on 15 September 1916

  • Mechanical problems led to many of the 50 machines breaking down or getting stuck in the mud

• At Cambrai in November 1917, around 400 tanks broke through the German lines, showing what massed tanks could achieve

  • Although they were refined and improved throughout the rest of the war, historians still debate whether they were decisive by 1918, when tanks helped the Allies break through at Amiens

Approach

These recollections have value because, as a British soldier who fought on the Somme, he identifies the specific problems that tanks could overcome: trenches, uncut barbed wire and machine-gun positions. His description of infantry following tanks also demonstrates the beginnings of the combined-arms tactics that became increasingly important by 1918. His acknowledgement that early tanks were “cumbersome” is also important, since mechanical unreliability meant that tanks demonstrated greater potential than decisive effectiveness when first introduced in 1916. However, Brown was recalling the events retrospectively, and the source does not say how much time had elapsed between the event and his recollection. His view from the infantry makes the source stronger on how tanks helped attacking soldiers than on how far tanks decided the outcome of the battles.

How important was science and technology in transforming weaponry?

• Science and technology had a huge impact on weaponry between 1790 and 1918

  • Due to science and technology, weapons became more accurate, more powerful and more destructive

• However, they were not the only factors responsible for transforming weaponry and warfare

  • The production of the new weapons and systems relied upon industrialisation having taken place

  • Britain, France and Germany could produce such weapons because they had the coal, railways and industries to do so

• The transformation of weaponry also relied upon government support and investment

  • Government funds paid for research, laboratories and factories

  • Without this, many of the weapons developed between 1790 and 1918 would not have made it to the battlefield

The importance of specific developments

• Carronades (1790s) and Congreve's rockets (1806) improved firepower but were limited by short range and inaccuracy

• Armstrong's rifled breech-loader (1859–60) showed what science could do for accuracy, but cost and reliability problems meant Britain reverted to muzzle-loaders until c. 1880

• The machine gun (Maxim 1884, Vickers 1912) had the biggest impact on warfare, because it made infantry attacks so costly in lives that it forced the development of the tank

Judgement

• Science and technology drove change throughout the period, but the key turning point came only when industrial production and government funding allowed new weapons to be made in huge numbers, as in 1914–18