Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, upon the subject of great guns. FEBRUARY, 27, 1865.-Referred to the Committee on Naval Affairs and ordered to be printed. To the Honorable Committee on the Conduct of the War, United States Senate: 1. Since the battle of Solferino, when rifled cannon were first actively put in use, all the nations liable to a state of war have been straining every nerve to improve their ordnance, and hence their improvements in the means of defence, and the experiments conducted to produce large rifled guns were cotemporary with the experiments in iron-clad ships, Modern warfare, therefore, with large rifled guns and iron-clad ships, is in its infancy, although large smooth bores and wooden ships have an earlier date; their general use in service began with the present rebellion, and, at this date, the large gup of either class, not liable either to the accident of enlargement of the bore or bursting has not yet been made; while of rifles we have none over 30-pounders that have not proved utterly unsafe, except a few 60-pounder Parrott's, untried in battle, and some experimental 50-pounders which have been made, but never put in service. 2. As field rifle guns were successfully used before the rebellion, it appears that no improvements have been made in large guns during the war, whilst every other branch of inventive genius has been successfully keeping pace with the march of the revolution in science and mechanics. 3. We can, and we should have guns to answer the purpose of their creation equally with agricultural instruments. 4. What farmer would continue to use a plough, if it were liable to burst and blow him and his team to atoms? Private enterprise overcomes these difficulties, why does not the government likewise? 5. At Fort Sumter, in the beginning of the rebellion, the only casualty was by the bursting of a gun. In the attack on Fort Fisher all the casualties in the fleet resulted from the same cause. At the bursting of every gun more or less life is lost, beside the sacrifice of property, and owing to the reticence of the departments but a small percentage of the numbers that burst, and the losses sustained by the government, are published. Those we hear of in the newspapers generally come from some literary, but unscientific reporter. 6. Eighteen large rifles were disabled on Admiral Porter's fleet at Fort Fisher, yet the Secretary reported to Congress but five; and recently a board convened by the Ordnance bureau of the navy to investigate the subject reported twenty-one burst altogether out of 703 in service, while their own tables show thirty-four, and the last report of the chief of the bureau exhibits 1,005 at that time available. The board likewise suppresses the truth in not reporting that of the 703, 483 were twenty and thirty pounders, which were not of the classes under contemplation or liable to burst. 7. I have had twenty-five years' experience in manipulating iron, and all the talent or inventive faculty I have resulting from that large experience has been for three years entirely devoted to this subject. The chief of the Ordnance bureau has said that I have great experience, much inventive talent, and am a great mechanic; yet I was not allowed to give any information to that board. Mr. Horatio Ames was here, and has the reputation of being one of the most extensive iron manufacturers with experience of this subject in the country, and who had made a 50-pounder wrought iron gun, that they could not burst, yet he was not allowed to testify, nor Mr. Hotchkiss, another very efficient ordnance mechanic. Only Mr. Parrott, the maker, was heard. Hence your honorable committee can see why no improvements are made in guns. partments persist in shutting out the light. The reason they do so is likewise apparent. The de 8. In the navy, some years since, a young lieutenant, of considerable talent, much ambition, with a remarkably fine address, exhibited great aptitude for ordnance. The country being at peace, he worked without rivalry, except in an officer sustaining about the same relation to the army. They were each more or less successful, owing to the general ignorance on this subject, and at the birth of this rebellion each was the autocrat of ordnance in their respective branches of the service, and their different systems were covered by patents: the one the Dahlgren navy gun, cast solid in a mass double the weight of the gun, chipped off, and bored out in the lathe; the other, the Rodman army gun, cast hollow, and cooled from the centre with water. It is doubtful if at this period Europe had so far advanced as we. But they have kept on while we have stood still, utterly, disgracefully still, so far as the departments are concerned. The mechanical talent of the country has had no encouragement, although private foundries have been employed to make these guns, but not to make other or better ones. This being the result of the influence of these two patentees, whose systems became so deeply rooted in the minds and interests of those connected with ordnance and the bureau. 9. An opinion of Robert Mallet in the preface to his great work on ordnance is apropos to this subject; he says: "There are those who affirm that all that relates to the fabrication or improvement of artillery belongs properly to the officer of artillery or of engineers, and that he alone is qualified to treat of or to direct such, and to these some apology may seem fitting for meddling with matters deemed so purely professional. To superior knowledge, wherever found, I willingly defer, and recognize the great ability and brilliant attainments of very many within the scientific corps of our army, among whom I reckon some honored friends, but I cannot admit the preceding doctrine, nor do I believe it possible that, under the existing conditions of military education and life, or perhaps under any others consistent with its primary necessities, commissioned officers can attain that varied, comprehensive, and accurate scientific and practical knowledge, and that educated physical tact which long experience in technical matters alone confers, to the extent that civil life permits, and which the education and occupation of the civil and mechanical engineer create and empower. Non omnia possumus omnes.' Experience proves it to have been of necessity so always and in all countries." 10. Who have been the great improvers, if not the creators of the science of gunnery itself? A long list of illustrious men, in civil life-Tartaglia, Galileo, |