Français  Contact Us  Help  Search  Canada Site Volume 1 (1000–1754) Volume 2 (1755-1871) Volume 3 (1872–2000) CHAPTER 1 The Conquest CHAPTER 2 The Revolt of Pontiac and the American Invasion CHAPTER 3 The Coveted Pacific Coast CHAPTER 4 The Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 CHAPTER 5 Demobilization CHAPTER 6 The Royal Navy, Ruler of the Seas A Power Force In Defence From Sail to Steam A Revolution in Artillery Arctic Exploration Franklin's Tragic Expedition Discovery of a Northwest Passage Events in the North West Territories The Red River Volunteers The Pacific Coast The Victoria Voltigeurs The Purported Russian Threat The Gold Rush and the Royal Engineers The Pig War The Royal Navy Patrols the West Coast The Volunteer Corps CHAPTER 7 A Decade of Turbulence APPENDIX A The British Armed Forces APPENDIX B Daily Life of Soldiers and Officers APPENDIX C Uniforms and Arms APPENDIX D Reference      CHAPTER 6 The Royal Navy, Ruler of the Seas           A Revolution in Artillery ( 1 page )                     Royal Naval Artillery Volunteer with an 40-pounder RBL Armstrong gun on a pivot mount, 1892. (Click image to enlarge) While advances were being made in naval technology, there was remarkable progress in artillery as well, both on land and on the sea.  There had been no fundamental changes since the sixteenth century.  At the end of the 1850s cannons were still simple muzzle-loaded cast-iron tubes that fired cannonballs.  Variations, such as howitzers and carronades, appeared, and even rifling was attempted in the muzzle-loaders.  But these innovations did not lead to any dramatic changes.  Then in 1858-59 a British artillery committee studied a revolutionary gun design by a British civil engineer, William G. Armstrong.  Instead of being cast, the gun was made of steel plates welded around a rifled iron tube; it was breech-loaded and fired a conically shaped shell a distance of some two kilometres with extraordinary accuracy.  The shell even had the capacity to pierce a dozen centimetres of armour before exploding.  The Armstrong gun was immediately adopted by the British navy and army. 114 The appearance of such a powerful weapon significantly influenced the design of warships and fortifications; ship armour and casemates for forts had to be much more elaborate.  The last great forts built by the British south of Quebec City between 1865 and 1870 reflected the influence of these new types of guns, because the Americans Thomas Rodman and Robert Parrott had invented similar guns for their army as early as 1861.  The new forts were clearly designed to fend off a land attack, because on the sea the Royal Navy remained invincible, having rapidly equipped itself with an impressive fleet of steam-propelled armoured ships against which no country had a chance.           Additional Images           Click image to enlarge   Last Updated: 2004-06-20 Important Notices