Industrialization of War, 1840–84 239
hood in return. From his official position Armstrong proceeded to
organize the Elswick Ordnance Company, located just outside New
castle. This private company then entered into a contract with the War
Department to manufacture the guns Armstrong had just designed,
and agreed to supply no one else. By 1861, Elswick had produced
some 1,600 guns of varying sizes. But there were difficulties with the
breech mechanism, which was liable to jam, and on the larger calibers,
Armstrong’s breeches required so much strength to operate that ordi
nary men could not serve the guns.
Critics claimed that Sir William was using his official position to
channel contracts towards the Elswick company while preventing
other designs from having a fair trial. Argument waxed very hot.
Joseph Whitworth, a Manchester manufacturer and personal rival to
Armstrong, exhibited muzzle-loading guns which he claimed, with
justification, were superior to Armstrong’s both in accuracy and
armor-piercing capacity.^28 Half a dozen other inventors were loudly
touting other designs, though none of them had Armstrong’s and
Whitworth’s capacity to build and test prototypes without government
funding.
The navy’s dislike of the Armstrong guns soon added weight to
private criticism. In 1859 the French launched La Gloire, which car
ried armor proof against anything that existing British warships could
bring against it. It therefore became a matter of urgency for British
gunmakers to come up with a weapon that could smash through La
Gloires armor. Armstrong’s biggest breech-loaders proved incapable
of doing so; and official tests, painstakingly conducted in 1863–64,
convinced the committee in charge that muzzle-loading guns were
safer, simpler, and more effective against armor than breech-loaders.
Whitworth’s guns were deemed too difficult to make since they re
quired a closer fit between projectile and bore than prevailing
methods of manufacture could readily attain.^29 Distrusting the truth
fulness of profit-seeking private armsmakers to begin with, and caught
- Whitworth combined scientific and technical with pecuniary entrepreneurship in
quite extraordinary degree, and developed connections with Liberal as Armstrong did
with Conservative politicians. Whitworth tested different forms of rifling and projectile
shapes more systematically than others had done and was able to develop a flat-nosed,
elongated, armor-piercing projectile that was indeed superior to all others. Cf. James E.
Tennant, The Story of the Guns (London, 1864), for Whitworth’s side of the story, and
David Dougan, The Great Gunmaker: The Story of Lord Armstrong (Newcastle-on-Tyne,
n.d.) for Armstrong’s.
- Whitworth’s guns had oval or polygonal bores, twisted in such a way as to impart
rotation to an elongated projectile, shaped to fit the bore. To manufacture such complex
planes precisely enough to assure a smooth passage in loading and firing was a formida
ble assignment for the metalworking methods of the age. Whitworth’s lasting claim to
