3. The Blakely Patent

To properly understand Alexander Blakely’s contribution to ordnance it is necessary first to understand the claims he made in the several patents he obtained between 1855 and 1866. As well as being aware of the many and varied claims within these patents one needs to compare these claims with the subsequent descriptions of his manufactured ordnance. A full summary of the claims for each patent is contained in the Patent page.

Only his first patent, numbered 431/1855, for Improvements in Ordnance, dated 27 February 1855 is really vital to his subsequent history. In this Blakely claimed as his invention the forming of guns with an internal tube or cylinder of cast-iron or steel, enclosed in a casing of wrought-iron or steel. He subsequently expanded this concept …

His first patent of February 27, 1855 defined the principle of tension in cannon; giving scientific reason for adding strengthening jackets to a basic gun tube. The importance of the principle that Alexander Blakely determined cannot be over-emphasised; adding successive jackets or rings of differing hardness’s of forged metal to an inner barrel permitted the construction of great guns. The principle was adopted under dubious Crown Privilege by W G Armstrong in Britain and was pirated by R P Parrott in North America. It was licensed to Spain and Russia, to the steelmakers Whitworth and Bessemer in Britain, to Voruz in France, and to the Putnam company in New England. 

                    A gun formed principally of cast-iron, and reinforced near the breech

                                     with three layers of [wrought-iron] tubes forced on

                    From “A Cheap and Simple Method of Manufacturing Strong Cannon”,

                                                        by Captain A T Blakely, RA, 1858

As probably the most scientific maker of ordnance of the age Alexander Blakely co-operated with many of his contemporaries including James Longridge, who perfected wire-wound gun barrels, Daniel Treadwell, the American who first proposed composite gun barrels, John Norton, his Irish compatriot and the pioneer of shell-firing guns, Joseph Whitworth and Henry Bessemer, as well as John Mercer Brooke, Chief of Ordnance in the Confederate States Navy.  He had a scientific squabble with Robert Mallet, creator of the 36 inch calibre, 40 ton mortar intended for the Crimea, over the discovery of tension in ordnance. He had a less than scientific squabble with W G Armstrong, who used, but did not understand, tension jackets in his ordnance; being outraged at Armstrong’s hiding behind Crown privilege on his appointment as Her Majesty’s Superintendent of Rifled Ordnance.

Treadwell

It is sometimes claimed that the American engineer Daniel Treadwell (1791-1872) originated the banding of gun barrels; this is not so as he proposed and patented in America and Britain during 1845 the construction of ordnance from short rings of metal welded end-to-end without a core. It was not until 1855, a full six months after Alexander Blakely’s initial patent, that Treadwell filed his claim for composite-barrelled cannon in Washington. This had a core around which the strengthening outer rings were screwed together; coincidentally, and curiously, Treadwell was living in London, England, at the time. In any event, the young Blakely maintained cordial even amicable relations with the very much older Treadwell, sometime Rumford Professor at Harvard University.

It is likely that Treadwell and Blakely co-operated closely; they corresponded, when Treadwell had his 1855 patent re-issued in 1862 unusually he included an extensive reference to the English professor, Peter Barlow, a primary source of Blakely’s knowledge on tension in metal, missing from the original. Treadwell was also a prominent resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, of which State more later…

The “Obvious” Solution

Blakely had a long narrative letter published in the Engineer magazine on October 24, 1862 that carefully summarises his view on the development of his principles of ordnance contained in his original patent, the influence of his scientific peers and the resistance of the British authorities:

BUILT-UP GUNS – Sir - In a leading article of the 17th inst. [October 17, 1862] you state that Mr Barlow “long ago laid down the rules governing the strengthening of hydraulic press cylinders.”  You will greatly oblige many of your readers, I am sure, if you will be kind enough to inform them in what publication can be found these rules, if, indeed, you are not mistaken in supposing that they exist.  The only generally known paper by Mr Barlow on the subject does not even hint at the possibility of strengthening cylinders, but is simply a calculation of their strength when cast of one piece of iron or one piece of brass.  He clearly demonstrates that the outside of thick cylinders formed of one mass is almost useless, but he does not suggest the remedy of putting this outside part into a state of initial tension.  I grant, sir, that this remedy appears sufficiently obvious, now that I have pointed it out.  Most inventions are obvious.  When first hearing of nine out of ten, one wonders that such “obvious” improvements had not been made before.

Indeed, when this thing first occurred to me I had the same feeling.  I never dreamt of patenting what seemed to me so perfectly obvious an improvement.  My only dread was that so extremely obvious an idea must occur to every one - the thinking of how to make strong cannon - (it did really occur to Dr Hart, Mr J A Longridge, and Prof Tredwell [sic] within a few months) - and that the Russians would construct cannon so powerful that one or two shells from them could sink one of the huge three-deckers which then formed our fleet. To induce the British Government to manufacture some very strong guns, quickly and secretly, was my wish.  Granite forts were then the great opponent of ships.  “Supply ships,” I said, “with one 320-pounder, in place of ten 32-pounders - as one ounce of lead in the form of a bullet is more effective against an animal than several ounces in the form of very small shot, so will one 320-pounder smash a block of granite which fifty 32-pounders could not seriously injure.”

This suggestion, also, I considered “obvious,” and greatly was I taken aback when the War Office - or rather the Ordnance Office, this happening before the War Office was established - greatly was I astonished when the Ordnance Office informed me that in the first place it wanted no large guns; and, secondly, that it disbelieved in all mathematical calculations, and that consequently it had made up its mind to spend half a million in a Royal Gun Foundry, believing the weakness of cast-iron guns not to be inherent to the form, but to proceed from the use of bad iron by the contractors.  The half million was spent and exceeded, and not one cannon fit for service was turned out of the “Royal Standard Gun Foundry.”

Meanwhile I saw that reasoning was of no use, so I proceeded to make strong guns, and, to secure a chance of having my expenses reimbursed, I took out a patent on the 27th February, 1855.  By June, 1855 - after several less successful attempts - I had produced the 4½ inch gun, which stood seven times as much firing as a cast iron gun, and three times as much as a brass gun, which the Ordnance Committee tried against it at Shoeburyness.  “Obvious” as my invention seems to you and many others, its value gradually rose in my own estimation when I found that so very few could understand it. To Mr Whitworth I endeavoured to explain it in 1855, and again in 1856, after the bursting of his guns formed of cast iron with sides 11 inches thick, the bore being only 4 inches or 5 inches! Yet in 1860 Mr Whitworth so little understood the principle, that every single gun he built burst; one so small as even a 32-pounder, and made with extra care as an experimental gun for Denmark, burst at Copenhagen, and killed my poor friend Lieut Carlsen.  The remains of another gun of Mr Whitworth’s, an 80-pounder, can still be seen at Woolwich Arsenal.  So unscientifically was this constructed that the inner tube is burst and the outer coils not disturbed.  I believe the gun only fired sixteen rounds. Knowing all this I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read in the Times of Tuesday week Mr Whitworth’s letter claiming the credit of the construction of the 120-pounder gun, made for him at Woolwich, in precisely the same way as the Armstrong guns are made. Sir William Armstrong to this day denies the necessity of building-up cannon with the layers in definite tension or compression. His speech on the subject at the British Association last year is thus reported: - “He differed from Captain Blakely in thinking that such mathematical nicety was required in the construction. Provided only care were taken to allow sufficient shrinking, the hoops would adapt themselves to that amount of tension which would give the maximum resisting force of the gun, and before the hoops would give way the gun would have passed through the phase of greatest resistance.”

This is the secret of the imperfection of the Armstrong guns. He dare not use anything but very yielding wrought iron in this manner.  He attempted to make his inner tubes of cast iron for hardness, but all the guns tried burst, and a couple of hundred are now lying unfinished in Woolwich Arsenal. It was one of these, by the way, which was lately shown there as a burst “Blakely” gun. Yet Sir William Armstrong’s guns are almost as perfect as regards strength as they can be while he uses iron. The difficulty of persuading not only the War Office people but others to use any method of strengthening cannon being so great, however obvious that method may appear to the fifty or one hundred persons who can understand it, I think, sir, you underrate both Sir William Armstrong’s services and my own. Of my own I will not say more than that you are in error in believing Professor Tredwell [sic] to have preceded me. His patent in England is dated eleven months after mine, and his American patent still later.

Sir William Armstrong may not even have been an original discoverer at all; he may have learnt from the published writings of Professor Tredwell [sic] and myself; he may have learnt something when, in 1855, he bored and turned at his works at Elswick a gun, constructed on the coiled system, for Mr James Longridge, under a license from me; yet it cannot be denied that, from Sir William Armstrong, and not from us, did the Government learn to build strong cannon.

It does not appear that he used any more charlatanism that the ignorance of the War Office authorities rendered necessary. Two hundred years ago he would have been forced to secure the attention of an ignorant person to his system by telling him that the metal was cast when Mars was in tune with Mercury. I am sure that not two out of the whole Ordnance Select Committee could be imposed upon by such a statement, carefully selected though they are; so, to gain their votes, Sir William was driven to pretend that he had a secret, to keep which an Act of Parliament was necessary.

This ruse, sir, was surely very pardonable when we compare it to the effrontery of some others, who want the War Office to buy their wares; those, for example, who say that bullets from an hexagonal bored gun have greater initial velocity than from a smooth bored one, and who add, by way of climax, that the hexagonal gun has less recoil even when projecting its bullet with greater velocity.

(I presume all readers of The Engineer know that the velocity backwards of a gun is exactly in proportion to the velocity forwards of the bullet, other circumstances being alike.)

I most conscientiously believe, Mr Editor, that you will be doing better service to the public, if you dwell more on their folly in not forcing the Government to appoint a scientific and independent committee to consider all ordnance questions, and less on the ease of the task of those who attempt to introduce any improvement, however “obvious,” through the present channels.

I also believe that you will be more just. 

T A Blakely

Army and Navy Club, October 21st, 1862.

To add context, by 1850 the British Army’s field guns, those that accompanied its infantry and cavalry on campaign, were to common designs that originated in 1719, being made of what was called “brass”, actually bronze metal, bored smooth within to fire solid round cast-iron shot. The weight of the shot denominated its nature. The principal field gun was a 9 pounder brass piece, the cavalry were supported by a 6 pounder brass piece, and activities in mountainous regions or in difficult colonial territories were covered by a small 3 pounder brass piece. There were also 12 pounder and 24 pounder brass howitzers dating from the early 1800s that were attached to field batteries to fire hollow shells filled with explosive. These weapons were all made at the Royal Brass Foundry, part of the War Office’s Woolwich Arsenal. Manufacture of the brass 3, 12 and 24 pounders ceased in 1859, and of the brass 6 and 9 pounders in 1862. The carriages, on which these guns travelled and from which they were fired, were all of wood with iron strapping.

All other Army guns, the very much larger pieces of the so-called “garrison” artillery in fortresses and guns of the siege train, were made of cast-iron. The guns for the Royal Navy were made through the agency of the War Office, which is the same source as Army ordnance; these too were made of cast-iron. The largest piece in service was the 68 pounder.

Iron guns were usually manufactured by contractors; by 1850 there were two: the Gospel Oak Foundry, Tipton, Staffordshire, owned by John and Edward Walker, and the Low Moor Iron Company, of Low Moor, Bradford, Yorkshire, owned by Thomas and Charles Hood. During the Crimean War of 1854 a large number of other ironworks were contracted to make ordnance, virtually all were to cast mortars for the siege of Sebastopol; only one then made iron guns for the government. By 1860 others were making cast-iron guns.

The coming of the rifled musket into the hands of the common infantry had rendered the range of smooth-bore artillery inadequate by 1855. In addition, at sea, the ironclad ocean-going steam-driven warships that appeared in 1860 were impervious to all existing cannon. To meet these challenges the War Office took the “one-size-fits-all” solution offered by the successful hydraulic engineer William Armstrong of Newcastle- upon-Tyne in Northumberland. No competition was allowed: the War Office’s decision was final.

Armstrong’s new guns were revolutionary. They had wrought-iron tubes and wrought-iron strengthening bands. The tubes were made with polygroove rifling, a multiplicity of small shallow grooves. They were breech-loading with a complicated vertical breech block and a hollow-screw mechanism, requiring unique ammunition covered with lead to grip the polygrooves and new precision-made mechanical fuses. They were immensely complex in manufacture and they were fantastically expensive.

The elderly Field Marshal, His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, commander-in-chief of the British Army, and uncle to the Queen, remarked, sarcastically, that “they could do everything but talk”.

Armstrong was given the monopoly of supply for all ordnance, a patent he obtained in 1856 was classified as a national secret by Act of Parliament, he was appointed superintendent of manufacture at Woolwich Arsenal, as well as owning and running, simultaneously, the Elswick Ordnance Company in Newcastle.

As a quantum leap in technology, from a simple cast-iron tube to a sophisticated multi-layered series of forgings, problems might have been expected with the new system of ordnance, which ranged from small 9 pounder field pieces to 110 pounder 7 inch cannon. The tubes in Armstrong’s guns fractured and burst, wrought-iron breech bands made in spirals opened up, the breech-blocks blew out, the lead-covered bolts jammed in the barrels, if they did not do that their coating fragmented into jagged shrapnel on leaving the barrel, his new mechanical concussion and percussion fuses proved hopelessly unreliable, costs (of course) escalated in endless attempts to rectify these issues. But the War Office would hear of no criticism.

It was not just Alexander Blakely that resented and rejected this appalling abuse of public money and resources, proposing safer, stronger and cheaper guns. The great engineer Joseph Whitworth of Manchester was the first to challenge the inefficiency of the “new order”. Charles Lancaster, who had devised simple oval-bored rifling for cast-iron guns before the Crimean war, made his own claim to be recognised by the War Office. In the Royal Navy, having inadequate armament in the face of foreign ironclad fleets, Commander Robert Scott proposed alternatives. The civil engineer Bashley Britten came up with his own system of ordnance manufacture and projectiles. Even one Alfred Krupp  of Essen in distant Prussia offered better, more durable guns.

The new Royal Gun Factory at Woolwich, also superintended by William Armstrong, made a further 1,610 wrought-iron breech-loading guns from 1860 until March 31, 1862, 110 pounders, 20 pounders, 12 pounders, 9 pounders and 6 pounders, costing the War Office, under the Arsenal’s dubious accounting regime, another £325,484.

The press in due course revealed the level of the problems with the Army and Navy ordnance. But it was not until 1863 that Parliament took a grip on the situation and Armstrong resigned.

In the mean time the opposition in the “ordnance war” effectively coalesced into two productive factions: that of Joseph Whitworth and that around Alexander Blakely, to whom Commander Scott and Bashley Britten became allied.

The Secretary of State for War, Lord Herbert, in the face of public uproar in 1860 grudgingly requested a test of Blakely’s principles at the government’s Woolwich Arsenal and proving grounds, then controlled by William Armstrong. An iron tube cast for an Armstrong 70 pounder piece by the Low Moor Iron Company was steel-banded at the breech at Woolwich to Blakely’s scientifically-calculated principles. A naval cast-iron 32 pounder, manufactured in 1799, was drawn from store and also given a Blakely steel breech band at Woolwich. Both tubes were then rifled at the Arsenal with Bashley Britten’s  new system, “indifferently”, according to the designer.

According to their markings recorded at Woolwich in 1864 the guns had Blakely serial numbers 97 and 98 of 1862; both were of 6.5 inch bore, rifled with seven “square” grooves and weighing 6,380 pounds each.

Blakely was aware that a similar trial at Woolwich in 1860 by William Armstrong using his own banding on cast-iron tubes had ended disastrously with eight pieces bursting on initial proof. He publically stated that he had no confidence in using Armstrong’s metal in the “70 pounder”, and that the old metal, when banded on his system, would stand the trial better.

Despite his reservations the Blakely “70 pounder” was fired 84 times at proof or maximum overload charge with an increasing weight of projectile starting with 180 pounds, and only burst with a 221 pound bolt.

The ancient 32 pounder, with its Blakely strengthening at the breech, was fired with the proof charge 133 times, the weight of the projectile being increased every ten rounds after the first fifty, initially with 96 pound projectiles and finally burst with a 238 pound cylinder.

The trials, long-delayed, were undertaken without the presence of, or even notice to, Captain Blakely in March and July 1862. The guns proved to be the two strongest and safest tubes of the twenty strengthened cast-iron pieces that were tested by the British government between 1858 and 1863.

And then having these amazing results Herbert did... Nothing.

“It is not my intention to enter into a discussion with regard to the respective merits of the great inventors and manufacturers of modern ordnance. All I wish to say of them is, that if their guns are not appreciated by their own Government they are at least appreciated by all the other Governments of the world. There is, first of all, the Blakely Ordnance Company. That company have been manufacturing guns of great calibre, 300 and 600 pounders, both for the Confederate and the Federal States of America, and they are still executing orders for the Federal Government. But it is not in America only that the guns of this company are appreciated. They are executing immense orders for the Russian Government - 11-inch guns for the defence of Cronstadt, and 8-inch guns for the Russian fleet. They are also manufacturing guns for the governments of Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Italy, in fact for most of the Governments of Europe, and it appears that it is only in their own country, and by their own Government, that their guns are not appreciated.”

Baillie went further in describing the system that allowed Blakely to be so overlooked:

“We know that the Government claim a right to use any patent they may think proper. But if the plan should be rejected, then the invention would be discredited, and no private manufacturer would construct a gun the plan of which had been condemned by the Ordnance Committee. It must be remembered also that the members of the Committee are themselves rival inventors and rival manufacturers. I say that, under those circumstances, the Ordnance Select Committee act as a complete obstruction to the introduction of new guns. Captain Blakely for five years never had his gun tried by the Government. And why? Because he always refused to send in his drawings to the Ordnance Select Committee.”

He also described the manner in which other countries acquired great guns:

“Now what is the state of the Russian navy? The Russians did not lose much time in following the example of the English and French, in procuring for themselves iron-clad ships; I believe they have now sixteen of them. But the Ordnance Department of St. Petersburg, as soon as this decision was come to, made a report to the Emperor, in which the following passage occurs: ‘The employment of iron-clad vessels in America has demonstrated the absolute necessity of having guns of a very large calibre, and the successful use of such guns against iron-plated vessels depends upon heavy charges.’ This report was made on the 10th of August, 1862, so that at that period the Russian engineers came to the conclusion that heavy charges were necessary for their guns, and I believe we have ourselves only very lately arrived at the same conclusion. About the same time - that is to say, in the year 1862 - Captain Blakely offered the Secretary for War to manufacture an 8-inch gun at his own expense, and to hand it over to him for six months to do what he liked with it, while he engaged that it should pierce the sides of the Warrior [the British iron-clad]. The Secretary for War told him that if he had such a gun he could not use it, and he therefore declined the offer. The consequence was that Captain Blakely communicated with the Russian Government, and they accepted his proposal. He then sent two of the guns to St Petersburg. The result was that the Russian Government was so pleased with them that they gave him an immense order. They also gave orders for guns of the same calibre to be constructed by the great German founder Krupp; and the iron-clad fleet of Russia was now armed with Krupp’s and Blakely’s guns. They also got guns from the French, but they prefer those supplied by Captain Blakely, and with them the Russian fleet is now being armed. The gun is of eight inches calibre with a 25 pound charge, and a projectile consisting of a long flat steel bolt weighing 180 pounds. Now, I ask whether it would be fair to expose one of our English ships to a collision with a Russian ship armed with such a weapon as that?”

In response, for the government of the day, Spencer Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, Liberal Member of Parliament for Lancashire North, and Under Secretary of State for War, replied:

“The hon. Member seems to know a good deal about the armament of the Russian navy. I always thought it was a very difficult matter to obtain accurate details connected with the Russian army or navy. The Russians are not so communicative as to their experiments, or the state of their preparations, as we are. It is quite possible that the Russian Government have ordered some guns from Captain Blakely. It is not a fact, as was stated by the hon. Gentleman, that no trial of Captain Blakely’s guns has ever been made by the British Government. Captain Blakely offered them a gun; it was accepted, and it was proved, but it burst in the proof. I do not mean to say that is any proof of the inferiority of Captain Blakely’s guns, because he has since stated to us that the gun in question was one of his third-rate guns. It is true that Captain Blakely’s first-rate guns have not been accepted, because they are so expensive, and, judging from his own description of his guns, and our own knowledge of what can be performed by guns of a cheaper construction manufactured by us, they are not worth the cost of the experiment. But I believe the Russians have also got some Prussian guns, but I doubt whether the information of the hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. In spite of the secrecy observed by the Russian Government, it is known that two of Krupp’s guns have burst at St Petersburg, and burst in such a manner as to cause considerable damage and loss of life.”

This sly and almost defamatory answer would not do. George Bentinck, Conservative Member of Parliament for Norfolk, rejoined;

“Now, so far as he could gather from what the noble Marquess the Under Secretary of State for War had said, he understood the noble Marquess to admit that Russia was ahead of us in point of guns which he (Mr. Bentinck) ventured to think was in itself a most alarming admission; and if that were so he thought the country would be of opinion that it was a most unsatisfactory state of things. He did not think this country should rest satisfied if any other country was ahead of us in ordnance. If we were in this position of inferiority the cause was that which was at the root of all evil in the management of our national affairs - a misplaced and an ill-timed economy. He believed it was on the score of expense that the Blakely gun was not adopted; and he was very much afraid - though it did not appear on that occasion - that it was the cloven foot of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer which peeped out under the mantle of economy which had been worn by his noble Friend - that was the root of all the mischief.”

Projectiles

The other significant patent that Captain Blakely secured was that for “Projectiles for Ordnance and Loading and Firing Ordnance”, number 3,087 of 1863. This demonstrated his increasing independence from his previous associates Bashley Britten and Robert Scott, substituting a new design of shot for muzzle-loading rifled ordnance for theirs.

It was inherently simple, a copper plate with curved edges was riveted to the base of the projectile and on firing the propellant expanded the plate to seal the shot or shell against the expanding gases. From 1863 this was the projectile used in all Blakely’s guns.

                                                    A 9 inch Blakely patent bolt of 1864

Rifling

Blakely immediately agreed to this request and added that he would provide a large piece strengthened on his principles, with Bashley Britten’s rifling, free of all cost to government for trials. The offer was ignored.

In addition to the “square” rifling of Britten, Blakely also used the ratchet or triangular, the so-called “centrical”, rifling devised by Commander Robert Scott RN between 1860 and 1862.

By 1863 Captain Blakely had developed and fixed his own views on effective rifling, adopting and patenting his own version of “ratchet” rifling for his guns.

Left, Blakely’s original sawtooth “ratchet”, Right the “ratchet” in 1864

The other form of rifling, and the most common in Europe, was that devised by Colonel Treuille de Beaulieu and adopted in 1860 by the Imperial French army and navy. This had three deep elliptical grooves for muzzle-loaded studded shot. It was adopted by Austria, Holland, Portugal, Russia and Spain for converting old ordnance in the early 1860s. In France and Spain the larger, newly-rifled cast-iron guns were banded at the breech to Alexander Blakely’s principles.