8. Cannon for Russia

11 inch Blakely gun for Russia in 1865

A detailed description of this particular cannon follows below

(Click on image for a much larger version, use Previous Page to resume)

The Picture Book section contains photographs of several of these pieces

Early in the year of 1863 Alexander Blakely was in St Petersburg, the capital of Russia. By May of that year he had entered into an agreement with Francis Baird, one of leading industrialists in the Empire to contract for great guns for the Russian coastal defences in the Baltic.

The Baird Works were located in the suburb of Kolomenskaia, on the mouth the Neva river, to the west of St Petersburg. It had been founded by Charles Baird (or “Bard” as he was known in Russia), a Scotsman, in 1792 and was the most important metal working and machine manufacturing enterprise in Russia. Baird made all manner of steam machinery for industry and shipbuilding; engines, saw mills, sugar mills, bridges, employing in the 1860s 900 workers in its foundries and machine shops. Francis Baird had taken over the works in 1843 on the death of Charles Baird, his father.

It is not known how the introduction was made between Blakely and Baird but it proved fruitful. In October 1864 it was said that Russia had contracted with the partners for upwards of 160 great guns and carriages with a value of £960,000.

The Imperial Artillery Committee reviewed the competing ordnance systems from around Europe, from Britain, France and Prussia. In November 1863 they decided upon Blakely and Baird. There were separate contracts with the Russian Army for 11 inch coast-defence pieces and with the Russian Fleet for 9 inch guns for sea-service. The first 11 inch guns were to be situated on the great fortress island of Kronstadt, defending St Petersburg, in the Baltic Sea.

In March 1865 the Parliamentary committee in London reviewing ordnance spending heard that Russia had, in fact, contracted for 220 guns from Blakely; their natures were 8 inch, 9 inch and 11 inch in cast-steel, primarily for the fortresses in the Baltic Sea. They cost on average £3,525 per piece.

The first four pieces had already been commissioned of the Low Moor Company in Bradford. Their weight and size necessitated shipping the guns by rail the 68 miles to Hull for transport by sea to Woolwich for proving. The first gun passing through Hull on October 30, 1863 was noted in the local press as being a “68 pounder”, weighing 20 tons and twenty-one feet in length.

The first gun was ready for proof at Woolwich Butts on November 13, 1863. It was actually an 11 inch cast-steel rifle, weighing 20 tons, to be proved with a 50 pound charge for a 600 pound bolt. It required a team of twenty horses to haul the barrel from the East Wharf on the Thames river at Woolwich Arsenal to the Butts. It rained and the huge truck with the barrel sank into the mud and had to be left until conditions improved.

The proof commenced on Monday, November 30, 1863; the first gun firing two 600 pound proof rounds as required without difficulty. The normal projectile was a 450 pound iron bolt. The three other guns followed on consecutive days. Unfortunately on the fourth day, according to the Engineer magazine, “The [final] gun underwent the first round with apparent success, but on making the usual survey and examination it was discovered that the base section at the head of the breech, and into which the ‘button’ appears to be screwed, had given way, and a large rent or split was clearly perceptible. The proof was, of course, at an end, and the gun was afterwards hoisted on one of the heavy trucks, to which some seventy or eighty men belonging to the storekeeper’s department were attached, and was conveyed to the wharf for transhipment.”

This failure did not affect the contract; one 11 inch gun a month was being produced for Russia during the next two years. By June 1865 Blakely had delivered forty 600 pounder, 11 inch, guns and was building a 900 pounder cast-steel rifle for St Petersburg, to be the first of many it was hoped.

General Todleben’s Gun

11 inch Blakely steel rifle, proved at Woolwich, October 24, 1864

The date is written on the photograph

General of Engineers Eduard Ivanovich Todleben, Aide-de-camp to the Tsar, who had inspired the Russian defence of Sebastopol in the Crimean war, had a ceremonial visit to Woolwich Arsenal on October 24, 1864, where he was entertained by his British counterpart General Sir John Burgoyne, Inspector-General of Engineers. On learning that the 11 inch Blakely gun was undergoing proof near-by he insisted on breaking-off his luncheon to witness the firing. Much to the surprise of the Spanish military attaché and the Peruvian Director of Artillery, as well as Captain Blakely and Daniel Campbell, his laboratory manager, who were attending the proof in the Woolwich Marshes, Todleben’s entourage and General Burgoyne joined them as two 600 pound bolts were successfully fired at a distant target. Forty similar pieces were in process of being supplied to Russia by Blakely.

General Todleben then returned to London to dine that evening with General Burgoyne, Members of Parliament, and several Russian and English engineer and artillery officers at the home of Captain and Mrs Blakely.

Todleben had arrived in London from St Petersburg on October 22, 1864 to stay as the guest of the Blakely’s at their house in Montpelier Square. On the night after his dinner with Burgoyne the Russian hero was set to dine with the Field Marshall, HRH the Duke of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army at Gloucester House, Park Lane, and in the following week he was to be given a banquet by the members of Blakely’s club, the Army & Navy, in Piccadilly.

It was all a splendid publicity coup by Blakely! 

“The Great Blakely Gun”

“The new gun, manufactured by the Blakely Ordnance Company for one of the Russian fortresses in the Gulf of Finland, is remarkable both for the strength of its construction and for the completeness of mechanical appliances for use.

“A brief description is necessary to accompany the Illustration on this page.

“The gun itself, with a bore of eleven inches, designed to throw an elongated shot or bolt weighing 500 lb, is 14 ft 6 ins in length, and its greatest diameter is 3 ft 4 ins, the whole gun, detached from its carriage, weighing about fourteen tons, which is very much less, in proportion to the weight of its projectile, than any of the large guns made upon a different system. This gun, as our readers will have remarked, is a muzzle-loader. It is composed of several pieces, which are so built up together as to render each other the greatest possible support in those directions liable to the greatest strain.   The innermost portion consists of a single tube of steel, fourteen feet in length and eighteen inches in external diameter, which is bored to within twelve inches of the end, leaving this twelve inches of solid steel at the breech, immediately behind the charge of powder; which, as the calibre or bore is eleven inches, the sides of this inner tube have a thickness of three inches and a half. The hind part, from the breech to the trunnions, a length of about six feet, is protected, in the first place, by a steel jacket four inches and a half thick forced on over the inner tube, and fitting at each end to certain projections in the central piece, at the breech and at the trunnions respectively, by which the jacket is locked up in its place; the end of it, moreover, being so formed as to give support to the rear of the gun, so that it serves at once to resist the longitudinal and the lateral pressure. Above this jacket are two layers which have a thickness of six inches in that part of the gun behind the trunnions, but are slighter in the front part, where the strain is inconsiderable, and are finally rounded off between the trunnions and the muzzle, as appears in our illustration. These pieces are so placed that the junction of those beneath is overlapped by the pieces of the outer layer. All the gun is of steel except the trunnions, which are of Low Moor iron. The terminal knob, or cascabel, fitted into the rear of the gun is independent of the twelve inches solid thickness provided for in the central tube. Such is the gun itself.

“We have now to describe how it is mounted and finished for working. It may be said to have a double carriage, or, rather, a carriage which travels upon a traversing platform or slide. The platform below turning on a central pivot, and on the semi-circular railway behind, enables the gun to be trained, so as to point its muzzle right or left. The carriage above runs down and up the inclined plane of the platform as the gun is loaded and discharged. With reference to the lower, or platform movement, we should observe that the whole weight of gun and carriage, amounting to thirty-four tons, can be moved upon the rail by a single man working the gear from behind; whereas, in the case of other great guns travelling upon a similar railway, it has been necessary, for want of such gearing, to train the gun either by means of handspikes or tackle requiring a number of men to work them. The contrivances of the upper, or carriage, movement are no less worth of remark. Instead of making the hind part of the carriage rest upon blocks of timber, to stop the recoil of the gun – a method which necessitates the partial lifting of the gun, with levers or handspikes, whenever it has to be run out forward – the whole carriage here rests upon four rollers of cast iron; and it runs freely, by gravitation, down the inclined plane of the platform, or runs back with the recoil when discharged. This movement, for a length of from 7 ft to 10 ft up and down the platform, is controlled with perfect ease and precision by the use of the compressor, a sort of brake, which is worked by a man at the capstan wheel attached to the side of the carriage. This compressor itself is formed by a series of longitudinal plates on iron, which are suspended under the bottom of the carriage and lie at intervals of a series of wooden bars which lie parallel to them, running the whole length of the platform, and, while in this position, they are grasped by a pair of very powerful levers, holding the entire series of wooden and iron bars together so that the motion of th carriage along the platform may either be retarded by producing a moderate degree of friction, or else it may be quickly checked. As soon as the compressor is loosened the carriage runs forward by its own weight; but after firing, it runs back with the recoil, and is then held by a compressor till reloaded.

“The apparatus for loading is conspicuous enough in our illustration, which shows a sort of crane overhanging the muzzle of the gun, with a pulley and chain or rope worked by a windlass; at the end of the rope are a pair of Lewis (double-hinged) tongs, in which an object, when once inclosed by the claws of the forceps, is held by its own weight. The shot is lifted by this means to the level of the muzzle, where it is met by the shot-guide, a half-hoop or half-cylinder, which descends upon its hinges to catch the shot and hold it, as in the hollow of a spoon, while the men put it into the gun and ram it home in the ordinary manner. We are informed, however, that the Blakely company have devised a further improvement, which will supersede the overhanging crane; the shot being raised to the muzzle, and held there, by the iron arms of a machine with a similar action to that of a man’s hand bringing his food to his mouth, and which (except when in use) will not project above the gun.

“Our illustration further shows a small truck, which is attached to the carriage for the accommodation of the men when sponging and loading. The whole series of operations essential to the complete working of this tremendous piece of artillery may be performed by six men - namely one ma at the gearing behind the platform to train the gun right or left; one man at the elevating screw; one man at the compressor, to control the running out or returning movement; one man at the crane, and two men for loading at the muzzle.

“The platform, which is 27 ft long and 9 ft or 10 ft wide, has room enough on each side for the men to pass to and fro. It may, perhaps, be objected to the crane and other loading apparatus that they are in a very exposed situation and would in a hostile action, very soon be knocked off by the enemy’s fire; but the gun might still be worked, like any other muzzle-loader, without the aid of those mechanical appliances.

“Altogether, its design reflects much credit upon Mr Vavasseur, the engineer to the Blakely Ordnance Company; and it is a fact which deserves the attentive consideration of those who have to provide for our own national defences that the Russian Government should have employed a London firm to construct these most formidable weapons.

“It is said that a steel gun of 15 inch bore, carrying a shot of 1,000 lb, has been ordered of the same manufacturers, and is actually in hand.”

“The Russian Engineer Todleben - The name of the head engineer at Sebastopol is Todleben. He is thirty-two years of age. His parents are poor shopkeepers in Riga. When the siege commenced, Prince Menschikoff, it is said, asked the then head engineer how long it would take to put the place in a state of defence. He answered “Two months”. A young captain, named Todleben, stepped forward and said he would undertake to do it, if he had as many men as he required, in two weeks. He did it in twelve days; and was made a Colonel. Since that time he has had the direction of everything in the way of building batteries, defences, &c. The other day the Grand Dukes called upon his wife, who is residing in St Petersburg, to congratulate her upon her husband’s promotion; for he is now General and Aide-de-Camp to the Emperor.”

 The Illustrated London News, May 12, 1855