"Gunnery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deal—for Mr Tallboys considered that the gunner was the most important personage in the ship. He had once been a captain's clerk, and having distinguished himself very much in cutting-out service, had applied for and received his warrant as a gunner. He had studied the "Art of Gunnery," a part of which he understood, but the remainder was above his comprehension: he continued, however, to read it as before, thinking that by constant reading he should understand it at last. He had gone through the work from the title-page to the finis at least forty times, and had ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... first to come forward. Well armed, they stole out of the stockade, but it proved a useless mission. The mutineers were bolder than we fancied, or they put more trust in Israel's gunnery, for four or five of them were busy carrying off our stores and wading out with them to one of the gigs that lay close by, pulling an oar or so to hold her steady against the current. Silver was in the stern-sheets in command, and every man of them was now provided with a musket from some ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the theory and practice of gunnery, as well as in the tactics of the arm, was to be given to the officers and non-commissioned officers of the volunteer batteries, by the study of suitable text-books, and by actual recitations in each division, under the direction of the regular ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... gunnery, both ships on that occasion managed to get out of range without being sunk, though some of the shells burst close aboard, and the Vicksburg's ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... this war?" asked Peyronie impatiently, after an hour of this gunnery. "In faith, had I thought 'twould be like this, I had been less eager to enlist. Why don't the cowards try ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... over-gallant First Gentleman of Europe out of mischief. Our autobiographer gives us a plain, blunt, not to say bald record of what must have been an interesting life. He was at Eton under KEATE; a cadet at Woolwich, where he saw a gunner receive two hundred lashes; a gunnery subaltern in the Crimea, where he saw many queer and unedifying things; a successful administrator in Madagascar, Mauritius and Penang, and finally Governor of the Straits Settlements, with a K.C.M.G. and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... War Committees in Wellingsford as is physically possible for Sergeant Marigold to get me into. I address recruiting meetings. I have taken earnest young Territorial artillery officers in courses of gunnery. You know they work with my own beloved old fifteen pounders, brought up to date with new breeches, recoils, shields, and limbers. For months there was a brigade in Wellings Park, and I used to watch their drill. I was like an old actor coming once again before the footlights.... ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... vessels were remarkably well-matched, but the engagement was decisive evidence of the superior qualities of northern marksmanship. It was, in fact, an exhibition of that magnificent gunnery which was so evident in the war of 1812, and which was to be shown again in the war with Spain. Nearly all of the 173 shots fired by the Kearsarge took effect, while of the 370 fired by the Alabama, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... George was of great importance and of great danger. The enemy had already trained their heavy guns on to the hill, and it was only their bad gunnery that made it possible for the officer's plan to be carried out. In every direction shells were flying, bursting overhead, on either side, short, and far over the city, till the air was filled with flying fragments of metal; every moment was a constant threat, a constant danger to the little ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... Breckenridge here tests fifty two meters. I can navigate anything, and Breckenridge can observe as well as any of your own men. Build a plane to accelerate at forty-five meters and we will blow those hexans out of the ether. You will have to revive and do the shooting, however—your gunnery ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... personally was, and admirable as had been the direction of his efforts in the two days' fighting, Howe had been forced in them to realize two things, namely, that his captains were, singly, superior in seamanship, and their crews in gunnery, to the French; and again, that in the ability to work together as a fleet the British were so deficient as to promise very imperfect results, if he attempted any but the simplest formation. To ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... Lanko flicked off the gunnery switches and leaned back, rubbing his head. "There was a possibility, and I fully intended to relax. But the decision time was short, and frankly, those thoughts of his overrode me for just too ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... 1914; the military expert is a man trained to think of war as essentially an affair of cavalry, infantry in formation, and field guns, whereas cavalry is entirely obsolete, infantry no longer fights in formation, and the methods of gunnery have been entirely changed. The military man I observe still runs about the world in spurs, he travels in trains in spurs, he walks in spurs, he thinks in terms of spurs. He has still to discover that it is about as ridiculous as if he were to carry a crossbow. I take it these ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... tons, formerly the French frigate "Renommee" (40). She was on her way to the East Indies, carrying the newly appointed lieutenant-governor of Bombay. She had a very raw crew, including very few real seamen, and her men had only had one day's gunnery drill. The United States navy paid great attention to its gunnery, which the British navy, misled by its easy victories over the French, had greatly neglected. In these conditions the fate of the "Java" was soon sealed. She was cut to pieces and forced to surrender, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... point his instrument exactly to a star he was confronted with precisely the same difficulty as is met in gunnery and rifle-shooting. The sights and the object aimed at cannot be in focus together, and a great deal depends on the form of sight. Tycho Brahe invented, and applied to the pointers of his instruments, an aperture-sight ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... keep our distance and trust to our gunnery. She is very heavily manned, and if she got alongside we ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... opened up with a roar that shook the ground. The guns were served with the precision that has made American gunnery the envy of the world, and great gaps were torn in the dense masses of the enemy troops. But the lanes filled up instantly, and with hardly a moment ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... retreat; but as they drew back the batteries re-opened, and so effectively, that the coming on of night alone saved the English from being driven at once, and on the spot, from their defences. The walls were of the old {p.304} sort, constructed when the art of gunnery was in its infancy, and brick and stone crumbled to ruins before the heavy cannon which had ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... nothing in that slogan which indicates a general unwillingness to emulate the foreigners' achievements in armaments or military tactics. In fact, for a number of years previous to 1853, Satsuma and Choshu and other western clans had been very busily engaged in manufacturing guns and practising gunnery: to that extent, at any rate, the discoveries of the students of European sciences had been deliberately used by those men who were to be foremost in ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... on "Gunnery" gave them just one of those convenient tables which are the blessing of wise men and learned men, and which lead half-trained men to their ruin. They found that for their "range," which was, as they supposed, eleven hundred yards, the elevation of ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... sent to the Pacific less than two weeks after activation. In contrast, the 51st Defense Battalion spent two months in hard field training, scarcely enough considering the number of raw recruits, totally unfamiliar with gunnery, that were being fed regularly into what was essentially ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... where the wheels of traffic were continually interlocking, but a street which would not, under any consideration, have widened itself by a single foot, because its narrowness was part of its prestige. Well, German gunnery has brought that street to an end past all resuscitation. It may be rebuilt— it will never be ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... notice my first Lieutenant, William H. Allen. He has served with me upwards of five years, and to his unremitted exertions in disciplining the crew, is to be imputed the obvious superiority of our gunnery exhibited in the result of ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... continued to bullet through the orange haze—which hadn't shown any foreign objects in it so far, thank God, even vultures, let alone "straight strings of pink stars"—I was receiving a cram course in gunnery! (Do you wonder I don't try to tell this part of my ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... tell you that several of them have a new and secret, experimental control system. One of our missions on this cruise was to carry out field tests. Well, it turned out that the system is still full of, ah, bugs. Gunnery Command has had endless trouble with it, has had to keep tinkering ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... boys); 'Ganges,' at Falmouth (500 boys); 'St. Vincent,' at Portsmouth (700 boys); and 'Boscawen,' at Portland (500 boys). To each is attached a brig for cruising during the summer months. The boys go through a regular course of instruction at school, in seamanship and in gunnery, till they are "rated," after a year or a little more, as 1st Class boys, when they have a cruise in the brig. With respect to the school instruction, the principle is to give the more backward boys more schooling than the more advanced, and to this end the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... the peasants toiled on, never dreaming that they were building a great navy for the great Tsar. Peter then sent fifty young nobles of the court to Venice, England, and the Netherlands to learn the arts of shipbuilding and seamanship and gunnery. But how could he be sure of the knowledge and the science of these idle youths—unless he himself owned it and knew better than they? The time had come for his long-indulged dream of ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... recollected a circumstance that I had lately heard from the officers in the country, who had been talking about a fowling-piece, and of the careless manner in which fire-arms are sometimes proved [Footnote: See Manton on Gunnery.]. Upon examination, I found that what I suspected might be just possible was actually the case with respect to the piece in question—the touch-hole had never been bored through, though the piece was marked as proof! I never shall forget the satisfaction which appeared in the countenance ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... declaration of war between Great Britain and the United States in 1812, the frigate saw no important service, though she captured several prizes. Broke utilized this period of comparative inactivity to train his men thoroughly. He paid particular attention to gunnery, and the "Shannon" ere long gained a unique reputation for excellence of shooting. Broke's opportunity came in 1813. In May of that year the "Shannon" was cruising off Boston, watching the "Chesapeake", ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... unlimited delight of the American public, and the stupefaction of England, five American cruisers in succession captured or sank five British in the autumn of 1812, utilizing superior weight of broadside and more accurate gunnery with merciless severity. These blows did no actual damage to a navy which comprised several hundred frigates and sloops, but the moral effect was great. It had been proved that ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... was wanting, the superior sailor, if superior in metal and men had an advantage which nothing but a calm or a lucky hit aloft could destroy. The crews of every ship on the North American Station were to be exercised in gunnery. Wisdom had been luckily forced upon the Admiralty. And the result was good. Sir John Borlase, the naval commander, in North America, blockaded every harbour in the United States. American commerce was ruined. The carrying trade ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... world by the dauntless and immortal Admiral Hollins (he should be promoted to the rank), who, to give positive evidence of the size of his master's spirit, just battered down a defenseless town or two. It may turn out that the bombshelling was only to practice a little in that sort of gunnery, and that using up the property of American citizens to illustrate the war principles of Uncle Sam was merely an evidence of spunk in Mr. Pierce, who expected ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... these cursed islanders seem to know not when they are beaten, and I doubt me that our victory will be at all an easy one. As for them, although the ship of Cavendish has lost all her masts, her hull is almost intact, thanks to our wretched gunnery; and there she now lies on the water, unable to move, it is true, but, like a wounded lion, all the more dangerous for being wounded. But the Gloria del Mundo is giving her all attention, and she will be compelled to strike to our heavier broadsides ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... delights of Western life, Rake, "feeling like a fool," as he thought himself, for which reason he had diverged into Argentine memories, applied himself to the touching and examining of the rifle with that tenderness which only gunnery love and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... heat when, with twenty hands holding him, poor Noyes was hustled in among them. They rushed at him like a pack of wolves. Had that been a bank parlor in festive Arizona, they would not have endured the delay incidental to procuring a rope, but would have ended it and him by gunnery at short range. Noyes could not be shaken; his nerve never failed. He said a gentleman had hired him as a clerk, and that was all he knew. He had left him at the Stock Exchange; if they would let him go, he would try and find him and bring him around to the bank. J. Bull is gullible, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... yet I believe a feather would turn the scale between the two countries, so far as courage and seamanship goes; and let it not be forgotten, although we have now regained our superiority in this respect, yet, in gunnery and smallarm practice, we were as thoroughly weathered on by the Americans during the war, as we overtopped them in the bulldog courage with which our boarders handled those genuine English weapons, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... motionless, when on the open ocean; and it is not necessary to tell the reader, that the smallest variation in the direction of a gun at its muzzle, becomes magnified to many yards at the distance of a few hundred feet. Marine gunnery has no little resemblance to the skill of the fowler; since a calculation for a change in the position of the object must commonly be made in both cases, with the additional embarrassment on the part of the seaman, of an allowance for a complicated ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... brief silences one could hear our chaps laughing. The danger seemed to fill them with a wild excitement. Every time a shell came near and missed them, they would taunt the unseen Huns for their poor gunnery, giving what they considered the necessary corrections: "Five minutes more left, old Cock. If you'd only drop fifty, you'd get us." These men didn't know what fear was—or, if they did, they kept it to themselves. And these were the chaps whom I was ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... at an average speed of four knots an hour. The Haliotis was very hard to move, and the gunnery-lieutenant, who had fired the five-inch shell, had leisure to think upon consequences. Mr. Wardrop was the busy man. He borrowed all the crew to shore up the cylinders with spars and blocks from the bottom and sides of the ship. It was a day's risky work; but anything was better than drowning ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... been seen, many of them had been decoyed from British war-vessels by offers of higher pay. The British ships on the other hand were manned largely by landsmen, often impressed from the jails. A false economy had induced the British admiralty to impose narrow limits on the use of ammunition for gunnery practice. The Americans on the other hand were very liberal in this respect, with the result that in the early years of the war they were greatly superior to their ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... frigate; but Sir John Pechell, under whom he had previously served for a short time, prevailed upon the admiral to transfer him to his own ship, the Sybille, of 48 guns, "a crack frigate," in a high state of discipline, the crew of which was remarkable for its skill in gunnery. ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... weathered the reefs and was practically safe,—safe at last. He had passed brilliantly in engineering; had been saved by his prompt and ready answers the consequences of a "fess" with clean black-board in ordnance and gunnery; had won a ringing, though involuntary, round of applause from the crowded galleries of the riding-hall by daring horsemanship, and he was now within seven days of the prized diploma and his commission. "For heaven's sake, Billy," pleaded big Burton, the first captain, "don't ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... gunboats rounded the point of land a mile and a half below the fort, the Rebels opened fire, and the boats replied. There was excellent gunnery. The shots from the fort and batteries fell upon the bows of the boats, or raked their sides; while the shells from the boats fell plump into the batteries, cutting the embankments, or sinking deep in the side of the hill and bursting with tremendous explosions, throwing ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... our green warriors were kept circling above the contending fleets of Helium and Zodanga, since their batteries were useless in the hands of the Tharks who, having no navy, have no skill in naval gunnery. Their small-arm fire, however, was most effective, and the final outcome of the engagement was strongly influenced, if not wholly determined, ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... longer thinking chiefly of its paint and brass, was no longer a pretty sight from Mediterranean or Pacific shores—it was almost the dirtiest thing to be seen in the North Sea, and quite the deadliest thing in the whole world as regards gunnery. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... transport and ammunition were being delayed by the fearsome and lamentable state of the roads. But the cavalry was pushing on ahead, and tired infantry were stumbling in extended order through the soaked fields on either side of us. There was hard gunnery well into the red dusk. Right down the valley came the thunder of it, and we began to realise that divisions, perhaps even corps, had ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... enriched my mind with his opinions on naval architecture, and informed me that he would like to be an engineer. I found him up to everything that is done in the contracting line by Messrs. Peto and Brassey—cunning in the article of concrete— mellow in the matter of iron—great on the subject of gunnery. When he spoke of pile-driving and sluice-making, he left me not a leg to stand on, and I can never sufficiently acknowledge his forbearance with me in my disabled state. While he thus discoursed, he several times directed his eyes to one distant quarter of the landscape, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... for deeds, and Hamilton had been occupied in other ways than writing pamphlets. During the past six months he had studied tactics and gunnery, and had joined a volunteer corps in order to learn the practical details of military science. All his friends belonged to this corps, which called itself "Hearts of Oak," and looked very charming in green uniforms and leathern ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... pragmatical preparations! I am sure it might be said of you, as it was of James the First, of most pacific and pedantic memory, that you are 'Captain of arts and Clerk of arms'—at least you are a very pedant in gunnery." ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester) |
