"Gunnery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... party below-stairs eagerly discussing Joe Atlee's medical qualifications, and doubting whether, if it was a knowledge of civil engineering or marine gunnery had been required, he would not have been equally ready to offer himself ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... to tow 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. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... D'Enfer and the Rue de Bois, was nothing but a heap of bricks. When we approached, the Germans were busy throwing coal boxes at the church tower, or what was left of it. They generally like to leave a bit of a church tower or gable standing, for as nearly as I could follow their gunnery they used these points to "clock on," that is to say, a ruined steeple will be the centre of the clock. The observer will then direct the guns something like this, "Aubers Church, one o'clock, five hundred yards." The above directions ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... 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 ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... subjected to torture, one form of which was that of lashing captives to the cannon's mouth and applying the match. Fort Montague is not occupied by even a corporal's guard to-day, and is of no efficiency whatever against modern gunnery. The reader will thus observe that the principal business which has engaged Nassau heretofore has been wrecking, buccaneering, privateering, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... preferred to engage at once the whole line of vessels and the Trekroner. It is difficult entirely to approve this refusal to concentrate upon a part of the enemy's order,—an advantage to which Nelson was fully alive,—but it was probably due to underestimating the value of the Danish gunnery, knowing as he did how long they had been at peace. He may, also, have hoped something from Parker's division. Be this as it may, he spread his ships-of-the-line, in the arrangement he prescribed, from one end to the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Neptune. An explosion of powder between the decks of the Neptune during the action, by which several men were killed and wounded, early directed his attention to the service of artillery on board ship; and the science of gunnery became his favourite study. Hastings was subsequently serving in the Seahorse when that frigate engaged two Turkish men-of-war, and captured one of them, which proved to be a frigate much larger than herself. During his career of service, he visited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... element as restless as the sea. The largest ship is rarely quite 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 Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... intended for each gun-carriage, where hammocks hung from hooks served them instead of beds; how the chapel was in a closet opened only on Sundays. He described the gymnastic feats in the rigging, the practice in gunnery, and many other things which, had they been well described, would have been interesting; but Fred was only a poor narrator. The conclusion the young ladies seemed to reach unanimously after hearing his descriptions, was discouraging. They ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... bad 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 ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... they can command. They have appointed Captain Henry Bennet, late of the United States army, Inspector-General of their legion, and he is commissioned as such by Governor Carlin. This gentleman is known to be well skilled in fortification, gunnery, and military engineering generally; and I am assured that he is receiving regular pay, derived from the tithing of this warlike people. I have seen his plans for fortifying Nauvoo, which are equal to any ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... eastern point. The Cerberus, however, was by this time standing directly towards her, a point off the wind, so as to make her escape almost impossible. Again the frigate fired—the water was smooth, and her gunnery was good. The shot struck the schooner's hull. Another and another followed. Still she stood on. She was in stays; another tack or two would carry her round the point, and there were reefs amid which she might possibly make her escape, when a shot, flying higher than the rest, struck the head ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... coming of the 1st of June. With a margin of only two demerits Will had safely 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
... Drake called "singeing the king of Spain's beard," delayed the expedition for a year. The "Invincible Armada" [30] set out at last in 1588 A.D. The Spanish vessels, though somewhat larger than those of the English, were inferior in number, speed, and gunnery to their adversaries, while the Spanish officers, mostly unused to the sea, were no match for men like Drake, Frobisher, and Raleigh, the best mariners of the age. The Armada suffered severely in a nine-days fight in the Channel, and ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Manual of Gunnery Instructions for the Navy of the United Slates. Compiled from the Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy, for the Use of the United States Naval Academy. New York. D. Van Nostrand. Square 18mo. pp. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... present representative is in three segments. The city itself is composed of two, and the citadel makes a fairly important third. From a military point of view, the citadel was once counted first, and the city itself made an unimportant third,—with no second. But modern gunnery has changed that estimate. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... into the British Camel Corps at Khartum it was discovered to contain the camel-keeper of Bostock's menagerie. We found piano-tuners for the Sirdar's Palace, gardeners for the Barrack plantations, and in later days expert mechanics for anti-aircraft gunnery. Skilled clerks like Sergeants J.C. Jones and Beaumont were marked out by Nature for the orderly room. Many men well qualified to hold commissions served in the ranks and died before the nation recognised their quality. Lastly, we could turn out more barristers than all the other East Lancashire ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... the garrison sought to make reply was dismounted the moment it was advanced into the embrasure, compelling their withdrawal during daylight hours; and though each night as soon as dark screened them from the accurate gunnery of the Americans, they were restored and the firing renewed, it was done with a feebleness that bespoke discouragement and exhaustion. For two days shot and shell splintered and tore through abattis and fraising, and levelled parapet ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... fine arts could flourish at a period when men's minds were more occupied with the philosophy of war than with the science of Descartes, and were more inclined to patronize a new invention in the art of gunnery, than the chef d'oeuvre of a limner or sculptor. The Irish language was the general medium of conversation in this century. No amount of Acts of Parliament had been able to repress its use, and even the higher classes of English settlers appear to have adopted it by preference. Military ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... breed of gunnery that there is. You know a Coast Guard cutter becomes a part of the navy in time of war, so an officer has got to know just as much about big guns as an officer in the navy. He might have to take his rank on a big battleship if ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... impudence they swung the guns round on to the town at point-blank range! Then they sent a message to the battery of horse-artillery operating with them to ask for gunners to give them instruction in the art of gunnery, as they were not doing enough damage themselves! I cannot say whether the instructors arrived or not, but the Anzacs clung to their captured guns like leeches and continued to use them in spite of the furious ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... splendidly at Dartmouth, heading the list at the passing-out exam, and so at once gaining the rating of midshipman; doing equally well afloat during the subsequent three years and a half, qualifying for Gunnery, Torpedo, and Navigating duties, serving for six months aboard a destroyer, and everywhere gaining the esteem and goodwill of my superiors, here was I, Paul Swinburne, at the age of seventeen and a half, an outcast kicked out of the Navy with ignominy and my career ruined, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... ability and mastery of the art of war. He admitted that he deserved high praise; but said that he was not by any means equally certain of success, so large a proportion of his forces being only a raw militia, brave enough no doubt for anything, when they saw their way to it; but knowing little of gunnery, and wholly unused to be shot at. Whereas all the Doones were practised marksmen, being compelled when lads (like the Balearic slingers) to strike down their meals before tasting them. And then Colonel Stickles asked me, whether I myself could stand fire; he knew that I was not a coward, but ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... hereditary states, and in many besides; and he had an ardent love of books, both classical and modern. He delighted in music, painting, architecture, and many arts of a more mechanical description; wrote treatises on all these, and on other subjects, especially gardening and gunnery. He was the inventor of an improved lock to the arquebus, and first divined how to adapt the disposition of his troops to the use of the newly- discovered fire-arms. And in all these things his versatile head and ready hand were personally employed, not by deputy; while coupled with ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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, by ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fitting-out; that is, getting in the masts, putting the rigging overhead, stowing the holds, and so on. The next obvious point to be considered in the equipment of a ship is, the force she is to carry, which brings us to the very curious question of naval gunnery. Finally, if we suppose a ship equipped, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... heating or telephone wires. Nothing was touched except the lines to the guns, of which there are eight disposed upon the deck. From the guns connections run to the switch room, the conning tower, the gunnery control platform aloft, and to the gunnery officer's bridge. It was the main cable between the switch room and the conning tower which was cut, and it was one cable laid alongside a dozen others. Now who could know that this was the gun cable, and ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... were peculiar. As Professor of Artillery he was responsible for little more than the drill of the cadets and their instruction in the theory of gunnery. The tactics of artillery, as the word is understood in Europe, he was not called upon to impart. Optics, mechanics, and astronomy were his special subjects, and he seems strangely out of place in expounding their ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... 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 honourable retirement to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... for their-selves, them that's under obligation to 'ee. But you started on me, an' so I'll be polite an' lead off. In th' first place, with all this tow-row, the fish be all gone to bottom; there's not one'll take hook by day nor net by night. An' next, with a parcel o' reservists pickin' up the gunnery they've forgot, for a week or so the firin' is apt to be flippant. Yes, Mr Pamphlett, you can go back to your business an' feel all the easier in mind every time a bangin' great shell makes ye bob up an' down in ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... gunnery, as one who knew how to do it, and had the most terrible mind to do it thoroughly, and the most terrible faith that it ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... 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 come up ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... drawn up by Thomas Audley by order of Henry VIII may be taken as the last word in England of the purely mediaeval time, before the development of gunnery, and particularly of broadside fire, had sown the seeds of more modern tactics. They were almost certainly drafted from long-established precedents, for Audley was a lawyer. The document is undated, but since Audley is mentioned ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... familiar with it before the other nations of Christendom. The affirmation of Zurita, however, that 5000 balls were fired from the battery of the besiegers at Gerona in one day, is perfectly absurd. So little was the science of gunnery advanced in other parts of Europe at this period, and indeed later, that it was usual for a field-piece not to be discharged more than twice in the course of an action, if we may credit Machiavelli, who, indeed, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... hurried below. A moment later she heard the boom of the old brass six pounder which for many years had graced the Ithaca's stern. In the bow Professor Maxon had mounted a modern machine gun, but this was quite beyond Sing's simple gunnery. The Chinaman had not taken the time to sight the ancient weapon carefully, but a gleeful smile lit his wrinkled, yellow face as he saw the splash of the ball where it struck the water almost at ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... from our brigade left for the course in machine gunnery. This course lasted two weeks and we rejoined our unit and were assigned to the Brigade Machine Gun Company. It almost broke my heart ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey |
