The evolution of the shell gun was at this partial stage when the Crimean War broke out. In 1854 both types of projectiles were still struggling for ascendancy, though large shell guns were by this time acknowledged as the superior armament for steam vessels. Both friend and foe were now literally “stormed at by shot and shell”--of which the shell proved on the whole the more effective missile. No decisive superiority could be claimed, however, by one type over the other; and, as we shall see later in surveying the evolution of the ironclad, it was only gradually that the inherent superiority of the shell gun came to be recognized. Soon after the close of the war a new step in the evolution of armament made its supremacy decisive. The rifled cannon at last materialized. The cylinder superseded the sphere. The increase in volume gained by the adoption of this form of projectile, and the enhanced range and striking velocity which it was possible to impart to it, set all doubts at rest as to the military value of the _Arme Nouvelle_. [Illustration: THE _SPEAKER_, A SECOND-RATE OF THE COMMONWEALTH From Fincham’s _Naval Architecture_] CHAPTER VIII THE RIFLED GUN While the evolution of smooth-bore ordnance owed little if anything to the prior development of small arms, the evolution of rifled ordnance which took place in the middle of the nineteenth century followed closely on that of rifling as applied to the musket. Experience with the rifled musket supplied the information necessary for the application of rifling on the larger scale. In tracing the development of rifled ordnance, therefore, the development of the rifled musket must first be considered: the two evolutions are historically linked together. In this chapter an endeavour is made to trace these two evolutions in their natural sequence, and to describe the circumstances in which each took place, the objects aimed at, the difficulties encountered and the results achieved. We shall see how the smooth-bore musket was replaced by the rifle firing a spherical ball; how the spherical ball gave place, in the course of time, to an elongated bullet; and how, when the elongated bullet had been evolved, the principle of the rifle was extended to field and to heavy ordnance. A complete survey of the whole process can be obtained only by stepping back, past the days of the primitive rifled fire-arm, to the age when the longbow was still “the surety, safeguard, and continual defence of this realm of England and an inestimable dread and terror to the enemies of the same.” §