dissimilar caliber on the same deck, the number of decks instantly presents itself ; as, from the necessity of placing the heavier guns nearest to the water, does the manner in which all the guns are distributed.

So long as that species of ordnance, called gun by the English and canon by the French, continued in exclusive possession of the decks of a fighting ship, no difference existed between the number of carriage pieces she actually mounted, and the number which stood as the sign of her class in the published lists. In the process of time, however, the nominal, or rated, and the real force of a ship lost their synonymous signification; and that in a manner, and to an extent, too important, in every point of view, to be slightly passed over.

In the early part of 1779 a piece of carriage-ordnance, the invention, by all accounts, of the late scientific General Robert Melville, was cast, for the first time, at the iron-works of the Carron Company, situated on the banks of the river Carron, in Scotland. Although shorter than the navy 4-pounder, and lighter, by a trifle, than the navy 12-pounder, this gun equalled, in its cylinder, the 8-inch howitzer. Its destructive effects, when tried against timber, induced its ingenious inventor to give it the name of smasher.

As the smasher was calculated chiefly, if not wholly, for a ship-gun, the Carron Company made early application to have it employed in the British navy, but, owing to some not well explained cause, were unsuccessful. Upon the supposition that the size and weight of the smasher, particularly of its shot, would operate against its general employment as a sea-service gun, the proprietors of the foundry ordered the casting of several smaller pieces, corresponding in their calibers with the 24, 18, and 12 pounder guns in use; or rather, being of a trifle less bore, on account of the reduced windage very judiciously adopted in carronades, and which might be extended to long guns with considerable advantage. These new pieces became readily disposed of among the captains and others, employed in fitting out private armed ships to cruise against America, and were introduced, about the same time, on board a few of the frigates and smaller vessels belonging to the royal navy.

The new gun had now taken the name of Carronade, and its several varieties became distinguished, like those of the old gun, by the weight of their respective shot. This occasioned the smasher to be called, irrevocably, a 68-pounder : whereas, repeated experiments had shown, that a hollow, or cored shot, weighing 50, or even 40 lbs., would range further in the first graze, or that at which the shot first strikes the surface of the water, and the only range worth attending to in naval gunnery. The hollow shot would, also, owing to its diminished velocity in passing through a ship's side, and the consequent enlargement of the hole and increased splintering of the timbers, produce