title: Naval artillery

text: In the reign of Queen Elizabeth advances in manufacturing technology allowed the English Navy Royal to start using matched cannon firing standard ammunition, allowing firing of coordinated broadsides (although that was more of a matter of improved training and discipline than of matched guns).


title: Naval artillery

text: Different types of shot were employed for various situations. Standard fare was the round shot—spherical cast-iron shot used for smashing through the enemy's hull, holing his waterline, smashing gun carriages and breaking masts and yards, with a secondary effect of sending large wooden splinters flying about to maim and kill the enemy crew. At very close range, two round shots could be loaded in one gun and fired together. "Double-shotting", as it was called, lowered the effective range and accuracy of the gun, but could be devastating within pistol shot range.


title: Naval artillery

text: Canister shot consisted of metallic canisters which broke open upon firing, each of which was filled with hundreds of lead musket balls for clearing decks like a giant shotgun blast; it is commonly mistakenly called "grapeshot", both today and in historic accounts (typically those of landsmen). Although canister shot could be used aboard ship, it was more traditionally an army artillery projectile for clearing fields of infantry. Grapeshot was similar in that it also consisted of multiple (usually 9–12) projectiles that separated upon firing, except that the shot was larger (at least 1 inch in diameter, up to 3 inches or larger for heavier guns), and it either came in bundles held together by lengths of rope wrapped around the balls and wedged between, with wooden bases to act as wadding when rammed down the muzzles, or in canvas sacks wrapped about with rope. The name "grapeshot" comes from the former's apparent resemblance to a bunch of grapes. When fired, the inertial forces would cause the bundle to disintegrate, and the shot would spread out to hit numerous targets. Grapeshot was a naval weapon, and existed for almost as long as naval artillery. The larger size of the grapeshot projectiles was desirable because it was more capable of cutting thick cordage and smashing equipment than the relatively smaller musket balls of a canister shot, although it could rarely penetrate a wooden hull. Although grapeshot won great popular fame as a weapon used against enemy crew on open decks (especially when massed in great numbers, such as for a boarding attempt), it was originally designed and carried primarily for cutting up enemy rigging.


title: Naval artillery

text: A more specialized shot for similar use, chain-shot consisted of two iron balls joined together with a chain, and was particularly designed for cutting large swaths of rigging—anti-boarding netting and sails. It was far more effective than other projectiles in this use, but was of little use for any other purpose. "Bar shot" was similar, except that it used a solid bar to join the two balls; the bar could sometimes also extend upon firing. Series of long chain links were also used in a similar way. Bags of junk, such as scrap metal, bolts, rocks, gravel, or old musket balls, were known as 'langrage', and were fired to injure enemy crews (although this was not common, and when it was used, it was generally aboard non-commissioned vessels such as privateers, actual pirate ships, merchantmen, and others who couldn't afford real ammunition).


title: Naval artillery

text: In China and other parts of Asia, fire arrows were thick, dartlike, rocket-propelled incendiary projectiles with barbed points, wrapped with pitch-soaked canvas which took fire when the rocket was launched, which could either be from special launching racks or from a cannon barrel (see "Chongtong", "Bō hiya".) The point stuck in sails, hulls or spars and set fire to the enemy ship. In Western naval warfare, shore forts sometimes heated iron shot red-hot in a special furnace before loading it (with water-soaked wads to prevent it from setting off the powder charge prematurely.) The hot shot lodging in a ship's dry timbers would set the ship afire. Because of the danger of fire aboard (and the difficulty of heating and transporting the red-hot shot aboard ship), heated shot was seldom used from ship-mounted cannon, as the danger to the vessel deploying it was almost as great as to the enemy; fire was the single greatest fear of all men sailing in wooden ships. Consequently, for men aboard these vessels, going up against shore artillery firing heated shot was a terrifying experience, and typically wooden fleets were not expected to brave such fire except in cases of great emergency, as a single heated shot could easily destroy the entire ship and crew, while the same ship could typically be expected to survive numerous hits from normal solid shot.


title: Naval artillery

text: In later years, the spherical exploding shell came into use. It first saw use in shore fortifications, and then relatively low-risk applications such as bomb-ketches, which used mortars, which required an explosive shell to be effective. However, the long trajectory of a mortar meant that long fuses could be used, which reduced the risk of premature explosion, and such vessels were small and cheap in any case. It took some time for them to be adopted aboard other combat ships, largely due to the imprecise nature of the fuses then available; with the short fuse-lengths required at naval battle ranges, it was not uncommon for shells to explode inside the gun barrel, or shortly after leaving the muzzle, which would pose a great risk to the vessel, and combat vessels represented a very large investment which a government could ill afford to lose. The risk of having to have such dangerous ammunition stocked above waterline during combat was also cited, as gunpowder in a rigid enclosure will explode with far more violence than if simply packed in a fabric sack, as propellant charges were. The strongly traditionalist nature of many senior naval officers was also a factor. Nevertheless, explosive shells were adopted for use aboard ship by the early 19th century. It had already been proven, from ships facing bombardment from shell-armed shore batteries, that wooden ships were vulnerable to shell-fire, which both caused massive blast and wood- and metal-fragmentation damage (and hence very high crew casualties), but also scattered red-hot, jagged fragments all about, which embedded themselves into the wooden hull and acted much the same as heated shot, or simply ignited many of the flammable objects and materials lying about on a normal wooden ship, lighting oils, tar, tarred cords, powder charges, etc. The quick destruction wrought by explosive shells on vessels during the American Civil War brought quick recognition of this in most cases.


title: Naval artillery

text: Although it is popularly believed that it was the advent of the ironclad vessel that single-handedly brought about the end of the wooden sailing ship, the recognition of their terrible vulnerability to explosive shells was equally vital in this transition, if not more so. Even without the factor of armored hulls to consider, the spectre of fleets of wooden ships decimating each other with shell-fire was unattractive to naval nations like Great Britain, which relied not only on maintaining a great fleet, but also on adding captured enemy vessels to it. The idea of a battle that, even in victory, would likely cost them over half of their engaged vessels and probably leave few if any suitable candidates for capture was unappealing. Combined with the protection afforded by ironclad hulls, the destructive power of explosive shells on wooden vessels ensured their rapid replacement in the first-line combat duties with ironclad vessels.


title: Naval artillery

text: The bomb ketch was developed as a wooden sailing naval ship with its primary armament as mortars mounted forward near the bow and elevated to a high angle, and projecting their fire in a ballistic arc. Explosive shells or carcasses were employed rather than solid shot. Bomb vessels were specialized ships designed for bombarding (hence the name) fixed positions on land.


title: Naval artillery

text: The first recorded deployment of bomb vessels by the English was for the Siege of Calais in 1347 when Edward III deployed single deck ships with Bombardes and other artillery.


title: Naval artillery

text: The first specialised bomb vessels were built towards the end of the 17th century, based on the designs of Bernard Renau d'Eliçagaray, and used by the French Navy. Five such vessels were used to shell Algiers in 1682 destroying the land forts, and killing some 700 defenders. Two years later the French repeated their success at Genoa. The early French bomb vessels had two forward-pointing mortars fixed side-by-side on the foredeck. To aim these weapons, the entire ship was rotated by letting out or pulling in a spring anchor. The range was usually controlled by adjusting the gunpowder charge.


title: Naval artillery

text: The Royal Navy continued to refine the class over the next century or more, after Huguenot exiles brought designs over to England and the United Provinces. The side-by-side, forward-pointing mortars were replaced in the British designs by mortars mounted on the centerline on revolving platforms. These platforms were supported by strong internal wooden framework to transmit the forces of firing the weapons to the hull. The interstices of the framework were used as storage areas for ammunition. Early bomb vessels were rigged as ketches with two masts. They were awkward vessels to handle, in part because bomb ketches typically had the masts stepped farther aft than would have been normal in other vessels of similar rig, in order to accommodate the mortars forward and provide a clear area for their forward fire. As a result, by the 1800s British bomb vessels were designed as full-rigged ships with three masts, and two mortars, one between each neighboring pair of masts.


title: Naval artillery

text: The art of gunnery was put on a scientific basis in the mid-18th century. British military engineer Benjamin Robins used Newtonian mechanics to calculate the projectile trajectory while taking the air resistance into account. He also carried out an extensive series of experiments in gunnery, embodying his results in his famous treatise on " New Principles in Gunnery" (1742), which contains a description of his ballistic pendulum (see chronograph).


title: Naval artillery

text: Robins also made a number of important experiments on the resistance of the air to the motion of projectiles, and on the force of gunpowder, with computation of the velocities thereby communicated to projectiles. He compared the results of his theory with experimental determinations of the ranges of mortars and cannon, and gave practical maxims for the management of artillery. He also made observations on the flight of rockets, and wrote on the advantages of rifled gun barrels.


title: Naval artillery

text: Robins argued for the use of larger bore cannon and the importance of tightly fitting cannonballs. His work on gunnery was translated into German by Leonhard Euler and was heavily influential on the development of naval weaponry across Europe. Another artillery scientist was George Marshall.


title: Naval artillery

text: Warrant Officer George Marshall was a Master Gunner in the United Navy. He wrote " Marshall's Practical Marine Gunnery" in 1822. Marshall was a naval artillery specialist. The book was the first scientific-technical book on naval artillery published in the United States for the U.S. Navy. He discussed cannons and fireworks.


title: Naval artillery

text: The book discusses the dimensions and apparatus necessary for the equipment of naval artillery. It features tables and charts. The book goes into further details regarding the distance of a shot on a ship based on the sound of the gun, which was found to fly at a rate of 1142 feet in one second. It was the standard of the time. According to Marshall's equation after seeing the flash of a cannon and hearing the blast the gunner would count the seconds until impact. This way a trained ear would know the distance a cannonball traveled based on ear training. The book example outlines a 9-second scenario where the distance the cannon was fired from the gunner was approximately 10,278 feet or 3,426 yards.


title: Naval artillery

text: By the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793, a series of technical innovations over the course of the late 18th century combined to give the British fleet a distinct superiority over the ships of the French and Spanish navies.


title: Naval artillery

text: The carronade was a short-barrelled gun which threw a heavy ball developed by the Carron Company, a Scottish ironworks, in 1778. Because of irregularities in the size of cannonballs and the difficulty of boring out gun barrels, there was usually a considerable gap between the ball and the bore—often as much as a quarter of an inch—with a consequent loss of efficiency. This gap was known as the "windage". The manufacturing practices introduced by the Carron Company reduced the windage considerably, enabling the ball to be fired with less powder and hence a smaller and lighter gun. The carronade was half the weight of an equivalent long gun, but could throw a heavy ball over a limited distance. The light weight of the carronade meant that the guns could be added to the forecastle and quarterdeck of frigates and ships of the line, increasing firepower without affecting the ship's sailing qualities. It became known as the "Smasher" and gave ships armed with carronades a great advantage at short range.


title: Naval artillery

text: The mounting, attached to the side of the ship on a pivot, took the recoil on a slider. The reduced recoil did not alter the alignment of the gun. The smaller gunpowder charge reduced the guns' heating in action. The pamphlet advocated the use of woollen cartridges, which, although more expensive, eliminated the need for wadding and worming. Simplifying gunnery for comparatively untrained merchant seamen in both aim and reloading was part of the rationale for the gun. The replacement of trunnions by a bolt underneath, to connect the gun to the mounting, reduced the width of the carriage enhancing the wide angle of fire. A carronade weighed a quarter as much and used a quarter to a third of the gunpowder charge for a long gun firing the same cannonball.


title: Naval artillery

text: Its invention is variously ascribed to Lieutenant General Robert Melville in 1759, or to Charles Gascoigne, manager of the Carron Company from 1769 to 1779. Carronades initially became popular on British merchant ships during the American Revolutionary War. A lightweight gun that needed only a small gun crew and was devastating at short range was a weapon well suited to defending merchant ships against French and American privateers. In the Action of 4 September 1782, the impact of a single carronade broadside fired at close range by the frigate HMS "Rainbow" under Henry Trollope caused a wounded French captain to capitulate and surrender the "Hebe" after a short fight.


title: Naval artillery

text: Flintlock firing mechanisms for cannon were suggested by Captain Sir Charles Douglas and introduced during the American War of Independence in place of the traditional matches. Flintlocks enabled a higher rate of fire and greater accuracy as the gun captain could choose the exact moment of firing. Prior to this the Royal Navy introduced the use of goose quills filled with powder during the Seven Years' War giving an almost instantaneous burn time compared with earlier methods of detonation.


title: Naval artillery

text: Douglas also innovated a system that greatly increased the field of fire. By the simple expedient of attaching the gun ropes at a greater distance from the gunports, the range through which each cannon could be traversed was greatly improved. The new system was first tested at the Battle of the Saintes in 1782, where the "Duke", "Formidable" and "Arrogant", and perhaps other British ships, had adopted Douglas's new system.


title: Naval artillery

text: The shrapnel shell was developed in 1784, by Major General Henry Shrapnel of the Royal Artillery. Canister shot was already in widespread use at the time; a tin or canvas container filled with small iron or lead balls burst open when fired, giving the effect of an oversized shotgun shell. Shrapnel's innovation was to combine the multi-projectile shotgun effect of canister shot, with a time fuze to open the canister and disperse the bullets it contained at some distance along the canister's trajectory from the gun. His shell was a hollow cast-iron sphere filled with a mixture of balls and powder, with a crude time fuze. If the fuze was set correctly then the shell would break open, either in front or above the intended target, releasing its contents (of musket balls). The shrapnel balls would carry on with the "remaining velocity" of the shell. In addition to a denser pattern of musket balls, the retained velocity could be higher as well, since the shrapnel shell as a whole would likely have a higher ballistic coefficient than the individual musket balls (see external ballistics).


title: Naval artillery

text: The Industrial Revolution introduced steam-powered ironclad warships seemingly impervious to cast cannon. The inadequacy of naval artillery caused the naval ram to reappear as a means of sinking armored warships. The rapidity of innovation through the last half of the 19th century caused some ships to be obsolete before they were launched. Maximum projectile velocity obtainable with gunpowder in cast cannon was approximately . Increased projectile weight through increased caliber was the only method of improving armor penetration with this velocity limitation. Some ironclads carried extremely heavy, slow-firing guns of calibres up to . These guns were the only weapons capable of piercing the ever-thicker iron armour on the later ironclads, but required steam powered machinery to assist loading cannonballs too heavy for men to lift.


title: Naval artillery

text: Explosive shells had long been in use in ground warfare (in howitzers and mortars), but they were only fired at high angles and with relatively low velocities. Shells are inherently dangerous to handle, and no solution had been found to combine the explosive character of the shells with the high power and flatter trajectory of a high velocity gun.


title: Naval artillery

text: However, high trajectories were not practical for marine combat and naval combat essentially required flat-trajectory guns in order to have some decent odds of hitting the target. Therefore, naval warfare had consisted for centuries of encounters between flat-trajectory cannon using inert cannonballs, which could inflict only local damage even on wooden hulls.


title: Naval artillery

text: The first naval gun designed to fire explosive shells was the Paixhans gun, developed by the French general Henri-Joseph Paixhans in 1822–1823. He advocated using flat-trajectory shell guns against warships in 1822 in his "Nouvelle force maritime et artillerie", and developed a delaying mechanism which, for the first time, allowed shells to be fired safely in high-powered flat-trajectory guns. The effect of explosive shells lodging into wooden hulls and then detonating was potentially devastating. This was first demonstrated by Henri-Joseph Paixhans in trials against the two-decker "Pacificateur" in 1824, in which he successfully broke up the ship. Two prototype Paixhans guns had been cast in 1823 and 1824 for this test. Paixhans reported the results in "Experiences faites sur une arme nouvelle". The shells were equipped with a fuse which ignited automatically when the gun was fired. The shell would then lodge itself in the wooden hull of the target before exploding a moment later.


title: Naval artillery

text: The first Paixhans guns for the French Navy were manufactured in 1841. The barrel of the guns weighed about 10,000 lbs. (4.5 metric tons), and proved accurate to about two miles. In the 1840s, Britain, Russia and the United States adopted the new naval guns. The effect of the guns in an operational context was decisively demonstrated during the Crimean War. The incendiary properties of exploding shells demonstrated the obsolescence of wooden warships in the 1853 Battle of Sinop; but detonation effectiveness was limited by use of gunpowder bursting charges. Early high explosives used in torpedo warheads would detonate during the acceleration of firing from a gun. After brief use of dynamite guns aboard , picric acid became widely used in conventional naval artillery shells during the 1890s.


title: Naval artillery

text: William Armstrong was awarded a contract by the British government in the 1850s to design a revolutionary new piece of artillery—the Armstrong Gun—produced at the Elswick Ordnance Company. This marked the birth of modern artillery both on land and at sea. The piece was rifled, which allowed for a much more accurate and powerful action. The necessary machinery to accurately rifle artillery was only available by the mid-19th century. The cast iron shell fired by the Armstrong gun was similar in shape to a Minié ball and had a thin lead coating which made it fractionally larger than the gun's bore and which engaged with the gun's rifling grooves to impart spin to the shell. This spin, together with the elimination of windage as a result of the tight fit, enabled the gun to achieve greater range and accuracy than existing smooth-bore muzzle-loaders with a smaller powder charge.


title: Naval artillery

text: His gun was also a breech-loader. Although attempts at breech-loading mechanisms had been made since medieval times, the essential engineering problem was that the mechanism couldn't withstand the explosive charge. It was only with the advances in metallurgy and precision engineering capabilities during the Industrial Revolution that Armstrong was able to construct a viable solution. The gun combined all the properties that make up an effective artillery piece. The gun was mounted on a carriage in such a way as to return the gun to firing position after the recoil.


title: Naval artillery

text: What made the gun really revolutionary lay in the technique of the construction of the gun barrel that allowed it to withstand much more powerful explosive forces. The "built-up" method involved assembling the barrel with wrought-iron (later mild steel was used) tubes of successively smaller diameter. The next tube would be heated to allow it to expand and fit over the previous tube. When it cooled the tube would contract to a slightly smaller diameter, which allowed an even pressure along the walls of the gun which was directed inward against the outward forces that the gun firing exerted on the barrel. Built-up guns with rifling made cast cannon obsolete by 1880.


title: Naval artillery

text: Armstrong's system was adopted in 1858, initially for "special service in the field" and initially he only produced smaller artillery pieces, 6-pounder (2.5 in/64 mm) mountain or light field guns, 9-pounder (3 in/76 mm) guns for horse artillery, and 12-pounder (3 inches /76 mm) field guns.


title: Naval artillery

text: However, despite the gun's advantages, an 1863 Ordnance Select committee decided to revert to muzzle-loading artillery pieces on the grounds of cost and efficiency.


title: Naval artillery

text: Large-caliber breech-loading naval artillery became practical with French development of the interrupted screw obturator by Charles Ragon de Bange in 1872. It was only after a serious accident on board in 1879 when the left muzzleloading gun in the forward turret exploded during practice firing in the Sea of Marmora killing 11 and injuring a further 35, that the Royal Navy decisively changed to breech loading guns. Improved loading and handling procedures were also adopted, and Thunderer herself was re-equipped with long-calibre 10" breech-loaders. Breech loading artillery overcame barrel length limitations of cast cannon imposed by the necessity of retracting the cannon into the hull for reloading through the muzzle. Simultaneous availability of longer barrels and slower burning brown powder increased projectile velocities to . Spin-stabilized elongated projectiles offered both reliable positioning of percussion fuzes and improved armor penetration through increased sectional density.


title: Naval artillery

text: Before the development of large-calibre, long-range guns in the mid-19th century, the classic battleship design used rows of port-mounted guns on each side of the ship, often mounted in casemates. Firepower was provided by a large number of guns which could only be aimed in a limited arc from one side of the ship. Due to instability, fewer larger and heavier guns can be carried on a ship. Also, the casemates often sat near the waterline, which made them vulnerable to flooding and restricted their use to calm seas.


title: Naval artillery

text: Turrets were weapon mounts designed to protect the crew and mechanism of the artillery piece and with the capability of being aimed and fired in many directions as a rotating weapon platform. This platform can be mounted on a fortified building or structure such as an anti-naval land battery, or on a combat vehicle, a naval ship, or a military aircraft.


title: Naval artillery

text: During the Crimean War, Captain Cowper Phipps Coles constructed a raft with guns protected by a 'cupola' and used the raft, named "Lady Nancy", to shell the Russian town of Taganrog in the Black Sea. "Lady Nancy" "proved a great success", and Coles patented his rotating turret after the war. Following Coles' patenting, the British Admiralty ordered a prototype of Coles' design in 1859, which was installed in the floating battery vessel, , for trials in 1861, becoming the first warship to be fitted with a revolving gun turret. Coles' design aim was to create a ship with the greatest possible all round arc of fire, as low in the water as possible to minimise the target.


title: Naval artillery

text: The Admiralty accepted the principle of the turret gun as a useful innovation, and incorporated it into other new designs. Coles submitted a design for a ship having ten domed turrets each housing two large guns. The design was rejected as impractical, although the Admiralty remained interested in turret ships and instructed its own designers to create better designs. Coles enlisted the support of Prince Albert, who wrote to the first Lord of the Admiralty, the Duke of Somerset, supporting the construction of a turret ship. In January 1862, the Admiralty agreed to construct a ship, , which had four turrets and a low freeboard, intended only for coastal defence. Coles was allowed to design the turrets, but the ship was the responsibility of the chief Constructor Isaac Watts.


title: Naval artillery

text: Another of Coles' designs, , was completed in August 1864. Its existing broadside guns were replaced with four turrets on a flat deck and the ship was fitted with of armour in a belt around the waterline. Early ships like "Monitor" and "Royal Sovereign" had little sea-keeping qualities, being limited to coastal waters. Coles, in collaboration with Sir Edward James Reed, went on to design and build , the first seagoing warship to carry her guns in turrets. Laid down in 1866 and completed in June 1869, it carried two turrets, although the inclusion of a forecastle and poop prevented the guns firing fore and aft.


title: Naval artillery

text: The gun turret was independently invented by the Swedish inventor John Ericsson in America, although his design was technologically inferior to Coles'.


title: Naval artillery

text: Ericsson designed in 1861. Its most prominent feature was a large cylindrical gun turret mounted amidships above the low-freeboard upper hull, also called the "raft". This extended well past the sides of the lower, more traditionally shaped hull. A small armored pilot house was fitted on the upper deck towards the bow, however, its position prevented "Monitor" from firing her guns straight forward. One of Ericsson's prime goals in designing the ship was to present the smallest possible target to enemy gunfire.


title: Naval artillery

text: The turret's rounded shape helped to deflect cannon shot. A pair of donkey engines rotated the turret through a set of gears; a full rotation was made in 22.5 seconds during testing on 9 February 1862. Fine control of the turret proved to be difficult as the engine would have to be placed in reverse if the turret overshot its mark or another full rotation could be made. Including the guns, the turret weighed approximately ; the entire weight rested on an iron spindle that had to be jacked up using a wedge before the turret could rotate.


title: Naval artillery

text: The spindle was in diameter, which gave it ten times the strength needed in preventing the turret from sliding sideways. When not in use, the turret rested on a brass ring on the deck that was intended to form a watertight seal. In service, however, this proved to leak heavily, despite caulking by the crew. The gap between the turret and the deck proved to be a problem as debris and shell fragments entered the gap and jammed the turrets of several s, which used the same turret design, during the First Battle of Charleston Harbor in April 1863. Direct hits at the turret with heavy shot also had the potential to bend the spindle, which could also jam the turret.


title: Naval artillery

text: The turret was intended to mount a pair of smoothbore Dahlgren guns, but they were not ready in time and guns were substituted. Each gun weighed approximately . "Monitor"s guns used the standard propellant charge of specified by the 1860 ordnance for targets "distant", "near", and "ordinary", established by the gun's designer Dahlgren himself. They could fire a round shot or shell up to a range of at an elevation of +15°.


title: Naval artillery

text: HMS "Thunderer" represented the culmination of this pioneering work. An ironclad turret ship designed by Edward James Reed, it was equipped with revolving turrets that used pioneering hydraulic turret machinery to maneouvre the guns. It was also the world's first mastless battleship, built with a central superstructure layout, and became the prototype for all subsequent warships. of 1871 was another pivotal design, and led directly to the modern battleship.


title: Naval artillery

text: The late 1850s saw the development of the ironclad warship, which carried wrought iron armor of considerable thickness. This armor was practically immune to both the round cast-iron cannonballs then in use and to the recently developed explosive shell.


title: Naval artillery

text: The first solution to this problem was effected by Major Sir W. Palliser. His Palliser shot, approved in 1867, was made of cast iron, the head being chilled in casting to harden it, using composite molds with a metal, water cooled portion for the head. At times there were defects that led to cracking in the projectiles but these were overcome with time. Bronze studs were installed into the outside of the projectile so as to engage the rifling grooves in the gun barrel. The base had a hollow pocket but was not filled with powder or explosive: the cavity was necessitated by difficulties in casting large solid projectiles without their cracking when they cooled, because the nose and base of the projectiles cooled at different rates, and in fact a larger cavity facilitated a better quality casting.


title: Naval artillery

text: At the Battle of Angamos (8 October 1879) the Chilean ironclad warships fired twenty 250-pound-Palliser gunshots against the Peruvian monitor , with devastating results. It was the first time that such piercing shells were used in actual combat.


title: Naval artillery

text: These chilled iron shots proved very effective against wrought iron armor, but were not serviceable against compound and steel armor, which was first introduced in the 1880s. A new departure therefore had to be made, and forged steel rounds with points hardened by water took the place of the Palliser shot. At first, these forged-steel rounds were made of ordinary carbon steel, but as armor improved in quality, the projectiles followed suit.


title: Naval artillery

text: During the 1890s and subsequently, cemented steel armor became commonplace, initially only on the thicker armor of warships. To combat this, the projectile was formed of steel—forged or cast—containing both nickel and chromium. Another change was the introduction of a soft metal cap over the point of the shell – so called "Makarov tips" invented by Russian admiral Stepan Makarov. This "cap" increased penetration by cushioning some of the impact shock and preventing the armor-piercing point from being damaged before it struck the armor face, or the body of the shell from shattering. It could also help penetration from an oblique angle by keeping the point from deflecting away from the armor face. (See: APCBC ammunition)


title: Naval artillery

text: Increased armor penetration became possible when projectile velocities of were obtained as smokeless powder propellants replaced gunpowder about 1900.


title: Naval artillery

text: Underwater hull damage possible with torpedoes encouraged development of small, inexpensive torpedo boats capable of sinking the largest warships. By the end of the 19th century, all warships required a defensive battery of quick-firing guns capable of hitting fast, maneuverable torpedo boats.


title: Naval artillery

text: The Royal Navy first introduced the quick-firing 4.7-inch gun in HMS "Sharpshooter" in 1889, and the quick-firing 6-inch MK 1 in , launched 1891. Other navies followed suit; the French Navy installed quick-firing weapons on its ships completed in 1894–95.


title: Naval artillery

text: Quick-firing guns were a key characteristic of the pre-dreadnought battleship, the dominant design of the 1890s. The quick-firing guns, while unable to penetrate thick armour, were intended to destroy the superstructure of an opposing battleship, start fires, and kill or distract the enemy's gun crews. The development of heavy guns and their increasing rate of fire meant that the quick-firer lost its status as the decisive weapon of naval combat in the early 1900s, though quick-firing guns were vital to defend battleships from attack by torpedo boats and destroyers, and formed the main armament of smaller vessels.


title: Naval artillery

text: Most late-19th-century warships mounted naval artillery of more than one caliber because of uncertainty about the relative destruction possible from a few large shells (which might miss) in comparison to the increased hit probability of a larger number of less damaging small-caliber shells fired within the same time period. Quick-firing guns were initially breech-loading weapons firing ammunition small enough to be loaded by hand. Later substitution of brass cartridges for silk powder bags allowed increased rates of fire using sliding wedge breech blocks. Increasing mechanization ultimately enabled similar rates of fire from naval artillery calibers up to .


title: Naval artillery

text: When gunnery ranges increased dramatically in the late 19th century, it was no longer a simple matter of calculating the proper aim point, given the flight times of the shells. Increasingly sophisticated mechanical calculators were employed for proper gunlaying, typically with various spotters and distance measures being sent to a central plotting station deep within the ship. There the fire direction teams fed in the location, speed and direction of the ship and its target, as well as various adjustments for Coriolis effect, weather effects on the air, and other adjustments.


title: Naval artillery

text: The resulting directions, known as a firing solution, would then be fed back out to the turrets for laying. If the rounds missed, an observer could work out how far they missed by and in which direction, and this information could be fed back into the computer along with any changes in the rest of the information and another shot attempted.


title: Naval artillery

text: The situation for naval fire control was highly complex, due to the need to control the firing of several guns at once. In naval engagements both the firing guns and target are moving, and the variables are compounded by the greater distances and times involved. Rudimentary naval fire control systems were first developed around the time of World War I.


title: Naval artillery

text: Arthur Pollen and Frederic Charles Dreyer independently developed the first such systems. Pollen began working on the problem after noting the poor accuracy of naval artillery at a gunnery practice near Malta in 1900. Lord Kelvin, widely regarded as Britain's leading scientist, first proposed using an analogue computer to solve the equations which arise from the relative motion of the ships engaged in the battle and the time delay in the flight of the shell to calculate the required trajectory and therefore the direction and elevation of the guns.


title: Naval artillery

text: Pollen aimed to produce a combined mechanical computer and automatic plot of ranges and rates for use in centralised fire control. To obtain accurate data of the target's position and relative motion, Pollen developed a plotting unit (or plotter) to capture this data. He added a gyroscope to allow for the yaw of the firing ship. Again this required substantial development of the, at the time, primitive gyroscope to provide continuous reliable correction. Trials were carried out in 1905 and 1906, which although completely unsuccessful showed promise. He was encouraged in his efforts by the rapidly rising figure of Admiral Jackie Fisher, Admiral Arthur Knyvet Wilson and the Director of Naval Ordnance and Torpedoes (DNO), John Jellicoe. Pollen continued his work, with tests carried out on Royal Navy warships intermittently.


title: Naval artillery

text: Meanwhile, a group led by Dreyer designed a similar system. Although both systems were ordered for new and existing ships of the Royal Navy, the Dreyer system eventually found most favour with the Navy in its definitive Mark IV* form. The addition of director control facilitated a full, practicable fire control system for World War I ships, and most RN capital ships were so fitted by mid 1916. The director was high up over the ship where operators had a superior view over any gunlayer in the turrets. It was also able to co-ordinate the fire of the turrets so that their combined fire worked together. This improved aiming and larger optical rangefinders improved the estimate of the enemy's position at the time of firing. The system was eventually replaced by the improved "Admiralty Fire Control Table" for ships built after 1927.


title: Naval artillery

text: Significant gunnery developments occurred in the late 1890s and the early 1900s, culminating with the launch of the revolutionary in 1906. Sir Percy Scott was given command of HMS "Scylla" in 1896, where he was able to implement his new theories on gunnery, scoring the unprecedented success of 80% during the 1897 gunnery trials. This was totally unprecedented, as the average in the Royal Navy was just 28%.


title: Naval artillery

text: Scott noted that night time signalling between ships in the fleet was slow and inaccurate. He addressed this in two ways: he devised training aids and put his signallers under instruction and he devised a new more effective flashing lamp. The new efficiency of his ship's signalling was adopted by the whole Mediterranean fleet. He devised a new sub-calibre gun which involved fitting a one-inch-calibre rifled barrel inside the barrel of the main armament but which used the main gun's controls. He also came up with new sights employing telescope optics and new training targets. In the Navy's 1901 prize firing, "Terrible" achieved the same score of 80%, and Scott's gunnery practices were adopted by other ships in the fleet. Later, Scott taught at the naval gunnery school at Whale Island, Hampshire. a largely honorary role which he held until promotion to flag rank in 1905.


title: Naval artillery

text: The development of the torpedo meant that it became necessary to engage an enemy at ranges outside torpedo range. This in turn meant that the old system whereby a gunlayer in each turret pointed and fired the turret guns independently could no longer be expected to achieve a significant hit rate on an opposing ship. Scott was instrumental in encouraging the development and installation of director firing, a system whereby the guns were all pointed, elevated and fired from a single point, usually at the top of the foremast. By firing all the guns simultaneously it was possible to observe the simultaneous splashes produced and correct the aim visually.


title: Naval artillery

text: As battle ranges were pushed out to an unprecedented , the distance was great enough to force gunners to wait for the shells to arrive before applying corrections for the next salvo. A related problem was that the shell splashes from the more numerous smaller weapons tended to obscure the splashes from the bigger guns. Either the smaller-calibre guns would have to hold their fire to wait for the slower-firing heavies, losing the advantage of their faster rate of fire, or it would be uncertain whether a splash was due to a heavy or a light gun, making ranging and aiming unreliable. Italian naval architect Vittorio Cuniberti first argued for the concept of an all-big-gun battleship in 1903, proposing an "ideal" future British battleship of , with a main battery of a dozen 12-inch guns in eight turrets, 12 inches of belt armour, and a speed of .


title: Naval artillery

text: First Sea Lord Sir John Fisher pushed through the Board of Admiralty a decision to arm the next battleship with 12-inch guns and that it would have a speed no less than . The result was HMS "Dreadnought", which rendered all previous ships immediately obsolete on its launch in 1906. The ship mounted the 45-calibre BL 12-inch Mark X gun in five twin gun turrets. These could deliver a broadside of a maximum of eight guns and could be elevated up to +13.5°. They fired projectiles at a muzzle velocity of ; at 13.5°, this provided a maximum range of with armour-piercing (AP) 2 crh shells. At 16° elevation, the range was extended to using the more aerodynamic, but slightly heavier 4 crh AP shells. The rate of fire of these guns was one to two rounds per minute. The ships carried 80 rounds per gun.


title: Naval artillery

text: Within five years of the commissioning of "Dreadnought", a new generation of more powerful "super-dreadnoughts" was being built. The arrival of the super-dreadnought is commonly believed to have started with the British . What made them 'super' was the unprecedented 2,000-ton jump in displacement, the introduction of the heavier 13.5-inch (343 mm) gun, and the placement of all the main armament on the centerline. In the four years between "Dreadnought" and "Orion", displacement had increased by 25%, and weight of broadside had doubled.


title: Naval artillery

text: In comparison to the rapid advancement of the preceding half-century, naval artillery changed comparatively little through World War I and World War II. Battleships remained similar to "Dreadnought", torpedo boats evolved into destroyers, and ships of intermediate size were called cruisers. All ship types became larger as the calibre of heavy guns increased (to a maximum of in the s), but the number of guns carried remained similar. Smaller ships used smaller-calibre weapons which were also used on battleships as the defensive secondary armament.


title: Naval artillery

text: Although naval artillery had been designed to perform within the classical broadside tactics of the age of sail, World War I demonstrated the need for naval artillery mounts capable of greater elevation for defending against aircraft. High-velocity naval artillery intended to puncture side armor at close range was theoretically capable of hitting targets miles away with the aid of fire control directors; but the maximum elevation of guns mounted within restrictive armored casemates prevented reaching those ranges.


title: Naval artillery

text: The QF 4 inch Mk V naval gun was one of the first artillery pieces to be adapted as an anti-aircraft gun and mounted on ships for defence. It was first used in 1914 as a secondary armament on s in a high-angle anti-aircraft role.


title: Naval artillery

text: Most naval artillery on ships built after World War I was capable of elevating to at least 45°, and some guns as large as were capable of elevating to 70° for potential use against aircraft. The Japanese used their large caliber guns for anti-aircraft defense when employing San Shiki "beehive" shells.


title: Naval artillery

text: Dual purpose guns were devised to protect ships against both torpedo boats and aircraft, and for WWII they comprised the primary armament on frigates and destroyers, and the secondary armament on cruisers and battleships. Dual purpose guns such as the US Navy's 5-inch (127 mm) /38 caliber guns functioned as heavy anti-aircraft artillery, firing VT shells (proximity fuzed-shells) that would detonate when they came close to an enemy aircraft, and could also aim into the water to create waterspouts which could bring down low flying aircraft such as torpedo planes. The light anti-aircraft artillery typically consisted of autocannons such as the Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft guns and 65 single Oerlikon 20 mm cannon.


title: Naval artillery

text: As destroyers began to assume ASW roles to include protection of the fleet from submarines, they were fitted with high-angle depth charge mortars (called Y-guns, K-guns or squid).


title: Naval artillery

text: Battleships were used in support of amphibious operations since the late 19th century in the form of naval bombardment. Under international law such bombardments are regulated by the general law of war and the "Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War (Hague Convention IX)"; 18 October 1907.


title: Naval artillery

text: At the beginning of World War I its principal practitioner was the Royal Navy. During the War RN ships fired against targets at Gallipoli, the Salonika front and along the Belgian Coast. In the Aegean, the problems were not especially challenging, and enemy coastal defences (forts, shore-batteries etc.) were fairly unsophisticated; but along the Belgian Coast the Germans constructed an extensive, well-equipped and well-coordinated system of gun-batteries to defend the coast. Ports, such as Ostend and Zeebrugge were of major importance to the U-boat campaign and were frequently bombarded by British monitors operating from Dover and Dunkirk.


title: Naval artillery

text: The Royal Navy continually advanced their technology and techniques necessary to conduct effective bombardments in the face of the German defenders—firstly refining aerial reconnaissance techniques, then experimenting with night-bombardment and moving on to adopt indirect fire. Finally, in the summer of 1918, monitors were equipped with Gyro Director Training gear, which effectively provided the Director with a gyro-stabilised Artificial Line of Sight, and thereby enabled a ship to carry out Indirect Bombardment while underway. This was a very significant advance, and established a firm foundation for naval bombardment as practiced by the Royal Navy and United States Navy during World War II.


title: Naval artillery

text: The practice reached its zenith during World War II, when the availability of man-portable radio systems and sophisticated relay networks allowed forward observers to transmit targeting information and provide almost instant accuracy reports—once troops had landed. Battleships, cruisers and destroyers would pound shore installations, sometimes for days, in the hope of reducing fortifications and attriting defending forces. Obsolete battleships unfit for combat against other ships were often used as floating gun platforms expressly for this purpose. However, given the relatively primitive nature of the fire control computers and radar of the era combined with the high velocity of naval gunfire, accuracy was poor until troops landed and were able to radio back reports to the ship.


title: Naval artillery

text: Naval gunfire could reach as far as inland, and was often used to supplement land-based artillery. The heavy-calibre guns of some eighteen battleships and cruisers were used to stop German Panzer counterattack at Salerno. Naval gunfire was used extensively throughout Normandy, although initially the surprise nature of the landings themselves precluded a drawn-out bombardment which could have reduced the Atlantic Wall defences sufficiently, a process that fell to specialist armoured vehicles instead.


title: Naval artillery

text: Aircraft began to replace naval artillery as more effective weapons against ships during WWII. This was particularly true of the Pacific Ocean theater where there ended up being far fewer engagements between surface combatants, including only two "battleship-versus-battleship" meetings. Most of the decisive battles in the Pacific were carrier-versus-carrier, included Coral Sea, the first battle in which the opposing ships neither sighted nor fired directly upon one another, followed by Midway, the Eastern Solomons, and the Santa Cruz Islands in 1942; and the Philippine Sea in 1944. Larger surface combatants (cruisers, battleships) thus employed their large caliber naval guns mostly for shore bombardment; an exception was the Japanese who fired San Shiki "beehive" shells for anti-aircraft defense.


title: Naval artillery

text: Naval artillery calibers greater than were not installed on most new ships after WWII. With the progression of ship design away from heavy caliber guns, nearly all main gun armaments developed since then are of dual-purpose nature. Ships who remained in service equipped with old large-caliber artillery were used only for naval gunfire support, as the anti-ship missile has supplanted naval guns for ship-versus-ship combat. USS "Missouri", the last active ship with a large-caliber gun, was decommissioned in 1996. Submarines shed their deck guns as a handicap in modern naval tactics.


title: Naval artillery

text: After World War II, guided missiles were retrofitted to certain surface combatants. New classes of vessels were designed with guided missiles as the primary weaponry, notably the Royal Navy's Type 22 frigate whose Batch 1 and Batch 2 subclasses lacked a main gun while only carrying a pair of 40 mm anti-aircraft guns although the Batch 3 was redesigned to include a 4.5-inch Mark 8 dual-purpose main gun. Modern cruisers, destroyers, and frigates often carry 1-2 dual-purpose guns, as a backup to missile systems for anti-aircraft defense and capable of land fire support, ranging from 3 inch to 5.1 inch (76 to 130 mm) calibre. Many modern warships also carry a Close-in weapon system such as the 20 mm Phalanx CIWS as a last ditch short-range defence against anti-ship missiles or aircraft that got through the other defense systems.


title: Naval artillery

text: Modern naval artillery is nevertheless still capable of impressive performances. For example, the Italian 127 mm (~5 inch) Otobreda 127/54 Compact can fire 40 rounds a minute at a range of over , or up to when using rocket-boosted, terminal guided "Vulcano GLR" rounds.


title: Naval artillery

text: Smaller, multi-role vessels are also seeing a resurgence. The Ukrainian Gurza-M is an example, armed with 2 turrets built by Mykolayiv Mechanical Repair Plant.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus ( 163 – 133 BC) was a Roman politician best known for his agrarian reform law entailing the transfer of land from the Roman state and wealthy landowners to poorer citizens. He had also served in the Roman army, fighting in the Third Punic War and in Spain.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Against substantial opposition in the senate, his land reform bill was carried through during his term as tribune of the plebs in 133 BC. Fears of Tiberius' popularity and willingness to break political norms, incited by his standing for a second and consecutive term as tribune, led to his being killed, along with many supporters, in a riot instigated by his enemies. A decade later, his younger brother Gaius proposed similar and more radical reformist legislation and suffered a similar fate.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The date of his death marks the traditional start of the Roman republic's decline and eventual collapse.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was born in 163 or 162 BC, being "not yet thirty" at his death. He was, from birth, a blue-blooded member of the Roman Republic's aristocracy.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: His homonymous father was part of one of Rome's leading families. He served in the consulships for 177 and 163 BC, and was elected censor in 169. He also had celebrated two triumphs during the 170s, one for the victorious establishment of a twenty-year-long peace in Spain. His mother, Cornelia, was the daughter of the renowned general Scipio Africanus, the hero of the Second Punic War. His sister Sempronia was the wife of Scipio Aemilianus, another important general and politician. Tiberius was raised by his mother, with his sister and his brother Gaius Gracchus.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Tiberius Gracchus married Claudia, daughter of the Appius Claudius Pulcher who was consul in 143 BC. Appius was a major opponent of the Scipios, a family with which Tiberius was related in his maternal line. The date of the marriage is uncertain; it could have been related to a plan to reconcile the two families. His marriage to Pulcher's daughter, however, did cement the friendship between Tiberius Gracchus' father and Appius into his generation.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Tiberius' military career started in 147 BC, serving as a legate or military tribune under his brother-in-law, Scipio Aemilianus during his campaign to take Carthage during the Third Punic War. Tiberius, along with Gaius Fannius, was among the first to scale Carthage's walls, serving through to the next year.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: In 137 BC he was quaestor to consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus and served his term in Hispania Citerior (nearer Spain). His appointment to Hispania Citerior, supposedly by lot, was very obviously manipulated. The campaign was part of the Numantine War and was unsuccessful; Mancinus and his army lost several skirmishes outside the city before a confused night-time retreat that led them to the site of a camp from a former consular campaign in 153 BC where they were surrounded. He was forced to send his quaestor to negotiate a treaty of surrender. Gracchus' negotiations were successful, in part to his inheriting Spanish connections from his father's honourable and good dealings in the area during his praetorship in 179–78 BC. During the negotiations, Tiberius requested the return of his quaestorian account books which were taken when the Numantines had captured the Roman camp; the Numantines acquiesced.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The Numantines also had previously signed a treaty with Rome a few years earlier under Quintus Pompeius but Rome had reneged on those terms, the treaty's ratification being rejected due to the terms being too favourable. Tiberius' new treaty also was rejected: the Romans rejected the terms as humiliating and would strip Mancinus of his citizenship and send him stripped and bound to the Numantines. However, by the time the terms of this agreement were being debated in the senate, Numantine ambassadors had also arrived and Mancinus likely argued in favour of his own ritual surrender, felt confident in his safety, and wanted to look towards making a soft landing for his career.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Tiberius, who Cassius Dio says expected to be rewarded for his conduct of the negotiations, quickly changed his position, distancing himself from his own treaty, especially as the Roman state's rejection of the treaty dealt a "blow to his reputation for good faith ("fides")". Around this time, Tiberius also was likely co-opted into the college of augurs.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Mancinus argued that his men were undertrained due to his predecessor's defeats; something which Scipio Aemilianus seemed to agree with when he ordered all prostitutes and camp followers out before setting out to Numantia in 133 BC; at the same time, Tiberius was claiming the cause of the defeats were related to diminishment of the yeomanry. Mancinus would have his citizenship later restored by special act of the people, re-entered the senate, and was eventually elected to a second praetorship; he never however commanded troops in the field again.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Tiberius Gracchus was elected as plebeian tribune for 133 BC. While Livy's depiction of the middle republic as being "largely devoid of domestic strife" is an overstatement, the political culture in Rome at this time still was able to find solutions through negotiation, peer pressure, and deference to superiors.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: There was a substantial demand among the poor for land redistribution; Gracchus enjoyed "unparalleled popular support" in bringing the matter before the Assemblies. Tiberius' unwillingness to stand aside or compromise broke with political norms. A similar land reform proposal by Gaius Laelius Sapiens during his consulship in 140 BC was withdrawn after bitter opposition and its defeat in the senate. Tiberius' stubbornness, however, was motivated in part by his need to recover politically from the Numantine affair:


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The motives of Tiberius and his ally and father-in-law Appius Claudius Pulcher were "doubtless complex" and may also have been motivated not only by a desire to support the state's ability to recruit soldiers or general pro-natalist policymaking, but also by "the reflection that [land reform's] grateful beneficiaries would include the veterans whom Scipio [Aemilianus] would shortly be bringing back [from] Numantia". The proposal would also serve a prominent "counter-stroke on the domestic front" after Aemilianus' expected foreign victory.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: At the time of Gracchus' tribunate in the late 130s BC, there were a number of economic issues before the Roman people: wage labour was scarce due to a dearth of public building, grain prices were likely high due to the ongoing slave rebellion in Sicily, population growth meant there were more mouths to feed, and declining willingness to serve on long army campaigns had increased migration to the cities.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Altogether, these trends reduced the opportunities for people in the cities to support themselves, driving them closer to subsistence. Influx into the cities was not high by modern standards: large numbers of people remained in the countryside. But similar issues plagued the rural poor as well. The absence of colonisation projects and increased demand for wage labour on large farms "may have caused an oversupply of labour in the country, [making] it difficult for the rural poor to support themselves".


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The Roman state owned a large amount of public land, or "ager publicus", acquired from conquest. The state, however, did not exploit this land heavily. While it was theoretically Roman property, the land "had been regarded as a sort of "beneficium" to the allies, who had been allowed to continue to work the land which had been confiscated from them".


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The traditional story, that the "ager publicus" was dominated by a "rich commercial elite [that] established large slave-staffed estates on public land" driving poor farmers into destitution between military service and competition with slave labour, is increasingly questioned due to the location of the "ager publicus" itself. The "ager publicus" was mainly located outside of the traditional farmland close to Rome. It was located mainly in places inhabited by non-Roman citizens.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The expanded population of Italy in the second century BC had split up, due to Roman practice of partible inheritance, previously modest agricultural properties into plots too small to feed a family. This caused higher underemployment of farmers, who were willing to sell their lands to richer men because the high demand for land near Rome had driven up the prices dramatically; farmers who sold their land engaged in wage labour, which was a major source of employment: "there is ample evidence to show that the temporary labour of free men was very important to large estates" especially around harvest-time.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: People also could move to the cities to find jobs in public works, day jobs such as moving things, and selling food; after 140 BC, however, public monumental projects etc had paused. Alternate occupations included the army, but by the late 130s BC, army life remained poor and the massive riches of the early 2nd century had given way to the conquest of Hispania, where "the chance of profit was small and the chance of dying great". There are many contemporaneous reports of endemic desertion, draft evasion, and poor morale.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The claims which the Gracchans made about the depopulation of the countryside "have long since been shown to be false". Ancient sources note an inability to find men to serve in the Spanish wars, but "at the time apparently nobody connected [unwillingness to serve in Spain] with under-registration in the census". It therefore would have "appeared" to Gracchus and other Roman leaders that there was a population decline and manpower shortage, even if the population had actually increased (something which the Romans eventually figured out in the census of 125-4 BC).


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Previous legislation had limited the amount of land that any person could hold to 500 jugera (approximately 120 hectares), this law was largely ignored and many people possessed far more than the limit, including Marcus Octavius, also serving as tribune in that year, and P Cornelius Scipio Nascia, then pontifex maximus.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The way that Gracchus sold his agrarian reforms is heavily reported in Appian and Plutarch. Modern scholars, however, had argued that their accounts do not reflect land in the second century objectively, but they do well-reflect the arguments which Gracchus and others gave for doing land reform. Gracchus and his supporters summarised the problem in terms of the poor being driven off land by the slave-owning rich, a decline in wage labour, people refraining from having children they cannot feed, and a consequent decline in living standards and the number of available soldiers.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: To resolve his identified issue, Tiberius Gracchus' law would enforce a limit on the amount of public land that one person could hold; the surplus land would then be privatised into the hands of poor Roman citizens. Benefitting the poor was not the only goal of his legislation: Gracchus also intended to reduce the level of inflammation in the city by moving the poor into the countryside while also endowing those people with the necessary land to meet army property qualifications. But less incidentally, the privatisation project itself would serve to increase the number of potential recruits for the army while also eventually stimulating population growth to reverse the apparent decades-long manpower shortage.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: It is natural that his agrarian policy, focusing on people with the skills to do agriculture, led to much of his support coming from the poor rural plebs (eg "the rural poor, very small owners, the younger sons of yeomen whose farms brooked no division...") rather than the plebs in the city. Thousands apparently flooded in from the countryside to support Gracchus and his programme. He was not, however, some maverick in his views and was certainly not alone: he was supported by one of the consuls for the year (the jurist Publius Mucius Scaevola), his father-in-law Appius Claudius Pulcher (who had served in the consulship for 143 BC), "the chief "pontifex" P Licinius Crassus Mucianus", and other younger junior senators.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: It is not known how much the recipients of redistribution would have got. Thirty jugera is often suggested, but this is rather large compared to the amount of land distributed to each family during Roman colonisation projects (only 10 jugera). Tiberius Gracchus' law also prohibited recipients from selling the land they received and possibly also required them to pay some rent (a "vectigal") to the public treasury. While these conditions place the private ownership of the distributed land into question, and therefore also question whether an owner could be registered in the census as owning that land, it is likely that the land was fully privatised but given conditional on payment of the "vectigal". If the "vectigal" were unpaid, the land would revert to the state, which would then be able to redistribute it to a new settler.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The law would also create a commission, staffed by Tiberius Gracchus, his brother Gaius Gracchus, and his father-in-law, Appius Claudius Pulcher, to survey land and mark which illegally-occupied land was to be confiscated.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Obviously, the people possessing more than 500 jugera of land opposed the law strongly. While previous practice had given fines for doing so, those fines were rarely enforced and the land possession itself was not disturbed. This led them to invest into improvements to that land, with some protests that the land was part of wives' dowries or the site of family tombs. Tiberius Gracchus' law would seize the land explicitly, a novel innovation. According to Plutarch, Tiberius initially proposed compensation, but proposal was withdrawn; his later proposal was to compensate by securing tenure with a cap of 500 jugera.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The exact legislative history of the bill is disputed: Appian and Plutarch's accounts of the bill's passage differ considerably. At a broad level, the bill was proposed before the "concilium plebis"; Tiberius forwent the approval of the senate before a bill was to be introduced. In response, the senate sought a fellow tribune to veto the proceedings. Both versions agree on the deposition of Octavius.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: In Plutarch's account, Tiberius proposes a bill with various concessions, which is then vetoed by Marcus Octavius, one of the other tribunes. In response, he withdraws the bill and removes the concessions. This latter bill is the one debated heavily in the forum. Tiberius tries various tactics to induce Octavius to abandon his opposition: offering him a bribe and shutting down the Roman treasury, and thereby, most government business. When the Assembly eventually assembles to vote, a veto is presumed. They attempt to adjudicate the matter in the senate, to no avail, and the Assembly votes to depose Octavius from office when he maintains his veto. Following the deposition, Gracchus' freedmen drag Octavius from the Assembly and the Assembly passes the bill.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: In Appian's account, however, there is only one bill: opposition from Octavius appears only at the final vote, leading to the dispute to be taken to the senate, and then Octavius' deposition followed by the bill's passage. Prior to the vote, Tiberius gives a number of speeches, in which Appian asserts that Tiberius passed the bill on behalf of all Italians.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The dispute between Tiberius Gracchus and Octavius was a political dispute which lacked a clear resolution, as the Roman constitution was unwritten and only worked properly when all actors worked cooperatively instead of "making use of their full legal powers". Both men, being tribunes, represented the people writ large. Octavius insisted on maintaining his veto in defiance of the clearly expressed views of his constituents; Gracchus' response was to "[depose] and [manhandle] an elected tribune of the plebs" in a "similarly unprecedented breach of political behaviour". As a whole, while Tiberius had "probably departed from constitutional practice in proposing [the bill] without consulting the senate... Octavius was guilty of a graver impropriety in seeking to hinder the tribes from voting on the proposal".


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: After passage of the bill, the senate allocated a nugatory grant of money for the commissioners, which made it impossible for the commission to do its job when it needed to pay for surveyors, pack animals, and other expenses. Fatal resistance to Gracchus' law, however, did not emerge until Tiberius proposed using the bequest of Attalus III of Pergamum to finance the land distribution and commission. It is not clear for what purpose this money was to be used: Plutarch asserts it was to be used to buy tools for the farmers, Livy's epitome asserts it was to be used to purchase more land for redistribution in response to an apparent shortage. The latter is unlikely, as merely determining how much "ager publicus" was available for redistribution had not started and would be extremely time-consuming; it is also possible the money was to be used to finance the commission itself. After this proposal, Tiberius was attacked in the senate by Quintus Pompeius, accused of harbouring decadent regal ambitions.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The explicit purpose of the money aside, Gracchus was breaking a major norm in Roman politics, which placed the finances and foreign policy exclusively in the hands of the senate. Senators also feared that Gracchus intended to appropriate Attalus' bequest to hand out money, which would massively benefit him personally. This was compounded by his attempt to stand for re-election, claiming that he needed to do so to prevent repeal of the agrarian law or possibly to escape prosecution for his deposition of Octavius. His bid for re-election was possibly in violation of Roman law. The bid, however, certainly violated Roman constitutional norms and precedents; some ancient historians also report that Tiberius, to smooth his bid for re-election, brought laws to create mixed juries of senators and "equites" but this "doubtless reflect[s] confusion with [his brother's] later measures". The deadly opposition to Tiberius Gracchus' reforms were focused, however, more on his subsequent actions than on the reforms themselves.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Tiberius' re-election bid "presented the Scipionic group with an issue to use against their political enemies": at the electoral "comitia" counting the votes for the tribunes for 134 BC, Tiberius and his entourage were attacked by a mob led by his first cousin Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, the pontifex maximus. Scipio Nasica first attempted to get consul Publius Mucius Scaevola to kill Gracchus during a senate meeting on Gracchus' imminent re-election; when the consul refused, saying he would not use force or kill a citizen without trial, Scipio Nasica shouted a formula for levying soldiers in an emergency – "anyone who wants the community secure, follow me" – and led a mob to the comitia with his toga drawn over his head. In doing so, he attempted to enact an "ancient religious ritual killing ("consecratio") ... presumably on the grounds that [Gracchus] was trying to seize power and overthrow the existing republic". Tiberius and supporters fell without resistance; slain by stones and other blunt weapons, their bodies were thrown into the Tiber. This opposition was political: Gracchus' land reforms "may have been acceptable", but not when combined with his seeming threats "to make the urban populace and the small peasants his personal "clientelae"".


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Tiberius' agrarian law was not repealed, likely because doing so would have been too unpopular to be "safe or practicable". His position on the agrarian commission was filled; the commission's business continued over the next few years: its progress can be observed in recovered boundary stones stating the commissioners' names. Most of those boundary stones bear the names of Gaius Gracchus, Appius Claudius Pulcher, and Publius Licinius Crassus. An increase in the register of citizens in the next decade suggests a large number of land allotments. But that registration could also be related to greater willingness to register: registration brought the chance of getting land from the commission. It also could have been related to lowering of the property qualifications for census registration into the fifth class from four thousand to 1.5 thousand "asses".


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: That said, the activities of the land commission started to slow after 129 BC. The senate pounced on complaints from Italian allies that the land commissioners were unfairly seizing land from Italians. Scipio Aemilianus, arguing on behalf of the Italians, convinced the state to move decisions on Italian land away from the land commissioners on grounds of prejudice, to the consuls; the consuls promptly did nothing, stalling the commission's ability to acquire new land to distribute. However, over the few years of the commission's most fruitful activities, the amount of land distributed was "quite impressive": the Gracchan boundary stones are found all over southern Italy, and distributed some 1.3 million jugera (or 3 268 square kilometres), accommodating somewhere between 70 and 130 thousand settlers. Shortly after this intervention, Scipio died mysteriously, leading to unsubstantiated rumours that his wife (also Tiberius Gracchus' sister), Gaius Gracchus, or other combinations of Gracchan allies had murdered him.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Some Gracchan supporters were prosecuted in special courts established by the senate under the supervision of the consuls for 132 BC; at least one was put to death by being tied into a sack with a poisonous snake. The special court, however, was not some kind of major purge: "the victims of the Popillian commission [the special court] were largely small fry and non-Romans". Scipio Nascia, after being brought up on the charge of murdering Tiberius Gracchus, was sent on a convenient delegation to Pergamum, where he died the following year. The senate, in so doing, conveyed at least a tacit approval of Tiberius' murder.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Tiberius' brother, Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, continued his career without incident until he too stood for the tribunate and proposed similarly radical legislation, before also being killed with now explicit approval of the senate. Part of Gaius' land programmes was to start establishing Roman colonies outside of Italy, which later became standard policy: "[he] apparently was the first to realise that the amount of land in Italy was insufficient to provide for all inhabitants of the peninsula".


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Personally, the killing of Tiberius also caused a greater break between Scipio Aemilianus and his Claudian and Gracchan relatives, especially after Scipio Aemilianus approved of Tiberius' lynching.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The impact of Tiberius' murder started a cycle of increased aristocratic violence to suppress popular movements: "the oligarchy had introduced violence into the political system with the murder of Tiberius Gracchus and over the years the use of violence became increasingly acceptable as various political disputes in Rome led to more and more bloody discord".


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Political disputes in the middle republic were not resolved by killing political opponents and purging them from the body politic: "there was virtually no society or legal precedent to support any argument that a citizen should forfeit his life in an internal political conflict". Roman republican law, when passing ostensibly capital sentences, explicitly permitted convicts to flee the city into permanent exile.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: His death also suggested that the republic itself was temperamentally unsuited for producing the types of economic reforms wanted or hypothetically needed, as in Gracchus' framing, by the people. However, Tiberius' actions did not mark him as an enemy of the senate seeking to destroy its authority: he was pursuing "a senatorial career and making use... of the popular element in the republican political system... excessively and irresponsibility". Yet, his aggressive political tactics also showed that the republic's norms and institutions were far weaker than expected, that a non-existential political issue such as distributing public land to help with army recruitment, could win against the republican constitution.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The senate's continued pursuit of Tiberius Gracchus' supporters also entrenched polarisation in the Roman body politic, while at the same time validating the "distinctly un-Roman notion" that senators as private citizens should use violence to enforce or suppress a group, even a majority, of their fellow countrymen. While the framing of Tiberius Gracchus' murder in terms of religious ritual sets it aside from the explicitly political killings of C Sempronius Gracchus and M Fulvius Flaccus that were authorised by the senate, the use of violence in of itself subverted the norms of consensual republican government.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: In terms of periodisation, the death of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC is and was viewed, both in the late republic and today, as the start of a new period in which politics was polarised and political violence normalised.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: In the ancient period, Cicero remarked as much in saying "the death of Tiberius Gracchus, and even before that the whole rationale behind his tribunate, divided a united people into two distinct groups" (though Beard also warns against this as a "rhetorical oversimplification": "the idea there had been a calm consensus at Rome between rich and poor until [133 BC] is at best a nostalgic fiction").


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: In the second edition of "The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic", Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg similarly writes:


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: Against Appian's claims about how Tiberius acted to give Rome's Italian allies land, there are no seeming indications that Tiberius Gracchus' reforms helped them in any way: the assignments "most likely benefited only Roman citizens, while Italians did not receive land". Moreover, it was the Italian allies who launched the fiercest opposition to the land reform programme; Tiberius Gracchus' supporters also are never Italians in Appian's account, but only rural plebeians.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: After Rome acquired its public lands via conquest, "many Italians had simply continued to use [officially confiscated land]; by now, this situation had lasted seventy years, and the Italians expected to be able to keep [it] as long as they did not rebel against Roman overlordship". While those who complained the most were likely rich over-occupiers, Appian also reports that the commission's work was "often done in haste and inaccurately". Furthermore, the land given in exchange for land taken per the "lex agraria" might have been of inferior quality, also stoking resentment.


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The loyalty of the Italian allies during the Punic wars and other conflicts therefore "had earned them nothing, or at least it had not ensured them the complete enjoyment of the land they had always considered their own". In the end, Roman enforcement of its long-unexercised rights over the "ager publicus" "was one of the causes of the Social War between Rome and many of its Italian allies, since it deprived the Romans of an important instrument [to] ensure their allies' loyalty".


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The interaction between the Italians and land reform also brought up later proposals, including those from Marcus Fulvius Flaccus and also Gaius Gracchus, to placate the Italian aristocracy that would lose portions of their land with the granting of Roman citizenship or rights of "provocatio".


title: Tiberius Gracchus

text: The French revolutionary François-Noël Babeuf took up the name "Gracchus Babeuf" in emulation of the then-contemporary view of the Roman brothers as revolutionaries who were misinterpreted as seeking limitations on private property. He also published a newspaper, "Le tribun du peuple" ("the tribune of the people"). Modern perspectives see the comparison unapt: "In stark contrast to the Gracchi, he was concerned with the private ownership of land, not public, and his most extreme programme sought in fact to do away with the former completely ... The Gracchi sought to strengthen and uphold the Roman republic; Babeuf wished to overthrow and radicalise the French republic".


title: M. R. James

text: Montague Rhodes James (1 August 1862 – 12 June 1936) was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–1918), and of Eton College (1918–1936). He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1913–15).


title: M. R. James

text: James's work as a medievalist and scholar is still highly regarded, but he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which some consider among the best in the genre. He redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. However, his protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly, he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story".


title: M. R. James

text: James was born in a clergy house in Goodnestone, Dover, Kent, England, although his parents had associations with Aldeburgh in Suffolk. His father was Herbert James, an Evangelical Anglican clergyman, and his mother, Mary Emily ("née" Horton), was the daughter of a naval officer. He had two older brothers, Sydney and Herbert (nicknamed "Ber"), and an older sister, Grace. Sydney James later became Archdeacon of Dudley. From the age of three (1865) until 1909 James's home, if not always his residence, was at the Rectory in Great Livermere, Suffolk. This had previously been the childhood home of another eminent Suffolk antiquary, Thomas Martin of Palgrave (1696–1771). Several of James's ghost stories are set in Suffolk, including 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad' (Felixstowe), "A Warning to the Curious" (Aldeburgh), "Rats" and "A Vignette" (Great Livermere).


title: M. R. James

text: In September 1873 he arrived as a boarder at Temple Grove School in East Sheen in west London, one of the leading boys' preparatory schools of the day. From September 1876 to August 1882 he studied at Eton College, where he claims to have translated the "Book of Baruch" from its original Ethiopic in 1879. He lived for many years, first as an undergraduate (1882–1885), then as a don and provost, at King's College, Cambridge, where he was also a member of the Pitt Club. The university provides settings for several of his tales. Apart from medieval subjects, James toured Europe often, including a memorable 1884 tour of France in a Cheylesmore tricycle, studied the classics and appeared very successfully in a staging of Aristophanes' play "The Birds", with music by Hubert Parry. His ability as an actor was also apparent when he read his new ghost stories to friends at Christmas time.


title: M. R. James

text: James is best known for his ghost stories, but his work as a medievalist scholar was prodigious and remains highly respected in scholarly circles. Indeed, the success of his stories was founded on his antiquarian talents and knowledge. His discovery of a manuscript fragment led to excavations in the ruins of the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, West Suffolk, in 1902, in which the graves of several twelfth-century abbots described by Jocelyn de Brakelond (a contemporary chronicler) were rediscovered, having been lost since the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He published a detailed description of the sculptured ceiling bosses of the cloisters of Norwich Cathedral in 1911. This included drawings of all the bosses in the north walk by C. J. W. Winter. His 1917 edition of the Latin hagiography of Æthelberht II of East Anglia, king and martyr, remains authoritative.


title: M. R. James

text: He catalogued many of the manuscript libraries of the colleges of the University of Cambridge. Among his other scholarly works, he wrote "The Apocalypse in Art", which placed the English Apocalypse manuscripts into families. He also translated the New Testament apocrypha and contributed to the "Encyclopaedia Biblica" (1903). His ability to wear his learning lightly is apparent in his "Suffolk and Norfolk" (Dent, 1930), in which a great deal of knowledge is presented in a popular and accessible form, and in "Abbeys".


title: M. R. James

text: He also achieved a great deal during his directorship of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (1893–1908). He managed to secure a large number of important paintings and manuscripts, including notable portraits by Titian.


title: M. R. James

text: James was Provost of Eton College from 1918 to 1936. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1930. He died in 1936 (age 73) and was buried in Eton town cemetery.


title: M. R. James

text: James's ghost stories were published in a series of collections: "Ghost Stories of an Antiquary" (1904), "More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary" (1911), "A Thin Ghost and Others" (1919), and "A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories" (1925). The first hardback collected edition appeared in 1931. Many of the tales were written as Christmas Eve entertainments and read aloud to friends. This idea was used by the BBC in 2000 when they filmed Christopher Lee reading James's stories in a candle-lit room in King's College.


title: M. R. James

text: James perfected a method of story-telling which has since become known as Jamesian. The classic Jamesian tale usually includes the following elements:


title: M. R. James

text: According to James, the story must "put the reader into the position of saying to himself, 'If I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to me!'" He also perfected the technique of narrating supernatural events through implication and suggestion, letting his reader fill in the blanks, and focusing on the mundane details of his settings and characters in order to throw the horrific and bizarre elements into greater relief. He summed up his approach in his foreword to the anthology "Ghosts and Marvels": "Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo. ... Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage."


title: M. R. James

text: He also noted: "Another requisite, in my opinion, is that the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story."


title: M. R. James

text: Despite his suggestion (in the essay "Stories I Have Tried to Write") that writers employ reticence in their work, many of James's tales depict scenes and images of savage and often disturbing violence. For example, in "Lost Hearts", pubescent children are taken in by a sinister dabbler in the occult who cuts their hearts from their still-living bodies. In a 1929 essay, James stated:


title: M. R. James

text: Reticence may be an elderly doctrine to preach, yet from the artistic point of view, I am sure it is a sound one. Reticence conduces to effect, blatancy ruins it, and there is much blatancy in a lot of recent stories. They drag in sex too, which is a fatal mistake; sex is tiresome enough in the novels; in a ghost story, or as the backbone of a ghost story, I have no patience with it. At the same time don't let us be mild and drab. Malevolence and terror, the glare of evil faces, 'the stony grin of unearthly malice', pursuing forms in darkness, and 'long-drawn, distant screams', are all in place, and so is a modicum of blood, shed with deliberation and carefully husbanded; the weltering and wallowing that I too often encounter merely recall the methods of M G Lewis.


title: M. R. James

text: Although not overtly sexual, plots of this nature have been perceived as unintentional metaphors of the Freudian variety. James's biographer Michael Cox wrote in "M. R. James: An Informal Portrait" (1983), "One need not be a professional psychoanalyst to see the ghost stories as some release from feelings held in check." Reviewing this biography ("Daily Telegraph", 1983), the novelist and diarist Anthony Powell, who attended Eton under James's tutelage, commented that "I myself have heard it suggested that James's (of course platonic) love affairs were in fact fascinating to watch." Powell was referring to James's relationships with his pupils, not his peers.


title: M. R. James

text: Other critics have seen complex psychological undercurrents in James's work. His authorial revulsion from tactile contact with other people has been noted by Julia Briggs in "Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story" (1977). As Nigel Kneale wrote in the introduction to the Folio Society edition of "Ghost Stories of M. R. James", "In an age where every man is his own psychologist, M. R. James looks like rich and promising material. ... There must have been times when it was hard to be Monty James." Or, to put it another way, "Although James conjures up strange beasts and supernatural manifestations, the shock effect of his stories is usually strongest when he is dealing in physical mutilation and abnormality, generally sketched in with the lightest of pens."


title: M. R. James

text: In addition to writing his own stories, James championed the works of Sheridan Le Fanu, whom he viewed as "absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories", editing and supplying introductions to "Madame Crowl's Ghost" (1923) and "Uncle Silas" (1926).


title: M. R. James

text: James's statements about his actual beliefs about ghosts are ambiguous. He wrote, "I answer that I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me."


title: M. R. James

text: James held strongly traditional views about literature. In addition to ghost stories, he also enjoyed reading the work of William Shakespeare and the detective stories of Agatha Christie. He disliked most contemporary literature, strongly criticising the work of Aldous Huxley, Lytton Strachey and James Joyce (whom he called "a charlatan" and "that prostitutor of life and language"). He also supported the banning of Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel about lesbianism, "The Well of Loneliness", stating, "I believe Miss Hall's book is about birth control or some kindred subject, isn't it? I find it difficult to believe either that it is a good novel or that its suppression causes any loss to literature."


title: M. R. James

text: When he was a student at King's, James had opposed the appointment of Thomas Henry Huxley as Provost of Eton because of Huxley's agnosticism; he later became Provost of Eton himself. In his later life James showed little interest in politics and rarely spoke on political issues. However, he often spoke out against the Irish Home Rule movement, and in his letters he also expressed a dislike for Communism. His friend A. C. Benson considered him to be "reactionary", and "against modernity and progress".


title: M. R. James

text: H. P. Lovecraft was an admirer of James's work, extolling the stories as the peak of the ghost story form in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927). Another renowned fan of James in the horror and fantasy genre was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote an essay on him. Michael Sadleir described James as "the best ghost-story writer England has ever produced". Marjorie Bowen also admired his work, referring to his ghost stories as "the supreme art of M. R. James". Mary Butts, another admirer, wrote the first critical essay on his work, "The Art of Montagu James", in the February 1934 issue of the "London Mercury". Manly Wade Wellman esteemed his fiction. In "The Great Railway Bazaar", Paul Theroux refers to "The Mezzotint" as "the most frightening story I know". In his list "The 13 Most Terrifying Horror Stories", T. E. D. Klein placed James's "Casting the Runes" at number one. E. F. Bleiler stated that James is "in the opinion of many, the foremost modern writer of supernatural fiction", and he described "Ghost Stories of an Antiquary" as "one of the landmark books in the history of supernatural fiction" and characterised the stories in James's other collections as "first-rate stories" and "excellent stories". Ruth Rendell has also expressed admiration for James's work, stating, "There are some authors one wished one had never read in order to have the joy of reading them for the first time. For me, M. R. James is one of these." David Langford has described James as the author of "the 20th century's most influential canon of ghost stories".


title: M. R. James

text: Sir John Betjeman, in an introduction to Peter Haining's book about James, shows how influenced he was by James's work:


title: M. R. James

text: In the year 1920 I was a new boy at the Dragon school, Oxford, then called Lynam's, of which the headmaster was C. C. Lynam, known as 'the Skipper'. He dressed and looked like an old Sea Salt, and in his gruff voice would tell us stories by firelight in the boys' room of an evening with all the lights out and his back to the fire. I remember he told the stories as having happened to himself. ... they were the best stories I ever heard, and gave me an interest in old churches, and country houses, and Scandinavia that not even the mighty Hans Christian Andersen eclipsed.


title: M. R. James

text: H. Russell Wakefield's supernatural fiction was strongly influenced by the work of James. A large number of British writers deliberately wrote ghost stories in the Jamesian style; these writers, sometimes described as the "James Gang", include A. N. L. Munby, E. G. Swain, "Ingulphus" (pseudonym of Sir Arthur Gray, 1852–1940), Amyas Northcote and R. H. Malden, although some commentators consider their stories to be inferior to those of James himself. Although most of the early Jamesian writers were male, there were several notable female writers of such fiction, including Eleanor Scott (pseudonym of Helen M. Leys, 1892–1965) in the stories of her book "Randall's Round" (1929) and D. K. Broster in the collection "Couching at the Door: Strange and Macabre Tales" (1942). L. T. C. Rolt also modelled his ghost stories on James's work, but, unlike other Jamesian writers, set them in industrial locations, such as mines and railways.


title: M. R. James

text: James's stories continue to influence many of today's great supernatural writers, including Stephen King (who discusses James in the 1981 non-fiction book "Danse Macabre") and Ramsey Campbell, who edited "Meddling with Ghosts: Stories in the Tradition of M. R. James" and wrote the short story "The Guide" in tribute. The author John Bellairs paid homage to James by incorporating plot elements borrowed from James's ghost stories into several of his own juvenile mysteries. Several of Jonathan Aycliffe's novels, including "Whispers in the Dark" and "The Matrix" are influenced by James's work. Aycliffe/MacEoin studied for his PhD in Persian Studies at King's College, Cambridge. This makes three King's College authors of ghost stories (James, Munby and Aycliffe).


title: M. R. James

text: The composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji wrote two pieces for piano with a link to James: "Quaere reliqua hujus materiei inter secretiora" (1940), inspired by "Count Magnus", and "St. Bertrand de Comminges: "He was laughing in the tower"" (1941), inspired by "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book".


title: M. R. James

text: H. Russell Wakefield's story "He Cometh and He Passeth By!" (1928) is a homage to James's "Casting the Runes".


title: M. R. James

text: W. F. Harvey's ghost story "The Ankardyne Pew" (1928) is also a homage to James's work, which Harvey admired.


title: M. R. James

text: Gerald Heard's novel "The Black Fox" is an occult thriller inspired by "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral".


title: M. R. James

text: Between 1976 and 1992, Sheila Hodgson authored and produced for BBC Radio 4 a series of plays which portrayed M. R. James as the diarist of a series of fictional ghost stories, mainly inspired by fragments referred to in his essay "Stories I Have Tried to Write". These consisted of "Whisper in the Ear" (October 1976), "Turn, Turn, Turn" (March 1977), "The Backward Glance" (22 September 1977), "Here Am I, Where Are You?" (29 December 1977), "Echoes from the Abbey" (21 November 1984), "The Lodestone" (19 April 1989), and "The Boat Hook" (15 April 1992). David March appeared as James in all but the final two, which starred Michael Williams. Raidió Teilifís Éireann also broadcast "The Fellow Travellers", with Aiden Grennell as James, on 20 February 1994. All the stories later appeared in Hodgson's collection "The Fellow Travellers and Other Ghost Stories" (Ash-Tree Press, 1998).


title: M. R. James

text: On Christmas Day 1987, "The Teeth of Abbot Thomas", a James parody by Stephen Sheridan, was broadcast on Radio 4. It starred Alfred Marks (as Abbot Thomas), Robert Bathurst, Denise Coffey, Jonathan Adams and Bill Wallis.


title: M. R. James

text: In 1989, Ramsey Campbell published the short story "The Guide", which takes an antiquarian on a macabre journey to a ruined church after following marginalia in a copy of James's guidebook "Suffolk and Norfolk". In 2001, Campbell edited the anthology "Meddling with Ghosts: Stories in the Tradition of M. R. James".


title: M. R. James

text: The novelist James Hynes wrote an updated version of "Casting the Runes" in his 1997 story collection "Publish and Perish".


title: M. R. James

text: In 2003, Radio 4 broadcast "The House at World's End" by Stephen Sheridan. A pastiche of James's work, it contained numerous echoes of his stories while offering a fictional account of how he became interested in the supernatural. The older James was played by John Rowe, and the younger James by Jonathan Keeble.