“Your memorialist being aware, from former communications with your Honourable Board, that in no case is any sum of money allowed for travelling expenses, &c., and your memorialist being very far from rich, is unable to attend any committee, either at Woolwich or elsewhere, your memorialist, therefore, suggests that if it meet the approbation of your Honourable Board to issue an order to the officer commanding the depot of his Majesty’s 1st Brigade 60th Rifles, at present stationed in this town, or to any other regiment or detachment in the neighbourhood, to appoint a squad of men to fire 100 rounds of memorialist’s and 100 rounds of the cartridges now in use, and to compare their respective merits, the whole to be provided at your memorialist’s expense.
“And memorialist, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
The success of the experiments far surpassed the expectations of the military men present; and that they fully established all the points claimed, will be evident from the following secret report made by Major Walcott to the Board of Ordnance:--
“I then examined Mr. Greener’s ammunition, and found he had not made it up into complete cartridges, but that his ball was separate from his powder. I then examined the ball, which being less than the barrel of the rifle, went down very easily--indeed slided down, and is thus formed. The ball is cast with a hollow in it, to which a plug of the same metal is inserted, but not going home. The force of the charge is said by Mr. Greener so to act on this hollow ball as to expand it, filling up the whole barrel, preventing all windage, and so truly keeping its flight that the head of the plug first striking the object fired at, is then driven home; the ball becomes a solid, and as such is equal to the present mode, as well as having more force and with a less quantity of powder than at present used.
“A detachment of the 60th was then ordered to load with Mr. Greener’s, and an equal number with his Majesty’s practice ammunition. The first certainly had the advantage in quickness of loading, but this may be accounted for by Mr. Greener’s ball being put in separate from the cartridge; for I am by no means certain (it being necessary that his plug should be exactly in the centre, either next the cartridge or from it) whether, when made into a complete form, should the plug have shifted from its position, it would not cost the soldier more time to place it right; neither am I certain whether the plug might not be liable to become jammed in the soldier’s cartouch-box.
