RML 16-inch 80-ton guns were large rifled muzzle-loading guns intended to give the largest British battleships parity with the large guns being mounted by Italian and French ships in the Mediterranean Sea in the 1870s.

Design and history

The gun was constructed of a toughened mild steel inner "A" tube surrounded by multiple

wrought-iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" t ...

coils, breech-piece and jacket. Rifling was of the "polygroove plain section" type, with 33 grooves increasing from 0 to 1 turn in 50 calibres (i.e. 1 turn in 800 inches) at the muzzle. After a long design and experimentation period beginning in 1873, with four guns became the only ship to mount them, in 1880. By that time such muzzle-loading guns were already obsolescent and were being superseded by a new generation of rifled breechloading guns. Two more guns were mounted for coastal defence in the

Admiralty Pier Turret The Admiralty Pier Turret, or Dover Turret, is an enclosed armoured turret built in 1882 on the western breakwater of Dover Harbour in southeast England. It contains two Fraser RML 16 inch 80 ton guns, the biggest installed in the United Kingdom. ...

at Dover.

Ammunition

This was a second-generation RML gun, equipped with polygroove rifling and firing only studless ammunition and using automatic gas-checks for rotation. File:RML 16 inch 112.5 lb quarter charge prism brown cartridge diagram.jpg, 112½-pound ¼

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brown prism powder

cartridge Cartridge may refer to: Objects * Cartridge (firearms), a type of modern ammunition * ROM cartridge, a removable component in an electronic device * Cartridge (respirator), a type of filter used in respirators Other uses * Cartridge (surname), a ...

Surviving examples

The only two remaining example are in the ruins of the

, Dover, Kent, UK.

Notes and references

Bibliography

Text Book of Gunnery, 1887
. London: Printed for His Majesty's Stationery Office, by Harrison and Sons, St. Martin's Lane
Text Book of Gunnery, 1902
. London: Printed for His Majesty's Stationery Office, by Harrison and Sons, St. Martin's Lane * Sir Thomas Brassey
The British Navy, Volume II. London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1882
*N.J.M. Campbell

External links