3-052-424 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Explosion of the Thunderer's Great Gun at Woolwich, 1880. 'The Explosion; The Gangway; The 38 Ton Gun after the Explosion; Sand-bay with fragments of the Gun in foreground; The experimental trials, at Woolwich, to see how one of the thirty-eight ton guns of H.M.S. Thunderer could be made to burst, were brought to a satisfactory termination, by the final explosion of the gun...The gun was mounted upon an iron carriage...as shown in our Illustration; in front of the muzzle was a long gallery, timber-framed, which was filled with sand-bags, to arrest the shot from the gun, and to catch the flying splinters when it burst. This structure was the work of the Royal Engineers...the gun was fired by electricity, with a deep booming sound and a cloud of smoke...The gun-carriage had recoiled with some force against the stops, and the violence of the explosion was shown by the torn pieces of the gun which strewed the floor of the cell...there had evidently been some heavy masses of iron hurled against the roof, splintering the thick beams which supported the superincumbent mass of earth...A minute examination of the fragments of the exploded gun will now be made by General Gordon's committee, after which a report mil he presented to the War Office'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.