. Besieged by the Boers; a diary of life and events in Kimberley during the siege . and never came out till late Fri-day afternoon, but she is the one who had ashell through her house in the first bombard-ment, so she was likely to be timid. CHAPTER VIII OUR BIG GUN AND THE BOERS BIGGER ONE Now, having finished about the bombardmentwhile it was fresh in my mind, I must go backand mention the De Beers gun. We had heardrumours that a big gun was being made forsome time before the second bombardment, andwe soon heard from the men at the De Beersmachine shops that it was true. I did not godown to
. Besieged by the Boers; a diary of life and events in Kimberley during the siege . and never came out till late Fri-day afternoon, but she is the one who had ashell through her house in the first bombard-ment, so she was likely to be timid. CHAPTER VIII OUR BIG GUN AND THE BOERS BIGGER ONE Now, having finished about the bombardmentwhile it was fresh in my mind, I must go backand mention the De Beers gun. We had heardrumours that a big gun was being made forsome time before the second bombardment, andwe soon heard from the men at the De Beersmachine shops that it was true. I did not godown to see it until it was nearly done, but Ilooked in a few days before it was completed,and took Agnes down next day, as she was in-terested in it. The gun has since been chris-tened Long Cecil, but many of us preferother names for it. My favourite is The DeBeers Baby, but another good one is It is a splendid piece of work, especially whenyou consider that many of the tools necessaryto do the rifling and other complicated workhad to be made in the shops, and that the men. OUR BIG GUN 113 were not used to the work, and that even thematerial used was only, so to speak, gun is about ten feet long, and is built uponthe Woolwich Infant principle, slender near themuzzle, thicker in the middle, and very muchthicker at the breech. The narrow part is aboutnine or ten inches through, and the thickestpart at the breech about twenty or so. Theshell it carries is inches in diameter, andweighs twenty-eight and a half pounds. Ofcourse a proper gun carriage and everythingcomplete was made at the same time, and at lastall was in order. There was great speculationas to what would happen the first time the gunwas fired, but the people principally concernedwere confident that he would be all right, andso he was. They took him out of the shop on the morn-ing of January 19th, and pointed him at themidway pumping station half way from here toRiverton, about sixty-five hundred
Size: 1261px × 1982px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1900
