"Ordnance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... galliasses Vast, and complete with chapels, chambers, towers. And in the said ships of free mariners Eight thousand, and of slaves two thousand more, An army twenty thousand strong. O then Of culverin, of double culverin, Ordnance and arms, all furniture of war, Victual, and last their fierceness and great spleen, Willing to founder, burn, split, wreck themselves, But they would land, fight, overcome, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... their other servants were. The whole show was the most glorious, in the order and expense, that had been ever seen in England: they who rode first being in Fleet street when the king issued out of the Tower, as was known by the discharge of the ordnance: and it was near three of the clock in the afternoon, when the king alighted at Whitehall. The next morning the king rode in the same state in his robes, and with his crown on his head, and all the lords in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... States. The confidence in the valor, abilities, etc., of the appointee, expressed in the commission, was very assuring. Accompanying it was a letter from the Secretary of the Navy directing me to report to the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography, in Washington, for such duty as it might assign me. I arrived on October 6, and immediately called on Professor J. S. Hubbard, who was the leading astronomer of the observatory. On the day following I ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... good its landing, take with you, if you please, this precis of its exploits: eleven hundred men, commanded by a soldier raised from the ranks, put to rout a select army of 6,000 men, commanded by General Lake, seized their ordnance, ammunition, and stores, advanced 150 miles into a country containing an armed force of 150,000 men, and at last surrendered to the Viceroy, an experienced general, gravely and cautiously advancing at the head of all his chivalry and of an immense army to oppose ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... Canada for land defence had been made much more effective since the twentieth century began. The permanent militia had been largely increased; engineer, medical, army-service, and ordnance corps had been organized or extended; rifle associations and cadet corps had been encouraged; new artillery armament had been provided; reserves of ammunition and equipment had been built up; a central training-camp had {298} ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... projectile force in the interior of the bullet, but beyond the centre of gravity, it would continue its flight without deviation. Having satisfied himself of the truth of this theory, he sent the mould to the Board of Ordnance on the 20th of January, 1797, and received a reply the following month, stating that upon trial it was found to be less accurate in its flight and less powerful in its penetration than the round bullet then in use. They also informed Mr. Stanton that there were some ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Booze." But in Belgium more drastic procedure is required. A Scotsman is accustomed to pronouncing difficult names, but even he is unable to contend with words composed almost entirely of the letters j, z, and v. So our resourceful Ordnance Department has issued maps—admirable maps—upon which the outstanding features of the landscape are marked in plain figures. But instead of printing the original place-names, they put "Moated Grange," or "Clapham Junction," or "Dead Dog Farm," which simplifies matters beyond all possibility ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... very latest types of battle-wagons," he said, "was steaming this way from the open sea outside the Narrows, ordered here to stand by in case of need, by the Navy Department. She was armed to the minute with the very latest ordnance. She carried ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... priest, hurriedly. "I know him—only too well. I saw him at the Ordnance. He has just arrived. He was brought here by Indians, on a litter. The commandant is even now with him. I saw him go in. I hurried here, for I knew that you were here, to tell you to fly. Fly then, at once, and for your life. I can get you away now, ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... much valuable time has been lost in the distribution of orders among a score or so of concerns which have had facilities for making shells, ordnance, and so forth. Competitive bidding for parts of contracts has held back the finished product and successful bidders have frequently been handicapped by ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... infantry of the line had come up and occupied the end of the street behind the piece of ordnance. The soldiers were tearing up the pavement and constructing with the stones a small, low wall, a sort of side-work not more than eighteen inches high, and facing the barricade. In the angle at the left of this epaulement, there was visible the head ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Grand Duke of Baden, and his three brothers came to greet the King of France in the capital of Alsace. He showed them at the arsenal sixteen hundred pieces of ordnance on their carriages, and arms sufficient ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... phalanx a pow'ful army, steady, true an' ole-fashioned, their powder strong of brimstone an' sulphur an' their ordnance antique. Why, they're usin' the same old mortars John Knox fired at the Popes, an' the same ole blunderbusses that scatter wide enough to cover all creation an' is as liable to kick an' kill anything in the rear as in front. They won't sleep in tents an' nothin' suits ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... advanced, Sir Henry Clinton leading the light infantry, Lord Percy following with the grenadiers, flying artillery, and light dragoons, while Lord Cornwallis, accompanied by Lord Howe, brought up the rear-guard with the heavy ordnance. About two hours before daybreak they arrived at the neighbourhood of the hills, when they discovered that the pass to the east, called the Bedford Pass, was unoccupied. He at once led his division through it, and ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... the lineal descendant. On the other hand the identification of this mysterious place with any part of Sussex has been seriously challenged. The estuary of the Adur then extended to Bramber. A glance at the two-inch Ordnance map of the district will make the old course of the river quite clear. In Hove Park is the famous "grey wether," called the "Goldstone." This used to lay in Goldstone Bottom between the railway and the ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... believe this to be the case, and that a serious mistake has been made in assuming that the Crown possesses large areas of land that may eventually become of great value. There are government lands, doubtless, of considerable extent, but I question their agricultural importance, and whenever the ordnance-map of the island shall be completed a wild confusion will be discovered in the discrepancy of title-deeds with the amount of land in possession of the owners. I have, whilst shooting in the wild tracts of scrub-covered hills and mountains, frequently ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Italian ports of Leghorn, Barcelona, Civita Vecchia and Venice, and to the Balearic Isles went lead, fine cloth, hides, Newfoundland fish and lime, and from them came oil, silk and fine porcelain. To Barbary went fine cloth, ordnance and artillery, armor and timber for oars, though, as a memorandum of 1580 says, "if the Spaniards catch you trading with them, you shall die for it." Probably what they objected to most was the sale ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Whenever the Naval appropriation bill comes before Congress, the Far-Eastern war-clouds threaten in thousands of newspaper sanctums, while all of us shudder at the danger of war, for the benefit of ordnance manufacturers, battleship builders, and every incipient "Fighting Bob" who hopes some day to command another American Armada on its gastronomic voyage around ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... constructed from beneath the mould to some distance outside. This drain dried up the place, and on a second attempt being made the success was complete. Theodore was delighted; he made handsome presents to the workmen, and prepared everything requisite to carry away with him his immense piece of ordnance. ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... forty-two pounders, and Brook guns to throw flat-headed projectiles (General Ripley told me that these Brook guns, about which so much is said, differ but little from the Blakely cannon); also there are parrot guns and Dahlgrens; in fact, a general assortment of every species of ordnance except Whitworths and Armstrongs. But the best gun in the fort is a fine new eleven-inch gun, which had just been fished up from the wreck of the Keokuk; the sister gun from the same wreck is at ——. The garrison consists of 350 enlisted ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... city, under the command of the sheriffs, marched along the Strand, attended by a vast crowd of spectators, to guard the avenues to the House of Commons; and thus, with shouts, and loud discharges of ordnance, the accused patriots were brought back by the people whom they had served, and for whom they had suffered. The restored members, as soon as they had entered the House, expressed, in the warmest terms, their ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tilled, the fort was repaired, wise Powhatan treated the pale-faces kindly for Smith's sake, and the emigrants felt for the first time firm ground beneath their feet. They had twenty-four pieces of ordnance, and three hundred stand of small-arms; three ships, seven boats, a store of more than two months' provisions, six hundred hogs, with goats, fowls, and sheep, and an established trading-station ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... &c., which has obtained much praise from judges in the art. Grainger quaintly remarks, that "the Duke of Newcastle was so attached to the Muses, that he could not leave them behind him, but carried them to the camp, and made Davenant the poet-laureate, his lieutenant-general of the ordnance." His second wife was Margaret, the imaginative Duchess of Newcastle, who never revised what she had written, lest it "should disturb her following conceptions," by which means she composed plays, poems, letters, philosophical discourses, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... it was a long time since he had seen active service. When appointed to the command he was sixty-six years old. From 1827 to 1852 he was military secretary at the Horse Guards,—the English War Office,—where he was made master-general of the Ordnance, and soon after became a full general. He was taciturn but accessible, and had the power of attracting everybody to him; averse to all show and parade; with an uncommon power for writing both good English and French,—an accomplished man, from ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... tide. They passed the groves of masts which even then astonished the stranger with the extended commerce of London, and now approached those low and blackened walls of curtain and bastion, which exhibit here and there a piece of ordnance, and here and there a solitary sentinel under arms, but have otherwise so little of the military terrors of a citadel. A projecting low-browed arch, which had loured over many an innocent, and many a guilty head, in similar circumstances, now spread its dark frowns ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... supposed to be sending a storm of small shell among the defenders of the Rock. The incessant rattle of the ships' machine guns was also heard in the intervals between the thundering broadsides of heavy ordnance. All the ships were, of course, cleared for action, with topmasts and yards sent down, and it is needless to say they looked exceedingly workmanlike ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... your muskets or any engine that you have: and to make them and multiply them more easily, and with small force, by wheels and other means: and to make them stronger and more violent than yours are; exceeding your greatest cannons and basilisks. We represent also ordnance and instruments of war, and engines of all kinds: and likewise new mixtures and compositions of gun-powder, wild-fires burning in water, and unquenchable. Also fireworks of all variety both for pleasure and use. We imitate also ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... new arrivals long in showing their mettle. The camp was then pitched on the right of the nullah at Suraj Kund, and in this position was much annoyed by twelve pieces of ordnance, placed in position round the Bibi Pakdaman mosque. These Lumsden offered to capture and silence and, if possible, bring away. The service was carried out with much dash and gallantry, and the guns were captured and rendered useless, though it was found impossible, in face ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... of vast importance. Twelve guns, thirty-twos and twenty-fours (among which were our old friends from Bisland), seventeen hundred prisoners, with many small arms and accouterments, and great quantities of quarter-master's, commissary, ordnance, and medical stores, fell into our hands. For the first time since I reached western Louisiana I had supplies, and in such abundance as to serve for the Red River campaign of 1864. Three fourths of the prisoners were sick and convalescent ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... soon concluded to be the top of a mountain which was in sight, seeing that from thence alone they could level their guns at the fort, which now lay open to them since the cutting down of the trees by the new possessors. Hence they resolved to open a way for the carriage of some pieces of ordnance to the top. This mountain is somewhat high, and the upper part thereof plain, from whence the whole island may be viewed: the sides thereof are very rugged, by reason a great number of inaccessible rocks do surround it; so that the ascent was very difficult, and ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... title of Miss Hamilton's poem referred to by Wordsworth. It occurs in the volume, pp. 126-131. Her brother's was one commencing, 'It haunts me yet.' The 'Mr. Nimmo' of this letter was a civil engineer connected with the Ordnance Survey ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco. After you left I sent down to Stamford's for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... fireman was lowering the feeding hose, Bob Tidball, "Shark" Dodson and a quarter-bred Creek Indian called John Big Dog climbed on the engine and showed the engineer three round orifices in pieces of ordnance that they carried. These orifices so impressed the engineer with their possibilities that he raised both hands in a gesture such as accompanies the ejaculation ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... skirting the piece of old ordnance dragged from the sea in 1775, near the Goodwin Sands, by some fishermen who were sweeping for anchors in the Gull-stream, you reach the conclusion, that politeness may sometimes be carried too far. "Deale," notes LELAND, in his interesting Itinerary, "is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... coat or braces, and with his shirt sleeves rolled up above his elbows, tried to emulate "Jack." Some of the goods they had to pile up on the shore; some to carry to the commissariat stores; and some, again, to the ordnance department. If free perspiration was the best thing for health and vigour, they were going the right way to ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... "was an officer in charge of the Mines and Ordnance Department. He went out that night in a small boat, after a visit to the strong house. No soul has ever seen or heard of him since, or his boat. It is only I ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... than twenty years old. Arguing from the known shortage of big guns in Turkey and the fact that of late years other fronts have been of prime importance and have undoubtedly received what fresh ordnance the army was able to purchase and secure, it does not seem likely that much modern equipment was found in the Caucasus fortress by the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... to the creative genius of the country in science, art, music, literature, and every other phase of human endeavor. Author of "Education for Industrial Workers." First short story, "Arthur McQuaid, American," Outlook, May 23, 1917. At present, living in Washington, working in the Ordnance Department on industrial ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... us some hours to get through this forest," said the ordnance officer, "It is one of the thickest woods in this region, and the terror of the police. The escaped prisoner who succeeds in concealing himself here, may defy discovery. It is impossible to pursue him in these dark, tangled woods, and a few hours conduct him to the sea-shore, where there ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... attempt of his father to place Lady Jane upon the throne; but on the intercession of the Lords of the Council was pardoned by Queen Mary, who received him into favour, and appointed him master of the English ordnance at the siege of St. Quentin, where his brother Henry was killed. On the accession of Elizabeth, Dudley soon became a great favourite of the Queen, who advanced him to the highest honours, and, there is little doubt, at one time contemplated ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... labour with which the honest man arranged his ideas for reply, and tasked his inert and sluggish powers to bring up all the heavy artillery of his learning for demolishing the schismatic or heretical opinion which had been stated—when, behold, before the ordnance could be discharged, the foe had quitted the post, and appeared in a new position of annoyance on the Dominie's flank or rear. Often did he exclaim "Prodigious!" when, marching up to the enemy in full confidence of victory, he found the field evacuated, and it may be supposed that it ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Boisbelle; Marquis de Rosny; Comte de Dourdan; Sire d'Orval, Montrond, and St. Amand; Baron d'Espineuil, Bruyeres, le Chatel, Villebon, la Chapelle, Novion, Bagny, and Boutin; King's Counsel in all the royal councils; Captain-Lieutenant of two hundred ordnance men-at arms; Grand Master and Captain-General of the Artillery; Grand Overseer of the highways of France; Superintendent of Finance, and of the royal fortifications and buildings; Governor and Lieutenant-General of his Majesty ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... the Chief of Ordnance of the Confederate States—now of the University of Alabama—writes, under date of July 11th, 1879, that to his "knowledge the Confederate States never authorized or used explosive or poisoned rifle balls during the late war." In this ...
— A Refutation of the Charges Made against the Confederate States of America of Having Authorized the Use of Explosive and Poisoned Musket and Rifle Balls during the Late Civil War of 1861-65 • Horace Edwin Hayden
... Why came I hither, but to that intent? Thinke you, a little dinne can daunt mine eares? Haue I not in my time heard Lions rore? Haue I not heard the sea, puft vp with windes, Rage like an angry Boare, chafed with sweat? Haue I not heard great Ordnance in the field? And heauens Artillerie thunder in the skies? Haue I not in a pitched battell heard Loud larums, neighing steeds, & trumpets clangue? And do you tell me of a womans tongue? That giues not halfe so great a blow to heare, As wil a Chesse-nut ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... jaded withers, the very steed whose rush they had welcomed with such exceeding joy, saddled, bridled, blanketed, saddle-bagged, lariated, side-lined, every item complete and exactly as issued by the Ordnance Department. The trooper himself wore the field uniform of the cavalry,—the dark-blue blouse, crossed by the black carbine sling, whose big brass buckle Ned could even now see gleaming between the broad shoulders, and gathered at the waist by the ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... stretch away to the horizon, and the lovely valley spreads itself like a map below. The bird's-eye view from Parker's Mountain must also be seen, and many other excursions accomplished. The old cannon of Lower Granville also is "one of the sights". This ancient piece of ordnance was fired in old times to notify the quiet country folk when news was received from England. At such times relays, seven to ten miles apart, mounted in hot haste and carried the messages on until Digby was reached; and from ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... kept booming intermittently; nothing but boom. Our besiegers' guns were being used to check the advance of Methuen. There remained only one piece of ordnance, nicknamed "Old Susannah," to keep Kimberley in order. The Premier Mine was the recipient of some lumps of love from this amorous gipsy; but nobody was smitten by ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... the south bank of the Tungabhadra, In the neighbourhood of the threatened fortress. The Sultan crossed somewhere near the present town of Siruguppa, and the great battle that ensued took place in the open cotton-plains, perhaps near Kavutal ("Kowtall" on the Ordnance Map). ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... morning light it really looked entrancingly lovely. On the fourth side the garden ended in a terrace dominating the entire Liguanea plain, with the city of Kingston, Kingston Harbour, Port Royal, and the hills on the far side spread out below us like a map. Those hills are now marked on the Ordnance Survey as the "Healthshire Hills." This is a modern euphemism, for the name originally given to those hills and the district round them by the soldiers stationed in the "Apostles' Battery," was "Hellshire," and any one who has had personal experience of the heat there, can hardly say that the ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... in London? But you will have ten minutes to spare. Look, I have an ordnance map—let us take our walk ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... nearer we could see a throng of soldiers upon her decks, she being without doubt a transport returning from the French possessions in the West Indies. She fired a shot or two at us, but they fell short, her ordnance plainly being no match for ours, so we had nothing to do but heave to and rake her at our pleasure. After a couple of broadsides that made havoc on her decks, she suddenly struck her flag, and of our crew I was perhaps the only one ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... rest of the band. Otto had found a dead tree. Its trunk had been hollowed by decay. He and his fellow-conspirators had sawn it off near to the ground, and close to the root they had drilled a touch-hole. This huge piece of ordnance they had loaded with a heavy charge of the ship's gunpowder. Otto now stood ready with a piece of slow-match at the touch-hole, and ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... public view. When I first knew the landmark it was occupied by Thomas Green, an old-time resident of the District. He married, as his second wife, Ann Corbin Lomax, a daughter of Major Mann Page Lomax of the Ordnance Department of the Army. During the Civil War, Mr. Green's sympathies were with the South, but he took no active part in the conflict. One of his idiosyncrasies was to pick up, on and around his spacious grounds, scraps of old ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... meant that the poet by his vision had taught us more about the Lake District than any ordinary geographer had been able to see. With his finer sensibility he had been able to see deeper. He had been able to reveal to us truths about the district which no mere ordnance surveyor was able to disclose. He was a true discoverer—a geographical discoverer—a geographer of the highest type. He had helped us really to ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... to the enemy's fire. We are not so proud and foolish as to wish to silence the guns ranged against us, but, at least, we should be able to make some reply. In desperation, the sailor-gunners tried to manufacture a crude piece of ordnance by lashing iron and steel together, and encasing it in wood. Fortunately it was never fired, for in the nick of time an old rusty muzzle-loader has been discovered in a blacksmith's shop within our lines, and has been made to fire the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... and Instrument Maker to the Royal Observatory, the Board of Ordnance, the Admiralty, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the married state, capered briskly about among her somewhat stolid and indifferent friends, saying, "They're going to fire it as soon as we round the point"; and presently a dull boom, as of a small piece of ordnance discharged in the neighborhood of the hotel, struck through the gathering fog, and this elderly sylph clapped her hands and exulted: "They've fired it, they've fired it! and now the captain will blow the whistle in answer." But ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... tons, and a pinnace of ten tons. They carried food for a year. The ships dropped down the Thames on June 7, 1576, and as they passed Greenwich, where the queen's court was, the little vessels made a brave show by the discharge of their ordnance. Elizabeth waved her hand from a window to the departing ships and sent one of her gentlemen aboard to say that she had 'a good liking of their doings.' From such small acts of royal graciousness has often ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... were full of men and of noise. Herds of cattle were being driven for the food of the army marching against Jargeau; there were trains of carts full of victual, and the citizens having lent the Maid their great pieces of ordnance, the bombard called "The Shepherdess," and the gun "Montargis," these were being dragged along by clamorous companies of apprentices, and there were waggons charged with powder, and stone balls, and boxes of arrows, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... and of Hesdin, was obliged to renounce those offices, notwithstanding his earlier "reconciliation," and the "blood and water" of John Sarrasin. Ghent was not even contented with these guerdons, but insisted upon the command of all the cavalry, including the band of ordnance which, with handsome salary, had been assigned to Lalain as a part of the wages for his treason, while the "little Count"—fiery as his small and belligerent cousin whose exploits have been recorded in the earlier pages ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... among them that of president of the City Council; and on his twenty-fifth birthday he was elected Mayor of San Jose. Meanwhile he had organized the Eagle Guard, one of the first independent military companies in the State, and had also been successively promoted from adjutant to ordnance officer, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, on Major-General Halleck's staff of the State Militia. Moreover, he had completed the study of law in the office of Judge W.T. Wallace, been admitted to the bar, and was ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... his birthplace, because his father, in the year 1814, was recalled to London, and in 1816 went to Chatham. They still show the room in the dockyard where the elder Dickens worked, and where his son often came to visit him. The family lived in Ordnance Place, Chatham, and the boy was sent to a school kept in Gibraltar Place, New Road, by one William Giles. As a child he is said to have been a great reader, and very early began to attempt original writing. In 1821, Charles being then nine years of age, the family fell into trouble; reforms ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... platform which overlooks a broad valley, a monstrous gun, several centuries old, which was formed of bars of iron secured by great iron hoops. The balls which this gun carried are more than a foot in diameter. The name of this enormous piece of ordnance is Mons Meg. It is now disabled, having been burst, many years ago, and injured beyond the possibility of repair. There were great rejoicings in Edinburgh at the time of Mary's marriage, and from some old accounts which still remain ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Theseus, and when at last the watchers dare to look, they see Theseus afar off, alone, screening his eyes with his hand, as if some sight too dreadful for mortal eyes had passed before him; but OEdipus is gone, and not with lamentation, but in hope and wonder. Even when Hamlet dies, and the peal of ordnance is shot off, it is to congratulate him upon his escape from unbearable woe; and that is the same in life. If our eye falls on the sad stories of men and women who have died by their own hand, how seldom do they speak in the scrawled messages they leave behind ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this the insurgents came to the south side of the Thames. Those of the inhabitants of London who held to Queen Mary armed themselves for her defence; and as the army of Sir Thomas Wyatt passed on the Surrey side in sight of the Tower, the ordnance which was placed thereon was discharged at them. Though the guns roared loudly, however, no injury was inflicted. When they came to London Bridge they found the gates shut and the drawbridge cut down. Onward they marched therefore to Kingston, there being ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hastings had just accepted the surrender of the vessel from a young ordnance officer, the sole German officer left alive with the exception of Captain Koenig, who was ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... Colonel John L. Gardner, who was lieutenant-colonel of the regiment. The regimental band and Captain Truman Seymour's company (H) also formed part of the garrison. The other forts were unoccupied, except by the ordnance-sergeants ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... the surface of the ground, just over the backs of a regiment, lying flat on their faces. As he moved to the shelter of the river bank, a shot dropped obligingly in the water before him. All day long the lines of batteries on the hills smoked like Etna and Vesuvius. Sometimes, between ordnance and musketry, there were twenty thousand flashes a minute. Carleton thus far had seen no battles where the fire equalled that which was poured upon Sumner's command during the last grand, but hopeless, charge at sunset. At nightfall, when the wearied soldiers could lie down for rest, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... unfortunate Elector-Palatine, the Temple and Gray's Inn men gave a masque, of which Sir Francis Bacon was the chief contriver. The masque came to Whitehall by water from Winchester Place, in Southwark; three peals of ordnance greeting them as they embarked with torches and lamps, as they passed the Temple Garden, and as they landed. This short trip cost L300. The king, after all, was so tired, and the hall so crowded, that the masque was adjourned till the Saturday following, when all went well. The next night the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... countries in Europe, Iceland is the one which has been the most minutely mapped, not even excepting the ordnance survey of Ireland. The Danish Government seem to have had a hobby about it, and the result has been a chart so beautifully executed, that every little crevice, each mountain torrent, each flood of lava, is laid down with an accuracy perfectly astonishing. One huge ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... fortune in the doing of it," said he; "or, if you do not, you will have acquired such a character as will entitle you to any fortune."' Letters of Boswell, p. 148. Four months later, Boswell wrote:—'By a private subscription in Scotland, I am sending this week 700 worth of ordnance [to Corsica] ... It is really a tolerable train of artillery.' Ib p. 156. In 1769 he brought out a small volume entitled British Essays in favour of the Brave Corsicans. By Several Hands. Collected and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... with about fifty men. He hurriedly put it into a state of defence. General Overton besieged the place in person, with his army, consisting of eighteen hundred foot and eleven hundred horse, and battered the walls with cannon, having brought a number of great ordnance from Stirling Castle. For ten days the castle was held by the small but resolute garrison, and might have held out longer had not the well failed. With the prospect of death before them in the event of the place being taken, Dundrennan and Lochan ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... no leisure, on this occasion, to inspect the wonders of the top-khana, or arsenal; but he paid a second visit for the purpose a few days later, duly armed with an order from the Master-General of the Ordnance, which is indispensable for the admission of a foreigner. His sensations, on entering this vast repository of arms, were not unlike those attributed to a personage whose fictitious adventures, though ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... we have begun to attain completed results in the comprehensive scheme of seacoast defense and fortification entered upon eight years ago. A large sum has been already expended, but the cost of maintenance will be inconsiderable as compared with the expense of construction and ordnance. At the end of the current calendar year the War Department will have nine 12-inch guns, twenty 10-inch, and thirty-four 8-inch guns ready to be mounted on gun lifts and carriages, and seventy-five 12-inch mortars. In addition ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... vessels to be equally formidable in ordnance, and alike invulnerable to the attacks of any adversary. To combine all these requisites is not beyond the ingenuity of American constructors. Most assuredly such vessels will soon make their appearance on the ocean. Some new arrangement of the propelling apparatus, and lighter and more powerful ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a fortune in the doing of it," said he; "or, if you do not, you will have acquired such a character as will entitle you to any fortune."' Letters of Boswell, p. 148. Four months later, Boswell wrote:—'By a private subscription in Scotland, I am sending this week L700 worth of ordnance [to Corsica] ... It is really a tolerable train of artillery.' Ib p. 156. In 1769 he brought out a small volume entitled British Essays in favour of the Brave Corsicans. By Several Hands. Collected and published by James ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... governor is so awfully cautious. Wait, wait, wait, that's always his cry. I tell him that he ought to have been in the Government Heavy Ordnance Department. But I'll speak to him tonight. I'll talk him round. See if I don't. And you must speak to your own governor. Robert here will back you up. And here are the ports and the dates that we are due at each. Mind ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... soldiers in his pay, not a stand of arms, or a barrel of powder, a musket, cannon or mortar, not a ship of all the fleet, or money in his treasury to procure them; whereas the Parliament had all his navy, and ordnance, stores, magazines, arms, ammunition, and revenue in their keeping. And this I take to be another defect of the king's counsel, and a sad instance of the distraction of his affairs, that when he saw how all things were going ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... more surprized, than to find my wings were to be thus clipt, by a civil officer of the board of ordnance; however wrong I or my horses had acted, I could not let Mr. GOODE graze so closely upon my authority, without a reprimand; I therefore wrote him an answer in terms as follow: "that having seen a fat impudent-looking strutting fellow about the garrison, it ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... law, and military preparations against a threatened invasion by the French, had almost exhausted the island of military stores and provisions. There was but little of either, excepting in the king's ordnance and victualling magazines. Over these the admiral claimed an exclusive command and controul, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... close intrench'd, Wont through a secret grate of iron bars In yonder tower to overpeer the city, And thence discover how with most advantage They may vex us with shot or with assault. To intercept this inconvenience, A piece of ordnance 'gainst it I have placed; And even these three days have I watch'd, If I could see them. Now do thou watch, for I can stay no longer. If thou spy'st any, run and bring me word; And thou shalt find me ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... observations may be applied to the Ordnance Corps and to the general staff, the operations of which as they are now organized must either be frequently interrupted or performed by officers taken from the line of the Army, to the great prejudice of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... monarch's mistress—princes, cardinals, bishops, dukes and every kind of nobility, excisemen and priests, keepers of the royal conscience and necessary—all ministers of filth, each in his degree, from the secretaries of state to the lowest underlings in office—clerks of the ordnance, victualing, stamps, customs, colonies, and postoffice, farmers and receivers general, judges and cooks, confessors and every other caterer to the royal appetite. This was the order of things that ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... heavier charge, the path will be along the second curved line, and the ball would again fall to the ground. But let us try next time with a charge still further increased, and, indeed, with a far stronger cannon than any piece of ordnance ever yet made. The velocity of the projectile must now be assumed to be some miles per second, but we can conceive that the speed shall be so adjusted that the ball shall move along the path C D, always at the same height above the earth, though still curving, as every projectile must ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... an occasional puff of cooler air which reached us through the embrasures. Some of the guns were of Spanish manufacture, dated 1665, but most of them were lying useless on the ground. In no case would they avail much against modern ordnance; but the fort, owing to its natural advantages, would be difficult to attack. The present Nawab is of ancient descent, and one of his ancestors was an Admiral in the service of the Grand Mogul. At the time of ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... credit, after this, that Welsted, who was clerk in ordinary at the Ordnance Office, was a man of family and independence, of elegant manners and a fine fancy, but who considered poetry only as a passing amusement? He has, however, left behind, amid the careless productions of his ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... boundary-line of the town on the west. Beyond it was nothing but fields and open country. There was no High Level Bridge in those days, spanning the river and forming a link in the great iron highway between the English and Scotch capitals; nor had so much as the first stone of the famous Elswick Ordnance and Engineering Works been laid. The future Lord Armstrong, whom I met at dinner not long ago, looking hardly older than when I first saw him, was then a solicitor, whose office stood in Westgate Street, and whose ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... once a picture familiar to me from my New England village childhood came upon me like a reminiscence rather than a revelation. It was a mighty bewilderment of slanted masts and spars and ladders and ropes, from the midst of which a vast tube, looking as if it might be a piece of ordnance such as the revolted angels battered the walls of Heaven with, according to Milton, lifted its muzzle defiantly towards the sky. Why, you blessed old rattletrap, said I to myself, I know you as well as I know my father's spectacles and snuff-box! And that same crazy witch of a Memory, so divinely ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... preparatory studies) to operate on any but the largest canvasses. He painted a prodigious battle-piece of Assaye, with General Wellesley at the head of the 19th Dragoons charging the Mahratta Artillery, and sabring them at their guns. A piece of ordnance was dragged into the back-yard, and the Colonel's stud put into requisition to supply studies for this enormous picture. Fred Bayham (a stunning likeness) appeared as the principal figure in the foreground, terrifically wounded, but still of undaunted courage, slashing about amidst ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... valley below them was increasing, a hurrying of wagons, horses and guns in the narrow road. Were more Austrian reinforcements coming up? It seemed so. From the mountains beyond, the rattle of small-arm fire had risen to a steady roar, but the detonations of heavy ordnance were ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... munitions, some artillery together—especially one huge gun, the biggest ever seen, "a twenty-four pounder," no less; to which the peasants, dragging her with difficulty through the clayey roads, gave the name of Faule Grete (Lazy or Heavy Peg); a remarkable piece of ordnance. Lazy Peg he had got from the Landgraf of Thueringen, on loan merely; but he turned her to excellent account of his own. I have often inquired after Lazy Peg's fate in subsequent times; but could never learn anything distinct; the German Dryasdust is a dull dog, and seldom ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... officers put a man on a railroad train and he detrained near the front. Every British soldier had to go on board a train and then a ship and then disembark from the ship and go on board another train. Every article of ordnance, engineering, medical supply, food supply, must be handled four times, while in Germany they need be handled but twice. Any railway traffic manager will understand what this means. Both the British supply system and the medical ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... against James. The patience of the House was wearied out by long discussions ending in the pompous promulgation of truisms like these. At last the explosion came. One of the grumblers called the attention of the Grand Committee to the alarming fact that two Dutchmen were employed in the Ordnance department, and moved that the King should be humbly advised to dismiss them. The motion was received with disdainful mockery. It was remarked that the military men especially were loud in the expression of contempt. "Do we seriously ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... himself in command of more than sixteen thousand men, including regulars, militia, and Indians. The mouth of the St. Charles had been closed with a heavy boom of logs, in front of which was moored a floating battery mounting five cannon; and behind it two stranded hulks, armed with heavy ordnance, were able to sweep the Bay. From this point to the height where, seven miles away, the Montmorency leaped foaming over its dizzy precipice, the lowlands of Beauport had been strongly fortified and intrenched. Redoubts had been erected at all possible ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... by drawing me aside into the room in which we had supped, where, after rallying me on the whimsical notion of the Grand Master of the Ordnance and Governor of the Bastile being besieged in a paltry inn, he confessed that he had been wrong, and that the adventure was likely to prove serious. "Ten to one this is the very band that ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... His army was small, and a march on the capital was in prospect. The Government grudged both men and money, and an assault would have cost more lives than could well be spared. On March 18 the trenches were completed. Four days later, sufficient heavy ordnance having been landed, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... can find these footpaths, which probably led nowhere; and as for the little old man with silver buckles on his shoes, it is a story only fit for some one in his dotage. You can't expect grave and considerate men to take your story as it stands; they must consult the Ordnance Survey and Domesday Book; and the fact is, you have not got the shadow of a foundation on which to carry your case into court. I may resent this, but I cannot deny that the argument is very black against me, and I begin to think that my senses have deceived me. It is as they say. No one ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Hamburg and Erfurt; but though we had not stirred, we were ten leagues from Rhenish Bavaria, and it was upon us that the first shower of bombs and bullets would fall. So, day after day, we received orders to restore the earthworks and to clear out the ditches and to put the old ordnance in good condition. At the beginning of April a great workshop was established at the arsenal for repairing the arms, and skilful engineers and artillerists arrived from Metz to repair the earthworks of the bastions and make terraces around ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... of Retribution and Salvation, was pictured in various ways and with some elaboration of detail. Paradise and Hell were mapped out, and the comfortable compartments to be occupied by the saints and the miserable quarters of sinners were specified with the precision of an Ordnance Survey. Purgatory was an institution not limited to the Roman Catholic Church; it had a strong hold on the mediaeval Jewish mind. The intermediate state was a favourite escape from the theological necessity ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... will give an idea of the ballistic test as prescribed by the Bureau of Ordnance, Navy Department. The test plate, irrespective of its thickness, is to be backed by thirty-six inches of oak or other substantial wood. Near the middle region of the plate an equilateral triangle will be marked, each side of which will be three and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... witness the incredible excitement so repeatedly made to take the bank by storm, sometimes by surprise, anon by stealth, and not rarely by digging a mine, laying intrenchments and opening a fire of field-pieces, heavy ordnance, and flying artillery; but the fortress, proud and conscious of its superior strength, built on a rock of adamant, laughs at the fiery attacks of its foes, nay, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... long applauding his generous warmth; he brought out a volume of British Essays in Favour of the Brave Corsicans, sent Paoli Johnson's Works and, what was more substantial, forwarded a quantity of ordnance, to buy which he had managed to raise a subscription of 700 pounds. His desire to be a well-known man now began to receive some gratification and he frankly confesses his pleasure at having such men as Johnson, Hume ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... point his ordnance at the walls was inexplicable to those who were strangers to his family history. He remained in the field on the north side of the Castle (called by his name to this day because of his encampment there) till it occurred to him to send a messenger to his ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... that trade and turn to something that might be made helpful to the prosecution of my education. An engagement was secured with the Sappers and Miners, who were mapping and measuring the county of Dumfries in connection with the Ordnance Survey of Scotland. The office hours were from 9 A. M. till 4 P. M.; and though my walk from home was above four miles every morning, and the same by return in the evening, I found much spare time for private study, ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... the founders of the Century Club of New York, a life member of the Academy of Design, and in 1817, at the age of twenty-one, in conjunction with his older brother, Gouverneur Kemble, established the West Point foundry, which for a long period received heavy ordnance contracts from the United States government. The famous Parrott guns were manufactured there. Captain Robert P. Parrott, their inventor and an army officer, married Mary Kemble, a sister of Gouverneur and William Kemble, who in early life was regarded as a beauty. Mr. William Kemble, apart ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur |
