From the Earth to the Moon Direct in Ninety-Seven Hours and Twenty Minutes: and a Trip Round It

From the Earth to the Moon Direct in Ninety-Seven Hours and Twenty Minutes: and a Trip Round It by Jules Verne. During the War of the Rebellion a new and influential club was established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland. It is well known with what energy the taste for military matters became developed amongst that nation of ship-owners shopkeepers and mechanics. Simple tradesmen jumped their counters to become extemporized captains colonels and generals without having ever passed the School of Instruction at West Point: nevertheless they quickly rivalled their compeers of the old continent and like them carried off victories by dint of lavish expenditure in ammunition money and men.But the point in which the Americans singularly distanced the Europeans was in the science of gunnery. Not indeed that their weapons retained a higher degree of perfection than theirs but that they exhibited unheard-of dimensions and consequently attained hitherto unheard-of ranges. In point of grazing plunging oblique or enfilading or point-blank firing the English French and Prussians have nothing to learn; but their cannon howitzers and mortars are mere pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of the American artillery.This fact need surprise no one. The Yankees the first mechanicians in the world are engineers—just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians—by right of birth. Nothing is more natural therefore than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery. Witness the marvels of Parrott Dahlgren and Rodman. The Armstrong Palliser and Beaulieu guns were compelled to bow before their transatlantic rivals.Now when an American has an idea he directly seeks a second American to share it. If there be three they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four they name a keeper of records and the office is ready for work; five they convene a general meeting and the club is fully constituted. So things were managed in Baltimore. The inventor of a new cannon associated himself with the caster and the borer. Thus was formed the nucleus of the Gun Club. In a single month after its formation it numbered 1833 effective members and 30565 corresponding members.One condition was imposed as a sine qua non upon every candidate for admission into the association and that was the condition of having designed or (more or less) perfected a cannon; or in default of a cannon at least a firearm of some description. It may however be mentioned that mere inventions of revolvers five-shooting carbines and similar small arms met with but little consideration. Artillerists always commanded the chief place of favour.The estimation in which these gentlemen were held according to one of the most scientific exponents of the Gun Club was proportional to the masses of their guns and in the direct ratio of the square of the distances attained by their projectiles.The Gun Club once founded it is easy to conceive the result of the inventive genius of the Americans. Their military weapons attained colossal proportions and their projectiles exceeding the prescribed limits unfortunately occasionally cut in two some unoffending pedestrians. These inventions in fact left far in the rear the timid instruments of European artillery.