Note 85 — Chapter V · THE CARRONADE

Mr. Patrick Miller, who is mentioned in a later chapter as builder of the first successful steam-propelled vessel, was also an enthusiastic artillerist. In a memorandum to the Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1824 to consider the claims of various inventors of steam-vessels, a Mr. Taylor gave the following evidence: “I found him (Mr. Miller) a gentleman of great patriotism, generosity, and philanthropy; and at the same time of a very speculative turn of mind. Before I knew him (1785) he had gone through a very long and expensive course of experiments upon artillery of which the carronade was the result.”