William Ellis Metford
William Ellis Metford (1824-1899).
1857 of Hook House, Taunton.[1]
1900 Obituary [2]
WILLIAM ELLIS METFORD was the elder son of William Metford, M.D., of Flook House, Taunton, by his marriage with Miss M. E. Anderdon, and was born on October 4th, 1824.
He was educated at Sherborne, and afterwards became a pupil of W. M. Peniston, then Resident Engineer, under Mr. Brunel, on the Bristol and Exeter Railway, and from 1846 to 1850 was employed under Mr. Brunel on the Wilts, Somerset, and Weymouth Railway.
He subsequently worked for T. E. Blackwell, in connection with schemes for developing the traffic of Bristol, and afterwards for a short time acted as engineer under Mr. Peniston, who was contractor for the Wycombe Railway.
During this period of his life he made many friends in the profession, and in 1855 became acquainted with William Froude, who at once recognized his ability and skill, and became his most intimate friend.
Mr. Metford devised a form of theodolite, with a traversing stage and a curved arm upholding the transit axis which is described in the Proceedings of the Institution for February, 1856.
He also invented an improved level, in which the upright stem of the level telescope terminated in a sphere resting on the lower plate of the level and gripped by a ring grip tightened by four screws pulling downwards, and having spherical nuts. The instrument could thus be adjusted accurately even if the plates were as much as 25 degrees out of the horizontal. Mr. Froude suggested a further improvement - that the sphere should not rest on the bottom plate, but should have an internal hollow sphere resting upon a small sphere concentric with the outer sphere.
Early in 1857 Mr. Metford, who had married a daughter of Dr. Wallis of Bristol, obtained a very important appointment on the East Indian Railway under the present Sir Alexander Rendel. This he obtained largely through the recommendation of Mr. Blackwell and Mr. Brunel. He arrived at Monghyr, on the Ganges, in May of that year, the mutiny having just broken out. Here there was every probability of an outbreak; the town of 50,000 native inhabitants contained no troops but a handful of Sepoys belonging to a mutinied regiment. The Europeans, some seventy or eighty in all, were taking no active steps to organise defence. If they fled, as was possible by boat, the town would be given over to anarchy and violence. Mr. Metford decided to remain, and, with his railway staff, took in hand, as well as he could, the organization of patrols and other repressive measures.
His task was difficult, for he had no official position as leader. The old fort was ruinous, and too large to be defended by so few ; a house was accordingly fortified and provisioned in case of need. Patrols and guards were organised, and it became known that "Metford Sahib" was making explosive shells and other murderous inventions. Besides taking his turn of guard duty, he superintended every measure of defence, and could scarcely rest night or day. It was the most trying part of the Indian hot weather, and not until the beginning of August could English soldiers be spared to garriaon the town. Had it not been for Mr. Metford's determination another massacre might have been added to the story of the Mutiny. The heroism of the man who prevented it has remained unrecognised and almost unknown.
The strain of this terrible time left him seriously ill-suffering from inflammation of the membrane lining the brain - and after some months of rest, and an attempt to resume his work at Monghyr, he returned home after little more than a year's absence from England, and was obliged definitely to abandon the profession. Much of the work which he afterwards accomplished was done under the strain of continual depression and headache.
He soon resumed his old hobby - experiment in rifle work. As early as 1852 Mr. Metford had carried on experiments at the long distance of 1,200 yards. About the end of that year he suggested a hollow-based bullet for the Enfield rifle, which was brought to the notice of the Committee on Small Arms in 1853 by Mr. Pritchett, and adopted by them. Both at this time and afterwards, he made many experiments on alloys of lead, tin and antimony, and on the changes in hardness which take place in them with time.
In 1854 he investigated the disturbance of the barrel by the shock of the explosion, which affects the line of flight of the bullet, a difficulty which had led to much misunderstanding. About this time he designed a form of telescopic sight, which he afterwards used a good deal, and which was a decided improvement on existing patterns.
He gave much attention to the problem of making an explosive rifle bullet, and in 1857 sent in his invention to the Select Committee, who found it the best of those offered to them. It was not adopted, however, until 1863, when it had successfully competed against Colonel Boxer's and General Jacob's shells. It was very cheap and easy to manufacture, the explosive being a mixture of sulphur with chlorate of potash, and the hollow a simple one at the nose of the bullet. The Convention of St. Petersburg in 1868 put an end to the use of explosive rifle bullets; but the superior accuracy of the hollow-fronted bullet led to its retention for the Service rifle.
The Volunteer movement of 1859-60 had led to a great revival of interest in rifle work, and at the Wimbledon meeting of 1862 Mr. Metford made the acquaintance of Sir Henry Halford, henceforward his friend and assistant in his experiments. Together they competed, with rifles specially designed by Mr. Metford, for the prizes given by the National Rifle Association in 1864-65 for shooting at 2,000 yards. In both these years Mr. Metford's rifles were successful. He now made many experiments to determine the velocity of the bullet at different points in its passage along the barrel, and was able to lay down a curve for such a spiral as would give the bullet equal increments of rotation in equal times - the only scientific basis for an increasing spiral. This invention, though it proved to be less important than was at first supposed, formed the subject of a patent. A new form of ballistic pendulum, with double suspension, suggested partly by Mr. Froude, was of great help to Mr. Metford in his experiments.
Mr. Metford's chief distinction in rifle progress, however, is, that he was the pioneer of the substitution of very shallow grooving and a hardened cylindrical bullet expanding into it, for deep grooving and bullets made of soft lead. No one before him had realised that the expansion of a bullet under the blow of the powder was ample and instantaneous, and that deep grooving served to accumulate fouling, while soft lead created unnecessary friction. The Whitworth system of polygonal grooving gave far more grip on the bullet than was needed to give it a proper spin.
Mr. Metford found that a bullet could be spun with rifling only 0 -0005 inch deep, and that a depth of 0.004 inch was ample for all practical purposes. In 1865 his first match-rifle appeared, having five shallow grooves, and shooting a hardened bullet of special design. It immediately attained prominence in the hands of Sir Henry Halford, and in a very few years Mr. Metford’s rifles, and those made on the same principles, had left all others far behind.
The Martini action, in combination with the Henry barrel, was adopted in February, 1869, by the Small Arms Committee, who had before them the work of all the prominent rifle-makers of the day, but not Mr. Metford‘s, and in 1870 he embarked seriously on the production of a breech-loading rifle. He saw that the solid drawn brass cartridge-case was, for strength and simplicity, far ahead of the compound rolled case adopted for the Service; and that, considering the needs of hot climates and other practical conditions, lubrication of bullet or cartridge was inadmissible.
Every detail of the barrel and cartridge received close attention, and especially the form of the chamber and of the "entry" conducting the bullet from the cartridge into the rifling. The adoption of a grooving of segmental form was also found to give great advantages in preventing the accumulation of fouling. It was not long before Mr. Metford’s first experimental breech-loaders made their appearance, and at Wimbledon, in 1871, two rifles and a limited supply of home-made ammunition were used. With one of these Sir Henry Halford won the principal prize for military breech-loading rifles - a single prize of £50 - given by H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, and shot for at 1,000 yards.
In 1872, a match, at Wimbledon, between teams armed with breech-loaders and muzzle-loaders, proved that, while the latter was certainly still superior, the Henry match breech-loader was quite out-classed by the Metford military rifle with match sights attached. By 1877 the rifle and ammunition had passed out of the experimental stage, and were made by makers of repute, to whom great credit is due for the good workmanship, which was an indispensable condition of the success of the rifle. From that time the record of the military rifle is an unbroken series of triumphs ; and in the whole twenty-three years up to 1894, when military rifles of larger bore than 0 e315 were no longer recognised by the National Rifle Association, the Metford rifle only four times failed to win the Duke of Cambridge’s prize, while it took a preponderating share of the other prizes. The Martini-Henry, adopted so recently by the Committee on Small Arms as the best breechloader, soon found its level, and after 1882 absolutely disappears from the longer-range prize lists for the military breech-loader class. The superiority of the Metford rifle was notably shown in the matches with the military rifle between the Volunteers of Great Britain and the National Guard of the United States, in 1882 and 1883, when the American rifles proved to be decidedly inferior to the British, notably at the long ranges, and almost the whole of the British teams used the Metford rifle.
The rapid advance in military small arms abroad, especially as regards quickness of loading, caused the appointment of a Committee to deal with the question of an improved British rifle in February, 1883. Mr. Metford designed, at the request of the Committee, the detail of the barrel of 0.42 bore for the rifle provisionally issued for trial at the beginning of 1887. But just at this time the question of further reduction of the calibre was raised, as a result of Continental experiments, and the outcome was the adoption of the present 0.303 barrel and cartridge for the Service. Mr. Metford‘s unique knowledge enabled him at very short notice to lay down the proper proportions for the grooving, the pitch of the spiral, the shape and dimensions of the "entry," and the "clearances" to be given for the cartridge, all so satisfactorily, that though he himself verified them at much trouble and cost, and the Committee also tried them exhaustively, it was found that no modification chld improve them, either as regards accuracy, convenience in use, or ease of manufacture.
The 0.303 was first used with black powder, for which his segmental grooving was almost essential, and it was only the rapid destruction of the bore by the smokeless powder afterwards adopted which made it advisable to return to a very obvious form of grooving which had been used by Mr. Metford twenty-five years earlier. The adoption of the name Lee-Enfield for the 0.303 magazine rifle with the altered grooving obscures the fact that the shape of the groove was only one of many details connected with the barrel, chamber and cartridge, which are due to Mr. Metford‘s skill. The form of the bullet, for instance, is one which he found to meet with leas resistance from the air than any previously invented.
Rifle work was by no means the only subject in which Mr. Metford took an active interest. He was something of an astronomer; was an authority on the making of fireworks; and knew much about kite-flying. He studied thoroughly the questions involved in the cutting of precious stones, and at the Exhibition of 1862 showed some jewels beautifully cut by a mechanism of his own invention. He was an interested reader of books on many subjects.
A return, in 1892, of his old illness in an acute form put an end to Mr. Metford's active work, and after some years of failing health he died on October 14th, 1899. Those who knew him will always remember specially his kindness, his deep and genuine nature, his wide sympathies, his extreme accuracy of mind as well as of hand, and the untiring thoroughness of his work.
Mr. Metford was elected an Associate of the Institution on the 4th March, 185G.
Obituary 1899[3]
"...Mr. Metford passed away at Bristol on Saturday, the 14th inst. He was born in 1829, and was elected an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers as far back as 1856. The work of his life was the improvement of the rifle, and wherever arms of precision are known there the name of Metford is heard.
He was a pupil of Mr. Peniston, a civil engineer, and was sent to India to fill an appointment on the East India Railway, under Rendel, The climate ruined his health; he came home ill, and all the remainder of his life he was more or less an invalid..."[More].