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79-546: MS Aramis was a Messageries Maritimes ocean liner that was launched in France in 1931. She was a sister ship of Félix Roussel and Georges Philippar . The three sisters were highly unusual in having square funnels . Aramis ' interior was an Art Deco interpretation of Minoan design. When France entered the Second World War , Aramis was converted into the armed merchant cruiser X-1 . In August 1940 she

158-486: A Portuguese fleet sent to India to take part in a colonial war in the 1740s. Also in 1737, it was mentioned that a German engineer had invented a 10-pounder cannon capable of firing 20 times in a minute. In 1740, a cannon able to shoot 11 times per minute was developed by a Frenchman called Chevalier de Benac. Meanwhile, not long after in England, in 1747 a cannon able to simultaneously charge and discharge itself 20 times in

237-421: A swivel gun that did not need cleaning or muzzle-loading and was capable of being made to any dimensions and used as an ordinary cannon at a moment's notice and firing 40 shots a minute was invented by a native of Ireland. Also in 1828 a revolver cannon capable of firing 12 shots a minute and worked by 2 artillerymen was invented by a Frenchman called Lesire-Fruyer. In 1854 this cannon would be put on display at

316-516: A tripod or on a vehicle; when carried on foot, the machine gun and associated equipment (tripod, ammunition, spare barrels) require additional crew members. Light machine guns are designed to provide mobile fire support to a squad and are typically air-cooled weapons fitted with a box magazine or drum and a bipod; they may use full-size rifle rounds, but modern examples often use intermediate rounds. Medium machine guns use full-sized rifle rounds and are designed to be used from fixed positions mounted on

395-416: A French artist known as Renard invented a piece of ordnance that could be operated by one man and fired 90 shots a minute. Also in 1792, a French mechanic called Garnier invented a musket battery made up of 15 barrels capable of firing 300 shots in 2 minutes for a total rate of fire of 150 shots a minute or 10 shots per minute per barrel and of being operated by one man. In the early and mid-19th century,

474-411: A bipod and drum in the light machine gun role or a tripod and belt feed in the medium machine gun role. Machine guns usually have simple iron sights, though the use of optics is becoming more common. A common aiming system for direct fire is to alternate solid ("ball") rounds and tracer ammunition rounds (usually one tracer round for every four ball rounds), so shooters can see the trajectory and "walk"

553-407: A breech-loading volley gun , similar to the later mitrailleuse, was invented by a Frenchman called Du Perron which was worked by 3 or 4 men and capable of discharging 24 barrels 10 times a minute for a total rate of fire of 240 shots per minute. In 1776, a gun capable of charging and discharging itself 120 times 'by the motion of one hand only' in a minute was invented in England by an inventor from

632-431: A cartridge to overheat and detonate even when the trigger is not pulled, potentially leading to damage or causing the gun to cycle its action and keep firing until it has exhausted its ammunition supply or jammed; this is known as cooking off (as distinct from runaway fire where the sear fails to re-engage when the trigger is released). To guard against cook-offs occurring, some kind of cooling system or design element

711-644: A class of military kinetic projectile weapons, machine guns are designed to be mainly used as infantry support weapons and generally used when attached to a bipod or tripod , a fixed mount or a heavy weapons platform for stability against recoils . Many machine guns also use belt feeding and open bolt operation, features not normally found on other infantry firearms. Machine guns can be further categorized as light machine guns , medium machine guns , heavy machine guns , general-purpose machine guns , and squad automatic weapons . Unlike semi-automatic firearms , which require one trigger pull per round fired,

790-618: A common feed source. The continuous nature of the rotary action and its relative immunity to overheating allow for a very high cyclic rate of fire , often several thousand rounds per minute. Rotary guns are less prone to jamming than a gun operated by gas or recoil, as the external power source will eject misfired rounds with no further trouble; but this is not possible in the rare cases of self-powered rotary guns. Rotary designs are intrinsically comparatively bulky and expensive and are therefore generally used with large rounds, 20 mm in diameter or more, often referred to as Rotary cannon – though

869-443: A full-power rifle cartridge from a closed bolt are called automatic rifles or battle rifles , while rifles that fire an intermediate cartridge are called assault rifles . Assault rifles are a compromise between the size and weight of a pistol-caliber submachine gun and a full-size battle rifle, firing intermediate cartridges and allowing semi-automatic and burst or full-automatic fire options (selective fire), sometimes with both of

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948-424: A given amount of heat, while at the same time they are also much better at shedding the excess, as the extra barrels provide a larger surface area from which to dissipate the unwanted thermal energy. In addition to that, they are in the nature of the design spun at very high speed during rapid fire, which has the benefit of producing enhanced air-cooling as a side-effect. In weapons where the round seats and fires at

1027-462: A halt, and the container found its way into the freight sector, which required a completely new type of ship with the container ship . In 1972 all liner services were discontinued and they were replaced by global container services. In 1977 the French Government proceeded with merging its two state-controlled shipping lines, i.e. Compagnie générale transatlantique and Messageries Maritimes, into

1106-563: A machine capable of firing 600 balls in a few minutes. In 1720, a French inventor called Philippe Vayringe invented a small cannon that could fire 16 shots in succession, which he demonstrated before the Duke of Lorraine. In 1737, it was mentioned that Jacob de Weinholtz, a Dane who was serving in the Portuguese army, had invented a cannon capable of firing 20 to 30 shots a minute though requiring 15 people to work it. The cannons were brought along with

1185-494: A machine gun is designed to continue firing for as long as the trigger is held down. Nowadays, the term is restricted to relatively heavy crew-served weapons , able to provide continuous or frequent bursts of automatic fire for as long as ammunition feeding is replete. Machine guns are used against infantry , low-flying aircraft , small boats and lightly/un armored land vehicles , and can provide suppressive fire (either directly or indirectly ) or enforce area denial over

1264-549: A minute of use. Because they become very hot, the great majority of designs fire from an open bolt , to permit air cooling from the breech between bursts. They also usually have either a barrel cooling system, slow-heating heavyweight barrel, or removable barrels which allow a hot barrel to be replaced. Although subdivided into " light ", " medium ", " heavy " or " general-purpose ", even the lightest machine guns tend to be substantially larger and heavier than standard infantry arms. Medium and heavy machine guns are either mounted on

1343-496: A minute though the rate of fire was limited by the overheating of the barrel. In 1819, an American inventor from Baltimore designed a gun with 11 barrels that could fire 12 times in a minute for a total rate of fire of 132 shots a minute. In 1821, a muzzle-loading repeating cannon capable of firing 30 shots in 6 minutes or 5 shots per minute was demonstrated in England by the French-American "Fire King" Ivan Ivanitz Chabert. It

1422-793: A minute was invented by James Allis and presented to the Royal Society of England. In 1750, in Denmark, a Prussian known as Captain Steuben of the Train of Artillery invented a breech-loading cannon worked by 4 people and fed by paper cartridges capable of firing 24 times in a minute and demonstrated it to the King of Denmark along with some other high-ranking officials in the same year. In 1764, Frenchman Ange Goudar wrote in his work The Chinese Spy that he had assisted in Paris in

1501-415: A multi-shot weapon by a Palmer during this period appear to be referring to a somewhat more common Kalthoff repeater or Lorenzoni-system gun . Despite this, there is a reference in 1663 to at least the concept of a genuine automatic gun that was presented to Prince Rupert , though its type and method of operation are unknown. In 1708, it was reported from Constantinople that a French officer had invented

1580-658: A number of rapid-firing weapons appeared which offered multi-shot fire, mostly volley guns. Volley guns (such as the Mitrailleuse ) and double-barreled pistols relied on duplicating all parts of the gun, though the Nock gun used the otherwise-undesirable "chain fire" phenomenon (where multiple chambers are ignited at once) to propagate a spark from a single flintlock mechanism to multiple barrels. Pepperbox pistols also did away with needing multiple hammers but used multiple manually operated barrels. Revolvers further reduced this to only needing

1659-430: A pre-prepared cylinder and linked advancing the cylinder to cocking the hammer. However, these were still manually operated. In 1805, a British inventor from Northampton designed a cannon that would prime, load and fire itself 10 times a minute. In 1806, a Viennese copper engraver and mechanic known as Mr Putz invented a machine cannon that could load, fire and clean itself once every second or potentially up to 60 times

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1738-402: A reasonable rate of fire and reliability. In contrast to the rotary format, such weapons have a single barrel and a recoil-operated carriage holding a revolving chamber with typically five chambers. As each round is fired, electrically, the carriage moves back rotating the chamber which also ejects the spent case, indexes the next live round to be fired with the barrel and loads the next round into

1817-462: A reduced rate of fire. Some designs – such as the many variants of the MG42 – are capable of rates of fire in excess of 1,200 rounds per minute. Motorized Gatling guns can achieve the fastest firing rates of all, partly because this format involves extra energy being injected into the system from outside, instead of depending on energy derived from the propellant contained within the cartridges, partly because

1896-598: A sector of land with grazing fire . They are commonly mounted on fast attack vehicles such as technicals to provide heavy mobile firepower, armored vehicles such as tanks for engaging targets too small to justify the use of the primary weaponry or too fast to effectively engage with it, and on aircraft as defensive armament or for strafing ground targets, though on fighter aircraft true machine guns have mostly been supplanted by large-caliber rotary guns. Some machine guns have in practice sustained fire almost continuously for hours; other automatic weapons overheat after less than

1975-724: A single one named Compagnie générale maritime . Machine gun A machine gun ( MG ) is a fully automatic and rifled firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges . Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles ) are typically designed more for firing short bursts rather than continuous firepower and are not considered true machine guns. Submachine guns fire handgun cartridges rather than rifle cartridges, therefore they are not considered machine guns, while automatic firearms of 20 mm (0.79 in) caliber or more are classified as autocannons rather than machine guns. As

2054-506: A terrestrial carrier company, the Messageries nationales , to merge to create a shipping company, first called Messageries nationales , then Messageries impériales , and finally in 1871 the Compagnie des messageries maritimes . Two engineers, Henri Dupuy de Lôme and Armand Béhic joined the company, encouraging the purchase of the shipbuilding yards of La Ciotat in 1849. In the beginning

2133-414: A time when close. It was also claimed to be able to shoot 5 or 6 times before infantry came within musket range or cavalry within pistol range and with no more space between each shot than the time needed to prime a pistol, cock it and release the hammer as well as being nearly as manoeuvrable as cavalry. An alternative and heavier version was said to be able to throw grenades and it was also proposed to equip

2212-492: A tripod. The heavy machine gun is a term originating in World War I to describe heavyweight medium machine guns and persisted into World War II with Japanese Hotchkiss M1914 clones; today, however, it is used to refer to automatic weapons with a caliber of at least 12.7 mm (0.5 in), but less than 20 mm (0.8 in). A general-purpose machine gun is usually a lightweight medium machine gun that can either be used with

2291-436: A very light cannon that could fire from a single barrel 30 shots in 2 and a half minutes for a total rate of fire of 12 shots a minute. In 1711, a French lawyer called Barbuot presented to the parliament of Dijon a crank-operated 'war machine' made up of 10 carbine barrels and loaded via a 'drum' capable of firing in vollies. It was said to be accurate at 400 to 500 paces and to strike with enough force to pierce 2 or 3 men at

2370-559: Is a revolving arquebus , produced by Hans Stopler of Nuremberg in 1597. True repeating long arms were difficult to manufacture prior to the development of the unitary firearm cartridge; nevertheless, lever-action repeating rifles such as the Kalthoff repeater and Cookson repeater were made in small quantities in the 17th century. Perhaps the earliest examples of predecessors to the modern machine gun are to be found in East Asia. According to

2449-888: Is locked into the chamber. Almost all machine guns have a "safety" sear, which simply keeps the trigger from engaging. The first successful machine-gun designs were developed in the mid-19th century. The key characteristic of modern machine guns, their relatively high rate of fire and more importantly mechanical loading, first appeared in the Model 1862 Gatling gun , which was adopted by the United States Navy . These weapons were still powered by hand; however, this changed with Hiram Maxim 's idea of harnessing recoil energy to power reloading in his Maxim machine gun . Dr. Gatling also experimented with electric-motor-powered models; as discussed above, this externally powered machine reloading has seen use in modern weapons as well. While technical use of

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2528-619: Is required. Early machine guns were often water-cooled and while this technology was very effective, (and was indeed one of the sources of the notorious efficiency of machine guns during the First World War ), the water jackets also added considerable weight to an already bulky design; they were also vulnerable to the enemies' bullets themselves. Armour could be provided, and in WW I the Germans in particular often did this; but this added yet more weight to

2607-543: Is the recoil actuated type, which uses the gun's recoil energy for the same purpose. Machine guns, such as the M2 Browning and MG42 , are of this second kind. A cam, lever or actuator absorbs part of the energy of the recoil to operate the gun mechanism. An externally actuated weapon uses an external power source, such as an electric motor or hand crank, to move its mechanism through the firing sequence. Modern weapons of this type are often referred to as Gatling guns , after

2686-674: The Burma Railway . 300 of these POWs were sent to Fukuoka Camp 6 in Orio , 350 POWs were sent to Fukuoka Camp 21 in Nakama , 100 Dutch POWs were sent to Fukuoka Camp 9 Miyata , and 250, including 150 Australian POWs, were assigned to work in Mitsui coal mines at PW Fukuoka Camp 17 in Ōmuta . On 10 August 1944 Teia Maru left Imari Bay carrying 5,478 soldiers and civilians. Most of her military passengers were Imperial Japanese Army Air Service personnel. She

2765-613: The Gulf of Aden with the loss of 54 lives. The ship was named after Georges Philippar the CEO of the company. During the Second World War, most of the company's fleet were laid up in port, but as the war continues most of the ships were sank or Commission by other navy which had been split between the Allies and Vichy France . and by 1945 the decimated the fleet only 21 ships were left. The Far East

2844-456: The Nordenfelt gun . The first known ancestors of multi-shot weapons were medieval organ guns . An early example of an attempt at the mechanisation of one of these would be an 'engine of war' produced in the mid-1570s in England capable of firing from 160 to 320 shots 4, 8, 12 or 24 bullets at a time at a rate of fire up to roughly 3 times the rate of fire of the typical arquebusier of the day. It

2923-569: The South China Sea . On 22 June 1940 France capitulated to Germany and Italy . On 1 August 1940 Aramis returned to Saigon and was disarmed and returned to her owners. In January 1942 became a barracks ship in Saigon. On 12 April 1942, Japan seized Aramis under angary . On 2 June her French crew was disembarked. Officially, Japan chartered Aramis and ten other Vichy French . Japan paid MM 168,346 yen per month for Aramis . On 2 June she

3002-667: The neutral Swedish Gripsholm arrived carrying 1,340 Japanese officials and businessmen and their families. They were exchanged for 1,270 US citizens, 120 Canadians, and 15 Chileans, plus as UK citizens, Panamanians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Cubans, Argentinians, and nationals from other Latin American countries. 48,670 Red Cross parcels for interned Allied civilians were transferred from Gripsholm to Teia Maru for Allied prisoners of war and interned civilians in Singapore, Manila and Japan. Teia Maru left Mormugao on 21 October and returned

3081-589: The 1950s for routes across Europe and Africa to areas containing commercial or cultural interests for France's citizens. In the South Atlantic, the Brazil line went as far as Montevideo and Buenos Aires . Less important, and less known, its home port initially was Bordeaux , before it became Hamburg in its latter years. By the 1960s and 70s, as air travel became more popular, many companies’ passenger services, like those of Messageries Maritimes, were brought to

3160-728: The Company operated on routes to the Middle East . Its ships were used as troopships during the Crimean War , and were so helpful for the army that the Emperor gave the company the right to operate on the Bordeaux – Brazil route as thanks. This was the first French transatlantic line equipped with steamers. The following year, the Société générale maritime (future Compagnie générale transatlantique ) received

3239-588: The French establishments in India . At Pondicherry the small harbour necessitated the use of ship's tenders . In 1912, the company lost its exclusive right to carry French mail on South American routes to Compagnie de Navigation Sud-Atlantique . During the First World War, the company lost a large part of its fleet, as did most of the shipping companies of the Entente powers. After the war, an extensive new building programme

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3318-623: The North Atlantic knew the ships with the typical double funnel, which worked the route London – Dunkirk – Le Havre – Marseille. In the Middle East, the ports of call were Malta , Alexandria , Port Said , Beirut , Syria , Smyrna , Constantinople , and the Black Sea . In the Indian Ocean , the line served Mahé, Seychelles , La Réunion , Mauritius , Zanzibar and Madagascar as well as

3397-798: The North Atlantic lines. From 1871 to 1914 the company saw its golden age. This was the period of French colonial expansion and of interventionism in the Middle and Far East . The Marseille liners continuously served in the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, then the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the China Sea and finally the Pacific Ocean. In the west, the South Atlantic line filled out. Ships of this line were some of

3476-658: The Wu-Pei-Chih, a booklet examining Chinese military equipment produced during the first quarter of the 17th century, the Chinese army had in its arsenal the 'Po-Tzu Lien-Chu-P'ao' or 'string-of-100-bullets cannon'. This was a repeating cannon fed by a hopper containing balls which fired its charges sequentially. The way it worked was similar to the Perkins steam gun of 1824 or the Beningfield electrolysis gun of 1845 only slow-burning gunpowder

3555-461: The basis of size; those using shotgun cartridges are almost always referred to as automatic shotguns . The term personal defense weapon (PDW) is sometimes applied to weapons firing dedicated armor-piercing rounds which would otherwise be regarded as machine pistols or SMGs, but it is not particularly strongly defined and has historically been used to describe a range of weapons from ordinary SMGs to compact assault rifles. Selective-fire rifles firing

3634-406: The chamber. The action is very similar to that of the revolver pistols common in the 19th and 20th centuries, giving this type of weapon its name. A Chain gun is a specific, patented type of Revolver cannon, the name, in this case, deriving from its driving mechanism. As noted above, firing a machine gun for prolonged periods produces large amounts of heat. In a worst-case scenario, this may cause

3713-538: The county of Westmoreland. In 1777, Philadelphia gunsmith Joseph Belton offered the Continental Congress a "new improved gun" , which was capable of firing up to twenty shots in five seconds; unlike older repeaters using complex lever-action mechanisms, it used a simpler system of superposed loads , and was loaded with a single large paper cartridge . Congress requested that Belton modify 100 flintlock muskets to fire eight shots in this manner, but rescinded

3792-519: The fire into the target, and direct the fire of other soldiers . Many heavy machine guns , such as the Browning M2 .50 BMG machine gun, are accurate enough to engage targets at great distances. During the Vietnam War , Carlos Hathcock set the record for a long-distance shot at 7,382 ft (2,250 m) with a .50 caliber heavy machine gun he had equipped with a telescopic sight . This led to

3871-603: The first large vessels to be fitted with the new water-tube boilers , specifically the large-tube Belleville boiler . Their performance was of such interest to the British Royal Navy that the Jerseyman Edouard Gaudin, who could pass for French, was sent to investigate their use. His report was an influence on their fitment to new ships, the Powerful -class cruisers HMS  Powerful & Terrible . Even

3950-568: The guns. Air-cooled machine guns often feature quick-change barrels (often carried by a crew member), passive cooling fins, or in some designs forced-air cooling, such as that employed by the Lewis Gun . Advances in metallurgy and the use of special composites in barrel liners have allowed for greater heat absorption and dissipation during firing. The higher the rate of fire, the more often barrels must be changed and allowed to cool. To minimize this, most air-cooled guns are fired only in short bursts or at

4029-507: The introduction of .50 caliber anti-materiel sniper rifles , such as the Barrett M82 . Other automatic weapons are subdivided into several categories based on the size of the bullet used, whether the cartridge is fired from a closed bolt or an open bolt , and whether the action used is locked or is some form of blowback . Fully automatic firearms using pistol-caliber ammunition are called machine pistols or submachine guns largely on

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4108-591: The inventions mentioned in the book, it is uncertain if it was ever built. It is sometimes claimed (i.e. in George Morgan Chinn's the Machine Gun ) that in 1663 the first mention of the automatic principle of machine guns was in a paper presented to the Royal Society of England by Palmer, an Englishman who described a volley gun capable of being operated by either recoil or gas. However, no one has been able to find this paper in recent times and all references to

4187-524: The latter presents. Many machine guns are of the locked breech type, and follow this cycle: The operation is basically the same for all locked breech automatic firearms, regardless of the means of activating these mechanisms. There are also multi-chambered formats, such as revolver cannon , and some types, such as the Schwarzlose machine gun etc., that do not lock the breech but instead use some type of delayed blowback . Most modern machine guns are of

4266-461: The locking type, and of these, most utilize the principle of gas-operated reloading , which taps off some of the propellant gas from the fired cartridge, using its mechanical pressure to unlock the bolt and cycle the action. The first of these was invented by the French brothers Claire, who patented a gas operated rifle, which included a gas cylinder, in 1892. The Russian PK machine gun is a more modern example. Another efficient and widely used format

4345-438: The machine with a bellows for clearing smoke that built up during firing. Another early revolving gun was created by James Puckle , a London lawyer, who patented what he called "The Puckle Gun " on May 15, 1718. It was a design for a manually operated 1.25 in. (32 mm) caliber, flintlock cannon with a revolver cylinder able to fire 6–11 rounds before reloading by swapping out the cylinder, intended for use on ships . It

4424-430: The next round can be inserted simultaneously with or before the ejection of the previous cartridge case, and partly because this design intrinsically deals with the unwanted heat very efficiently – effectively quick-changing the barrel and chamber after every shot. The multiple guns that comprise a Gatling being a much larger bulk of metal than other, single-barreled guns, they are thus much slower to rise in temperature for

4503-413: The order when Belton's price proved too high. In 1779, a machine made up of 21 musket barrels worked by 3 men was produced by a British inventor called William Wilson Wright which he claimed could be fired 3 times quicker than a single man could load and fire a musket 3 times. In 1788, a Swiss soldier invented a machine worked by 10 men capable of discharging 300 balls in 3 minutes. Also in 1788, it

4582-413: The original inventor (not only of the well-known hand-cranked 19th century proto-machine gun, but also of the first electrically powered version). They have several barrels each with an associated chamber and action on a rotating carousel and a system of cams that load, cock, and fire each mechanism progressively as it rotates through the sequence; essentially each barrel is a separate bolt-action rifle using

4661-408: The proofing of a 'great gun' capable of firing 60 times in a minute. In 1773, another cannon capable of firing 23 or 24 times in a minute and cleaning itself after every shot was invented by Thomas Desaguliers . In 1775, it was mentioned that in England two large cannons invented by an unidentified matross at Woolwich had achieved a rate of fire of 59 shots in 59 and a half seconds. Also in 1775,

4740-683: The repatriated Japanese to Yokohama on 14 November. On 1 January 1944 the Japanese Navy requisitioned Teia Maru again, this time as a troop ship. She sailed to Singapore with convoy Hi-41 in February 1944, and returned to Japan with convoy Hi-48 in March. She sailed again to Singapore with convoy Hi-63 in May 1944, and returned to Japan in June carrying about 1,000 Australian, British, Dutch, and other PoWs who had worked on

4819-521: The rifle-calibre Minigun is an exception to this. Whereas such weapons are highly reliable and formidably effective, one drawback is that the weight and size of the power source and driving mechanism makes them usually impractical for use outside of a vehicle or aircraft mount. Revolver cannons , such as the Mauser MK 213 , were developed in World War II by the Germans to provide high-caliber cannons with

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4898-406: The same time, mechanical timing is essential for operator safety, to prevent the round from firing before it is seated properly. Machine guns are controlled by one or more mechanical sears. When a sear is in place, it effectively stops the bolt at some point in its range of motion. Some sears stop the bolt when it is locked to the rear. Other sears stop the firing pin from going forward after the round

4977-538: The term "machine gun" has varied, the modern definition used by the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute of America is "a fully automatic firearm that loads, fires and ejects continuously when the trigger is held to the rear until the ammunition is exhausted or pressure on the trigger is released." This definition excludes most early manually operated repeating arms the Gatling gun and such as volley guns like

5056-488: The usual 19th- and early 20th-century de luxe styles. In this case the designers went on a research trip to Crete . The "Neo-Aegean" design, based on Sir Arthur Evans ' reconstructions at Knossos mixed with Art Deco, received much publicity. Tours of the ship were arranged at ports she visited on her maiden voyage. The ship had twin screws , each driven by a French-built Sulzer ten-cylinder single-acting two-stroke diesel engine . The combined power of her twin engines

5135-488: Was 543.5 ft (165.7 m), her beam was 69.6 ft (21.2 m)and her depth was 33.6 ft (10.2 m). Her tonnages were 17,357  GRT and 9,990  NRT . She had berths for 196 passengers in first class , 110 in second class, 60 in third class, and 1,183 to 1,402 "rationnaires". The ship's Minoan décor was part of a programme by MM's President, Georges Philippar , to give MM's ships unusual revivalist décors from various ancient cultures, to get away from

5214-662: Was also claimed that the gun could be reloaded 'as often as you like' and fired no matter the weather though the English government never adopted the weapon despite testing being carried out at the Tower of London . The first firearms to have the ability to fire multiple shots from a single barrel without a full manual reload were revolvers made in Europe in the late 1500s. One is a shoulder-gun-length weapon made in Nuremberg, Germany, circa 1580. Another

5293-932: Was decommissioned. In 1942 Japan seized her under angary and renamed her Teia Maru ( 帝亜丸 ) . She was a repatriation ship in 1943 and a troop ship in 1944, until a United States Navy submarine sank her. About 2,665 of her passengers and crew were killed. Between 1929 and 1932 Messageries Maritimes (MM) had three new ocean liners built for its routes between France and the Far East. Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire in Saint-Nazaire launched Félix Roussel in 1929 and Georges Philippar in 1930. The Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée in La Seyne-sur-Mer launched Aramis on 30 June 1931 and completed her in October 1932. Aramis ' registered length

5372-408: Was one of several ships torpedoed that night. She sank at position 18°16′N 120°21′E  /  18.267°N 120.350°E  / 18.267; 120.350 , killing 2,665 of her passengers and crew. [REDACTED] Media related to Teia Maru at Wikimedia Commons Messageries Maritimes In 1851 a ship owner from Marseille , Albert Rostand, proposed to Ernest Simons, director of

5451-455: Was one of the earliest weapons to be referred to as a machine gun, being called such in 1722, though its operation does not match the modern usage of the term. According to Puckle, it was able to fire round bullets at Christians and square bullets at Turks . However, it was a commercial failure and was not adopted or produced in any meaningful quantity. In 1729, a report was written in France on

5530-575: Was part of convoy Hi-71 carrying Operation Shō reinforcements to the Philippines. On 17 August the convoy entered the South China Sea from Mako naval base in the Pescadores . USS  Redfish discovered the convoy that evening, and assembled USS  Rasher , Bluefish and Spadefish for a radar -assisted wolfpack attack in typhoon conditions on the night of 18–19 August. Teia Maru

5609-503: Was rated at 2,490 NHP or 11,000  shp (8,200 kW), and gave her a speed of 16 knots (30 km/h). MM registered Aramis at Marseille . Her code letters were ORNA. On 21 October 1932 Aramis left Marseille on her maiden voyage to Kobe via the Suez Canal . She called at Port Said , Djibouti , Colombo , Penang , Singapore , Saigon , Hong Kong and Shanghai . On 22 June 1933 Aramis ran aground on Zhoushan . She

5688-538: Was refloated, and the French cruiser  Primauguet towed her to Japan. In 1934 the call sign FOBP superseded her code letters. In 1935–36 Aramis ' engines were supercharged . This increased her power to 15,600  shp (11,600 kW) and her speed to 19 knots (35 km/h). At the same time, Chantier naval de La Ciotat built her a new bow, which lengthened her by 30 feet (9 m). On 4 September 1939, work to convert Aramis into an armed merchant cruiser

5767-967: Was renamed Teia Maru . Mitsubishi Heavy Industries at Yokohama dry docked her from 5 July until 19 November. On 20 November 1942 the Imperial Japanese Navy requisitioned Teia Maru . From September 1943 she made voyages exchanging interned civilians with the Allies . On 14 September she left Yokohama on the second Japanese–US exchange voyage. She carried 80 US repatriates from Japan. She embarked about 975 repatriates at Shanghai on 19 September, 24 at Hong Kong on 23 September, 130 at San Fernando, Philippines on 26 September, 27 at Saigon on 30 September, and others at Singapore on 5 October. She reached Mormugao in Portuguese India , on 15 October 1943 carrying 1,525 priests, nuns, Protestant missionaries , and businessmen with their families who had been stranded in areas captured by Japan. On 19 October,

5846-413: Was reported that a Prussian officer had invented a gun capable of firing 400 balls one after the other. In 1790, a former officer in the French military known as Joseph-François-Louis Grobert invented a 'ballistic machine' or 'pyroballistic machine' with multiple barrels operated by 4 men and a continuous rotational movement capable of firing 360 rifle shots a minute in a variety of calibers. In 1792,

5925-477: Was started in Saigon. She was armed with eight 138 mm (5.4 in) guns, two 75 mm (3.0 in) anti-aircraft guns, two 37 mm (1.5 in) anti-aircraft guns, and eight machine guns . On 20 January 1940 she left Saigon, and in February she reached Hong Kong, where she was dry docked . On 1 March she left dry dock, and was commissioned into the French Navy as auxiliary cruiser X-1 . She patrolled

6004-535: Was started. The ship that were loss in the war were replaced by larger and more luxurious liners and the newly opened Panama Canal was added to the route network at the beginning of the 1920s. During this time, Georges Philippar was President of Messageries Maritimes. He was a great admirer of Alexandre Dumas and made sure that on every ship on the line there was something reminiscent of the writer; four ships were named after The Three Musketeers . In 1932, Georges Philippar caught fire on her maiden voyage and sank in

6083-496: Was the private field of the company. Cambodge was the first of three new liners that modernised MM's Far East route in the 1950s. Saigon was rapidly becoming the second home port of the company. The "stationnaires" , ships of small tonnage, afforded to the local lines departed from there. They went to Hanoi , Yokohama , Hong Kong , Shanghai , Australia and New Caledonia . They had the largest fleet of ships under one flag, with nine combination passenger/cargo liners built in

6162-556: Was used as the propelling force in place of steam or the gases produced by electrolysis. Another repeating gun was produced by a Chinese commoner, Dai Zi, in the late 17th century. This weapon was also hopper-fed and never went into mass production. In 1655, a way of loading, aiming and shooting up to 6 wall muskets 60 times in a minute for a total rate of fire of 360 shots per minute was mentioned in The Century of Inventions by Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester , though, like all

6241-420: Was worked by a "wheel" fed by paper cartridges from a store attached to the cannon and ignited using a match from a match-holder somewhere else on the cannon. In 1825 an Italian book attempting to catalogue all topographic features of all known countries on Earth mentioned that in France there were 'mechanical rifles' used to defend warehouses that were capable of firing 120 shots without reloading. In 1828,

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