Two hundred and fifty years ago, a new artillery gun appeared in the service of the English navy: the carronade, unique by its high rate of fire and ability to conduct a dense fire. There was nothing similar in Russia at that time, so agents of Catherine II went to Scotland to persuade its inventor to work... for the benefit of a hostile state.
The decisive argument for engineer Charles Gascoigne, who was then director and co-owner of the largest cannon factories in Europe, was a fee. The conditions offered for his move to Russia, with its equipment and advanced technology, promised him freedom from large accounts payable debts. Under a perpetual contract, in addition to an annual salary at the current exchange rate of twenty-five million rubles, he would receive half the factory profit. Never before had such a large financial offer been made to a foreign national. But in this case, the stakes for Russia were several times more serious. At stake was the victory of the country in the wars with Turkey and Prussia, which was not possible without the modernization of industry and the rearmament of the army and the navy.
Up to the time of his departure, Gascoigne's fierce pursuers, among whom were English factory owners who believed that the engineer's move would deal them a serious financial blow, tried in every way to accuse him of high treason. Through the courts, they secured official permission to delay and read a competitor's mail, hoping thereby to make Charles' actions criminal in nature. The engineer's departure had been carefully planned by the Russian side and was under the personal control of Ambassador Count Vorontsov, so that the seized papers had an innocent and rather distracting character and did not discredit the emigrant in any way.
At the age of 47, the Scotsman left Great Britain for good, enlisting in the Russian service. In the same year he began work and started up one of the blast furnaces at the Alexander cannon foundry in Petrozavodsk, equipping it with new cylindrical Smiton furs, where he cast his first cast-iron cannon. The new design, in comparison with the wooden and box furs used earlier, allowed to increase the productivity of the furnaces almost six times and to improve the quality of iron. The fact is that the ore used at the plant had many harmful impurities, such as phosphorus and sulfur, which left voids in the iron during melting. By feeding air into the blast furnace at all times, the melting temperature increased - and unnecessary inclusions were burned out. In addition, Gascoigne suggested casting the cannons and boring the barrels, which immediately increased the accuracy and range of fire. The Alexandrovsky factory began to produce the best guns in Europe. As a result of innovations, the defect rate in production under Gascoigne was about 4%, which became one of the most important stages in the development of metallurgy.
Soon after this event, the Museum of the Mining School in St. Petersburg received a gift from Empress Catherine II for the model of that very improved furnace. The collections of Russia's first higher technical school were constantly replenished, as they are now, with advanced equipment for the training of future mining engineers. Today this exhibit is one of the oldest in the collection of the Mining Museum.
Charles Gascoigne worked for another 20 years for the benefit of Russian industry. Thanks to him new factories and types of armaments appeared in the country, and large deposits were discovered and explored. And even when he was dying, the engineer did not want to be buried in England, but rather willed that Petrozavodsk be his final resting place.
