fluid should press the valve tighter. Now Sir William Armstrong's breech-loader is on a diametrically opposite system; nothing there confines the gas but the actual amount of labour expended in the screwing up of the breech. If the gas is stronger than the man, aided by the screw, the gas will escape"... Captain Blakely to the Select Committee on Ordnance. As these limitations were imposed by the current Armstrong breechloading design, and as no other suitable breechloading mechanism was available, production of the 110-pounder was discontinued in 1864 and Britain reverted to muzzle-loading heavy guns. The remaining guns were moved to the role of fortress artillery where they remained in post for much of the Victorian era. The abandonment of the Armstrong breech-loading design led Britain to begin a major program of building rifled muzzle-loaders to equip its fleet. The Armstrong 110-pound gun was succeeded by various RML 7 and 8-inch guns. 7-inch Armstrong breech-loaders under construction at the time of cancellation were completed as RML 64-pounder muzzle-loaders. However, the gun construction method developed by Armstrong for breech-loaders, of a wrought-iron "A" tube surrounded by wrought-iron coils, was considered sound and was retained for the first generation of new rifled muzzle-loaders in the mid-1860s. When Britain returned to breech-loaders in 1880 it used the Elswick cup and the French De Bange obturation systems, both of which used the power of the gun's firing to achieve obturation rather than manual labour. Use in action The gun was used extensively by Royal Navy ships against land fortifications in the Bombardment of Kagoshima and Bombardment of Shimonoseki in 1863 and 1864. We have two descriptions of the same incident aboard HMS Euryalus at the Bombardment of Kagoshima in August 1863: "We had on our main-deck 32-pr. 56 cwt. muzzle-loaders; and they, of course, gave no trouble... in the forecastle we had a 7-in. B.L. 110-pr. Armstrong. Whether the men in the heat of the action became hurried I cannot say; but certain it is that the breech piece of this gun blew out with tremendous effect, the concussion knocking down the whole gun's crew, and apparently paralysing the men, until Webster, captain of the forecastle and of the gun, roused them by shouting: 'Well; is there ere a b----- of you will go and get the spare vent piece?'" -- Letter from an officer of HMS Euryalus to historian William Laird Clowes many