ROC ( 759 ) ROC
noise similar to that of a broken-winded one, and who is generally acrib-biter.
ROBBER, one that plunders by force,or steals by secret means.
Public- Robber, one who betrays thetrust reposed in him, either in a mili-tary or civil capacity, and enricheshimself unlawfully, at the expense of-the nation. This term is intrinsicallythe same as public defaulter. A puhlicrobber is the more infamous, because henot only betrays his trust, hut pilfersfrom the hard earned pittance of everyindividual in the nation. The commonhighwayman is less criminal.
ROBINET, an ancient machine ofwar, which, like the Mute-griffon, threwboth stones and darts.
ROC, Fr. a rock.
Roc de lance, Fr. in tournaments;the wooden part of a lance is so called.
ROCAILLE , Fr. a term of orna-mental architecture, signifying the col-lection of shells, pebbles, and petrifac-tions, See. which are used in grottos.
110CHE, Fr. By this word theFrench mean the hardest and the mostdifficult stone to be cut that is found.Such as flint, and other stones that canbe broken into scales.
Roche a feu, Fr. a solid composition,which gradually consumed when it hasbeen lighted, but which emits a verybroad and lively flame, and is not ex-tinguished by water.
ROCHE vive, Fr. such a rock asis all of stone, without any bed or mix-ture of earth.
ROCIIER, Fr. a large rock; de-rived from roc, and generally bearingthe same import.
ROCK, (roc, Fr.) stone which is ex-tremely hard, and is difficult to beworked, the broken pieces of which areused to throw at the foot of a jetty, inorder to strengthen it against the vio-lence of the waves. This species ofstone does not decay by being exposedeither to air or water.
The Rock, a term familiarly usedamong military men, to signify theRock of Gibraltar.
ROCKET as used in India . SeeFougette.
ROCKETS. See Laboratory.
Signal Rockets are seldom morethan one pound weight. They are usedin the navy for signals, and are firedperpendicularly.
Indian Rockets are used by thenative troops in India . These rocketsare made of iron, and are lashed to abamboo cane. The weight is seldommore than two pounds, or less than one.They were used with very destructiveeffect against the British during thesiege of Seringapatain in 1799. SeeFougette.
Congreve ’s Rockets , so called fromthe name of the inventor, are of a pe-culiar internal structure and composi-tion, by which the action of this prin-ciple of projectile force is so greatlyincreased, as not only to triple theflight of small rockets so formed, butalso to allow of the construction ofrockets of such dimensions as, on theordinary principles of combination,'would not even rise from the ground,and of such powers of flight and bur-then as have hitherto been consideredaltogether impracticable.
On the basis of this increase of power,Mr.Congreve has succeeded in makingwar rockets for various naval andmilitary purposes, and of various de-scriptions and calibres, either for ex-plosion or conflagration, and armedboth with shells and case-shot; the 32pr. rocket carcass, which is the naturehitherto chiefly used for bombardment,will range 3000 yards with the samequantity of combustible matter as thatcontained in the 10 inch spherical car-cass, and 2500 yards with the samequantity as that of the 13 inch spheri-cal carcass. The 12 pr. rocket caseshot, which is so portable that it maybe used with the facility of musketry,has a range nearly double that of fieldartillery, carrying as many bullets as the6 pr.”spherical case: and here it oughtto be observed, that the projectile forceof the rocketis peculiarly well calculatedfor the conveyance of case shot to greatdistances, because as it proceeds itsvelocity is accelerated instead of beingretarded, as happens with every otherprojectile, while the average velocityof the shell is greater than that of therocket only in the ratio of 9 to 8; in-dependent of which, the case shotconveyed by the rocket admits of anydesired increase of velocity in its rangeby the bursting powder, which cannotbe obtained in any other description ofcase.
Of this description of rocket caseshot, one hundred infantry soldiers will
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