iS4 Mounting of Naval Ordnance, 



and this has been the main cause of placing the equipment 

 of sea-service ordnance so far behind that of the land service. 

 No one afflicted with ill health vi^ould call in a doctor of 

 music to improve it ; he would naturally fly to the doctor of 

 medicine ; in like manner, if we wish to improve our naval 

 artillery, we must apply to naval artilleristSj arid not to la7id 

 ones. If the Admiralty wish naval artillery to improve in an 

 equal ratio with that of the land service, they must have a. 

 committee of the comparatively few amongst naval officers 

 who have studied a subject, hitherto, it must be confessed, 

 too little regarded, and, what is worse, generally returning 

 nothing to its cultivator but disappointment and chagrin, 

 fl*om coming in contact with those naturally incapable of ap« 

 predating his motives and ideas. 



We think that Commander Marshall has settled the lonjj 

 and vehement dispute regarding square and rounded sterns 

 very satisfactorily in a military point of view. As his gun-car- 

 riage enables the broadside guns to be pointed 45° or 50*^ abaft 

 the beam, and also the stern guns 45° or 50° from a fore-and- 

 aft-line, it immediately appears that a square-sterned ship can 

 produce a parallelism of fire between the broadside and stern 

 guns at the greatest traverse, and that whether the stern be 

 square or rounded, there is no point of impunity. It therefore 

 now becomes a question purely of naval construction, and naval 

 architects must decide which stern contributes most to the 

 sea-going qualities of ships. 



Persons who are acquainted with the method of applying 

 the force of artillery on land, are aware that this force is 

 always brought to bear on some one point. The focal fire 

 of a battery of only a few pieces of field artillery are terribly 

 destructive, and in siege batteries for breaching the walls of 

 a fortress the same principle is adopted, with similar effi- 

 ciency ; but, on board ship, with the present system of mount- 

 ing naval ordnance, in which the training is limited to an arc 

 of 70°, it is scarcely possible to effect anything like focal 

 tiring, excepting at such distances as to render it a matter of 

 no importance. We cannot forbear citing here the very just 

 remark of our author on this important particular, in which 

 his gun-carriage has so much the advantage over the com- 

 mon one. 



* Let, for instance, five well-directed broadsides, double shotted, 

 be all concentrated into any part of the enemy, which niay be 

 effected in five minutes by the new system, and there can be little 

 doubt but that much more decisive effects would be thus produced 

 on the fate of an action than the customary results of a first onset. 

 ^ ** These principles of combined and controlled effort might also 



