172 , Major-General Sir Howard Douglas 



niy, or comes practically to this, — a meliej in which Mr Clerk asserts, that, 

 without sacrificing the activity, or compromising the safety, of any of his own 

 sliips, by running foul of the enemy's vessels, he must disable and detain 

 them and their followers, but not his own, and so cripple the enemy's ships 

 and ruin their fleet. Truly there is no science in this. Such a mode of 

 fighting would be going back to the times of the ancients. Skirmishing with 

 three decked ships as if they were galleys ! Totally unqualified in practical 

 knowledge, either of gunnery or seamanship, to treat this matter rightly, it 

 is not surprising that Mr Clerk should have formed some strange and erro- 

 neous notions on the service, practice, capabilities, and comparative effects, of 

 naval ordnance. So far was that commentator from having taught the Bri- 

 tish navy how to know and use their force, properly considered, he was so 

 little skilled in what he undertook to explain and demonstrate, as to be in- 

 competent to detect the serious errors that were committed by sail as well as 

 by gun — ^in evolution and explication — in the very cases to which he refers. 



" Mr Clerk likewise enumerates, as one of his demonstrations, that when 

 the ships of a weather fleet are brought to at their position, the shot from the 

 lee fleet, by the lying along of its ships, will be thrown up in the air, and 

 have an effect at a much greater distance ; whereas the shot from the wind- 

 ward fleet, from the lying along of its ships, will be thrown into the water, and 

 the effect lost. This very extravagant conclusion, called a ' Demonstra- 

 tion,' appears to have been drawn from Admiral Byron's account of his en- 

 gagement of the 6th of July 1779-" 



Sir Howard Douglas then enters into an explanation of these 

 errors, and shews, as well he might, that they were attributable 

 to a total ignorance of naval gunnery. 



" Mr Clerk was in a great mistake in supposing that the French made it a 

 rule to throw the whole effect of their shot into the rigging of their enemy. 

 That practice was the effect of random errors in gunnery, just such as those 

 upon which Mr Clerk proceeds." 



Sir Howard Douglas, in page 75 of his Naval Evolutions, 



remarks : 



" It is entirely owing to the injudicious attempts of the Professor (Play- 

 fair), and the (well known though anonymous) reviewer (in the Edinburgh 

 Review), who have thought proper to urge Mr Clerk's performances out of 

 all place, by representing them as evincing a superior degree of learning and 

 skUl in nautical war, to any such qualifications possessed by those professional 

 men with whom Mr Clerk has been unwisely put in competition, and to the 

 disparaging tendencies of the pleadings and conclusions of the reviewer, in 

 particular, that these strictures on his client's work are owing. I may appeal 

 to former writings, to show that I have forborne to notice the m%nifold errors 

 and defects which are to be found in that work ; and I deny not ' that it is a 

 wonderful work for a landsman, who had never been at sea in his life, to have 

 written.' But, when the contents of this book are cited by his advocates, thus 

 to depreciate the skill of the eminent oflRcers concerned, and doctrine such as 

 the preceding is cried up as evidence of that superiority, I am obliged to 

 show cause against the j)retensions urged for the author as a learned teacher 



