148 



NATURE 



\_Dec. 15. 1887 



Crouch was engaged had for its object to connect a 

 number of settlements on the West Coast of Africa from 

 Bathurst to St. Paul de Loanda, and belonging to the 

 British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Although it 

 is fixed beforehand what places are to be connected, it is 

 only when the ship arrives on the ground that the exact 

 place of landing, the amount of assistance to be got from 

 the shore, and a host of matters of minute local detail, but 

 of great importance, can be settled, and to do so satisfac- 

 torily, expeditiously, and without friction, requires qualities 

 of a very high order in the chief of the expedition. How 

 difficulties were overcome, dangers met, and accidents 

 repaired, in the course of the laying of one portion of the 

 West African Company's cables is told in a pleasant and 

 readable way in " On a Surf-bound Coast." Mr. Crouch 

 carries his descriptions only as far as Cutanu, a French 

 settlement lying between Accra and Lagos. From this 

 place the cable was taken to the Portuguese islands St. 

 Thome and Principe, the French settlement on the 

 Gaboon, and the Portuguese town St. Paul de Loanda ; 

 but this part of the expedition is reserved for description 

 in a possible future volume. 



The narrative begins with the start of the s.s. Thracia 

 and her consort the Pioneer from the Thames, under the 

 chief command of Mr. White. The names of persons 

 and ships are purposely altered. The work really begins 

 with their arrival at Bathurst, the chief British settlement 

 in the Gambia district. In the previous year the cable 

 had been laid as far south as the French settlement 

 Conakry, about 70 miles north of Sierra Leone ; and out- 

 side of Bathurst the cable, coming from the Cape Verde 

 island of St. Jago, had been joined to it, forming a T 

 piece. Their first job was to cut out this piece, 

 and run the three ends, leading respectively northwards 

 to Dakar, westwards to St. Jago, and southwards to 

 Conakry, into Bathurst. This affords the author an 

 opportunity of describing the operations of " picking up '' 

 in shallow water, also of laying shore ends in protected 

 water, and of splicing cables. In this Mr. Crouch acquits 

 himself fairly well ; indeed, it is very difficult to make 

 intricate mechanical operations of the kind quite intel- 

 ligible to the uninformed without the use of drawings. 

 In the course of these operations the two ships each passed 

 , a portion of their time on the sand-banks, which are here 

 plentiful and almost completely unsurveyed. 



The next piece of work was connecting the French 

 settlement Conakry with Sierra Leone. Here, again, 

 there was no dearth of incident, as the Pioneer, in land- 

 ing the shore end, went on a rocky patch, and was with 

 difficulty got off. During the laying the cable got round 

 the propeller, and might have caused great delay but for 

 Ihe promptitude and courage of Mr. White, who, without 

 hesitation, went overboard and dived straight down to 

 the propeller, and on coming up ordered "three half 

 turns more in the same direction," when the cable came 

 free. There are many other instances scattered through 

 the book of the resource, energy, and perseverance required 

 for success in this kind of work. 



The Pioneer was obliged to return home, and the 

 Thracia left Sierra Leone alone and proceeded round the 

 coast, landing shore ends at Grand Bassam, Accra, and 

 Cutanu or Appi. The company's larger steamer, the 

 Copperfield, meanwhile came out with the bulk of the 



cable, and connected these shore ends. Mr. Crouch was 

 transferred to the Copperjteld, and assisted at the laying 

 of a portion of these cables, and he was landed at Accra, 

 along with two other members of the staff, to attend that 

 end of the cable, which, for the time being, had a blind 

 end buoyed out at sea. It was the duty of these gentle- 

 men to watch night and day the spot of light on the scale 

 of the galvanometer, so as to be ready to answer when- 

 ever the ship picked up the end and " called " them. The 

 fatigue and monotony of this weary work of waiting and 

 watching is well described. There are also interesting de- 

 scriptions of Accra and its inhabitants. Indeed, the latter 

 half of the book is by far the more interesting ; there is 

 more business in it and less of the jokes and chaff of the 

 quarter-deck, which, though useful and even amusing at 

 the time, seldom possess sufficient permanent value to 

 justify their being printed at any length. 



The book, taking it all round, is a useful and entertain- 

 ing one, and as a first attempt is altogether creditable and 

 full of promise. In any future work the author should 

 not be afraid of tiring the reader by careful and detailed 

 description of any operation of interest on which he may 

 be engaged. Outside of those directly connected with 

 the business or the profession, the general reader knows 

 nothing of the methods of laying and working submarine 

 cables. J. Y. B. 



TEXT-BOOK OF GUNNERY. 



Text-book of Gunnery, 1887. By Major G. Mackinlay, 

 R.A. (London: Printed for Her Majesty's Stationery 

 Office by Harrison and Sons, 1887.) 



TO realize the great alterations which have taken place 

 in artillery in the last twenty years it will be neces- 

 sary to compare the present work with the corresponding 

 "Treatise on Artillery" of 1866, prepared for the use of 

 the Practical Class, Royal Military Academy, in which 

 there is no mention of rifled artillery, iron armour, or 

 electro-ballistic apparatus, and the Practical Class were 

 expected to go forth fully equipped to compete with any 

 foreign enemy with the smooth-bore gun, the spherical 

 projectile, the formulae for penetration into earth, and 

 such information on velocity and resistance as the ballistic 

 pendulum could afford. If twenty years can make such 

 alterations in the science of artillery, imagination attempts 

 to penetrate the future and to gather some information as 

 to the view in which the present treatise of 1887 will 

 then be held. 



Official treatises, however, must not be criticized 

 according to the irreverent sceptical rules of modern 

 scientific inquiry. The authors are prevented by military 

 discipline from expressing any opinion on the merits of 

 the weapons they describe, even when of an experimental 

 nature. Thus the Armstrong rifled gun had been in 

 serviceable use for seven or eight years, and Mr. Bashforth 

 had been experimenting with his chronograph on elongated 

 projectiles and the resistance of the air to their flight for 

 nearly two years, before the appearance of the 1866 edition 

 of the " Treatise on Artillery" ; and, coming to the present 

 edition, we find little or no mention of such important 

 matters as steel shields for the protection of the gunners 

 in the field against bullets {i.nde reports on the Boer War), 



