OUTPOSTS FOR COAST DEFENCE. 
149 
vessels were out, as an aid to the identification of vessels passing. The 
system I have briefly sketched would ensure a certain number of guns 
being brought into action at very short notice; it provides for the 
transmission of warnings to interior forts, and for a look-out being 
kept, this would ensure notice of an approaching ship from the time 
she could be sighted from an outlying fort. The time for preparation 
this amount of notice would give, would be a varying quantity: 
depending on time of year, time of day, weather, position of fort and 
speed of ship. The interior forts would probably get ample warning 
from the forts below, but should not on that account dispense with 
their own look-out. At an outlying fort the officer on look-out, would 
have in the short time available from the ship being first sighted, to 
decide— 
(1) Whether it was friend or foe, 
(2) Whether to open fire, 
(3) How to attack, and— 
(4) He would have to acquaint his own B.C. and the F.C. 
As very often the time from the ship being seen from the fort would 
not be enough for all this, an additional advanced post, as it were, is 
necessary, and this is afforded by the examination anchorage, which 
would very likely be about 1000 to 3000 yards outside the outermost 
fort, or one of the outer forts. 
The examining officer would, in most cases, be able to inform the 
fort whether the ship was friend or foe before the officer on look-out 
could decide it for himself, and in the case of a foe, would signal the 
alarm when she crossed the examining line, which, in many cases, 
would be before she could be clearly seen from the fort, but this would 
not diminish the necessity for a look-out at the fort, as the examination 
anchorage might be evaded or rushed, or the examining officer deceived 
as to the character of the ship, so that the system of examining 
shipping may be said to be an assistance to the defence, but not to 
relieve it of responsibility. 
The duties of the officer on look-out should be very clearly defined; 
he should be trained in identifying ships and should have an assistant, 
whom I have called a signal man, also trained in this duty. The officer 
should be empowered, without reference to higher authority, to fire a 
shot across the bows of any doubtful ship and to attack her if she did 
not heave to. Also to attack at once any vessel known to be hostile or 
signalled as such, if she was trying to run past, or was at close or 
medium range. 
The officer on look-out, or the senior officer of the watch or relief (if 
at the B.O. post), would be considered in command of the fort until 
relieved by the regular B.C. A watch should also be posted in the 
F.C/s station consisting of one or more telephone operators, observers, 
orderlies and trumpeters, under an officer who would represent the 
F.C. during his absence and summon him if necessary. In case of an 
action being commenced at one fort, he would acquaint all the other 
B.C's. That some such system is necessary, and that the initiative may 
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