146 
OKEHAMPTON EXPERIENCES, 1892 . 
Discipline should be entirely eliminated from the competition. (Hear, hear.) 
My ground for saying so is that I do not think thoroughly competent Eire Dis¬ 
cipline judges can always be got. The position of a man who is called upon to 
judge the Eire Discipline of a battery appears to me to be an exceedingly difficult 
one; unless he is, like the beast in the Revelations, furnished with eyes before 
and behind, I do not see liow* he is to do it alone ; and if you are to have two or 
three to help him, then it means having others to judge besides himself. So far 
as I myself saw, I cannot say that I was at all satisfied with the result of the 
judging of Eire Discipline, I will not say in what particular cases, but certainly 
in some that I have seen. I have no doubt that it was very ably done when we 
had, as last year, Colonel Tyler, and his able assistants to do it; but they are not 
always available, nor is it always even possible to have the same man judging 
entirely through a group of batteries. I cannot think it at all satisfactory that 
Eire Discipline should be judged in that way, and I consider that it would be 
very much better if the practice stood on its own merits, and the Eire Discipline 
were left to be settled by the Lieutenant-Colonel or some other competent judge, 
before the battery came on the field to practise. 
Major Davidson —I quite agree with Colonel Spragge about the difficulty of 
judging, and I think it is most important that the judging should be uniform ; 
but I must say that I entirely differ from Colonel Spragge as to the importance 
of Fire Discipline as part of the competition. As Colonel Tyler says, the actual 
firing, the results on the target, may be influenced almost entirely by luck, by 
weather, and other circumstances ; but with anything like competent judging the 
Eire Discipline of a battery is a certainty, more or less. The state of training 
the men are in, the way they do their work, and everything else, is absolutely 
unmistakeable if the judging is anything like competent and uniform. It was 
proved last year, I think, that in the case of Major Curling’s battery at any rate, 
they made comparatively poor effects on the target, although they got full marks 
for Eire Discipline; and I think that the marks for Eire Discipline, instead of 
being abolished, as Colonel Spragge suggests, ought to be increased, because the 
results on the target are fluctuating, and more or less a matter of luck, but the 
Eire Discipline is most important, and is absolutely independent of any luck. 
As I am on my legs, there is one question that I should like to ask, and that 
is whether anything was noticed as to the results of Hammant’s indicator ? I 
believe one battery had it, and I happen to have used the Hammant indicator at 
Shoeburyness, and I think it is a most valuable instrument, and that it would be 
a grand thing if all 12-pr. batteries -were furnished with it. The Hammant 
indicator makes the ranging process almost as quick again, and simplifies the 
whole thing ; it almost entirely does away with individual errors, and I should be 
very much obliged if Captain Blunt would give us the experience as to Hammant’s 
indicator at Okehampton. 
There is one other point of the lecture that I should like to allude to, because 
I think it is of very great importance, and that is that “ Some Battery Com¬ 
manders consider that it would be advantageous to retain the services of the No. 1 
of the sub-division as gun-captain.” That is a most invaluable suggestion. At 
present the tendency is that the battery layers should not be Nos. 1 of sub¬ 
divisions. In my own battery only one No. 1 is a layer : all the others are 
gunners or bombardiers. I think it would be an excellent thing if the No. 1 was 
always the supernumerary gun-captain giving general assistance and supervision. 
Less than five numbers would very soon be exhausted on service, and the laying 
become wild; and I think it is a humiliating position for the sergeant to be No. 3, 
as at present, and the suggestion that No. 1 should always be the gun-captain, 
although he is not a layer, is a very valuable one. (Cheers.) 
Captain Blunt— With regard to the question of the Hammant indicator, I 
