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A PLEA FOR 
SPEED IB FIRING WITH GARRISON GUNS, 
BY 
MAJOR-GENERAL J. B. RICHARDSON. 
The fact that, unless guns used in Coast Defence are extremely rapidly 
served, they are now-a-days of little practical use does not appear to be 
as yet sufficiently recognized. Probably the miserable slowness of fire 
obtaining among Coast Artillery is largely due to very difficult peace 
conditions. Nobody likes the noise and concussion of their guns, and 
only those who have to make arrangements for the very small amount 
of practice available know the hundred and one objections and diffi¬ 
culties thrown in the way of Garrison Artillery getting a “ free shoot ” 
in a large majority of our forts ; or the amount of worry and corres¬ 
pondence entailed before a gun can be got off at all. But want of speed 
in working is not wholly due to this, for the Garrison Artillery them¬ 
selves, as a body, can hardly be said to have realized the absolute 
necessity of rapid work against modern ships. It must be admitted 
that they too frequently display a remarkable indifference to the lapse 
of time when, at last, an opportunity offers for pouring in fire and a 
want of true smartness in the division of responsibility and in combining 
the many small operations, either necessary or imposed upon them by 
too-complicated tools, which have to be performed before a shell can 
bury itself in an opposing ship. That of late years they have ceased to 
improve the material with which they work, and by improving it to 
cut out useless and time-absorbing operations, is much to be regretted, 
for it is generally by the small and simple inventions and improvements 
of actual workers that speed and efficiency are increased. As the modern 
Artilleryman may not invent he takes the battery gun, mounting, 
ammunition and surroundings, as he finds them. He knows that the 
constructive and manufacturing departments will, each in their own 
way, do their best; but he finds that their thoughts are not his thoughts 
and that they do not know his wants as thoroughly as he knows them 
himself. Still a Garrison Artillery Officer can occasionally do some¬ 
thing for speed of fire. It may be no part of his actual duty to call 
attention to what may appear to him manifest defects in works which 
are being constructed for his use, under his very eyes, in his district ; 
3. VOL. xxiv. 14 
