102 
BFEED IN FIRING WITH GARRISON GUNS, 
buryness for a nine months’ course of instruction. The writer was one 
of these officers and kept careful notes of this first course ; notes which 
abundantly prove the comparative ignorance of those days, and tend to 
show the vast increase in Artillery knowledge which has been effected 
in a period of less than 40 years. During the progress of this first Long 
Course of Instruction many changes were made for the better. Its 
great success as an institution and its future permanency were very 
largely due to the very happy selection of Colonel W. B. Gardner, R.A., 
as Chief Instructor. A man of superabundant energy and great 
determination, he possessed a practical gunner’s mind far in advance of 
his time. He foresaw the coming necessity for rapid work and strove 
to attain it by reliance on individual intelligence and resource, as opposed 
to stiff unyielding drill. He suppressed the long-winded quotations 
from drill books with which instructors w T ere wont to weary men, and 
compelled them to themselves demonstrate what was required to be 
done. He ensured officers knowing thoroughly what to expect from 
their men, and encouraged a tendency on their part to cut out useless 
work by making them go through every portion of the drill book, even 
to fetching their own stores and working through every operation with 
their own hands. Above all things he so inculcated speed of work in 
every department that it is very doubtful whether the records of his 
day, taking all things into consideration, have ever been beaten. Like 
many another earnest reformer he met with strong opposition and a vis 
inertia which eventually broke him down while, unfortunately for the 
Regiment, he was allowed to retire unrewarded and his great work 
unrecognised except by his pupils. For some time after, however, 
rapid smart work with guns became the fashion, gradually to relapse 
into slowness, latterly made more pronounced by abuse of the use of 
instruments, in themselves good servants but bad masters ; and by a 
discouragement of individual resource, inventive ability, and scientific 
attainments. 
It is, then, very doubtful whether speed in firing by Garrison 
Artillery at the present time eclipses or even equals the records of 
earlier Long Courses. Men are better than ever they were, guns are 
more accurate, and could, as will presently be shewn, be fired at 
considerable speed ; the batteries, mountings, &c., are far more in¬ 
genious and costly. Why should there be room to doubt whether old 
records are broken ? Can it be that the improvements in surroundings 
are not altogether such as really increase the warlike powers of Garrison 
Artillery ? As regards long range work, there is no comparison, for 
the old guns had but short ranges ; but suppose the conditions of the 
contrast laid down equal numbers of men manning as many guns as 
possible ; and results were judged by the number of foot-tons of energy 
expended by each on a ship of their period, starting from a point near 
the battery. The old target ship moved slowly, the modern ship very 
fast. The system now in vogue compels the withdrawal of an ever 
increasing number of Artillerymen from the actual service of guns in 
battery, as P.F., D.R.F., Telephone men, and whatnot, so that an equal 
number of men man far fewer guns than of old. The guns are heavier, 
and give an enormously greater striking energy when their shot does 
strike, but their service, owing to their mountings, complicated em¬ 
placements, and numerous adjuncts giving accuracy at the expense of 
speed, is very slow, while it is most difficult to induce men trained to 
wait on instruments to act promptly on an emergency. 
