COAST DEFENCE AGAINST TORPEDO-BOAT ATTACK. 35 
all. Oar latest experience shows that it is a matter of the greatest 
possible importance. 
Suppose a battery B and two fixed lights LI, L2 , all low sited. The 
battery B generally sees nothing of torpedo-boats in the sea areas 
a, a , a , no matter how many wandering rays are showing them up, 
nor does B see them if the boats are at all or al2. The only chance 
the guns get of hitting is when the boats actually are crossing the 
rays or silhouetted in the water area b, b , b. If such batteries are 
working independently they get no warning and the boats are through 
in a few seconds. The above is a very common form which electric 
installations for Artillery purposes have taken. Those who have the 
selection of sites for electric lights can hardly have considered the 
question from the gun point of view, and until Artillery are permitted 
to settle the sites both of their guns and of the electric lights, their 
hope of successfully keeping torpedo-boats at a distance must be 
more or less forlorn, no matter how large the armament. A small, 
well sited and well formed armament with electric lights under the 
same management could dispose of torpedo-boats with far greater 
certainty and economy than five times the number of guns and lights 
badly placed and opposed to each other. It seems incredible that 
such an adjunct to gun fire as electric light should be treated as a 
thing entirely apart from Garrison Artillery, yet such is the fact! 
It is to be hoped that if the chance ever falls in the way of an 
artilleryman of arranging guns and lights for his defence he will not 
content himself with the consultation of plans, contours, charts, etc., 
the fruitful cause of faulty work up to the present, but that he will 
settle the question on the ground itself by actual trial, the only method 
affording hope of success. The trial need not be a costly affair, but it 
must be somewhat prolonged as it must embrace variation of weather. 
It would repay its expenses and the trouble given to it ten times over 
in the avoidance of costly and constant changes afterwards. The 
means required are a dozen or so observers, a torpedo-boat or launch, 
two portable electric lights, several D.R.F. instruments on tripods, 
and a few Verey’s pistols with cartridges, the D.R.F.'s and Verey's 
pistols would represent the guns 
