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THE SHOOTING OF OUR COAST 
AND HOW TO IMPROVE 
MAJOR-GENERAL J. F. OWEN, 
1. Progress made in recent years. 
T HOUGH heavily handicapped by much obsolete material, by hav¬ 
ing in so many cases to fire from obsolete guns and from works 
which were designed on far other bases than such as would, in these days, 
be admitted as sound, there is no branch of the service in which more 
progress has been made, in shooting with the weapons given to it, 
than our Coast Artillery. 
It is not proposed, in this short paper, to touch upon the quest¬ 
ion of material, save where unavoidable, nor upon the tactical working 
of Coast Artillery which is necessarily so closely bound up with the 
guns and material supplied. 
When we consider that ten years ago it was not possible to employ 
aimed fire from heavy guns at a ship, unless at rest or moving so slow¬ 
ly as to be almost in the same condition, (excepting in the very rare 
cases in which the Watkin position finder existed with trained men to 
work it), and that, at the present moment, we are able to direct 
an effective and well aimed fire upon vessels going at any known rate 
of speed, with perfect ease, and that at ranges of two to three miles, 
it will be seen how very great the advance has been. 
2. Want of rapidity of fire. 
But, there is always that horrid “But,” much, very much, more re¬ 
quires to be done ; though we can deliver a well aimed fire from heavy 
guns and that at long ranges, and almost irrespective of the rate of 
speed of our target, yet we fail, as yet, woefully in rapidity of fire ; 
however much we may, in some cases, be kept back by old type guns 
and materiel we can and must be up and doing, and attain that com¬ 
parative rapidity of fire which the materiel will allow of, and which 
certainly is something very much beyond what we have so far attained 
to; the object of this paper is mainly to point out some means, at 
least, towards that end. 
In a most valuable paper recently published.* Major-General J. B. 
Richardson, R.A., G.O.C. R.A., Gibraltar has ably treated of the 
* R.A.I. “Procea Ungs,” Vol. XXIV., No. 3, 1897. 
4. VOL. XXVI. 
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