NAVAL ATTACK OF FOKTIFICATIONS. 
99 
navigate ships when the electric light is about without standing a very 
good chance of their running on shore, and if a ship runs on shore in a 
place of that kind, of course one would not give much for her. So 
that I would make my run in early daylight. I would rig out from my 
ships nets, and what have been irreverently termed cow-catchers or 
dredges, to keep off contact mines, and one must have a good flotilla 
of small craft to hunt everything in the semblance of a torpedo boat. 
We must go in line ahead. The clear channel will not admit of any¬ 
thing else. To lead, I should not put a ship of the “ Rodney ” class, 
but probably some of our more old-fashioned iron-clads, in which the 
guns are better protected and the ship in many respects not so valuable, 
so that if you lose her you will not mind so much. Still, if you are 
going to run past a place you cannot altogether pick and choose your 
ships. When they were running into the Mississippi, of course they 
had to take with them river gun-boats, because the work up the river 
necessitated that kind of craft. The river gun-boat is not at all the 
kind of craft that you would take to run past a fort if you had your 
choice; and, speaking generally, the ships will be those that are required 
for the particular class of work beyond the forts. However, if there 
is a choice, I should put moderately old iron-clads in front, then might 
come, perhaps, our best ships, then the weakest ships, and lastly a few 
iron-clads with good stern fire, with everything ready in the way of 
towing hawsers, &c., to pick up any stragglers in the rear. 
With regard to tiring, the main object of the ships being to get 
through, it would be, I think, a question as to whether all the un¬ 
protected guns should be manned in the leading ships. Perhaps, in 
ships of the “ Rodney class, it might be as well to keep the men 
belonging to all the unprotected guns under cover until you got fairly 
close to, and then to let them go up and fire; but, at any rate, our 
firing would not be directed towards destroying the batteries or even 
towards disabling them, but towards slowing the fire of the batteries 
in any way, principally by firing at people who were exposed. We 
could hardly expect to hit the very small target which a gun represents, 
but still, with the quick-firing guns and machine guns, and so on, we 
might make their fire slower and wilder. 
We should also keep a very good look-out for anything in the way 
of observing stations for range-finders. I have not the least doubt that 
foreigners have plotted down on all their charts our observing stations, 
because they are not very well hidden away; and, in the same way, 
anything that looked like a torpedo station or a station from which 
anybody was directing fire. Plans of all the forts would be most 
necessary, and also, if we could get them, photographs. If those 
boats could run in in the way I have contemplated, of course they could 
take photographs, and it would be very useful to have photographs to 
point out to us just where the places were which ought to be fired at. 
At Alexandria, I myself fired an electric broadside at what I afterwards 
found was a lot of old smooth-bore guns, because I had neither the 
time nor the opportunity to make sure that they were not rifled guns, 
and so the whole of that broadside was thrown away. We must care¬ 
fully study all the works, and then each ship must be told what to 
