NAVAL ATTACK OF FORTIFICATIONS. 
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batteries are very often some three or four or five or six thousands 
yards in advance of the dockyard, the game hardly appears to me to 
be worth the candle. The chances are just as great, I imagine, of the 
batteries pitching a shell into your sea-going ship as of the sea-going 
ship pitching a shell into the dockyard; and when they have pitched 
a shell into your sea-going ship they have done much more damage 
than you have done by the shell you have pitched on to the shore. 
As to the question whether we should employ special craft, I think 
we might, as was done in the case of Sveaborg, run up special mortar- 
boats or small craft capable of carrying one or two sizeable guns. 
Any gun will do—breech-loader or muzzle-loader—it does not much 
matter. If we used craft of this kind we should not mind if we 
lost them, and we should not mind running them into shoal-water 
and into places where we should not venture with our big ships, 
so that that might make us rather more daring. But as to the big 
ships, they would keep under way, so as to avoid being hit; but 
again, if the people on shore have range-finders, being under way 
ought not to make much difference, and if you found you were getting 
much hit you would go away, so that remaining under way would 
make you all ready for that proceeding. 
As to the question whether high explosive shells would make much 
difference, perhaps you could tell me more than I can tell you ; but as 
far as I have gone I do not think they would, and at present we do 
not see our way to admitting high explosive shells as part of the 
equipment of a ship. The risk of their going off in our guns out¬ 
weighs any possible advantage that we know of at present. High 
explosive shells might, however, be used in a special flotilla, just as 
the special flotilla of the old days fired shells and bombs, which the 
ship's guns did not. 
There are some places, but only a few, where the defence on shore 
has not been well arranged, where it would be possible to push in some 
of those special craft where there is nothing on shore to oppose them; 
but if the defence were active, as it should be, a very few field guns 
brought there would send these small craft away; after all the most 
unassailable position for a ship is for her to get behind some small 
island which her men can occupy. There was an instance of that in 
the case of the war between Chili and Peru. The Peruvians left an 
island off Callao unoccupied, and the Chilian ships got behind this 
island, and threw shell at the only Peruvian ship that was in the dock. 
They threw shell at this ship off and on, I think, for many months, 
and at the end of those many months she was just as intact as she was 
at the beginning; and the only thing that brought matters to an issue 
with regard to that ship was the taking of the town by a land force, 
when the ship was burnt at once lest she should fall into the Chilians' 
hands. 
I do not think that in case of a bombardment it is necessary much 
to consider the forts. We should be so far off the forts that it would 
not be possible to subdue their fire to any material extent, and shell 
fired at the forts would be practically thrown away. If the forts were 
annoying us to an extent which became serious, instead of trying to 
