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NAVAL ATTACK OP FORTIFICATIONS. 
for the gun. You either fired at the wrong place, or you spent a lot 
of time in trying to find this gun again. 
Again, of course there is no fear of mines if you are at anchor, 
besides which you can stow your ships very much closer at anchor; if 
you are under way you must have what we call “ sea-room ”—room to 
manoeuvre. If you are at anchor you can put two or three times the 
number of ships into the same space. Another great thing is that 
you can slew your ship so as to bring the greatest number of guns 
possible to bear, and you also give an oblique target for the enemy to 
fire at. In nearly all our ships the guns now-a-days can fire from 30 
to 40 degrees from the broadside, and when a ship is slewed in that 
way the chance of the shot glancing off the armour is considerably 
greater. 
The thing that we should have to fear most in anchoring would be 
howitzer fire. That, of course, is a comparatively new factor, and it 
appears to me to be very much to be dreaded. I do not see exactly 
how you are to cope with that. You cannot see a howitzer. It is 
behind a wood or no one knows where ; and a howitzer shell can 
get behind your armour, because our ships are not built to cope with 
that kind of fire. For example, in this ship, of which I have a section 
here, the top of the turret has only an inch of iron. A comparatively 
small shell would go right through it, and disable this turret gun, 
which you would have to get a 134-inch gun to disable if you use 
direct fire, but which might be disabled by the fire of a 6-inch 
howitzer using high angle fire. 
Then again, everyone of these guns in the secondary battery is in 
the same position. They are quite unprotected overhead, the bulk¬ 
heads across the deck do not help them at all. As to howitzer fire 
hitting the ship down below, I confess that I am not so much afraid of 
it as some people are. If howitzers used shell (and I think they would 
do much better if they did) the shell would burst up here in the upper 
works, and the pieces would not have a chance against this 3-inch 
armoured deck. If, on the other hand, howitzers use shot, you have 
at any rate not nearly so much to fear as you had before. I should 
not be very much afraid of the shot piercing the armoured deck, 
because the shot would have to go first of all through a boat perhaps, 
then through the upper deck and the main deck, and then very often 
there are coals, stores, provisions, and so on, before it gets to the 
armoured deck at all; so it is almost certain that the shot would be 
deflected. And even if it did get through the armoured deck it would 
very likely land in a coal bunker or store-room ; if you hit a boiler, of 
course, that is a serious thing, but this ship has twelve boilers, and if 
one is hit you have only one boiler out of action. 
Again, engines are not so easy to disable as is sometimes sup¬ 
posed. In the American War there were several cases of shot and 
shell going amongst their engines, and the ships were not as a rule 
put entirely out of action. Only the other day in the “Huascar” 
nearly e very one in the engine-room was killed, but the engines were 
not disabled. It was also exemplified here when that fatal shell 
exploded which killed Colonel Strangways and so many others. As I 
