NAVAL ATTACK OF FORTIFICATIONS. 
181 
daresay you know, it was close to a 6-inch gun carriage, which has a 
good deal of machinery. It was so close that the gun carriage saved 
the lives of several men; but that gun carriage was not put out of 
action; there were dents and holes made in it, but the gun carriage 
remains to this day without much or any repair. 
Of course, before we began our attack we should want to clear a 
way, just as we did in running past batteries. There will be the same 
fight over the mines; the boats must destroy them. But if the boats 
can do this why should not they do all that is required ? The boats 
can run in and sink the ships alongside the dockyard, and that is 
probably all you would do if you silenced the forts altogether. There 
would also be the same necessity for special craft in the way of counter¬ 
mining boats, all of which would probably require some base close 
at hand. A single rough day might wreck all your boats and pre¬ 
parations. The mimic attack which took place at Milford Haven, and 
which perhaps some of you may remember, was very unpractical in 
this respect : owing to the weather it was found necessary to make all 
the preparations for the counter-mining and sweeping within the shelter 
of the shore, and, therefore, more or less under fire, which would 
have been scarcely practicable if a real attack had been contemplated. 
In the same way the attack would probably have to take place 
during daylight. The place would have to be cleared of mines and 
other obstructions during the night; and to make sure that nothing 
else was laid down you would have to go in as quickly after that as 
possible. 
There would be this further consideration that we had not to take 
into account when we were going to ran past the forts : that we might 
perhaps back up the boats and counter-mining craft by supporting 
them with fire from the ships; and, therefore, some artillery fighting 
might take place at night, but I do not think much. So far as I can 
see, with all the advantages that electric light confers on the shore 
forces, ships would never care to come within even moderate range of 
shore works at night. 
We should require to be very definite as to what to fire at. I think 
that is fairly exemplified by two attacks which took place in the 
American War, one a success and the other a failure. The first was 
at Charlestown. The Admiral simply ordered that the ships should 
go in and fire at Fort Sumter at the middle embrasure. Nobody 
thought, I suppose, that he wanted every shot to hit the middle em¬ 
brasure, and not the others, and those orders seem to have been 
interpreted to mean that so long as they fired at the fort somehow it 
would be all right. Their ships straggled in, and never got close 
to at all ; they never anchored, and they got the worst of it. On 
the other hand, when the ships had had a great deal more ex¬ 
perience, and they went in towards the end of the war to attack Fort 
Fisher, led by the " Ironside,” which had already been hit 250 times 
at Charlestown, they knew what forts could do, and what they could 
not do, and a very elaborate plan was drawn out. Each ship had her 
station assigned to her, and had orders what gun she was to fire at. 
The accounts differ somewhat as to the number of guns on shore (but 
