166 COAST ARTILLERY IN ACTION. 
to adapt himself to almost anything that he is called upon to do. When you see 
the way in which these men do their work, whether it is mounting heavy guns in 
the narrow passages at Horsesand or Delimara Forts, or working ankle deep in 
water on a steam tug in half a gale of wind off Fort Picklecombe—when you see 
them march past without any sort of practice, and with officers whom they have 
never seen, and shoulder to shoulder with men whom they never worked with— 
you begin to appreciate what a grand fellow the garrison gunner is. He has of 
necessity often to act on his own initiative, and this gives him a readiness of 
resource and self-reliance that is possessed, I believe, by no other soldier in 
the army. 
Masor F. G. Stons—I think, sir, that as the subject of record targets has been 
touched upon, it may be some satisfaction to know how the matter stands at pre- 
sent. From what Colonel Rainsford-Hannay said, some of us might think that 
possibly there was some idea of letting the record target go. But far from that ; 
every effort has been made during the last year to secure one type of record 
target which will please everybody—with the usual result, that it was found 
quite impossible todo. The record targets which have been tried during the last 
summer have, unfortunately, each of them been reported upon most favourably in 
one district and most unfavourably in other districts; so that, although a very 
thorough trial was made, the same class of target was not found to suit everybody’s 
requirements. It may possibly end in two record targets having to be adopted ; 
but certainly the record targets will not be allowed to go. We have improved 
them year by year. 
With regard to the question of a Fire Commander—which the lecturer brought 
out at the beginning of his lecture—who was unable to exercise the functions of a 
Fire Commander over an adjacent Battery Commander, removed by geographical 
circumstances to the other side of the hill, or whatever it might be, the lecturer 
suggested that it would be a good thing for him at all events to exercise a certain 
amount of surveillance. I am inclined to agree with him to acertain extent ; but 
I think that perhaps we ought to limit that by saying that he should only exercise 
that surveillance provided that the water area, over which the Battery Commander 
is carrying out his powers, is also easily seen by the Fire Commander of whom the 
lecturer spoke, because, otherwise, I think that a Fire Commander coming in to a 
Battery Commander who was really outside his immediate Fire Command, might 
cause delay and confusion. I am not quite sure that I followed Colonel Jocelyn 
correctly in what he said, but that was what I understood. 
With regard to the practice of quick-firing guns, the latest experiments that 
have been carried out were in the Isle of Wight this summer, and the report of the 
practice led to the conclusion that it was quite impossible to group the quick-firing 
guns under a Battery Commander, or anything of the sort, with the slightest 
hope of getting quick-firing results ; and that the only thing that the Commanding 
Officer could do (whether you call him the Battery Commander or something else) 
would be to give the target and the range to start with, and that after that 
the guns must be fired by the individual gun-captain, or whatever you like to call 
him. The objection which, at first sight, would have appeared a short time ago, 
as to smoke, drops at once when you consider the use of cordite cartridges. Further 
experiments will be carried out on a more exhaustive scale at Shoeburyness as soon 
as we have a satisfactory target on which to practice, but the Commandant does 
not wish to carry out experiments until we have got a target which will travel 
about 20 miles to the hour,—in which, doubtless, he is right. 
With regard to a target which can approach or recede over a sea range, and be 
fired at with safety, that question has also been taken up, but there are many 
serious difficulties to be overcome. 
Captain C. OrpE-BrowNre—lIs there any order to be followed in the adoption 
