MORE BRIEF CONSIDERATIONS ON COAST DEFENCE. 513 
has been inaugurated. It goes without saying that we should find 
considerable difficulty in hitting a ship at say, 10,000 yards, by fire 
from such howitzers, unless she anchored stem and stern, but even at 
that range, our fire is quite accurate enough, thanks to Colonel Watkin, 
to prevent her doing so. 
Here again, however, there has been an attempt to paint the lily—to 
gild refined gold—by devising a special projectile for piercing the 
steel protecting decks and bursting in the entrails of the devoted 
cruiser. If any of my readers have ever been on board a man-o’-war, 
be she line of battle ship or cruiser, they will surely see the futility of 
expecting a shell, in obedience to the wish of the firer, to avoid the 
superstructure, boats, torpedo nettings, spare spars and all the hetero- 
gencous mass of gear scattered about her upper works, and to steer a 
tortuous, intricate path down to the steel turtle deck, to penetrate it, 
and to burst, having kept its percussion fuze inactive until this supreme 
moment! Is this not crediting an inanimate thing with rather subtle 
powers of discrimination? This fad has, I trust, been abandoned and 
its spirit finally laid to rest. As in the case of direct fire, therefore, 
common shell with large bursting charges, probably of high explosive, 
will be the only projectile, and these the garrison gunner may cheer- 
fully launch into space, without the hampering thought that he is 
asking them to do rather more than he would expect of his terrier, did 
he enter him at a badger in a difficult earth. Let him take courage to 
himself, and, when the time comes, let him say with General Geary 
(and Mr. Wemmick), “ here’s a ship, let’s hit it.” 
