Hawkes Bay Herald WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13, 1900. THE WRECKING POWER OF GUNS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 11560, 13 June 1900, Page 2

Hawkes Bay Herald WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13, 1900. THE WRECKING POWER OF GUNS.

The other day a cable message recorded an experiment off the British coast, in which an old bnt strongly armored man-of-war was shelled by a modern battleship, with the result that the former went to the bottom in two or three minutes. It is somewhat strange, that though three important wars have been fought in late years, they have afforded practically no contribution towards the solution of the problem of what would be the result if two fleets, of fairly equal power and armament, and well handled, met in deadly grip on the high seae. In the Chinese. Japanese war the ships of the former were so badly handled and served in comparison with those of the Japanese, that the contest was too unequal to be accepted as a guide, 'x he same disparity was the most prominent feature of such naval engagements as there were in the American-Spanish war. The South African war is entirely a land conteat, and affords absolutely no criterion to go by. The conditions of artillery fire and its effects on ' land and on the sea are so different, that one has little bearing on the other. On land the guns have solid, steady ground for their base, the objective aimed at is more often than not stationary, and distance, if not accurately known at first, can soon be ascertained by watching the effect of the firing. On the Bea a pitching or rolling vessel is the base for the guns, both combatants would be moving, distances would constantly change. At first glance that would seem to give a better chance to the Bailor than the soldier on land. But then the most important factor at sea does not exist on laud. A shell falling on solid ground may injure persons or buildings near it, but that is the limit of its efficiency as a weapon of offence or defence. But a single shell striking a ship may penetrate a vital part, and at one stroke paralyse it even if it does not involve it sinking with all its crew. Then, again, naval guns are more powerful and of longer range than any guns which can be used on land except for the defence of fortresses. Ho altogether the conditions of naval and land warfare are so different as to have a comparatively small bearing one on another. A ship struck in a vital part is like a man shot in the heart or brain. We have a sad instance of this in the sinking of Admiral Tryon's flagship Victoria in manoßUvres in the Mediterranean, with enormous sacrifice of life, after being rammed by the Camperdown, though, sooth to say, the Camperdown was so damaged that she had to be beached to save her from sinking. We have other examples in the rapid sinking of Chinese and Spanish ships undei the fire of Japanese and Americans, though in neither case were those vessels of the most modern type. It would seem as if nearly everything depended upon the skill of the commander of a ship in so handling it as to expose its broadside as little as possible consistent with fighting efficiency. Mi W, J. Gordon, writing in an English magazine on this question, presents rather cold comfort to the sailor and marine. His special topic is the range of modern artillery, and he says : — At the Jubilee, for instance, one of the 92 guns, such as our first-class cruisers are armed with, was tried at Shoeburyness to see how far it really could carry its projectile of 3801 b, and it sent; it 21,800 yards, or a little over 12] miles. The shell took 69 6 seconds to travel the distance, that is, it was in the air for that time, for it rose in its trajectory to 17,000 feet, or 2000 feet higher than Mont Blanc. Mr Gordon goes on to give the dimensions of the rectangle or area within which half the number of the shots will fall at 4500 yards from the ordinary 12-pounder — 12^ feet wide and 27 feet high. These figures he translates into the following blood-curdling suggestions : — 1 The height is that of an ordinary twostorey honse, suoh as the bow-windowed things that are being built by the mile in the suburbs, and the width is not quite so much ; and yet, at a distance equal to that of Buckingham Palaco from the Bank of England, this gun will send every other shot, and probably three-fourths of its shots, crashing into it, or rather into where it was before the first shot fell ; and he could knock down house after house in the terrace at the rate of two a minute. For another mile, say from the Bank of Engrland to Chelsea Hospital, this gun would be effective over a Blightly larger area, and its deadly messengers would travel the distance from point to point in 21 seconds. Of course in actual warfare such conditions are practically impossible except in the eaße of a big fortress captured by an enemy and turned on the city it was meant to defend. Even the heaviest artillery available for field work is comparatively harmless beside these huge guns. We have very notable examples of this in the sieges of Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking. Granted that these were all scattered towns, presenting very different conditions to those of a densely populated European city, their experience shows that field artillery does very little damage compared with the energy expended At Kimberley, for instance, there was not a great deal of damage done to the buildings of the town, and out of some 1700 deaths only nine were due to shells exploding in the township But in naval warfare we approach more closely the conditions imagined by Mr Gordon, He thus describes the probable result of the bombardment of a closely-built town from the sea by modem ironclads:— let us have another instance, that being the 12-inoh 46 ton gun, with which our new flret-olass battleships armed. This gun, with a charge of 167 Jib of cordite, will, at a thousand yards, drive its projectile nearly a yard deep into wrought iron. The gun is 37 feet long ; the projectile weighs 75owfc and 101 b more. At a distance of 10,000 yards, or say 5J miles, it can drop half ita rounds into a spaoe of 6 yards wide and 66 yards long or 26 yards high. In other words, its rectangle is smaller than the space opposite the Bank of England, and if it were fired from Woolwiok Dookyard, it would, in 24 seconds, drop the shell between the Sank and the Mansion House. A ship struck by a projectile of snch mighty force could hardly fail to be seriously crippled, unless the shot struck at such an angle as to glance off the armor. The experiment off the British coast; goes to confirm Mr Gordon's estimate of the effect of these huge modern projectiles under conditions where their full effective force could be exerted, The disappearance of maßts and sails, and their replacement by steam engines and propellers, has not done away with the necessity for good seamanship. It has rather emphasised it, though it will be exercised in a different direction, and the handling of ships will be more to the point in securing ultimate victory than the rapidity of fire. In other words, skill in defence, will be as important as powerful armaments and skill in their use. But even with all possible skill we must confess that

we should prefer to take our chances in a battle on land, rather than on the finest ironclad in a sea fight.