GUNNERY IN THE NAVY.
ITO TEE EDITOR OF TUB " SPECTATOE:.] 8TE,-I do not wish to intervene in the discussion of " The State of the Navy" now proceeding in your columns ; but in justice to many capable and zealous officers and men serving afloat, I ask to be allowed to correct some of the prevail- ing misunderstanding of what may be called the gunnery position. Several obviously inspired writers are attempting to ascribe all the progress in that important matter to the present authorities at Whitehall. This is grossly unfair to commanding officers, gunnery officers, officers of quarters, and guns' crews of both seamen and Marines; for it is to them, and to them almost exclusively, that any real improve- ment is due. The only credit that can be justly claimed in the matter by the authorities on shore is that resulting from advertising the shooting performances of the Navy. It would be as correct to ascribe to the Board of Admiralty the "record-breaking" performances in coaling our ships which still occasionally receive notice in the newspapers. The advertising above mentioned is of extremely doubtful advan- tage to the Service. It encourages imitation by subordinates; and we have already reached the stage at which the officer who is near home, and has found out bow to get his name into the newspapers, is put in a much more favourable position as regards advancement than the equally or more capable officer in distant waters who has been too much occupied in the dis- charge of his duty to be able to discover methods of working the Press. That this is much felt afloat is proved by the frequency and warmth of the complaints that naval target practice has now " too much Bisley " about it. The writers above referred to—no doubt owing to their ignorance—are hard upon the very people whom they mean to puff. If the shooting of the Navy was in former years as carelessly super- vised as they try to make out, it was when the now much- belauded authorities were themselves Gunnery Lieutenants, Captains, and Adrairals in command.. Thus the present
attempts to puff them can only make it appear as if they were scandalously negligent and inefficient, and therefore con- spicuously inferior to officers of corresponding position now serving.
The truth is that the shooting of the British Navy is not only good now, it has always been good. It is a falsehood to assert that target practice has not always been a matter of intense interest to an overwhelming majority of officers and men. There were; no one will deny, inefficient excep- tions, and so there are now. There are official statistics in existence to prove the latter condition. The reading public' ought to suspect the candour of composers of laudatory paragraphs about naval gunnery in which but a word is said about the great advance made in the instruments of shooting. There is certainly in existence some evidence, and probably there is a great deal, to show—with respect to the quality of the gun, the explosive, the sighting apparatus, the mounting, and the range-finding appliances—that the shooting of to-day is little, if at all, better than it was in the days before newspaper self-advertisement was looked upon as a merit in a naval officer. It is just as absurd to omit all count of the difference between the guns and their accessories of to- day and those of former days in reports of shooting as it would be to attribute to the Captains of our time superiority over those who served under Nelson, because it took the latter thirteen days to go from England to Gibraltar in sailing ships, whereas we can do it in steamers in three days and a half.
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