he target--the ship to be hit--is
barely visible on the sky line on the clearest and calmest sea. If a
hole the size of the head of a pin be made in a piece of cardboard
and the latter he held about a foot and a half from the eye, the
distant ship will just about fill the hole.

The guns on the modern battleships are not "laid"; that is, they
are not aimed as were the cannon of past days or the rifle of today.
It is set toward its target by two factors. The first is known as
"traverse," which means how far to the left or right it must be
pointed in a horizontal plane. The second factor is "elevation"--how
far up or down it must be pointed in a vertical plane. The latter
factor determines how far it will throw its projectile, and up to
a certain point the higher the gun is pointed the further will
go the shell. A certain paradox seems to enter here. It is a fact
that a distant ship presents a target more easily hit if its bow
or stern is toward the gunner. If it presents a broadside there
is the danger that the shells will go either beyond the ship or
will fall short of it, for the greatest beam on a warship is not
much more than 90 feet. If the bow or stern is toward the gunner
he has a chance of landing a shell on any part of the 600 or more
feet of the ship's length. The first firing in a battle at a distance
is known as "straddling," by which is meant that a number of shots
are sent simultaneously, some falling short, some falling beyond
the target, and some hitting it.

The man who really "aims" the gun never sees what he is shooting at.
At some point of vantage on his ship one of the officers observes the
enemy and reports to the chief gunner the distance, the direction,
and the effect of the first shots. The gunnery officer then makes
certain calculations, taking into consideration the speed of his
own ship and the speed of the enemy ship. He knows that at a given
moment his target will be at a given point. He knows also just how
fast his shells will travel and makes calculations that enable him
to place a shell at that point at just the right second. In this
battle the shells of the British ship took about twenty seconds
to go from the mouths of the guns to the German hulls. And they
made a curve at the highest point of which they reached a distance
of more than two miles; and most wonderful of all was the fact
that at the beginning of the firing a man standing on the deck
of one of the German ships could not