But why this haste, you ask. Well, it trains the men to get the drop on the enemy and also, and perhaps of just as much importance, it reveals the defects in the system. In other words, it tends more to make turrets and ordnance what the experts call "foolproof." It may be said that nearly all of our ordnance on these ships has reached that stage, the stage where some man by some unforeseen fool action, one that no one could guess would happen, endangers and probably costs the lives of himself and several others. Every breakdown of a gun on this practice has had its value and it all goes toward speeding the day when these faults will be corrected and a ship may go into action with a reasonable assurance that all its mechanism will do the work it was intended to do. Yes, speed has its advantages, very great advantages.
What a change in twenty years! There are men on this ship who used to take part in the old practice on such ships as the Saratoga or the Quinnebaugh, the one that was on the European station so long that some one in the Navy Department forgot for a year or two to put it in the Naval Register. The Saratoga had one 8-inch muzzle loading rifle that had formerly been a smooth bore 11-inch Dahlgren gun, the kind of gun that resembled a soda water bottle and was called such. It was mounted amidships between the fireroom hatch and the break of the to'gallant fo'c's'le. The bulwarks at that place were pierced by pivot gun ports that could be secured as part of the bulwarks when the gun was not in action.
The gun swung on circles and pivot bolts by using hauling and training tackles, and could be used on either broadside and about ten points forward and abaft the beam. The ship had also four 9-inch smoothbore Dahlgrens to complete its main battery. It required about twenty-two men to handle such a gun. The charges of powder were in canvas bags and rammed home. The guns could be sighted up to 2,000 yards. The recoil was taken up by a heavy hempen hawser fastened to the bulwarks and passed through the cascabel of the gun. The range for target practice was 1,000 yards, and lucky was the gunner if he made 30 per cent. of hits.
In those days the men at the guns were not half stripped, as they are now. One-half of them were armed with cutlass and pistol and the other half with magazine rifles and bayonets. This was to repel boarders. That's all gone. No battleship ever expects to repel boarders in these days. Protection for the gunners was made by piling up hammocks and bags--about the last thing that would be thought of, with its danger from fire, in these days, even if all else failed. Nowadays the recoil is taken up hydraulically, and the gun is shot back into place with springs. Even fewer men are required to handle an 8-inch gun than twenty years ago. One of these guns will shoot five times further and do ten times--yes, one might say almost a hundredfold--more damage than the old ones. And there are eight of these on a ship like the Louisiana, to say nothing of twelve 7-inch guns, four 12-inch, twenty 3-inch and twelve 3-pounders.