In the year 1867 I crossed the Atlantic in the Great Eastern, then in command of Sir James Anderson. Among the passengers was the Austrian Admiral Tegetthoff, who had the year before gained the battle of Lissa, with whom I formed a pleasant acquaintance; and as we walked the deck together, drew from him some particulars of that great victory. He was as modest as he was brave, and did not like to talk of himself; but in answer to my inquiries, said that before the battle he knew the immense superiority of the Italian fleet; and that his only hope of victory was in disregarding all the ordinary rules of naval warfare: that, instead of drawing up his ships in the usual line of battle, he must rush into the centre of the enemy, and confuse them by the suddenness of his attack where they did not expect him. The manoeuvre was successful even beyond his own expectation. The _Rè d'Italia_, the flagship of the Italian Admiral, which had been built in New York as the masterpiece of naval architecture, was sunk, and the fleet utterly defeated! What Tegetthoff did at Lissa, the English may do in future battles. Of this I am sure, that whatever _can_ be done by courage and skill will be done by the sons of the Vikings to retain their mastery of the sea. But it would be too much to expect of any power that it could stand against the combined navies of the world.
If Gibraltar be thus powerless for offence, is it altogether secure for defence? Is it really impregnable? That is a question often asked, and on which only military men are competent to give an opinion, and even they are divided. Englishmen, who are most familiar with its defences, say, Yes! Those defences have been enormously increased even in our day. In the Great Siege we saw its powers of resistance a hundred years ago. Yet Eliott defeated the French and Spanish fleets and armies with less than a hundred guns. Ninety years later--in 1870--there were _seven hundred_ guns in position on the Rock, the smallest of which were larger than the heaviest used in the siege. And yet since 1870 the increase in the size of guns and their weight of metal, is greater than in the hundred years before. In the siege it was counted a wonderful shot that carried a ball two miles and a half. Now the hundred-ton guns carry over eight miles. Putting these things together, English officers maintain that Gibraltar cannot be taken by all the powers of Europe combined.