So far as this fleet is concerned this cruise was chiefly for this purpose. Aside from mere cruising and getting shaken down the officers and men had their minds and their energies centred on shooting guns. No matter what was the reason why the fleet was sent to the Pacific, the officers and men passed it by as something that concerned them only incidentally. They take their orders to go here or there with simply passing interest. They obey. Their one idea, their chief work, mentally and physically, during the entire cruise has been to prepare for this target shooting. To them it was the business end of the cruise.
Some people think that the purpose of the cruise was to go calling internationally, to say "How d'y do?" and fire salutes, the officers to be entertained with receptions and dances and dinner speeches and the men to have liberty on shore, with a chance to get a drink of real red "likker"; some might say that the purpose was to get data as to the cruising ability of the fleet; some might say it was to get the men used to what might be called the navy habit; some might say it was to gain experience in meeting problems of warship navigation; some might say it was for other than strictly naval reasons, to make a show of strength or to satisfy a public clamor or advance a political plan.
Whatever ideas others may have had about the cruise, the officers and men have had only one, as a matter of business and daily toil, and that was that the cruise would have its real naval culmination in target shooting in Magdalena Bay. That was what it was for to the men on these ships, and from the very hour the ships said good-by at Hampton Roads every effort was made to get them in fighting condition as a fleet entity. The target practice was to reveal whether they had done good work in strictly naval business. To the fleet the cruise was no spectacular parade around a continent; it was to prepare to shoot in the finest naval shooting place in the world, Magdalena Bay.
Every one was glad to see Magdalena Bay because of this tension. It is a splendid sheet of water, in a general way about fifteen miles long and ten wide, with a narrow entrance and water just deep enough for safe manœuvring and good anchorages everywhere. A line of sharp crested hills shuts it in from sight of the Pacific. There is only one village on it, consisting of about twenty dwellings, and no commerce in its waters. The shores on the inside are flat and there is a good horizon. The warships of the world might find an anchorage here without crowding one another. It is cut off from the rest of the world, in a desolate, barren region, and was designed apparently by nature for the very purpose of modern target shooting.
It seems a pity that American statesmanship years and years ago could not have had the foresight to secure it, when such a course would have been easy, for use of the navy, when a great naval station could have been built up and proper use of the place for strategical purposes could have been made certain. With a naval station on Puget Sound, one in San Francisco and this one on Magdalena Bay, the entire Pacific Coast within our immediate sphere of action would have been within our grasp. Oh, yes; it's a pity—too bad—that we do not own Magdalena Bay. Perhaps an effort to secure it would still be a most desirable field for the exercise of statesmanship. One feels like suggesting to Washington to get busy and keep busy.
As soon as the fleet came to anchor there were things doing. On every ship what is known as bore sighting had to be done. That means that a telescope sight had to be inserted in the exact axis of the bore of the gun and the sighting telescopes had to be so adjusted that they were exactly in line with the centre of the gun. It had to be proved scientifically that when the sights of the gun were exactly on a bullseye with their cross wires the centre of the gun was also exactly on the same spot. Every sight on every gun had to be tested and checked up, and it was tedious work. But you couldn't shoot straight without it, and it took hours and hours of most careful adjustment to make sure that all was in perfect condition.
Then came the laying out of the ranges. This required careful surveying. An equilateral triangle had to be laid out for each range. Along one side, the base, spar buoys with flags on them had to be fixed, and buoys fixed further along at each end, so as to give a ship an opportunity of getting on the exact range in its turnings. At the apex of each triangle a great raft of thick timbers and poles on it for the targets had to be put in position. All this took time, but it was surprising how quickly the work was done.
And then the targets had to be brought out. Now the ship's crew had been working on those targets in spare moments for several weeks. Each ship had less than fifty and more than twenty-five of them to make. The biggest targets are for the smaller guns and the smallest ones for the larger guns. The size is proportional, as the experts put it, to "the angle of fall," and the size also represents, they tell you, "the mean error of fire" of a gun. Well, the angle of fall and mean error of fire may not convey a satisfactory idea to you, but you must remember that the shot of a little gun goes to its target in a high curve, while the shot of a big one goes almost horizontally. So you can see why a little gun ought to have the bigger target. It curves more, has a greater angle of fall, than a big gun has. And the mean error of fire has to do with what experience has shown that guns perfectly pointed and fired ought to do. They vary a little in their performances and the target is just large enough for every shot to hit it, if everything works absolutely perfectly.
The making of the targets is a long job. Great rolls of canvas were broken out of storerooms and cut into a certain number of strips of a certain length. These strips had to be sewed together, and at times certain compartments resembled the inside of a tailor shop with sewing machines buzzing and trimming and cutting going on. Then the rough target had to be spread out and the edges cut off until there was just margin enough to sew it all around to a rope about an inch thick. It required hard work with stout needles and thick leather palms to put the ropes on all four sides.
Then came careful measurements for the black lines about two inches wide that marked the targets into squares and a great square in the centre for the bullseye. Out came the paint pots. Some of the targets were made black with white lines and white centres and others were left white with black lines and centres. Then came the battens to which the targets were nailed so as to be stretched on the poles of the raft. Ropes had to be attached in certain places for fastening the target in the exact place and at the exact height. All this work had to be exact, for the umpires measured every target to see that no ship got the slightest advantage.