Well, if it is not noise you begin to think that if there is ever another war you know one place where you don't want to be, and that is on a battleship. Every one of the ships had to go through this work, and when it was all over then it was that the men on these ships felt the sense of relief that none of them experienced over their safe arrival and the performance of the fleet on the way to this bay. They were ready to drop in their tracks. They were worn out, as the expression goes.

There is one moment of great suspense at every gun in such practice as this. It is when some adjustment has gone wrong, when some accident has occurred, and when there is real danger. Then the officer in charge cries sharply:

"Silence!"

That means that no more shots must be fired from that gun on that run. With it goes a penalty that works against the ship's record. More than once such command has been heard on these ships, but it is wise, for all too sad have been the records of accidents at target practice not only in our own ships but in those of every other navy. It would have pleased any one to observe all the precautions that were taken this time. The navy has learned some lessons. Safer and safer the turrets are becoming all the time. And this element of speed which enters into all contests with the firing of guns conduces to that end. You see, it is not only the hits that count but the time in which they are made.

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.

In target practice on one of these ships ten shots are fired from each 7-inch gun, twenty from each 3-inch gun, twenty from each 3-pounder and as many from each 8-inch and 12-inch as can be got off in a given time. It may be stretching the proprieties to tell even that much, and to get back to generalities it may be said that about twenty-five tons of metal were fired from all the guns. The cost? Well, put it for convenience sake at $300,000 for the fleet. Expensive? Not a bit of it! That expenditure is the best money spent by the United States Navy. It is the premium of insurance paid annually for efficiency, and it will prove its value if these ships ever get into war. There'll be no hit or miss or reckless helter-skelter shooting then. To make the practice record here each ship has to steam about 100 miles in going over the course and in a general way it may be said that each ship made from thirty-five to forty runs on the range. There, that's about all to be said in print or elsewhere about target practice by this fleet.

Well now honest, you say, didn't the ships do well, pretty well, just a little better than ever before, perhaps a great deal better? Just that much is what you want to know? Well, you'll have to ask the Navy Department about that. In its own good time and in its own way it may decide to give out such information and it may not. You'll never get an answer from the Sun's correspondent on this trip.