and a lugger—in all, 502 guns. On his approach, Lenois, who was anchored in a line nearly north and south, at some distance from the shore, cut his cables and ran into shoal water, to prevent being doubled upon by the British line; this manœuvre, at the same time, entirely unmasked the fire of the batteries.

The Hannibal, one of the British 74's, in attempting to close with the French admiral, touched the ground and could not be floated off. She, however, continued the fight with great obstinacy, even for a considerable time after she was deserted by her consorts. Not being able to double upon the French line, an attempt was made to assault the Green Isle battery, which, being badly served by the Spaniards, had nearly ceased firing. But this attempt was anticipated by the arrival at the island of a party sent from the French frigate lying near, and the assault was defeated, with the loss to the English of one boat sunk and another taken, the Frenchmen renewing with vigor the fire of the battery. At the north end of the line the French admiral was aided by seven gunboats, which took so active a part in the fight that five of them were sunk or rendered unserviceable. The St. Jaques battery being, however, served sluggishly by the Spaniards, the French sent a party from the Dessaix to impart greater activity and effect.

After the combat had continued about six hours, the British squadron drew off greatly damaged, leaving the Hannibal 74 alone and aground; and she, after suffering great loss, was obliged to strike. The French insist that the Pompée, an English ship of 80 guns, had struck her colors, but, as they could not take possession, she drifted off and was then towed away; it is believed she was entirely dismasted.

We do not know the loss in the French squadron, but the killed, wounded, and missing in the English fleet amounted to 375 men, being more than twelve men for every ten guns against them, and being twice as great, in proportion, as the English loss in the battle of Trafalgar.

In this battle of Algesiras there were 502 English guns afloat, acting against 306 French guns afloat. As the English chose their own time for the attack, and had the wind, it is only reasonable to suppose that 306 of the English guns were a match for the 306 guns in the French vessels. This will leave 196 English guns afloat opposed to the 12 guns in the batteries, or, reckoning one side only of each ship, it shows 98 guns in the British fleet to have been overmatched by the twelve guns in the batteries.

There never was a more signal and complete discomfiture; and it will admit of no other explanation than that just given, namely, that the two small batteries, one of 5 and the other of 7 guns, partly 18 and partly 24-pounders, more than compensated for the difference in favor of the British fleet of 196 guns.

The Hannibal got aground, it is true, but she continued to use her guns with the best effect until she surrendered; and, even on the supposition that this ship was useless after she grounded, the British had still an excess of 122 guns over the French fleet and batteries.

These batteries were well placed, and probably well planned and constructed, but there was nothing extraordinary about them; their condition before the fight was complained of by Admiral Lenois; and they were badly fought in the early part of the action; still the 12 guns on shore were found to be more than equivalent for two seventy-fours and one frigate.

BATTLE OF FUENTER ABIA.

This recent affair introduces steam batteries to our notice.

On the 11th July, 1836, six armed steamers, together with two British and several Spanish gunboats, attacked the little town of Fuenterabia. The place is surrounded only by an old wall; and two guns of small calibre, to which, on the evening of the attack, a third gun of larger calibre was added, formed the

entire of its artillery. The squadron cannonaded this place during a whole day. and effected absolutely nothing beyond unroofing and demolishing a few poor and paltry houses, not worth perhaps the ammunition wasted in the attack. What may have been the number of guns and weight of metal which the assailants brought is unknown; though the superiority, independent of the superior weight of metal, must have been at least ten to one; but not the slightest military result was obtained.-(See United Service Journal, August, 1836, page 531.)

We will now turn to affairs of a similar character on our own coast.

In June, 1776, Sir Peter Parker, commanding a squadron of two ships of 50 guns, four of 28 guns, two of 20 guns, and a bomb-ketch-in all (according to their rate) 252 guns-attacked Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor, South Carolina.

It is stated that the fort mounted "about thirty pieces of heavy artillery." Three of the smaller vessels were aground for a time during the action; and one of them could not be floated off, and was, in consequence, burnt by the English. Deducting this vessel as not contributing to the attack, and supposing that the other two were engaged but half the time, the English force may be estimated at 200 guns; or, reckoning on broadside only, at 100 guns against 30 guns.

The English were defeated with great loss of life, and injury to the vessels; while the fort suffered in no material degree, and lost but 30 men. The killed and wounded in the squadron were reported by the commodore to be 205, being for every ten guns employed against them more than 68 men killed and wounded. a loss more than eleven times as great, in proportion to the opposing force, as the loss at the battle of Trafalgar.

In September, 1814, a squadron of small vessels, consisting of two ships and two brigs, mounting about 90 guns, attacked Fort Boyer, at the mouth of Mobile bay. A false attack was at the same time made by a party of marines, artillery, and Indians, on the land side. The fort was very small, and could not have mounted more than twenty guns on all sides, nor more than fifteen guns on the water fronts. The action continued between two and three hours, when one of the ships being so injured as to be unmanageable, drifted ashore under the guns, and was abandoned and burnt by the English; the other vessels retreated after suffering severely. There were ten men killed and wounded in the fort; the loss on the other part is not known.

The affair of Stonington during the last war affords another instance of successful defence by a battery. In this case there were only two guns, (eighteenpounders,) in a battery which was only three feet high and without embrasures. The battery, being manned exclusively by citizen volunteers from the town, repelled a persevering attack of a sloop-of-war, causing serious loss and damage, but suffering none.

The only other instance we will adduce is that of the late attack on the castle of St. Juan de Ulloa. Having before us a plan of this work, made on the spot after the surrender, by a French engineer officer who was one of the expedition; having also his official account of the affair, as well as narratives by several eyewitnesses, we can fully understand the circumstances attending the operations,

and are liable to no material errors.

On the 27th of November, 1838, Admiral Baudin anchored at the distance of about seven-eighths of a mile in a northeast direction from the castle, with the frigates La Néréide, of 52 guns, La Glorie, of 52 guns, and L'Iphigénie, of 60 guns, and, after being a short time in action, he was joined by La Créole, of 24 guns; in all, 188 guns, according to the rate of the ships. In a position nearly north from the castle, and at a distance of more than a mile, two bomb-ketches, carrying each two large mortars, were anchored. The wind being adverse, all the vessels were towed into position by two armed steamboats belonging to the squadron. "It was lucky for us," says the reporter, "that the Mexicans did

not disturb this operation, which lasted near two hours, and that they permitted us to commence the fire." He further says: "We were exposed to the fire of one 24-pounder, five 16-pounders, seven 12-pounders, one 8-pounder, and five 18-pounder carronades-in all, 19 pieces only." In order the better to judge of these batteries, we will convert them, in proportion to the weight of balls, into 24-pounders; and we find these 19 guns equivalent to less than 12 guns of that calibre. But we must remark that, although this simplifies the expression of force, it presents it greatly exaggerated; it represents, for example, three 8-pounders as equivalent to one 24-pounder; whereas, at the distance the parties were engaged, (an efficient distance for a 24-pounder,) the 8-pounders would be nearly harmless. It represents also the 18-pounder carronades as possessing each three-fourths the power of a long 24-pounder; whereas at that distance they would not be better than the 8-pounders, if so good. Although the above estimate of the force of the batteries is too great by full one-third, we will, nevertheless, let it stand as representing that force.

There were, then, twelve 24-pounders engaged against 94 guns, (estimating for one broadside only of each ship) and 4 sea-mortars. During the action a shell caused the magazine in the cavalier to explode, whereby three of the nineteen guns were destroyed, reducing the force to about ten 24-pounders.

Considering the manner in which this work was defended, it would not have been surprising if the ships had prevailed by mere dint of their guns; but our author states, expressly, that though the accident just mentioned completely extinguished the fire of the cavalier, still the greater part of the other pieces which could see the ships, to the number of sixteen, continued to fire till the end of the action." They were not dismounted, therefore, and the loss of life at them could not have been great. What, then, was the cause of the surrender of the castle?

Much has been said of the great use made by the ships of horizontal shells, or shells fired at low angles from large guns; and it is a prevailing idea that the work was torn to pieces, or greatly dilapidated by these missiles. This engineer officer states that, on visiting the castle after the cannonade, he found "it had been more injured by the French balls and shells than he had expected; still the casemates in the curtains, serving as barracks for the troops, were intact." "Of 187 guns found in the fort, 102 were still serviceable; 29 only had been dismounted by the French fire. The heaviest injury was sustained by the cavalier" (where a magazine exploded) "in bastion No. 2; in battery No. 5," (where another magazine was blown up,) "and the officers' quarters." They found in the castle twenty-five men whose wounds were too severe to permit their removal with the rest of the garrison.

Of the twenty-nine guns dismounted, five were thrown down with the cavalier; the remaining twenty-four guns were no doubt situated in parts of the work opposite to the attack, being pointed in other directions, and were struck by shots or shells that had passed over the walls facing the ships. There is reason to suppose that of the remaining sixteen guns pointed at the French none were dismounted; and we know that most of them continued to fire till the end of the action.

The two explosions may certainly have been caused by shells fired at low angles from Paixhan guns. But it is much more likely they were caused by shells from the sea-mortars, because these last were much larger, and therefore more likely to break through the masonry; because, being fired at high angles, they would fall vertically upon the magazines, which were less protected on the top than on the sides; and because there were more of these large shells fired than of the small ones, in the ratio of 302 to 117.

But considering that the cannonade and bombardment lasted about six hours, and that 8,250 shot and shells were fixed by the French, it is extraordinary that there were no more than two explosions of magazines, and that no gro

H. Rep. Com. 86—11

injury was done the fort, since it is certain that there were no less than six other similar magazines situated on the rampart, in different parts of the work, not one of which was shell-proof. The surrender, after these explosions, was a very natural event, with a governor and garrison who seem to have known as little about the proper preparation for such contests as about the mode of conducting them. The second explosion must have satisfied them, if the first did not, that they had introduced within their own precincts much more formidable means of destruction than any it was in the power of the French to send from gun or mortar.

The important points to be noticed in this contest are these:

1. The French took such a position that their 94 guns were opposed by the equivalent of 10 or 12 guns only.

2. In proof of the inefficiency of the Mexican guns generally, it may be stated that although the three French frigates were struck in their hulls about three hundred times, they lost but thirty-three men in killed and wounded. The Iphigenie was hulled 160 times, and yet had but thirteen men hurt. Very few, therefore, of these 160 balls could have passed through her sides.

3. It appears that very few, if any, of the guns exposed to the direct action of the French broadsides were dismounted or silenced by their fire.

4. The narratives of the day contain exaggerated statements of injury inflicted on the walls by shells fired from guns; the professional report, above quoted, of the chief engineer of the expedition, neither speaks of nor alludes to any such injury. After deducting from the parts of the work said to be most injured-the cavalier and also battery No. 5, in each of which a magazine exploded-there remain, as having suffered most, the quarters of the officers and bastion No. 2. As to the first, if it was elevated above the walls, as is probable, it would of course suffer severely, because the walls of mere barracks or quarters are never made of a thickness to resist shot or shells of any kind; and if not elevated above the walls, but covered by them, the injury resulted, most probably, from shells fired at high angles from the sea-mortars, and not from shells fired nearly horizontally from the Paixhan guns. Whether the injury sustained by bastion No. 2 was the effect of shot and shells upon the face of the walls, or of shells falling vertically within the bastion, is not stated. It was probably due in part to both. If there had been any extraordinary damage done by the horizontal shells, we may reasonably suppose special mention would have been made of it, because it was the first time that this missile had been tried, in a large way, in actual warfare. That anything like a breach could have been effected with solid shot, at that distance and in that time, we know to be impossible; but it is neither unreasonable to suppose, nor unlikely, that many of the heavy vertical shells may have fallen in the bastion and caused much injury. Whatever may have been the cause of the damage, or its amount, it did not, we have reason to believe, extinguish the fire of any of the five 16-pounders that were pointed from the bastion against the ships.

5. So far as effects were produced by the direct action of the French armament, whether guns, bomb-cannon, or sea-mortars, it does not appear that there was the slightest reason for the submission of the fort. There is little doubt that the 8,250 shot and shells fired at the castle must have greatly marred the surface of the walls, and it is not unlikely that three or four striking near each other may have made deep indentations, especially as the stone is soft, beyond any material applied to building in any part of the United States. But these are not injuries of material consequence, however they may appear to the inex perienced eye, and we should risk little in asserting that, abstracting the effects of the explosion, the castle was as inaccessible to assault after the cannonade as before it; that, so far as regards the levelling of obstacles lying in the way of a sword in hand attack, the 8,250 shot and shells might as well have been fired in the opposite direction.

6. The explosion, however, of two deposits of powder in the castle, one of which is reported to have buried sixty men in its ruins, showed the defenders that, although they might evade the vertical fire, and their works might cover them from the horizontal fire of the French, there was no protection against, no evasion of, the dreadful ravages of exploding magazines. With this ruin around them, and a sixfold greater ruin likely, at every moment, to burst upon their heads, it is not surprising that a garrison, found in circumstances so unmilitary, doubted their power of protracted resistance.

7. It must be borne in mind that these explosions have nothing to do either with the question of relative strength or with the peculiarities of the French attack. No defences, with such management, can be effective, and no attack can fail. The French, not dreaming of such culpable, such inconceivable negligence on a point always receiving the most careful attention, entered upon the cannonade with no other purpose, as is avowed, than that of somewhat weakening the defences and dispiriting and fatiguing the garrison, before proceeding to an assault, which was to have followed at night, and for which all preparations had been made. Had the Mexicans thrown all the powder of these eight magazines into the sea, or had they transported it to their barracks, and every man, making a pillow of a keg, slept through the whole cannonade, as might have been done safely, in their quarters in the curtain casemates, the castle of St. Juan de Ulloa would, we doubt not, have been as competent to resist the projected assault as it was when the French first arrived before it

8. The number of killed and wounded in the French vessels, in proportion to the guns acting against them was, for ten guns, more than twenty-seven men, being upwards of four times as great as the loss sustained by the English at the battle of Trafalgar.

In concluding this reference to facts in military history, we will add that we do not see how it is possible to avoid making the following deduction, namely: that fixed batteries upon the shore are capable of resisting the attacks of ships, even when the armament of the latter is by far the most numerous and heavy. There are several reasons for this capacity in batteries, of which the principal may be thus stated; and these reasons apply to vessels of every size and every sort, to small or large, to vessels moved by wind or steam. This ship is everywhere equally vulnerable, and, large as is her hull, the men and the guns are very much concentrated within her; on the other hand, in the properly constructed battery it is only the gun itself, a small part of the carriage, and now and then a head or an arm raised above the parapet that can be hurt, the ratio of the exposed surfaces being not less than fifteen or twenty to one. Next, there is always more or less motion in the water, so that the ship-gun, although it may have been pointed accurately at one moment, at the next will be thrown entirely away from the object, even when the motion in the vessel is too small to be otherwise noticed; whereas, in the battery the gun will be fired just as it is pointed, and the motion of the ship will merely vary to the extent of a few inches, or at most two or three feet, the spot in which the shot is to be received. In the ship there are, besides, many points exposed that may be called vital points; by losing her rudder, or portions of her rigging, or of her spars, she may become unmanageable and unable to use her strength; she may receive shots under water and be liable to sink; she may receive hot shot and be set on fire; and these damages are in addition to those of having her guns dismounted and her people killed by the shot which pierce her sides and scatter splinters from her timbers, while the risks of the battery are confined to those mentioned above, namely, the risk that the gun, the carriage, or the men may be struck. That the magazines should be exposed, as were those of the castle St. Juan de Ulloa, must never be anticipated as possible.

While on this part of our subject, it is proper to advert to the use of horizontal shells, or hollow shot, or Paixhan's shells, (as they are variously called,) it