With such a training did the captain of the _Shannon_ prepare for the duel which fortune was to give him with the _Chesapeake_. The pick of the British fleets was to meet an American of average efficiency. Superiority of gunnery would have decided that famous action in favour of the former, it may safely be said, whatever the conditions in which it had been fought. At long range the deliberate and practised aim of the _Shannon’s_ 18-pounders would have overborne even the good individual shooting of an American crew. At night or in foggy weather or in a choppy sea the _Shannon’s_ arrangements for firing on a given bearing and at a given elevation would have given her the superiority. As it happened, the combined and correct fire at pistol range, of long gun and carronade--the long gun, double-shotted, searching the _Chesapeake’s_ decks with ball and grape, the carronade splintering her light fir-lined sides and spreading death and destruction among the crew--quickly secured a victory, and showed the naval world the value of high ideals in the technique of gunnery. In the _Shannon_ we have the high-water mark of smooth-bore gunnery. From that time onward, in spite of the precedents which her captain created, little appears to have been done in the way of extending his methods or of applying his improvements to the armament of the navy generally. As a consequence, relatively to the continuously improving defensive efficiency of the ships themselves there was an actual decline in the efficiency of the truck gun after the American War: a decline which culminated in Navarino. It was a time when “new-fangled notions,” developments of method and material, were viewed with strong suspicion, even with resentment, by many of the most influential of naval officers. In the case of the truck gun, strong prejudices reacted against the general introduction of such refinements as had admittedly been found effective in exceptional cases, and the demand still went up for everything in connection with gunnery to be “coarsely simple.” To many it doubtless seemed impolitic, to say the least, that anything should be done in the way of mechanical development which would have the effect of substituting pure skill for the physical force and endurance, in the exertion of which the British seaman so obviously excelled. The truck gun was merely the rough medium by which this physical superiority gained the desired end, and it had been proved well suited to the English genius. Nothing more was asked than a rough equality of weapons. The arguments used against such finesse in gunnery as that used by the commander of the _Shannon_ were much the same, it may be imagined, as those used at an earlier date (and with better reason) to prohibit the use of the mechanically worked crossbow in favour of the simple longbow, strung by the athletic arm of the English archer.