The destructiveness of shell from ordinary guns was so obvious, especially for forts to use against wooden ships, that the difficulties were gradually overcome, and horizontal shell fire was introduced soon after the cessation of wars allowed men time for thought and change. But although the idea was accepted and the fact realized, practice changed slowly, as it tends to do in the absence of emergency. In the attack on Vera Cruz, in 1848, Farragut was present, and was greatly impressed, as with a novelty, by the effect of what he called the “shell shot,” a hybrid term which aptly expresses the transition state of men’s minds at the time. I remember an officer who entered the navy in 1840 telling me the respectful awe and distrust with which his superiors then regarded the new weapon, a very few of which for each gun were supplied tentatively. Ten years more, however, saw a great change, and in 1853 the attack of the Russian squadron of wooden sailing-ships upon the Turkish vessels in the Bay of Sinope gave an object-lesson that aroused the naval world to what wooden ships must expect from horizontal shell fire. In a few minutes three out of seven Turkish frigates were in flames; while of nine sailing-ships and two steamers only one of the latter escaped. HORIZONTAL SHELL FIRE The Crimean War followed quickly, and in 1854 the wooden steamships of the line of the allies, vessels identical in fighting characteristics with those of Trafalgar, attempted to silence masonry works at Sebastopol. Though the disaster was not so great, the lesson of Sinope was reaffirmed. Louis Napoleon, a thoughtful man though scarcely a man of action, had foreseen the difficulty, and had already directed the construction of five floating batteries which were to carry armor. Before the war ended these vessels attacked the forts at Kinburn, which they compelled to surrender, losing, themselves, no men except by shells that entered the gun ports. Their armor was not pierced. Horizontal shell fire had called for iron armor, and the two, as opposing factors, were now established in the recognition of men. The contest between the two sums up the progression and the fluctuations of military ideas which have resulted in the battle-ship of to-day, which, as the fleet-ship, remains the dominant factor in naval warfare, not only in actual fact but in present probability. From the first feeble beginnings at Kinburn to the present time, although the strife has waxed greatly in degree, it remains unchanged in principle and in kind. To exclude the shell, because, starting as one projectile, it became many after penetration, in what does it differ from excluding the rapid-fire gun, whose projectiles are many from the first, and penetrate singly?