Just as von Spee at Coronel, having the advantage of greater speed and greater power, could do what he pleased with the _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_, so Sturdee with his battle cruisers could do what he pleased with von Spee. The _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_ could steam at twenty-eight knots—they were clean ships—while the _Scharnhorst_ and the _Gneisenau_, now five months out of dock, could raise little more than twenty. The superiority of the English battle cruisers in guns was no less than in speed. Each carried eight 12-inch guns, firing a shell of 850 lb., while von Spee’s two armoured cruisers were armed with eight 8.2-inch guns, firing shell of 275 lb. Sturdee, with his great advantage of speed, could set the range outside the effective capacity of von Spee’s guns, secure against anything but an accidental plunging shot upon his decks, while the light German 6-inch armour upon sides and barbettes was little protection against his own 12-inch armour-piercing shell. Sturdee could keep his distance and pound von Spee to bits at leisure. The “visibility” was perfect, space was unlimited, the Germans had no port of refuge, and from dawn to sunset Sturdee had sixteen hours of working daylight. He was in no hurry, though one may doubt if he expected to take so unconscionable a time as three and a half hours to sink the _Scharnhorst_ and five hours to dispose of the _Gneisenau_. It was not that Sturdee’s gunnery was bad—relatively, that is, to the gunnery of other ships or of other navies. The word bad suggests blame. But it was certainly ineffective. After the Falkland Islands action, and after those running fights in the North Sea between battle cruisers, it became dreadfully clear that naval gunnery is still in its infancy. All the brains and patience and mechanical ingenuity which have been lavished upon the problem of how to shoot accurately from a rapidly moving platform at a rapidly moving object, all the appliances for range-finding and range-keeping and spotting, leave a margin of guesswork in the shooting, which is a good deal bigger than the width of the target fired at. The ease and accuracy of land gunnery in contrast with the supreme difficulty and relative inaccuracy of sea gunnery were brought vividly before me once in conversation with a highly skilled naval gunner. “Take a rook rifle,” said he, “put up a target upon a tree, measure out a distance, sit down, and fire. You will get on to your target after two or three shots and then hit it five times out of six. You will be a land gunner with his fixed guns, his observation posts, his aeroplanes or kite balloons, his maps upon which he can measure up his ranges. Then get into a motor-car with your rook rifle, get a friend to drive you rapidly along a country road, and standing up try what sport you make of hitting the rabbits which are running and jumping about in the fields. That, exaggerated a bit perhaps, is sea gunnery.