When, say, the shots of one salvo fall beyond the mark and the shots of the next come down on the near side, the mark is said to be “bracketed.” When the individual shots of a salvo fall some too far and others too short, the mark has been “straddled.” A straddle is a closed-in bracket. At long ranges far more shots miss than hit, and we are dealing now with ranges up to ten or twelve miles. The bigger the gun the bigger the splash made by its shell when striking the water, and as the spotting officers cannot spot unless they can clearly make out the splashes, there is an accuracy—an ultimate effective accuracy—in big guns with which smaller ones cannot compete however well they may be served. For, ultimately, in naval gunnery, when ships are moving fast and ranges are changing continually, we come down to trial and error. We shoot and correct, correct and shoot, now and then find the mark and speedily lose it again, as the courses and speeds are changed. Unless we can see the splashes of the shells and are equipped with guns powerful enough to shoot fairly flat—without high elevation—we may make a great deal of noise and expend quantities of shell, but we shall not do much hurt to the enemy. The Falkland Islands action was the Royal Navy’s first experience in long-range war gunnery under favorable conditions of light—and it was rather disappointing. It revealed the immense gap which separates shooting in war and shooting at targets in time of peace. The battle cruisers sank the enemy, and suffered little damage in doing their appointed work, and thus achieved both the purposes which Admiral Sturdee had set himself and his men. But it was a wasteful exhibition, and showed how very difficult it is to sink even lightly armoured ships by gun-fire alone. Our shells at the long ranges set were falling steeply; their effective targets were not the sides but the decks of the Germans, which were not more than seventy feet wide. If one reflects what it means to pitch a shell at a range of ten miles upon a rapidly moving target seventy feet wide, one can scarcely feel surprised that very few shots got fairly home. We need not accept _au pied de la lettre_ the declaration of Lieutenant Lietzmann—a damp and unhappy prisoner—that the _Gneisenau_, shot at for five hours, was hit effectively only twenty times, nor endorse his rather savage verdict that the shooting of the battle cruisers was “simply disgraceful.” But every competent gunnery officer, in his moments of expansive candour, will agree that the results of the big-gun shooting were not a little disappointing. The Germans added to our difficulty by veiling their ships in smoke clouds and thus, to some extent cancelled the day’s “visibility.”