"We also made the torpedo a relatively more important feature of the armament of all of our ships--from destroyers to battleships--than you did. They were to be our "last ditch" defence in the event of our being drawn into a general fleet action--just such an action, in fact, as the battle of Horn Reef was. We knew all about your gunnery up to the outbreak of the war, and the fact that the big-gun target practices were only at moderate ranges--mostly under 16,000 metres--told us that you were not expecting to engage us at greater ranges. But all the time we were meeting with good success in shooting at ranges up to, and even a good deal over, 20,000 metres, and so we felt sure of having all the best of a fight at such ranges. We knew that our 11-inch guns would greatly out-range your 12-inch (perhaps you already know that even the 8.2-inch guns of the _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ out-ranged the 12-inch guns of the _Invincible_ and _Indefatigable_ at the Falkland battle), and we hoped they might even have the best of your 13.5's. We also knew that our ships were better built than yours to withstand the plunging fall of long-distance shots, and we felt sure that our explosive was more powerful than your lyddite. I am not sure that this proved to be the case, though there is no question that our hits generally did more harm than yours because more of them penetrated decks and armour. "Feeling confident, then, of having the best of a long-range action, our plan was, as I have said, to use the torpedo as a 'last ditch' defence in case the English fleet tried to reduce the range to one at which it could be sure of securing a higher percentage of hits and thus making the greater weight of its broadside decisively felt. In such a contingency we planned to literally fill the sea with torpedoes, on the theory that enough of them must find their targets to damage the enemy fleet sufficiently to force it to open out the range again, and perhaps to cripple it to an extent that would open the way for us to win a decisive victory. Theoretically, this plan was quite sound, for it was based on the generally recognized fact that from three to five torpedoes--the number varying according to the range and the interval between the targets--launched one after the other at a line of ships _cannot_ fail to hit at least one of them, providing, of course, that they all run properly.