And then the targets had to be brought out. Now the ship's crew had been working on those targets in spare moments for several weeks. Each ship had less than fifty and more than twenty-five of them to make. The biggest targets are for the smaller guns and the smallest ones for the larger guns. The size is proportional, as the experts put it, to "the angle of fall," and the size also represents, they tell you, "the mean error of fire" of a gun. Well, the angle of fall and mean error of fire may not convey a satisfactory idea to you, but you must remember that the shot of a little gun goes to its target in a high curve, while the shot of a big one goes almost horizontally. So you can see why a little gun ought to have the bigger target. It curves more, has a greater angle of fall, than a big gun has. And the mean error of fire has to do with what experience has shown that guns perfectly pointed and fired ought to do. They vary a little in their performances and the target is just large enough for every shot to hit it, if everything works absolutely perfectly. The making of the targets is a long job. Great rolls of canvas were broken out of storerooms and cut into a certain number of strips of a certain length. These strips had to be sewed together, and at times certain compartments resembled the inside of a tailor shop with sewing machines buzzing and trimming and cutting going on. Then the rough target had to be spread out and the edges cut off until there was just margin enough to sew it all around to a rope about an inch thick. It required hard work with stout needles and thick leather palms to put the ropes on all four sides. Then came careful measurements for the black lines about two inches wide that marked the targets into squares and a great square in the centre for the bullseye. Out came the paint pots. Some of the targets were made black with white lines and white centres and others were left white with black lines and centres. Then came the battens to which the targets were nailed so as to be stretched on the poles of the raft. Ropes had to be attached in certain places for fastening the target in the exact place and at the exact height. All this work had to be exact, for the umpires measured every target to see that no ship got the slightest advantage. The targets being prepared, the next thing done on every ship was to clear for action. All stanchions, boats, ridge ropes, chests, gangways, everything movable, were taken down and the decks stripped. Hatches were closed and the ship was stripped for fighting. Theoretically everything wooden and not absolutely necessary to the fighting of the ship was thrown overboard. Pictures were removed from bulkheads and crockery packed away so as to save breakage. So carefully was all this packing done on the Louisiana that all the breakage that occurred when the big guns were fired was one water pitcher in a stateroom under the forward bridge and one pane of glass in the bridge storm shield.