' Our own supply
therefore exceeded fifty rounds. In his life of Vice-Admiral
Lord Lyons,[76] Sir S. Eardley Wilmot tells us that the British
ships which attacked the Sebastopol forts in October 1854 'could
only afford to expend seventy rounds per gun.' At the close of
the nineteenth century, the regulated allowance for guns mounted
on the broadside was eighty-five rounds each. Consequently, the
Elizabethan allowance was nearly, if not quite, as much as that
which our authorities, after an experience of naval warfare during
three centuries, thought sufficient. 'The full explanation,' says
Professor Laughton, 'of the want [of ammunition] seems to lie
in the rapidity of fire which has already been mentioned. The
ships had the usual quantity on board; but the expenditure was
more, very many times more, than anyone could have conceived.'
Mr. Julian Corbett considers it doubtful if the ammunition, in
at least one division of the fleet, was nearly exhausted.
[Footnote 75: _The_Spanish_War_, 1585-87 (Navy Records Society),
1898, p. 323.]
[Footnote 76: London, 1898, p. 236.]
Exhaustion of the supply of ammunition in a single action is a
common naval occurrence. The not very decisive character of the
battle of Malaga between Sir George Rooke and the Count of Toulouse
in 1704 was attributed to insufficiency of ammunition, the supply
in our ships having been depleted by what 'Mediterranean' Byng,
afterwards Lord Torrington, calls the 'furious fire' opened on
Gibraltar.
Pages:
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212