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CHAPTER V H.M.S. SCYLLA AND GUNNERY In the Mediterranean again - Condition of Gunnery and Signalling - Revolutionising Night Signalling - The Admiralty and Inventions - A Source of Discouragement - The Boat that went Adrift - The Scylla's Cruise - Improvement in Gunnery - A New Sub-calibre Gun and Target - History of the "Dotter" - Prize Firing - The Scylla's Triumph - Half-pay. ON the 28th May, 1896, I was appointed Captain of H.M.S. Scylla, a cruiser of 3400 tons, armed with two 6-inch and six 4.7-inch guns, and we left England to join the flag of Admiral Sir Michael Culme Seymour, G.C.B., the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. It was six years since I had left the Mediterranean, and I expected to find great improvements in the routine in gunnery and in signalling. To my surprise everything was just as it had been ; no advance had been made in any way, except in the housemaiding of the ships. The state of the paintwork was the one and only idea. To be the cleanest ship in the Fleet was still the objective for every one ; nothing else mattered. The quarter's allowance of ammunition had to be expended somehow, and the custom throughout the Navy was to make a signal, "Spread for target practice - expend a quarter's ammunition, and rejoin my flag at such and such a time." The ships of the Fleet radiated in all directions and got 73 74 H.M.S. SCYLLA AND GUNNERY rid of their ammunition as quickly as they could. How the ammunition was expended did not matter. The orders to the ships were to expend a quarter's ammunition, and the important thing was to get the practice over and rejoin the flagship at the time specified. At the end of my first year in commission, Admiral Sir John O. Hopkins was appointed to command the Fleet, and I found that he had ideas of fleet manoeuvres, gunnery and signalling far in advance of any other Admiral with whom I had served. Night signalling had very little improved since I was in H.M.S. Edinburgh, and though a lamp on the truck had been introduced into the Navy, it was too slow to be of much use. I found that all the signalmen on board H.M.S. Scylla except one, the yeoman, G. H. Glover, were quite unreliable in the work of taking in signals at night ; and in October I put all the signalmen under instruction. By day they were exercised with a small venetian-blind shutter, which made the shorts and longs of the Morse code, and by night with the truck flashing lamp. The venetian-blind idea was new, so the Admiralty "turned it down." During the War twenty-six years afterwards, in 1917, it was resurrected and found to be very useful ; it was also used horizontally for communicating with aeroplanes. Reading 90 groups of five letters each, a total of 450 letters, was rather a severe exercise. At first we had to make it very slowly, and even then there was a high percentage of mistakes. But after two months' instruction the men were perfect. 75 PROGRESS IN SIGNALLING They could read the 450 letters at almost telegraphic speed, and their superiority over the other ships of the Fleet was so marked that the Commander-in- Chief called upon me to report :-
I drew up a full report on these points and the Commander-in-Chief ordered the system of instruction to be adopted by the Mediterranean Squadron. The energetic Flag Lieutenant (now Capt. H. G. Sandiman) used to exercise the Fleet every night ; competition was introduced and prizes were given for special efficiency. In a very short time the night signalling of the Squadron was completely revolutionised ; it was found to be quicker and more reliable than day signalling. On the 17th September, 1898, the Flag Lieutenant sent in the following report: "H.M.S. Ramillies, Malta, " Sir, " I. The Truck Lamp. " Captain Percy Scott has invented an electric truck flashing lantern which fulfils all  76 H.M.S. SCYLLA AND GUNNERY requirements. The lantern consists of a lamp surrounded by a series of slats as in a Venetian blind ; when the operator presses a key these slats turn radially to the light and so expose it ; when he releases the key the light is obscured. " These lamps have undergone a very severe trial of from eighteen months to two years ; they have proved themselves reliable, have been used for general work, and all the night signal exercises ; I attribute the high degree of accuracy in night signals which the Squadron has arrived at mainly to the fact of being able to exercise the signalmen with a lamp which makes true Morse at any rate of speed,
" II. Colomb's Flashing Lamp. This lamp is rarely used in its present form, on account of the following defects in it. " Captain Scott has invented a shutter to overcome these defects ; it is worked by a suitable side lever, can be easily fitted to the existing lanterns, and answers all requirements. "III. Flashing Arrangements for Searchlight. " The obscuring disc supplied by the Service is a most clumsy and unreliable contrivance. The disc itself shuts off very little light. It frequently carries away owing to excessive heat ; the method of working it is irksome, the lever being too high up, on the wrong side of the projector, moving in a wrong direction, with too long a beat. " In fact everything that can be wrong is wrong. "Captain Scott has invented a shutter 1 which is placed in front of the lens ; it is worked by a handle on the right, moving at a short beat and in a suitable direction. It is a pleasure to make Morse with it. Three have been on trial. " In conclusion I would submit that the following, which have been thoroughly tried, be adopted in H.M. Service :
1 This machine was used by every ship of the Fleet during the War, for signalling both by day or by night. 78 H.M.S. SCYLLA AND GUNNERY " In view also of what I consider to be the satisfactory state of the signalling of the Squadron here, I submit that the scheme of instruction and instruments which have brought it about may be generally adopted in the Fleet. " The scheme was submitted to you by Captain Scott early in 1897, and has been in use ever since. Important as the suggestions were it was many years before they were acted on, and during that time the appliance supplied to H.M. Navy for signalling at night remained, in the Flag Lieutenant's phrase, "inadequate and unsatisfactory." In H.M. Navy an officer is allowed to patent an invention, provided that he submits it to the Admiralty and agrees to comply with some rather drastic official conditions. On the 10th January, 1899, I applied to patent some of the machines I had invented while in H.M.S. Scylla. Their Lordships, on the 15th March, 1899, replied that they were pleased to accede to my request, but they added that the fact of my holding a number of patents would, in their Lordships' opinion, constitute a grave objection to my being selected for any scientific or administrative post in H.M. Service. I discussed this letter with the Commander-in-Chief, Sir John O. Hopkins, who had occupied various positions on the Board of Admiralty and knew their ways. He advised me, in the circumstances, to withdraw my application and not to  79 MISTAKEN ADMIRALTY POLICY send the Admiralty any more of my inventions. I withdrew my application, but I am sorry to say I did send the Admiralty some more inventions. They were for a long time boycotted: and the country lost the use of them. The threat conveyed to me by their Lordships was a distinct infraction of the King's Regulations. Moreover, such an attitude was most harmful to H.M. Navy, for it could only have the effect of discouraging officers from thinking out and devising mechanism for improving the efficiency of the Fleet. The faculty of inventing or devising is a valuable asset to the country, a fact fully demonstrated by the Great War. Where, for example, should we have been without the officers who conceived the idea of Q ships and many other ingenious devises for destroying submarines ? The action of their Lordships, which practically precluded me from patenting any of my inventions, was freely discussed in the Fleet and much criticised. The view taken was that, if the holding of patents was prejudicial to an officer's career, then officers could not patent anything, and they became, in fact, debarred from exercising a right which is otherwise common to all. An officer, who was a real mechanical genius, came to me for advice with regard to an exceedingly clever device he had invented for improving the efficiency of the Whitehead torpedo. He pointed out to me that he knew it would be boycotted if he submitted it officially, as that had been the fate of most of his suggestions. Finally, he decided to sell it to the Whitehead factory, and that company having adopted it, brought it into 80 H.M.S. SCYLLA AND GUNNERY use at once, and H.M. Navy benefited by its introduction ! Such are the results of blind officialism ! In 1897, at night, during a gale of wind the flagship had a boat washed away, and there was evidence of its having been much damaged before it got adrift. Wood does not sink, and the remains, after travelling some hundreds of miles, turned up finally at Ajaccio in Corsica. Rather a fuss was made about the incident, as the discovery in the wrecked boat of a bluejacket's cap with the ribbon of H.M.S. Ramillies started a rumour that an attempt had been made to spy on the French fortress. The Commander-in-Chief sent me to explain matters and to bring back the remains of the boat. The explanation was quite satisfactory and the French gave me a most charming welcome. The acting English Consul drove me round and showed me all the places of interest in the town, and we visited the house where the great Napoleon was born. At the top of the street in which this house stands is a statue of the five sons of Madame Napoleon, all kings, erected, as the date inscribed on it shows, sixty years after her death. Why, one wonders, did they not put it up during her lifetime ? No other woman has ever been the mother of five sons all of whom became kings. On our return voyage to Malta, my First Lieutenant, a very able officer, named Pennant Lloyd, pointed out to me that the recovered boat could be very easily repaired by our carpenter, and that we badly wanted a boat for rough work. After this conversation I was not surprised to find that 81 THE GUNNERY PROBLEM the boat on the following morning presented a much worse appearance than when we found her. On arrival at Malta a sort of Coroner's inquest took place, the president being an officer who afterwards became head of the London Fire Brigade. My First Lieutenant argued strongly that the boat was of no use except for firewood, and eventually the Board took that view and she was condemned to be broken up. Instead of breaking her up, however, we patched her up, and she did very useful work for a long time. Gunnery was a difficult problem to attack. There were no efficient targets, the gun sights were bad, and the expenditure of ammunition had to be carried out at stated times and under conditions that afforded little scope for instruction. Our sub-calibre gun was inaccurate and of very little use for instructing the men. However truly a man might lay his gun with it, the shot would not necessarily hit the mark. In such circumstances it was very difficult to make any progress in rapid hitting. In 1897 and 1898 we complied with the general rules as to drill and the expenditure of the quarterly allowance of ammunition, and we carried out our prize firings with very poor results. In 1898 I was ordered to go for a cruise to Crete and various places, and as the order meant that I should be away from the Fleet for some time, the Commander-in- Chief, Sir John Hopkins, gave me permission to carry out any changes in gunnery which I considered might improve the shooting of the Scylla. In Chapter II. I mentioned the three difficulties 82 H.M.S. SCYLLA AND GUNNERY that the firer had to contend with. No. 3 had disappeared, as a lateral correction had been added to all gun sights. I therefore had to overcome only the optical difficulty, and the necessity of waiting for the ship to roll the alignment on. Using a telescope as a gun sight would remove the optical difficulties. It would give the firer only one point to align on the target instead of two ; he would be able to see the target more distinctly, and he could adjust the focus of the telescope to meet any imperfection of his eye. To alter the existing gun sight was not difficult. We simply pivoted a bar carrying a telescope on the fore sight and allowed it to rest on the rear sight. We experimented with this, using the one-inch Admiralty pattern sub-calibre gun, and obtained very bad results, which the men attributed to the telescope. This threw me back a great deal, as it was difficult to convince them that the fault rested with the sub-calibre gun and not with the sight. Opposite to Candia in Crete was an uninhabited island which we made use of for many purposes. I took the sub-calibre gun there, mounted it on a rigid platform, and fired at a target. The elevation being the same for every round, all the shots should have gone in approximately the same spot, instead of which they went all over the place. This demonstration proved to the men that their erratic shooting was due to the gun and not to the telescope sight, and thus restored confidence in the gun sight. The one-inch sub-calibre gun supplied by the Admiralty for instructional purposes only we condemned as worse than useless. It was  83 A NEW SUB-CALIBRE GUN relegated to the storeroom and never appeared again. Something had to be made to take its place. The conditions which I wanted the new sub-calibre gun to fulfil were-
To meet these requirements I had a disc made to fit into the breach of the gun. In the centre of it was fixed a rifle, the fore end of the barrel having a cone-piece on it fitting into the bore of the gun. An armature was attached to the rifle trigger and an electro-magnet placed opposite to it, the wires therefrom being taken to the trigger of the gun.  LEE-METFORD AIMING RIFLE IN THE GUN. We thus had an accurately shooting rifle rigidly fixed in the bore of the gun, and capable of being fired by the ordinary gun mechanism. It was brought into use for instructional purposes on board the Scylla, and proved to be a great success. Photographs and drawings of this sub-calibre rifle 84 H.M.S. SCYLLA AND GUNNERY were sent to the Admiralty in 1898, but they declined to adopt it. Had they done so the Navy would have had an efficient instructional weapon and the country would have been saved �40,000 a year in ammunition, the relative prices of the cartridges of the one-inch and the Lee-Metford being, one-inch, �110 per 1000, and Lee-Metford, �4 per 1000. This rifle was generally adopted in the Navy seven years afterwards. This delay caused a waste of the country's money to the extent of half a million sterling, and very much retarded our progress in gunnery. Readers with technical knowledge will ask why, if better results were obtained from ammunition costing �4 per 1000 than from ammunition costing �110 per 1000, was the suggestion not adopted ? The answer is, that in Government offices they do not like suggestions coming from outside which could have originated in the office itself. It was the same with all my proposals. They were all boycotted, because the people - mostly my juniors in age, and with far less experience - dealt with these matters at the Admiralty, and felt aggrieved that the suggestions had not emanated from themselves. The accuracy obtained with this rifle in combination with the telescope sight was marvellous, but a difficulty cropped up. According to the Admiralty drill the man who pointed the gun was to adjust his sight ; that is, raise or lower it according to where his shot went. But when using a telescope the man had one eye at the telescope and the other one shut, so he could not possibly adjust the sight. To meet this difficulty I increased the gun's crew by one man, whose duty was to raise 85 NEW TYPE OF TARGET or lower the sight according to the orders of the pointer. He was called the "sight-setter." The Admiralty hauled me over the coals for the innovation, but four years afterwards a sight-setter was allowed to every gun in the Navy. Our next trouble was that we had no towing target - the Admiralty did not supply one. What was required was a target that could be towed rapidly past the ship, so as to exercise the men in following it, and teach them to adjust their gun sights in accordance with the speed of their own ship and the speed of the target. Accordingly I had a box made about 12 feet long and 9 inches in section. It was filled with cork so as not to sink when struck with bullets, it carried a flag, and a keel was added underneath to keep the flag-staff vertical. It would tow at very high speed, and answered our purpose in every way, and we practised at it whenever we could get an opportunity. 1 The next problem to solve was the provision of a target at which to fire Service ammunition. The target supplied by the Admiralty for the purpose was of no use. It consisted of a triangular base with a mast at each angle, and was canvassed all round. If you hit it the canvas behind made the hole invisible, and it was no use trying to teach the men to shoot if they could not see whether they were hitting or not. So I made a new target, 2 consisting simply of boards separated by iron rods, two masts and a sail 6 feet by 6 feet. When this 1 Though much required in the Navy, the Admiralty would not adopt it. 2 The Admiralty would not adopt it for six years. Then it came into general use and is in use to this day. 86 H.M.S. SCYLLA AND GUNNERY target was hit the hole made by the shot could easily be seen. With our telescope sight and efficient sub-calibre gun, we fired thousands of rounds, and the accuracy of aim went ahead by leaps and bounds. One day, when there was a considerable swell and the ship was rolling, we carried out some practice, and the results were shocking, The firing was very slow and, with the exception of one man, no one put his shot anywhere near the target. I watched this one man very carefully during his firing, and saw that he could work his elevating wheel with such dexterity and speed as to keep his sight steady on the target notwithstanding the rolling of the ship. What one man could do intuitively the others could be taught to do, but inasmuch as the ship did not always roll, the difficulty was to find out how to teach them. For some days I was at a loss how to solve this final problem. It was a serious one, for had we met an enemy in a seaway our shooting would have been shockingly bad. One man had demonstrated that in him, whatever the cause might be (he had just had seven days cells), there existed a union between his eye looking through the telescope and his hand on the elevating wheel which enabled him to work that wheel in the right direction and at exactly the correct speed to compensate for the roll of the ship. How to make the other men like him ? Fortunately it occurred to me that I could design a contrivance with a target moving up and down at about the same rate as a ship rolls, and compel the pointer to manipulate his elevating wheel quick 87 THE "DOTTER" enough to follow it. This contrivance was made, and the men christened it the "Dotter." A description of the arrangement may be of interest. On a vertical board, opposite to the muzzle of the gun, was a metal frame which, by means of rollers and a handle, could be moved up and down at either a slow or a fast rate. On this frame was painted a bull's-eye, and beside it was a card with a line drawn upon it. On the face of the board, and moved either up or down by the muzzle of the gun, was a carrier containing a pencil. When the men under instruction pressed the trigger of the gun the pencil, actuated by an electrical contrivance, made a dot on the card, and the pencil at the same time moved a space to the right. If the gun was truly pointed at the bull's-eye at the moment of firing, the dot would be in line with the bull's-eye. If the gun was not truly pointed, the amount of error was indicated on the card. At this machine the men were given constant practice, and in a very short time they were able to follow the target up and down with remarkable accuracy. In other words they had all learned to do what the one man had done intuitively. The next time we went out firing there was a considerable roll, but it made no difference to the men, whose shooting was admirable, a fact which I attribute entirely to their course of instruction at the "Dotter." We had got rid of the second difficulty which I have referred to on page 82. On the 2nd September, 1898, I wrote to Sir John Hopkins, thanking him for the great assistance 88 H.M.S. SCYLLA AND GUNNERY he had given me in my endeavours to improve the gunnery of H.M.S. Scylla, and I pointed out that in our recent practices our shooting, owing to the "Dotter," had so improved that at the next prize firing I anticipated making seventy or eighty per cent, of hits. On the 26th May, 1899, we carried out our prize firing. At that time independent umpires were not considered necessary, but I took out three with me, Captain R. B. Farquhar, of H.M.S. Nymphe, and two lieutenants from H.M.S. Illustrious. The six 4.7 guns fired seventy rounds and made fifty-six hits, which was exactly eighty per cent., and placed the little cruiser Scylla at the top of the Navy in heavy-gun shooting, and made a record that had never been approached before. H.M.S. Scylla also won the Mediterranean Challenge Cup for rifle shooting. It was strange that although every station encouraged rifle shooting and had a challenge cup for the best ship, on no station was a cup or reward of any sort offered for the ship making the most hits in heavy-gun shooting. Sir John Hopkins, in December, 1888, offered to present a cup, and I drew out a scale of points and regulations for the competition. But he met with too much opposition from the senior officers in the Fleet to carry it through, and, unfortunately for the Navy, his time as Commander-in-Chief was nearly expiring. Had he remained a little longer on the station, I feel sure that we should have seen introduced under his command all the improvements in gunnery for which we had to wait six long years. On my return to England in June, 1899, I  89 DELAY AND WASTE explained and submitted drawings to the Admiralty of the "Dotter," and it went through the ordinary Admiralty procedure. As in the case of my flashing lamp, they tried to improve on it. On the 15th January, 1901, their Lordships wrote to the Commander-in-Chief China Station: "Trials are being carried out with an improved pattern of Captain Scott's apparatus with a view of its introduction and supply to the Service." In December, 1902, I saw the official pattern. All the "improved" dotters had to be altered at great expense, and we had lost three years of instruction with the apparatus. Fifteen years after this the Admiralty did the same thing in war-time with the depth charge. An efficient pattern was submitted to them, but a year was lost of its use because they wanted to improve on it. After paying off H.M.S. Scylla I was for a few months on half-pay. What a shocking injustice is half-pay to the officers of the Navy ! For instance, a captain, fifty years old, after thirty-five years of service in the Navy, with probably a wife and family, received �4 7s. 6d. a week, less income tax not the wage of a decent mechanic or hard-working miner. 1 1 In July, 1919, this old injustice was at last remedied. <-Previous Chapter - Next Chapter -> ^ back to top ^ |
