The Sun.
London, England, 1867-09-28 00:00:00

OUR COAST DEFENCES.

The Secretary of State for War and Inspector-
General of Fortifications are at present engaged on
a tour of inspection of the coast, harbour, and river
defences of the kingdom, more especially on the
southern, eastern, and western coasts. The conside-
ration of the present state of these works, and of
the plans submitted for finishing them, is a sub-
ject of no little magnitude. It is well known
that opinions are vastly divided among pro-
fessional men as to the form and disposition of
the iron plating, both for the marine fortifica-
tions--such as the forts at Spithead—and the
embrasure " shields" for the coast batteries. The
great fault in points of design in the first instance
with regard to most of the works on the coast that
have been expressly planned to carry armour plat-
ing is the evident over-crowding of each work with
embrasures. These works, it must be remembered,
built of granite, with an iron ribwork of longitudinal
and transverse girders, and sheathing of outer ar-
mour, in the disposition of which each embrasure will
cost from £l,OOO to £1,500, are supposed to be
boilding to last, not for a few years, but for all time •
They can neither, when once planted in the sea—like
the Shovel Fort in Plymouth Sound, the Spithead
forts, or the fort on the Isle of Grain—be recon-
structed like a fleet,or materially enlarged upon in any
way. The fact is, these forts were all intended
when first designed to carry the heaviest gun then
known, the 23-tonner, or, as it is generally called,
the 600-pounder, which has earned such fame at
Shoebury ; but now that the land batteries at the
Gilkicker, at Sandown, at Sheerness, and other
points are nearly ready to receive their iron plating,
it is found that there will not be space for the
23-ton gun, and a lesser weapon will therefore
have to be substituted. The same conclusions
apply to the marine forts at Spithead and else-
where. The introduction of submarine mines into
the system of defence for roadsteads, harbours,
and rivers has, however, rendered the failure of
our marine forts to carry their originally intended
weight of armament a less serious matter than it
would otherwise have been, as it is just possible
that all such works may in future be looked upon as
grand torpedo stations, with their guns protecting
the nests of hidden mines lying in the water channels
and on the edges of the shoals, rather than as fight-
ing batteries defending, unaided by any secret be-
devilments, the passage from the attack of an enemy's
fleet. But there are faults of over-crowding bat-
teries with gunports in some of the works that have
been, or are about to be, visited by Sir John Pak-
ington and Sir John Burgoyne that is really war.
donable, and utterly without remedy unless every
alternate embrasure is built up, and half the
original number of guns placed in the work. Take
the costly Hilsea lines, which were designed to com-
mand the entrance to the island of Portsea (on
which stands all the naval and ordnance establish-
ments at Portsmouth), as an example. The
embrasures have been placed so closely together
that even the earthen covering for the stone-
fronted face of the batteries will not stand, so acute
is the angle given by the short distance between the
ports. As the earth is piled up over the top of
these batteries the foundations also give way, and
huge cracks may be seen opening up through the
brickwork in all directions. The want of solidity
in the base to support the superstructure is, indeed,
also to be found in almost every piece of new fortifi-
cation now erecting, or lately erected, around our
coasts. In many places this result may have been
inevitable from the nature of the ground, but in
many cases it has most undoubtedly been assisted
by a neglect of precautionary measures, or disregard
of any consideration of the condition of the soil,
marsh, or shingle on which the fort was to be
raised. Forts are now standing, or rather are
trying to stand, which are constantly letting slip
large slices of their ramparts into the ditch below.
These forts carry guns, but it is almost needless to
say that not one has yet been fired from their ram-
parts, nor could it be done with safety, for fear of
the whole fort falling prostrate.—Tinges.

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