Johnstown weekly Democrat. (Johnstown, Cambria County, Pa.) 1889-1916, 1890-01-17

struction at the battery for action. Small
arm drill as infantry and sharpshooters,
cutlass and pistol drill, torpedoes, both
on ship board and in boats; the handling
of powder and projectiles, howitzers,
rapid fire and machine guns which, in
addition to the usual drills aloft with
sails and spars, boat exercise under oars
and sails, occasional landing parties, and,
At rare intervals, encampments on shore
occupy large portion of the available
hours, and give an opportunity for thor
ough Instruction in all that pertains to
what woul probably be the experience
in ac.',a! service against an enemy. The
guns mcst generally in use aboard the
wooden Ships are the smooth bore 9-inch
Dahlgrcus, made during the civil war
and few years before that struggle, a
few Parrot guns of the G0-pounder pat
tern are also to be found, while the larg-
est gun is an S.inch rifle converted from
an 1l-inch Dahlgren smooth bore.
The whole object of the drill is to so
perfect the crew in their individual duties
that when they are called together to go
enemy every detail will have been care
fully attended to and the whole body will
act as IN intelligent unit. The great
gun drill consists in casting loose all the
tackles that hold the gun in place when
the ship is rolling about, and in prOvid-
ing the apparatus required to load and
fire, while the guns crew arm themselves
with cutlass and pistol or rifles, as their
stations call for. Once n week at ''gen-
eral quarters powder and proiectiles are
brought up on deck and the motions of
loading and firing gone through with.
Primers are snapped instead of actually
firing the guns, which latter is only done
once in three months, when the quarter
ly target practice is gone through with.
Until within the last four years but little
proper system was observed at this quar-
terly firing, and it was quite generally
apt to be regarded as more or. less of a
bore that must be gone through with and
endured simply for the sake of carrying
out what the regulations prescribed.
Lieut.. Forsyth-Meigs, for some years
gunnery instructor at the Navalacademy,
drew up a most excellent system, which
he introduced in the North Atlantic
squadron while under the command of
Admirals Luce and Jouett. This consist
ed of two partisan individual practice
in which the vessel and target were both
anchored about thousand yards apart,
and each gun was fired separately, the
scale of merit depending both upon the
celebrity displayed in firing certain
number of shots and in the smallness of
the area covered by these shots.
A medal was presented to the most
successful gun captain. The man win
ming the greatest number of times was
James johnson. His work was re-
markable, especially as his gun was
in competition with some of the riAed
guns. The gun which he fred was
one Of the broadside 0-inch smooth
bores Of the flagship Richmond. This
method OF individual practice was in
tended to lead up to what was termed
battery practice. in which the target Was
again stationary, but the vessels were
under way, steaming arOund it through
an arc of 90 degs., and ut romcwhat over
one thousand yards off The prize in this
case was a small triangular flag, which