The San Francisco call., 1898-02-20

c munition each. Hospital equip = 0 ment was also taken along. c
 As there are insufficient quarters at it will be obliged to camp in quarter masters tents supplied the party for the purpose by the Quartermaster's Department at the fort. These tents are the regulation "A" tents of the service, and as they cannot be heated, the soldiers are likely to have hard time of it during the present weather.
 Fifteen hundred rounds of ammuni- tion for the battery arrived to-day, and mortars of the battery will be put in condition for instant use. The breech blocks for the mortars have been lying in the quartermaster' s storehouse since the battery was To- cated, but now they will be attached.
 Rush orders were received at Fort Warren on Friday by Colonel Wood- ruff, who was directed to send de- tachment of one corporal and eight men to Fort Winthrop, where they are to get the eight eight-inch converted rifle guns to the dock in readiness for shipment. The guns are to go to Mo- bile, Ala, where carriages from New York have been sent to mount the rifles.
 The big guns will go all the way by rail. a rather expensive method of transporting heavy material, showing the urgency of the call. These orders of the War Department are sent as a matter of precaution. There is nothing necessarily sensational in either the strengthening the garrison of the new Winthrop battery or the forwarding 10 Mobile of the guns from the old ana dismantled Fort Winthrop on Gov ernor Island. An addition to the gar rison Of the mortar battery would enable the lieutenant in command properly to care for and drill with the sixteen huge mortars located there. Altogether the Winthrop battery is the most complete new fortificat1on which Boston harbor possesses.
 The guns which are to go to Mobile from Governors Island are not strictly smooth bores, into which jackets car rying rifle grooves have been inserted. In point of range and accuracy these converted cannon would doubtless be superior to the old type of smooth-bore artillery, which is the only kind which most of our forts as yet contain, but at best are makeshifts.
 They are muzzle loaders and their crew would be terribly exposed to an enemy's fire in loading, nor could the guns be discharged with anything ap preaching the rapidity and accuracy practicable with the new breech-load ing rifles, of which, unhappily, we have but few.
 The War Department made it known that 1t proposed to make @ special effort to strengthen the defenses of the Southern seaports, which were in an even more unprotected condition than the great cities of the North. It was in fulfllment of this purpose that sev- eral new 8-inch rifle cannon were being sent to Savannah when they were lost at sea some months ago, and active work has been going on in emplace- ments for guns not only at Savannah, but at Charleston, Mobile Key West and Pensacola. These converted rifles from Boston harbor are doubtless be- ing forwarded to Mobile, because the War Department finds itself deficient in better guns, and feels that these are fairly sufficient for the purposes. There are cities on the Atlantic Coast where works that have been begun are in such an advanced state of completion as to call for garrisons.
 Heretofore the old forts not in oc- cupancy have been turned over to an ordnance sergeant. Such posts are Fort Independence, Fort Winthrop in Boston harbor, Fort Constitution, at Newcas- tie, N. Y., and others of like character, but with the new high-power guns comes an expensive and complicated mechanism in the breech and carriage recurring far more care than was ever bestowed on the old Rodu1ans. It has been said that the mechanism of the retreating gun at Warren, the only one we have mounted, requires as much at tention and protection as the finest ma chinery, and no ordnance sergeant could give that. For that reason the number of men is increased, as at Win throp.