The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-04-30
COST OF A SEA FIGHT.
Grim Giant Guns Would Hur Forth Fortunes With Every
BrOadSde.

! century sea fighting, would be as child S
play beside such a struggle as here in
Dictated.
Vast questions of statecraft, national
| defense, improved warfare and the like
will hinge on the results then demon
strated. Prime ministers, emperors
and war lords are eager to note the
| effect and significance of such a spec
| tacular international melodrama Their
admirals would stand by and note the
performance
The cost of the production would be
reckoned in millions.
The effect in billions.
NO CHANCE TO RUN.
What a soul-stirring sight it would
be! Nearly 500 men in each vessel.
Each one actuated by a common i'm
pulse; all determined to do their ut
most to MAIN and mangle and kill.
Stripped to the waist, the men down in
the ammunition chambers sweating,
black and grimy, work like fiends in
new inferno. In the turretS, three
score guners loading, aiming and firing
the big steel monsters as fast as hu-
man endeavor can perform. Above all,
the roar and crashing of the eXplo-
sions.
War is hell said a great American
commander. War on the deep is dou-
bly, so. There is no chance for the in
valorous to escape. Bound by the adj
amantine walls that confine him,
every man must fight or jump over
board.
Even the artillerists. jumping about
the huge rifles like the witches around
the bubbling caldron in Macbeth"
are not even protected by shields now.
Recent experiences have shown that
these so-called projections were the
wickedest delusions. When the rain of
missiles begins the iron aprons around
the guns are quickly shattered and the
decks swept by the metal splinters.
Since the battle of the Yalu, shields
have been abandoned and now the ar
tillerist on shipboard, unless he be coop
ed up in a turret like a rat in a trap,
is as unprotected as any infantryman
skirmishing on shore. 1t is better to
have three or four gunners killed at
their posts than scores of men wounded
all over the deck by the jagged tsplin-
tiers from their own ''life-saving" de-
vices.
A SEA FIGHT PICTURE.
Up aloft the men are working the
machine guns in the military tops.
They ascend to their eyries through the
hollow masts. The smoke UP there is
not so binding as on deck. The gat-
lings sing a shrill treble as they dis
charge a shower of 45-calibre bullets.
The boom. boom of the big rifled guns
in the turrets, together with the muf-
fled baritones from the eight-inch sing
ers in the barbettes between decks,
yield a diapason of tremendous range
and stentorian volume.
The conclusions are terrific. Blood
oozes from the ears and nose of this
one and that. The shots of command
are drowned by the screams of the
shells and the death grOans of the
wounded. A we'll placed shot pene
trateS magazine and a crater bursts
forth. belching guns, powder cases,
ammunition hoists, chains, blocks and
mangled bodies, with sickening thun-
der.
Up in the air spins the iron hood of
circular turret, blown skyward by
the explosion of the 13-inch rife be-
meath. 1t slides off the foremost, which
crashes overheard. Up leap dozen
eager fellows to cut away the rigging
and disentangle their beloved ship
their home, their refuge and their maui
solemn all in one.
A scant quarter of a mile away the
enemy lies, maneuvering around and
about like harpooned swOrdfsh. The
waste of water between is covered with I
wreckage, sparS, matches, small boats
and the like The strain of the en-
counter has told severely. On their
sides, mute and grim, lie a couple of
high pressure guns, made as useless as
Medusa's head through the bursted re-
coil cylinders beside them.
In the indented steel deck several of ;
the guns crew are damned, dying, /
gasping for air. No succOr is nigh. /
Every man possessed of vitality enough I
to stand is working with frenzied zeal (
to keep up the fusilade. An ominous /
silence would disclose their weakness +
to the slaughterers on the other ship,
and so the CHASTITY work goes on.