positions. I have had ample proof that in bad weather torpedo-boats cannot fire with any accuracy. It therefore tells both ways.
Now as to lying at anchor near an enemy's coast. In this also I have had considerable experience while at Batoum and its neighbourhood, where I had frequently under my command twelve or fourteen ships, against which the Russians constantly organised torpedo attacks. All their attacks were unsuccessful, for the following reasons: in the first place, as a most gallant Russian officer informed me after the war, it was very difficult to find Batoum at all. I will diverge for a moment from my point in order to state that an English naval officer of the highest rank and position informed me that he had tried defence in torpedo warfare, he himself being on board the defending ship, and that he found that the torpedo-boats so easily discovered his vessel in the darkest nights, that, had it been real warfare, she would have been sunk or destroyed.
Now if a man tries to find a thing in the dark in his own bedroom, he can easily find it; but if he goes into another man's bedroom, it will puzzle him vastly to put his hand upon what he wants. I make this comparison because I imagine that the attacking torpedo-boats referred to by this gallant officer came from the immediate neighbourhood, and knew pretty well where the object of their attack was lying – knew the bearings and distance before they started to attack her, and thus had very little difficulty in finding their way. The attacks by the Russian ships on the Turkish squadrons was generally made from vessels coming from ports 200 to 300 miles off, and which, on a pitch-dark night, had to find a harbour where there were no marks or lights of any description. Nothing could be seen beyond the dark outline of the high mountains behind the harbour, which were next to useless as a guide to the anchorage. Moreover, we had a plan of defence at Batoum of a most original nature, proving again that necessity is the mother of invention. (See Plan No. 2.)
The little port of Batoum and its town were kept, as I have stated, in perfect darkness. The severest penalties were to be incurred by those who showed a light anywhere, and on several occasions infraction of that rule were punished with great severity. On one occasion we caught an old rascal showing a light from the window of a house prominently placed near the sea. The man was instantly seized and bastinadoed. After this, and when one or two other examples had been made, one might have imagined Batoum a city of the dead during the night. The shape of the harbour is shown by the plan. From the spit of land marked A we improvised a breakwater, consisting of such trees and spars as we could lay our hands on. These trees and spars were anchored in a line verging towards the beach at a point called B. To these trees we nailed numbers of thin planks abreast straight down into the water – so making, as it were, a wall of planks about 12 feet deep. The proof of their efficacy was shown one morning by our finding a hole in the planks, and a torpedo diverged from its course lying on the beach at the point marked C. This torpedo had not exploded, and, when discovered by the guard-boats, was surrounded by gaping inhabitants who, in their astonishment, looked upon this unusual apparition as if it were a huge fish still alive and moving his tail – that tail being,
