seems to have done no harm at all; but against this it must be remembered that the American vessel discharged very few projectiles all told, and had no large dockyard to aim at. Of the few that she did fire one fell near a destroyer. It might as well have been a ship, and that ship would undoubtedly have been injured or destroyed.
Port Arthur is another story. Here there is no doubt that the bombardment caused a cessation of repair work in the dockyard, destroyed many important shops in the yard and generally contributed largely to the inability of the Russian fleet to repair damages after the battle of Round Island. This result was mostly achieved by land batteries, the naval guns afloat took little part in the affair. But it is a matter of some wonder that the Japanese never managed to originate armoured floating-batteries with which to attack Port Arthur by sea. It could have been done; and it would surely have been effective to a degree.
Supposing merely twelve guns to be engaged in bombarding an arsenal from beyond the horizon, and assuming a rate of fire per gun of one round every five minutes, in four hours only no less than 250 projectiles will be discharged. Each gun would be laid on the big area of dockyard, and probably a balloon would be employed to locate the hits. It is certainly conceivable that from ten to thirty projectiles would fall in the aimed-at area, and they would very probably accomplish damage that it would take at least a month to remedy.
