File:America's war for humanity related in story and picture, embracing a complete history of Cuba's struggle for liberty, and the glorious heroism of America's soldiers and sailors (1898) (14591448448).jpg

English: Caption cut off: "Mortar battery at Sandy Hook, NY for coast defense." The mortar battery on Sandy Hook was actually at Fort Hancock, New Jersey. The weapons are 12-inch coast defense mortars. This is a somewhat fanciful depiction of firing the 16-mortar battery. The soldiers pulling the lanyards seem to be absent, and the actual mortar battery was surrounded by high walls.

Identifier: americaswarforhu00newy (find matches)
Title: America's war for humanity related in story and picture, embracing a complete history of Cuba's struggle for liberty, and the glorious heroism of America's soldiers and sailors
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors:
Subjects: Spanish-American War, 1898
Publisher: New York, St. Louis, N.D. Thompson Publishing Company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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, as it frequently does, several forts within it, as well as several minefields, which are all so placed as to be covered by the fire of the guns, inorder to prevent them being removed or destroyed by counter-mines. The defenses of Havana form a coast fortress of this sort, commanding a.water channel which is very easily defended. The American vessels, toattack it, will have to steam inshore and engage in long-range fire, whenthey will not be able to do very great harm, or they will have to take up aposition closer still, come to anchor, and pour in a rain of shell. Theunsteady platform of a ships deck is not conducive to good shooting, thoughthey may be helped by something wonderful in the way of a range-finderwhich the United States ships are believed to possess. The Spaniards are not known to have any system of range-finding instru-ments in use, and will have to pick up their distances by means of rangingshots. There is a belief that no nation is so well equipped in this respect as
Text Appearing After Image:
346 AMERICAS WAR FOR HUMANITY. ourselves. A special department in Woolwich Arsenal is devoted to themanufacture of these instruments, and, for a wonder, it is not at the inspec-tion of the wandering foreigner, while the principle of the Watkin position-finder is kept a secret even from the bulk of those who would have to put itto practical use. The ordinary range-finder consists of a telescope, with adrum marked in hundreds of yards fitted below it, and a sliding-bar whichenables the instrument to be adjusted to the height above-tide at which it ismounted. Without going into further details of a technical character, itmay be said that when the telescope is focused on the target the drum showsthe yards in the range, and an arc on the base of the instrument, which cor-responds with the arc on the guns, gives the training in degrees and subdi-visions of degrees. This enables the gun to be trained at once on the targetat a known range, and reduces the error to a very few yards. With the p

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