“With respect to the damages received by Fort Constantine, Dahlgren says:—­”

“The distance of the Agamemnon and Sanspareil from Fort Constantine (17th October, 1854), was assumed to be about 800 yards; Lord Raglan states it to have been rather less.  These two ships could bring to bear about 87 guns, and the firing from them probably lasted some four hours.  There can be no doubt that it inflicted much damage, for the Russian Commander-in-chief-admits it in his official report; but not sufficient to impair the strength of the masonry, and far short of effecting a breach in it.”

“At Bomarsund, the results were rather different:—­Three 32-pounders of 42 cwt. (guns of inferior weight), were landed from a ship’s spar deck, and placed in battery at 950 yards from the North Tower—­the masonry of good quality and 6-1/2 feet thick.  In eight hours, the wall between two embrasures was cut through from top to bottom, offering a practicable breach, to effect which 487 shot and 45 shells were fired, being at the rate of one round from the battery in rather less than a minute; or, from each gun, one in 2-3/4 minutes.  The Tower surrendered.”

“It seems almost incredible that three pieces should be able to accomplish fully that which eighty-seven pieces utterly failed to do, the distances from the object being alike—­particularly when it is considered that many of the latter were of greater calibre, and most of them employed much heavier charges where the calibres were similar.  The guns of the ship, if fired at the same rate as those of the battery, which was not unusually rapid (one round in two and three-fourth minutes), would have discharged some seven thousand seven hundred shot and shells in the course of the four hours, supposing no interruption; a number which, if properly applied, would appear, from the results of three guns, to have been sufficient to breach the wall of the fort in fourteen places; whereas they did not effect a single breach, which is abundant proof of the lack of accuracy.  They must either have been dispersed over the surface of the fort, or else missed it altogether, and this could have been due only to a want of the precision which was attained by the battery.  The constantly preferred complaint of motion in the ships was not to be urged, because on the day of cannonading Sebastopol, there was scarcely a breath of wind, and the ships were too large to be easily moved by the swell, unless very considerable.  That the fort did no greater damage to the ships than it received from them, proves no more than that its fire was quite as illy directed, and the calibres too low.  It is said that the Agamemnon was struck in the hull by two hundred and forty shot and shells, which must have been but a small portion of what was fired, though sufficient to be decisive, if, as already observed, the calibre had been heavier.”

Here, then, a number of projectiles thrown from the ships, which were sufficient, had they been thrown from a land battery, according to the result at Bomarsund, to produce fourteen practicable breaches, failed not only to produce a single breach, but even “to impair the strength of the masonry.”