He knows that at a given
moment his target will be at a given point. He knows also just how
fast his shells will travel and makes calculations that enable him
to place a shell at that point at just the right second. In this
battle the shells of the British ship took about twenty seconds
to go from the mouths of the guns to the German hulls. And they
made a curve at the highest point of which they reached a distance
of more than two miles; and most wonderful of all was the fact
that at the beginning of the firing a man standing on the deck
of one of the German ships could not even see the ship which was
firing the shells at her, though the weather was very clear.
By a quarter to ten o'clock the _Lion_ had come up with and had
passed the slow _Bluecher_, firing broadsides into her as she went
by. The _Tiger_ then passed the unfortunate German ship, also letting
her have a heavy fire, and then the _Princess Royal_ did likewise.
Finally the _New Zealand_ was able to engage her and later even
the slow _Indomitable_ got near enough to do so. By that time the
_Bluecher_ was afire and one of her gun turrets, with its crew and
gun, had been swept off bodily by a British shell.
Meanwhile the _Lion, Tiger_, and _Princess Royal_ kept straight
ahead till they were able to "straddle" even the leading ship of
the enemy's line. The _Tiger_ and _Lion_ poured shells into the
_Seydlitz_, but were unable to do much damage to the _Moltke_.
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