The issue of this contest, unless attended with extraordinary and easily distinguishable circumstances, would be a fair test of their relative strength.
[Footnote 17: These conditions for a battery are easily satisfied, but for the ship, are partly dependent on the elements, and seldom to be wholly attained.] What result should we anticipate from the nature of the contending forces?
The ship, under the circumstances we have supposed, can choose her point of attack, selecting the one she may deem the most vulnerable; but she herself is everywhere vulnerable; her men and guns are much concentrated, and consequently much exposed.

But in the fort the guns and men are more distributed, a fort with an interior area of several acres not having a garrison as large as the crew of a seventy-four-gun ship.

All parts of the vessel are liable to injury; while the fort offers but a small mark,--the opening of the embrasures, a small part of the carriage, and now and then a head or arm raised above the parapet,--the ratio of exposed surfaces being not less than _twenty to one_.

In the vessel the guns are fired from an oscillating deck, and the balls go at random; in the fort the guns are fired from an immoveable platform, and the balls reach their object with unerring aim.

There is always more or less motion in the water, so that the ship's guns, though accurately pointed at one moment, at the next will be thrown entirely away from the object, even when the motion is too slight to be otherwise noticed; whereas in the battery the guns will be fired just as they are pointed; and the motion of the vessel will merely vary to the extent of a few inches the spot in which the shot is received.