In Fiction
The Commodore (published 1945), a Horatio Hornblower novel written by C. S. Forester, features several actions by British bomb vessels. The text includes a highly detailed account of the procedures used to load the mortars and aim, which involved anchoring fore-and-aft, receiving feedback from shot monitors, and precisely adjusting the aim using a spring-line attached to a windlass to adjust the direction of the shot, and by using sometimes tiny adjustments in the amount of charge to adjust the range. It is worth noting that Hornblower's vessels are named "Harvey" and "Moth", suggesting that Forester might have been unaware of the historical naming conventions. A later book Hornblower in the West Indies, features a small portable "ship's mortar" mounted in a boat, used to bombard a target during a riverine operation.
Read more about this topic: Bomb Vessels
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“For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.”
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