orth, was not to be perpetually menaced, then
Port Townsend must be put out of commission.

But for every weapon a counter-weapon is usually invented, and every new
discovery is apt to be counterbalanced by another. The world has never
yet been overturned by a new triumph of skill in military technics,
because it is at once paralyzed by another equally ingenious. And now,
at Port Townsend, very much the same thing happened as on March ninth,
1862. In much the same way that the appearance of the _Merrimac_ had
brought destruction to the wooden fleet until she was herself forced to
flee before Ericsson's _Monitor_ at Hampton Roads, so now at Port
Townsend on May seventh a new weapon was made to stand the crucial test.
Only this time we were not the pathfinders of the new era.

While the Japanese cruisers, keeping carefully beyond the line of fire
from the forts, sailed on to Seattle, four ships were brought into
action against the mortar batteries of Port Townsend which appeared to
set at defiance all known rules of ship-building, and which,
indestructible as they were, threatened to annihilate all existing
systems. They were low vessels which floated on the water like huge
tortoises. These mortar-boats, which were destined to astound not only
the Americans but the whole world, had been constructed in Japanese
shipyards, to which no stranger had ever been admitted. In place of the
ordinary level-firing guns found on a modern warship, these uncanny gray
things carried 17.7-inch howitzers, a kind of mortar of Japanese
construction. There was nothing to be seen above the low deck but a
short heavily protected funnel and four little armored domes which
contained the sighting telescopes for the guns, the mouths of which lay
in the arch of the whaleback deck. Four such vessels had also been
constructed for use at San Francisco, but the quick capture of the forts
had rendered the mortar-boats unnecessary.

We were constantly being attacked in places where no thought had been
given to the defense, and the fortifications we did possess were never
shot at from the direction they faced. Our coast defenses were
everywhere splendidly protected against level-firing guns, which the
Japanese, however, unfortunately refrained from using. With their
mortar-boats they attacked our forts in their most vulnerable spot, that
is, from above. With the exception of Winfield Scott, the batteries at
Port Townsend were the only ones on our western