grace
brought no submission, the British fleet opened fire at 7 A.M.

The ensuing action is of great interest as being one of the very few
cases in modern warfare where ships have successfully encountered modern
forts. The seeming helplessness of the British unarmoured ships before
Cronstadt during the Crimean War, their failure before the forts of
Sevastopol, and the uselessness of the French navy during the war of
1870, had spread the notion that warships could not overpower modern
fortifications. Probably this impression lay at the root of Arabi's
defiance. He had some grounds for confidence. The British fleet
consisted of eight battleships (of which only the _Inflexible_ and
_Alexandra_ were of great fighting power), along with five unarmoured
vessels. The forts mounted 33 rifled muzzle-loading guns, 3 rifled
breech-loaders, and 120 old smooth-bores. The advantage in gun-power lay
with the ships, especially as the sailors were by far the better
marksmen. Yet so great is the superiority of forts over ships that the
engagement lasted five hours or more (7 A.M. till noon) before most of
the forts were silenced more or less completely. Fort Pharos continued
to fire till 4 P.M. On the whole, the Egyptian gunners stood manfully to
their guns. Considering the weight of metal thrown against the forts,
namely, 1741 heavy projectiles and 1457 light, the damage done to them
was not great, only 27 cannon being silenced completely, and 5
temporarily. On the other hand, the ships were hit only 75 times and
lost only 6 killed and 27 wounded. The results show that the
comparatively distant cannonades of to-day, even with great guns, are
far less deadly than the old sea-fights when ships were locked yard-arm
to yard-arm.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF ALEXANDRIA (BOMBARDMENT OF, 1882).]

Had Admiral Seymour at once landed a force of marines and bluejackets,
all the forts would probably have been surrendered at once. For some
reason not fully known, this was not done. Spasmodic firing began again
in the morning, but a truce was before long arranged, which proved to be
only a device for enabling Arabi and his troops to escape. The city,
meanwhile, was the scene of a furious outbreak against Europeans, in
which some 400 or 500 persons perished. Damage, afterwards assessed at
L7,000,000, was done by fire and pillage. It was not till the 14th
that the admiral, after receiving reinforcements, felt able to send
troops into the city, when a