The effect of shot.
--A shot does not make a hole of its own size right through wood, but indents it, the fibres springing back after the shock.
Generally, the course of shot can only be traced by a wire, sometimes by a hole as large as a man's finger.
The damage most often happens in the inside of a vessel, in splintering and breaking the wood, after the main force of the shot was spent.
Forts Hamilton and Richmond, which are about a mile apart, with a vessel lying between them, could not, with their guns, send shot through two feet of its timber.
There is rarely an instance where a ship was sunk by a solid shot.
Hot shot and shells do the mischief; the latter will sometimes make apertures of several feet in extent, through the sides of vessels.