Volume Two - The Era of Optimism, Investment & Development - The demise of H.M.S. Exmouth at Penarth Dock - 1905 . . .

They are trained in whatever may tend towards the development of their muscles. So efficiently are the boys taught, that those whom I have seen at my visit go through most difficult exercises on the horizontal and parallel bars and on the spring board. I would safely have compete with the best model sections or Masterriegen of Germany's leading gymnastic societies. Yet the Fatherland is the home and, as it were, the academy of systematic physical culture ! Highly satisfactory, too, if not truly astonishing, is the perfect manner in which the Lilliputians on board the Exmouth take to their musketry, bayonet, and cutlass drill.

'Firing the Truck-Gun' and 'Sham-Fight' - aboard the training ship Exmouth.

Reader, you need but look at the illustrating snap-shots to feel that, when grown up or even before, these lads will prove men and warriors bold and true should occasion arise. Indeed, as it is, when witnessing the earnestness and skill with which each command of the drill-master is executed, you soon fancy to be face to face with a company of marines-veterans in the exercise of arms - although, in fact, they are a company of mere boys, rescued from the streets and recruited from the workhouses. And as veterans in arms they behave at gun drill. At mounting or dismounting field pieces, at charging or discharging not truly astonishing, is the perfect manner the truck-guns, they are equally smart.

How well the crews are trained, both in the use of rifle, cutlass, and canon, and in their more extensive and complicated application to military tactics, is demonstrated by the photos, illustrating a sham-fight between a party of sailors and an imaginary enemy. It can be seen at a glance that the proceedings are looked upon by the boys as something more than an amusing intermezzo in their daily routine ; with them it is a serious lesson to be learned seriously.