Lieutenant Meadors’s five main battery crews fired some 260 shells at the battleship. From close range, four to eight thousand yards away, Meadors watched his shells explode all along the ship’s menacing form. It was anyone’s guess what damage the fifty-four-pound rounds did to the armored giant. Judging by the smoke and flame that wreathed the battlewagon’s towering superstructure, it was reasonable to think the destroyer was giving back a little bit of the hell that had engulfed the bridges of the Johnston and the Hoel shortly before. From what Meadors could see, the effect was considerable.
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