the Navy's 1901 prize firing Terrible achieved a score of 80%, the best of any ship in the Navy. Consequent to this the captain of adopted the Terrible training regime and saw a doubling in its score within a month. During the spring of 1902 Terrible spent several months at Hong Kong, providing relief and condensed water for the dockyard, amid an outbreak of cholera in the city leading to a water famine. In July 1902 Scott received orders to return with his ship to Britain and after making passage via the Suez Canal returned to Portsmouth in September. After arrival, Captain Scott and the officers and men of the ship were hosted to a public dinner in Portsmouth, and Scott was allowed to present the South Africa and China medals to 740 officers and men of the Terrible before leaving the ship for a new command. In early October he visited Balmoral Castle where King Edward VII invested him with his CB, and appointed him a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO). With the intervention of Jackie Fisher, Scott was posted to HMS Excellent, the naval gunnery school at Whale Island, Hampshire. The Excellent served as a training ground, especially for gunnery, and Scott was able to continue to refine his ideas. This included ways to increase artillery accuracy as well as improve the speed of loading the guns. In 1903 Scott was appointed aide de camp to the king, a largely honorary role which he held until promotion to flag rank in 1905. Gunnery developments Until the end of the nineteenth century, the accepted range at which warships would open fire on an enemy was 2,000 yards. The development of the torpedo as a practical weapon forced a change in this policy, and it became necessary to engage an enemy at ranges outside torpedo range. This in turn meant that the old system whereby a gunlayer in each turret pointed and fired the turret guns independently could no longer be expected to achieve a significant hit rate on an opposing ship. Scott was instrumental in encouraging the development and installation, initially in dreadnought battleships and battlecruisers, of director firing, a system whereby the guns were all pointed, elevated and fired from a single point, usually at the top of the foremast. By firing all the guns simultaneously it was possible to observe the simultaneous splashes produced and