The main battery turrets and ammunition magazines were also the subject of intense scrutiny; among the tests conducted was a trial to see how fast the magazines could be flooded—the result was 12 minutes. The gunnery school HMS "Excellent" ran loading trials on the main battery guns. It was found that the guns could be prepared to fire in 23 seconds, 13 seconds faster than in the s. The ship's watertight bulkhead and underwater protection systems also particularly interested the inspection team; they paid close attention to the ship's pumping and counter-flooding equipment. Commander W M Phipps Hornby, who lived on board "Baden" for weeks during the examination, wrote to the naval historian Arthur Marder in 1969 that it was his "considered opinion—which I know coincided with that of others engaged on the same job—that, "considered as a fighting machine", anyhow on balance the "Baden" was markedly in advance of any comparable ship of the Royal Navy".