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Rh wind and tide, the advantage would rest with him who took his precautions. The truth was so obvious that it could not but be universally accepted. The line ahead then became “the line of battle.” This term has a double meaning. It may mean the formation, but it may also mean the ships which are fit to form parts of the line in action. The practice of sorting out ships, so as to class those fit to be in a line of battle apart from others, dates from the second half of the 17th century. Its advantages had been seen before, but the classification was not made universal till then. The excessive number of ships collected in those naval wars, their variety in size, and the presence in the fleets of a large proportion of pressed or hired merchant ships had led to much bad execution. But in the final battles of the first war between England and the Dutch Republic (1652–53), the Parliamentary admirals enforced the formation of the line by strong measures. On the conclusion of the war, they drew up the first published code of fighting instructions. These give the basis of the whole tactical system of the 17th and 18th centuries in naval warfare. The treatises of Paul Hoste, Bigot de Morogues and Bourdé de Villehuet, which were the text-books of the time, all French in origin but all translated into other languages, are commentaries upon and developments of this traditional code of practice.

The governing principles were simple and were essentially sound. The ships were arranged in a line, in order that each should have her broadside free to fire into the enemy without running the risk of firing into her own friends. In order to remove the danger that they would touch each other, a competent space, to allow for a change of course in case of need, was left between them. It was fixed at two cables—that is, 200 fathoms, or 400 yds.—though less room was occasionally taken. To reduce the number of men required to handle the sails, and leave them free to fight the guns, the ships fought under reduced canvas. But it was necessary to retain the power to increase the speed of a ship rapidly. This was secured by not sheeting home one of the sails—that is to say, it was left loose, and the wind was “spilt out of it.” When the vessel was required to shoot ahead it was easy to sheet the sail home, and “let all draw.” The fleets would fight “on the wind”—that is to say, with the wind on the side, because they were then under better control. With the wind blowing from behind they would take the wind out of one another’s sails. When the course had to be altered, the ships turned by tacking—that is, head to wind—or by wearing—that is, stern to wind, either together or in succession. To tack or wear a large fleet in succession was a very lengthy operation. The second ship did not tack, or wear, till she had reached the place where the first had turned, and so on, down the whole line. By tacking or wearing together the order of a fleet was reversed, the van becoming the rear, and the rear the van. It must be remembered that a fleet was divided into van, centre and rear, which kept their names even when the order was reversed. Orders were given by signals from the flag-ship, but as they could not be seen by the ships in a line with her, frigates were stationed on the side of the line opposite to that facing the enemy “to repeat signals.”

A main object which the admirals who drafted the orders had before them was to obviate the risk that the enemy would double on one end of the line and put it between two fires. It is obvious that if two fleets, A and B, are sailing, both with the wind on the right side, and the leading ship of A comes into action with the seventh or eighth of B, then six or seven leading ships of B’s line will be free to turn and surround the head of A’s line. This did actually happen at the battle of Beachy Head. Therefore, the orders enjoin on the admiral the strict obligation to come into action in such a way that his leading ship shall steer with the leading ship of the enemy, and his rear with the rear. The familiar expression of the British navy was “to take every man his bird.”

The regular method of fighting battles was thus set up. In itself it was founded on sound principles. As it was framed when the enemies kept in view were the Dutch, who in seamanship and gunnery were fully equal to the British, its authors were justified in prescribing the safe course. Unhappily they added the direction that a British admiral was to keep his fleet, throughout the battle, in the order in which it was begun. Therefore he could take no advantage of any disorder which might occur in the enemy’s lines. When therefore the conflict came to be between the British and the French in the 18th century, battles between equal or approximately equal forces were for long inconclusive. The French, who had fewer ships than the British, were anxious to fight at the least possible cost, lest their fleet should be worn out by severe action, leaving Great Britain with an untouched balance. Therefore, they preferred to engage to leeward, a position which left them free to retreat before the wind. They allowed the British fleet to get to windward, and, when it was parallel with them and bore up before the wind to attack, they moved onwards. The attacking fleet had then to advance, not directly before the wind with its ships moving along lines perpendicular to the line attacked, but in slanting or curving lines. The assailants would be thrown into “a bow and quarter line”—that is to say, with the bow of the second level with the after part of the first and so on from end to end. In the case of a number of ships of various powers of sailing, it was a difficult formation to maintain. The result was that the ships of the assailing line which were steering to attack the enemy’s van came into action first and were liable to be crippled in the rigging. If the same formation was to be maintained, the others were now limited to the speed of the injured vessels, and the enemy to leeward slipped away. At all times a fleet advancing from windward was liable to injury in spars, even if the leeward fleet did not deliberately aim at them. The leeward ships would be leaning away from the wind, and their shot would always have a tendency to fly high. So long as the assailant remained to windward, the ships to leeward could always slip off.

The inconclusive results of so many battles at sea excited the attentions of a Scottish gentleman, Mr Clerk of Eldin (1728–1812), in the middle of the 18th century. He began a series of speculations and calculations, which he embodied in pamphlets and distributed among naval officers. They were finally published in book form in 1790 and 1797. The hypothesis which governs all Clerk’s demonstrations is that as the British navy was superior in gunnery and seamanship to their enemy, it was their interest to produce a mêlée. He advanced various ingenious suggestions for concentrating superior forces on parts of the enemy’s line—by preference on the rear, since the van must lose time in turning to its support. They are all open to the criticism that an expert opponent could find an answer to each of them. But that must be always the case, and victory is never the fruit of a skilful movement alone, but of that superiority of skill or of moral strength which enables one combatant to forestall or to crush another by more rapid movement or greater force of blow. Clerk’s theories had at least this merit that they must infallibly tend to make battles decisive by throwing the combatants into a furious mingled strife.

The unsatisfactory character of the accepted method of fighting battles at sea had begun to be obvious to naval officers, both French and English, who were Clerk’s contemporaries. The great French admiral Suffren condemned naval tactics as being little better than so many excuses for avoiding a real fight. He endeavoured to find a better method, by concentrating superior forces on parts of his opponent’s line in some of his actions with the British fleet in the East Indies in 1782 and 1783. But his orders were ill obeyed, and the quality of his fleet was not superior to the British. Rodney, in his first battle in the West Indies in 1780, endeavoured to concentrate a superior force on part of his enemy’s line by throwing a greater number of British ships on the rear of the French line. But his directions were misunderstood and not properly executed. Moreover he did not then go beyond trying to place a larger number of ships in action to windward against a smaller number to leeward by arranging them at a less distance than two-cables length. But