NAVAL WARFARE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The recent close of the nineteenth century has familiarized us with the

thought that such an epoch tends naturally to provoke an estimate of the

advance made in the various spheres of human activity during the period

which it terminates. Such a reckoning, however, is not a mere matter of

more and less, of comparison between the beginning and the end,

regardless of intermediate circumstances. The question involved is one

of an historical process, of cause and effect; of an evolution, probably

marked, as such series of events commonly are, by certain salient

incidents, the way-marks of progress which show the road traversed and

the succession of stages through which the past has become the present.

Frequently, also, such development associates itself not only with

conspicuous events, but with the names of great men, to whom, either by

originality of genius or by favoring opportunity, it has fallen to

illustrate in action the changes which have a more silent antecedent

history in the experience and reflection of mankind.

The development of naval warfare in the eighteenth century, its advance

in spirit and methods, is thus exemplified in certain striking events,

and yet more impressively is identified with the great names of Hawke

and Rodney. The period of nearly half a generation intervened between

their births, but they were contemporaries and actors, though to no

large extent associates, during the extensive wars that occupied the

middle of the century--the War of the Austrian Succession, 1739-1748,

and the Seven Years War, 1756-1763. These two conflicts are practically

one; the same characteristic jealousies and motives being common to

both, as they were also to the period of nominal peace, but scarcely

veiled contention, by which they were separated. The difference of age

between the two admirals contributed not only to obviate rivalry, by

throwing their distinctive activities into different generations, but

had, as it were, the effect of prolonging their influence beyond that

possible to a single lifetime, thus constituting it into a continuous

and fruitful development.

They were both successful men, in the ordinary acceptation of the word

success. They were great, not only in professional character, but in the

results which do not always attend professional desert; they were great

in achievement. Each name is indissolubly linked with a brilliant

victory, as well as with other less known but equally meritorious

actions; in all of which the personal factor of the principal agent, the

distinctive qualities of the commander-in-chief, powerfully contributed

and were conspicuously illustrated. These were, so to say, the examples,

that enforced upon the men of their day the professional ideas by which

the two admirals were themselves dominated, and upon which was forming a

school, with professional standards of action and achievement destined

to produce great effects.

Yet, while this is so, and while such emphatic demonstrations by deeds

undoubtedly does more than any other teaching to influence

contemporaries, and so to promote professional development, it is

probably true that, as a matter of historical illustration, the advance

of the eighteenth century in naval warfare is more clearly shown by two

great failures, for neither of which were these officers responsible,

and in one only of which in fact did either appear, even in a

subordinate capacity. The now nearly forgotten miscarriage of Admiral

Mathews off Toulon, in 1744, and the miserable incompetency of Byng, at

Minorca, in 1756, remembered chiefly because of the consequent execution

of the admiral, serve at least, historically, to mark the low extreme to

which had then sunk professional theory and practice--for both were

there involved. It is, however, not only as a point of departure from

which to estimate progress that these battles--if they deserve the

name--are historically useful. Considered as the plane to which

exertion, once well directed and virile, had gradually declined through

the prevalence of false ideals, they link the seventeenth century to the

eighteenth, even as the thought and action--the theory and practice--of

Hawke and Rodney uplifted the navy from the inefficiency of Mathews and

Byng to the crowning glories of the Nile and Trafalgar, with which the

nineteenth century opened. It is thus, as the very bottom of the wave,

that those singular and signal failures have their own distinctive

significance in the undulations of the onward movement. On the one hand

they are not unaccountable, as though they, any more than the Nile and

Trafalgar, were without antecedent of cause; and on the other they

serve, as a background at least, to bring out the figures of the two

admirals now before us, and to define their true historical import, as

agents and as exponents, in the changes of their day.

It is, therefore, important to the comprehension of the changes effected

in that period of transition, for which Hawke and Rodney stand, to

recognize the distinctive lesson of each of these two abortive actions,

which together may be said to fix the zero of the scale by which the

progress of the eighteenth century is denoted. They have a relation to

the past as well as to the future, standing far below the level of the

one and of the other, through causes that can be assigned. Naval warfare

in the past, in its origin and through long ages, had been waged with

vessels moved by oars, which consequently, when conditions permitted

engaging at all, could be handled with a scope and freedom not securable

with the uncertain factor of the wind. The motive power of the sea,

therefore, then resembled essentially that of the land,--being human

muscle and staying power, in the legs on shore and in the arms at sea.

Hence, movements by masses, by squadrons, and in any desired direction

corresponding to a fixed plan, in order to concentrate, or to

outflank,--all these could be attempted with a probability of success

not predicable of the sailing ship. Nelson's remarkable order at

Trafalgar, which may almost be said to have closed and sealed the record

of the sail era, began by assuming the extreme improbability of being

able at any given moment to move forty ships of his day in a fixed order

upon an assigned plan. The galley admiral therefore wielded a weapon far

more flexible and reliable, within the much narrower range of its

activities, than his successor in the days of sail; and engagements

between fleets of galleys accordingly reflected this condition, being

marked not only by greater carnage, but by tactical combinations and

audacity of execution, to which the sailing ship did not so readily lend

itself.

When the field of naval warfare became extended beyond the

Mediterranean,--for long centuries its principal scene,--the galley no

longer met the more exacting nautical conditions; and the introduction

of cannon, involving new problems of tactics and ship-building,

accelerated its disappearance. The traditions of galley-fighting,

however, remained, and were reinforced by the habits of land

fighting,--the same men in fact commanding armies on shore and fleets at

sea. In short, a period of transition ensued, marked, as such in their

beginnings are apt to be, by an evident lack of clearness in men's

appreciation of conditions, and of the path of development, with a

consequent confusion of outline in their practice. It is not always easy

to understand either what was done, or what was meant to be done, during

that early sail era; but two things appear quite certainly. There is

still shown the vehemence and determination of action which

characterized galley fighting, visible constantly in the fierce effort

to grapple the enemy, to break his ranks, to confuse and crush him; and

further there is clear indication of tactical plan on the grand scale,

broad in outline and combination, involving different--but not

independent--action by the various great divisions of the fleet, each of

which, in plan at least, has its own part, subordinate but contributory

to the general whole.

The results, though not unimportant, were not satisfactory, for men

were compelled to see that from various causes the huge numbers brought

upon the field lapsed into confusion, and that battle, however well

planned in large outline, resolved itself into a mere mass of warring

units incoherently struggling one with another. There was lack of

proportion between effort exerted and effect achieved. A period of

systematization and organization set in. Unwieldy numbers were reduced

to more manageable dimensions by excluding ships whose size and strength

did not add to the efficiency of the order of battle; the powers and

limitations of those which remained were studied, and certain simple

tactical dispositions, fitted to particular emergencies, were recognized

and adopted,--all tending to impart unity of movement and action, and to

keep the whole in regulated order under the hand of the

commander-in-chief, free from confusion.

To this point there was improvement; but reaction, as often, went too

far. The change in accepted ideas is emphatically shown by a comparison

of the Fighting Instructions of 1740 and 1756, when the crystallization

of the system was complete but disintegration had not yet begun, with

those issued in 1665 by the Duke of York, afterwards James II., at the

beginning of the second of the three Anglo-Dutch Wars. His in turn are

directly deducible from others framed shortly after the first war, in

1652-1654, when sail tactics had not passed the stage of infancy, and

were still strongly affected by the galley tradition. There is here

found, on the one hand, the prescription of the line of battle,--a

single column of ships formed in each other's wake,--with the provision

that if the enemy is to leeward, and awaits attack, the headmost

squadron of the British shall steer for the headmost of the enemy's

ships. This accords with the general tenor of the later Instructions;

but there occurs elsewhere, and previously, the direction that, when the

enemy is to windward, if the leading British Squadron finds it can

weather any considerable part of them, it is to "tack and stand in, and

strive to divide the enemy's body," and that, "being got to windward, is

to bear down on those ships to leeward of them," which have thus been

cut off.

The thing to be observed here is the separate, but positive, initiative

prescribed for a portion of the fleet, with a view to divide the enemy,

and then concentrate the whole fleet upon the fraction thus isolated.

The British van takes a particular, but not an independent, action; for

the other divisions contribute their part to the common purpose. "The

middle squadron is to keep her wind, and to observe the motion of the

enemy's van, which" [that is, "which" action of the middle squadron]

"the last squadron--the rear--is to second; and both of these squadrons

are to do their utmost to assist or relieve the first squadron, that

divided the enemy's fleet." Evidently here we have tactical combination

in order to decisive action; clearly contemplated also beforehand, not

merely by a capable individual general, but by the consensus of

professional opinion which such a paper as the Fighting Instructions

necessarily reflects. The stamp of the galley period is upon this:

strenuous and close battle, the piercing of the enemy's order, the

movement of the squadrons differentiated, in order that they may in a

real and effective sense _combine_, instead of being merely

_distributed_, as they afterwards were by both the letter of the later

Instructions and the tradition by which these became encrusted. Nor

should there be overlooked, in this connection, the discretion allowed

the centre and rear. They are to "keep their wind;" an expression which

leaves optional whether to tack, or stand as they are, whether to engage

the separated enemies to windward or to leeward, as occasion may offer,

in support of the van. The provisions of 1665 afterwards disappear. In

1740, and even as late as 1781, they are traceable only in certain

colorless articles, suggestive of the atrophied organs of a body

concerning whose past use physiologists may speculate.

As in the restoration of sounder methods, with which we shall be

concerned, this degeneration of ideals was a work of time. In June,

1666, the British met with a severe check in the Four Days Battle, in

which Monk, a soldier, commanded in chief. This reverse is chiefly to

be attributed to antecedent strategic errors, which made a portion only

of the available British force bear the brunt of the first three days;

but, among the inevitable criticisms, we find stress laid upon fighting

in line as essential to success. This insistence upon the line as an

effective instrument proceeded, among others, from Sir William Penn, a

seaman, and was at that time in the direction of professional advance.

The line had not yet obtained the general professional acceptance needed

to establish and utilize its indisputable value. This process was

gradual, but when effected it followed the usual laws of human

development; from a valuable means, it became in men's estimation an

exaggerated necessity. It came to pass in time that the line no longer

existed for tactics, but tactics for the line, in which they found their

consummation and end.

There intervened, however, a happier period,--one of transition,--and in

the third Anglo-Dutch war, 1672-1674, we seem to find a close approach

to just proportion between regularity of formation and decisive tactical

purpose; in which the principle of the line is recognized and observed,

but is utilized by professional audacity for definite and efficient

tactical action, aiming at conclusive results. The finest exponent of

this, the culminating epoch of naval warfare in the seventeenth century,

is the Dutchman Ruyter, who, taken altogether, was the greatest naval

seaman of that era, which may be roughly identified with the reign of

Charles II. After that, naval warfare was virtually suspended for

fifteen years, and when resumed in the last decade of the century, the

traces of incipient degeneracy can already be noted amid much brilliant

performance. From that time completeness of military achievement became

in men's minds less of an object than accurate observance of rule, and

in practice the defensive consideration of avoiding disaster began to

preponderate over offensive effort for the destruction of the enemy.

In the development of tactical science, the French had played a leading

part, as they usually have where reflective mental processes and formal

evolution of ideas are concerned. Among admirals, the greatest name of

this later period is the French Tourville, a master of the science of

his profession, and gifted with a personal courage of the heroic type;

while the leading exponent of Tourville's ideas, as well as historian of

his achievements, was the French priest Paul Hoste,--chaplain to his

fleet, and the father of the systematic treatment of naval evolutions.

But with Tourville's name is associated not only a high level of

professional management, but a caution in professional action not far

removed from timidity, so that an impatient Minister of Marine of his

day and nation styled him "poltroon in head, though not in heart." His

powers were displayed in the preservation and orderly movement of his

fleet; in baffling, by sheer skill, and during long periods, the efforts

of the enemy to bring him to action; in skilful disposition, when he

purposely accepted battle under disadvantage; but under most favorable

opportunities he failed in measures of energy, and, after achieving

partial success, superfluous care of his own command prevented his blows

from being driven home.

Tourville, though a brilliant seaman, thus not only typified an era of

transition, with which he was contemporary, but foreshadowed the period

of merely formal naval warfare, precise, methodical, and unenterprising,

emasculated of military virility, although not of mere animal courage.

He left to his successors the legacy of a great name, but also

unfortunately that of a defective professional tradition. The splendid

days of the French Navy under Louis XIV. passed away with him,--he died

in 1701; but during the long period of naval lethargy on the part of the

state, which followed, the French naval officers, as a class, never

wholly lost sight of professional ideals. They proved themselves, on the

rare occasions that offered, before 1715 and during the wars of Hawke

and Rodney, not only gallant seamen after the pattern of Tourville, but

also exceedingly capable tacticians, upon a system good as far as it

went, but defective on Tourville's express lines, in aiming rather at

exact dispositions and defensive security than at the thorough-going

initiative and persistence which confounds and destroys the enemy.

"War," to use Napoleon's phrase, "was to be waged without running

risks." The sword was drawn, but the scabbard was kept ever open for its

retreat.

The English, in the period of reaction which succeeded the Dutch wars,

produced their own caricature of systematized tactics. Even under its

influence, up to 1715, it is only just to say they did not construe

naval skill to mean anxious care to keep one's own ships intact. Rooke,

off Malaga, in 1704, illustrated professional fearlessness of

consequences as conspicuously as he had shown personal daring in the

boat attack at La Hougue; but his plans of battle exemplified the

particularly British form of inefficient naval action. There was no

great difference in aggregate force between the French fleet and that of

the combined Anglo-Dutch under his orders. The former, drawing up in the

accustomed line of battle, ship following ship in a single column,

awaited attack. Rooke, having the advantage of the wind, and therefore

the power of engaging at will, formed his command in a similar and

parallel line a few miles off, and thus all stood down together, the

ships maintaining their line parallel to that of the enemy, and coming

into action at practically the same moment, van to van, centre to

centre, rear to rear. This ignored wholly the essential maxim of all

intelligent warfare, which is so to engage as markedly to outnumber the

enemy at a point of main collision. If he be broken there, before the

remainder of his force come up, the chances all are that a decisive

superiority will be established by this alone, not to mention the moral

effect of partial defeat and disorder. Instead of this, the impact at

Malaga was so distributed as to produce a substantial equality from one

end to the other of the opposing fronts. The French, indeed, by

strengthening their centre relatively to the van and rear, to some

extent modified this condition in the particular instance; but the fact

does not seem to have induced any alteration in Rooke's dispositions.

Barring mere accident, nothing conclusive can issue from such

arrangements. The result accordingly was a drawn battle, although Rooke

says that the fight, which was maintained on both sides "with great fury

for three hours, ... was the sharpest day's service that I ever saw;" and

he had seen much,--Beachy Head, La Hougue, Vigo Bay, not to mention his

own great achievement in the capture of Gibraltar.

This method of attack remained the ideal--if such a word is not a

misnomer in such a case--of the British Navy, not merely as a matter of

irreflective professional acceptance, but laid down in the official

"Fighting Instructions." It cannot be said that these err on the side of

lucidity; but their meaning to contemporaries in this particular

respect is ascertained, not only by fair inference from their contents,

but by the practical commentary of numerous actions under commonplace

commanders-in-chief. It further received authoritative formulation in

the specific finding of the Court-Martial upon Admiral Byng, which was

signed by thirteen experienced officers. "Admiral Byng should have

caused his ships to tack together, and should immediately have borne

down upon the enemy; his van steering for the enemy's van, his rear for

its rear, each ship making for the one opposite to her in the enemy's

line, under such sail as would have enabled the worst sailer to preserve

her station in the line of battle." Each phrase of this opinion is a

reflection of an article in the Instructions. The line of battle was the

naval fetich of the day; and, be it remarked, it was the more dangerous

because in itself an admirable and necessary instrument, constructed on

principles essentially accurate. A standard wholly false may have its

error demonstrated with comparative ease; but no servitude is more

hopeless than that of unintelligent submission to an idea formally

correct, yet incomplete. It has all the vicious misleading of a

half-truth unqualified by appreciation of modifying conditions; and so

seamen who disdained theories, and hugged the belief in themselves as

"practical," became _doctrinaires_ in the worst sense.

It would seem, however, that a necessary antecedent to deliverance from

a false conception,--as from any injurious condition,--is a practical

illustration of its fallacy. Working consequences must receive

demonstration, concrete in some striking disastrous event, before

improvement is undertaken. Such experience is painful to undergo; but

with most men, even in their private capacity, and in nearly all

governmental action where mere public interests are at stake, remedy is

rarely sought until suffering is not only felt, but signalized in a

conspicuous incident. It is needless to say that the military

professions in peace times are peculiarly liable to this apathy; like

some sleepers, they can be awakened only by shaking. For them, war alone

can subject accepted ideas to the extreme test of practice. It is

doubtless perfectly true that acquaintance with military and naval

history, mastery of their teachings, will go far to anticipate the

penalty attaching to truth's last argument--chastisement; but

imagination is fondly impatient of warning by the past, and easily

avails itself of fancied or superficial differences in contemporary

conditions, to justify measures which ignore, or even directly

contravene, ascertained and fundamental principles of universal

application.

Even immediate practical experience is misinterpreted when incidents are

thus viewed through the medium of a precedent bias. The Transvaal War,

for instance, has afforded some striking lessons of needed

modifications, consequent upon particular local factors, or upon

developments in the material of war; but does any thoughtful military

man doubt that imagination has been actively at work, exaggerating or

distorting, hastily waiving aside permanent truth in favor of temporary

prepossessions or accidental circumstance? It is at least equally likely

that the naval world at the present time is hugging some fond delusions

in the excessive size and speed to which battle-ships are tending, and

in the disproportionate weight assigned to the defensive as compared to

the offensive factors in a given aggregate tonnage. Imagination, theory,

_a priori_ reasoning, is here at variance with rational historical

precedent, which has established the necessity of numbers as well as of

individual power in battle-ships, and demonstrated the superiority of

offensive over defensive strength in military systems. These--and

other--counterbalancing considerations have in past wars enforced the

adoption of a medium homogeneous type, as conducive both to adequate

numbers,--which permit the division of the fleet when required for

strategic or tactical purposes,--and also directly to offensive fleet

strength by the greater facility of manoeuvring possessed by such

vessels; for the strength of a fleet lies not chiefly in the single

units, but in their mutual support in elastic and rapid movement. Well

tested precedent--experience--has here gone to the wall in favor of an

untried forecast of supposed fundamental change in conditions. But

experience is uncommonly disagreeable when she revenges herself after

her own fashion.

The British Navy of the eighteenth century in this way received an

unpleasant proof of the faultiness of its then accepted conclusions, in

the miscarriages of Mathews off Toulon, in 1744, and of Byng off

Minorca, in 1756. So fixed were men's habits of thought that the lessons

were not at once understood. As evidenced by the distribution of

censure, the results were attributed by contemporary judges to

particular incidents of each battle, not to the erroneous underlying

general plans, contravening all sound military precedent, which from the

first made success improbable, indeed impossible, except by an

inefficiency of the enemy which was not to be presumed. These battles

therefore are important, militarily, in a sense not at all dependent

upon their consequences, which were ephemeral. They are significant as

extreme illustrations of incompetent action, deriving from faulty

traditions; and they have the further value of showing the starting

point, the zero of the scale, from which the progress of the century is

to be measured. In describing them, therefore, attention will be given

chiefly to those circumstances which exhibit the shackles under which

fleet movements then labored, not only from the difficulties inherent to

the sea and sailing ships, but from the ideas and methods of the times.

Those incidents also will be selected which show how false standards

affected particular individuals, according to their personal

characteristics.

In Admiral Mathews' action, in February, 1744, an allied fleet composed

of sixteen French ships-of-the-line and twelve Spanish lay in Toulon,

waiting to sail for a Spanish port. The British, in force numerically

equal, were at anchor under the Hyères Islands, a few miles to the

eastward. They got underway when the allied movement began on February

20th; but anchored again for the night, because the enemy that day came

no farther than the outer road of Toulon. The next morning the French

and Spaniards put to sea with a wind at first westerly, and stretched to

the southward in long, single column, the sixteen French leading. At 10

A.M. the British followed, Vice-Admiral Lestock's division taking the

van; but the wind, shifting to east, threw the fleet on the port tack,

on which the rear under Rear-Admiral Rowley had to lead. It became

necessary, therefore, for this division and the centre to pass Lestock,

which took some time with the light airs prevailing. Two or three

manoeuvres succeeded, with the object of forming the fighting order, a

column similar and parallel to that of the enemy, and to get closer to

him. When night fell a signal was still flying for the line abreast, by

which, if completed, the ships would be ranged on a line parallel to the

allies, and heading towards them; consequently abreast of each other. It

would then need only a change of course to place them in column, sides

to the enemy; which, as before said, was the fighting order--the "line

of battle."

The line abreast, however, was not fully formed at dark. Therefore the

admiral, in order to hasten its completion, soon afterwards made a night

signal, with lanterns, for the fleet to bring-to,--that is, bring their

sides to the wind, and stop. He intended thereby that the ships already

in station should stand still, while the others were gaining their

places, all which is a case of simple evolution, by land as by sea. It

was contended by the admiral that Vice-Admiral Lestock's division was

then too far to the right and rear, and hence too distant from the

enemy, and that it was his duty first to get into his station and then

to bring-to. To this the vice-admiral on his trial replied, first, that

he was not out of his station; and, second, that if he were, the later

signal, to bring-to, suspended the earlier, to form line abreast, and

that it was therefore his business, without any discretion, to stop

where he was. Concerning the first plea, a number of witnesses, very

respectable in point of rank and opportunity for seeing, testified that

the vice-admiral did bring-to three or four miles to the right and rear

of his place in the line abreast, reckoning his station from the

admiral's ship; yet, as the Court peremptorily rejected their evidence,

it is probably proper to accept the contemporary decision as to this

matter of fact.

But as regards the second plea, being a matter of military correctness,

a difference of opinion is allowable. The Court adopted as its own the

argument of the vice-admiral. Without entering here into a technical

discussion, the Court's ruling, briefly stated, was that the second

signal superseded the first, so that, if the vice-admiral was in the

wrong place, it was not his duty to get into the right before stopping;

and that this was doubly the case because an article of the Night

Signals (7) prescribed that, under the conditions of the alleged

offence, "a fleet sailing before the wind, or nearly so, if the admiral

made the signal for the fleet to bring-to, the windward ships should

bring-to first." Therefore, if Lestock was to windward, as the charge

read, it was his duty to bring-to first and at once. It is evident,

however, that even the Sailing Instructions, cast-iron as they were,

contemplated a fleet in order, not one in process of forming order; and

that to bring-to helter-skelter, regardless of order, was to obey the

letter rather than the spirit. Muddle-headed as Mathews seems to have

been, what he was trying to do was clear enough; and the duty of a

subordinate was to carry out his evident aim. An order does not

necessarily supersede its predecessor, unless the two are incompatible.

The whole incident, from Lestock's act to the Court's finding, is

instructive as showing the slavish submission to the letter of the

Instructions; a submission traceable not to the law merely, but to the

added tradition that had then fast hold of men's minds. It is most

interesting to note that the unfortunate Byng was one of the signers of

this opinion, as he was also one of the judges that sentenced Mathews to

be dismissed from the navy, as responsible for the general failure.

During the night of the 21st the allies, who had stopped after dark,

appear again to have made sail. Consequently, when day broke, the

British found themselves some distance astern and to windward--

northeast; the wind continuing easterly. Their line, indifferently

well formed in van and centre, stretched over a length of nine

miles through the straggling of the rear. Lestock's ship was six

miles from that of Mathews, whereas it should not have been more than

two and a half, at most, in ordinary sailing; for battle, the

Instructions allowed little over a half-mile. Accepting the Court's

finding that he was in position at dark, this distance can only be

attributed, as Lestock argued and the Court admitted, to a current--that

most convenient of scape-goats in navigation. The allies, too, had a

lagging rear body, five Spanish ships being quite a distance astern; but

from van to rear they extended but six miles, against the British nine.

It was the distance of the British rear, not straggling in van or

centre, that constituted this disadvantage.

Mathews wished to wait till Lestock reached his place, but the allies

were receding all the time; and, though their pace was slackened to

enable the five sternmost Spaniards to come up, the space between the

fleets was increasing. It was the duty of the British admiral to force

an action, on general principles; but in addition he believed that the

French intended to push for Gibraltar, enter the Atlantic, and join

their Brest fleet, in order to cover an invasion of England by an army

reported to be assembling at Dunkirk. Clearly, therefore, something must

be done; yet to enter into a general engagement with near a third of his

command out of immediate supporting distance was contrary to the

accepted principles of the day. The fleet was not extended with that of

the enemy, by which is meant that the respective vans, centres, and

rears were not opposed; the British van being only abreast of the allied

centre, their centre of the allied rear, Lestock tailing away astern and

to windward, while the dozen leading French were some distance ahead of

both bodies. Now the Fighting Instructions required that, "If the

admiral and his fleet have the wind of the enemy, and they have

stretched themselves in a line of battle, the van of the admiral's fleet

is to steer with the van of the enemies, and _there_ to engage them."

There was no alternative course laid down; just as there was no

punishment alternative to death in the Article of War under which Byng

was shot.

Yet the indications all were that to wait for this most formal and

pedantic disposition, which ignored every principle of warfare, would

be to throw away the chance of battle. The French, fresh from port and

clean-bottomed, out-sailed the bulk of the British, as did the

Spaniards, though to a less degree; and it was part of Lestock's

defence, admitted by the Court, that, doing his utmost, his division, as

a whole, certainly could not get abreast the allied rear. Lestock,

indeed, directly submitted to the Court that the commander-in-chief was

at fault in not waiting till his line was thus extended and formed, and

then all bearing down together, in line abreast; although by his own

contention no such issue could have been reached that day, unless the

allies were obliging enough to wait. "I aver, and I shall die in this

opinion, that no man that is an officer, who knows his duty, will make

the signal for line abreast to steer down upon an enemy, until the fleet

has been stretched and extended in a line of battle, according to the

19th Article of the Fighting Instructions. Can it be service," he adds,

"to bear down so much unformed and in confusion, that the van cannot

possibly join battle with, or engage the van of the enemy, the centre

with the centre, and the rear with the rear?"

Mathews not being then on trial, the Court in its finding did not reply

directly to this question; but indirectly it left no doubt as to its

opinion. "The Admiral, by bearing down as he did upon the rear division

of the combined fleet, excluded the Vice-Admiral from any part of the

engagement, if he could have come up; for if both lines had been closed,

when the Admiral engaged the _Real_, there would have been no more than

one ship of the enemy's fleet for the Vice-Admiral and his whole

division to have engaged." Again, "It does not appear that the

Vice-Admiral was in any part the cause of the miscarriage of his

Majesty's fleet in the Mediterranean; the _bringing on of the general

engagement according to the 19th Article_ of the Fighting

Instructions ... not depending upon him." Sixteen officers of the rank of

captain and above signed these opinions, and there is no denying the

words of the 19th Article; yet one wonders to see no recognition of the

necessity of using your opportunity as you find it, of the moral effect

of an approaching reserve, which Lestock's division would have

constituted, of the part it may take in improving or repairing the

results of an action--taking the place of injured friends, preventing

injured foes escaping, turning doubtful battle into victory. But no;

these commonplaces of to-day and of all time were swamped by the

Fighting Instructions. It will be seen in the sequel what a disastrous

moral influence Lestock's aloofness exercised upon a few timid captains,

and not improbably upon the entire subsequent course and worst errors of

his unfortunate superior.

One of the witnesses in the ensuing Courts-Martial testified that the

commander-in-chief, under these perplexing circumstances, went into the

stern gallery of the flag-ship _Namur_, and called to Captain Cornwall

of the _Marlborough_, next astern, asking what he thought. Cornwall

replied he "believed they would lose the glory of the day, if they did

not attack the Spaniards,"--_i.e._, the allied rear-centre and

rear,--"the Vice-Admiral--Lestock--being so far astern." To which the

admiral said, "If you'll bear down and attack the _Real_,"--the _Real

Felipe_, Spanish flag-ship,--"I'll be your second." This was about one

o'clock, and the signal to engage had been made two hours earlier,

probably with the double object of indicating the ultimate intention of

the movements in hand, and the immediate urgency of forming the line.

The admiral's words betray the indecision of an irresolute nature and of

professional rustiness, but not of timidity, and Cornwall's words turned

the scale. The course of the flag-ship _Namur_ had hitherto been but a

little off the wind, "lasking" down, to use the contemporary but long

obsolete expression, in such manner as to show the admiral's desire to

engage himself with the enemy's centre, according to the Fighting

Instructions; but now, in hopelessness of that result, she kept broad

off, directly for the nearest enemy, accompanied closely by the

_Norfolk_, her next ahead, and by the _Marlborough_. Rear-Admiral

Rowley, commanding the van, imitated the admiral's example, bringing the

French ship abreast him to close action. He also was thoroughly

supported by the two captains next astern of him, the second of whom was

Edward Hawke,--afterwards the brilliant admiral,--in the _Berwick_. Two

British groups, each of three ships, were thus hotly engaged; but with

an interval between them of over half a mile, corresponding to the

places open for six or seven other vessels. The conduct of the ships

named, under the immediate influence of the example set by the two

admirals, suggests how much the average man is sustained by professional

tone; for a visible good example is simply a good standard, a high

ideal, realized in action.

Unfortunately, however, just as Hawke's later doings showed the man able

to rise above the level of prescribed routine duty, there was found in

the second astern of the _Namur_ a captain capable of exceptional

backwardness, of reasoning himself into dereliction of clear duty, and

thus effecting a demonstration that the example of timidity is full as

contagious and more masterful than that of audacity. The flag-ships and

their supporters ranged themselves along the hostile line to windward,

within point-blank range; according to the 20th Article of the Fighting

Instructions, which read, "Every Commander is to take care that his guns

are not fired till he is sure he can reach the enemy upon a point-blank;

and by no means to suffer his guns to be fired over any of our own

ships." The point-blank is the range of a cannon laid level, and the

requirement was necessary to efficient action in those days of crude

devices for pointing, with ordnance material of inferior power. Even

sixty years later Nelson expressed his indifference to improvements in

pointing, on the ground that the true way of fighting was to get so

close that you could not miss your aim. Thus Mathews' captain placed the

_Namur_, of ninety guns, within four hundred yards--less than quarter of

a mile--of the Spanish flag-ship, the _Real Felipe_, of one hundred and

ten guns; and Cornwall brought the _Marlborough_ immediately in the wake

of the _Namur_, engaging the Spanish _Hercules_. But the _Dorsetshire_,

which should have followed the _Marlborough_, was stopped by her

commander, Captain George Burrish, at a distance which was estimated by

several witnesses to be from half a mile to nearly a mile from the

enemy, or, to use a very expressive phrase then current, "at random

shot." The Court-Martial, however, in pronouncing upon this point,

decided that inasmuch as a bar-shot came on board the _Dorsetshire_ in

this early part of the engagement, she must be construed to have brought

to within extreme point-blank. In view of the mass of testimony to the

greater distance, this seems to have been simply giving the benefit of a

doubt.

Thus situated, the action between the _Namur_ and _Marlborough_ on the

one side, and the _Real Felipe_ and _Hercules_ on the other, was for

some time very hot; but the _Marlborough_, moving faster than the

_Namur_, closed upon her, so that she had to get out of the way, which

she did by moving ahead and at the same time hauling to windward, till

she reached as far from the Spanish line as the _Dorsetshire_ had

remained. The Court in this matter decided that, after the admiral had

thus hauled off, the _Dorsetshire_ was in a line, or as far to

leeward--towards the enemy--as the admiral. The _Marlborough_ was thus

left alone, exposed to the fire of a ship heavier than herself, and also

to that of the _Hercules_, which was able to train upon her a

considerable part of her battery. Under these circumstances, it was the

duty of the _Dorsetshire_, as it was the opportunity of her commander,

by attacking the _Hercules_, to second, and support, the engaged ship;

but she continued aloof. After two hours--by 3 P.M.--the main and mizzen

masts were cut out of the _Marlborough_, and she lost her captain with

forty-two men killed, and one hundred and twenty wounded, out of a crew

of seven hundred and fifty. Thus disabled, the sails on the foremast

turned her head towards the enemy, and she lay moving sluggishly,

between the fleets, but not under control. The admiral now sent an

officer to Burrish--the second that morning--to order him into his

station and to support the _Marlborough_; while to the latter, in

response to an urgent representation by boat of her condition, and that

she was threatened by the approach of the hitherto separated ships of

the Spanish rear, he replied that the _Namur_ was wearing and would come

to her assistance.

When Burrish received his message, he sent for his lieutenants on the

quarter-deck, and spoke to them words which doubtless reflect the

reasoning upon which he was justifying to himself his most culpable

inaction. "Gentlemen, I sent for you to show you the position of our

ships to windward," (_i.e._ the ships of the centre division behind him,

and Lestock's division), "likewise those five sail [Spanish] of the

enemy that are astern of us. I have my orders to engage the _Real_, and

you see I am bearing down for that purpose." The lieutenants remarked

that he could do so with safety. To this he rejoined, with a curtness

that testifies to the uneasiness of his mind, "I did not send for you to

ask your opinions, but only to observe that not one of our ships is

coming down to my assistance, in order to cut those five sail off, and

in case those five sail should oblige me to haul my wind again, and

leave the _Marlborough_, that you may be able to indemnify my conduct,

if called in question." One witness also testified that he "was angry

that Admiral Lestock's division did not bear down,"--which was just

enough,--and that "he thought it most advisable to keep his station;"

meaning by this, apparently, to remain where he was. His

cross-examination of the evidence was directed to prove the danger to

his ship from these remaining Spaniards. This anxiety was wholly

misplaced, and professionally unworthy. Quite independent of orders by

signal and message, he was bound, in view of the condition of the

_Marlborough_, to go to her relief, and to assume that the three English

ships of the centre division, in his rear, would surely sustain him. To

base contrary action upon a doubt of their faithfulness was to condemn

himself. Four ships to five under such conditions should be rather a

spur than a deterrent to an officer of spirit, who understands the

obligation of his calling.

Till this, the _Dorsetshire_ had been under her three topsails only. She

appears then to have stood down under more sail, but very slowly, and

here occurred another disaster which was largely chargeable to her being

out of her station. Seeing the desperate state of the _Marlborough_,

Mathews, who throughout managed blunderingly, with the single exception

of the original attack, had thought to aid her and divert the fire of

the _Real_ by sending against the latter a fire-ship. It was elementary

that vessels of this class needed energetic support and cover in their

desperate work. Small in size, of no battery-force except against boat

attacks, loaded with combustibles and powder, success in the use of them

under an enemy's guns required not only imperturbable coolness and

nerve, but the utmost attainable immunity from the attention of the

enemy. This could be secured only by a heavy and sustained fire from

their own fleet. With the _Norfolk_, _Namur_, _Marlborough_, and

_Dorsetshire_ in close line, as they should have been, and heavily

engaged, a fire-ship might have passed between them, and, though at

imminent hazard even so, have crossed the four hundred yards of

intervening water to grapple the hostile flag-ship; but with the

_Marlborough_ lying disabled and alone, the admiral himself acting with

indecision, and the _Dorsetshire_ hanging aloof, the attempt was little

short of hopeless. Still it was made, and the _Anne Galley_--such was

her odd name--bore down, passing close by the _Dorsetshire_.

It became doubly the duty of Burrish to act, to push home whatever

demonstration was in his power to make; the fire-ship, however, went by

him and was permitted to pursue her desperate mission without his

support. The _Real_, seeing the _Anne_ approach, bore up out of her

line, and at the same time sent a strongly-manned launch to grapple and

tow her out of the way. This was precisely one of the measures that it

was the business of supporting ships to repel. The captain of the

fire-ship, thrown upon his own resources, opened fire, a most hazardous

measure, as much of his priming was with loose powder; but the launch

readily avoided injury by taking position directly ahead, where the guns

would not bear. The crew of the _Anne_ were now ordered into the boat,

except the captain and five others, who were to remain to the last

moment, and light the train; but from some cause not certainly

demonstrated she exploded prematurely, being then within a hundred yards

of the _Real_. It is necessary to say that the Court-Martial acquitted

Burrish of blame, because he "had no orders to cover the fire-ship,

either by signal or otherwise." Technically, the effect of this finding

was to shift an obvious and gross blunder from the captain to some one

else; but it is evident that if the _Dorsetshire_ had occupied her

station astern of the _Marlborough_, the fire-ship's attempt would have

been much facilitated.

The Court decided unanimously that Burrish "ought to have borne down as

far to leeward as where the admiral first began to engage,

notwithstanding that the admiral might be hauled off before the

_Dorsetshire_ got so far to leeward." The point upon which the line

should have been formed was thus established by the Court's finding. The

subsequent proceedings of this ship need not be related. She now came

slowly into close action, but that part of the enemy's order was already

broken, and their rear vessels, the fear of which had controlled her

captain, passed by as they came up without serious action.

How far Burrish's example influenced the captains immediately behind him

cannot certainly be affirmed. Such shyness as he displayed is not only

infectious, but saps that indispensable basis upon which military

effectiveness reposes, namely, the certainty of co-operation and

support, derived from mutual confidence, inspired by military

discipline, obedience, and honor. It is well to note here that the

remoteness of Lestock's division thus affected Burrish, who evidently

could not understand either its distance or its failure to approach, and

who, being what he was, saw himself threatened with want of that backing

which he himself was refusing to the _Marlborough_. While he was blaming

Lestock, hard things were being said about him in Lestock's division;

but the lesson of Lestock's influence upon Burrish is not less

noteworthy because the latter forfeited both duty and honor by his

hesitation. It is to be feared that the captain of the _Essex_,

following the _Dorsetshire_, was a coward; even so Burrish, an old

captain, certainly did not cheer his heart by good example, but rather

gave him the pretext for keeping still farther off. The rearmost two

ships of the division but confirm the evidences of demoralization, and

the more so that their captains seem from the evidence to have been

well-disposed average men; but the five Spanish vessels approaching,

with the _Dorsetshire_ and the _Essex_ holding aloof, was too much for

their resolution--and not unnaturally. The broad result, however, was

lamentable; for four British ships feared to come to the aid of an

heroic and desperately injured consort, in deadly peril, because five

enemies were drawing nigh.

Upon these four therefore fell, and not unjustly, the weight of national

anger. Burrish was cashiered, and declared forever incapable of being an

officer in the Navy. Norris, of the _Essex_, absconded to avoid trial.

The two others were pronounced unfit to command, but, although never

again employed, mitigating circumstances in their behavior caused them

to be retained on the lists of the Navy. It is not too much to say that

they were men just of the stamp to have escaped this shame and ruin of

reputation, under more favorable conditions of professional tone.

Concerning the vice-admiral's action at this time, which had its share

in the ruin of these captains, another curious instance of men's bondage

to the order of battle transpires. The three rear ships of his squadron

were clean, that is, relatively fast; and they were rearmost for this

very reason of speed, because, when the division led on the other tack,

they, as headmost ships of the fleet, would be ready to chase.

Nevertheless, when the admiral sent to Lestock in the forenoon to hurry

him into line, no order was given to these ships to press ahead. Why?

Lestock answers that to send those ships ahead, out of the place in the

line prescribed to them by the commander-in-chief, was breaking the

line, which should expose him to condign punishment; and this opinion

the Court also adopts: "The [only] messages sent to the Vice-Admiral by

the Admiral's two lieutenants were to make what sail he possibly could,

and to close the line with his division; no signal was made for him to

chase with his division, or send ships of his division to chase; without

which, _while the signal for the line of battle was flying_, and more

especially after the messages brought him, he could not, _without breach

of duty_, either have chased or sent ships to chase out of the line." It

is to be noted that the word "chase" is here used in the strictest

technical sense, not merely to exclude Lestock from diverting a ship to

some other purpose than that of the engagement, but even from shifting

her place in the general order in the view of furthering the engagement;

for the Court says again: "The Vice-Admiral could not send any ships of

his division to the relief of the _Namur_ and _Marlborough without

breaking the order of battle_, there being four ships of the Admiral's

division" (to wit, the _Dorsetshire_ and that crowd) "stationed between

the Vice-Admiral's division and the _Marlborough_, which four ships

might have gone to the assistance of the _Marlborough_."

The second in command thus had no liberty to repair either the

oversights of his superior, or the results of obvious bad conduct in

juniors; for Burrish's backwardness was observed throughout the rear.

There was a long road yet to travel to Nelson's personal action at St.

Vincent and Copenhagen, or to his judicious order at Trafalgar, "The

Second in command will, after my intentions are made known to him, have

the entire direction of his line." Even that great officer Hood, off the

Chesapeake in 1781, felt himself tied hand and foot by the union flag at

the mizzen peak,--the signal for the line. Only the commander-in-chief

could loose the bonds; either by his personal initiative alone, and

vigilant supervision, as did Hawke and Rodney, or by adding to this the

broad view of discretion in subordinates which Nelson took. Before

leaving this subject, note may be taken of a pettifogging argument

advanced by Lestock and adopted by the Court, that orders to these three

ships to press ahead would have resulted in nothing, because of the

lightness of the wind then and afterwards. True, doubtless, and known

after the fact; but who before the event could predict the uncertain

Mediterranean breeze, or how much each foot gained might contribute to

the five minutes which measure the interval between victory and defeat.

It is not by such lagging hesitations that battles are won.

It is a trivial coincidence, though it may be noted in passing, that as

it was the second astern of the commander-in-chief on whom fell the

weight of the disgrace, so it was the second astern of the commander of

the van who alone scored a distinct success, and achieved substantial

gain of professional reputation. Hawke, at first bearing down, had come

to close action with the Spanish _Neptuno_, a vessel nominally of less

force than his own ship, the _Berwick_. The _Neptuno_ was at length

driven out of her line, with a loss of some two hundred killed and

wounded. Thus left without an immediate antagonist, Hawke's attention

was attracted by another Spanish vessel, the _Poder_, of the same

nominal force as the _Neptuno_, and following her in the order; with

which four or five of the seven British ships, that should have closed

the interval between Mathews and Rowley, were carrying on a distant and

circumspect engagement, resembling in caution that of the _Dorsetshire_

and her followers. He carried the _Berwick_ close alongside the new

enemy, dismasted her, and after two hours compelled her to strike her

flag; the only vessel in either fleet that day to surrender, and then

only after a resistance as honorable to Spain as that of the

_Marlborough_ had been to Great Britain. Her commander refused to yield

his sword to any but Hawke, who also took possession of the prize with a

party from his own ship; thus establishing beyond dispute, by all

customary formalities, his claim to the one trophy of the day. The

occurrences through which she was afterwards lost to the British, so

that only the honor of the capture remained, and that to Hawke alone,

must be briefly told; for they, too, are a part of the mismanagement

that has given to this battle its particular significance in naval

history.

As the unlucky fire-ship bore down, Mathews began wearing the

_Namur_,--turning her round, that is, from the wind, and therefore

towards the _Marlborough_ and her opponents. In this he seems to have

had first in view supporting the fire-ship and covering the

_Marlborough_. Boats were ahead of the latter towing her from the enemy.

As she was thus being dragged off, but after the fire-ship blew up, the

_Namur_ passed between her and the hostile line; then, hauling to the

wind on the starboard tack, she stood north towards Lestock's division.

This movement to the rear was imitated by the British ships of the

centre,--the _Dorsetshire_ and others,--and, beyond a brush with the

rear five Spanish vessels as they came up, the action in the centre here

ceased.

This retrograde movement of Mathews and his division drew the centre

away from the van. At about the same time the allied van, composed

wholly of French ships, seeing the straits of the _Poder_ and the

_Real_, tacked--turned round--to come down to their assistance. This

imposed a like movement upon the British van, lest it should be engaged

apart from the rest of the fleet, and perhaps doubled on, by a number of

perfectly fresh ships. The _Poder_, having lost her chief spars, could

not be carried off, nor was Hawke able even to remove the men he had

thrown on board. She was therefore retaken by the French. Lieutenant

Lloyd, the officer in charge, escaped with a part of the prize crew,

taking with him also a number of Spanish prisoners; but a junior

lieutenant and some seamen were left behind and captured. The _Berwick_

being compelled to follow her division, Lloyd could not rejoin her till

the following day, and sought refuge for that night on board another

ship.

The next day, February 23d, Mathews had another chance. As he did not

pursue during the night, while the allies continued to retire, he was a

long way off at daylight; but his fleet was now united, and the enemy

retreating. He need therefore have no anxiety about the crippled

_Marlborough_, but could follow freely; whereas, the enemy being

pursued, their injured ships both retarded the movement and were

endangered. In the course of the day, the _Poder_ had lagged so far

behind that Admiral Rowley, who had recognized Hawke's enterprise the

day before, directed him to move down upon her. As he approached, the

French ship in company abandoned her, but in taking possession Hawke was

anticipated by the _Essex_, which Mathews himself had ordered to do so.

The captain of the _Essex_ got hold of the Spanish flag, with some other

small trophies, which he afterwards refused to give up unless compelled;

and, as Mathews would not give an order, Hawke never got them. Thus

curiously it came to pass that the one man who above several

misdemeanants distinguished himself by bad conduct, amounting to

cowardice, and who ran away to escape trial, kept the tokens of the

single achievement of the day from him whose valor had won them. The

_Poder_ herself was set on fire, and destroyed.

The British fleet continued to follow during the 23d, and at nightfall

was within three or four miles of the enemy, when Mathews again stopped.

The allies, continuing to withdraw, were next morning nearly out of

sight, and further pursuit was abandoned.

Thus ended this almost forgotten affair, which in its day occasioned to

an unusual degree the popular excitement and discussion which always

follow marked disaster, and but rarely attend success. Besides the

particular missteps of Lestock and the individual captains, which have

been mentioned, Mathews's conduct was marked by serious failures in

professional competency. The charge preferred against him which seems

most to have attracted attention, and to have been considered most

damaging, was taking his fleet into action in a confused and disorderly

manner. It is significant of professional standards that this should

have assumed such prominence; for, however faulty may have been his

previous management, the most creditable part of his conduct was the

manner of his attack. He did not wait for a pedantically accurate line,

but by a straightforward onslaught, at a favorable moment, upon a part

of the enemy,--and that the rear,--set an example which, had it been

followed by all who could do so, would probably have resulted in a

distinct and brilliant success. He was justified--if he reasoned at

all--in expecting that Lestock could get into action as soon as the

French van; or, at the least, before it could reverse the conditions

which would have ensued from a vigorous encounter upon the lines of

Mathews's attack. It is most doubtful, indeed, whether the French van

would have ventured to engage, in the case supposed; for the French

admiral, writing to the French ambassador in Spain, used these words:

"It is clear, in the situation I was in, it could not be expected that a

French admiral should go to the assistance of the Spaniards; neither

could the vanguard of the fleet do it without running the hazard of

being surrounded by the vanguard of the English, which had the wind of

them; but _as soon as the English left me_ I drew together all the ships

of both squadrons, and sailed immediately to the assistance of the _Real

Felipe_, in doing which I was exposed to the fire of the whole English

line; but happily the English did not punish my _rashness_ as it

deserved." Evidently De Court shared to the full the professional

caution which marked the French naval officers, with all their personal

courage; for if it was rash to pass the hostile line after it wore, it

would be reckless to do so before.

Considered simply as a tactical situation, or problem, quite independent

of any tactical forethought or insight on the part of the

commander-in-chief,--of which there is little indication,--the

conditions resulting from his attack were well summed up in a

contemporary publication, wholly adverse to Mathews in tone, and

saturated with the professional prepossessions embodied in the Fighting

Instructions. This writer, who claims to be a naval officer, says:

"The whole amount of this fight is that the centre, consisting of

eleven ships-of-the-line, together with two of-the-line and two

fifty-gun ships of the Rear-Admiral's division [the van], _were

able to destroy_ the whole Spanish squadron, much more so as three

of those ships went on with the French [the allied van], and four

of the sternmost did not get up with their admiral before it was

darkish, long after the fire-ship's misfortune, so that the whole

afternoon there were only five, out of which the _Constante_ was

beat away in less than an hour; what then fifteen ships could be

doing from half an hour past one till past five, no less than four

hours, and these ships not taken, burnt, and destroyed, is the

question which behooves them to answer."

In brief, then, Mathews's attack was so delivered that the weight of

thirteen of-the-line fell upon five Spanish of the same class, the

discomfiture of which, actually accomplished even under the misbehavior

of several British ships, separated the extreme rear, five other Spanish

vessels, from the rest of the allies. Whatever the personal merit or

lack of merit on the part of the commander-in-chief, such an

opportunity, pushed home by a "band of brothers," would at the least

have wiped out these rear ten ships of the allies; nor could the

remainder in the van have redeemed the situation. As for the method of

attack, it is worthy of note that, although adopted by Mathews

accidentally, it anticipated, not only the best general practice of a

later date, but specifically the purpose of Rodney in the action which

he himself considered the most meritorious of his whole career,--that of

April 17, 1780. The decisive signal given by him on that occasion, as

explained by himself, meant that each ship should steer, not for the

ship corresponding numerically to her in the enemy's order, but for the

one immediately opposite at the time the signal was made. This is what

Mathews and his seconds did, and others should have imitated. Singularly

enough, not only was the opportunity thus created lost, but there is no

trace of its existence, even, being appreciated in such wise as to

affect professional opinion. As far as Mathews himself was concerned,

the accounts show that his conduct, instead of indicating tactical

sagacity, was a mere counsel of desperation.

But after engaging he committed palpable and even discreditable

mistakes. Hauling to windward--away--when the _Marlborough_ forced him

ahead, abandoned that ship to overwhelming numbers, and countenanced the

irresolution of the _Dorsetshire_ and others. Continuing to stand north,

after wearing on the evening of the battle, was virtually a retreat,

unjustified by the conditions; and it would seem that the same false

step gravely imperilled the _Berwick_, Hawke holding on, most properly,

to the very last moment of safety, in order to get back his prize-crew.

Bringing-to on the night of the 23d was an error of the same character

as standing north during that of the 22d. It was the act of a doubtful,

irresolute man,--irresolute, not because a coward, but because wanting

in the self-confidence that springs from conscious professional

competency. In short, the commander-in-chief's unfitness was graphically

portrayed in the conversation with Cornwall from the quarter gallery of

the flag-ship. "If you approve and will go down with me, I will go

down." Like so many men, he needed a backer, to settle his doubts and to

stiffen his backbone. The instance is far from unique.

In the case of Byng, as of Mathews, we are not concerned with the

general considerations of the campaign to which the battle was

incidental. It is sufficient to note that in Minorca, then a British

possession, the French had landed an army of 15,000 men, with siege

artillery sufficient to reduce the principal port and fortress, Port

Mahon; upon which the whole island must fall. Their communications with

France depended upon the French fleet cruising in the neighborhood.

Serious injury inflicted upon it would therefore go far to relieve the

invested garrison.

[Illustration: Plan of Byng's Action off Minorca, May 20, 1756]

[Transcriber's Note: This illustration shows on a map the positions of

the fleets and their ships at various times in the action. Critical

positions on the map are marked with codes such as "B1" and "F2",

which will be referred to below in the text. This illustration is

available in the HTML version of the e-book.]

Under these circumstances the British fleet sighted Minorca on the 19th

of May, 1756, and was attempting to exchange information with the

besieged, when the French fleet was seen in the southeast. Byng stood

towards it, abandoning for the time the effort to communicate. That

night both fleets manoeuvred for advantage of position with regard to

the wind. The next day, between 9 and 10 A.M., they came again in view

of each other, and at 11 were about six miles apart, the French still to

the southeast, with a breeze at south-southwest to southwest. The

British once more advanced towards them, close hauled on the starboard

tack, heading southeasterly, the enemy standing on the opposite tack,

heading westerly, both carrying sail to secure the weather gage (B1,

F1). It appeared at first that the French would pass ahead of the

British, retaining the windward position; but towards noon the wind

changed, enabling the latter to lie up a point or two higher (B2). This

also forced the bows of the several French vessels off their course, and

put them out of a regular line of battle; that is, they could no longer

sail in each other's wake (F2). Being thus disordered, they reformed on

the same tack, heading northwest, with the wind very little forward of

the beam. This not only took time, but lost ground to leeward, because

the quickest way to re-establish the order was for the mass of the fleet

to take their new positions from the leewardmost vessel. When formed

(F3), as they could not now prevent the British line from passing

ahead, they hove-to with their main-topsails aback,--stopped,--awaiting

the attack, which was thenceforth inevitable and close at hand.

In consequence of what has been stated, the British line (B2-B3)--more

properly, column--was passing ahead of the French (F2-F3), steering

towards their rear, in a direction in a general sense opposite to

theirs, but not parallel; that is, the British course made an angle, of

between thirty and forty-five degrees, with the line on which their

enemy was ranged. Hence, barring orders to the contrary,--which were not

given,--each British ship was at its nearest to the enemy as she passed

their van, and became more and more distant as she drew to the rear. It

would have been impossible to realize more exactly the postulate of the

17th Article of the Fighting Instructions, which in itself voiced the

ideal conditions of an advantageous naval position for attack, as

conceived by the average officer of the day; and, as though most

effectually to demonstrate once for all how that sort of thing would

work, the adjunct circumstances approached perfection. The admiral was

thoroughly wedded to the old system, without an idea of departing from

it, and there was a fair working breeze with which to give it effect,

for the ships under topsails and foresail would go about three knots;

with top-gallant sails, perhaps over four. A fifty-gun ship, about the

middle of the engagement, had to close her lower deck ports when she set

her top-gallant sails on the wind, which had then freshened a little.

The 17th Article read thus: "If the admiral see the enemy standing

towards him, and he has the wind of them, the van of the fleet is to

make sail till they come the length of the enemy's rear, and our rear

abreast of the enemy's van; then he that is in the rear of our fleet is

to tack first, and every ship one after another as fast as they can

throughout the whole line; and if the admiral will have the whole fleet

to tack together, the sooner to put them in a posture of engaging the

enemy, he will hoist" a prescribed signal, "and fire a gun; and whilst

they are in fight with the enemy the ships will keep at half a cable's

length--one hundred yards--one of the other." All this Byng aimed to do.

The conditions exactly fitted, and he exactly followed the rules, with

one or two slight exceptions, which will appear, and for which the Court

duly censured him.

When thus much had been done, the 19th Article in turn found its

postulate realized, and laid down its corresponding instruction: "If the

admiral and his fleet have the wind of the enemy, and they have

stretched themselves in a line of battle, the van of the admiral's fleet

is to _steer with_ the van of the enemy's, and there to engage with

them." The precise force of "steer with" is not immediately apparent to

us to-day, nor does it seem to have been perfectly clear then; for the

question was put to the captain of the flag-ship,--the heroic Gardiner,

--"You have been asked if the admiral did not express some uneasiness at

Captain Andrews"--of the van ship in the action--"not seeming to

understand the 19th Article of the Fighting Instructions; Do not you

understand that article to relate to our van particularly when the two

fleets are [already] in a parallel line of battle to each other?" (As

TT, F3). _Answer_: "I apprehended it in the situation" [not parallel]

"we were in[1] if the word _For_ were instead of the word _With_, he

would, I apprehend, have steered directly _for_ the van ship of the

Enemy." _Question_. "As the 19th Article expresses to steer with the van

of the enemy, if the leading ship had done so, in the oblique line we

were in with the enemy, and every ship had observed it the same, would

it not have prevented our rear coming to action at all, at least within

a proper distance?" _Answer_: "Rear, and van too." "Steer with"

therefore meant, to the Court and to Gardiner, to steer parallel to the

enemy,--possibly likewise abreast,--and if the fleets were already

parallel the instruction would work; but neither the articles

themselves, nor Byng by his signals, did anything to effect parallelism

before making the signal to engage.

The captain of the ship sternmost in passing, which became the van when

the fleet tacked together according to the Instructions and signals,

evidently shared Gardiner's impression; when about, he steered parallel

to--"with"--the French, who had the wind nearly abeam. The mischief was

that the ships ahead of him in passing were successively more and more

distant from the enemy, and if they too, after tacking, steered with the

latter, they would never get any nearer. The _impasse_ is clear. Other

measures doubtless would enable an admiral to range his fleet parallel

to the enemy at any chosen distance, by taking a position himself and

forming the fleet on his ship; or, in this particular instance, Byng

being with the van as it, on the starboard tack, was passing the enemy

(B3 B3), could at any moment have brought his fleet parallel to the

French by signalling the then van ship to keep away a certain amount,

the rest following in her wake. Nothing to that effect being in the

Instructions, it seems not to have occurred to him. His one idea was to

conform to them, and he apprehended that after tacking, as they

prescribed, the new van ship would bear down and engage without further

orders, keeping parallel to the French when within point-blank, the

others following her as they could; a process which, from the varying

distances, would expose each to a concentrated fire as they successively

approached. Byng's action is only explicable to the writer by supposing

that he thus by "steer with" understood "steer for;" for when, after the

fleet tacked together, the new van ship (formerly the rear) did not of

her own motion head for the leading enemy, he signalled her to steer one

point, and then two points, in that direction. This, he explained in his

defence, was "to put the leading captain in mind of his Instructions,

who I perceived did not steer away with the enemy's leading ship

agreeable to the 19th Article of the Fighting Instructions." The results

of these orders not answering his expectations, he then made the signal

to engage, as the only remaining way perceptible to him for carrying out

the Instructions.

To summarize the foregoing, up to the moment the signal for battle was

made: While the fleets were striving for the weather gage, the wind had

shifted to the southwest. The French, momentarily disordered by the

change, had formed in line ahead about noon, heading northwest,

westerly, so as just to keep their main topsails aback and the ships

with bare steerage way, but under command (F3). The British standing

south-southeast, by the wind, were passing (B2-B3) across the

head of the enemy's fleet at a distance of from three to two miles--the

latter being the estimate by their ships then in the rear. The French

having twelve vessels in line and the British thirteen, the gradual

progress of the latter should bring their then van "the length of the

enemy's rear," about the time the rear came abreast of his van. When

this happened, the Instructions required that the fleet tack together,

and then stand for the enemy, ship to ship, number one to number one,

and so along the line till the number twelves met[2].

This Byng purposed to do, but, unluckily for himself, ventured on a

refinement. Considering that, if his vessels bore down when abreast

their respective antagonists, they would go bows-on, perpendicularly,

subject to a raking--enfilading--fire, he deferred the signal to tack

till his van had passed some distance beyond the French rear, because

thus they would have to approach in a slanting direction. He left out of

his account here the fact that all long columns tend to straggle in the

rear; hence, although he waited till his three or four leading ships had

passed the enemy before making signal to tack, the rear had got no

farther than abreast the hostile van. Two of the clearest witnesses,

Baird of the _Portland_, next to the then rear ship, and Cornwall of the

_Revenge_, seventh from it, testified that, after tacking together, to

the port tack, when they kept away for the enemy in obedience to the

signal for battle, it was necessary, in order to reach their particular

opponents, to bring the wind not only as far as astern, but on the

starboard quarter, showing that they had been in rear of their station

before tacking, and so too far ahead after it; while Durell of the

_Trident_, ninth from rear and therefore fifth from van, asserted that

at the same moment the British van, which after tacking became the rear,

had overpassed the enemy by five or six ships. This may be an

exaggeration, but that three or four vessels had gone beyond is proved

by evidence from the ships at that end of the line.

The Court therefore distinctly censured the admiral for this novelty:

"Unanimously, the Court are of opinion that when the British fleet on

the starboard tack were stretched abreast, _or about the beam_ of the

enemy's line, the admiral should have tacked the fleet all together, and

immediately have conducted it on a direct course for the enemy, the van

steering for the enemy's van," etc. The instructive point, however, is

not Byng's variation, nor the Court's censure, but the idea, common to

both, that the one and only way to use your dozen ships under the

conditions was to send each against a separate antagonist. The highest

and authoritative conception of a fleet action was thus a dozen naval

duels, occurring simultaneously, under initial conditions unfavorable to

the assailant. It is almost needless to remark that this is as contrary

to universal military teaching as it was to the practice of Rodney,

Howe, Jervis, and Nelson, a generation or two later.

This is, in fact, the chief significance of this action, which ratified

and in a measure closed the effete system to which the middle eighteenth

century had degraded the erroneous, but comparatively hearty, tradition

received by it from the seventeenth. It is true, the same blundering

method was illustrated in the War of 1778. Arbuthnot and Graves,

captains when Byng was tried, followed his plan in 1781, with like

demonstration of practical disaster attending false theory; but, while

the tactical inefficiency was little less, the evidence of faint-hearted

professional incompetency, of utter personal inadequacy, was at least

not so glaring. It is the combination of the two in the person of the

same commander that has given to this action its pitiful pre-eminence in

the naval annals of the century.

It is, therefore, not so much to point out the lesson, as to reinforce

its teaching by the exemplification of the practical results, that there

is advantage in tracing the sequel of events in this battle. The signal

to tack was made when the British van had reached beyond the enemy's

rear, at a very little after 1 P.M. (B3). This reversed the line of

battle, the rear becoming the van, on the port tack. When done, the new

van was about two miles from that of the French (F4); the new rear,

in which Byng was fourth from sternmost, was three and a half or four

from their rear. Between this and 2 P.M. came the signals for the ship

then leading to keep two points, twenty-five degrees, more to starboard,

--towards the enemy; a measure which could only have the bad effect of

increasing the angle which the British line already made with that of

the French, and the consequent inequality of distance to be traversed by

their vessels in reaching their opponents. At 2.20 the signal for battle

was made, and was repeated by the second in command, Rear-Admiral Temple

West, who was in the fourth ship from the van. His division of six bore

up at once and ran straight down before the wind, under topsails only,

for their several antagonists; the sole exception being the van-most

vessel, which took the slanting direction desired by Byng, with the

consequence that she got ahead of her position, had to back and to wear

to regain it, and was worse punished than any of her comrades. The

others engaged in line, within point-blank, the rear-admiral hoisting

the flag for close action (B4). Fifteen minutes later, the sixth ship,

and rearmost of the van, the _Intrepid_, lost her foretopmast, which

crippled her.

The seventh ship, which was the leader of the rear, Byng's own division,

got out of his hands before he could hold her. Her captain, Frederick

Cornwall, was nephew to the gallant fellow who fell backing Mathews so

nobly off Toulon, and had then succeeded to the command of the

_Marlborough_, fighting her till himself disabled. He had to bring the

wind on the starboard quarter of his little sixty-four, in order to

reach the seventh in the enemy's line, which was an eighty-gun ship,

carrying the flag of the French admiral. This post, by professional

etiquette, as by evident military considerations, Byng owed to his own

flag-ship, of equal force.

The rest of the rear division the commander-in-chief attempted to carry

with himself, slanting down; or, as the naval term then had it,

"lasking" towards the enemy. The flag-ship kept away four

points--forty-five degrees; but hardly had she started, under the very

moderate canvas of topsails and foresail, to cover the much greater

distance to be travelled, in order to support the van by engaging the

enemy's rear, when Byng observed that the two ships on his left--towards

the van--were not keeping pace with him. He ordered the main and mizzen

topsails to be backed to wait for them. Gardiner, the captain, "took the

liberty of offering the opinion" that, if sail were increased instead of

reduced, the ships concerned would take the hint, that they would all be

sooner alongside the enemy, and probably receive less damage in going

down. It was a question of example. The admiral replied, "You see that

the signal for the line is out, and I am ahead of those two ships; and

you would not have me, as admiral of the fleet, run down as if I was

going to engage a single ship. It was Mr. Mathews's misfortune to be

prejudiced by not carrying his force down together, which I shall

endeavor to avoid." Gardiner again "took the liberty" of saying he would

answer for one of the two captains doing his duty. The incident, up to

the ship gathering way again, occupied less than ten minutes; but with

the van going down headlong--as it ought--one ceases to wonder at the

impression on the public produced by one who preferred lagging for

laggards to hastening to support the forward, and that the populace

suspected something worse than pedantry in such reasoning at such a

moment. When way was resumed, it was again under the very leisurely

canvas of topsails and foresail.

By this had occurred the incident of the _Intrepid_ losing her

foretopmast. It was an ordinary casualty of battle, and one to be

expected; but to such a temper as Byng's, and under the cast-iron

regulations of the Instructions, it entailed consequences fatal to

success in the action,--if success were ever attainable under such a

method,--and was ultimately fatal to the admiral himself. The wreck of

the fallen mast was cleared, and the foresail set to maintain speed,

but, despite all, the _Intrepid_ dropped astern in the line. Cornwall in

the _Revenge_ was taking his place at the moment, and fearing that the

_Intrepid_ would come back upon him, if in her wake, he brought up first

a little to windward, on her quarter; then, thinking that she was

holding her way, he bore up again. At this particular instant he looked

behind, and saw the admiral and other ships a considerable distance

astern and to windward; much Lestock's position in Mathews's action.

This was the stoppage already mentioned, to wait for the two other

ships. Had Cornwall been Burrish, he might in this have seen occasion

for waiting himself; but he saw rather the need of the crippled ship.

The _Revenge_ took position on the _Intrepid's_ lee quarter, to support

her against the enemy's fire, concentrated on her when her mast was seen

to fall. As her way slackened, the _Revenge_ approached her, and about

fifteen minutes later the ship following, the _Princess Louisa_,--one of

those for which Byng had waited,--loomed up close behind Cornwall, who

expected her to run him on board, her braces being shot away. She

managed, however, with the helm to back her sails, and dropped clear;

but in so doing got in the way of the vessel next after her, the

_Trident_, which immediately preceded Byng. The captain of the

_Trident_, slanting down with the rest of the division, saw the

situation, put his helm up, ran under the stern of the _Louisa_, passed

on her lee side,--nearest the enemy,--and ranged up behind the

_Revenge_; but in doing this he not only crossed the stern of the

_Louisa_, but the bow of the admiral's ship--the _Ramillies_.

Under proper management the _Ramillies_ doubtless could have done just

what the _Trident_ did,--keep away with the helm, till the ships ahead

of her were cleared; she would be at least hasting towards the enemy.

But the noise of battle was in the air, and the crew of the _Ramillies_

began to fire without orders, at an improper distance. The admiral

permitted them to continue, and the smoke enveloping the ship prevented

fully noting the incidents just narrated. It was, however, seen before

the firing that the _Louisa_ was come up into the wind with her topsails

shaking, and the _Trident_ passing her to leeward. There should,

therefore, have been some preparation of mind for the fact suddenly

reported to the admiral, by a military passenger on the quarter deck,

that a British ship was close aboard, on the lee bow. It was the

_Trident_ that had crossed from windward to leeward for the reasons

given, and an instant later the _Louisa_ was seen on the weather bow.

Instead of keeping off, as the _Trident_ had done, the admiral ordered

the foresail hauled up, the helm down, luffed the ship to the wind, and

braced the fore-topsail sharp aback; the effect of which was first to

stop her way, and then to pay her head off to leeward, clear of the two

vessels. About quarter of an hour elapsed, by Captain Gardiner's

evidence, from the time that the _Ramillies's_ head pointed clear of the

_Trident_ and _Louisa_ before sail was again made to go forward to aid

the van. The battle was already lost, and in fact had passed out of

Byng's control, owing to his previous action; nevertheless this further

delay, though probably due only to the importance attached by the

admiral to regularity of movement, had a discreditable appearance.

The Court held that the admiral was justified in not trying to go to

leeward of the two ships, under the circumstances when they were seen;

but blamed him for permitting the useless cannonade which prevented

seeing them sooner. The results at this moment in other parts of the

field should be summarized, as they show both the cause and the

character of the failures due to faulty management.

The five ships of the British van had already seen their adversaries

withdraw after a sharp engagement. This seems to have been due to the

fact that two were individually overmatched and driven off; whereupon

the other three retired because unable to contend with five. But no

support reached the British van at this important moment; on the

contrary, the British rear was now two or three miles distant, astern

and to windward. The lagging of the crippled _Intrepid_ held back the

_Revenge_. Cornwall was detained some time by the old idea that he

needed a signal to pass her, because to do so was breaking the order

established by the admiral; but concluding at last that Byng was unaware

of the conditions, and seeing that his immediate opponent--the French

admiral--was drawing ahead, he sent word to the _Intrepid_ to hold her

fire for a few moments till he could go by. He then made sail.

The French rear with its commander-in-chief had been watching the

incidents narrated: the crippling of the _Intrepid_, the consequent

disorder in the British rear, and the increasing distance between it and

the van. When the _Revenge_, however, passed ahead, and Byng

disentangled his flag-ship, the moment for a decisive step arrived. The

French rear vessels were nearer the British van than Byng's division

was. They now filled their topsails, made more sail, stood for the

British leading ships, already partially unrigged, passed by, and in so

doing gave them the fire of a number of substantially fresh vessels,

which had undergone only a distant and ineffective cannonade. Byng saw

what was about to happen, and also set more canvas; but it was no longer

possible to retrieve the preceding errors. The French admiral had it in

his power very seriously to damage, if not to destroy the hostile van;

but in accordance with the tradition of his nation he played an

over-prudent game, strictly defensive, and kept too far off. After

exchanging distant broadsides, he steered northwest towards Mahon,

satisfied that he had for the time disabled his opponent. The British

that evening tacked off-shore and stood to the southeast. Four days

later they abandoned the field, returning to Gibraltar. The fall of

Minorca followed.

Nothing could have been much worse than the deplorable management of

this action on the part of the commander-in-chief. It is a conspicuous

instance of weak and halting execution, superimposed upon a professional

conception radically erroneous; and it reflected throughout the timid

hesitancy of spirit which dictated the return to Gibraltar, under the

always doubtful sanction of a Council of War. But the historical value

of the lesson is diminished if attention is confined to the shortcomings

of the admiral, neglectful of the fact that his views as to the

necessity to observe the routine of the Fighting Instructions are

reproduced in the evidence of the captains; and that the finding of the

Court censures, not the general idea, but certain details, important yet

secondary. Durell, being asked whether the admiral could not have passed

under the stern of the _Trident_, as the _Trident_ had under that of the

_Louisa_, replies, "Yes, but she would have been to leeward of those

ships ahead;" that is, to leeward of the line. Gardiner "knows no other

method than what the admiral took, for preserving the line regular."

Cornwall cannot pass the _Intrepid_ without a signal, because it would

be breaking the order. These were all good men.

The Court, composed of four admirals and nine captains, the junior of

whom had over ten years seniority, give in their finding no shadow of

disapproval to the broad outlines of the action. There can be,

therefore, no doubt about service standards. The questions put to the

witnesses reveal indeed a distinct preference for forming the line of

battle _parallel_ to that of the enemy before bearing down, so that all

the ships may have the same distance to go, have a clear field ahead of

each, and the comparatively simple mutual bearing of "abeam" to observe;

but it refrains from censuring the admiral for forming on a line very

oblique to that of the enemy, which entailed the burden of changing the

relative positions during standing down, so as to arrive all together,

on a line parallel to his; while the course itself being oblique alike

to their own front and the enemy's, each preceding ship was liable to

get in the way, "to prove an impediment," to its follower,--as actually

happened. It was indeed impossible to fault the commander-in-chief in

this particular, because his action was conformable to the letter of the

Instructions, with which he was evidently and subserviently eager to

comply.

The decision of the Court therefore was, in substance, that in bearing

down upon the enemy Byng did not do wrong in starting upon a line

oblique to them; but that he should have steered such a course, and

maintained such spread of sail, graduated to the speed of the slowest

ship in the fleet, that all should reach point-blank range at the same

time, and be then ranged on a line parallel to that of the enemy. "When

on the starboard tack, the admiral should have tacked the fleet all

together and immediately conducted it on a direct course for the

enemy; ... each ship steering for her opposite ship in the enemy's line,

and under such sail as might have enabled the worst sailing ship, under

all her plain sail, to preserve her station." It is needless to insist with

any naval man, or to any soldier, that such an advance, in orderly

fashion, oblique to the front, is unattainable except by long drill,

while this fleet had been but a few weeks assembled; and the difficulty

is enhanced when each ship has not only to keep its station in line, but

to reach a particular enemy, who may not be just where he ought, having

respect to the British order. The manoeuvre favored by the Court for the

fleet as a whole was in fact just that which Byng attempted for his own

division, with the results that have been narrated. These were

aggravated by his mismanagement, but did not originate from it.

The invariable result of an attack thus attempted, however vigorously

made, was that the van of the assailant got into action first, receiving

the brunt of the enemy's fire without proper support. Not infrequently,

it also underwent a second hammering from the enemy's rear, precisely in

the same way as occurred in Byng's action; and whether this happened or

not depended more upon the enemy than upon the British rear. In

ignoring, therefore, the idea of combining an attack in superior

numbers upon a part of the enemy, and adopting instead that of an

onslaught upon his whole, all along the line, the British practice of

the eighteenth century not only surrendered the advantage which the

initiative has, of effecting a concentration, but subjected their own

fleets to being beaten in detail, subject only to the skill of the

opponent in using the opportunity extended to him. The results, at best,

were indecisive, tactically considered. The one apparent exception was

in June, 1794, when Lord Howe, after long vainly endeavoring a better

combination with a yet raw fleet, found himself forced to the old

method; but although then several ships were captured, this issue seems

attributable chiefly to the condition of the French Navy, greatly fallen

through circumstances foreign to the present subject. It was with this

system that Rodney was about to break, the first of his century formally

to do so. A false tactical standard, however, was not the only drawback

under which the British Navy labored in 1739. The prolonged series of

wars, which began when the establishment of civil order under Cromwell

permitted the nation to turn from internal strife to external interests,

had been for England chiefly maritime. They had recurred at brief

intervals, and had been of such duration as to insure a continuity of

experience and development. Usage received modification under the

influence of constant warlike practice, and the consequent changes in

methods, if not always thoroughly reasoned, at the least reflected a

similar process of professional advance in the officers of the service.

This was consecutively transmitted, and by the movement of actual war

was prevented from stagnating and hardening into an accepted finality.

Thus the service and its officers, in the full performance of their

functions, were alive and growing. Nor was this all. The same

surroundings that promoted this healthful evolution applied also a

continual test of fitness to persons. As each war began, there were

still to be found in the prime of vigor and usefulness men whose

efficiency had been proved in its predecessor, and thus the line of

sustained ability in leadership was carried on from one naval generation

to another, through the sixty-odd years, 1652-1713, over which these

conditions extended.

The peace of Utrecht in 1713 put an end to this period. A disputed

succession after the death of Queen Anne, in 1714, renewed the condition

of internal disquietude which had paralyzed the external action of

England under Charles I.; and this co-operated with the mere weariness

of war, occasioned by prolonged strife, to give both the country and the

navy a temporary distaste to further military activity. The man of the

occasion, who became the exponent and maintainer of this national

inclination, was Sir Robert Walpole; to whom, during his ministry of

over twenty years, can fairly be applied Jefferson's phrase concerning

himself, that his "passion was peace." But, whatever the necessity to

the country of such a policy, it too often results, as it did in both

these cases, in neglect of the military services, allowing the equipment

to decay, and tending to sap the professional interest and competency of

the officers.

From this last evil the United States Navy in Jefferson's day was saved

by the simple fact that the officers were young men, or at the most in

the early prime of life,--the Navy itself, in 1812, being less than

twenty years old as a corporate organization. The British Navy of 1739

was in very different case. For a quarter of a century the only

important military occurrence had been the Battle of Cape Passaro, in

1718, where the British fleet in a running fight destroyed a much

inferior Spanish force; and the occasion then was not one of existent

war, but of casual hostilities, which, precipitated by political

conditions, began and ended with the particular incident, as far as the

sea was concerned. Back of this lay only Malaga, in 1704; for the

remaining years of war, up to 1713, had been unmarked by fleet battles.

The tendency of this want of experience, followed by the long

period--not of peace only, but--of professional depression resultant

upon inactivity and national neglect, was to stagnation, to obviate

which no provision existed or was attempted. Self-improvement was not a

note of the service, nor of the times. The stimulus of occupation and

the corrective of experience being removed, average men stuck where they

were, and grew old in a routine of service, or, what was perhaps worse,

out of the service in all but name. In naval warfare, the Battle of

Malaga, the last point of performance, remained the example, and the

Fighting Instructions the passively accepted authority. The men at the

head of the Navy, to whom the country naturally looked, either had no

record--no proof of fitness--because but youths in the last war, or

else, in simple consequence of having then had a chance to show

themselves, were now superannuated. This very fact, however, had the

singular and unfortunate result that, because the officers of reputation

were old, men argued, by a curious perversion of thought, that none but

the old should be trusted.

Of this two significant cases will tell more than many words. Mathews,

who commanded at Toulon in 1744, was then sixty-seven years old, and had

not been at sea between 1724 and 1742. Hawke, in 1747, when he had

already established an excellent reputation as a captain, and for

enterprise in recent battle, was thought young to be entrusted with a

squadron of a dozen ships-of-the-line, although he was forty-two,--two

years older than Nelson at the Nile, but four years younger than

Napoleon and Wellington at Waterloo, and one year less in age than Grant

at the close of the American Civil War. Such instances are not of

merely curious interest; they are symptoms of professional states of

mind, of a perplexity and perversion of standards which work

disastrously whenever war succeeds to a prolonged period of peace, until

experience has done its work by sorting out the unsound from among the

fair-seeming, and has shown also that men may be too old as well as too

young for unaccustomed responsibility. The later prevalence of juster

views was exemplified in the choice of Wolfe, who was but thirty-two

when he fell before Quebec in 1759, charged with one of the most

difficult enterprises that had then been entrusted to a British general.

It is these two factors, therefore, an erroneous standard and a

lethargic peace, which principally caused the weakness of the British

official staff for battle service at the period of lowest descent, which

was reached in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, but was

prolonged and intensified by a protracted interval of professional

apathy. Other grievous evils doubtless existed, serious defects in

administration, involving indifferent equipment, bad and scanty

provisions, inferior physique in the ships' companies, and wretched

sanitary arrangements; but while all these unquestionably gravely

affected general efficiency for war, they belonged rather to the civil

than the military side of the profession. In the hour of battle it was

not these, but the tone and efficiency of the officers, that chiefly

told. A false pattern of action had been accepted at a moment favorable

to its perpetuation, when naval warfare on the grand scale had ceased,

owing to the decline of the principal enemy, the navy of France; while

the average competency of naval officers had been much lowered through

want of professional incentive, and the absence of any sifting process

by which the unfit could be surely eliminated. That plenty of good

material existed, was sufficiently shown by the number of names,

afterwards distinguished, which soon began to appear. Weeding went on

apace; but before its work was done, there had to be traversed a painful

period, fruitful of evidences of unfitness, of personal weakness, of low

or false professional ideas.

It is with this period that we have first had to do as our point of

departure, by which not only to estimate the nature and degree of the

subsequent advance, but to illustrate also the part specifically

contributed to it by Hawke and Rodney, through their personal and

professional characteristics. While types, they are more than mere

exponents of the change as a whole, and will be found to bear to it

particular relations,--its leaders in fact, as well as in name. It is

not merely fanciful to say that Hawke stands for and embodies the spirit

of the new age, while Rodney rather exemplifies and develops the form in

which that spirit needed ultimately to cloth itself in order to perfect

its working. The one is a protest in act against the professional

faintheartedness, exaggerated into the semblance of personal timidity,

shown by the captains off Toulon in 1774; the other, in the simple but

skilful methods and combinations adopted by him, both represents and

gives effect to a reaction against the extravagant pedantry, which it

fell to Byng, in all the honesty of a thoroughly commonplace man, to

exhibit in unintentional caricature.

In thus ascribing to these great men complementary parts in leading and

shaping the general movement, it is not meant that either is deficient

on the side attributed to the other. Hawke showed by his actions that he

was by no means indifferent to tactical combinations, which is another

way of saying that he appreciated the advantage of form in warfare;

while Rodney, though a careful organizer and driller of fleets, and

patient in effort to obtain advantage before attacking, exhibited on

occasion headlong, though not inconsiderate, audacity, and also

tenacious endurance in fight. Still, it will probably be admitted by the

student of naval biography that to him Hawke suggests primarily the

unhesitating sudden rush--the swoop--upon the prey, while Rodney

resembles rather the patient astute watcher, carefully keeping his own

powers in hand, and waiting for the unguarded moment when the adversary

may be taken suddenly at unawares. Certain it is that, with

opportunities much more numerous than were permitted to Hawke, his

successes would have been far greater but for an excess of methodical

caution. There was a third, who combined in due proportion, and

possessed to an extraordinary degree, the special qualities here

assigned to each. It is one of the ironies of history that the first Sir

Samuel Hood should have had just opportunity enough to show how great

were his powers, and yet have been denied the chance to exhibit them

under conditions to arrest the attention of the world; nay, have been

more than once compelled to stand by hopelessly, and see occasions lost

which he would unquestionably have converted into signal triumphs. In

him, as far as the record goes, was consummated the advance of the

eighteenth century. He was the greatest of the sowers. It fell to

Nelson, his pupil,--in part at least,--to reap the harvest.

Before closing this part of our subject, the necessary preliminary to

understanding the progress of naval warfare in the eighteenth century,

it is pertinent to note the respect in which advance there differs from

that of the nineteenth, and in some degree, though less, from that of

the seventeenth centuries. The period was not one of marked material

development. Improvements there were, but they were slow, small in

ultimate extent, and in no sense revolutionary. Ships and guns, masts

and sails, grew better, as did also administrative processes; it may

indeed be asserted, as an axiom of professional experience, that as the

military tone of the sea-officers rises, the effect will be transmitted

to those civil functions upon which efficiency for war antecedently

depends. Still, substantially, the weapons of war were in principle, and

consequently in general methods of handling, the same at the end of the

period as at the beginning. They were intrinsically more efficient; but

the great gain was not in them, but in the spirit and intellectual grasp

of the men who wielded them. There was no change in the least analogous

to that from oars to sails, or from sails to steam.

Under such conditions of continued similarity in means, advance in the

practice of any profession is effected rather in the realm of ideas, in

intellectual processes; and even their expert application involves mind

rather than matter. In the nineteenth century such intellectual

processes have been largely devoted to the purposes of material

development, and have found their realization, in the navy as elsewhere,

in revolutionizing instruments, in providing means never before

attainable. The railroad, the steamer, the electric telegraph, find

their counterpart in the heavily armored steamship of war. But in

utilizing these new means the navy must still be governed by the ideas,

which are, indeed, in many ways as old as military history, but which in

the beginning of the eighteenth century had passed out of the minds of

naval men. It was the task of the officers of that period to recall

them, to formulate them anew, to give them a living hold upon the theory

and practice of the profession. This they did, and they were undoubtedly

helped in so doing by the fact that their attention was not diverted and

absorbed, as that of our day very largely has been, by decisive changes

in the instruments with which their ideas were to be given effect. Thus

they were able to make a substantial and distinctive contribution to the

art of naval warfare, and that on its highest side. For the artist is

greater than his materials, the warrior than his arms; and it was in the

man rather than in his weapons that the navy of the eighteenth century

wrought its final conspicuous triumph.