decisive. Les Anglois avoient essaié de gagner le vent: mais
l'amiral Tromp en aiant toujours conservé l'avantage, et l'étant
rangé sur une ligne parallèle à celle des Anglois arriva sur
eux,' &c. This is the first known instance of a Dutch fleet forming in
single line, and, so far as it goes, would tend to show they adopted
it in imitation of the English formation.[7] At any rate, so far as
we have gone, the evidence tends to show that the English finally
adopted the regular line-ahead formation in consequence of the orders
of March 29, 1653, and there is no indication of the current belief
that they borrowed it from the Dutch.

By the English admirals the new system must have been regarded as a
success. For the Fighting Instructions of 1653 were reissued with
nothing but a few alterations of signals and verbal changes by Blake,
Monck, Disbrowe, and Penn, the new 'admirals and generals of the fleet
of the Commonwealth of England,' appointed in December 1653, when the
war was practically over. They are printed by Granville Penn
(_Memorials of Penn_, ii. 76), under date March 31, 1655, but
that cannot be the actual date of their issue, for Blake was then in
the Mediterranean, Penn in the West Indies, and Monck busy with his
pacification of the Highlands. We must suspect here then another
confusion between old and new styles, and conjecture the true date to
be March 31, 1654, that is just before Monck left for Scotland, and a
few days before the peace was signed. So that these would be the
orders under which Blake conducted his famous campaign in the
Mediterranean, Penn and Venables captured Jamaica, and the whole of
Cromwell's Spanish war was fought.

FOOTNOTES: