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