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