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