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