4. Item, the admiral of the wing shall be always in the wind with his whole company; and when we shall join with the enemies he shall keep still the advantage of the wind, to the intent he with his company may the better beat off the galleys from the great ships.[2]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The articles are preceded, like the first ones, by a list of ships or 'battle order,' showing an organisation into a vanward, main body (battle), and one wing of oared craft. See Introductory Note, p. 19.
[2] Of the remaining seven articles, five relate to distinguishing squadronal flags and lights as in the earlier instructions, and the last one to the Watchword of the night. It is to be 'God save King Henry,' and the answer, 'And long to reign over us.'
PART II
ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN
SIR WALTER RALEGH, 1617
THE ELIZABETHAN ORIGIN OF RALEGH'S INSTRUCTIONS
INTRODUCTORY
No fighting instructions known to have been issued in the reign of Elizabeth have been found, nor is there any indication that a regular order of battle was ever laid down by the seamen-admirals of her time.[1] Even Howard's great fleet of 1588 had twice been in action with the Armada before it was so much as organised into squadrons. If anything of the kind was introduced later in her reign Captain Nathaniel Boteler, who had served in the Jacobean navy and wrote on the subject early in the reign of Charles I, was ignorant of it. In his Dialogues about Sea Services, he devotes the sixth to 'Ordering of Fleets in Sailing, Chases, Boardings and Battles,' but although he suggests a battle order which we know was never put in practice, he is unable to give one that had been used by an English fleet.[2] It is not surprising. In the despatches of the Elizabethan admirals, though they have much to say on strategy, there is not a word of fleet-tactics, as we understand the thing. The domination of the seamen's idea of naval warfare, the increasing handiness of ships, the improved design of their batteries, the special progress made by Englishmen in guns and gunnery led rapidly to the preference of broadside gunfire over boarding, and to an exaggeration of the value of individual mobility; and the old semi-military formations based on small-arm fighting were abandoned.