Having thus explained the system of doubling, he proceeds to give the latest ideas of his chief on breaking the enemy's line, or, as it was then called, passing through his fleet. 'We find,' he says, 'that in the relations of the fights in the Channel between the English and the Dutch that their fleets passed through one another…. In this manner the two fleets passed through one another several times, which exposed them to be cut off, taken, and mutually to lose several ships. Remark.—This manoeuvre is as bold as it is delicate, and consummate technical skill is necessary for it to succeed as happily as it did with the Comte d'Estrées … in the battle of the Texel, in the year 1673, for he passed through the Zealand squadron, weathered it, broke it up, and put the enemy into so great a disorder that it settled the victory which was still in the balance.'[5]
After pointing out by diagrams various methods of parrying the manoeuvre, he proceeds: 'I do not see, then, that we need greatly fear the enemy's passing through us; and I do not even think that this manoeuvre ought ever to be performed except under one of the three following conditions: (1) If you are compelled to do it in order to avoid a greater evil; (2) If the enemy by leaving a great gap in the midst of his squadrons renders a part of his fleet useless; (3) If several of his ships are disabled….
'Sometimes you are compelled to pass through the enemy's fleet to rescue ships that the enemy has cut off, and in this case you must risk something, but you should observe several precautions: (1) You should close up to the utmost; (2) You should carry a press of sail without troubling to fight in passing through the enemy; (3) The ships that have passed ought to tack the moment they can to prevent the enemy standing off on the same tack as the fleet that passes through them.'
It is clear, then, that in the eyes of perhaps the finest fleet leader of his time, and one of the finest France ever had, a man who thoroughly understood the value of concentration, the method of securing it by breaking the line was dangerous and unsound. In this he thoroughly endorses the views contained in the 'Observations' of the Admiralty MS. and the modifications of the standing order which they suggest. Indeed, Hoste's remarks on breaking the line are, in effect, little more than a logical elaboration of those ideas and suggestions. In the 'Observations' we have the monition not to attempt the manoeuvre 'unless an enemy press you on a lee shore.' We have the signal for a squadron breaking the enemy's line, but only in order to rejoin the main body, and we have the simple method of parrying the move by tacking with an equal number of ships. The fundamental principles of the problem in both the English and the French author are the same, and a comparison of the two enables us to assert, with no hesitation, that the manoeuvre of breaking the line was abandoned by the tacticians of that era, not from ignorance nor from lack of enterprise, but from a deliberate tactical conviction gained by experience in war. In judging the apparent want of enterprise which our own admirals began to display in action at this time, we should probably be careful to refrain from joining in the unmitigated contempt with which modern historians have so freely covered them. In the typical battle of Malaga, for instance, Rooke did nothing but carry out the principles which were the last word of Tourville's brilliant career. Nor must it be forgotten that, although Rodney executed the manoeuvre in 1782, and Hood provided a signal for its revival which Howe at first adopted, it was never in much favour in the British service, seeing that it was only adapted for an attack from to leeward. The manoeuvre of breaking the line which Howe eventually introduced was something wholly different both in form and intention from what Rodney executed and from what was understood by 'dividing the fleet' in the seventeenth century.[6] How far the system of doubling was approved by English admirals is doubtful. We have seen that an 'Observation' in the Admiralty Manuscript distrusts it,[7] but I have been able to find no other expression of opinion on the point earlier than 1780, and that entirely condemns it. It occurs in a set of fleet instructions drawn up for submission to the admiralty by Admiral Sir Charles H. Knowles, Bart. As Knowles was a pupil and protégé of Rodney's, we may assume he was in possession of the great tactician's ideas on the point; and in these Fighting and Sailing Instructions the following, article occurs: 'To double the enemy's line—that is, to send a few unengaged ships on one side to engage, while the rest are fighting on the other—is rendering those ships useless. Every ship which is between two, has not only her two broadsides opposed to theirs, but has likewise their shot which cross in her favour.'[8] No signal was provided for 'doubling' in Lord Howe's or the later signal books, though Nelson certainly executed the manoeuvre at the Nile. It survived however in the French service, and the English books provided a signal for preventing its execution by a numerically superior enemy. Sir Alexander Cochrane also revived it after Trafalgar.
Knowles's objection to the manoeuvre makes it easy to understand that, however well it suited the French tactics of long bowls or boarding, it was not well adapted to the English method of close action with the guns. With the French service it certainly continued in favour, and the whole of Hoste's rules were reproduced by the famous naval expert Sébastien-Francois Bigot, Vicomte de Morogues—in his elaborate Tactique navale, ou traits des évolutions et des signaux, which appeared in 1763, and was republished at Amsterdam in 1779. Not only was he the highest French authority on naval science of his time, but a fine seaman as well, as he proved when in command of the Magnifique on the disastrous day at Quiberon.[9]
The remainder of the new instructions, though less important than the expansion of the Duke of York's third article, all tend in the same direction. So far from insisting on a rigid observance of the single line ahead in all circumstances, the new system seems to aim at securing flexibility, and the power of concentration by independent action of squadrons. This is to be specially noted in the new article, No. 30, in which signals are provided for particular squadrons and particular divisions forming line of battle abreast. It is true that the old rigid form of an attack from windward is retained, but, ineffective as the system proved, it was certainly not inspired, as is so often said, by a mediæval conception of naval battle as a series of single ship actions. From what has been already said, the well-considered tactical idea that underlay it is obvious. The injunction to range the length of the enemy's line van to van, and rear to rear, or vice versa, was aimed at avoiding being doubled at either end of the line; while the injunction to bear down together was obviously the quickest mode of bringing the whole fleet into action without giving the enemy a chance of weathering any part of it by 'gaining its wake.' That it was inadequate for this purpose is well known. It would only work when the two fleets were exactly parallel at the moment of bearing down—as was made apparent at the battle of Malaga, where the French from leeward almost succeeded in dividing Rooke's fleet as it bore down. Still the idea was sound enough. The trouble was that it did not make sufficient allowance for the unhandiness of ships of the line in those days, and their difficulty in taking up or preserving exact formations.
As to the authorship of the articles, it must be remembered that the mere fact that they were issued by Russell is not enough to attribute them to him. He had had practically no previous experience as a flag officer, and in all probability they followed more or less closely those used by Lord Torrington in the previous year. Torrington was first lord of the admiralty in 1689, and commander-in-chief of the main fleet in 1690. It was not till after his acquittal in December of that year that he was superseded by Russell. The instructions moreover seem generally to be designed in close accordance with all we know of Torrington's tactical practice, and it is scarcely doubtful that they are due to his ripe experience and not to Russell.
That the point cannot be settled with absolute certainty is to be the more lamented because henceforth this set of Fighting Instructions, and not those of Rooke in 1703, must be taken as the dominating factor of eighteenth-century tactics. Rooke's instructions, except for the modification of a few articles, are the same as Russell's, and consequently it has not been thought necessary to print them in full. For a similar reason it has been found convenient to print such slight changes as are known to have been made in the standing form after 1703 as notes to the corresponding articles of Russell's instructions.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Introductory Note to Rooke's Instructions of 1703, p. 197.