er is now only remembered as the inventor
of grog. The high reputation he justly held as a seaman and commander
amongst his contemporaries has long been buried under his undeserved
failure at Cartagena; but trained in the flagships of Rooke and
Shovell, and afterwards as a captain under Sir John Norris in the
Baltic, there was no one till the day of his death in 1757, at the age
of 73, who held so high a place as a naval authority, and from no one
was a pregnant tactical reform more likely to come. The Lestock
pamphlet, moreover, makes it clear that through all the time of his
service--the dead time of tactics as we regard it now--tacticians so
far from slumbering had been striving to release themselves from the
bonds in which the old instructions tied them.

This is confirmed by two manuscript authorities which have fortunately
survived, and which give us a clear insight into the new system as it
was actually set on foot. The first is a MS. copy of some Additional
Instructions in the Admiralty Library. They are less full and clearly
earlier than those used by Boscawen in 1759, and are bound up with a
printed copy of the regular Fighting Instructions already referred to,
which contain in manuscript the additions made by Mathews during his
Mediterranean command.[2] In so far as they differ from Boscawen's
they will be found below as notes to his set.

The second is a highly interesting MS. copy of a signal book dated
1756, in which the above instructions are referred to. It is in the
United Service Institution (_Register No._ 234). At the end it
contains a memorandum of a new article by which Hawke modified the
established method of attack, and for the first time introduced the
principle of each ship steering for her opposite in the enemy's
line. It is printed below, and as will be seen was to be substituted
for 'Articles V. and VI. of the Additional Fighting Instructions by
Day' then in force, which correspond to Articles XV. and XVI. of
Boscawen's set. It does not appear in the Boscawen set, and how soon
it was regularly incorporated we do not know. No reference has been
found to it till that by Rodney, in his despatch of April 1780
referred to below.

Of even higher interest for our purpose is another entry in the same
place of an article also issued by Hawke for forming 'line of
bearing.' Here again the older form of the Additional Fighting
Instructions is referred to, and the new article is to be inserted
after