ch group of
Instructions has been adopted, which it is feared will appear to bear
an excessive proportion to the Instructions themselves. There seemed,
however, no other means of dealing with the illustrative matter in a
consecutive way. The extracts from admirals' despatches and
contemporary treatises, and the remarks of officers and officials
concerned with the preparation or the execution of the Instructions,
were for the most part too fragmentary to be treated as separate
documents, or too long or otherwise unsuitable for foot-notes. The
only adequate way therefore was to embody them in Introductory Notes,
and this it is hoped will be found to justify their bulk.

A special apology is, however, due for the Introductory Note on
Nelson's memoranda. For this I can only plead their great importance,
and the amount of illustrative matter that exists from the pens of
Nelson's officers and opponents. For no other naval battle have we so
much invaluable comment from men of the highest capacity who were
present. The living interest of it all is unsurpassed, and I have
therefore been tempted to include all that came to hand, encouraged by
the belief that the fullest material for the study of Nelson's tactics
at the battle of Trafalgar could not be out of place in a volume
issued by the Society in the centenary year.

As to the general results, perhaps the most striking feature which the
collection brings out is that sailing tactics was a purely English
art. The idea that we borrowed originally from the Dutch is no longer
tenable. The Dutch themselves do not even claim the invention of the
line. Indeed in no foreign authority, either Dutch, French or Spanish,
have I been able to discover a claim to the invention of any device in
sailing tactics that had permanent value. Even the famous tactical
school which was established in France at the close of the Seven
Years' War, and by which the French service so brilliantly profited in
the War of American Independence, was worked on the old lines of
Hoste's treatise. Morogues' _Tactique Navale_ was its text-book,
and his own teaching was but a scientific and intelligent elaboration
of a system from which the British service under the impulse of Anson,
Hawke, and Boscawen was already shaking itself free.

Much of the old learning which the volume contains is of course of
little more than antiquarian interest, but the bulk of it in the
opinion of those best able to judge should be fo