assed some distance beyond the French rear, because
thus they would have to approach in a slanting direction. He left out of
his account here the fact that all long columns tend to straggle in the
rear; hence, although he waited till his three or four leading ships had
passed the enemy before making signal to tack, the rear had got no
farther than abreast the hostile van. Two of the clearest witnesses,
Baird of the _Portland_, next to the then rear ship, and Cornwall of the
_Revenge_, seventh from it, testified that, after tacking together, to
the port tack, when they kept away for the enemy in obedience to the
signal for battle, it was necessary, in order to reach their particular
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,