ght out at close quarters gave very
definite results, the fleet that was defeated being practically destroyed.

When battles began to be fought under sail, with the gun as the chief
weapon, a new method had to be evolved. The more the fire of broadside
batteries was relied upon, the greater was the tendency to fight at short
artillery range, without closing to hand-to-hand distance, and when the
sailors and sea-fighters of the seventeenth century adopted line ahead as
the normal formation for making the most of broadside fire, battles had a
marked tendency to degenerate into inconclusive artillery duels.

In both the English and the French navies--the two powers that after the
naval decline of Spain and Holland disputed the command of the sea--the
tactics of the battle in line ahead soon crystallized into a pedantic
system. For a hundred years the methods of English admirals were kept in
rigid uniformity by a code of "Fighting Instructions for the Navy," drawn
up under the direction of the Duke of York (afterwards James II), when he
was still Lord High Admiral of England in his brother's reign. These
instructions were a well-meant attempt to provide a "sealed pattern" for
naval engagements. They contemplated set, formal battles with both fleets
in line ahead, sailing on parallel courses, or passing and repassing
each other on opposite tacks, exchanging broadsides as the guns bore. The
French adopted similar methods. If the English had any advantage in their
tactics, it was in their ideas of gunnery. The French aimed at masts and
rigging, in the hope of crippling an adversary in her sail power and
forcing her to fall out of the moving line. The English believed in making
the hull their target, aiming "between wind and water" to start dangerous
leaks, or sending their shot into the crowded gun-decks to put the enemy's
batteries out of action.

[Illustration: GUNS AND CARRONADES IN USE IN THE BRITISH NAVY
IN THE LATTER PART OF THE 18TH CENTURY]

Under such methods battles became formal duels, in which, as often as not,
there was no great result, and both sides claimed the victory. The story of
many of the naval campaigns of the first three-quarters of the eighteenth
century is weary reading. It was in the last quarter of the century that
English admirals learned to fight again at close quarters, and to strike
crushing blows at an enemy. The new period of energetic, decisive fighting
began with a famous battle in