al's ship, the Old James, being the southernmost and sternmost
ship in the fleet), the rest of his fleet tacking, first placed
themselves in a line ahead of the general, who after tacking hauled up
his mainsail in the brails, fitted his ship to fight, slung his yards,
and run out his lower tier of guns and clapt his fore topsail upon the
mast.' If Gibson could be implicitly trusted this passage would be
conclusive on the existence of the line formation earlier than any of
the known Fighting Instructions which enjoined it; but unfortunately,
as Dr. Gardiner pointed out, Gibson did not write his account till
1702, when he was 67. He is however to some extent corroborated by
Blake himself, who in his official despatch of May 20, relating the
incident, says that on seeing Tromp bearing down on him 'we lay by and
put ourselves into a fighting posture'--_i.e._ battle order--but
what the 'posture' was he does not say. If however this posture was
actually the one Gibson describes, we have the important fact that in
the first recorded instance of the complete line, it was taken as a
defensive formation to await an attack from windward.

The only other description we have of English tactics at this time
occurs in a despatch of the Dutch commander-in-chief in the
Mediterranean, Van Galen, in which he describes how Captain Richard
Badiley, then commanding a squadron on the station, engaged him with
an inferior force and covered his convoy off Monte Christo in August
1652. When the fleets were in contact, he says, as though he were
speaking of something that was quite unfamiliar to him, 'then every
captain bore up from leeward close to us to get into range, and so all
gave their broadsides first of the one side and then again of the
other, and then bore away with their ships before the wind till they
were ready again; and then as before with the guns of the whole
broadside they fired into my flagship, one after the other, meaning to
shoot my masts overboard.'[4] From this it would seem that Badiley
attacked in succession in the time-honoured way, and that the old
rudimentary form of the line ahead was still the ordinary practice.
The evidence however is far from strong, but really little is
needed. Experience teaches us that the line ahead formation would
never have been adopted as a standing order unless there had been some
previous practice in the service to justify it or unless the idea was
borrowed from abroad. But, as we shall