and a comparison of the two enables us to assert, with
no hesitation, that the manoeuvre of breaking the line was abandoned
by the tacticians of that era, not from ignorance nor from lack of
enterprise, but from a deliberate tactical conviction gained by
experience in war. In judging the apparent want of enterprise which
our own admirals began to display in action at this time, we should
probably be careful to refrain from joining in the unmitigated
contempt with which modern historians have so freely covered them. In
the typical battle of Malaga, for instance, Rooke did nothing but
carry out the principles which were the last word of Tourville's
brilliant career. Nor must it be forgotten that, although Rodney
executed the manoeuvre in 1782, and Hood provided a signal for its
revival which Howe at first adopted, it was never in much favour in
the British service, seeing that it was only adapted for an attack
from to leeward. The manoeuvre of breaking the line which Howe
eventually introduced was something wholly different both in form and
intention from what Rodney executed and from what was understood by
'dividing the fleet' in the seventeenth century.[6] How far the
system of doubling was approved by English admirals is doubtful. We
have seen that an 'Observation' in the _Admiralty Manuscript_
distrusts it,[7] but I have been able to find no other expression of
opinion on the point earlier than 1780, and that entirely condemns
it. It occurs in a set of fleet instructions drawn up for submission
to the admiralty by Admiral Sir Charles H. Knowles, Bart. As Knowles
was a pupil and _protege_ of Rodney's, we may assume he was
in possession of the great tactician's ideas on the point; and in
these _Fighting and Sailing Instructions_ the following, article
occurs: 'To double the enemy's line--that is, to send a few unengaged
ships on one side to engage, while the rest are fighting on the
other--is rendering those ships useless. Every ship which is between
two, has not only her two broadsides opposed to theirs, but has
likewise their shot which cross in her favour.'[8] No signal was
provided for 'doubling' in Lord Howe's or the later signal books,
though Nelson certainly executed the manoeuvre at the Nile. It
survived however in the French service, and the English books provided
a signal for preventing its execution by a numerically superior
enemy. Sir Alexander Cochrane also revived it after Trafalgar.

Knowles's objection