what were called
'Additional Fighting Instructions.' They did not supersede the old
standing form, but were intended to be read with and be subsidiary to
it. It is to these 'Additional Instructions,' therefore, that we have
to look for the progress of tactics during the eighteenth century. By
one of those strange chances, however, which are the despair of
historians in almost every branch and period of their subject, these
Additional Instructions have almost entirely disappeared. Although it
is known in the usual way--that is, from chance references in
despatches and at courts-martial--that many such sets of Additional
Instructions were issued, only one complete set actually in force is
known to exist. They are those signed by Admiral Boscawen on April
27, 1759, in Gibraltar Bay, and are printed below.

After his capture of Louisbourg in the previous year, Boscawen had
been chosen for the command of the Mediterranean fleet, charged with
the important duty of preventing the Toulon squadron getting round to
Brest, and so effecting the concentration which the French had planned
as the essential feature of their desperate plan of invasion. He
sailed with the reinforcement he was taking out on April 14, and must
therefore have issued these orders so soon as he reached his
station. There is every reason to believe, however, that he was not
their author; that they were, in fact, a common form which had been
settled by Lord Anson at the admiralty. In the shape in which they
have come down to us they are a set of eighteen printed articles, to
which have been added in manuscript two comparatively unimportant
articles relating to captured chases and the call for lieutenants.
These may have been either mere 'expeditional' orders, as they were
called, issued by Boscawen in virtue of his general authority as
commander-in-chief on the station, or possibly recent official
additions. More probably they were Boscawen's own, for, strictly
speaking, they should not appear as 'Additional Fighting Instructions'
at all. From the series of signal books and other sources we know
there already existed a special set of 'Chasing Instructions,' and yet
another set in which officers' calls and the like were dealt with, and
both of Boscawen's articles were subsequently incorporated into these
sets. The printed articles to which Boscawen attached them were
certainly not new. Either wholly or in part they had been used by Byng
in 1756, for at his cour