o the Channel Fleet.' Further, he
says, he soon after invented the tabular system of flags suggested by
the chess-board, and published them in the summer of 1778. To this
work he prefixed as a preface the observations of his father, Sir
Charles Knowles, condemning the existing form of sailing order, and
recommending Pere Hoste's old form in three columns, and this
order, he says, Howe adopted for the relief of Gibraltar in September
1782. He also infers that the alleged adoption of his signals in the
Channel Fleet was when Lord Howe commanded it before he became first
lord of the admiralty for the second time--that is, before he
succeeded Keppel in December 1783. For during the peace Knowles tells
us he made a second communication to Howe on tactics, of which more
must be said later on. The inference therefore is that when Knowles
says that Howe adopted his code in the Channel Fleet it must have been
the first time he took command of it--that is, on April 2, 1782.[4]

Now if, as Knowles relates--and there is no reason to doubt this part
of his story--Howe did issue a new code of signals some time before
sailing for Gibraltar in 1782, and if at the time, as Knowles also
says, he had been studying Hoste, internal evidence shows almost
conclusively that these folios must be the Signal Book in
question. From end to end the influence of Hoste's Treatise and of
Rodney's tactics in 1782 is unmistakable.[5]

From Hoste it takes not only the sailing formation in three columns,
but re-introduces into the British service the long-discarded
manoeuvre of 'doubling.' For this there are three signals, Nos.
222-4, for doubling the van, doubling the rear, and for the rear to
double the rear. From Hoste also it borrows the method of giving
battle to a superior force, which the French writer apparently
borrowed from Torrington. The signification of the signal is as
follows: 'No. 232. When inferior in number to the enemy, and to
prevent being doubled upon in the van or rear, for the van squadron to
engage the headmost ships of the enemy's line, the rear their
sternmost, and the centre that of the enemy, whose surplus ships will
then be left out of action in the vacant spaces between our
squadrons.'

The author's obligations to the recent campaigns of Rodney and Hood
are equally clear. Signal 236 is, 'For ships to steer for independent
of each other and engage respectively the ships opposed to them in the
enemy's line,' and this was a n