of individual mobility; and the old semi-military formations based on
small-arm fighting were abandoned.

At the same time, although the seamen-admirals did not trouble or were
not sufficiently advanced to devise a battle order to suit their new
weapon, there are many indications that, consciously or unconsciously,
they developed a tendency inherent in the broadside idea to fall in
action into a rough line ahead; that is to say, the practice was
usually to break up into groups as occasion dictated, and for each
group to deliver its broadsides in succession on an exposed point of
the enemy's formation. That the armed merchantmen conformed regularly
to this idea is very improbable. The faint pictures we have of their
well-meant efforts present them to us attacking in a loose throng and
masking each other's fire. But that the queen's ships did not attempt
to observe any order is not so clear. When the combined fleet of
Howard and Drake was first sighted by the Armada, it is said by two
Spanish eye-witnesses to have been _in ala_, and 'in very fine
order.' And the second of Adams's charts, upon which the famous House
of Lords' tapestries were designed, actually represents the queen's
ships standing out of Plymouth in line ahead, and coming to the attack
in a similar but already disordered formation. Still there can be no
doubt that, however far a rudimentary form of line ahead was carried
by the Elizabethans, it was a matter of minor tactics and not of a
battle order, and was rather instinctive than the perfected result of
a serious attempt to work out a tactical system. The only actual
account of a fleet formation which we have is still on the old lines,
and it was for review purposes only. Ubaldino, in his second
narrative, which he says was inspired by Drake,[3] relates that when
Drake put out of Plymouth to receive Howard 'he sallied from port to
meet him with his thirty ships in equal ranks, three ships deep,
making honourable display of his masterly and diligent handling, with
the pinnaces and small craft thrown forward as though to reconnoitre
the ships that were approaching, which is their office.' Nothing,
however, is more certain in the unhappily vague accounts of the 1588
campaign than that no such battle order as this was used in action
against the Armada.

It is not till the close of the West Indian Expedition of 1596, when,
after Hawkins and Drake were both dead, Colonel-General Sir Thomas
Baskerville, the