centre. And on this service, it
is probable, should the enemy's ships bear up, that some of the rear
ships will be employed--the signal No. 21 will be made accompanied
with the number or pennants of the headmost ship--upon which she, with
the ships in her rear, will proceed to the attack of the enemy.

When an attack is likely to be made by an enemy's squadron, by forcing
the fleet from to-leeward, Signal 109 will be made with a blue pennant
where best seen;[4] upon which each ship will luff up upon the
weather quarter of her second ahead, so as to leave no opening for the
leading ship of the enemy to pass through: this movement will expose
them to the collected fire of all that part of the fleet they intended
to force.[5]

It has been often remarked that Nelson founded no school of tactics,
and the instructions which were issued with the new Signal Book
immediately after the war entirely endorse the remark. They can be
called nothing else but reactionary. Nelson's drastic attempt to break
up the old rigid formation into active divisions independently
commanded seems to have come to nothing, and the new instructions are
based with almost all the old pedantry on the single line of
battle. Of anything like mutually supporting movements there is only a
single trace. It is in Article XIV., and that is only a resurrection
of the time-honoured _corps de reserve_, formed of superfluous
ships after your line has been equalised with that of a numerically
inferior enemy. The whole document, in fact, is a consecration of the
fetters which had been forged in the worst days of the seventeenth
century, and which Nelson had so resolutely set himself to break.

The new Signal Book in which the instructions appear was founded on
the code elaborated by Sir Home Riggs Popham, but there is nothing to
show whether or not he was the author of the instructions. He was an
officer of high scientific attainments, but although he had won
considerable distinction during the war, his service had been entirely
of an amphibious character in connection with military operations
ashore, and he had never seen a fleet action at sea. He reached flag
rank in 1814, and was one of the men who received a K.C.B. on the
reconstitution of the order in 1815. Of the naval lords serving with
Lord Melville at the time none can show a career or a reputation which
would lead us to expect from them anything but the colourless
instructions they produced. The controll