ces."
How can this be, seeing the French had the more ships? It was because,
as the narrative tells us, "the French had not yet repaired the
disorder of the first movement." However, all at last got into action
(B, B, B), and Duquesne gradually restored order. The Dutch, engaged
all along the line, resisted everywhere, and there was not one of
their ships which was not closely engaged; more cannot be said for the
admiral and captains of the inferior fleet. The remaining part of the
fight is not very clearly related. Ruyter is said to have given way
continually with his two leading divisions; but whether this was a
confession of weakness or a tactical move does not appear. The rear
was separated (C'), in permitting which either Ruyter or the immediate
commander was at fault; but the attempts made by the French to
surround and isolate it failed, probably because of damaged spars, for
one French ship did pass entirely around the separated division. The
action ended at 4.30 P.M., except in the rear, and the Spanish galleys
shortly after came up and towed the disabled Dutch ships away. Their
escape shows how injured the French must have been. The positions, C,
C', are intended to show the Dutch rear far separated, and the
disorder in which a fleet action under sail necessarily ended from
loss of spars.

Those who are familiar with Clerk's work on naval tactics, published
about 1780, will recognize in this account of the battle of Stromboli
all the features to which he called the attention of English seamen in
his thesis on the methods of action employed by them and their
adversaries in and before his time. Clerk's thesis started from the
postulate that English seamen and officers were superior in skill or
spirit, or both, to the French, and their ships on the whole as fast;
that they were conscious of this superiority and therefore eager to
attack, while the French, equally conscious of inferiority, or for
other reasons, were averse to decisive engagements. With these
dispositions the latter, feeling they could rely on a blindly furious
attack by the English, had evolved a crafty plan by which, while
seeming to fight, they really avoided doing so, and at the same time
did the enemy much harm. This plan was to take the lee-gage, the
characteristic of which, as has before been pointed out, is that it is
a defensive position, and to await attack. The English error,
according to Clerk, upon which the French had learned by exper