eing thus disengaged, the latter was desirous of tacking
to windward of the head of the English line, thus putting it between
two fires, but was checked by the intelligent action of the three
leading English captains, who, disregarding the signal to bear down,
kept their commanding position and stopped the enemy's attempts to
double. For this they were cashiered by the court-martial, but
afterward restored. This circumspect but justifiable disregard of
signals was imitated without any justification by all the English
captains of the centre, save the admiral's seconds already mentioned,
as well as by some of those in the van, who kept up a cannonade at
long range while their commander-in-chief was closely and even
furiously engaged. The one marked exception was Captain Hawke,
afterward the distinguished admiral, who imitated the example of his
chief, and after driving his first antagonist out of action, quitted
his place in the van (b), brought to close quarters (b') a fine
Spanish ship that had kept at bay five other English ships, and took
her,--the only prize made that day. The commander of the English van,
with his seconds, also behaved with spirit and came to close action.
It is unnecessary to describe the battle further; as a military affair
it deserves no attention, and its most important result was to bring
out the merit of Hawke, whom the king and the government always
remembered for his share in it. The general inefficiency and
wide-spread misbehavior of the English captains, after five years of
declared war, will partly explain the failure of England to obtain
from her undoubted naval superiority the results she might have
expected in this war--the first act in a forty years' drama--and they
give military officers a lesson on the necessity of having their
minds prepared and stocked, by study of the conditions of war in their
own day, if they would not be found unready and perhaps disgraced in
the hour of battle.[89] It is not to be supposed that so many English
seamen misbehaved through so vulgar and rare a defect as mere
cowardice; it was unpreparedness of mind and lack of military
efficiency in the captains, combined with bad leadership on the part
of the admiral, with a possible taint of ill will toward him as a rude
and domineering superior, that caused this fiasco. Attention may here
fitly be drawn to the effect of a certain cordiality and good-will on
the part of superiors toward their subordinates. It is