Here, then, we have indisputable evidence that the system which gave elasticity to the old rigid Fighting Instructions began with Admiral Vernon, who as a naval reformer is now only remembered as the inventor of grog.  The high reputation he justly held as a seaman and commander amongst his contemporaries has long been buried under his undeserved failure at Cartagena; but trained in the flagships of Rooke and Shovell, and afterwards as a captain under Sir John Norris in the Baltic, there was no one till the day of his death in 1757, at the age of 73, who held so high a place as a naval authority, and from no one was a pregnant tactical reform more likely to come.  The Lestock pamphlet, moreover, makes it clear that through all the time of his service—­the dead time of tactics as we regard it now—­tacticians so far from slumbering had been striving to release themselves from the bonds in which the old instructions tied them.

This is confirmed by two manuscript authorities which have fortunately survived, and which give us a clear insight into the new system as it was actually set on foot.  The first is a MS. copy of some Additional Instructions in the Admiralty Library.  They are less full and clearly earlier than those used by Boscawen in 1759, and are bound up with a printed copy of the regular Fighting Instructions already referred to, which contain in manuscript the additions made by Mathews during his Mediterranean command.[2] In so far as they differ from Boscawen’s they will be found below as notes to his set.

The second is a highly interesting MS. copy of a signal book dated 1756, in which the above instructions are referred to.  It is in the United Service Institution (Register No. 234).  At the end it contains a memorandum of a new article by which Hawke modified the established method of attack, and for the first time introduced the principle of each ship steering for her opposite in the enemy’s line.  It is printed below, and as will be seen was to be substituted for ’Articles V. and VI. of the Additional Fighting Instructions by Day’ then in force, which correspond to Articles XV. and XVI. of Boscawen’s set.  It does not appear in the Boscawen set, and how soon it was regularly incorporated we do not know.  No reference has been found to it till that by Rodney, in his despatch of April 1780 referred to below.

Of even higher interest for our purpose is another entry in the same place of an article also issued by Hawke for forming ’line of bearing.’  Here again the older form of the Additional Fighting Instructions is referred to, and the new article is to be inserted after Article IV., which was for forming the line ahead or abreast.  The important point however is that the new article is expressly attributed to Lord Anson.  Now it is known that when Anson in April 1747 was cruising off Finisterre for De la Jonquiere he kept his fleet continually exercising ’in forming line and in manoeuvres of battle till then absolutely unknown.’[3]