[1] See pp. 211-2.  These additional signals are all added in paler ink, with those made by Admiral Pigot.  In the original they occur on various pages without numbers.  In the text above they have merely been numbered consecutively for convenience of reference.  Hood was made a viscount September 12, 1782, and began to issue these orders on March 11, 1783, when he had a squadron placed under his command.

[2] Ascribed also to Pigot.

[3] Also ascribed to Pigot.

[4] The MS. has also an additional signal ascribed to Pigot for a particular ship to cut through the enemy’s line of battle, and for the other ships to follow her in close order to support each other.

PART IX

THE LAST PHASE

I. LORD HOWE’S FIRST SIGNAL BOOK

II.  SIGNAL BOOKS OF THE GREAT WAR

III.  NELSON’S TACTICAL MEMORANDA

IV.  ADMIRAL GAMBIER, 1807

V. LORD COLLINGWOOD, 1808-1810

VI.  SIR ALEXANDER COCHRANE’S INSTRUCTIONS

VII.  THE SIGNAL BOOK OF 1816

THE NEW SIGNAL BOOK INSTRUCTIONS

INTRODUCTORY

The time-worn Fighting Instructions of Russell and Rooke with their accretion of Additional Instructions did not survive the American War.  Some time in that fruitful decade of naval reform which elapsed between the peace of 1783 and the outbreak of the Great War they were superseded.  It was the indefatigable hand of Lord Howe that dealt them the long-needed blow, and when the change came it was sweeping.  It was no mere substitution of a new set of Instructions, but a complete revolution of method.  The basis of the new tactical code was no longer the Fighting Instructions, but the Signal Book.  Signals were no longer included in the Instructions, and the Instructions sank to the secondary place of being ‘explanatory’ to the Signal Book.[1]

The earliest form in which these new ‘Explanatory Instructions’ are known is a printed volume in the Admiralty Library containing a complete set of Fleet Instructions, and entitled ’Instructions for the conduct of ships of war explanatory of and relative to the Signals contained in the Signal Book herewith delivered.’  The Signal Book is with it.[2] Neither volume bears any date, but both are in the old folio form which had been traditional since the seventeenth century.  They are therefore presumably earlier than 1790 when the well-known quarto form first came into use, and as we shall see from internal evidence they cannot have been earlier than 1782.  Nor is there any direct evidence that they are the work of Lord Howe, but the ‘significations’ of the signals bear unmistakable marks of his involved and cumbrous style, and the code itself closely resembles that he used during the Great War.  With these indications to guide us there is little difficulty in fixing with practical certainty both date and authorship from external sources.[3]