the famous House of Lords’ tapestries were designed, actually represents the queen’s ships standing out of Plymouth in line ahead, and coming to the attack in a similar but already disordered formation.  Still there can be no doubt that, however far a rudimentary form of line ahead was carried by the Elizabethans, it was a matter of minor tactics and not of a battle order, and was rather instinctive than the perfected result of a serious attempt to work out a tactical system.  The only actual account of a fleet formation which we have is still on the old lines, and it was for review purposes only.  Ubaldino, in his second narrative, which he says was inspired by Drake,[3] relates that when Drake put out of Plymouth to receive Howard ’he sallied from port to meet him with his thirty ships in equal ranks, three ships deep, making honourable display of his masterly and diligent handling, with the pinnaces and small craft thrown forward as though to reconnoitre the ships that were approaching, which is their office.’  Nothing, however, is more certain in the unhappily vague accounts of the 1588 campaign than that no such battle order as this was used in action against the Armada.

It is not till the close of the West Indian Expedition of 1596, when, after Hawkins and Drake were both dead, Colonel-General Sir Thomas Baskerville, the commander of the landing force, was left in charge of the retreating fleet, that we get any trace of a definite battle formation.  In his action off the Isla de Pinos he seems, so far as we can read the obscure description, to have formed his fleet into two divisions abreast, each in line ahead.  The queen’s ships are described at least as engaging in succession according to previous directions till all had had ‘their course.’  Henry Savile, whose intemperate and enthusiastic defence of his commander was printed by Hakluyt, further says:  ’Our general was the foremost and so held his place until, by order of fight, other ships were to have their turns according to his former direction, who wisely and politicly had so ordered his vanguard and rearward; and as the manner of it was altogether strange to the Spaniard, so might they have been without hope of victory, if their general had been a man of judgment in sea-fights.’

Here, then, if we may trust Savile, a definite battle order must have been laid down beforehand on the new lines, and it is possible that in the years which had elapsed since the Armada campaign the seamen had been giving serious attention to a tactical system, which the absence of naval actions prevented reaching any degree of development.  Had the idea been Baskerville’s own it is very unlikely that the veteran sea-captains on his council of war would have assented to its adoption.  At any rate we may assert that the idea of ships attacking in succession so as to support one another without masking each other’s broadside fire (which is the essential germ of the true line ahead) was in the air, and it is clearly on the principle that underlay Baskerville’s tactics that Ralegh’s fighting instructions were based twenty years later.[4]