These which are the first instructions known to have been issued to an English fleet since Henry VIII’s time were signed by Sir Walter Ralegh on May 3, 1617, at Plymouth, on the eve of his sailing for his ill-fated expedition to Guiana.  Most of the articles are in the nature of ‘Articles of War’ and ‘Sailing Instructions’ rather than ’Fighting Instructions,’ but the whole are printed below for their general interest.  A contemporary writer, quoted by Edwards in his Life of Ralegh, says of them:  ’There is no precedent of so godly, severe, and martial government, fit to be written and engraven in every man’s soul that covets to do honour to his king and country in this or like attempts.’  But this cannot be taken quite literally.  So far at least as they relate to discipline, some of Ralegh’s articles may be traced back in the Black Book of the Admiralty to the fourteenth century, while the illogical arrangement of the whole points, as in the case of the Additional Fighting Instructions of the eighteenth century, to a gradual growth from precedent to precedent by the accretion of expeditional orders added from time to time by individual admirals.  The process of formation may be well studied in Lord Wimbledon’s first orders, where Ralegh’s special expeditional additions will be found absorbed and adapted to the conditions of a larger fleet.  Moreover, there is evidence that, with the exception of those articles which were designed in view of the special destination of Ralegh’s voyage, the whole of them were based on an early Elizabethan precedent.  For the history of English tactics the point is of considerable importance, especially in view of his twenty-ninth article, which lays down the method of attack when the weather-gage has been secured.  This has hitherto been believed to be new and presumably Ralegh’s own, in spite of the difficulty of believing that a man entirely without experience of fleet actions at sea could have hit upon so original and effective a tactical design.  The evidence, however, that Ralegh borrowed it from an earlier set of orders is fairly clear.

Amongst the Stowe MSS. in the British Museum there is a small quarto treatise (No. 426) entitled ’Observations and overtures for a sea fight upon our own coasts, and what kind of order and discipline is fitted to be used in martialling and directing our navies against the preparations of such Spanish Armadas or others as shall at any time come to assail us.’  From internal evidence and directly from another copy of it in the Lansdown MSS. (No. 213), we know it to be the work of ‘William Gorges, gentleman.’  He is to be identified as a son of Sir William Gorges, for he tells us he was afloat with his father in the Dreadnought as early as 1578, when Sir William was admiral on the Irish station with a squadron ordered to intercept the filibustering expedition which Sir Thomas Stucley was about to attempt under the auspices of Pope Gregory XIII.  Sir William was a cousin