That so grave an error should have been permitted to pass into the Signal Book is bad enough, but that such a signal even if it had been correctly worded should stand for Nelson’s last word to the service is almost beyond belief.  The final outcome of Nelson’s genius for tactics lay of course in his memorandum, and not in the form of attack he actually adopted.  Yet this remarkable signal ignores the whole principle of the memorandum.  The fundamental ideas of concentration and containing by independent squadrons are wholly missed; and not only this.  It distorts Nelson’s lee attack into a weather attack, and holds up for imitation every vice of the reckless movement in spite of which Nelson had triumphed.  Not a word is said of its dangers, not a word of the exceptional circumstances that alone could justify it, not a word of how easily the tables could be turned upon a man who a second time dared to fling to the winds every principle of his art.  It is the last word of British sailing tactics, and surely nothing in their whole history, not even in the worst days of the old Fighting Instructions, so staggers us with its lack of tactical sense.[8]

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] I.e. the Instructions of 1799, supra, p. 278.  For Signal 27 see p. 255.

[2] ‘To attack on bearing indicated.’

[3] In Ekin’s text the punctuation of this sentence is obviously wrong and destroys the sense.  It should accord, as I have ventured to amend it, with that of the previous paragraph.

[4] Signal 109, ‘To close nearer the ship or ships indicated.’

[5] Sir Charles Elkin adds, ’In the same work he has also a signal (No. 785) under the head “Enemy” to “Lay on board,” with the following observation:—­

’"N.B.—­This signal is not meant that your people should board the enemy unless you should find advantage by so doing; but it is that you should run your ship on board the enemy, so as to disable her from getting away."’

[6] Mathieu-Dumas, Precis des Evenements Militaires:  Pieces Justificatives, vol. xiv. p. 408.

[7] Fernandez Duro, Armada Espanola, viii. 353.

[8] The anonymous veteran of the old French navy, cited by Mathieu-Dumas, explains exactly how Villeneuve might have turned the tables on Nelson by forming two lines himself.  ‘There is,’ he concludes, ’no known precedent of a defensive formation in two lines; but I will venture to assert that if Admiral Villeneuve had doubled his line at the moment he saw Nelson meant to attack him in two lines, that admiral would never have had the imprudence of making such an attack.’—­Evenements Militaires, xiv. 411.

THE INSTRUCTIONS OF 1816.

[+Signal Book, United Service Institution+.]

Instructions relating to the Line of Battle and the Conduct of the Fleet preparatory to their engaging and when engaged with an enemy.