All the fifth and sixth rates[5] are to lie on that broadside of the admiral which is away from the enemy, looking out well when any sign is made for them.  Then they are to endeavour to come up under the admiral’s stern for to receive orders.

If we shall give the signal of hanging a pennant under the flag at the main topmast-head, then all the ships of this squadron are, with what speed they can, to fall into this posture, every ship in the place and order here assigned, and sail and anchor so that they may with the most readiness fall into the above said posture.[6]

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Son of Colonel Sir Edward Seymour, 3rd baronet, Governor of Dartmouth.

[2] I.e. ensign.

[3] I.e. in the ‘order of battle’ already given.

[4] The earliest known use of the word ‘jack’ for a flag in an official document occurs in an order issued by Sir John Pennington to his pinnace captains in 1633.  He was in command of the Channel guard in search of pirates, particularly ‘The Seahorse lately commanded by Captain Quaile’ and ’Christopher Megges, who had lately committed some outrage upon the Isle of Lundy, and other places.’  The pinnaces were to work inshore of the admiral and to endeavour to entrap the piratical ships, and to this end he said, ’You are also for this present service to keep in your Jack at your boultsprit end and your pendant and your ordnance.’ (Sloane MSS. 2682, f. 51.) The object of the order evidently was that they should conceal their character from the pirates, and at this time therefore the ‘jack’ carried at the end of the bowsprit and the pennant must have been the sign of a navy ship.  Boteler however, who wrote his Sea Dialogues about 1625, does not mention the jack in his remarks about flags (pp. 327-334).  The etymology is uncertain.  The new Oxford Dictionary inclines to the simple explanation that ‘jack’ was used in this case in its common diminutive sense, and that ‘jack-flag’ was merely a small flag.

[5] I.e. his cruisers.

[6] In the Report of the Historical MSS.  Commission it is stated that the position of the ships is shown in a diagram, but I have been unable to obtain access to the document.

II

MONCK, PRINCE RUPERT AND THE DUKE OF YORK

INTRODUCTORY

It has hitherto been universally supposed that the Dutch Wars of the Restoration were fought under the set of orders printed as an appendix to Granville Penn’s Memorials of Penn.  Mr. Penn believed them to belong to the year 1665, but recent research shows conclusively that these often-quoted orders, which have been the source of so much misapprehension, are really much later and represent not the ideas under which those wars were fought, but the experience that was gained from them.