this all.  Spragge’s ‘Sea Book’ contains also a set of ten ’additional instructions’ all of which are new.  They are undated, but from another copy in Capt.  Robert Moulton’s ‘Sea Book’ we can fix them to April 18th, 1665.[3] Their whole tenour suggests that they were the outcome of prolonged discussions in the council of war; and in the variously dated copies which exist of sections of the orders we have evidence that between the last week in March, when the duke hoisted his flag, and April 21st, when he put to sea, much time must have been spent upon the consideration of the tactical problem.[4]

The result was a marked advance.  In these ten ’additional instructions,’ for instance, we have for the first time a clear distinction drawn between attacks from windward and attacks from leeward.  We have also the first appearance of the close-hauled line ahead, and it is enjoined as a defensive formation when the enemy attacks from windward.  A method of attack from windward is also provided for the case where the enemy stays to receive it.  Amongst less important developments we have an article making the half-cable’s length, originally enjoined under the Commonwealth, the regular interval between ships, and others to prevent the line being broken for the sake of chasing or taking possession of beaten ships.  Finally there are signals for tacking in succession either from the van or the rear, which must have given the fleet a quite unprecedented increase of tactical mobility.  Nor are we without evidence that increased mobility was actually exhibited when the new instructions were put to a practical test.

It was under the old Commonwealth orders as supplemented and modified by these noteworthy articles of April 1665, that was fought the memorable action of June 3rd, variously known as the battle of Lowestoft or the Second Battle of the Texel.  It is this action that Hoste cites as the first in which two fleets engaged in close hauled line ahead, and kept their formation throughout the day.  After two days’ manoeuvring the English gained the wind, and kept it in spite of all their enemy could do, and the various accounts of the action certainly give the impression that the evolutions of the English were smarter and more complex than those of the Dutch.  It is true that about the middle of the action one of the new signals, that for the rear to tack first, threw the fleet into some confusion, and that later the van and centre changed places; still, till almost the end, the duke, or rather Penn, his flag captain, kept at least some control of the fleet.  Granville Penn indeed claims that the duke finally routed the Dutch by breaking their line, and that he did it intentionally.  But this movement is only mentioned in a hasty letter to the press written immediately after the battle.  If the enemy’s line was actually cut, it must have been an accident or a mere instance of the time-honoured practice of trying to concentrate on or ‘overcharge’