2ndly.  When the admiral of the fleet makes a weft with his flag, the rest of the flag officers are to do the like, and then all the best sailing ships are to make what way they can to engage the enemy, that so the rear of our fleet may the better come up; and so soon as the enemy makes a stand then they are to endeavour to fall into the best order they can.[2]

3rdly.  If any flagship shall be so disabled as not to be fit for service, the flag officer or commander of such ship shall remove himself into any other ship of his division at his discretion, and shall there command and wear the flag as he did in his own.

RUPERT.

For Sir Edward Spragge, Knt., vice-admiral of the blue squadron.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Meaning, of course, Article 1 of the ‘Additional Instructions’ of April 18, 1665, which would be No. 17 when the orders were collected and reissued as a complete set.  No copy of the complete set to which Rupert refers is known to be extant.

[2] It should be noted that this instruction anticipates by a century the favourite English signals of the Nelson period for bringing an unwilling enemy to action, i.e. for general chase, and for ships to take suitable station for neutral support and engage as they get up.

PART VI

THE THIRD DUTCH WAR TO THE REVOLUTION

I. THE DUKE OF YORK, 1672-3

II.  SIR JOHN NARBROUGH, 1678

III.  THE EARL OF DARTMOUTH, 1688

PROGRESS OF TACTICS DURING THE THIRD DUTCH WAR

INTRODUCTORY

For the articles issued by the Duke of York at the outbreak of the Third Dutch War in March 1672 we are again indebted to Lord Dartmouth’s naval manuscripts.  They exist there, copied into the beginning of an ‘Order Book’ which by internal evidence is shown to have belonged to Sir Edward Spragge.  It is similar to the so-called ‘Royal Charles Sea Book,’ and is nearly all blank, but contains two orders addressed by Rupert to Spragge, April 29 and May 22, 1673, and a resolution of the council of war held on board the Royal Charles on May 27, deciding to attack the Dutch fleet in the Schoonveldt and to take their anchorage if they retired into Flushing.

The orders are not dated, but, as they are signed ‘James’ and countersigned ‘M.  Wren,’ their date can be fixed to a time not later than the spring of 1672, for Dr. Matthew Wren, F.R.S., died on June 14 in that year, having served as the lord admiral’s secretary since 1667, when Coventry resigned his commissionership of the navy.  They consist of twenty-six articles, which follow those of the late war so closely that it has not been thought worth while to print them except in the few cases where they vary from the older ones.