Yet the indications all were that to wait for this most formal and pedantic disposition, which ignored every principle of warfare, would be to throw away the chance of battle.  The French, fresh from port and clean-bottomed, out-sailed the bulk of the British, as did the Spaniards, though to a less degree; and it was part of Lestock’s defence, admitted by the Court, that, doing his utmost, his division, as a whole, certainly could not get abreast the allied rear.  Lestock, indeed, directly submitted to the Court that the commander-in-chief was at fault in not waiting till his line was thus extended and formed, and then all bearing down together, in line abreast; although by his own contention no such issue could have been reached that day, unless the allies were obliging enough to wait.  “I aver, and I shall die in this opinion, that no man that is an officer, who knows his duty, will make the signal for line abreast to steer down upon an enemy, until the fleet has been stretched and extended in a line of battle, according to the 19th Article of the Fighting Instructions.  Can it be service,” he adds, “to bear down so much unformed and in confusion, that the van cannot possibly join battle with, or engage the van of the enemy, the centre with the centre, and the rear with the rear?”

Mathews not being then on trial, the Court in its finding did not reply directly to this question; but indirectly it left no doubt as to its opinion.  “The Admiral, by bearing down as he did upon the rear division of the combined fleet, excluded the Vice-Admiral from any part of the engagement, if he could have come up; for if both lines had been closed, when the Admiral engaged the Real, there would have been no more than one ship of the enemy’s fleet for the Vice-Admiral and his whole division to have engaged.”  Again, “It does not appear that the Vice-Admiral was in any part the cause of the miscarriage of his Majesty’s fleet in the Mediterranean; the bringing on of the general engagement according to the 19th Article of the Fighting Instructions ... not depending upon him.”  Sixteen officers of the rank of captain and above signed these opinions, and there is no denying the words of the 19th Article; yet one wonders to see no recognition of the necessity of using your opportunity as you find it, of the moral effect of an approaching reserve, which Lestock’s division would have constituted, of the part it may take in improving or repairing the results of an action—­taking the place of injured friends, preventing injured foes escaping, turning doubtful battle into victory.  But no; these commonplaces of to-day and of all time were swamped by the Fighting Instructions.  It will be seen in the sequel what a disastrous moral influence Lestock’s aloofness exercised upon a few timid captains, and not improbably upon the entire subsequent course and worst errors of his unfortunate superior.