One of the witnesses in the ensuing Courts-Martial testified that the commander-in-chief, under these perplexing circumstances, went into the stern gallery of the flag-ship Namur, and called to Captain Cornwall of the Marlborough, next astern, asking what he thought.  Cornwall replied he “believed they would lose the glory of the day, if they did not attack the Spaniards,”—­i.e., the allied rear-centre and rear,—­“the Vice-Admiral—­Lestock—­being so far astern.”  To which the admiral said, “If you’ll bear down and attack the Real,”—­the Real Felipe, Spanish flag-ship,—­“I’ll be your second.”  This was about one o’clock, and the signal to engage had been made two hours earlier, probably with the double object of indicating the ultimate intention of the movements in hand, and the immediate urgency of forming the line.  The admiral’s words betray the indecision of an irresolute nature and of professional rustiness, but not of timidity, and Cornwall’s words turned the scale.  The course of the flag-ship Namur had hitherto been but a little off the wind, “lasking” down, to use the contemporary but long obsolete expression, in such manner as to show the admiral’s desire to engage himself with the enemy’s centre, according to the Fighting Instructions; but now, in hopelessness of that result, she kept broad off, directly for the nearest enemy, accompanied closely by the Norfolk, her next ahead, and by the Marlborough.  Rear-Admiral Rowley, commanding the van, imitated the admiral’s example, bringing the French ship abreast him to close action.  He also was thoroughly supported by the two captains next astern of him, the second of whom was Edward Hawke,—­afterwards the brilliant admiral,—­in the Berwick.  Two British groups, each of three ships, were thus hotly engaged; but with an interval between them of over half a mile, corresponding to the places open for six or seven other vessels.  The conduct of the ships named, under the immediate influence of the example set by the two admirals, suggests how much the average man is sustained by professional tone; for a visible good example is simply a good standard, a high ideal, realized in action.

Unfortunately, however, just as Hawke’s later doings showed the man able to rise above the level of prescribed routine duty, there was found in the second astern of the Namur a captain capable of exceptional backwardness, of reasoning himself into dereliction of clear duty, and thus effecting a demonstration that the example of timidity is full as contagious and more masterful than that of audacity.  The flag-ships and their supporters ranged themselves along the hostile line to windward, within point-blank range; according to the 20th Article of the Fighting Instructions, which read, “Every Commander is to take care that his guns are not fired till he is sure he can reach the enemy upon a point-blank; and by no means to suffer his guns to be fired over any