In his report of the business, Hawke used a quaint but very expressive phrase, “As the enemy’s ships were large, they took a great deal of drubbing, and (consequently) lost all their masts, except two, who had their foremasts left.  This has obliged me to lay-to for these two days past, in order to put them into condition to be brought into port, as well as our own, which have suffered greatly.”  Ships large in tonnage were necessarily also ships large in scantling, heavy ribbed, thick-planked, in order to bear their artillery; hence also with sides not easy to be pierced by the weak ordnance of that time.  They were in a degree armored ships, though from a cause differing from that of to-day; hence much “drubbing” was needed, and the prolongation of the drubbing entailed increase of incidental injury to spars and rigging, both their own and those of the enemy.  Nor was the armor idea, directly, at all unrecognized even then; for we are told of the Real Felipe in Mathews’s action, that, being so weakly built that she could carry only twenty-four-pounders on her lower deck, she had been “fortified in the most extraordinary surprising manner; her sides being lined four or five foot thick everywhere with junk or old cables to hinder the shot from piercing.”

It has been said that the conduct of one captain fell under Hawke’s displeasure.  At a Council of War called by him after the battle, to establish the fitness of the fleet to pursue the convoy, the other captains objected to sitting with Captain Fox of the Kent, until he had cleared himself from the imputation of misbehavior in incidents they had noticed.  Hawke was himself dissatisfied with Fox’s failure to obey a signal, and concurred in the objection.  On the subsequent trial, the Court expressly cleared the accused of cowardice, but found him guilty of certain errors of judgment, and specifically of leaving the Tonnant while the signal for close action was flying.  As the Tonnant escaped, the implication of accountability for that result naturally follows.  For so serious a consequence the sentence only was that he be dismissed his ship, and, although never again employed, he was retired two years after as a rear-admiral.  It was becoming increasingly evident that error of judgment is an elastic phrase which can be made to cover all degrees of faulty action, from the mistakes to which every man is liable and the most faithful cannot always escape, to conduct wholly incompatible with professional efficiency or even manly honor.

The case of Fox was one of many occurring at about this period, which, however differing in detail between themselves, showed that throughout the navy, both in active service before the enemy, and in the more deliberate criteria of opinion which influence Courts-Martial, there was a pronounced tendency to lowness of standard in measuring officer-like conduct and official responsibility for personal action; a misplaced leniency, which regarded