The course followed by English admirals was less complicated and risky than this, but also less likely to prove effectual when fully carried out. When they were to leeward and the enemy would not attack them, they manœuvred to gain the weather-gage. When they had the wind of the enemy, they came down on him with their fleet in line—the leading ship of the English steering for the leading ship of the enemy, and the others behind for their respective opponents. Thus the two fleets engaged van to van, centre to centre, rear to rear. To take “every man his bird” was the familiar naval image for a well-conducted action with an enemy who did not shirk. Of course this method only applied to the case where the two fleets were going in the same direction. If one turned, the two would pass one another, and then they must curl round again before the action could be resumed. The advantage of engaging the enemy from the leading ship to the last was this, that it prevented any portion of his ships from tacking, and so putting some of the English between two fires. The drawback was that if the two fleets were even not very unequal, no overwhelming superiority was developed on either side at a chosen point. The damage done was about equivalent, and the two separated without decisive result. This would not have been the case if the admirals after the Revolution had been as ready as the chiefs of the Dutch wars to depart from their line when once it had served its purpose of bringing them in contact with the enemy. If the captains had been allowed to steer through the hostile line wherever they could find or make an opening, a general mêlée must have ensued, and the battle would have been fought out. But here came in the influence of Article No. XVI., which prescribed the retention of the “same order” all through the battle. If an English captain stood out of the line to press through the enemy, it must necessarily be broken. But this was rigidly forbidden. Therefore the system of fighting adopted by our navy at the close of the seventeenth century made it inevitable that our admirals would attack from windward, would spread themselves all along the enemy’s line, that the damage done would be pretty equally divided between the two fleets, and that the enemy, having the road to leeward open, could retire whenever he pleased.