So the seed must have grown, till we find the fruit in Lord Dundonald's oft-quoted phrase, 'Never mind manoeuvres: always go at them.' So it was that Nelson's teaching had crystallised in his mind and in the mind perhaps of half the service.

The phrase is obviously a degradation of the opening enunciations in Nelson's memoranda, a degradation due to time, to superficial study, and the contemptuous confidence of years of undisputed mastery at sea.
The conditions which brought about this attitude to tactics are clearly seen in the way others saw us.

Shortly after Trafalgar a veteran French officer of the war of American Independence wrote some _Reflections_ on the battle, which contain much to the point.

'It is a noteworthy thing,' he says in dealing with the defects of the single-line formation, 'that the English, who formerly used to employ all the resources of tactics against our fleets, now hardly use them at all, since our scientific tacticians have disappeared.

It may almost be said that they no longer have any regular order of sailing or battle: they attack our ships of the line just as they used to attack a convoy.'[6] But here the old tactician was not holding up English methods as an example.