The pamphlet is entitled 'Observations on Naval Tactics and on the Claims of Clerk of Eldin,' and in the course of it he says that about 1777 he devised this new system of signals, and gave it to Howe on his arrival in the summer of that year at Newport, in Rhode Island, 'and his lordship,' he says, 'afterwards introduced them into the Channel Fleet.' Further, he says, he soon after invented the tabular system of flags suggested by the chess-board, and published them in the summer of 1778.

To this work he prefixed as a preface the observations of his father, Sir Charles Knowles, condemning the existing form of sailing order, and recommending Pere Hoste's old form in three columns, and this order, he says, Howe adopted for the relief of Gibraltar in September 1782.

He also infers that the alleged adoption of his signals in the Channel Fleet was when Lord Howe commanded it before he became first lord of the admiralty for the second time--that is, before he succeeded Keppel in December 1783.

For during the peace Knowles tells us he made a second communication to Howe on tactics, of which more must be said later on.

The inference therefore is that when Knowles says that Howe adopted his code in the Channel Fleet it must have been the first time he took command of it--that is, on April 2, 1782.[4] Now if, as Knowles relates--and there is no reason to doubt this part of his story--Howe did issue a new code of signals some time before sailing for Gibraltar in 1782, and if at the time, as Knowles also says, he had been studying Hoste, internal evidence shows almost conclusively that these folios must be the Signal Book in question.