At any rate we may assert that the idea of ships attacking in succession so as to support one another without masking each other's broadside fire (which is the essential germ of the true line ahead) was in the air, and it is clearly on the principle that underlay Baskerville's tactics that Ralegh's fighting instructions were based twenty years later.[4] These which are the first instructions known to have been issued to an English fleet since Henry VIII's time were signed by Sir Walter Ralegh on May 3, 1617, at Plymouth, on the eve of his sailing for his ill-fated expedition to Guiana.

Most of the articles are in the nature of 'Articles of War' and 'Sailing Instructions' rather than 'Fighting Instructions,' but the whole are printed below for their general interest.

A contemporary writer, quoted by Edwards in his _Life of Ralegh_, says of them: 'There is no precedent of so godly, severe, and martial government, fit to be written and engraven in every man's soul that covets to do honour to his king and country in this or like attempts.' But this cannot be taken quite literally.

So far at least as they relate to discipline, some of Ralegh's articles may be traced back in the _Black Book of the Admiralty_ to the fourteenth century, while the illogical arrangement of the whole points, as in the case of the Additional Fighting Instructions of the eighteenth century, to a gradual growth from precedent to precedent by the accretion of expeditional orders added from time to time by individual admirals.

The process of formation may be well studied in Lord Wimbledon's first orders, where Ralegh's special expeditional additions will be found absorbed and adapted to the conditions of a larger fleet.