Penn, the vice-admiral of the fleet, was a professional naval officer of considerable experience, and it was he who by a bold and skilful movement had saved the action off Portland from being a severe defeat for Blake and Deane.

Monck's therefore was the only new mind that was brought to bear on the subject.

Yet it is impossible to credit him with introducing a revolution in naval tactics.

All that can be said is that possibly his genius for war and his scientific and well-drilled spirit revealed to him in the traditional minor tactics of the seamen the germ of a true tactical system, and caused him to urge its reduction into a definite set of fighting instructions which would be binding on all, and would co-ordinate the fleet into the same kind of homogeneous and handy fighting machine that he and the rest of the Low Country officers had made of the New Model Army.

In any case he could not have carried the thing through unless it had commended itself to the experience of such men as Penn and the majority of the naval officers of the council of war.