Not only do they contain the earliest known attempt to get away from the unsatisfactory method of engaging in parallel lines ship to ship, but in seeking a substitute for it they seem to foreshadow the transition from the Elizabethan idea of throwing the enemy into confusion to the eighteenth century idea of concentration on his most vulnerable part.

In so far as the author recommends a concentration on the weathermost ships his idea is sound, as they were the most difficult for the enemy to support; but since the close-hauled line had come in, they were also the van, and a concentration on the van is theoretically unsound, owing to the fact that the centre and rear came up naturally to its relief.

To this objection he appears to attach no weight, partly because no doubt he was still influenced by the old intention of throwing the enemy into confusion.[3] For since the line ahead had taken the place of the old close formations it seemed that to disable the leading ships came to the same thing as disabling the weathermost.

The solution eventually arrived at was of course a concentration on the rear, but to this at the time there were insuperable objections.

The rear was normally the most leewardly end of the line, and an oblique attack on it could be parried by wearing together.