Compared with preceding orders, these new ones appear nothing less than revolutionary. But it is by no means certain that they were so. Here again it must be remarked that it is beyond all experience for such sweeping reforms to be so rigorously adopted, and particularly in the middle of a war, without their having been in the air for some time previously, and without their supporters having some evidence to cite of their having been tried and tried successfully, at least on a small scale. The natural presumption therefore is that the new orders only crystallised into a definite system, and perhaps somewhat extended, a practice which had long been familiar though not universal in the service. A consideration of the men who were responsible for the change points to the same conclusion. Blake, the only one of the three generals who had had experience of naval actions, was ashore disabled by a severe wound, but still able to take part, at least formally, in the business of the fleet. Deane, another soldier like Blake, though he had commanded fleets, had never before seen an action, but had done much to improve the organisation of the service, and at this time, as his letters show, was more active and ardent in the work than ever. Monck before the late cruise had never been to sea at all, since as a boy he sailed in the disastrous Cadiz expedition of 1625; but he was the typical and leading scientific soldier of his time, with an unmatched power of organisation and an infallible eye for both tactics and strategy, at least so far as it had then been tried. 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. And they would hardly have been induced to agree had they not felt that the new instructions were calculated to bring out the best of the methods which they had empirically practised.