In saying that the seamen of the middle seventeenth century knew the advantage of forming a line and attacking in that order, I do not mean to assert that they had carried the art of handling a fleet in battle to the perfection it attained in later times, but only that they were not in the habit of endeavouring to fight in a mere swarm. Their ignorance of the refinements of the conduct of a fleet was perhaps in their favour. It is the defect of every formation for war, whether by land or sea, that it is capable of becoming, in the belief of dull and pedantic men, an end in itself. This did happen with the close-hauled line of battle, within about forty years of the first Dutch war. Every order is valuable only in so far as it enables a fighting force to bring its whole strength to bear. When it has done that, it has served its purpose. But it may happen that a generation of unintelligent leaders will get into the habit of endeavouring to avoid whatever disturbs the mere arrangement of their forces, and will aim at preserving that, even when, by so doing, they have to let slip the opportunity of damaging the enemy. In the first Dutch war this pedantry had not yet begun to be visible among the admirals on either side.
That the modern navy was beginning in this war is further to be seen in the fact that we now first meet with a general body of orders established for the maintenance of discipline by the authority of the State. Hitherto each admiral had drawn up his own code, and from among them there had been formed what may, without a fantastic abuse of words, be called a body of common law known as the Customs of the Sea. The brief pamphlet containing the regulations of the Council of State is the germ of the weighty volume, hardly smaller than a family Bible, which contains the Queen's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions. There will be occasion to return to it when we reach the great organising period of Charles II.'s reign. It is enough to note at present that, while maintaining the old authority of the admirals and captains, it gave the seamen a security against the arbitrary will of their superiors by providing that they were not to be punished until after regular trial. One change in the internal economy of the ship was promoted by this war. Hitherto it had been the custom to carry lieutenants in ships of the third rate and upwards, and in them only one. Under the strain of a great and serious war, it was found that this did not afford a sufficient supply of the higher rank of officers, and the number of lieutenants was increased. Admiral Penn, in a letter to Cromwell dated early in the war, argued they should be employed in all vessels.