Caracciolo!  The explanation of Torrington’s conduct is this:—­ He had a fleet so much weaker than Tourville’s that he could not fight a general action with the latter without a practical certainty of getting a crushing defeat.  Such a result would have laid the kingdom open:  a defeat of the allied fleet, says Mahan, ’if sufficiently severe, might involve the fall of William’s throne in England.’  Given certain movements of the French fleet, Torrington might have manoeuvred to slip past it to the westward and join his force with that under Killigrew, which would make him strong enough to hazard a battle.  This proved impracticable.  There was then one course left.  To retire before the French, but not to keep far from them.  He knew that, though not strong enough to engage their whole otherwise unemployed fleet with any hope of success, he would be quite strong enough to fight and most likely beat it, when a part of it was trying either to deal with our ships to the westward or to cover the disembarkation of an invading army.  He, therefore, proposed to keep his fleet ’in being’ in order to fall on the enemy when the latter would have two affairs at the same time on his hands.  The late Vice-Admiral Colomb rose to a greater height than was usual even with him in his criticism of this campaign.  What Torrington did was merely to reproduce on the sea what has been noticed dozens of times on shore, viz. the menace by the flanking enemy.  In land warfare this is held to give exceptional opportunities for the display of good generalship, but, to quote Mahan over again, a navy ’acts on an element strange to most writers, its members have been from time immemorial a strange race apart, without prophets of their own, neither themselves nor their calling understood.’  Whilst Torrington has had the support of seamen, his opponents have been landsmen.  For the crime of being a good strategist he was brought before a court-martial, but acquitted.  His sovereign, who had been given the crowns of three kingdoms to defend our laws, showed his respect for them by flouting a legally constituted tribunal and disregarding its solemn finding.  The admiral who had saved his country was forced into retirement.  Still, the principle of the ‘fleet in being’ lies at the bottom of all sound strategy.

Admiral Colomb has pointed out a great change of plan in the later naval campaigns of the seventeenth century.  Improvements in naval architecture, in the methods of preserving food, and in the arrangements for keeping the crews healthy, permitted fleets to be employed at a distance from their home ports for long continuous periods.  The Dutch, when allies of the Spaniards, kept a fleet in the Mediterranean for many months.  The great De Ruyter was mortally wounded in one of the battles there fought.  In the war of the Spanish Succession the Anglo-Dutch fleet found its principal scene of action eastward of Gibraltar.  This, as it were, set the fashion for future wars.  It became