Whenever we read of a movement for breaking the line in this period it is almost always accompanied with remarks which assume that Rodney's manoeuvre is intended and not Howe's.

Probably it is Nelson who is to blame.

At Trafalgar, after carefully elaborating an attack based on Howe's method of line abreast, he delivered it in line ahead, as though he had intended to use Rodney's method.

His reasons were sound enough, as will be seen later.

But as a piece of scientific tactics it was as though an engineer besieging a fortress, instead of drawing his lines of approach diagonally, were to make them at right angles to the ditch.