Admiral West came down on the Frenchmen briskly, and then hauled up with the heads of his ships in the same direction as theirs. Meanwhile the other English vessels were steering to come into action while carefully preserving their relative positions to the vessels in the van. In the French line vessels here and there stood out, and ran to leeward. Our men cheered, thinking they had forced the enemy to flee, but the movement was the result of design. As these vessels ran to leeward, those astern “let all draw” and shot ahead. Thus a movement in advance was given to the whole French line, and the distance which the English ships of the centre and rear had to cover before reaching their proper opponents was constantly increased. In any case, the French admiral would almost certainly have succeeded in filing past the leading English vessels, crippling their rigging, and then running down to form a new line to leeward. But he was helped by a piece of bungling in our squadron. The =Intrepid=, the sixth ship, lost her foretop-mast. As she was before the wind, this ought to have been no great disaster, but she was so badly steered that she came right round and lay across the path of the following ship—the =Revenge=. According to all rule, tradition, and honour, the =Revenge= ought to have passed between the crippled =Intrepid= and the enemy—that is to leeward. But she tried to pass to windward, could not do so, and then backed her topsail to stop her way and prevent a collision. The vessels behind did the same thing, and thus our fleet broke in two. The five ships ahead of the =Intrepid= followed the enemy with Admiral West, while the others remained behind. It was about this time that the flag-captain, Gardiner, pointed out to Byng that if he stood out of his line he could bring the Frenchman then running past him to closer action. The admiral answered that Mathews had been broken for not taking his fleet down in a body, and that he would not incur the same fate. Rather than offend against the superstition of the line of battle, he would let the enemy get off unhurt. La Galissonière did get off with little damage, leaving us with three ships badly crippled in their rigging, and the whole fleet in scandalous disorder.