There was no instruction enjoining line-ahead as a battle formation, but it was understood, and when Blake had his first encounter with Marten Tromp the English ships formed into single-line ahead. So much for the moment with regard to tactics. What was the strategy displayed at the commencement of the Anglo-Dutch wars? Consider a moment what would most probably be that strategy employed by the British Navy to-day at the beginning of hostilities between ourselves and Germany. We should assuredly do three things: (1) We should close up the Straits of Dover and intercept German liners homeward bound. (2) That being so, the only possible chance of the enemy’s ships reaching their Fatherland would be to go round the north of Scotland: so we should have a squadron off the north-east coast of Scotland to thwart that intention. (3) And, lastly, we should send some of our warships across the North Sea to blockade German ports. Now except for a comparatively slight coast erosion and the shifting of minor shoals, Great Britain in the twentieth century is geographically the same as in the seventeenth. Instead of a German enemy, imagine that Holland is the foe; instead of the German liners, substitute the Dutch Plate ships; instead of the modern steel steam warriors, substitute sail-propelled warships. Otherwise you have exactly similar conditions. The strategy is the same: only the century and the type of ships are different. For what happened? Ayscue with his squadron remained in the Downs to catch the Dutch Plate ships bound home to Holland. Blake was sent with sixty or seventy ships to the north-east of Scotland and captured a hundred of the Dutch fishing fleet, and then proceeded further north to intercept the Dutch merchantmen between the Orkneys and Shetlands. He then came in contact with the Dutch fleet and prepared for war, but a gale sprang up and dispersed Tromp’s ships. It was only the lack of good charts that made the English sea general reluctant to cross the North Sea into the shoal-strewn Dutch waters, though in fact they did cross later and blockade. Thus we may say that at any rate by the beginning of the first of these Anglo-Dutch wars there is the surest evidence that naval strategy was appreciated at its full value, and that it was modern and not medieval strategy.