Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816

A fleet’s own gun smoke, Alonso de Chaves argues, could blind the enemy until its ships mistook one another and fought among themselves. At sea, he insists, order can be the difference between victory and defeat.

This volume of naval instructions spanning 1530 to 1816 opens with a rare glimpse of the early sailing era: a treatise by Spanish naval lecturer Alonso de Chaves, apparently never published in his own time. Julian Stafford Corbett brings together instructions that show how commanders tried to turn ships into a fleet capable of fighting in formation. Chaves challenges the belief that wind and waves make order impossible, prescribing where the largest ships should strike, how lighter vessels should support them, and why the captain-general belongs in the centre, not at the head of the charge. Could discipline hold when the sea itself seemed to fight against it?

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