THE BATTLE OF MINORCA

Although Byng had sighted the French fleet under Galissonniere the day before, there was at first no sign of it at dawn on 20 May; but at 7 am a sailor picked it up from a masthead. Byng reckoned it twelve miles offshore. He called his cruisers together at 10 am, and they 'tacked towards it and formed the line ahead'. Both fleets approached each other in extended line, parallel but from opposite directions, still many miles apart. The customary prelude to battle was a race to 'gain the weather gage', that is remain to windward of the enemy, which would give a vital advantage during the coming fight. It was an exercise in skilled seamanship, and Byng succeeded in this manoeuvre.
At this point Hervey, impetuous and spoiling for excitement, offered to sacrifice his ship the Phoenix as a fireship. He suggested that he and his crew abandon ship at the last moment, after it had been primed to go up in flames. Byng agreed, and Hervey filled the Phoenix with shavings, picked oakum dipped in resin, pitch, and mixed brimstone and gunpowder.
The British and French fleets each had twelve ships of the line and five frigates, and their armament was about equal. Naval battles in the days of sail were highly conventionalised in their manoeuvres, and the Battle of Minorca was no exception. The permitted movements of British ships, laid down in Admiralty Fighting Instructions, were almost inviolable. Byng himself had previously sat in judgement on courts-martial and sentenced fellow officers for infringement. He himself, by nature indecisive, was unlikely to deviate from the script, as the death penalty had just been introduced for doing so. Indeed pathetically - he went into battle holding a copy of the Fighting Instructions in his hand.
As the opposing fleets approached each other they converged, and proceeded to pass each other as in a dance. When Byng's leading ships were opposite Galissonniere's rear, Byng gave the order for each ship to tack and engage his opposite opponent. In this manoeuvre the British ships would wheel round to port, so that they were now sailing in the same direction as the enemy, but bearing down on them at an angle.
Among the first to engage was Byng's second-in-command Rear-Admiral West, now leading, who engaged his opponents at dose quarters, at first too slowly and then so vigorously that the enemy ships opposite him were thrown out of line. At this point Byng took his fatal decision, and did not follow suit, failing to engage the enemy. His rear was thrown into disorder, and those in the van, left unsupported, suffered heavy damage from the broadsides of the French fleet as they sailed past. The French fleet, who had never sought a battle, then withdrew.
    On the morning after the battle there was no sign of the enemy fleet, and Byng himself lay about ten leagues to the south of the island. He had lost contact with two of his ships - the Intrepid and the Chesterfield - during the night, and sent cruisers in search of them. When found the next day their masts were found to be badly damaged and the captain of the Intrepid had been lost. Byng called the inevitable Council of War on the 24th. In addition to three badly damaged ships, there had been a loss of forty two killed and there were 168 wounded, with no hospital ship, and nowhere to put them.
The Council decided against further offensive action, and recommended that the fleet proceed to Gibraltar forthwith with the wounded and to refit. Byng definitely meant to return to Minorca to renew the fight, as his dispatch written to the Admiralty at this stage shows: 'I hope we shall find stores to refit at Gibraltar, and if I have any reinforcement, will not lose a moment to seek the enemy again, and once more give him battle.'    But the Admiralty, now fearing for their own lives, were determined to have Byng as a scapegoat, and censored this passage before its publication in the London Gazette.
Without any further attempt to contact Blakeney or inform him of his plans, Byng sailed from Minorca with his fleet the same afternoon.
 
 

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