British Break The Line
Within minutes of issuing the signal and turning his flagship HMS Queen Charlotte, Howe's plan began to falter. Many of the British captains had either misunderstood or ignored the signal and were hanging back in the original line. Other ships were still struggling with damage from Howe's earlier engagements and could not get into action fast enough. The result was a ragged formation tipped by Queen Charlotte that headed unevenly for Villaret's fleet. The French responded by firing on the British ships as they approached, but the lack of training and coordination in the French fleet was obvious; many ships which did obey Howe's order and attacked the French directly arrived in action without significant damage.
Read more about this topic: Glorious First Of June
Famous quotes containing the words break the line, british, break and/or line:
““O what unlucky streak
Twisting inside me, made me break the line?
What was the rock my gliding childhood struck,
And what bright unreal path has led me here?””
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The inhabitants of St. John’s and vicinity are described by an English traveler as “singularly unprepossessing,” and before completing his period he adds, “besides, they are generally very much disaffected to the British crown.” I suspect that that “besides” should have been a “because.””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Night City was like a deranged experiment in Social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone ... though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)