And whereas the accident should have driven home with all the force of Camperdown’s ram the rightness of Sir George’s mission to train subordinate senior officers to exercise their own tactical judgement, to all intents and purposes it had the opposite effect. TA had been merely the means to an end; and the hidden cost of the Victoria affair was that, with Tryon’s death and the apparent discrediting of the means, the all-important end – the return of the Royal Navy to fundamental action-principles – was orphaned and implicitly tabooed.
