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As it happened, it was a fine, cold wintry day that dawned as the two great fleets drew towards each other. As Denis Castellan said, "It was a perfect jewel of a day for a holy fight," and so it was. The French fleet was advancing at twelve knots. Admiral Beresford made his fifteen, and led the line in the _Britain_. Erskine had been ordered to go to the rear of the French line and sink any destroyer or torpedo boat that he could get hold of, but to let the battleships and cruisers alone, unless he saw a British warship hard pressed, in which case he was to ram and sink the enemy if he could.
One division of cruisers, consisting of the fastest and most powerful armoured vessels, was to make a half-circle two miles in the rear of the French Fleet. The ships selected for this service were the _Duke of Edinburgh_, _Warwick_, _Edward III._, _Cromwell_ and _King Alfred_. Outside them, two miles again to the rear, the _Leviathan_, _Good Hope_, _Powerful_ and _Terrible_, the fastest ships in the Fleet, were to take their station to keep off stragglers.