The 12th Article of War read as follows: "Every person in the fleet who, through cowardice, negligence or disaffection, shall in time of action withdraw, or keep back, or not come to the fight or engagement, or shall not do his utmost to take or destroy every ship ... [or to] assist all and every of His Majesty's ships, or those of allies, which it shall be his duty to assist and relieve; every such person so offending and being convicted thereof by the sentence of a court martial shall suffer death or such other punishment as the circumstances of the offence shall deserve and the court martial shall judge fit." The final clause was struck from the Article in 1745, eleven years before Byng's trial.[28]
He was obviously a scapegoat, but the Royal Navy expects it's commanders to be aggressive, lucky and kiss the right butts, which doesn't always occur.
Nelson wasn't just aggressive and lucky, he picked and prepared his subordinates, and his success immunized him against perceived transgressions. Cochrane failed to kiss the right butts.
Byng's execution has been called "the worst legalistic crime in the nation's annals".[24] But naval historian N. A. M. Rodger believes it may have influenced the behaviour of later naval officers by helping inculcate:
"a culture of aggressive determination which set British officers apart from their foreign contemporaries, and which in time gave them a steadily mounting psychological ascendancy. More and more in the course of the century, and for long afterwards, British officers encountered opponents who expected to be attacked, and more than half expected to be beaten, so that [the latter] went into action with an invisible disadvantage which no amount of personal courage or numerical strength could entirely make up for."[40]
