Captain Salmond rushed on deck and ordered the anchor to be dropped, the quarter-boats to be lowered, and a turn astern to be given by the engines.
Backwash Motion in the water caused by the propeller(s) moving in reverse (astern) direction.
The rudder was augmented with special steering system on the engine transmissions; they had gears that could drive half of the engines astern and half forward allowed the screws to assist in turning the ship at sharper angles.
At 15:00, with the detached division rapidly approaching from astern, Hallowell turned his ship towards the ships sailing ahead of Swiftsure and attempted to pass across the stern of the rearmost ship in an effort to rake and disable it, creating enough confusion to mask an escape.
Ahead of her Fremantle saw Eliab Harvey's Temeraire turn to pass astern of the French Redoutable, but resolved to follow Nelson and HMS Victory to pass astern of the French flagship Bucentaure.
Lookouts spotted the torpedo tracks and Ark Royal turned towards the attack, reducing her cross-section and causing the torpedoes to miss and explode harmlessly astern.
We turned to the eastward with our escorting destroyers, the British Encounter and the American Pope, to put the enemy astern.
As the German battle cruisers and destroyers steamed forward, the German battleships astern became confused and disorganized in trying to execute their reverse turn.
Another was the ability to go astern at full power without needing a separate reverse turbine to do so, simply by reversing the electrical polarity of the motors.
Mr. Russell, acting on his training, ordered "full astern": the signal for his crew to completely engage the reverse thrust.
