leet to capture, destroy, and scatter that Great Armada,
with the loss (but not the capture) of one pinnace, and one gentleman of
note?

There were more causes than one: the first seems to have lain in the
build of the English ships; the second in their superior gunnery and
weight of metal; the third (without which the first would have been
useless) in the hearts of the English men.

The English ship was much shorter than the Spanish; and this (with
the rig of those days) gave them an ease in manoeuvring, which utterly
confounded their Spanish foes. "The English ships in the fight of 1588,"
says Camden, "charged the enemy with marvellous agility, and having
discharged their broadsides, flew forth presently into the deep, and
levelled their shot directly, without missing, at those great ships of
the Spaniards, which were altogether heavy and unwieldy." Moreover, the
Spanish fashion, in the West Indies at least, though not in the ships
of the Great Armada, was, for the sake of carrying merchandise, to build
their men-of-war flush-decked, or as it was called "race" (razes), which
left those on deck exposed and open; while the English fashion was to
heighten the ship as much as possible at stem and stern, both by
the sweep of her lines, and also by stockades ("close fights and
cage-works") on the poop and forecastle, thus giving to the men
a shelter, which was further increased by strong bulkheads
("cobridgeheads") across the main-deck below, dividing the ship thus
into a number of separate forts, fitted with swivels ("bases, fowlers,
and murderers") and loopholed for musketry and arrows.

But the great source of superiority was, after all, in the men
themselves. The English sailor was then, as now, a quite amphibious
and all-cunning animal, capable of turning his hand to everything, from
needlework and carpentry to gunnery or hand-to-hand blows; and he
was, moreover, one of a nation, every citizen of which was not merely
permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practise from
childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider sword-play
and quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel of education, and the
pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest nation upon earth," as
they were then called, and the freest also, each man of them fought for
himself with the self-help and self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once
bidden to do his work, was trusted to carry it out by his own wit as
best he could. In one wo