at helped to seal the fate of
the doomed Armada. For not only were the English seamen twice as many
and twice as good as the Spanish seamen, but in the numbers of their
trained seamen-gunners the English beat the Spaniards no less than ten
to one: and guns were the weapons that decided the issue of the day,
just as they did at Jutland in our recent war against the Germans.

A little before sunset the mist lifted, and the Spaniards, to their
intense surprise, saw the whole English fleet together. Every big ship
in the Armada sent boats hurrying off to know what orders Sidonia had
to give them. But Sidonia had none. That the Sea-Dogs had worked out
of Plymouth so quickly and were all together in a single fleet was
something he had not reckoned on, and something Philip's silly plan had
not provided for. Still, the Armada had one advantage left, the
weather-gage; for the southwest wind was piping up again, blowing from
the Armada to the English. Yet even this advantage was soon lost, not
by any change of wind, but by English seamanship. For while eight
English vessels held the attention of the Armada, by working about
between it and the shore, the rest of Drake's fleet stole off to sea,
got safely out of sight, tacked to windward with splendid skill, edged
in toward the Armada when sea-room west of it was gained, and then,
next morning, to the still more intense surprise of the Armada, came
down to attack it, having won the weather-gage by sailing round behind
it in the night.

This was the decisive stroke. The fight itself was simply the
slaughter of a floating army by a fleet. The Spaniards fought like
heroes, day after slaughterous day. But their light guns, badly served
by ill-trained crews, fired much too high to hull the English ships
"'twixt wind and water," that is, to smash holes in their sides along
the water-line. On the other hand, the English had more and better
guns, far more and far better seaman-gunners, and vessels managed by
the sea's own "handy men." They ran in with the wind, just near enough
to make their well-aimed cannon-balls most deadly on the Spanish
water-line, but never so near that the Spaniards could catch them with
grappling hooks and hold them fast while the Spanish soldiers boarded.
Another way the skilful English had was to turn their broadside against
the enemy's end-on. This, whether for a single ship or for a fleet, is
called "crossing the T"; and if you will look at a T yo