and this time ineffective foray upon the Spanish
Main. Drake was buried off Puerto Bello, where legend has it his
spirit still awaits England's call--

"Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,
Strike et when your powder's running low.
If the Dons sight Devon, I'll leave the port of Heaven,
An' drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago."[1]

[Footnote 1: DRAKE'S DRUM, Sir Henry Newbolt.]

We are still far from the period when sea control was thought of
as important in itself, apart from land operations, or when fleets
were kept in permanent readiness to take the sea. It is owing to
this latter fact that we hear of large flotillas dispatched by
each side even in the same year, yet not meeting in naval action.
Thus in June of 1596 the Essex expedition, with 17 English and
18 Dutch men-of-war and numerous auxiliaries, seized Cadiz and
burned shipping to the value of 11,000,000 ducats. There was no
naval opposition, though Philip in October of the same year had
ready a hundred ships and 16,000 men, which were dispersed with
the loss of a quarter of their strength in a gale off Finisterre.
Storms also scattered Philip's fleet in the next year; in 1598,
Spanish transports landed 5,000 men at Calais; and England's fears
were renewed in the year after that by news of over 100 vessels
fitting out for the Channel, which, however, merely protected the
plate fleet by a cruise to the Azores. As late as 1601, Spain landed
3500 troops in Ireland.

But if these major operations seem to have missed contact, there
were many lively actions on a minor scale, the well-armed trading
vessels of the north easily beating off the galley squadrons guarding
Gibraltar and the routes past Spain. Among these lesser encounters, the
famous "Last Fight of the Revenge," which occurred during operations
of a small English squadron off the Azores in 1591, well illustrates
the fighting spirit of the Elizabethan Englishman and the ineptitude
which since the Armada seems to have marked the Spaniard at sea.
In Drake's old flagship, attacked by 15 ships and surrounded by
a Spanish fleet of 50 sail, a bellicose old sea-warrior named Sir
Richard Grenville held out from nightfall until eleven the next
day, and surrendered only after he had sunk three of the enemy,
when his powder was gone, half his crew dead, the rest disabled,
and his ship a sinking wreck. "Here die I, Richard Grenville," so
we are given his last words, "with a joyful a