rsistent Philip slaved away upon this 'Enterprize of
England.' With incredible toil he spun his web anew. The ships were
collected into squadrons; the squadrons at last began to wear the
semblance of a fleet. But semblance only. There were far too many
soldiers and not nearly enough sailors. Instead of sending the fighting
fleet to try to clear the way for the troopships coming later on, Philip
mixed army and navy together. The men-of-war were not bad of their kind;
but the kind was bad. They were floating castles, high out of the water,
crammed with soldiers, some other landsmen, and stores, and with only
light ordnance, badly distributed so as to fire at rigging and
superstructures only, not at the hulls as the English did. Yet this was
not the worst. The worst was that the fighting fleet was cumbered with
troopships which might have been useful in boarding, but which were
perfectly useless in fighting of any other kind--and the English
men-of-war were much too handy to be laid aboard by the lubberly Spanish
troopships. Santa Cruz worked himself to death. In one of his last
dispatches he begged for more and better guns. All Philip could do was
to authorize the purchase of whatever guns the foreign merchantmen in
Lisbon harbor could be induced to sell. Sixty second-rate pieces were
obtained in this way.

Then, worn out by work and worry, Santa Cruz died, and Philip forced the
command on a most reluctant landlubber, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a
very great grandee of Spain, but wholly unfitted to lead a fleet. The
death of Santa Cruz, in whom the fleet and army had great confidence,
nearly upset the whole 'Enterprize of England.' The captains were as
unwilling to serve under bandylegged, sea-sick Sidonia as he was
unwilling to command them. Volunteering ceased. Compulsion failed to
bring in the skilled ratings urgently required. The sailors were now not
only fewer than ever--sickness and desertion had been thinning their
ranks--but many of these few were unfit for the higher kinds of
seamanship, while only the merest handful of them were qualified as
seamen gunners. Philip, however, was determined; and so the doomed
Armada struggled on, fitting its imperfect parts together into a still
more imperfect whole until, in June, it was as ready as it ever could be
made.

Meanwhile the English had their troubles too. These were also political.
But the English navy was of such overwhelming strength that it could
stand them wit