y breezes, watched closely by the Queen's fleet,
which hovered at a moderate distance to windward, without offering, that
day, any obstruction to their course.

By five o'clock on Tuesday morning, 2nd of August, the Armada lay between
Portland Bill and St. Albans' Head, when the wind shifted to the
north-east, and gave the Spaniards the weather-gage. The English did
their beat to get to windward, but the Duke, standing close into the land
with the whole Armada, maintained his advantage. The English then went
about, making a tack seaward, and were soon afterwards assaulted by the
Spaniards. A long and spirited action ensued. Howard in his little
Ark-Royal--"the odd ship of the world for all conditions"--was engaged at
different times with Bertendona, of the Italian squadron, with Alonzo de
Leyva in the Batta, and with other large vessels. He was hard pressed for
a time, but was gallantly supported by the Nonpareil, Captain Tanner; and
after a long and confused combat, in which the St. Mark, the St. Luke,
the St. Matthew, the St. Philip, the St. John, the St. James, the St.
John Baptist, the St. Martin, and many other great galleons, with saintly
and apostolic names, fought pellmell with the Lion, the Bear, the Bull,
the Tiger, the Dreadnought, the Revenge, the Victory, the Triumph, and
other of the more profanely-baptized English ships, the Spaniards were
again baffled in all their attempts to close with, and to board, their
ever-attacking, ever-flying adversaries. The cannonading was incessant.
"We had a sharp and a long fight," said Hawkins. Boat-loads of men and
munitions were perpetually arriving to the English, and many, high-born
volunteers--like Cumberland, Oxford, Northumberland, Raleigh, Brooke,
Dudley, Willoughby, Noel, William Hatton, Thomas Cecil, and others--could
no longer restrain their impatience, as the roar of battle sounded along
the coasts of Dorset, but flocked merrily on board the ships of
Drake,--Hawkins, Howard, and Frobisher, or came in small vessels which
they had chartered for themselves, in order to have their share in the
delights of the long-expected struggle.

The action, irregular, desultory, but lively, continued nearly all day,
and until the English had fired away most of their powder and shot. The
Spaniards, too, notwithstanding their years of preparation, were already
sort of light metal, and Medina Sidonia had been daily sending to Parma
for a Supply of four, six, and ten pound balls.