there is plenty of testimony that, besides their thirty-four best ships, the Spaniards possessed many vessels which must be regarded as having serious fighting importance; while the testimony is equally strong that, beyond the thirty-four vessels belonging to the queen, Howard commanded very few that could serve a much better purpose than, as Wynter put it, "to make a show."[1] The superior handiness of the English ships, and the superior seamanship of the English officers and men, are undoubted. The largest Spanish ships were but little bigger than the largest English; and their relatively greater height above the water, although it gave their crews an advantage when boarding or repelling boarding was attempted, was a source of weakness which ought not to be lost sight of. Their excessively lofty poops and forecastles rendered them very leewardly, and caused them to present magnificent targets to the English gunners.
On July 19th, the Armada, with a favourable wind from the westward, pursued its course.[2] On that day the dispatch-vessel, which had been sent in the direction of the Lizard to search for the missing vessels, rejoined the fleet with the intelligence that they were ahead, under Don Pedro de Valdes, and that he was keeping them together and awaiting the main body.
By the English this detached portion of the Spanish fleet was sighted off the Lizard. The discoverer of them was Captain Thomas Flemyng, of the Golden Hind, a vessel which had been apparently placed on scouting duty by Howard himself. Flemyng was not, as has often been asserted, a pirate, but an honest man, and a connection of the Hawkyns family. He reported, or at least conveyed the impression, that he lad seen as many as fifty ships in company, and he reached Plymouth on the 19th.
On the afternoon of that day almost the whole of the Armada was once more with the flag,[3] the four galleys and one other vessel only being missing; and the invaders, as a whole, had their first sight[4] of the English coast. Upon an announcement to this effect being made to him, Medina Sidonia hoisted at the fore a flag hearing a crucifix and the figures of Our Lady and St. Mary Magdalene; and fired three guns as a signal for general prayer
