Medina-Sidonia tells
in his diary that when Howard's fireships came drifting through the summer
night off Gravelines, he and his captains thought that they were likely to
be _maquinas de minas_, "contrivances of mines," like the terrible floating
mine of Antwerp. With this suspicion, all idea of grappling them was
abandoned. As they drew nearer there was something like a panic in the
Armada. The admiral signalled to weigh anchor and make sail, but few of the
ships waited for the tedious operation of getting the heavy anchors up to
the cat-heads by slow hand labour on windlass or capstan. In most of the
galleons the carpenter's broad axe hacked through the cables and left the
anchors deep in Channel mud. Sails were hurriedly shaken out, and like a
startled flock of sheep the crowd of ships hurried away to the eastward
along the coast in wild disorder. Moncada, the admiral of the galleasses,
in the "San Lorenzo," collided with the galleon "San Juan de Sicilia," and
the great galleass dismasted and with shattered oars drifted on a back eddy
of the tide towards Calais bar. The fireships went aground here and there,
and burned harmlessly to the water's edge. Medina-Sidonia, seeing the
danger was over, fired a gun as a signal for the fleet to anchor, but most
of the ships had cut their cables, and had no spare anchors available on
deck, and they drifted along the coast, some of them as far as Dunkirk. The
sunrise on the Monday morning showed the great fleet widely scattered, only
a few of the best ships being with the admiral. Moncada's flagship had been
left by the falling tide hard aground on Calais bar.

The English attacked the stranded galleass in pinnaces and boats, Howard
with some of the larger ships standing by "to give the men comfort and
countenance." Some of the Spaniards escaped to the shore. The rest, headed
by Moncada, made a brave stand against the boarders, who swarmed up her
sides, led by one Richard Tomson, of Ramsgate. Moncada was killed, and the
ship taken. The English pillaged her, but the hulk was abandoned and seized
later by the French Governor of Calais.

During this fight on the bar Medina-Sidonia had reassembled about half his
fleet, which he formed in a great crescent off Gravelines. The wind was
from the west, and numbers of galleons were away to leeward. Some of them
were in dire peril of driving ashore. Howard saw his advantage, and the
whole English fleet bore down on the Spanish crescent. It