was the nearest
thing to a pitched battle in the whole Armada campaign. The English came on
with wind and tide helping them and, with the confidence that was the
outcome of their growing sense of superiority, ventured to close quarters
with the tall Spaniards, while taking care never to give them the chance of
grappling and boarding. As the fight went on the Spaniards worked slowly
towards the north-east edging off the land, for their deep draught and the
fate of Moncada's galleass made them anxious about the Flanders shoals.

Howard and Hawkins led the English centre, Drake and Frobisher the right,
Seymour and Winter the left. Not a shot was fired till they were at musket
range, and then the English guns roared out in a well-sustained cannonade
in which every shot told. It was the first of modern naval battles, the
fights decided by gunfire, not by hand-to-hand conflict on the decks. The
Spaniards answered back with their lighter and more slowly served
artillery, and with a crackle of musketry fire. Before noon the Spanish
cannon were mostly silent, for sheer lack of ammunition, and the galleons
defended themselves only with musket and arquebuse, while striving in vain
to close and grapple with their enemies. Spars and rigging were badly cut
up, shots between wind and water were letting the sea into the huge hulls.
Just as the English thought the "San Juan de Sicilia" had been put out of
action and would be their prize, the galleon heeled over and went to the
bottom. Soon the fight was only sustained by the rearward ships, the rest
trying to extricate themselves from the melee, not for any lack of courage,
but because all their ammunition was gone, their decks were encumbered with
wreckage from aloft, and the men were toiling at the pumps to keep them
afloat.

The English at last drew off from their persistent attacks on the rearward
ships, only because after a hot cannonade of seven hours they were running
short of ammunition; so they used the advantage of position and better
seamanship and seaworthiness to break off from the battle, Howard hanging
out the "council flag" from the "Ark," as a signal to his leading captains
to come on board and discuss the situation with him.

Medina-Sidonia, in his diary of the day, says nothing of the sinking of the
"San Juan de Sicilia," but he goes on to tell how the "San Felipe" and the
"San Mateo" were seen drifting helplessly towards the shoals of the Zealand
coast; how efforts