Giant's Causeway. The galleass was shattered to matchwood, and Leyva
perished with all on board save five who swam ashore.

In the last days of September the surviving ships of the Armada came
straggling into the northern ports of Spain with starving, fever-stricken
crews. Medina-Sidonia had kept some fifty sail together till 18 September.
He had resigned all active duties of command to his lieutenants, Flores and
Bobadilla, for he was ill and broken in spirit. His hair had whitened, and
he looked like an old man, as he sat all day in the "great cabin" of the
"San Martin," with his head in his hands. A Biscay gale scattered the
remnant of the Armada, and on 21 September the "San Martin" appeared alone
off Santander. The wind had fallen; her sails hung loose from the yards,
and the long swell that followed the gale was driving the ship towards the
rocks outside the port. Some boats went out and towed her in. Most of the
crew were sick. Nearly two hundred had been buried at sea.

Recalde and Oquendo brought their ships home, but landed broken with the
hardships of the terrible voyage, and only survived it a few weeks. Every
ship that arrived told of the many buried at sea, and landed scores of
dying and fever and scurvy-stricken men, so that all the northern ports
were like great hospitals. When the last galleon had struggled into
harbour, fifty-five great ships were still missing. The best of the leaders
were dead. Not more than a third of the sailors and soldiers survived. It
was a disaster from which Spain as a naval power never really recovered.
For fifty years to come the Spanish infantry still upheld their claim to be
invincible on the battlefield, but the tall galleon had ceased to be the
mistress of the seas.

The campaign of the Armada is remarkable not only for inaugurating the
modern period of naval war, the era of the sail and the gun, but also
because, though it ended in disaster for one side and success for the
other, there was from first to last in the long series of engagements in
the narrow seas no battle "fought to a finish." In all the fighting the
English showed that they had grasped the essential ideas of the new
warfare, and proved themselves better sailors and better gunners, but the
number of the ships they took or destroyed was insignificant. Howard was so
crippled by parsimonious mismanagement on the part of his Government that
he had to be content with "half-doings," instead of decisive results