ury, the regulated allowance for guns mounted
on the broadside was eighty-five rounds each. Consequently, the
Elizabethan allowance was nearly, if not quite, as much as that
which our authorities, after an experience of naval warfare during
three centuries, thought sufficient. 'The full explanation,' says
Professor Laughton, 'of the want [of ammunition] seems to lie
in the rapidity of fire which has already been mentioned. The
ships had the usual quantity on board; but the expenditure was
more, very many times more, than anyone could have conceived.'
Mr. Julian Corbett considers it doubtful if the ammunition, in
at least one division of the fleet, was nearly exhausted.

[Footnote 75: _The_Spanish_War_, 1585-87 (Navy Records Society),
1898, p. 323.]

[Footnote 76: London, 1898, p. 236.]

Exhaustion of the supply of ammunition in a single action is a
common naval occurrence. The not very decisive character of the
battle of Malaga between Sir George Rooke and the Count of Toulouse
in 1704 was attributed to insufficiency of ammunition, the supply
in our ships having been depleted by what 'Mediterranean' Byng,
afterwards Lord Torrington, calls the 'furious fire' opened on
Gibraltar. The Rev. Thomas Pocock, Chaplain of the _Ranelagh_,
Byng's flag-ship at Malaga, says:[77] 'Many of our ships went
out of the line for want of ammunition.' Byng's own opinion, as
stated by the compiler of his memoirs, was, that 'it may without
great vanity be said that the English had gained a greater victory
if they had been supplied with ammunition as they ought to have
been.' I myself heard the late Lord Alcester speak of the anxiety
that had been caused him by the state of his ships' magazines
after the attack on the Alexandria forts in 1882. At a still
later date, Admiral Dewey in Manila Bay interrupted his attack
on the Spanish squadron to ascertain how much ammunition his
ships had left. The carrying capacity of ships being limited,
rapid gun-fire in battle invariably brings with it the risk of
running short of ammunition. It did this in the nineteenth century
just as much as, probably even more than, it did in the sixteenth.

[Footnote 77: In his journal (p. 197), printed as an Appendix
to _Memoirs_relating_to_the_Lord_Torrington_, edited by
J. K. Laughton for the Camden Society, 1889.]

To charge Elizabeth with criminal parsimony because she insisted
on every shot being 'registered and accounted for' will be received
with ridicule