ter-gate to Italy.... Henceforth the Spanish crown
found in the Dorias its admirals; their squadron was permanently
hired to the kings of Spain.' Spanish supremacy at sea was
established at the expense of France.[36] The acquisition of a
vast domain in the New World had greatly developed the maritime
activity of Castile, and Spain was as formidable on the ocean as
in the Mediterranean. After Portugal had been annexed the naval
vessels of that country were added to the Spanish, and the great
port of Lisbon became available as a place of equipment and as an
additional base of operations for oceanic campaigns. The fusion
of Spain and Portugal, says Seeley, 'produced a single state of
unlimited maritime dominion.... Henceforth the whole New World
belonged exclusively to Spain.' The story of the tremendous
catastrophe--the defeat of the Armada--by which the decline of
this dominion was heralded is well known. It is memorable, not
only because of the harm it did to Spain, but also because it
revealed the rise of another claimant to maritime pre-eminence--the
English nation. The effects of the catastrophe were not at once
visible. Spain still continued to look like the greatest power
in the world; and, though the English seamen were seen to be
something better than adventurous pirates--a character suggested
by some of their recent exploits--few could have comprehended
that they were engaged in building up what was to be a sea-power
greater than any known to history.

[Footnote 35: Prescott, _Ferdinand_and_Isabella_, Introd. sects.
i. ii.]

[Footnote 36: G. W. Prothero, in M. Hume's _Spain_, 1479-1788,
p. 65.]

They were carrying forward, not beginning the building of this.
'England,' says Sir J. K. Laughton, 'had always believed in her
naval power, had always claimed the sovereignty of the Narrow
Seas; and more than two hundred years before Elizabeth came to the
throne, Edward III had testified to his sense of its importance
by ordering a gold coinage bearing a device showing the armed
strength and sovereignty of England based on the sea.'[37] It is
impossible to make intelligible the course of the many wars which
the English waged with the French in the Middle Ages unless the
true naval position of the former is rightly appreciated. Why were
Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt--not to mention other combats--fought,
not on English, but on continental soil? Why during the so-called
'Hundred Years' War' was England in reality the i