p's scheme. Even
if Parma's army succeeded in landing, its task was now an impossible
one. Forty thousand Spaniards were no match for four millions of
Englishmen, banded together by a common resolve to hold England against
the foreigner. But to secure a landing at all, the Spaniards had to be
masters of the Channel. Parma might gather his army on the Flemish
coast, but every estuary and inlet was blocked by the Dutch cruisers.
The Netherlands knew well that the conquest of England was planned only
as a prelude to their own reduction; and the enthusiasm with which
England rushed to the conflict was hardly greater than that which
stirred the Hollanders. A fleet of ninety vessels, with the best Dutch
seamen at their head, held the Scheldt and the shallows of Dunkirk, and
it was only by driving this fleet from the water that Parma's army could
be set free to join in the great enterprise. The great need of the
Armada therefore was to reach the coast of Flanders. It was ordered to
make for Calais, and wait there for the junction of Parma. But even if
Parma joined it, the passage of his force was impossible without a
command of the Channel; and in the Channel lay an English fleet resolved
to struggle hard for the mastery. As the Armada sailed on in a broad
crescent past Plymouth, the vessels which had gathered under Lord
Howard of Effingham slipped out of the bay and hung with the wind upon
their rear. In numbers the two forces were strangely unequal, for the
English fleet counted only eighty vessels against the hundred and
forty-nine which composed the Armada. In size of ships the disproportion
was even greater. Fifty of the English vessels, including the squadron
of the Lord Admiral and the craft of the volunteers, were little bigger
than yachts of the present day. Even of the thirty Queen's ships which
formed its main body, there were but four which equalled in tonnage the
smallest of the Spanish galleons. Sixty-five of these galleons formed
the most formidable half of the Spanish fleet; and four galleys, four
galleasses armed with fifty guns apiece, fifty-six armed merchantmen,
and twenty pinnaces made up the rest. The Armada was provided with 2500
cannons, and a vast store of provisions; it had on board 8000 seamen and
more than 20,000 soldiers; and if a court-favourite, the Duke of Medina
Sidonia, had been placed at its head, he was supported by the ablest
staff of naval officers which Spain possessed.

[Sidenote: The fi