The long-expected Armada presented a pompous, almost a theatrical appearance.

The ships seemed arranged for a pageant, in honour of a victory already won.

Disposed in form of a crescent, the horns of which were seven miles asunder, those gilded, towered, floating castles, with their gaudy standards and their martial music, moved slowly along the channel, with an air of indolent pomp.
Their captain-general, the golden Duke, stood in his private shot-proof fortress, on the--deck of his great galleon the Saint Martin, surrounded by generals of infantry, and colonels of cavalry, who knew as little as he did himself of naval matters.

The English vessels, on the other hand--with a few exceptions, light, swift, and easily handled--could sail round and round those unwieldy galleons, hulks, and galleys rowed by fettered slave-gangs.

The superior seamanship of free Englishmen, commanded by such experienced captains as Drake, Frobisher, and Hawkins--from infancy at home on blue water--was manifest in the very, first encounter.