He was hard pressed for a time, but was gallantly supported by the Nonpareil, Captain Tanner; and after a long and confused combat, in which the St.Mark, the St.Luke, the St.Matthew, the St.Philip, the St.John, the St.James, the St.
John Baptist, the St.Martin, and many other great galleons, with saintly and apostolic names, fought pellmell with the Lion, the Bear, the Bull, the Tiger, the Dreadnought, the Revenge, the Victory, the Triumph, and other of the more profanely-baptized English ships, the Spaniards were again baffled in all their attempts to close with, and to board, their ever-attacking, ever-flying adversaries.

The cannonading was incessant.
"We had a sharp and a long fight," said Hawkins.

Boat-loads of men and munitions were perpetually arriving to the English, and many, high-born volunteers--like Cumberland, Oxford, Northumberland, Raleigh, Brooke, Dudley, Willoughby, Noel, William Hatton, Thomas Cecil, and others--could no longer restrain their impatience, as the roar of battle sounded along the coasts of Dorset, but flocked merrily on board the ships of Drake,--Hawkins, Howard, and Frobisher, or came in small vessels which they had chartered for themselves, in order to have their share in the delights of the long-expected struggle.
The action, irregular, desultory, but lively, continued nearly all day, and until the English had fired away most of their powder and shot.

The Spaniards, too, notwithstanding their years of preparation, were already sort of light metal, and Medina Sidonia had been daily sending to Parma for a Supply of four, six, and ten pound balls.

So much lead and gunpowder had never before been wasted in a single day; for there was no great damage inflicted on either side.