That the armed merchantmen conformed regularly to this idea is very improbable.

The faint pictures we have of their well-meant efforts present them to us attacking in a loose throng and masking each other's fire.

But that the queen's ships did not attempt to observe any order is not so clear.

When the combined fleet of Howard and Drake was first sighted by the Armada, it is said by two Spanish eye-witnesses to have been _in ala_, and 'in very fine order.' And the second of Adams's charts, upon which the famous House of Lords' tapestries were designed, actually represents the queen's ships standing out of Plymouth in line ahead, and coming to the attack in a similar but already disordered formation.

Still there can be no doubt that, however far a rudimentary form of line ahead was carried by the Elizabethans, it was a matter of minor tactics and not of a battle order, and was rather instinctive than the perfected result of a serious attempt to work out a tactical system.