Lord High Admiral Howard to Sir Francis Walsingham, Ark Royal ‘thwart Plymouth’, 31 July 1588.1 Early on Saturday 30 July, as his fleet lay hove to within sight of the enemy coast, Medina Sidonia summoned a council of war on board his flagship San Martin.2 While the admirals were saluted with proper naval ceremony, the lookouts atop the warship’s mainmast could see the drifting smoke of the warning beacons on high points along the Cornish coast. Everyone in the battered, creaking ships of the Armada knew that, at last, action was imminent and their thoughts inevitably turned to divine protection. At prayers that morning, prompted by their ministering friars, the crews had knelt reverently upon the wet decks, ‘beseeching Our Lord to give us victory against the enemies of His holy faith’.3 Their king, fretting and fussing in Madrid, would have heartily approved of their piety, had he but known. There was the rub. The lack of news on the Armada’s fortunes had substantially increased his anxieties, and rumours abounded throughout Europe about the fate of his ships.
