The 30th of March, 1588, is the day of days to be remembered in the history of sea power because it was then that Drake, writing from Plymouth to the Queen-in-Council, first formulated the true doctrine of modern naval warfare, especially the cardinal principle that the best of all defence is to attack your enemy’s main fleet as it issues from its ports.  This marked the birth of the system perfected by Nelson and thence passed on, with many new developments, to the British Grand Fleet in the Great War of to-day.  The first step was by far the hardest, for Drake had to convert the Queen and Howard to his own revolutionary views.  He at last succeeded; and on the 7th of July sailed for Corunna, where the Armada had rendezvoused after being dispersed by a storm.

Every man afloat knew that the hour had come.  Yet Elizabeth, partly on the score of expense, partly not to let Drake snap her apron-strings completely, had kept the supply of food and even of ammunition very short; so much so that Drake knew he would have to starve or else replenish from the Spanish fleet itself.  As he drew near Corunna on the 8th, the Spaniards were again reorganizing.  Hundreds of perfectly useless landlubbers, shipped at Lisbon to complete the absurdly undermanned ships, were being dismissed at Corunna.  On the 9th, when Sidonia assembled a council of war to decide whether to put to sea or not, the English van was almost in sight of the coast.  But then the north wind flawed, failed, and at last chopped round.  A roaring sou’wester came on; and the great strategic move was over.

On the 12th the fleet was back in Plymouth replenishing as hard as it could.  Howard behaved to perfection.  Drake worked the strategy and tactics.  But Howard had to set the tone, afloat and ashore, to all who came within his sphere of influence; and right well he set it.  His dispatches at this juncture are models of what such documents should be; and their undaunted confidence is in marked contrast to what the doomed Spanish officers were writing at the selfsame time.

The southwest wind that turned Drake back brought the Armada out and gave it an advantage which would have been fatal to England had the fleets been really equal, or the Spaniards in superior strength, for a week was a very short time in which to replenish the stores that Elizabeth had purposely kept so low.  Drake and Howard, so the story goes, were playing a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe on Friday afternoon the 19th of July when Captain Fleming of the Golden Hind rushed up to say the Spanish fleet was off the Lizard, only sixty miles away!  All eyes turned to Drake.  Divining the right way to calm the people, he whispered an order and then said out loud:  ’There’s time to end our game and beat the Spaniards too.’  The shortness of food and ammunition that had compelled him to come back instead of waiting to blockade now threatened to get him nicely caught in the very trap he had wished to catch the Great Armada in himself; for the Spaniards, coming up with the wind, might catch him struggling out against the wind and crush his long emerging column, bit by bit, precisely as he had intended crushing their own column as it issued from the Tagus or Corunna.