1888.] on the Inline 'thle Armada : a Tercentenary BetrospecL 317 



gnns and in number of men beyond all proportion. The numbers I 

 give here, from tbe official Spanisb record,* agree very well with 

 those reported in England.f 



lu cue point alone of this statement is the diiierence from the 

 English account worth noticing. Barrow gives the number of 

 Spanish gims as 3165. To this I shall presently recur. Meantime, 

 I have to point out to you that these numbers refer to the fleet as it 

 left Lisbon. They had suffered a marked decrease before the fleet 

 left Corunna, and a still further decrease before the fleet came into 

 the Channel. Of the ships left behind I have no account. Some, 

 and some large ships amongst them, certainly did not come on. 

 Some, again, apj^ear to have parted company on the voyage : and of 

 four galleys, from which much had been expected, one was driven 

 ashore and wrecked near Bayonne ; the other three, making very bad 

 weather of it, returned to Spain. i Allowing for these losses, I think 

 it doubtful whether even 120 ships of all sizes came into the Channel; 

 the nmnber of men did certainly not exceed 24,000 ; and in the 

 council of war held at Corunna it was estimated as low as 22, 500. § 

 On the other hand, the number of men borne in the English ships 

 when ail collected together, is officially given as 15,925, to which 

 ought to be added many more who were sent off from Plymouth on 

 21st July, or who joined as volunteers during the passage up Channel. 

 It is difficult to estimate the gross total as less than from 17,000 to 

 18,000 men. 



Our idea of the size of the Spanish ships has been also somewhat 

 exaggerated. According to Barrow : " The best of the Queen's ships 

 placed alongside one of the first class of Spaniards would have been 

 like a sloop-of-war by the side of a first rate." In point of tonnage, 

 they were, in fact, the same. The largest Spaniard, the Be<jazona, 

 of the Levant s-^uadron, is given as of 1249 tons. The largest 

 English ship, the TriumpJi, was of 1100 tons, and many circumstances 

 lead me to believe that the English mode of reckoning tonnage gave 

 a smaller result than the Spanish. [ There is no doubt, however, that 



* Dtiro, ii. pp. 66, S3. f Barrow's ' Life of Drake," p. 270. 



^ Dirro, i. p. 6o. As they did return, the popular story of David Gwyane 

 (Lediard. p. 253) is, in its details at least, certainly fictitious. 



§ Duro. ii. pp. 199, 142. 



11 Other modes of reckoning tonnage adopted in the following reign gave 

 results varying: from 20 to 50 per cent. more. — ' State Papers,' I)omestic, 

 ccxxxvii. Ci. 



