1888.] on the Invincible Armada : a Tercentenary B^etrospect. 321 



" the cannon was held to be an ignoble arm ; well enough for the 

 beginning of the fray, and to pass away the time till the moment of 

 engaging hand to hand, that is, of boarding. Actuated by such 

 notions, the gunners were recommended to aim high, so as to dis- 

 mantle the enemy and prevent his escape ; but, as a vertical stick is a 

 difficult thing to hit, the result was that shot were expended harmlessly 

 in the sea, or, at best, made some holes in the sails, or cut a few ropes 

 of no great consequence." On the other hand, the gun was the 

 weapon which the English sailors had early learned to trust to. 

 Their practice might appear contemptible enough to an ExceUenfs 

 gun's crew, but everything must have a beginning. With no disparts 

 or side scales, with no aid beyond possibly a marked quoin to lay the 

 gun horizontal, and with shot which — perhajDS a good inch less in 

 diameter than the bore of the gun — wobbled from side to side, or from 

 top to bottom, leaving the gun at any angle that chance dictated, the 

 hitting the object aimed at was excessively doubtful. Still, by firing 

 a great many shot, they did manage to get home with sufficient to do 

 a good deal of damage. The Sj^anish accounts, speaking of the 

 quickness of the English fire, estimate the English expenditure of 

 shot as about three times their own.* Captain FitzGerald has 

 recently called attention to the possibility of a rapid fire of small 

 guns being found in the day of battle superior to the slow fire of big 

 guns. It is a very grave question, and one that deserves all the care 

 which Caj)tain FitzGerald can persuade our authorities to give it. 

 But in the case we are now considering, the conditions were reversed ; 

 it was the heavy armament which was quick firing, the lighter guns 

 which were slow. 



There is another point which may very probably have also stood 

 in the way of the Spanish gunners. Through the greater part of last 

 century, the ports of Spanish line-of-battle ships were made much too 

 small, with the idea, apparently, of keeping out the enemy's musketry 

 shot, but with the actual result that their guns could neither be 

 trained, depressed, or elevated. In this way was possible such an 

 action as that between the Glorioso, a 70-gun ship, and the King 

 George, a frigate-built privateer of 32 guns, in 1747 ; in which the 

 two ships engaged broadside to broadside for several hours, without 

 the privateer receiving any proportionate damage. f In the beginning, 

 some such fault was general ; and to a very great extent, the gun was 

 brought to bear by the action of the helm ; but it is at least probable 

 that Spanish ships carried it to a still greater degree, and that this 

 might, to some extent, exaggerate the badness of the Si^anish gunnery 

 practice, which was very bad indeed. 



All this was quite well known to Philip, and therefore to the 

 principal officers in the fleet before they left Lisbon. The king's 

 instructions to Medina-Sidonia say : — " You are especially to take 

 notice that the enemy's object will be to engage at a distance, on 

 account of the advantage which they have from their artillery and 



* Duro, ii. 377. t ' Studies in Naval History,' p. 243. 



