Then, worn out by work and worry, Santa Cruz died, and Philip forced the command on a most reluctant landlubber, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a very great grandee of Spain, but wholly unfitted to lead a fleet.  The death of Santa Cruz, in whom the fleet and army had great confidence, nearly upset the whole ‘Enterprize of England.’  The captains were as unwilling to serve under bandylegged, sea-sick Sidonia as he was unwilling to command them.  Volunteering ceased.  Compulsion failed to bring in the skilled ratings urgently required.  The sailors were now not only fewer than ever—­sickness and desertion had been thinning their ranks—­but many of these few were unfit for the higher kinds of seamanship, while only the merest handful of them were qualified as seamen gunners.  Philip, however, was determined; and so the doomed Armada struggled on, fitting its imperfect parts together into a still more imperfect whole until, in June, it was as ready as it ever could be made.

Meanwhile the English had their troubles too.  These were also political.  But the English navy was of such overwhelming strength that it could stand them with impunity.  The Queen, after thirty years of wonderful, if tortuous, diplomacy, was still disinclined to drop the art in which she was supreme for that in which she counted for so much less and by which she was obliged to spend so very much more.  There was still a little peace party also bent on diplomacy instead of war.  Negotiations were opened with Parma at Flushing and diplomatic ‘feelers’ went out towards Philip, who sent back some of his own.  But the time had come for war.  The stream was now too strong for either Elizabeth or Philip to stem or even divert into minor channels.

Lord Howard of Effingham, as Lord High Admiral of England, was charged with the defence at sea.  It was impossible in those days to have any great force without some great nobleman in charge of it, because the people still looked on such men as their natural viceroys and commanders.  But just as Sir John Norreys, the most expert professional soldier in England, was made Chief of the Staff to the Earl of Leicester ashore, so Drake was made Chief of the Staff to Howard afloat, which meant that he was the brain of the fleet.

A directing brain was sadly needed—­not that brains were lacking, but that some one man of original and creative genius was required to bring the modern naval system into triumphant being.  Like all political heads, Elizabeth was sensitive to public opinion; and public opinion was ignorant enough to clamor for protection by something that a man could see; besides which there were all those weaklings who have been described as the old women of both sexes and all ages, and who have always been the nuisance they are still.  Adding together the old views of warfare, which nearly everybody held, and the human weaknesses we have always with us, there was a most dangerously strong public opinion in favor of dividing up the navy so as to let enough different places actually see that they had some visible means of divided defence.