By five o’clock on Tuesday morning, 2nd of August, the Armada lay between Portland Bill and St. Albans’ Head, when the wind shifted to the north-east, and gave the Spaniards the weather-gage.  The English did their beat to get to windward, but the Duke, standing close into the land with the whole Armada, maintained his advantage.  The English then went about, making a tack seaward, and were soon afterwards assaulted by the Spaniards.  A long and spirited action ensued.  Howard in his little Ark-Royal—­“the odd ship of the world for all conditions”—­was engaged at different times with Bertendona, of the Italian squadron, with Alonzo de Leyva in the Batta, and with other large vessels.  He was hard pressed for a time, but was gallantly supported by the Nonpareil, Captain Tanner; and after a long and confused combat, in which the St. Mark, the St. Luke, the St. Matthew, the St. Philip, the St. John, the St. James, the St. John Baptist, the St. Martin, and many other great galleons, with saintly and apostolic names, fought pellmell with the Lion, the Bear, the Bull, the Tiger, the Dreadnought, the Revenge, the Victory, the Triumph, and other of the more profanely-baptized English ships, the Spaniards were again baffled in all their attempts to close with, and to board, their ever-attacking, ever-flying adversaries.  The cannonading was incessant.  “We had a sharp and a long fight,” said Hawkins.  Boat-loads of men and munitions were perpetually arriving to the English, and many, high-born volunteers—­like Cumberland, Oxford, Northumberland, Raleigh, Brooke, Dudley, Willoughby, Noel, William Hatton, Thomas Cecil, and others—­could no longer restrain their impatience, as the roar of battle sounded along the coasts of Dorset, but flocked merrily on board the ships of Drake,—­Hawkins, Howard, and Frobisher, or came in small vessels which they had chartered for themselves, in order to have their share in the delights of the long-expected struggle.

The action, irregular, desultory, but lively, continued nearly all day, and until the English had fired away most of their powder and shot.  The Spaniards, too, notwithstanding their years of preparation, were already sort of light metal, and Medina Sidonia had been daily sending to Parma for a Supply of four, six, and ten pound balls.  So much lead and gunpowder had never before been wasted in a single day; for there was no great damage inflicted on either side.  The artillery-practice was certainly not much to the credit of either nation.

“If her Majesty’s ships had been manned with a full supply of good gunners,” said honest William Thomas, an old artilleryman, “it would have been the woefullest time ever the Spaniard took in hand, and the most noble victory ever heard of would have been her Majesty’s.  But our sins were the cause that so much powder and shot were spent, so long time in fight, and in comparison so little harm done.  It were greatly to be wished that her Majesty were no longer deceived in this way.”