"The Lord Mayor of London, a very wise man,
What to do in the case vastly wondered.
Says the Queen, ' Send in fifty good ships, if you can,'
Says the Lord Mayor, 'I'll send you a hundred!'
Our fire ships soon struck every cannon all dumb,
For the Dons ran to Ave and Credo;
Don Medina roars out, ' Sure the foul fiend is come,
For th' Invincible Spanish Armado.'
"On Effingham's squadron, tho' all in abreast,
Like open-mouth'd curs they came bowling;
His sugar-plums finding they could not digest,
Away they ran yelping and howling.
When Britain's foe shall, all with envy agog,
In our Channel make such a tornado,
Huzza! my brave boys! we're still lusty to flog
An Invincible . . . . Armado."
And here the dotted line will allow of Gallic, Russian, or German to be inserted. Of Spanish there need be no fear. Spain is played out.
A fine bronze statue of Sir Francis by Boehm is on the Hoe, the traditional site of the bowling match, but it is only a replica of that at Tavistock, and lacks the fine bas-reliefs representing incidents in the life of Drake; among others, the game of bowls, and his burial at sea. On the Hoe is also a ridiculous tercentenary monument commemorative of the Armada, and the upper portion of Smeaton's Eddystone lighthouse.
This dangerous reef had occasioned so many wrecks and such loss of life, that Mr. Henry Winstanley, a gentleman of property in Essex, a self-taught mechanician, resolved to devote his attention and his money to the erection of a lighthouse upon the reef, called Eddystone probably because of the swirl of
