fortunes, after Howard had given up the chase, scarcely belongs to English Naval History, and may be very briefly summarised.
On August 11th, Medina Sidonia sent to Philip a dispatch[1] in which he admitted that the undertaking had failed. "God," he wrote, "has seen good to direct matters otherwise than we expected." He went on to lay down the reasons which had prompted the decision to give up the expedition. His fleet was almost destroyed; the best vessels had no ammunition; the survivors had no confidence or spirit remaining. The queen's fleet, owing to its peculiar methods of fighting, had proved its superiority to his. The English strength lay in gunnery and in seamanship. The Spanish strength, on the contrary, lay, unfortunately, in small-arms and in fight at close quarters; and as the Spaniards had been unable to get to close quarters, this advantage had not availed them. Looking to all the circumstances, Medina Sidonia deemed that he would best serve Philip by endeavouring to save the fleet by taking the admittedly perilous course home round Scotland. Indeed, the wind, which had steadily blown from the southward, left him no option. Besides his many wounded, he had three thousand sick among his people.
But the Armada had still the worst of its mishaps before it. In the course of the voyage round Scotland and Ireland, it lost by storm and shipwreck at least nineteen vessels,[2] and probably several more; for the exact fate of no fewer than thirty-five missing vessels of the great Spanish fleet remains to this day unknown. In addition to almost continuous bad weather, two exceptionally heavy storms were encountered. The galleass Girona went to pieces near Giant's Causeway, on a rock still called Spaniards' Rock, and carried down with her Don Alonso de Leyva, the Count of Paredes, and all her crew. The "urca" or hulk, El Gran Grifon, which belonged to Rostock, was lost on Fair Island, where Juan Gomes de Medina, admiral of the hulks, remained with his men during the whole winter, The Rata Coronada, or, to give her her full name, La Rata Santa Maria Encoronada,[3] went ashore and became a wreck on the coast of Erris. Don Alonso de Leyva, who later went on board the Girona, narrowly escaped losing his life in her. The Duquesa Santa Ana, into which he first removed, was
