Drake, who destroyed many Spanish ships while they were yet unequipped, and early in 1588 Santa Cruz died. Medina Sidonia was appointed in his stead, despite his protestations of lack of the necessary experience.
He sailed at the end of May with 130 ships and a total of 30,493 men, a force far inferior to the original Santa Cruz estimate, though, so far as soldiers were concerned, troops from the Netherlands were destined to bring it up to something like the Santa Cruz figure. The lessened number of troops to be transported from Spain reduced the number of ships, for the original estimate embodies 150 'great ships of war'[1] besides many lesser warships, whereas the whole total of Medina Sidonia's force was only about 130 ships of all sorts, and of these several came to grief on the way. Professor Laughton estimates the outside numbers that reached the Channel as under 120 ships and 24,000 men. Of these not more than sixty-two were fighting ships, several of which were but very lightly armed. The Annunciada, for instance, carried but three 18-pounders and three 9-pounders in the way of medium-sized guns, and several others were proportionately feeble.[2] The same authority places the English fleet at forty-nine vessels, a few of them quite as large as the Spaniards in tonnage, though of less freeboard. The English ships carried many more heavy guns than the Spaniards as a rule, had altogether
