The English fleet had the resource of retiring to its own harbours, but there was no such escape for the Spaniards. There was no port of their own available for the heavy ships nearer than the Bay of Biscay. Parma did indeed advise the duke to betake himself to the free city of Hamburg, where, as he was well provided with money, he would have no difficulty in finding stores, and from whence he could issue later on for the purpose either of renewing the attack on England, or of co-operating in a serious effort to reduce Holland and Zeeland. Whatever the worth of the advice may have been, and whether it was physically practicable or not, the Duke of Medina Sidonia was in no condition to act upon it. He had become completely cowed. Indeed, he had just had a demonstration of the utter unfitness of his fleet for the work his master the king had sent him to perform. The battle of Gravelines was followed by strong breezes, for they do not seem to have attained to the dignity of a storm, from the S. and S.W. Under the impulse of these winds, the heavier ships of the Armada began to drift on the shallows of the coast of Zeeland. By the confession of the Spaniards, their vessels were wholly at the mercy of the wind and the currents. They drifted along quite unable to help themselves, and only a lucky shift of the wind saved them from going ashore. When the wind did turn to a point more favourable to them, the Spanish ships, still very little diminished in number, but entirely broken in spirit, straggled out into the North Sea, and then, by the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, all stood to the northward for the purpose of making their way back to Spain by the west of the British Isles.