This the earl had done, and early in May they had journeyed down to Plymouth on horseback with a party of other gentlemen who were going on board the _Active_, a vessel of two hundred and fifty tons belonging to a gentleman of Devonshire, one Master Audrey Drake, a relation of Sir Francis Drake. The earl himself was with the party. He did not intend to go on board, for he was a bad sailor; and though ready, as he said, to do his share of fighting upon land, would be only an encumbrance on board a ship. He went down principally at the request of Cecil and other members of the council, who, knowing that he was a favourite of the queen, thought that his representations as to the state of the fleet might do more than they could do to influence her to send supplies to the distressed sailors. The earl visited the ships lying in the mouth of the Tamar, and three times started in a boat to go out to those in the Sound; but the sea was so rough, and he was so completely prostrated by sickness, that he had each time to put back. What he saw, however, on board the ships he visited, and heard from Lord Howard as to the state of those at sea, was quite sufficient. He at once expended a considerable amount of money in buying wine and fresh meat for the sick, and then hurried away to London to lay before the queen the result of his personal observations, and to implore her to order provisions to be immediately despatched to the fleet. But even the description given by one of her favourites of the sufferings of the seamen was insufficient to induce the queen to open her purse-strings, and the earl left her in great dudgeon; and although his private finances had been much straitened by his extravagance and love of display, he at once chartered a ship, filled her with provisions, and despatched her to Plymouth. Mr. Drake and the gentlemen with him took up their abode in the town until there should be need for them to go on board the _Active_, where the accommodation was much cramped, and life by no means agreeable; and the Vickars therefore escaped sharing the sufferings of those on board ship. At the end of May came the news that the Armada had sailed on the 19th, and high hopes were entertained that the period of waiting had terminated. A storm, however, scattered the great fleet, and it was not until the 12th of July that they sailed from the Bay of Ferrol, where they had collected after the storm. Never was there known a season so boisterous as the summer of 1588, and when off Ushant, in a south-west gale, four galleys were wrecked on the French coast, and the _Santa Anna_, a galleon of 800 tons, went down, carrying with her ninety seamen, three hundred soldiers, and 50,000 ducats in gold.