The _San Iago_, having her bottom ripped out by a coral reef, her admiral, pilot, master and a dozen others entered into a boat, keeping it with naked rapiers until they got clear, and deserted. Left without any officers, the people on the wreck were addressed by an Italian seaman who cried, “Why are we thus abashed?” So ninety valiant mariners took the longboat and cleared, hacking off the fingers, hands and arms of the drowning women who held on to her gunwale. As to the pilot who caused this little accident, he afterward had charge of the _San Thomas_ “full of people, and most of the gentility of India,” and lost with all hands. But if the seamanship of the Portuguese made it a miracle if they escaped destruction, that of the Spaniards was on a much larger scale. Where Portugal lost a ship Spain bungled away a fleet, and never was incompetence more frightfully punished than in the doom of the four armadas. Philip II was busy converting Protestant Holland, and in 1587 he resolved to send a Catholic mission to England also, but while he was preparing the first armada Drake came and burned his hundred ships under the guns of Cadiz. A year later the second, the great armada, was ready, one hundred thirty ships in line of battle, which was to embark the army in Holland, and invade England with a field force of fifty-three thousand men, the finest troops in Europe. Were the British fleet of to-day to attack the Dutch the situation would be much the same. It was a comfort to the English that they had given most ample provocation and to spare, but still they felt it was very awkward. They had five million people, only the ninth part of their present strength; no battle-ships, and only thirty cruisers. The merchant service rallied a hundred vessels, the size of the fishing smacks, the Flemings lent forty, and nobody in England dared to hope. To do Spain justice she made plenty of noise, giving ample warning. Her fleet was made invincible by the pope’s blessing, the sacred banners and the holy relics, while for England’s spiritual comfort there was a vicar of the inquisition with his racks and thumbscrews. Only the minor details were overlooked: that the cordage was rotten, the powder damp, the wine sour, the water putrid, the biscuits and the beef a mass of maggots, while the ship’s drainage into the ballast turned every galleon into a floating pest-house. The admiral was a fool, the captains were landlubbers, the ships would not steer, and the guns could not be fought. The soldiers, navigators, boatswains and quartermasters were alike too proud to help the short-handed, overworked seamen, while two thousand of the people were galley slaves waiting to turn on their masters. Worst of all, this sacred, fantastic, doomed armada was to attack from Holland, without pilotage to turn our terrific fortifications of shoals and quicksands.