There was harder work for the _Dreadnought_ in the great battle of Tuesday off Portland Bill. First came the fierce brush in the morning, when Drake and Lord Howard and the leaders of the English fleet, after a daring attempt to work in between the Spanish fleet and the Dorset coast, had to tack at the last moment, baffled for want of sea room, and were closed with by the enemy in the act of going about. On came the galleons exultantly, their crews shouting and cheering, amid a blare of trumpets and ruffle of drums, in full confidence to run down and sink the lighter built English vessels. It was a moment of extreme peril:—but at the very last, suddenly, the fortune of the day changed. As the Spaniards seemed to be upon them the wind shifted, the English sails filled, ship by ship and all together, and then stretching out with bowsprits pointing seaward, the _Revenge_, _Victory_, _Ark Royal_, _Dreadnought_, and the others safely cleared the enemy, pouring in so fierce a fire as they passed that the Spanish ships had to sheer off. This was the first fight of the day. Later, when the wind, going round with the sun, shifted again and gave Drake and Howard the weather gage, came on the most desperate encounter with the Armada that our ships had yet seen. Lord Howard in the _Ark Royal_ and Drake in the _Revenge_, with the _Dreadnought_, the _Lion_, the _Victory_, and the _Mary Rose_ near at hand, driving ahead before the wind, pushed into the thick of the Spanish main body, and attacked the enemy, in a long and furious battle that lasted until the afternoon sun was nearing the horizon. A third day of battle was yet to come—Thursday’s hot fight off the back of the Isle Wight, and here again the _Dreadnought_ took her full share of what was done, until the long summer day drew to its close and the Armada “gathered in a roundel,” sullenly stood off eastward, proposing to fight no more until the coast of Flanders had been made. Next morning the _Dreadnought’s_ captain was summoned on board Lord Howard’s flagship, the _Ark Royal_. He returned “Sir George,” knighted by the Lord High Admiral on the quarter-deck, in the presence of the enemy. Sunday night saw the fireship attack, so disastrous to the Armada, and next morning followed the crowning victory of the week’s campaign, the great fight off Gravelines of Monday, the 29th of July, “the great battle which, more distinctly perhaps than any battle of modern times, has moulded the history of Europe—the battle which curbed the gigantic power of Spain, which shattered the Spanish prestige and established the basis of England’s empire.” Here the _Dreadnought_ distinguished herself again, fighting in the thick of the fray from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, within pistol-shot of the enemy most of the time.