It was otherwise with English navies. All through the Tudor period, the nation was steadily realising its maritime capacities. Whether the strategic meaning of "ruling the seas" was understood or not, the century witnessed the rise of the English naval power from comparative insignificance to an actual pre-eminence. The two Henries fostered their fleets; when Elizabeth was reigning, the sea-faring impulse was past any need of artificial encouragement. But it is noteworthy that coast defence and ship-building were almost the only public purposes to which an appreciable share of the King's ecclesiastical spoils was appropriated. The King's ships were few, but they were supplemented by an ever-increasing supply of armed merchant-craft; and in the French war at the end of Henry's reign is the premonition of the great struggle with Spain, in which one most characteristic feature was the comparative reliance of England on sails and of her rivals on oars. As yet however, naval fighting was still governed by military analogies. [Sidenote: The New World] Though Henry was keenly interested in ship-building and naval construction, in the matter of ocean voyages and the acquisition of new realms Spain and Portugal still left all competitors far behind. Albuquerque had already founded a Portuguese Maritime empire in the Indian Ocean when Henry VIII. ascended the throne, and Spain was established in the West Indies. In 1513, Balboa sighted the Pacific from the Isthmus of Darien. In 1519 Cortes conquered Mexico; in 1520 Magelhaens passed through the straits [Footnote: It was still believed that Tierra del Fuego was a vast continent stretching to the South.] that bear his name, and his ships completed their voyage round the globe in the course of the next two years; in 1532 Pizarro conquered Peru; Brazil and the River Plate were already discovered and appropriated. All that England had done was represented by some Bristol explorers in the far North, some tentative efforts in the direction of Africa; and some four voyages to Brazil, the first two under William Hawkins, father of the more famous Sir John. [Sidenote: Absolutism]