The ships of the Royal Navy at this time amounted to no more than thirty-six; but the most serviceable merchant vessels were collected from all the ports of the country; and the citizens of London, Bristol, and the other great seats of commerce, showed as liberal a zeal in equipping and manning vessels as the nobility and gentry displayed in mustering forces by land. The seafaring population of the coast, of every rank and station, was animated by the same ready spirit; and the whole number of seamen who came forward to man the English fleet was 17,472. The number of the ships that were collected was a hundred and ninety-one; and the total amount of their tonnage 31,985. There was one ship in the fleet (the _Triumph_) of eleven hundred tons, one of ten hundred, one of nine hundred, two of eight hundred each, three of six hundred, five of five hundred, five of four hundred, six of three hundred, six of two hundred and fifty, twenty of two hundred, and the residue of inferior burden. Application was made to the Dutch for assistance; and, as Stowe expresses it, "The Hollanders came roundly in, with threescore sail, brave ships of war, fierce and full of spleen, not so much for England's aid, as in just occasion for their own defence; these men foreseeing the greatness of the danger that might ensue, if the Spaniards should chance to win the day and get the mastery over them; in due regard whereof their manly courage was inferior to none." We have more minute information of the numbers and equipment of the hostile forces than we have of our own. In the first volume of Hakluyt's "Voyages," dedicated to Lord Effingham, who commanded against the Armada, there is given (from the contemporary foreign writer, Meteran) a more complete and detailed catalogue than has perhaps ever appeared of a similar armament. "The number of mariners in the saide fleete were above eight thousand, of slaves two thousand and eighty-eight, of soldiers twenty thousand (besides noblemen and gentlemen voluntaries), of great cast pieces two thousand six hundred. The aforesaide ships were of an huge and incredible capacitie and receipt: for the whole fleete was large enough to containe the burthen of sixty thousand tunnes.