The fatal weakness of the Great Armada was its being out of date. Though little better than an ancient floating army, it had to fight what then was the one really modern fleet; and this was its undoing. Time out of mind, as we have seen already, battles on the water had always been made as much like battles on the land as the wit of man could make them. They were fought by soldiers under generals, not by sailors under admirals. They were fought mostly on the platforms of huge rowboats called galleys; and the despised galley-slaves were almost the only seamen. Even the officers and men who handled the clumsy old sailing craft, or the still clumsier sail aboard a galley, were thought to be next door to nobodies; for their only work was to fit their craft together like so many bits of land in order that the soldiers might have the best imitation of a "proper field." The main bodies of these floating armies drew up in line-abreast (that is, side by side) charged each other end-on, and fought it out hand-to-hand on the mass of jammed-together platforms. No such battle was ever fought far from the land; for a good breeze would make the platforms wobble, while no galley could survive a gale. These ancient rowboat battles on calm coastal waters lasted till Lepanto in 1571. Guns, muskets, and sailing craft were all used at Lepanto. But the main fighting was done on galley platforms, and not so very differently done from the way the Greeks and Persians fought at Salamis twenty _centuries_ before. Then, after less than twenty _years_, the Armada, though better than the Spaniards at Lepanto, was sent across the open sea to fight a regular sea-going fleet, whose leaders were admirals, whose chief fighting men were sailors, whose movements were made under sail, and whose real weapon was the shattering broadside gun. It was ancient Spanish floating army against modern English Sea-Dog fleet.