Drake's own perfect plan was to take the whole fleet straight to Lisbon and beat the Armada as it tried to get out. This would have given him an enormous advantage; first, because he would have found the Armada at once, instead of having to search for it after it had sailed; secondly, because he could have crushed it ship by ship as it came out of the Tagus; and, thirdly, because this defeat of the Armada off the coast of Portugal would certainly prevent Parma from taking his army from Flanders into England. On the 30th of March, 1588, a day to be forever remembered in the history of sea-power, Drake wrote all this from Plymouth to the Queen and her Councillors. One civilian, Sir Francis Walsingham, saw at once that Drake was right. But the others shook their heads; while even those who thought Drake knew better than they did were afraid to let the fleet go so far away, because the people liked the comfort of seeing it close beside the coast. Drake's way was the way of Nelson, Jellicoe, Beatty, and all the greatest seamen. But he was not allowed to try it till the 7th of July, when the Armada had left Lisbon and was in the harbour of Corunna at the northwest corner of the Spanish coast. And even then the Queen kept him so short of stores that he could not have waited there to take the best chance. When almost in sight of Spain a roaring sou'wester blew up; so, being unable to wait, he had to come back to Plymouth on the 12th. Then for a week the English fleet was taking in stores as hard as it could. Lord Howard of Effingham, the Lord High Admiral of England, was in command as the Great Officer of State who represented the Queen. But he was a very sensible man, who, knowing that Drake was the greatest seaman in the world, let him do the fighting in the proper way. [Illustration: One of Drake's Men-of-War that Fought the Great Armada in 1588.] The southwest wind that blew Drake back brought the Armada out and up the English Channel. Howard and Drake, their desperate week of taking in stores at last quite done, were playing a game of bowls on the green when Captain Fleming, of the ever famous _Golden Hind_, rushed up to say the Spaniards were in sight of the Lizard, only sixty miles west. Drake, knowing perfectly well what time there was to spare, and how best to calm the people looking on, said, "There's time to finish the game first and the Spaniards after." But the fleet got its sailing orders on the spot; and all that fateful night the ships were working out of Plymouth Sound. The Queen and her politicians, though patriotic as any Sea-Dog, had, by keeping Drake so short of stores, very nearly got their own fleet caught in just the same way as Drake had wished to catch the Great Armada, that is, coming out of port, ship by ship, against a united fleet outside. But Philip's silly plan, the clumsiness of the Armada, and, above all, the supreme skill of the English Sea-Dogs, put everything to rights again.