Froude describes the scene thus, using as his authorities the letters of eyewitnesses, Howard, Drake, Winter, and other accounts now in the Record Office. “When the Spanish bells were about striking twelve, and, save the watch on deck, soldiers and seamen lay stretched in sleep, certain dark objects, which had been seen dimly drifting on the tide where the galleons lay thickest, shot suddenly into pyramids of light, flames leaping from ruddy sail to sail, flickering on the ropes, and forecastles, foremasts and bowsprits a lurid blaze of conflagration.... Panic spread through the entire Armada; the enemy they most dreaded was upon them.” The success of the fire-ships was complete, so far as frightening the Spanish into putting to sea was concerned. Most of the galleons, after some confusion and damage, got clear of the shoals, and lay-to about six miles from the shore. Then when daybreak came, some were seen aground on Calais Bar. During the next few days the running fight was resumed, as at first the galleons strove to regain their former anchorage off Calais, but were driven along the Dutch coast, ultimately to speed northwards towards Scotland, with Howard, Drake, Hawkins, and the rest of the English captains in hot pursuit. “Without pilots, in a strange sea, with the autumn storms prematurely upon them, and with no friendly port for which to run, he (Medina Sidonia) became utterly unmanned.... On, therefore, sped the Armada before the rising breeze, the English still following. Then as ship after ship became leaky or disabled by the ever-rising storm, and was abandoned with callousness bred of ‘a wonderful fear,’ what remained of the great fleet of Philip of Spain passed for a time out of English ken, and rushed northwards to destruction and dismemberment.” Howard was at last compelled to abandon the chase. Froude tells us “the English had but three days’ provisions left, and to follow further so ill-provided, with the prospect of a continuing storm, was to run into needless danger.” Thus, with the return of Howard’s ships to Margate and Harwich, was the “greatest service ever done by an English fleet ... successfully accomplished by men whose wages had not been paid from the time of their engagement, half-starved, with their clothes in rags and falling off their backs, and so ill-found in the necessaries of war that they had eked out their ammunition by what they could take in action from the enemy himself.” Plymouth’s share in the most glorious event in national history was the chief and ever unforgettable one. And for this reason we have told the story of it somewhat fully. It was from Plymouth that Sir Walter Raleigh set sail with other bold adventurers for America, where he took possession of Virginia, calling the new colony after his none too grateful mistress, Queen Elizabeth, on July 13, 1584.