But owing to lack of wind neither fleet became generally engaged, and the affair, which might have been a naval battle, descended to the level of a mere desultory fight between the French galleys and the English ships which had succeeded in creeping out nearest the French fleet ere the wind entirely dropped. The _Mary Rose_ was not one of the ships near enough to take part in the engagement. She was manned, so one authority asserts, with officers and seamen who had so good an opinion of their own importance and skill that they considered themselves “fitter to command than to obey.” The gun ports were opened, the guns run out, and, by carelessness on account of the calm, the latter were not properly secured. As the day wore on, however, a breeze suddenly came, the ship heeled over to it, and in consequence the windward tier of guns crashed across the deck, causing the ship to heel still further over with the great additional weight. The lee ports were suddenly dipped under water, the sea rushed in, and a few moments later the great, unwieldy ship sank with 600 on board of her. It is said that the watchword of the fleet on that memorable occasion was “God Save the King,” and the pass words, “Long to reign over us.” Some authorities assert that to these words may be traced the origin of our National Anthem. How true this view may be it is not easy to say. There have been other disasters near the same spot, too; notably the loss of the _Royal George_, the 108-gun ship of Rear-Admiral Kempenfeldt, which sank at Spithead on August 29, 1782, whilst heeled over for the repair of a pipe. All hands were aboard to the number of about 600 souls, including women and Jews. Also there was the sinking of the _Newcastle_, which went down with her crew in 1703; the loss of the _Edgar_ and 400 lives by the blowing up of her powder magazine in 1711; and that of 98-gun line-of-battle ship _Boyne_ from a similar cause in 1795. War always brought stirring times for Portsmouth, for though, perhaps, the hum and bustle was not equal to that of to-day’s stress and hurry, these things are, after all, comparative, and the seamen of “Bluff King Hal’s” time worked probably with as good or better will than those of our own in manœuvring the galleons and caravels, which must, as one writer says, “have been fickle craft in all save a beam wind.”