Towards the end of 1339, Edward and his expedition returned to England to refit, with a view to preparing for a fresh invasion of France during the following summer. As Edward was about to embark, he learned that the French King had got together an enormous fleet at Sluys. After collecting some additional vessels, bringing the total number of ships up to 250 or thereabouts, Edward took command and sailed for Sluys, at which port he found the French fleet. He localised the French on Friday, July 3rd, but it was not until the next day that the battle took place. The recorded number of the enemy in all these early sea fights requires to be accepted with caution. For what it is worth the number of French ships has been given at 400 vessels, each carrying 100 men. The French, as on a later occasion they did on the Nile, lay on the defensive at the mouth of the harbour, the ships being lashed together by cables. Their boats, filled with stones, had been hoisted to the mast-heads. In the van of their fleet lay the _Christopher_, _Edward_, and various other “King’s ships,” which they captured in the previous year. [Illustration: BATTLE OF SLUYS--1340.] The English took the offensive, and in doing so manœuvred to have the sun behind them. Then, with their leading ships crowded with archers they bore down upon the main French division and grappled with them. The battle, which lasted right throughout the night, was fought with unexampled fury, and for a long time remained undecisive, considerable havoc being wrought by the French with the then novel idea of dropping large stones from aloft. The combatants, however, were so mixed up that it is doubtful whether the French did not kill as many of their own number as of the enemy; whereas, on the other side, the use of English archers who were noted marksmen told only against those at whom the arrows were directed. Furthermore, the English had the tactical advantage of throwing the whole of their force on a portion of the enemy, whom they ultimately totally destroyed. This Battle of Sluys took place in 1340. In 1346, after various truces, the English again attacked France in force, and the result was the Battle of Cressy. A side issue of this was the historic siege of Calais, which held out for about twelve months. 738 ships and 14,956 men are said to have been employed in the sea blockade. Up to this time the principal English ship had been a galley, _i.e._, essentially a row boat. About the year 1350 the galley began to disappear as a capital ship, and the galleon, with sail as its main motive power, took its place. Also a new enemy appeared; for at that time England first came into serious conflict with Spain. To a certain extent the galleon was to the fleets of the Mid-Fourteenth Century much what the ironclad was to the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, or “Dreadnoughts” at the end of the first decade of the Twentieth Century.