No sooner, however, was the war over than the Queen ordered a special survey to be made of the Navy. New ships were laid down and arsenals established for the supply of guns and gunpowder, which up to that time had been imported from Germany. Full advantage was taken of the privateering spirit, the erstwhile pirates being encouraged to undertake distant voyages. In many of these enterprises the Queen herself had a personal financial interest. She thus freed the country from various turbulent spirits who were inconvenient at home, and at one and the same time increased her own resources by doing so. There is every reason to believe that this action of Elizabeth’s was part of a well-designed and carefully thought out policy. The type of ship suitable for distant voyages and enterprises was naturally bound to become superior to that which was merely evolved from home service. The type of seamen thus bred was also necessarily bound to be better than the home-made article. Elizabeth can hardly have failed to realise these points also. To the _personnel_ of the regular Navy considerable attention was also given. Pay was raised to 6/8 per month for the seamen, and 5/- a month with 4/- a month for clothing for soldiers afloat. Messing was also increased to a daily ration of one pound of biscuit, a gallon of beer, with two pounds of beef per man four days out of the seven, and a proportionate amount of fish on the other three days. Subsequently, and just previous to the Armada, the pay of seamen rose to 10/- a month, with a view to inducing the better men not to desert. The regular navy was thus by no means badly provided for as things went in those days; while service with “gentlemen adventurers” offered attractions to a very considerable potential reserve, and so England contained a large population which, from one cause and another, was available for sea service. To these circumstances was it due that the Spanish Armada, when it came, never had the remotest possibility of success. It was doomed to destruction the day that Elizabeth first gave favour to the “gentlemen adventurers.” Of these adventurers the greatest of all was Francis Drake, who in 1577 made his first long voyage with five ships to the Pacific Ocean. Drake, alone, in the _Pelican_, succeeded in reaching the Pacific and carrying out his scheme of operations, which--not to put too fine a point on it--consisted of acts of piracy pure and simple against the Spaniards. He returned to England after an absence of nearly three years, during which he circumnavigated the globe.