The advocates of the fast, low-lying ships carried the day. War came with Spain, and there was soon work to show what the English ships could do. The _Armada Papers_[7] light up for us, by the fitful glare of the cressets of Hawkins and Co., the preparation of the fleet at Plymouth, and show us what state of efficiency the royal ships were in. “The _Hope_ and _Nonpariel_ are both graved, tallowed, and this tide into the road again,” writes William Hawkins to his brother. “We trim one side of every ship by night and the other side by day, so that we end the three great-ships in three days this spring. The ships sit aground so strongly, and are so staunch as if they were made of a whole tree. The doing of it is very chargeable, for that it is done by torchlight and cressets, and in an extreme gale of wind, which consumes pitch, tallow, and firs abundantly.” Not only the few royal ships, but the whole of the force which lies in the Sound is tuned for the fight. “For Mr. Hawkins’ bargain,” writes the Commander-in-Chief to Lord Burghley, “this much I will say: I have been aboard of every ship that goeth out with me, and in every place where any may creep, and there is never a one of them that knows what a leak means. I do thank God that they be in the estate they be in.” The Spanish ships prove to be in a very different condition. High-charged and leewardly, poorly rigged and lightly gunned, they are so hammered and raked by Lord Howard’s well-found fleet that, when bad weather ultimately comes, they are in no condition to combat the elements. With masts and rigging shattered, water-casks smashed, no anchors; short-handed and leaking like sieves, they are hounded northwards to a disaster unparalleled in naval history. And now, before tracing its evolution through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, let us glance at the warship as it existed at the end of the Elizabethan era, and note its chief constructive features. § Athwart a keel of large squared timbers, scarphed together and forming with a massive inner keelson the principal member or backbone, were laid the curved frames or ribs which, bolted to each other and to the keel with iron bolts washered and clinched, gave to the hull its transverse strength and form. These frames were held together, as they curved upward from the ground or floor level, by thick longitudinal wales, worked externally along the frames at convenient heights, and curved so as to suit the degree of sheer desired.