have drowned all those which were in her.” Neither then, however, nor in any of her mishaps, does she appear to have actually drowned anyone, not even when, in 1591, “with a storme of wind and weather, riding at her moorings in the river of Rochester, nothing but her bare Masts overhead, shee was turned topse-turvie, her Kele uppermost.” One might have thought that this final proof of her indestructibility would convince her detractor. Drake, at any rate, knew a good sea-boat when he saw one, for he chose her for his flagship when he sailed against the Armada as Vice-Admiral, and the Calendar of State Papers contains, under the date of November, 1588, a “Device of Lord Admiral Howard, Sir F. Drake, Sir W. Wynter, Sir John Hawkyns, Capt. Wm. Borough and others, for the construction of four new ships to be built on the [Illustration] model of the _Revenge_, but exceeding her in burthen.” (She was but of 500 tons herself, and carried at most 260 men and forty guns.) To this evidence we may add the statement of a Spanish prisoner, bearing the delightful name of Gonsalo Gonsalez del Castillo, who writes in 1592 that in England “they have been much pained by the loss of one of the Queen’s galleons, called the _Revenge_; they say she was the best ship the Queen had, and the one in which they had the most confidence for her defence.” Such was the _Revenge_, and, if she had her share of misfortune she had also her full share of prosperous service. She bore Drake’s flag as Vice-Admiral from January 3, 1588. On May 23, at the head of sixty sail, she escorted the Lord Admiral Howard into Plymouth; then, till July 12, [Illustration] she watched and longed for the “felicisima Armada.” On Saturday the 20th, while the enemy crept up Channel in heavy rain, and the wind fell lighter and lighter, she tacked and tacked her way out painfully through a night of deadly anxiety. She had her reward. On Sunday, “conspicuous with an extravagant pennant and a banner on her mizzen, and fighting almost at grappling distance,” she battered Don Juan Martinez de Recalde in the _Santa Anna_. Towards evening the Admirals held Council on board her; when night fell her lantern led the fleet, until Drake, finding himself among strange sail, extinguished it and lay by for daylight. Howard and the rest went after the Spanish lights, and when dawn came the _Revenge_ found herself alone, [Illustration]