The enemy's ships moved steadily toward the coast in the form of a crescent seven miles across; but Howard, Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, and other noted captains, were ready to receive them. With their fast-sailing cruisers they sailed around the unwieldy Spanish warships, firing four shots to the enemy's one, and "harassing them as a swarm of wasps worry a bear." Several of the Spanish vessels were captured and one blown up. At last the commander sailed for Calais to repair damages and take a fresh start. The English followed. When night came on, Drake sent eight blazing fire ships to drift down among the Armada as it lay at anchor. Thoroughly alarmed at the prospect of being burned where they lay, the Spaniards cut their cables and made sail for the north. 401. Destruction of the Armada, 1588; Elizabeth at Tilbury and at St. Paul's. They were hotly pursued by the English, who, having lost but a single vessel in the fight, might have cut them to pieces, had not Elizabeth's suicidal economy stinted them in body powder and provisions. Meanwhile the Spanish fleet kept moving northward. The wind increased to a gale, the gale to a furious storm. The commander of the Armada attempted to go around Scotland and return home that way; but ship after ship was driven ashore and wrecked on the wild and rocky coast of western Ireland. On one strand, less than five miles long, over a thousand corpses were counted. Those who escaped the waves met death by the hands of the inhabitants. Of the magnificent fleet which had sailed so proudly from Spain only fifty-three vessels returned, and they were but half manned by exhausted crews stricken by pestilence and death. Thus ended Philip II's boasted attack on England. When all danger was past, Elizabeth went to Tilbury, on the Thames below London, to review the troops collected there to defend the capital. "I know," said she, "that I have but the feeble body of a woman, but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England too." Unhappily the niggardly Queen had half starved her brave sailors, and many of them came home only to die. None the less Elizabeth went with solemn pomp to St. Paul's Cathedral to offer thanks for the great victory, which was commemorated by a medal bearing this inscription: "God blew with his winds, and they were scattered." The date of the defeat of the Armada, 1588, was a turning point in English history. From that time England gradually rose, under the leadership of such illustrious commanders as Drake, Blake, and Nelson, until she became what she has ever since remained--the greatest sea power in the world (SS459, 557). 402. Insurrection in Ireland (1595).