These were all burned, and Drake brought up at
Cape St. Vincent, hoping to meet there a portion of the Armada expected
from the Mediterranean. As a harbour was necessary, he landed, stormed
the fort at Faro, and took possession of the harbour there. The
expected enemy did not appear, and Drake sailed up to the mouth of the
Tagus, intending to go into Lisbon and attack the great Spanish fleet
lying there under its admiral, Santa Cruz.
That the force gathered there was enormous Drake well knew, but relying
as much on the goodness of his cause as on the valour of his sailors,
and upon the fact that the enemy would be too crowded together to fight
with advantage, he would have carried out his plan had not a ship
arrived from England with orders forbidding him to enter the Tagus.
However, he lay for some time at the mouth of the river, destroying
every ship that entered its mouth, and sending in a challenge to Santa
Cruz to come out and fight. The Spanish admiral did not accept it, and
Drake then sailed to Corunna, and there, as at Cadiz, destroyed all the
ships collected in the harbour and then returned to England, having in
the course of a few months inflicted an enormous amount of damage upon
Spain, and having taken the first step to prove that England was the
mistress of the sea.
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