HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

consisting of seven ships, belonging to the queen, fitted out in 1591, under thecommand of the Lord Thomas Howard, for the purpose of intercepting the Spa-

nish Plate fleet. The expedition was rendered particularly memorable by thevery gallant defence, and much to be lamented death, of the brave Sir Richard

Grenville, who unfortunately fell into the hands of the Spaniards, together

with his ship the Revenge, which had received so much injury in the encounter,

that it foundered five days afterwards.

This tranquillity, for such it might be deemed, in comparison with the hurryof those transactions which took place during the year 1588, was in somemeasure interrupted in 1596, by the expedition to Cadiz, commanded by theEarl of Essex. The account of it would be extraneous in this place, it beingsufficient for the present purpose to state merely, that the armament* consisted offourteen ships belonging to the queen’s navy, five of which appear to have beenlaunched since the destruction of the Armada -j-. Their names are the DueRepulse, of 700 tons, the ship on board which the earl himself embarked ; theMary Honora, as it was commonly called, but more properly the Mer Honneur,of 800 tons; the Warspight, of 600 ; the Acquittance, or Quittance, and theCrane, of 200 ^ tons burthen each. The mighty preparations made by theking of Spain to revenge his former defeat, as well as the insult offered hisdignity by the foregoing invasion, were completely dispersed by a violent tem-pest ; and in the following year, a second expedition took place under thesame commander, in which two other first 'rate ships make their appearance—the St. Matthew and the St. Andrew, the former of 1000, the latter of900 tons burthen. No mention is made of any more new vessels being em-ployed in the few remaining expeditions which took place during this queen’s

* Talbot papers, in Bib. Coll. Arm. vol. marked I. p. 259.

Mention is made in some of the preceding expeditions of the following ships :—the Defiance,of 500 tons ; the Garland, or Guardland, of "700; and the Adventure, of 250 ; all of them new ships.In the year 1590, the queen made several new arrangements and regulations for the improvement ofher navy, and to put it on a much superior footing to what it had previously been. As a preliminarystep to this purpose, the regular yearly sum of eight thousand nine hundred and seventy pounds wasassigned for repairs : a sum then deemed fully equivalent to so great a purpose. From hence may beinferred the high value of money in those days, the economy and care used in the disbursement of it, aswell as what is of still greater consequence to our present enquiry, the cheap rate at which all naval storeswere then sold.

X Both the last were launched in 1589.

VOL. II.

K

reign.