Lord Howard did not attempt to stay them, as the wind was against him, but he let them ride lazily by in all their pomp and show.
The Spaniards, seeing that the English were ready for them, and were not to be caught napping, turned west again and anchored in the bay of Looe, a few miles from Plymouth Sound.
Next morning, Sunday, the 21st of July, the Spaniards weighed anchor early, with the idea of sailing east and seizing a harbour in the Isle of Wight, and then of going on to the Hague to take on board the Prince of Parma and his men.
Lord Howard let the Armada pass Plymouth, keeping his sixty ships in the haven. When about nine o'clock on this Sunday morning the Armada had all passed eastward, Howard weighed anchor and hoisted sail. "We durst not adventure to put in amongst them, their fleet being so strong," he wrote in his first report.
But he sent after them his swift pinnace, the Disdain, which fired the first shot; then came fire, smoke, and echoing cannon, for Howard in the Ark Royal followed the Disdain, thundering furiously upon a big galley which he thought was the admiral's flagship, but which proved to be the Spanish vice-admiral's, Alphonso de Leyva. Meanwhile Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher were playing fiercely upon the rear division under Juan de Recaldé.
We can imagine how anxiously Howard and Drake watched the effect of this first attack, and how they noted that the high galleons and galleasses were sending their shot plunging into the whitened sea right over the low hulls of barque and pinnace, while the English shot told again and again.
The wind was favouring the English, whose ships darted about from side to side with incredible rapidity round the slowly moving, stately Spaniards.
"Their great ships," says Hakluyt, "were powerful to defend, but not to offend; to stand, but not to move; and therefore far unfit to fight in narrow seas. Their enemies were nimble and ready at all sides to annoy them, and as apt to escape harm themselves by being low built and easily shot over."
So the Spaniards gathered their ships together in close order in form of a half-moon, keeping the smaller vessels in the centre.
This unequal fight lasted six hours. As Hawkins said, "We had some small fight with them that Sunday afternoon."