Gilbert Oglander, as he strode towards the companion stairs after having helped Sir Richard Grenville to don his body armour, glanced round at the vast fleet of the enemy. Each galleon's decks and fighting-tops were crowded with soldiers, whose morions and breastplates glistened in the afternoon sun. On the San Philip's decks there were, as he afterwards estimated, no fewer than six or seven hundred soldiers, apart from her seamen, and the others of the Spanish ships must certainly have been equally well manned; while on the Revenge there were no fighting-men beside the mariners, excepting only the servants of her officers and some few gentlemen volunteers like himself.
Already the dread sounds of battle greeted Gilbert's unaccustomed ears. The loud rumbling roar of the cannons coming from the lumbering hulls below was mingled with the sharp crackling of musketry from above, where the Spaniards posted in the tops were firing in the hope of picking off some of the English officers. The air was even at this early time charged with a faint smell of burnt gunpowder. Gilbert did not pause to watch the opening of the battle, but hastened down to the main-deck, where, for the present, he was to occupy himself in helping the gunners and carrying out the powder from the magazines.
Here, down below, he found Edward Webbe with his lighted lintlock coolly glancing outward along the barrel of a great brass gun. There was no need to take careful aim, for wheresoever the cannon might be fired its contents of heavy shot were certain to strike into the oaken hull of one of the galleons. Webbe applied his fuse, and the cannon flung forth its spurt of fire with a thunderous boom that made the very deck shake and the strained lashings creak. Along the whole space of the 'tween decks and at both sides the gunners applied themselves to their work with quiet and unruffled movements, and presently Edward Webbe gave up his gun to another man and undertook the task of directing his shipmates in the work, only peering out now and again through one of the portholes to watch the movements of the enemy, as galleon after galleon came within close range.
"Steady, my lads!" he cried, "and take good aim. Waste not a shot, but mark well where it must find its home. Lower your gun's muzzle, Matthew Giles," he said to one who was training his piece to fire against the walls of one of the nearer galleons. "Take her below the water-line, and sink her."
It was the great San Philip that was alongside now. Having blocked out the breeze from the Revenge's sails by her own vast stretch of canvas, she had forced herself full into the path of the English man-of-war, and swung herself round broadside to broadside, with her grapplings ready to hold her intended victim fast and so overpower her by superior strength, and riddle her with shot until she should sink. This was just at three o'clock in the afternoon, and forthwith the terrible and memorable combat was begun in desperate earnest.
At the same time four other of the most formidable of the Spanish galleons—the smallest of them double the size of the Revenge—drew out to support the San Philip, and took up positions round Sir Richard Grenville's ship, two on her larboard side, one astern of her, and the fourth under her bows. And all five assailed her with a storm of iron shot and heavy stone balls and langrage and cross-bar shot. The noise of the discharge of so many guns was deafening to hear. But it was seen that the greater number of the shots passed over her, so low in the hull was she compared with the towering height of her enemies. Nevertheless many a shot buried itself in her stout sides, many crashed through her bulwarks, cut great pieces out of her masts, and tore her sails and rigging. But her gallant flag of St George waved gloriously on high; her men stuck to their work with ever-ripening courage, and small though she was in the midst of her huge foes, she dealt them as much as they gave: nay, even more than that, for she had British guns on board of her and British men to fire them, and never a shot did they fire that did not tell.
After the interchange of many volleys of great ordnance and small-shot, the Spaniards, finding that the Revenge still held her ground and defended herself with so great determination, made an attempt to board her, hoping to force her by the sheer multitude of their armed soldiers and musketeers. The great San Philip drew to close quarters. Her bulging sides crunched against those of the Revenge, and a host of her men clambered over her rails, pike and sword in hand, climbed into the Revenge's lower shrouds, and swarmed like so many infuriated bees along her stout bulwarks at every point. But Ambrose Pennington, who had control of the murderer-gun on the starboard side of Sir Richard's quarter-deck, was ready at the moment with his fuse. He fired the gun, and its scattering charge of small-shot played fearful havoc among the would-be boarders, while those who escaped the destructive fire fell either back between the ships or forward upon the deck of the Revenge, where they were speedily overpowered.
Nor were the gunners below decks unmindful of their opportunity. At the moment when the Spaniards were in the act of boarding, Edward Webbe had every gun on his starboard side ready loaded with cross-bar shot and primed. He gave the order, and his men applied their lintlocks, and the full broadside was discharged straight into the San Philip's hull. After this she sheered off with all diligence from her too close position, "utterly misliking her first entertainment". It was said afterwards that the galleon foundered, but Sir Walter Raleigh in his written account of the fight cast doubt upon the point. Howbeit, no sooner had the San Philip been cleared away than her position was taken up by yet another galleon, only to be beaten off in like manner. One after another they closed and boarded, one after another they were flung back beaten and in confusion, their boarders being repulsed again and again, taking refuge in their own ships or else falling into the seas.
To tell every incident of this terrible battle would make a long story, albeit the valour displayed by our English seamen on that great occasion has no more glorious example in all the annals of our navy's history. Hour after hour went by and still the Revenge fought on with undaunted courage. Many of her men were slain and many were hurt, and her surgeons and their assistants were busy in the hold. Yet the Spaniards suffered more. Early in the fight Don Louis Cutino, one of the admirals of Seville, brought his galleon alongside in all her bravery, but he had not fought for more than a quarter of an hour ere a broadside from the Revenge was fired point blank into his vessel's hull, sinking her with all on board. And the same fate befell the powerful galleon, the Ascension, of Seville, commanded by the Marquis of Arumburch. One other galleon, sorely beaten, had yet strength to recover the roadstead of the island of St. Michaels, where she quickly followed her anchor to the bottom. A fourth, to save her men, was run aground on Flores.
All through that hot August afternoon the Revenge fought on, and as each galleon was driven off another pushed in to relieve her beaten consort and to renew the attack upon the stubborn little English man-of-war, who withstood it all with her hundred men on board, resisting all comers. With never fewer than two mighty galleons by her side, she fought to the death, single-handed.