The ship was of the new English "race-built" class, low in the water and swift. Absent were the bulky superstructures on bow and stern that weighed down a galleon, the "castles" that Spanish and Portuguese commanders used to stage infantry for boarding an enemy vessel. A full thirty years before, the English seaman and explorer John Hawkins had scoffed at these, as had Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. They saw clearly that the galleons' towering bow and stem, their forecastle and poop, slow them, since the bluff beamy hull needed to support their weight wouldn't bite the water. A superstructure above decks serves only to spoil a warship's handling in a breeze, they declared, and to lend a better target to an English gunner.
"Your ships assuredly are smaller than Portuguese galleons, I agree," the pilot volunteered after a pause, "but I see no advantage in this."
"You'll see soon enough. The Discovery may be low, but she'll sail within six points of the wind, and she's quicker on the helm than anything afloat."
Hawksworth raised the glass and studied the galleons again. As he expected they were beating to windward, laboring under a full head of canvas.
Good. Now the Resolve can make her move.
The longboat was returning, its prow biting the trough of each swell, while on the Resolve seamen swarmed the shrouds and rigging. Hawksworth watched with satisfaction as his sister ship's main course swiveled precisely into the breeze and her sprits'l bellied for a run down the wind. Her orders were to steer to leeward, skirting the edge of the galleons' cannon range.
And if I know the Portugals, he told himself, they'll be impatient enough to start loosing round after round of shot at her, even from a quarter mile off. It takes courage to hold fire till you're under an enemy's guns, but only then do you have accuracy. Noise and smoke are battle enough for most Portugals, but the main result is to overheat and immobilize their cannon.
As the Discovery lay hove to, biding time, the Resolve cut directly down the leeward side of the galleons, laboring
under full press of sail, masts straining against the load. The Indian pilot watched the frigate in growing astonishment, then turned to Hawksworth.
"Your English frigates may be swift, but your English strategy is unworthy of a common mahout, who commands an old she-elephant with greater cunning. Your sister frigate has now forfeited the windward position. Why give over your only advantage?"