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Originally Posted by kronckew
... on both sides, cannon were basically ineffectual, doing little damage... the brits higher rate of fire, while psychologically impressive did little actual damage as the cannons were fairly light caliber...
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Indeed ... although the galleon São João, for one, was hit by 300 projectiles. Although it is recognizable that the superior fire capacity of the Portuguese (not Spanish) galleon São Martinho kept the Brit ships at distance. Contrary to what is said that the Armada fleet didn't shoot more than a couple volleys, flagship São Martinho sent off 200 pelouros only on the 2nd August, having been hit by 50 projectiles, some below the water level, which had to be plugged with lead plates by divers.
According to a relation of ammunitions listed at departure and arrival, São Martinho shot 47% of its pelouros, São Luis 60% and in other cases 87% were shot, from smaller galleons Agusta and Julia. It is therefore a myth that British ships could shoot more volleys than the Armada. It occurs that the number of ships that the main Armada galleons had to confrontate was much larger and the English were in numerical superiority. This is what explains that their projectiles hit more Armada ships and not the superiority of their gunners.
Despite in both sides actual war ships were in a rather inferior number than the total fleet boats, the English counted with the 34 galleons of the Queen squad, among 197 ships. The real battle was indeed fought bwetween these 34 vessels and the 9 Portuguese galleons, together with the 4 Naples galeasses. So the superiority of the British in actual war ships was considerable, only minimized by the fire capacity of each Portuguese galleon.
The real inferiority from the British side was their embarked infantry (15.551 men versus 27.365) but, as boarding operations were not relevant in such battle, this disadvantage became a vantage, as the difference in number was in terms of infantry, which had no role in combat
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Originally Posted by kronckew
... good queen bess, after the 'victory' over the armada, had the fleet anchored and not only did not pay the sailors, but refused them permission to leave, many starved to death or died of disease...
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Amazingly a similar situation ocurred with the Spaniards. By the time they returned from the battle some of the crews were already boarded for nine months as, during the fleet concentration in Lisbon before the departure, only the the crews of the Portuguese Crown were allowed to come ashore, having not been afected by a plague that spread aboard.
The situation was already dramatic even before any combat took place.