More Spaniards joined their admiral as Sidonia passed north, the Spanish rear and centre squadrons forming together a long straggling array, among the ships of which, from nine to after one o’clock, the _Revenge_, _Victory_, _Dreadnought_, _Triumph_, _Ark Royal_, and the rest charged through and through fighting both broadsides. Shortly after two o’clock, the English ships passed on, pressing forward to overtake the Spanish van group of galleons. By four o’clock the battle was won, but firing went on till nearly six, “when every man was weary with labour, and our cartridges spent and our ammunition wasted” (_i.e._ used up).
Once more the _Dreadnought_ followed the fortunes of Drake’s flag to battle; again, too, as Captain Fenner’s ship. In the year after the Armada she had her part in escorting the Corunna expedition, the “counter-Armada,” designed to beat up the quarters of the enemy at home and attempt the wresting of Portugal from the Spanish yoke. A landing party of “Dreadnoughts” fought ashore. Led by Drake and the general of the soldiers, Sir John Norris, they drove the Spaniards before them. “Unto every volly flying round their ears,” says old Stow, “the generall, turning his face towards the enemie would bow and vale his bonnet, saying ‘I thank you, Sir! I thank you, Sir!’ to the great admiration of all his campe and of Generall Drake.” The wine vaults of Corunna, however, interposed on behalf of Spain. Soldiers and sailors alike broke in and got drunk, and all that could be done after that was to reship the men and write the campaign down a failure.
In the attack on Brest in 1594, when Sir Martin Frobisher met his death, the _Dreadnought_ had her share. Two years after that she fought with Essex and Raleigh in the grand attack on Cadiz—this time as one of the picked ships of Sir Walter Raleigh’s own “inshore squadron.” She sailed with Sir Walter again after that in the celebrated “Islands Voyage”; and then the curtain rings down on the memorable days of the story of the _Dreadnought_ of the Great Queen’s fleet. The old ship lasted afloat (after an expensive rebuild in James the First’s reign) until the time of the Civil War. She figured in the interim in the Rochelle Expedition and also in one of Charles the First’s Ship-money fleets. The _Dreadnought_ of St. Bartholomew’s Day and Matthew Baker made her last cruise of all in the year of Marston Moor.
