By Fenner’s count forty-seven caravels and barks laden with hoops, pipe-boards, planks and oars were burned. These were the materials that Santa Cruz needed to make casks to store provisions for the fleet, and when the Armada eventually sailed the following year the rot that prematurely afflicted its supplies was in no small way due to the Spaniards’ having to use unseasoned wood for casks after Drake’s raid destroyed so much of their supply of seasoned timber.

John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, loc. 876