Disease, probably typhus fever, had been troubling the English ships, particularly those of Howard’s division, for some time, but after the fleet’s return the losses reached alarming proportions, welcomed only by the enemy and, almost incredibly, some members of the government who saw it merely as a saving on wages. The men had not been paid and could not, therefore, be fully discharged, and they began dying daily on the ships and in the ports, their miseries multiplied by deficiencies in clothing and what seems to have been a form of food poisoning occasioned by the consumption of contaminated victuals.

John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, loc. 1073