APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH, THE first modern naval battle in history began with gestures out of the Middle Ages, out of romances of chivalry. The Captain-General of the Ocean Sea hoisted to his maintop his sacred banner as a signal to engage, as Castilian commanders at sea had always done since first they sighted the Moorish galleys. And the Lord Admiral of England sent his personal pinnace, the Disdain, to bear his challenge to the Spanish admiral, like King Arthur sending Sir Gawaine to defy the Emperor Lucius.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 627