Expecting the English to attack, Medina Sidonia fired a signal gun and the Armada formed in battle order, each unit making or slackening sail with military precision, and changing course with due regard to its neighbours until the whole fleet presented to the English for the first time the famous crescent formation which was to puzzle and awe them all the way up the Channel. It was not, of course, a perfect crescent, but with the extended wings pointing towards the enemy, and thickened centre, it was sufficiently like one to make any experienced seaman wonder how so heterogeneous a lot of ships could achieve so smoothly and maintain so firmly so complicated a formation.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 620