The dockyards worked night and day, and by the end of the year all was in readiness.
In England men had not been idle.

A great army was raised of people of every rank and condition, Catholics as well as Protestants uniting in the defense of the country; while in every port round, the din of preparation was heard.

The army was destined to combat the thirty thousand Spanish soldiers commanded by the Duke of Parma in the Netherlands, where a fleet of transports had been prepared to bring them across, when the great armada should have cleared the sea of English ships.

By dint of great efforts, 191 English ships of various sizes, these mostly being small merchantmen--mere pygmies in comparison with the great Spanish galleons--were collected, while the Dutch dispatched sixty others to aid in the struggle against Spain.
On the 29th of May the Spanish armada sailed from the Tagus but, being delayed by a storm, it was not till the 19th of June that its advance was first signaled by the lookout near Plymouth.

Then from every hill throughout England beacon fires blazed to carry the tidings, and every Englishman betook himself to his arms, and prepared to repel the invaders.
Instead, however, of attempting to land at once, as had been expected, the Spanish fleet kept up channel; the orders of the king being that it should make first for Flanders, there form junction with the fleet of the Duke of Parma, and so effect a landing upon the English coast.