Note 9 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
Macaulay, writing his ballad of the Armada before the full English and Spanish records of the time were available, represents the news as being brought to Plymouth by a merchantman that had seen "Castille's black fleet lie heaving many a mile" out by the Channel Islands, where the Armada was never sighted. The "tall 'Pinta'" chased her for hours. There was no such ship in the Armada. Macaulay took the name of one of Columbus's caravels to adorn his ballad. Instead of the enemy seeing "fire and smokes" at dawn, he describes with more picturesque effect, how, in the night—
"From the deep the Spaniards saw Along each southern shire, Cape after cape in endless range, Those twinkling points of fire."