Drake misjudged both Spanish orders and ammunition needs for the battle

Evidence

In one thing Drake was quite wrong: Medina Sidonia had express orders not to be diverted by any English offensive, but to sail for the Channel and his rendezvous with Parma no matter what Drake did. If Drake had relied on the alarm caused by his appearance in person on the coast of Spain to keep the Spanish fleet at home he might have missed the Armada altogether. … Like Santa Cruz he was prepared to sail to meet the enemy with thirty rounds of ammunition per gun. In the actual encounter the English had spent more than that before they had done the Armada any real damage. — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 588

Categorization

• XREF: The thirty-rounds miscalculation foreshadows the Channel battles and explains why superior ammo logistics saved the English later. — connects to: Drake exposed Spanish strategic weaknesses and held the initiative for years — John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, 1330; Attacking Corunna instead of Lisbon allowed Spanish forces to regroup — Richard Bruce Wernham, The Expedition of Sir John Norris and…, 941; The weather of 1588 appears to have been extraordinary; the Spanish were prevented from putting to sea for some weeks by contrary winds. — Climatic change, sea-power and historical discontinuity: The Spanish Armada and the Glorious Revolution of 1688
• SEED: The near-miss counterfactual — what if Drake had fought off Lisbon instead — is a vivid narrative fork for the reader’s contemporary retelling.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 588

Library Connections

• Drake exposed Spanish strategic weaknesses and held the initiative for years #complicates (0.70) — John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, 1330

Broader Connections

• Attacking Corunna instead of Lisbon allowed Spanish forces to regroup #exemplifies (0.75) — Richard Bruce Wernham, The Expedition of Sir John Norris and…, 941