Long-range ship gunnery proved ineffective against thick hulls

Evidence

The English believed, and so did the Spanish, that a fleet with a marked advantage in long-range weapons, culverins and demi culverins, could lie off at extreme range or nearly, and knock the enemy fleet to pieces without danger to itself. It turned out not to be so. At ranges of three to seven hundred yards a sixteenth-century culverin or demi-culverin might fail altogether to pierce the thick hull of a galleon or stout greatship — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 709

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts with the later decisive lesson that close-range broadsides won fleet actions — the tactical doctrine Drake’s era was still learning. — connects to: Long-range naval cannon were far less deadly than contemporaries believed — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 709; Pushing siege weapons to longer range only drove artillery growth — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 514
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 709