The Armada could not board the faster English ships even with the weather-gauge

Evidence

The bitter lesson for the Spanish was that even when they had the weather-gauge they could not grapple and board the English ships, which were fast enough and weatherly enough to keep whatever distance they chose. The Spanish all thought that the enemy seemed to be right, too, in trusting to their guns, for the English had more big guns and of longer range, and better gunners who could fire much faster. Everyone in both fleets said three times as fast, though it must have been hard to keep count. — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 673

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s fireship/tactics theme — the Spanish tactical dilemma that shaped the whole campaign’s naval warfare. — connects to: An important reason why the English were able to defeat the Armada was that the wind blew the Spanish ships northwards, celebrated on a medal inscribed ‘God Blew and they were Scattered’. — God blew and they were scattered; On the night of 7 August, English fireships broke the Spanish formation, and Medina Sidonia’s ships ‘scattered in a…’ — British History in depth: Armada Gallery; The English sent fire ships into the Spanish anchorage at Calais, and prevailing winds and storms ultimately scattered and destroyed the Spanish fleet on its retreat. — Winds of Change: Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 673