The English fleet then sailed for Cape St. Vincent, picking up on their way large convoys of store-ships all bound for the Tagus, where the Armada was collecting. These were all burned, and Drake brought up at Cape St. Vincent, hoping to meet there a portion of the Armada expected from the Mediterranean. As a harbour was necessary, he landed, stormed the fort at Faro, and took possession of the harbour there. The expected enemy did not appear, and Drake sailed up to the mouth of the Tagus, intending to go into Lisbon and attack the great Spanish fleet lying there under its admiral, Santa Cruz.

That the force gathered there was enormous Drake well knew, but relying as much on the goodness of his cause as on the valour of his sailors, and upon the fact that the enemy would be too crowded together to fight with advantage, he would have carried out his plan had not a ship arrived from England with orders forbidding him to enter the Tagus. However, he lay for some time at the mouth of the river, destroying every ship that entered its mouth, and sending in a challenge to Santa Cruz to come out and fight. The Spanish admiral did not accept it, and Drake then sailed to Corunna, and there, as at Cadiz, destroyed all the ships collected in the harbour and then returned to England, having in the course of a few months inflicted an enormous amount of damage upon Spain, and having taken the first step to prove that England was the mistress of the sea.