But the Armada never reached the Spanish Army. It was met in the English Channel by some 200 English vessels, which encircled the Spanish fleet near Calais. The English craft - lighter, smaller, and faster, though well furnished with guns - harried the lumbering mass of the Armada, broke up its formations, and attacked its great vessels one by one. It found no refuge at Calais, and English fireships drove it out again to sea. Then arose a great storm, which the English would later call the "Protestant wind."