In the late sixteenth century, on the verge of the first efforts at English colonization, Catholic Spain sent a vast armada of ships to the English Channel with the expectation of invading Protestant England and destroying their navy. The potential of being invaded by the most successful military power in Europe struck horror into the hearts of the Protestant English people. Yet upon the armada's arrival, the English navy and its sailors—well-armored with cannons, faster moving, and confident due to centuries of familiarity with commerce and war at sea—easily dispatched with the Spanish Armada, delivering a miracle that the English accorded to their version of a Protestant God. In fact, as historians have since noted, the Spanish Armada and its defeat helped provide a neat definition of what it meant to the English people to be English—they were Protestant, maritime, commercial, and free.