"John Donne had enlisted in Essex's expedition. Izaac Walton, the famed author of "The Compleat Angler", had written several short Memoirs on famous men of his time, including Donne (1640) and Donne's friend Henry Wotton (1651) who was on the same expedition with Essex in l596.......John Donne saw from shipboard the encounter of Essex's well prepared fleet of warships blasting cannon at some fifty-three Spanish ships in the harbor as they blew up or sank, then turning the cannon with fire balls onto the town, which being on a promontory in the bay, offered little chance of escape."