in that same year a new and more energetic sovereign came to the throne. Elizabeth was not personally involved with her fleet as her father had been--it is nearly inconceivable that a woman sovereign in that age could have been--but it benefited from the energy she brought to the throne.
Existing ships were overhauled, and new ones were built. As early as the winter of 1560-61, Elizabeth's fleet was able to blockade the Firth of Forth, barring any French attempt to reinforce Marie de Guise, Regent and mother of Mary Queen of Scots, in her conflict with Protestant Scottish nobles. The ability of the fleet to perform this mission attests both to Elizabeth's attention to it and to the fact that it had not wholly deteriorated from Henry's time; such a fleet could not have been built out of nothing in the time since Elizabeth's accession to the throne. In fact, though the most famous Henrician ships had vanished by that time, a good many survived into Elizabeth's reign, and the circumstances of their preservation says something of the evolution of na
...