Englishman Sir Rowland Yorke, were conspicuous.

It was a dark, mild evening of early spring. As the fleet of vessels
dropped slowly down the river, they suddenly became luminous, each ship
flaming out of the darkness, a phantom of living fire. The very waves of
the Scheldt seemed glowing with the conflagration, while its banks were
lighted up with a preternatural glare. It was a wild, pompous,
theatrical spectacle. The array of soldiers on both aides the river,
along the dykes and upon the bridge, with banners waving, and spear and
cuirass glancing in the lurid light; the demon fleet, guided by no human
hand, wrapped in flames, and flitting through the darkness, with
irregular movement; but portentous aspect, at the caprice of wind and
tide; the death-like silence of expectation, which had succeeded the
sound of trumpet and the shouts of the soldiers; and the weird glow which
had supplanted the darkness-all combined with the sense of imminent and
mysterious danger to excite and oppress the imagination.

Presently, the Spaniards, as they gazed from the bridge, began to take
heart again. One after another, many of the lesser vessels drifted
blindly against the raft, where they entangled themselves among the hooks
and gigantic spearheads, and burned slowly out without causing any
extensive conflagration. Others grounded on the banks of the river,
before reaching their destination. Some sank in the stream.

Last of all came the two infernal ships, swaying unsteadily with the
current; the pilots of course, as they neared the bridge, having
noiselessly effected their escape in the skiffs. The slight fire upon
the deck scarcely illuminated the dark phantom-like hulls. Both were
carried by the current clear of the raft, which, by a great error of
judgment, as it now appeared, on the part of the builders, had only been