A comparatively small vessel, weighing about 400 tons, being about half the size of Henry Grace à Dieu, Revenge was rated as a galleon.

Revenge was particularly heavily armed during her last cruise: she carried 20 heavy demi-cannon, culverins and demi-culverins on her gun deck, where the sailors slept.

[1] In 1587, Sir Francis Drake sailed to the Spanish coast and destroyed much materiel that Philip II had accumulated in preparation for the Armada.

In 1589 Revenge again put to sea as Drake's flagship, in what was to be a failed attempt to destroy the surviving Spanish fleet at Santander and invade Spanish-controlled Portugal.

[3] In 1590 Revenge was commanded by Sir Martin Frobisher in an unsuccessful expedition along the coast of Spain to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet.

When morning broke on 1 September, Revenge lay with her masts shot away, six feet of water on the hold and only sixteen men left uninjured out of a crew of two hundred and fifty.

[4] The grappling manoeuvre of San Bernabé, which compelled the English gun crews to abandon their posts in order to fight off boarding parties, was decisive in securing the fate of the Revenge.

[5] "Out-gunned, out-fought, and out-numbered fifty-three to one",[6] when the end looked certain Grenville ordered Revenge to be sunk: "Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain!

The captured but heavily damaged Revenge never reached Spain, but was lost with her mixed prize-crew of 70 Spaniards and English captives, along with a large number of the Spanish ships in a dreadful storm off the Azores.

[7] Her final action inspired a popular poem entitled The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet by Lord Tennyson, which dramatically narrates the course of the engagement.