A costly victory measured in captured hulls

The sources disagree over how many Castilian vessels the English captured. A simple comparison between the fifty departing ships and roughly sixty-four returning hulls suggests fourteen prizes. About twenty-six remains plausible because many English cogs sank after their crews transferred into captured ships. The arithmetic therefore records both tactical success and the severe material cost of achieving it. Almost no ordinary prisoners survived, with wounded Castilians and Flemings commonly thrown overboard. Accounts from people watching the battle from the Winchelsea shore add an unusual land-based perspective to this brutal conclusion.