Edward sent his ships against the French fleet in units of three, two ships carrying archers flanking one with men-at-arms. The English ships with the archers would approach a French ship and loose arrows at a rate of more than ten per minute from each archer onto its decks; the men-at-arms would then board and take the vessel. The modern historians Jonathan Sumption and Robert Hardy separately state that the English archers, with their longbows, had a rate of fire two or three times greater than the French crossbowmen and significantly outranged them: Hardy reckons the longbows had an effective range of compared with for the crossbows.