REIGN OF ELIZABETH TO THE DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA
AUTHORITIES.--Charnock continues to be of value for this reign, and
indeed for the history of the navy till the end of the eighteenth
century. Derrick's _Rise and progress of the Royal Navy_ gives
useful official lists. Mr. Whateley gives the substance of the rules
established for the Navy Office by Elizabeth in 1560, at pp. 131-134
of his _Samuel Pepys, and the World he lived in_. The original is in
the S. P. Dom. Elizabeth, vol. xv. The Calendars of State Papers of
the reign contain much information as to the navy. More is in the
great collection of Hakluyt. The Navy Record Society has published the
papers referring to the Armada, while the Spanish side of the story
is told in _La Armada Invencible_ of Don Cesareo Duro--so admirably
extracted and combined by Mr. Froude in his _Spanish Story of the
Armada_. Drake's first notable cruise to the West Indies is told in
the _Drake Redivivus_.
When Elizabeth ascended the throne, in 1559, she found the navy in
the same state of weakness and confusion as all other parts of the
administration. Its downward progress from the high level at which
it had been left by Henry VIII. was rapid. In 1548, at the beginning
of the reign of Edward VI., it had consisted of 53 vessels of 11,268
tons, carrying 237 brass guns and 1848 of iron. The crews were then
estimated at 7731 men. In the sixth year of Elizabeth's reign, even
after her government had begun its efforts to restore the naval forces
of the country, the number of vessels was only 29. From that point
it gradually returned to something more like the position it had
occupied under Henry VIII. In one respect, indeed, it may be said to
have remained permanently inferior to his. It never reached the same
number, but numbers afford only one, and not necessarily the surest,
test of strength. The size and armament of the ships are often far more
trustworthy indications of power than the number of vessels. During
the queen's reign the average size of ships was much greater than it
had been in her father's. In 1578 the navy contained 24 ships of 10,506
tons, manned by 3760 mariners, 630 gunners, and 1900 soldiers. The
total force is put in Derrick's list at 6570 officers and men. If these
figures are accurate, or even only approximately correct, it would
appear that the staff of the navy, that is, the officers and their
immediate personal attendants, must have numbered 280. Ten years later
the navy had increased to 34 ships of 12,590 tons, with 6279 men. At
the death of the queen the number of ships was 42, the tonnage 17,055,
while the crews amounted to 8346 men, divided into 5534 mariners, 804
gunners, and 2008 soldiers. On comparing these figures with those
of the navy as it stood in 1548, it will be seen that the ships of
Elizabeth were on an average rather more than twice as large as those
her brother had inherited from their father. The changes which had
taken place in the constitution of the crews are somewhat different.
The little vessels of King Edward carried nearly as many men as the
much larger ships of Queen Elizabeth. No doubt, where there were more
ships to man, many men were necessary, but, scattered among small
vessels averaging 212 tons or thereabouts, they cannot have exerted the
same power as they would have done in the better and heavier warships
of Elizabeth. It is interesting to see the great change which had come
over the constitution of the crews in the course of the century. In
Henry's reign the soldiers were always more numerous than the sailors.
During Elizabeth's the proportion was entirely reversed, and at the
date of her death the mariners were almost twice as numerous as the
soldiers in her sea service. In fact, the navy was becoming necessarily
a more seamanlike force. The development of the ship had been steady.
The mere barges of King Henry's reign had given place to vessels which
were already approximating to a modern standard. Seamanship itself had
grown far beyond the humble standard of the early sixteenth century.
Then the seaman, at least the English seaman, was a mere coaster. When
the great queen died, he was already accustomed to far-ranging voyages,
and the navy was no longer expected only to carry soldiers across the
Channel, and fight a force no more expert than itself, but to invade
the West Indies, and at need to circumnavigate the globe. It followed
that the sailor became relatively more important, and as his skill
grew to be the most essential element of strength, his numbers had to
be increased. Sir Walter Raleigh in the following reign summed up the
changes which had taken place in his time.
"Whoever were the inventors, we find that every age has added somewhat
to ships; and in my time the shape of our English ships has been
greatly bettered. It is not long since the striking of the topmasts,
a wonderful ease to great ships, both at sea and in the harbour, hath
been devised, together with the chain-pump, which taketh up twice as
much water as the ordinary one did. We have lately added the bonnet,
and the drabler, to the courses; we have added studding-sails, the
weighing anchor by the capstern. We have fallen into consideration of
the length of cables, and by it we resist the malice of the greatest
winds that can blow. Witness the Hollanders, that were wont to ride
before Dunkirk with the wind at north-east, making a lee shore in all
weathers; for true it is, that the length of the cable is the life of
the ship in all extremities; and the reason is, that it makes so many
bendings and waves, as the ship riding at that length is not able to
stretch it, and nothing breaks that is not stretched."
When we speak of the greater size of Elizabeth's vessels, it must be
remembered that the increase of tonnage had been among the smaller, not
the greater warships. Some of King Henry's had been as large as, if not
larger than, any of Queen Elizabeth's, but then she did not have the
same swarm of mere cockboats. The navy was, in fact, tending to become
a more uniform as well as a more seaworthy force.
The armament of these ships was still very heterogeneous, and the names
of the pieces curiously fantastic. The following list gives the mere
denominations of the guns:--
Cannon
Demi-cannon
Culverins
Demi-culverins
Sakers
Mynions
Falcons
Falconets
Port-pece Halls
Port-pece Chambers
Fowler Halls
Fowler Chambers
and
Curtalls.
There is some uncertainty as to the weight of the shot fired by these
various pieces, and the following list must be taken with some reserve,
but it no doubt gives the calibres of the guns with substantial
accuracy.
+---------------+---------------------+---------------+
| | Sir | According |
| | William Monson's | to some other |
| Sorts | Account. | Accounts |
| of +---------+-----------+---------------+
| Ordnance. | Bore. | Weight of | Weight of |
| | | the Shot. | the Shot. |
+---------------+---------+-----------+---------------+
| | inches. | lbs. | lbs. |
| Cannon | 8 | 60 | 60 or 63 |
| Demi-Cannon | 6-3/4 | 33-1/2 | 31 |
| Cannon Petro | 6 | 24-1/2 | 24 |
| Culverin | 5-1/2 | 17-1/2 | 18 |
| Demi-Culverin | 4 | 9-1/2 | 9 |
| Falcon | 2-1/2 | 2 | 2 |
| Falconet | 2 | 1-1/2 | ... |
| Minion | 3-1/2 | 4 | 4 |
| Sacar | 3-1/2 | 5-1/2 | 5 |
| Rabinet | 1 | 1/2 | ... |
+---------------+---------+-----------+---------------+
The quality of these guns was good. Down to the middle of the sixteenth
century they were made by welding together bars of wrought iron little
inferior in tensile strength to that used in very recent times for
Armstrong guns. About 1550 the use of cast iron, which made it possible
to turn out large numbers of guns, came in. All the changes which have
taken place in the construction of weapons of war have not been in the
direction of what we should consider progress. When in our own time the
guns which had been sunk at Spithead, in the wreck of the =Mary Rose=,
were dredged up, it was found that they were breech-loaders, and there
is evidence that experiments in the rifling of cannon were made very
early. The difficulty of making a trustworthy breech-piece accounts
for the triumph of the muzzle-loader, which drove its rival out of the
field for centuries. The distribution of the guns in the ships remained
very much what it had been during the reign of Henry VIII.; that is to
say, cannon of the most various sizes were mounted side by side on the
same deck. A few specimens taken from a list attested by the auditors
of the Prest and the officers of the Ordnance in 1599, printed by
Derrick, will show how far this practice was carried.
+----------------------+------------+------------+------------+
| Names. | Arke | White Bear | Triumph |
+----------------------+------------+------------+------------+
| Cannon. | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| Demi-Cannon. | 4 | 11 | 3 |
| Culverins. | 12 | 7 | 17 |
| Demi-Culverins. | 12 | 10 | 8 |
| Sakers. | 6 | ... | 6 |
| Mynions. | ... | ... | ... |
| Falcons. | ... | ... | ... |
| Falconets. | ... | ... | ... |
| Port-piece Halls. | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Port-piece Chambers. | 7 | ... | 4 |
| Fowler Halls. | 2 | 7 | 5 |
| Fowler Chambers. | 4 | ... | 20 |
| Curtalls. | ... | ... | ... |
+----------------------+------------+------------+------------+
| Total Number of | | | |
| Pieces of Ordnance | 55 | 40 | 68 |
+----------------------+------------+------------+------------+
A large proportion of the pieces named here were very small, and it
is doubtful what is to be understood by some of the terms. They apply
doubtless often to small "murdering pieces," of about the size of a
duck-gun, mounted on the cobridge heads and bulwarks, for the purpose
of repelling or driving out boarders. Therefore we must not suppose
that the 68 guns of the =Triumph= represented anything like what
that figure would have meant two hundred years later. It must not be
forgotten that if Elizabeth did less to increase the strength of the
navy than her father, she did not inherit a treasure as he did, and
neither had she the spending of the plunder of the Church. He spent his
capital. She had to confine herself to income.
No administrative changes in essentials were made by Elizabeth in the
organisation of the navy. The function of the officers of the Navy
Office, which had not as yet been strictly defined, were settled by
instructions issued by the queen in 1560. What her Government did do
was to attend to the navy with enlightened care, and to select the
officials with judgment. It is known that for years the business of
building, refitting, and taking care of the ships of the navy, and
of superintending the purchase of stores, was carried on by Sir John
Hawkins, who held the posts of Treasurer and Comptroller of the Navy.
Hawkins was the successor of his father-in-law, Benjamin Gonson, in
the office of Treasurer. It appears that he held his post under an
agreement with the queen, by which he undertook to discharge the
ordinary duties of caretaking for £5714 a year, he meeting all the
common charges and supplying part of the stores, while heavier and
exceptional expenses, whether for building new ships or for fitting out
the fleet for sea, fell to the Crown. His remuneration for the work
was apparently to be derived, in addition to the fees of his offices
of Treasurer and Comptroller, from what remained over and above after
paying for the work, and from the privilege of disposing of condemned
ships and stores. The openings for fraud in such a system are many
and obvious. If his enemies are to be believed, Hawkins did not miss
the opportunities afforded him. It is said that he robbed the queen
directly, and that, being partner in a shipbuilding yard on the Thames,
he made use of his official position to forward his private interests.
But Lord Howard of Effingham bears witness that Hawkins had the ships
of the queen's navy in admirable order in the Armada year, and he is
undoubtedly entitled to the credit of having done much to introduce
into the navy the improvements in construction and rigging detailed by
Sir Walter Raleigh.
Such in its main outlines was the instrument of which the great
queen, her ministers, and her captains made magnificent use. It was
but modest and even weak in itself; but in truth the Royal Navy was
only part of the naval force at the disposal of Elizabeth. During the
forty-four years of her reign, we constantly find that the vanguard
in all actions, and a great part of the main body of the queen's sea
power, was formed of adventurers. In the following century, and from
the time of the first Dutch war, it is possible to tell the history of
the navy with rare references to the action of those volunteers who
fought for their own hand as privateers. But this was by no means the
case with the navy of Queen Elizabeth. The most famous of her captains
gained their reputation by privateering voyages, and were only taken
into her service when they were already known leaders. To the end of
her long war with Spain the private ship is found fighting alongside
the queen's. The most successful of her expeditions against the
Spaniard, whether in Europe or in the New World, were carried out by
what, according to modern practice, would be a very strange partnership
between the Crown and speculators, who, no doubt, had patriotic
motives, but who had also very direct interest in the pecuniary
results of the campaign. In fact, the word adventurer in the language
of Elizabeth's time was commonly applied, not to the sea-captains,
mariners, and soldiers who assailed the Spaniard in the West Indies,
but to the shipowners and capitalists who found the money for fitting
out the expedition, and who claimed two-thirds of the prize as their
reward.
The privateer may be said to have made his first appearance during
the last naval war of the reign of Henry VIII. The king had issued
what were called letters of marque, that is, a species of commission
authorising anybody who could fit out an armed ship to plunder the
French and to keep a large share of the booty. His invitation to this
form of private enterprise was eagerly accepted, especially by the
seamen and country gentlemen of the West of England. They fitted out
ships in large numbers, and cruised with profitable results against
the French trade. The experience of 1545-46 seems to have thoroughly
established the taste for privateering in the western counties, and it
endured without any visible sign of abatement for generations. During
the reigns of Edward and Mary and the early years of Elizabeth the
western sea rovers continued as busy as ever, even when the country was
at peace. They had an excellent pretext in the religious dissensions
which were now beginning to swallow up, or at least to colour, the
political conflicts of the European powers. In Mary's reign, Devonshire
gentlemen of strong Protestant sympathies betook themselves to the
pious work of plundering Spaniards and the other subjects of the
queen's husband. The considerable traffic between Flanders and the
Basque Ports of Spain supplied them with an irresistible motive for
embracing the cause of pure religion. When the Low Countries revolted
against the persecuting despotism of Philip II., the Protestants, who
had been for a time crushed on land, appeared on blue water under
the well-known name of "The Beggars of the Sea." These landless and
desperate men found sympathy and help in the west country. For many
years no small part of the duty of every Spanish ambassador consisted
in making unavailing protests against the outrageous piracy of the
queen's subjects. In this school were trained the men who manned the
ships of Hawkins and Drake.
At the same time, another influence was at work to turn the energy of
Englishmen to the sea. Until the death of Mary Tudor put an end to the
Burgundian alliance, that is, the close community of interests which
had for long united England with the House of Hapsburg, there had been
few signs of distant commercial enterprise in England. The trade to the
Levant had indeed been extended, and attempts had been made to open a
route by the north-east to the Spice Islands, but England seemed to be
reluctant to break in upon the Portuguese monopoly of the route by the
Cape and the Spanish tenure of the route by the West, until she had
clearly learned by experiment that there was no third way of access
she could acquire for herself. France, which was at open war with
the sovereign of Spain and the Low Countries, had sent out swarms of
adventurers to attack the Spaniards in the New World, but we had, when
Elizabeth ascended the throne, taken no part in this warfare. No sooner
was Elizabeth well settled on the throne than a great change took place.
The persecutions of Mary's reign, if they had not made England
Protestant, had at least made it bitterly anti-Roman Catholic; and
this, at a time when the King of Spain was the recognised protector of
the Pope, meant anti-Spanish. This served to remove any disinclination
to attack our old ally. At the same time, Englishmen began to be much
more effectively desirous of sharing in the wealth to be obtained by
trade with the New World They were impatient at the thought that they
were to be for ever shut out from the commerce of the East and the West
Indies by a decision of a Pope of the previous century, who had given
the Spaniards everything to the west of the famous line drawn from
north to south, a hundred leagues to the west of the Azores, and had
left the Portuguese the exclusive right to everything in the East. We
did not recognise the Pope's right to dispose of what did not belong
to him, and were minded to have our share of the good things lying
beyond the line. The Spaniards would hear of no such pretension, and,
though they were ready enough to trade with us in Europe, insisted
upon treating all seamen of other nations whom they found in America
as pirates. According even to the principles of some of their own
thinkers, this refusal to trade was a fair justification for a war.
Elizabeth was, however, by no means prepared for open hostilities
with Spain. All she would do was to refuse to recognise the right of
the Spaniards to exclude her subjects from trading with the Indians.
Therefore they were free in her opinion to go to the New World, and if
the Spaniards refused to recognise their trade as legitimate, Elizabeth
for her part was not inclined to forbid her subjects to defend
themselves against what she considered unfair interference. The causes
of dispute between the queen and King Philip, apart from this, were
many and various. Thus it got to be known among enterprising Englishmen
that if they could make their hand keep their head from the blow of the
Spaniard, they had nothing to fear from the queen when they came home
from poaching expeditions on his preserves. For men who had, or who
only affected to have, religious motives, and who had the most genuine
desire to gain riches, this hint was enough, and so the third year of
the queen's reign saw the first voyage of Hawkins to the West Indies.
In 1562, Hawkins, who was the son of a prosperous Plymouth merchant
and shipowner, and had been bred to the sea in his father's ships
in voyages to the Canaries, made the first recorded slaving venture
carried through by an Englishman. He had learned enough in the
Canaries to know that slaves were valuable in the West Indies, and
that the Spanish planters, who were very ill supplied under the
system of monopoly which prevailed in Spain, would be ready to buy
negroes smuggled among them by an English trader. With the help of his
father-in-law Gonson, Sir William Duckett, Sir Thomas Lodge, and Sir
William Winter, all merchants and seafaring men, and some of them very
directly connected with the queen's Government, he fitted out three
little vessels and made a most profitable all-round voyage. First he
went to the coast of Africa, where he kidnapped slaves, then he went to
the Antilles and smuggled them. The second voyage, carried out in the
last months of 1563 and the first of 1564, was a repetition of this on
a much larger scale. Hawkins had now done so well that every confidence
was felt in his capacity. Lord Robert Dudley, better known as the Earl
of Leicester, became his patron. He was allowed to hire a queen's ship,
the =Jesus of Lubeck=, an old vessel built in Germany. With a larger
force Hawkins visited the coasts of Africa once more, after touching at
Teneriffe, probably to make arrangements with the Spaniards associated
with him in his smuggling speculations. On the coast of Senegambia he
plundered Portuguese slavers who had already secured a full cargo,
and then he burned, murdered, and kidnapped among the native villages
until his hold was full of what in the cant of later times was called
"ebony." With this cargo he made his way to the mainland of South
America, after a trying voyage, in which both the kidnapped blacks and
their captors suffered severely. Hawkins was borne up by a conviction
that the "Lord would not suffer His elect to perish." At Borburata
and Rio de la Hacha he sold the greater part of his cargo, partly by
the help of the planters, who were glad enough to get the slaves,
and partly by threatening to do them a displeasure if his trade was
forbidden. From Rio de la Hacha, Hawkins sailed northward across the
Caribbean Sea. The force of the westerly current, which is permanent
in those waters, was not then known, and the smugglers were carried
to the westward of the island of San Domingo. Owing to the mistake of
a Spaniard whom they had among them, either as a prisoner, or, as is
at least equally probable, as the agent of their associates among the
Spanish planters, they fell to leeward, which in the West Indies means
to westward both of San Domingo and of Jamaica. As the season was far
advanced, and his vessels foul from being long at sea, Hawkins decided
to make no further attempt to touch at the Spanish Antilles, which
he could only have reached by beating to windward against the trade
winds. He returned home by the Straits of Florida and the Banks of
Newfoundland. On his way he relieved the French colony established in
Florida by Ribault. It is one of the best-known events in the history
of the time that this colony was not long afterwards exterminated by
the Spaniard Pedro Menendes de Aviles, by methods which have, in the
opinion of Protestant writers, covered his name with the infamy of
extreme cruelty.
Although there had been no actual fighting in Hawkins's two
expeditions, they were considered by the Spaniards as hostile. That
they should have taken this view is not unreasonable, for the English
rover had undoubtedly forced an entrance into their ports by threats.
He himself must undoubtedly have been aware that his occupation was
illegal, for on his own showing he excused his presence in Spanish
ports by a tissue of lies. It was his regular practice to assert that
he was sailing with a squadron of the queen's ships, and had been
driven into harbour by bad weather or the want of stores. It is easy
to understand that the manifest falsity of this excuse was not so
obvious to the Spanish Government as it is to us. King Philip would
not unnaturally believe that although the queen disavowed the actions
of Hawkins publicly, she was encouraging him in private. In a sense
this was true; for if the queen did not actually send Hawkins to the
West Indies, she not only refused to punish him for going there, but
allowed him to enjoy the fruits of his voyage, and shared in them
largely herself as owner of the =Jesus of Lubeck=. If the sovereigns
had been disposed to go to war, the excuse for hostilities was ready to
their hands. But Philip was entangled in heavy expenses by the revolt
in the Netherlands and his wars with the Turks, who were then at the
height of their power. So he preferred to remain patient under the
provocations inflicted on him by Elizabeth; and she, who had abundant
troubles of her own, was equally little disposed to incur a war if
it could be avoided. The struggle was left to be carried on by the
subjects of both rulers in unavowed warfare, and from the nature of
the case very soon took the form of piracy on one side and of savage
repression on the other. Hawkins had been exasperated on his return
from his second voyage by what he considered a private wrong. Ships
which he had sent to Spain from the West Indies laden with colonial
produce had been confiscated by the Spanish Government. At a later
period he succeeded in getting back a part at least of the value of his
forfeited goods by pretending to betray the queen. But between 1564
and 1567, when he sailed on his third voyage, he had other schemes
for righting himself. He would have sailed sooner than he did if the
queen, who was in danger from the intrigues of Mary Stuart, had not
had particular reason to refrain from offending Philip too far. But
in 1567 Mary had ruined her own cause by the murder of her husband,
and her marriage with his murderer. The need for Philip's neutrality
was not what it had been, and so Hawkins was allowed to sail, and
was again permitted to hire the queen's ships. That his expedition
was of the nature of an act of hostility to Spain was a matter of
public notoriety. The Spanish ambassador protested against it as
against other acts of piracy, but to no kind of purpose. So little was
Hawkins restrained, that he was allowed to combine with some of the
"Beggars of the Sea" for the purpose of plundering some Spanish ships
which took refuge in Plymouth Sound while he was lying there with his
squadron. In high hopes, and with the sense that, however the queen
might refuse to justify his actions in form, she would certainly afford
him effectual protection, Hawkins sailed on his third voyage, which
ended so disastrously, in October 1567. The earlier part of the voyage
was spent in the usual round of kidnapping on the coast of Africa and
smuggling in the Spanish ports of the West Indies and the Main. When
only a remnant of his cargo of slaves remained, Hawkins departed from
his previous course and steered for the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico
to the little island of St. Juan de Ulloa, which forms the harbour of
La Vera Cruz, then, and now, the port of Mexico. He excused himself
for sailing into this harbour by his customary fiction, alleging that
his ships had been injured by bad weather, and must be refitted before
he could venture to return to Europe. But this story can hardly have
been told with the slightest expectation that it would be believed.
Indeed, Hawkins was so thoroughly well aware that the Spaniards would
see through his very transparent defence, that on his way across the
Gulf of Mexico he captured a Spanish vessel, and held her crew and
passengers as hostages. This was an act of undeniable piracy, and would
have been so considered at any period of the world's history. In truth,
it can only have been for form's sake that Hawkins put himself to the
trouble of repeating his stock invention. It had come to this, that if
the Spaniards were to make good their claim to keep the English from
trading with their American possessions, they must show themselves
strong enough to do it. For the present, Hawkins believed that the
strength was on his side, and, but for an event which he cannot be
blamed for not foreseeing, he might very well have turned out to be in
the right.
The squadron Hawkins took to La Vera Cruz on the 16th of September 1568
consisted of some ten or a dozen vessels, for he had been joined in
the West Indies by French rovers. With this force it would have been
easy for him to overpower any resistance the Spaniards could offer.
There was at that time no fortress on the island of St. Juan de Ulloa,
and the town of La Vera Cruz was not yet built. A few sheds, used only
during the time that the yearly convoy of merchant ships from Spain was
in the harbour, was all that stood upon the beach. When Hawkins made
his appearance outside the harbour, he had no difficulty in frightening
the local officials into letting him anchor. But in the course of
negotiations with them he learned a piece of news which caused him
well-grounded anxiety. On his first appearance off the harbour, the
Spaniards had mistaken him for a convoy expected from Spain, bringing
the new Viceroy, Don Martin Henriquez: of course, if this appeared,
the position would be disagreeably complicated. But it was now too
late for Hawkins to go back, so he took up his place in the harbour.
In a few days the fleet from Spain made its appearance. It consisted
almost wholly of merchant ships, but there was one heavy galleon of
war which served as the flagship of the Spanish admiral, Francisco
de Lujan. Hawkins could probably have kept the Spaniards out of the
harbour easily enough, but in the autumn months the coast of Mexico is
liable to furious gales of the nature of hurricanes, called Northers.
If one of these had burst while the Spaniards were outside the island
of St. Juan de Ulloa, the whole Spanish squadron must have perished.
As it was estimated to be worth £1,850,000, and carried hundreds of
his subjects, including so great an officer as the Viceroy of Mexico,
this would have been an outrage King Philip could not possibly have
endured. Hawkins must have been very well aware that if the queen did
not happen to wish for a war with Spain at the moment when he returned
to England after such an exploit, she would hang him without the
slightest scruple for causing her the trouble. On the other hand, if he
once allowed the Spaniards to get inside the harbour, there was every
probability that they would cut his throat with the least possible
delay. In the dreadful fix in which he now found himself, Hawkins
hit upon a middle course. He allowed the Spaniards to come in, after
exacting from them a promise that they would suffer him to trade in
safety and depart in peace. It is hardly credible that the Englishman
can have supposed that a promise extorted in such a fashion would have
been observed. If he did, his confidence did not last long, for, in
his own narrative of what our ancestors called "the treachery of the
Spaniards," he confesses that he was extremely nervous. From the day
after Don Francisco de Lujan had moored his ships beside the English
on the island of St. Juan de Ulloa, he was in constant expectation
of a sudden attack, and on the third day it came. The English had
insisted upon keeping possession of the island, but the men who had
been appointed to stand on guard broke into a panic and fled, leaving
the guns mounted for the protection of the English ships to be turned
upon them by the Spaniards. The panic spread to the ships. The crews
cast off their moorings and endeavoured to fly, but, attacked as they
were by the battery on the island and by the Spanish ships, they were
all destroyed except two--the =Minion=, in which Hawkins made his own
escape, and the =Judith=, commanded by his cousin, Francis Drake.
This, the treachery of the Spaniards, makes a great epoch in the
history of the naval adventures of Elizabeth's reign. It killed for
ever the hope of establishing a peaceful trade with the Spanish
possessions in the West Indies. It showed our men that if they were
to have their share of the wealth of the New World, it must be got
sword in hand. Hawkins, in whom there seems to have been very much
more of the fox than the lion, did not again appear in the West
Indies, till he came there to die in the disastrous failure of 1594.
But the work was taken up by other hands. The strongest and the
most famous were Francis Drake's. After two small voyages, probably
smuggling ventures with slaves, in 1570 and 1571, Drake boldly entered
the West Indies to plunder in 1572 with two very small vessels, the
=Pasha= of Plymouth, of 72 tons, and the =Swan=, of 25. This was a
pure-and-simple buccaneering venture, conducted with spirit and skill,
and finally with success. He was, indeed, beaten off at Nombre de
Dios, which the historian of his voyage mendaciously asserts to have
been a town as big as Plymouth. It was, in fact, a mere temporary
trading station, consisting of a storehouse and twenty or thirty wood
huts in a very unhealthy position, and was afterwards given up by the
Spaniards in favour of Porto Bello. But after this check, and some
months of cruising on the coast, made melancholy by the loss of a
brother and nearly half his crews in scuffles with the Spaniards or by
fever, Drake had the good fortune to capture a _recua_, the Spanish
name for a string of pack mules laden with gold. The profits of the
voyage were immense, and the audacity of it, not unnaturally somewhat
exaggerated by his countrymen, gained Drake great renown. But the real
fruits of his invasion of the West Indies were seen in the voyage of
circumnavigation which followed in 1577 and 1578. A detailed history
of this famous enterprise would be out of place here. It belongs,
properly speaking, to discovery, and such feats as the capture of
Spanish merchant ships and of the galleon _Cacafuego_ hardly entitle it
to rank among the exploits of the navy. The importance of the voyage
lies mainly in the immense stimulus it gave to the enterprise of the
whole nation, and in this, that it was an unmistakable proclamation to
the whole world that England had both the will and the power to set at
nought the pretensions of the Spaniards and the Portuguese to debar all
rivals from the free use of the ocean.
After Drake's return from ploughing a furrow round the world, we need
not treat the actions of the adventurers as standing apart. Although
open war with Spain did not come for several years, it was known to be
inevitable by both countries. The most famous leaders among the western
seamen were retained for the queen's service. Throughout the years in
which the maritime strength of England had been growing by its own
intrinsic strength, and her seamen had been gaining both in skill and
confidence, the Royal Navy, in the strict sense of the word, had played
a subordinate part. It was not yet expected to afford protection to
English traders beyond the four seas of Britain. Of what was its proper
work, it had had little to do.
In 1560 Sir William Winter had been despatched to the coast of Scotland
to aid the Lords of the Congregation in their struggle against the
French regent, Mary of Guise. In 1562-3 another English squadron had
been employed to help the French Huguenots by conveying the detachment
of English soldiers who were sent under command of Ambrose Dudley to
Havre. In 1573 it was found necessary to employ the queen's ships
against our late allies, the Huguenots, Sea Rovers, and the Beggars
of the Sea, who, having pretty effectually destroyed Spanish commerce
in the Channel, were driven to plunder their Protestant friends as
an alternative to starvation. But as the struggle with Spain grew
nearer open national war, the navy found more perilous work than
this. In 1579 a squadron of the queen's vessels did good service by
capturing the Spanish ships which had landed the soldiers of the Pope
at Smerwick in Ireland. Even yet the queen shrank from making a direct
attack on Spain, and preferred to injure her enemy by assisting his
rebellious subjects in the Low Countries. At last, when, under the
sting of multiplying provocations, Philip was known to be making ready
in his own slow way for a decisive attempt to crush England for good,
Elizabeth and her Council decided upon delivering a direct blow.
The manner of the doing of the thing was a curious example of the
partnership between the queen and her subjects. In 1585 an expedition
was organised to sweep the West Indies. The calculation was, that an
invasion of this part of his dominions would cause the King of Spain
more harm than a direct attack at home, since he drew by far the
best part of his revenue from the American mines. The English seamen
were not yet sufficiently acquainted with the details of the Spanish
establishments in America to deliver their stroke in the most effectual
manner. For one thing, they altogether over-estimated the importance of
the towns in the West Indian Islands. Yet, in principle, the policy of
the expedition was perfectly sound. To cripple the King of Spain before
his invading fleet was under way, was a far more effectual course
than to wait for him in the Channel; and there is no doubt that the
five-and-twenty ships put under the command of Drake in the autumn of
1585, to attack the island of San Domingo and Carthagena, did delay the
sailing of the Armada, besides inflicting great discredit on the King
of Spain.
In this fleet only a minority of the ships actually belonged to the
queen, the others being the property of men in business, who entered
into this warlike operation as a speculation. Unity of command
was provided for by the appointment of Drake, both as the queen's
admiral and as the privateer admiral, if such an expression is to be
admitted. Martin Frobisher, chiefly known hitherto as an explorer
who had attempted to discover a North-West Passage, was appointed
vice-admiral. The command of the troops was given to Christopher
Carleill, an officer of much experience both at sea and in the wars
of the Low Countries. The fleet sailed from Plymouth on the 14th of
September, and touched on the coast of Spain on the way out. It was
characteristic of the time that we did not profess to be at war with
the King of Spain in Spain, but only in America. Therefore there was
a good deal of rather polite negotiation between the English leaders
and the Marquis of Zerralbo, the King of Spain's governor of Galicia.
This did not prevent our seamen from plundering a Spanish ship in which
they discovered a tempting consignment of church plate; but casual
acts of piracy of this kind were too much in the habits of the time
to be counted an unpardonable infraction of the peace. From Vigo the
English fleet sailed to the Canaries, and from thence to Santiago in
the Cape de Verd Islands. At this place it made a too prolonged stay,
in the hope of extorting a ransom, but the Spanish authorities took
refuge in the hills of the centre of the island, and could neither be
threatened nor cajoled into giving themselves up. This was no doubt
a serious disappointment to Drake in his character of agent for the
adventurers, and it was not the last; for though the political results
of the cruise were great, as a financial speculation it proved to be a
failure. From Santiago the fleet stretched across the Atlantic to the
island of San Domingo, and captured the city of the same name with very
little difficulty. The Spanish towns had not hitherto been subject to
any attack more formidable than that of native Indians, and were not
seriously fortified. They fell easily before the assault of the 1200
well-appointed soldiers Carleill could land from the ships.
San Domingo proved a great disappointment to the captors. It had at
one time been the seat of a considerable export trade of bullion from
the mines of the island. But, though our men did not know it, these had
been long exhausted or deserted in favour of the far richer mines of
Mexico and Peru.
The well-to-do inhabitants of San Domingo were planters who had little
ready money, or the lawyers of the Court of Appeal. After several weeks
spent in haggling, and in burning part of the town, the English were
constrained to accept of 25,000 ducats of 5s. 6d. each as ransom for
the town, a much smaller sum than they had hoped to obtain. From San
Domingo they went on to Carthagena on the mainland of South America,
at that time a small unfortified town of a few hundred inhabitants.
Entering the land-locked harbour by the Boca Grande, the English made
themselves masters of Carthagena, after storming its only defence--a
wooden stockade. Here their experience at San Domingo was repeated. The
Spaniards had received warning of the approach of a hostile expedition,
and had had time to remove their bullion into the country. After a
good deal more haggling, 110,000 ducats were extorted as the ransom of
the town. The results of the expedition had been disappointing, but
the fleet had nothing for it but to return home without further delay.
A fever had broken out at Santiago, and the health of the crews had
suffered still more severely from the tropical malaria of the coast.
Including those who fell in action, it was calculated that more than
half of the men forming the expedition lost their lives. The total
product of the cruise was £60,000. Of this, £40,000 was due to the
adventurers, and the remaining third was to be divided between the
soldiers and sailors who manned the ships. This can have given only
about £6 a head to those who had risked their lives and had survived
the fevers and the weapons of the Spaniards. The adventurers cannot
have done much more than cover the expenses of fitting out their ships.
We are now approaching perhaps the most famous passage, and certainly
the most picturesque, in the naval history of England. From the
beginning of 1586 England was threatened by invasion from Spain,
throughout 1587 she was taking measures to avert the danger, and in
1588 the great Armada, which has been baptized in sarcasm with the name
of Invincible, actually approached our shores, and then passed away
to destruction without having as much as burned one sheepcote in this
island.
It was the habit of Philip II. to be very slow in his preparations. His
flatterers, knowing the kind of praise that would give him pleasure,
described him as thorough and prudent. In point of fact, the course
he followed was singularly inefficient and practically rather rash.
It would have cost Philip less, and would have redounded much more to
his glory, if he had armed three or four well-appointed squadrons of
active ships to protect his galleons on their way across the Atlantic,
and to keep the West Indies clear of invaders. It must be obvious
that if fifteen or twenty Spanish warships had made their appearance
in the neighbourhood of San Domingo while the English soldiers were
disembarked for the purpose of attacking the town, the squadron could
hardly have escaped destruction, and in that case the soldiers must
sooner or later have shared the fate of those members of Hawkins's
crew who were left behind in Mexico in 1567, to the "little mercy" of
the Spaniards. But when a small active squadron would have been of
immense service to Philip, he had nothing but the first beginnings of
the raw material of the great fleet with which he intended one day to
exterminate the power of Elizabeth. His admiral, Don Álvaro de Bazan,
the Marquis of Santa Cruz, told him, when the news of the sailing of
the expedition of 1585 came, that there was nothing to prevent Drake
from sweeping the West Indies, or from entering the Pacific, and
there doing as he pleased with the ill-armed and unprepared Spanish
settlements. King Philip had ships and guns and men enough among his
subjects, but when they were wanted, the guns were not in the ships
and the crews were not collected. Thus the "potent" King of Spain, as
he was called, and as he might have been with better management, had
to sit helpless while a privateering fleet ranged at will through
his possessions and plundered his subjects. As it was in 1585, so it
was in 1586 and 1587: Philip was toiling laboriously to collect his
armament, but as he would not put the various parts together till he
had collected all he wanted, no portion of his inchoate fighting forces
was ready on a sudden call.
There are few more ludicrous passages in history than the cruise of
Drake in 1587. Queen Elizabeth and her ministers were aware that
preparations were being made for an invasion of England. Although the
queen's passion for intrigue induced her to keep up a laborious show
of friendly negotiations with the Prince of Parma, Philip's viceroy in
the Low Countries, she did not in practice forget that she was at war.
In the spring of 1587 she decided to despatch Sir Francis Drake for the
purpose of looking into the preparations reported to be making in the
Spanish ports. As in 1585, the queen bore only a part of the expenses.
Of the thirty ships despatched, four, the =Bonaventure=, the =Lion=,
the =Dreadnought=, and the =Rainbow=, with two pinnaces attached as
tenders, belonged to the Royal Navy; the others were "tall ships" of
London, not hired by the queen, but joined in partnership with her
for the purpose of making what profit they could by plundering the
Spaniards.
Drake sailed from Plymouth early in April, and in the 40th degree
of latitude he learned from two German merchant ships that great
quantities of naval stores were being collected at Cadiz to be
transported to Lisbon, where the King of Spain's "Admiral of the Ocean
Sea," Don Álvaro de Bazan, had his headquarters. Portugal, it may not
be superfluous to remind the reader, had been annexed a few years
before by Philip II., who claimed to be the heir of Dom Sebastian,
slain at the battle of Alcázar el Kebir, and it continued to be
joined to the many other crowns of the King of Spain till 1640. Drake
immediately made for Cadiz, where he found the outer harbour crowded
with ships. These were the vessels which were designed to take part in
the invasion of England. But, by a piece of ineptitude of a kind not
at all rare in Philip's reign, they were for the most part unmanned. It
was easy work for the thirty efficient ships to capture, burn, sink,
or drive on shore such of these vessels as were not able to make a
timely escape into the inner harbour. The work was done thoroughly,
and to the no small profit of the adventurers. Enormous quantities
of booty were transferred from the Spanish to the English ships; and
although they were subject to an irritating fire from the distant
Spanish batteries, and to attack by the galleys, the English sailors
met with little difficulty in the discharge of their task. The work was
hard, and the men are said to have been really glad when the Spaniards
set fire to the vessels which had not yet fallen into our hands, and
thereby put a stop to the toil of collecting more plunder. Nothing more
disgraceful to the management of Philip II., nothing which more fully
revealed the essential weakness of his power, could well have happened.
From Cadiz Drake stretched along the coast to Lisbon, landing as he
pleased, and plundering as he thought fit. At the mouth of the Tagus he
anchored and sent in a challenge to the Marquis of Santa Cruz. But the
king's admiral, though he was a man of great natural courage and of an
enterprising character, could not accept it, for his vessels were in
no condition to take the sea without the stores burned at Cadiz. From
Cascaes Drake stood across to the Azores, and lay there undisturbed
on the track of the carracks, the great merchant ships employed by
the Portuguese at that time in the trade with the East Indies. One of
these, named the _St. Philip_, fell into his hands. She was the first
of these ships ever taken by us, and the sight of her cargo must have
had a good deal to do with arousing the desire of English merchants
to share in the trade of the East. This capture, added to the plunder
taken at Cadiz, secured the profits of the voyage, and therefore
Drake made sail for England with his fleet and the prize, where they
all arrived "to their own profit and due commendation, and the great
admiration of the whole kingdom."
This check did not make Philip any wiser than before, but neither
did it in any way damp his determination to collect such a fleet as
should make an end of the English pirates. He began the work of getting
his stores together again with imperturbable patient industry. Drake
described his feat in the outer harbour of Cadiz as the singeing of
the King of Spain's beard, and the phrase was accurate as well as
humorous. He had insulted the enemy, and had done him as much injury
as would compel him to abstain from action for the time being, but he
had not seriously crippled his power. By the spring of the following
year the Spanish fleet was ready for service, and if Don Álvaro de
Bazan had lived, it might have sailed sooner than it actually did.
The old man's own plan, communicated to the king some years before,
had been to embark a sufficient army in Spain, and sail direct to the
coast of England, but the resources of King Philip were not adequate
to a scheme of the scale proposed by his admiral. He had to maintain
an army under the Prince of Parma in Flanders, and could not meet the
expense of organising another. He had therefore decided to make the
fleet he was collecting in Spain co-operate with the army he already
had in the Low Countries. It was indeed to carry reinforcements to the
Prince of Parma, but it was on him that the task of providing an army
for the invasion of England was to be laid. The Spaniards have always
counted it fortunate for England that the Marquis de Santa Cruz died
on the 9th February 1588. Perhaps it was, though it may be doubted
whether the very complicated task set by the king could have been
successfully performed even by him. To bring a fleet from Spain into
the Channel, to carry it to the Low Countries, to embark an army there
and transport it to the coast of England, would have made a long and
complicated operation, to be conducted in difficult seas, of which the
Spaniards had little knowledge, and in the face of the most determined
opposition from Dutch and English seamen. However that may be, the
Spaniards were deprived of such chance of victory as they might have
had under the command of the "Iron Marquis" by his death; and then the
king, acting on motives which are not a little mysterious, selected
from among his subjects as leader of this great enterprise perhaps the
gentleman who was more fitted than any other then living to lead it
to ruin. This was Don Alonso Perez de Guzman, Duke of Medina Sidonia.
He was a youngish man, small, of a swarthy complexion, and somewhat
bandy-legged, who, according to his own candid and somewhat pitiful
confession to the king, knew nothing of war by land or sea, was always
sea-sick when he went in a vessel, and never failed to catch cold. What
qualification he had, beyond his illustrious lineage and his great
estates, for a high command nobody has ever been able to discover.
These were no doubt to be taken into account at a time when obedience
was more readily rendered to a gentleman of great social position than
to others; but there were men of the duke's own rank among Philip's
subjects who had served, and were at least not manifestly unfit for the
post. But the king chose the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and, overcoming
his manifest reluctance to take the command, sent him to succeed the
Marquis de Santa Cruz. It was in reality consistent enough with the
duke's first unwillingness to take the post, that, once in it, he had
not the smallest hesitation in contradicting the advice and overruling
the decisions of his veteran predecessor. He declared that what had
seemed enough for Santa Cruz was not enough; he wanted more ships, more
men, more stores; and thus the fleet, which ought to have started in
February, did not leave the Tagus till May. During all this time the
stores already collected began to go rotten and had to be replaced. The
pressed-men ran, and others had to be found; and so delay bred delay,
and the months passed in mere waste alike of time and material.
On our own side there were also defects of management, not, however,
attributable to the officers in command, but partly to the poverty of
the queen's Government, and partly to the vacillations of the queen.
Elizabeth, it must not be forgotten, was a very poor sovereign, and
the maintenance of a great fleet was a heavy drain upon her resources.
Moreover, she had an artistic love of tricks. She could not be
thoroughly persuaded that it was hopeless to expect to avert the
Spanish invasion by artful diplomacy. Therefore, between her impatience
under the expenses of the fleet and her profound belief in her own
cleverness, she vacillated all through the spring of that eventful
year. Her ships had been brought into excellent order by John Hawkins.
Her subjects were full of zeal; and although the smaller ports met the
demand for ships with loud complaints of poverty and of the ruin of
their trade by war, yet London freely offered twice as many vessels and
men as the Crown asked for, while the nobles and those adventurers of
the stamp of Drake and Hawkins, who had grown rich at the expense of
the Spaniards, were active in fitting out vessels and collecting crews.
The queen's Lord High Admiral, Charles Howard, Lord Effingham, was as
fit a man for the place as could have been found. He had, it is true,
no experience in war; and it does not appear, from anything recorded of
him, that he was a man of much ability. But he had character and tact,
and the happy faculty of allowing himself to be guided by his abler and
more experienced subordinates, without suffering his authority to be
diminished.
By the mouth of Howard, Elizabeth's captains implored her for leave to
repeat the cruise for 1587. They pointed out that, if we must fight
the Spaniard, it was better to fight him on his own coast than ours,
and, moreover, it was safer, since, even if we were to be beaten,
defeat would be less dangerous a long way off than at home. But
Elizabeth would not part with the hope that her diplomacy, which had
stood her in such admirable stead during the twenty-eight years of
her reign, would serve her again, and she would not allow her fleet
to sail for an attack upon Spain, which must necessarily have broken
off the negotiations of peace. Still, the preparations for war were
not neglected. The Admiral of England, Lord Howard, with Drake as Vice
and Hawkins as Rear Admiral, had his headquarters at Plymouth, while
Lord Henry Seymour commanded the ships of London and the East Coast,
in the Thames. On the approach of the enemy, his station was to be in
the Downs, where he was to watch the Duke of Parma, who was collecting
the army of invasion in the Flemish ports. In this work Seymour had the
help of a squadron of Dutch vessels, commanded by Justinus of Nassau, a
natural son of William the Silent.
At the end of May the Duke of Medina Sidonia did at last sail. All
his demands had been supplied by the king. His banners had been
solemnly blessed by the Cardinal Albert--the cardinal who was Viceroy
of Portugal; all his officers and men had taken the Communion and
confessed their sins; and at last the Armada was on the way, with
assurances from the king that "it must succeed, since God would not
fail to help it on an enterprise so much for His service as this
was." When Cromwell told his soldiers to trust in God, he also added
the order to keep their powder dry; in other words, not to allow
their reliance on divine assistance to tempt them into neglecting
ordinary human precautions. King Philip was lavish in good advice
and intelligent direction, but he was neither so practical as Oliver
Cromwell, nor would he take equally good care that what he directed
his men to do should be within their power. It was worthy of a king
who, throughout the whole of his life, was endeavouring to achieve
vast ends with very insufficient means, that Philip sent his fleet out
with the knowledge that it suffered from a great cause of inferiority,
but without making the slightest effort to remove the defect. He knew
that the gunnery of his crews was altogether inferior to the English,
and that his guns were not so good. Therefore, as he warned the Duke
of Medina Sidonia, it was to be expected that the English ships would
endeavour to engage at a distance, and would avoid coming so close that
the Spaniards would have a chance of boarding them. It was also not
unknown to Philip that the English ships sailed better than his own,
and that therefore it would be in their power to choose the distance at
which they would engage. Yet, instead of providing quicker ships and
better guns, and of training more skilful gunners, he could only advise
his admiral to come to close quarters with the English fleet without
telling him how the feat was to be achieved. The very first experience
of his fleet after leaving Lisbon ought to have shown him how little
hope there was that the unlucky Duke of Medina Sidonia would have it in
his power to engage the English except on their own terms. By a curious
coincidence, Lord Howard and the duke left port at about the same time;
the Lord Admiral sailing from Plymouth to the south and west in order
to meet the coming Spaniards, and Medina Sidonia sailing from Lisbon
towards England. Had no accident intervened, they would probably have
met in the neighbourhood of the Scilly Isles. A few days after the duke
had left Lisbon, a gale broke out from the south-west. It affected both
fleets,--the Spaniards, who had just rounded Cape Finisterre, and the
English, who were at the mouth of the Channel. But whereas these latter
were only hindered, the Invincible Armada was completely scattered. The
duke had given his fleet only one rendezvous in case of an accident
of this kind, and that was the neighbourhood of the Scilly Isles. The
squadron of _urcas_, or storeships, which accompanied his fleet held on
to the appointed place, and there remained. But the heavy galleons were
so maltreated by the wind that they were scattered along the coast. The
duke himself anchored at Corunna, and there collected his ships after
some days of confusion. A whole month passed before he was ready to go
to sea again. He himself was so dispirited that he actually proposed
to advise the king to give the enterprise up altogether, and was only
restrained from writing to that effect by the strenuous efforts of a
council of war. Meanwhile, Lord Howard, after being driven back by the
gale, had taken to the sea again, and had despatched a squadron to
reconnoitre towards the coast of Spain, while the bulk of his fleet was
stretched across the mouth of the Channel, in order to be the better
able to catch sight of the enemy if he endeavoured to pass. Nothing was
seen of the Spaniards, and Lord Howard returned to Plymouth. Although
undoubtedly better fitted than the Invincible Armada, the English
ships were not without wants of their own. In the hope of diminishing
expenses, or perhaps rather from the difficulty found in collecting
provisions, it was thought necessary to put the men "six on four,"
that is to say, that each set of six men received the rations of four.
It is doubtful whether the gaol fever, which broke out later on, had
already appeared, but the health of the fleet was not good. From Cecil
there came incessant appeals to keep down "charges," and complaints
that, no matter how much money was sent, he was worried out of his
life by appeals for more, to the no small aggravation of the gout,
from which he suffered cruelly. This idle hope to diminish expense,
at a moment when England had need to spend every man and every penny,
led the Treasurer, and perhaps Elizabeth, to propose a measure of
enormous practical folly. It was actually proposed to the Lord Admiral
to pay off four or five of his biggest ships on his return to Plymouth.
Howard, with patriotic indignation, professed that he would rather pay
the expenses out of his own pocket. The proposal was never carried out,
for the Spanish fleet appeared off the Lizard.
Medina Sidonia sailed from Corunna on the 12th of July. This date and
all the others must be understood to be in the old style used by us,
and not in the new or Gregorian employed by the Spaniards. The strength
of the Spanish fleet is put at 132 ships of 59,120 tons, carrying
29,287 men, of whom 21,621 were soldiers and 8066 were sailors. It is
doubtful whether all these vessels were actually present after the
various disasters the Armada had already experienced. The four galleys
must be deducted from its strength. They proved perfectly incapable of
facing the winds and currents of the Channel, and were compelled to
take refuge in French ports. Nearly a third of the others were _urcas_,
and of no use for fighting purposes. The whole was divided into ten
squadrons. The first in dignity--for it included the flagship of Medina
Sidonia--was the squadron of Portugal, consisting of ten galleons.
Then followed the squadron of Castile, of fourteen sail, under the
direct command of Diego Flores de Valdes. This officer had commanded
the yearly _flota_, or convoy, which went to and fro between Spain
and its American possession, carrying the trade; on account of his
experience as a seaman, Diego Flores had been especially recommended
to Medina Sidonia as his adviser, and sailed with him in the flagship.
His character seems to have been envious, and, whatever he may have
done to supply the duke's deficiencies as a seaman, he proved an
indifferent military adviser. Pedro de Valdes commanded the squadron
of Andalusia, of ten ships. The squadron of Biscay was of the same
strength, and the flag officer in command was Juan Martinez de Recalde,
who was also senior admiral of the whole fleet, by which we may perhaps
understand that he was the officer responsible for the navigation,
subject to the directions of Medina Sidonia. Miguel de Oquendo led the
ten ships forming the squadron of Guipuzcoa. The squadron of Italy,
under Martin de Bertendona, was of the same force. Twenty-three _urcas_
or storeships were under the command of Juan Gomez de Medina, while a
miscellaneous swarm of other small craft were under Antonio Hurtado de
Mendoza. Four galleasses, great overgrown galleys, formed a squadron
apart, under Hugo de Moncada. The four galleys under Diego de Medrado
proved, as has been said above, useless from the first, and never
took any share in the fighting in the Channel. They were driven by
the weather to seek refuge in French ports, and were able, later on,
to return in safety to Spain. Although the names of the various kinds
of ships forming the Armada are strange, the vessels themselves, with
the exception of the galleasse, described above, were not essentially
different from our own. The "galleon" was, for instance, only our
"capital ship." Although it has been customary to speak of the Spanish
ships as exceeding ours in bulk, it does not appear that any of them
were larger than the best of the queen's--the =White Bear=, for
instance, or the =Triumph=, or the =Ark=. Some twenty or twenty-five of
our largest were equal to eighty or ninety of the Spaniards in average
size, and far superior in seaworthiness. The smaller ships were equal
to their smaller in size, and vastly superior in number.
In the number of guns, also, the superiority of the Spaniards was much
more apparent than real. There is a doubt as to the actual excess in
the number of the Spanish cannon over the English. On the other hand,
modern Spanish writers have endeavoured to show that the English had
the advantage in the point of weight. It is, however, easy to make too
much of this. The number of cannons royal, and even of demi-cannon,
in the English navy was not great. The large majority of our guns
were culverins and demi-culverins of about the same calibre as the
guns carried by the Spaniards. For practical purposes, however, the
English had really a greater number of cannon, for it is beyond doubt
that the fire of our gunners was both more rapid and better directed.
The Spaniards themselves confessed that we fired three to one. It is
self-evident that a gun which is fired three times in five minutes is,
for the purpose of doing damage, quite as effectual as three guns which
are fired once each in the same space of time. The Spaniards, indeed,
looked down upon the use of artillery as being somewhat ignoble. The
management of the guns was left entirely to the sailors, who were a
despised and subordinate element in the crews of their ships. It does
not seem that they had any class of gunners. When, then, we remember
that the Spanish ships were ill fitted for the navigation of the
Channel, and that their seamen had no knowledge of its waters, it
will be seen that even with good leadership they would have been at a
disadvantage.
When we turn to our own fleet, the conditions are completely reversed.
In mere material force, that is to say, in the number of capital ships
and of guns, we were inferior, but in every other respect we had
the superiority. We had experience, familiarity with the waters in
which the fighting was to take place, and a far higher level of skill
in gunnery. The value of the fleet, the fighting instrument, must
depend on the skill of the men by whom it is used, that is to say,
of the seamen. Now, whereas the Spanish sailor was, as has been said
above, subordinate and despised, the English seaman had conquered his
due place of superiority in the fleet. But, after all, the greatest
element of superiority on our side was to be found in the quality
of the leaders. Lord Howard of Effingham, without being a man of
extraordinary ability, had a valuable mixture of intellectual docility
and vigour of character. And his subordinates, Drake, Hawkins, and
Frobisher, were all in various degrees capable men. The subordinate
leaders among the Spaniards were not unworthy to compete with our own.
Pedro de Valdes, Martinez de Recalde, and Miguel de Oquendo, not to
mention many others, were able officers, but they were not listened
to by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, whose conduct presented a familiar
combination of vacillation and obstinacy. He alternately allowed
himself to be earwigged by his official adviser, Diego Flores, or
insisted upon having his way when the advice of any seaman would have
saved him from committing a blunder. The number of ships with Lord
Howard at Plymouth was about a hundred, including all the best of the
queen's. The other vessels, which altogether amounted to nearly another
hundred, were either still in the ports along the Channel, or were
collecting, under the command of Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William
Winter, in the Thames and the Downs.
The orders the Duke of Medina Sidonia had received from his king were
both intelligent and explicit. He had been told that his first duty
was to cripple or destroy, if he could, the English fleet, and that
the transport of Parma's army was only to be a secondary object. A
large discretion was very properly left him in the carrying out of his
duties, while the general principles upon which he was to act were made
quite clear. How the duke contrived to disobey at once the letter and
the spirit of his orders will be seen from the following narrative.
On the 20th of July his fleet reached the Lizard, after eight days
of easy navigation from Corunna, which he had left upon the 12th. As
not infrequently happens in the case of a long-expected danger, the
actual crisis was a surprise. When the Spaniards were reported to be
in the neighbourhood of the Lizard, Lord Howard was lying with the
whole of his fleet in Plymouth Sound. As the Spaniards came up with a
good south-westerly breeze, they had, if they had known how to use it,
a great opportunity to strike with advantage. The same breeze which
brought them up made it extremely difficult for the English to get out,
since the wind was blowing across the Sound. If, then, the duke had
kept straight on and had steered boldly into Plymouth Sound, he might
have forced the English to battle under circumstances highly favourable
to himself, for in a confined anchorage the English ships could not
have manoeuvred, nor would it have been within their power to choose
their distance. The heavy Spanish galleons could have run them aboard,
and then the fight must have been conducted in conditions which it was
the interest of the Spaniards to seek. From the report of one Captain
Vanegas, a military officer serving in the flagship, it appears that
the proposal to sail in and attack the English in Plymouth Sound was
actually made to Medina Sidonia by Alonso de Leiva, but it was rejected
with the advice of a council of war, on the ground that the Spanish
fleet could not attack in a line abreast, because of the shoals at
the mouth of the Sound (those upon which the breakwater now stands);
while if they entered in line ahead, that is to say, one ship following
another through the channels on either side of the shoal, they would be
destroyed in detail by the fire of the English ships and forts. This
was a line of reasoning, and these were dangers, which, fortunately
for us, were destined to have a powerful influence with our enemies,
both French and Spanish, for centuries. In reality, the perils of an
attack in line ahead were greatly exaggerated, and, even if it had been
necessary for the Duke of Medina Sidonia to sacrifice a few ships, the
results would have repaid the cost. But the Spanish leader, who could
over-ride his professional advisers roughly enough when he pleased, was
on this occasion slavishly obedient to the advice of the mere seamen,
when it would have been better for him to have listened to the bolder
council of the military officer. He stood on past Plymouth, and by that
action he decided the fate of the Armada.
From the moment that his approach had been reported, the most strenuous
efforts had been made on the part of the English fleet to get to sea.
Working all through the night of the 20th and the morning of the 21st,
they had warped out a large part of the ships. While they were carrying
out this movement, undeterred by the Spaniards, Medina Sidonia was
rolling slowly up Channel. On the 21st July, so soon, in fact, as he
was out of harbour, Howard stood after the Spaniards and sent them in
the old chivalrous fashion a solemn defiance to battle. He despatched
a pinnace appropriately named the =Defiance=, with orders to fire a
gun at the Spaniard as a symbolical announcement that it was open war.
Then a confused action began between the two fleets. The Spaniards
were advancing along the Channel in a long half-moon, or concave line
abreast, stretching seven miles from north to south. This formation,
which was copied from the galleys, was absurdly ill fitted for vessels
carrying a broadside of guns, since it is clear that he who is between
two ships of his own side can fire neither to right nor to left without
injuring his own friends. Such a blundering arrangement almost dictated
to Lord Howard the course it was most convenient for him to adopt.
He attacked the two extremities of the Spanish line. It is probable
that the English ships more or less roughly carried out the method of
attack which has been described as "concentration by defiling"; that
is to say, they ran down from windward till within easy gunshot, then
they fired into the stern and quarter of the galleons at the extremity
of the Spanish wing, and hauled to windward so soon as there was
any danger of coming too near, or of heading, and therefore falling
to leeward of, their enemy. Under the pressure of such an attack as
this, the extremities of the Spanish half-moon would naturally flinch
inwards, and the danger of collision between the ships thus thrown out
of their order of sailing would be very serious. We know as a matter
of fact that the ships at the extremity of the Spanish line did suffer
very severely. One, the _Sta Catalina_, was very much cut up. Oquendo's
flagship was crippled by an explosion of gunpowder, said to have been
caused by a Flemish gunner in revenge for some ill usage. But the most
serious loss to the Spaniards, both materially and in honour, occurred
in the squadron of Andalusia. The _Nuestra Señora del Rosario_ was
the flagship of Pedro de Valdes, one of the best and ablest officers
in King Philip's service. In the confusion produced throughout the
Spanish fleet by the English attack, the _Rosario_ had been run into
and crippled by another ship of the squadron. Her bowsprit was carried
away and the foremast brought down. In this state Valdes was incapable
of keeping up with the fleet unless he was towed. But no help was
afforded him. At sundown, apparently immediately after the accident had
happened, the duke signalled to the fleet to hold on its course, and
stood up Channel before the westerly wind. Pedro de Valdes was left to
his fate, which not only might have been, but was, foreseen by every
ship in the Armada. There is a general agreement among the witnesses on
the Spanish side, who are many and circumstantial, that the desertion
of the flagship of the squadron of Andalusia spread a profound
discouragement. There was not a man in the fleet who did not say to
himself, "If so good an officer as Pedro de Valdes is deserted, what
can the rest of us expect if we are disabled?" During the night Lord
Howard followed the Spaniards close, but was not himself accompanied
by the rest of the fleet. Drake had been ordered to carry the guiding
light for the night, but, tempted by the sight of some vessels passing
him to the westward, he had turned back, thinking, or professing to
think, that they formed a part of the Spanish fleet endeavouring
to escape out of the Channel. Lord Howard mistook the light of the
Spaniards for that of his own vice-admiral. Meanwhile the rest of the
English fleet, having lost the guiding light, lay to. Thus when day
broke we were all scattered, though fortunately all to windward, and
the different parts of our force were most characteristically placed.
The gallant and disinterested Lord Howard was in dangerous proximity to
the enemy, the bulk of the English fleet was lying off some distance
in safety, but Drake, the ex-slaver and buccaneer, was close to the
crippled Spaniard--a prize which he could seize at no great cost of
danger or trouble to himself. Pedro de Valdes, being surrounded on
all sides, had no resource but to surrender at discretion, and the
_Rosario_ was sent into Weymouth. The remainder of the 22nd passed
without any incident of note. By the following day the Spaniards had
rolled slowly along to Portland. Here they seemed about to enjoy a
change of fortune. By this time, indeed, they had begun to understand
that it was upon fortune they must depend for a chance of bringing
the English to battle on terms fairly favourable to themselves. The
operations of the 21st had convinced them of the great superiority
of the English fleet in weatherliness. When, then, on the morning of
the 23rd the wind shifted to the N.E. and thereby gave the Spaniards
an opportunity of securing the weather-gage, they were flattered by a
prospect of taking their revenge. A part of the English were between
them and the shore. The Spaniards turned in the confident hope of
catching their slippery enemy between the "sword and the wall," to use
their own expressive idiom. But they were not to enjoy any favour of
fortune on this campaign. Just when a close engagement seemed to be
inevitable, the wind again swept round to the west, transferring the
weather-gage once more to the English. The duke resumed his course
to the east, and the English fell back a short space, and then again
followed their lumbering enemy, looking keenly for every chance to
strike him with advantage.
Nothing of note is recorded to have happened on the 24th, unless it
be that complaints were heard of want of powder in the fleet. In the
meantime the country had become thoroughly aroused. The Spaniards had
seen the beacon fires blazing on the hills of Devon on the night of
the 20th, and before daylight those flames had leapt from hill-top to
hill-top--
"From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, from Lynn to Milford Bay."
Volunteers swarmed down to the fleet. As English and Spaniards rolled
heavily along the Channel, ships slipped out from the different ports
to reinforce Howard. To the eastward, Lord Henry Seymour and Sir
William Winter were concentrating their squadrons in the Downs, while
the squadrons of Holland and Zeeland, united under the command of
Justinus of Nassau, were blocking every port in Spanish Flanders.
It was one of the most fatal of the misconceptions of the Spaniard
that he had hoped to draw help from those very harbours which the son
of William the Silent was blockading. On the 25th of July, Medina
Sidonia despatched a quick-sailing ship in advance to the Duke of
Parma, informing him of his own approach, and begging him to come out,
in order that they might combine their forces. The Spanish fleet was
then off the Isle of Wight. It was the day of St. Dominic, founder
of the Dominican order, and a member of the house of Guzman. The
Duke of Medina Sidonia, as was only natural in a Roman Catholic, and
a gentleman of a family which had produced so eminent a saint, was
in expectation that the anniversary would be marked by some signal
manifestation of divine assistance. But none came. Lord Howard was so
little disturbed by his enemy, and, we may add, was so little anxious
to force on a battle with him, that he spent some part of the day
in conferring the honour of knighthood on Lord Thomas Howard, Lord
Sheffield, Roger Townsend, Hawkins, and Frobisher. There was indeed
some fighting, but the day was calm, with very light breezes from the
west, and the engagement was a mere artillery duel, which in times of
rude gunnery meant a great waste of powder and shot. On the 26th there
was no action, and next day the Spaniards anchored in the Roads of
Calais.
In his own belief and in that of most of his contemporaries, the
Duke of Medina Sidonia had now carried out one main purpose of his
expedition. He had come to a place at which, if distance and their own
relative position were alone to be considered, he could effect his
meeting with the Duke of Parma. From Calais, therefore, he sent another
officer, urging the prince to come out at once with his seventeen
thousand soldiers. As a matter of fact, however, the Duke of Parma was
unable to move. The vessels he had been building to serve as transports
were in no state to go to sea, and if they had been they could not
have moved, for the prince had few sailors, and the Dutch squadron,
numerous and well appointed, was waiting for him outside. Alexander
Farnese, who does not seem ever to have had any effective belief in the
advisability of invading England, made a show of embarking his men, but
until the Dutch blockading squadrons were cleared away this was a mere
parade, and there was no naval force at hand to drive them off. As on
a famous occasion in our own later history, the Duke of Medina Sidonia
waited for the Duke of Parma, while the Duke of Parma, for his part,
stood waiting for the Duke of Medina Sidonia. So the 27th and the 28th
of July wore away.
Meanwhile, Howard had been joined by Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William
Winter, and a council of war was held on the flagship, the =Ark Royal=.
At this council it was decided to do some service against the Spaniards
at anchor by fireships. Seven vessels were filled with combustibles
and primed with powder. These preparations did not pass unperceived by
the enemy, and it was at least suggested to the Duke of Medina Sidonia
to prepare pinnaces with grappling irons for the purpose of towing off
any fireships the English might send among them. Ever since a weapon
of this kind had been used against them at the siege of Antwerp,
the Spaniards had regarded the fireship with considerable fear. But
measures of precaution were either not taken at all, or were taken very
ill. After dark, and when the tide was flowing strongly, the fireships
were sent in before the westerly wind. An instantaneous panic broke
out in the Spanish fleet. The whole swarm of ships hurried to escape
their assailants by getting up anchor and running away to leeward.
The better disciplined ships, in which the officers of experience and
volunteers of noble birth were numerous, weighed anchor, and moved off
in some order. The others cut their cables, and ran for it in great
confusion. Collisions were common. One great galleasse, the flagship of
Don Hugo de Moncada, had her rudder unshipped, and was stranded while
endeavouring to get into Calais harbour. Here the greater part of her
crew deserted her. The remainder, under the command of Don Hugo, made a
gallant fight for it against the swarm of English boats, till Moncada
fell shot through the head with a harquebus bullet, when the others
surrendered. Wild confusion prevailed throughout the rest of the now
beaten fleet. The vessels which had cut their cables drifted away to
leeward, for, as the Spaniards at that time carried no anchors on deck
except those at the catheads, they could not hoist others out in time
from the hold, and had no means of bringing themselves up. Thus, when
the day broke, such of Medina Sidonia's vessels as were in a position
to anchor were separated by miles from the great majority, which the
tide had carried far to leeward. The duke got under way, and ought to
have run down to leeward. But, having been yielding when he ought to
have been firm, he was, after the not uncommon habit of timid men,
obstinate when he might very well have yielded. He stood out to sea
with the galleons immediately about him, and signalled for the rest
of his fleet to join him. As they had to tack against the wind, this
movement could not be executed by most of them in less than many hours.
The isolated position of the Spanish commander was at once obvious to
the English admirals, and their whole force fell upon the part of the
Spanish fleet nearest them. This was the hottest day's fighting of the
whole campaign. The English were confident, and threw aside some of the
caution they had hitherto displayed. They came to close quarters, and
their artillery did heavy damage to their enemies. No Spanish ship was
actually taken, but one was seen to sink, and others were so crippled
that they drifted out of action and sought refuge in the Flemish ports
held by the Duke of Parma. These, with few exceptions, became prizes to
the Dutch.
When the battle of Gravelines was over, the Armada was beaten. It had
not suffered very severe loss in numbers, but it had become convinced
both of its own inferiority in manoeuvring power to its opponents,
and of the utter incapacity of its chief. He, for his part, was
thoroughly sick of his command, and was already in a humour to tell the
king, as he did on his arrival in Spain, that he would rather have his
head cut off than meddle with the command of fleets again.
In truth, neither fleet was in a condition to continue the action. The
English had exhausted their gunpowder, and the gaol fever was extending
with dreadful rapidity. There was also a want of provisions, for which
the queen's Government has been severely, and perhaps not altogether
justly, blamed by historians. If the queen and Lord Burleigh were
eager to keep down expenses, it must be remembered that the Crown was
very poor. The resources required to keep a great fleet on foot for
any length of time could only be obtained by an appeal to Parliament.
The political difficulties of her position made Elizabeth at all times
unwilling to put herself in the position of having to make a bargain
with the House of Commons, which was certain to exact concessions in
return for supplies of money. At such a time, indeed, nothing ought to
have been allowed to stand in the way of the defence of the country,
or to prevent the fair treatment of the officers and men serving in
the fleet. Yet there is no reason to suppose that Elizabeth and her
Lord Treasurer were careless of their duty; but the Government of the
time had very little experience in the maintenance of great military
forces. The naval administration was in a rudimentary condition, and
it may very well be that the want of powder and provisions and the
very irregular payment of wages were due rather to awkwardness and
ignorance, helped perhaps by dishonesty on the part of subordinates,
than to meanness in Elizabeth. The fleet which in the following year
was sent to the coast of Spain to retaliate for the Spanish invasion
suffered much from the want of food and from pestilence. Yet it was
organised not by the queen, but by a committee of adventurers, who had
every motive to fit it out well, since they must needs rely upon its
efficiency to repay them by the capture of Spanish prizes. However the
blame must be divided, the fact remains that within a few days after
the battle of Gravelines the English fleet was in danger of being
paralysed by the want of necessary stores, and by the unmanning of the
ships through sickness and desertion.
The English fleet had the resource of retiring to its own harbours,
but there was no such escape for the Spaniards. There was no port
of their own available for the heavy ships nearer than the Bay of
Biscay. Parma did indeed advise the duke to betake himself to the free
city of Hamburg, where, as he was well provided with money, he would
have no difficulty in finding stores, and from whence he could issue
later on for the purpose either of renewing the attack on England, or
of co-operating in a serious effort to reduce Holland and Zeeland.
Whatever the worth of the advice may have been, and whether it was
physically practicable or not, the Duke of Medina Sidonia was in no
condition to act upon it. He had become completely cowed. Indeed, he
had just had a demonstration of the utter unfitness of his fleet for
the work his master the king had sent him to perform. The battle of
Gravelines was followed by strong breezes, for they do not seem to
have attained to the dignity of a storm, from the S. and S.W. Under
the impulse of these winds, the heavier ships of the Armada began to
drift on the shallows of the coast of Zeeland. By the confession of
the Spaniards, their vessels were wholly at the mercy of the wind and
the currents. They drifted along quite unable to help themselves, and
only a lucky shift of the wind saved them from going ashore. When the
wind did turn to a point more favourable to them, the Spanish ships,
still very little diminished in number, but entirely broken in spirit,
straggled out into the North Sea, and then, by the command of the Duke
of Medina Sidonia, all stood to the northward for the purpose of making
their way back to Spain by the west of the British Isles.
When the Armada was seen to be in retreat, Howard told off Lord
Henry Seymour to remain in the Downs for the purpose of operating
with Justinus of Nassau in the blockade of Parma's ports. He himself
followed the Spaniards as far north as the Firth of Forth. That he
made no attack upon them, shows either that his own vessels were
wholly destitute of stores, or that the enemy still inspired him with
an amount of respect not justified by their real condition. At the
Firth of Forth, Howard left the enemy and returned to the mouth of the
Thames. For a time there was a belief that the Duke of Parma might
still sally out, and there was even in the opinion of some of our
leaders a fear that the Armada might return. It was not, indeed, until
months afterwards that the world began to know what had been the fate
of the King of Spain's great fleet. It had stood to the north until
the pilots, by whose advice the Duke of Medina Sidonia acted, thought
it safe to turn to the west, and up to this period it had apparently
not suffered much. Nine vessels had in all been lost by capture or
abandonment to the enemy. But on the way home fifty-four perished by
shipwreck. Almost from the very day in which the galleons and _urcas_
of the King of Spain turned the north of Scotland on their way home,
they were subjected to a succession of storms of extraordinary violence
for the season of the year. Being ill provided with pilots and charts,
as well as essentially unseaworthy, they were quite unable to struggle
with the violence of the weather. Nineteen vessels were wrecked on the
coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Those of the Spaniards who were wrecked
within the dominions of Queen Elizabeth were massacred by orders of her
officers, many of them being put to death in cold blood, after they had
been received to quarter. About one-half of the King of Spain's ships
were lost. Those which reached his ports were almost unmanned, for the
scurvy broke out during the miseries of the return home, and, as the
provisions were exhausted, the crews died from actual starvation. Few
of the leaders lived to return home. Alonso de Leiva perished in the
wreck of the _Rata_. Oquendo and Martinez de Recalde did indeed live
to cast anchor in Spanish waters, but they died almost immediately
afterwards from the effect of the sufferings they had endured, and the
shame of the great disaster. The Duke of Medina Sidonia spent his time,
while returning to Spain, sitting in his cabin with his face buried
in his hands, in complete prostration and stupor, while Diego Flores
and Don Francisco de Bobadilla carried on the duties of commander.
The duke had left Spain a very prosperous gentleman; he returned a
white-haired old man.
The failure of the Armada was naturally a very conspicuous event in
the opinion of that and succeeding generations. It was the visible
deliverance of England, and with her of the Protestants of Europe. The
piety of the time accounted for the failure of the mighty armament
by saying that God had blown upon it, and it had been scattered.
This verdict has not always been accepted by the rationalism or the
patriotism of modern times, and yet it may be said to be essentially
true. The Armada failed through its own weakness and the incapacity
of its chief. With the single exception of their use of the fireships
in Calais Roads, the English leaders did nothing to force the Duke of
Medina Sidonia into a disadvantageous position. He put himself into
the worst position by his own acts. When he did decide to retreat, the
material strength of his fleet was hardly impaired. It was the moral
strength that was gone, and that partly through the discovery that
the ships were very ill fitted for their work, and partly because the
Spaniards had discovered the hopeless incapacity of their leader. Even
at the last moment, when the Spaniards had been saved by a mere shift
in the wind from destruction on the banks of Zeeland, Lord Howard
showed no wish to come to close quarters with them. The supposition
that he left them at the Firth of Forth because he foresaw they would
perish on their way home, is inadmissible. Lord Howard cannot have
known that the latter part of the month of August would be beyond
precedent stormy. If the weather had been what it might have been
expected to be, the loss of the Spaniards would probably not have
gone beyond a very few more vessels than those which had already been
taken or driven on shore, or had fallen into the hands of the enemy
in the Channel. In that case, they would indeed have failed to effect
an invasion of England; but the ships might have been refitted, and
the Armada would not have been considered to have suffered severely.
Thousands of men would no doubt have died from scurvy and want of
food, but that was usual even with the successful naval expeditions of
the time. As the English were then not familiar with the seas north of
the Firth of Forth, it is possible that if Lord Howard had pursued the
Spaniards, his own ships would have suffered much, if not quite as much
as the enemy. The storms did not cause the failure of the Armada in the
Channel or the North Sea, but they did produce its destruction.