THE GREAT ARMADA
1588
"Attend, all ye who list to hear
Our glorious England's praise.
I sing of the thrice famous deeds
She wrought in ancient days,
When that great fleet 'Invincible'
Against her bore in vain
The richest spoils of Mexico,
The bravest hearts of Spain."
Thus Macaulay begins his stirring ballad of the Armada. The lines have
helped to perpetuate a popular error--one of the many connected with the
story as it is generally told in our English histories. It somehow became
the fashion at a very early date to speak of the defeat of the so-called
"Invincible Armada" of Spain. But the Spaniards never gave their fleet such
a name. In the contemporary histories and in Spanish official documents it
is more modestly and truthfully spoken of as the "Gran Armada"--"the great
armed force." And, by the way, our very use of the word "armada" is based
on popular ignorance of the Spanish language, and on the impression
produced in England by the attempt of Philip II to make himself master of
the narrow seas, and invade our islands. An "armada" is not necessarily a
fleet. It is an armed force, an "army" either marching on land or embarked
for service on the sea, in which case fleet and fighting-men are included
in the word.
Philip II was King not of Spain only, but also of Portugal and of the Two
Sicilies, ruler of other European lands and "Lord of the Indies," the
Sovereign of a widespread maritime Empire in Asia, Africa, and America,
that had been won by a hundred years of enterprise on the part of sailors
and soldiers like Columbus and Vasco da Gama, Cortes, Pizarro, and
Albuquerque. The tradition of Spanish victory on the sea was a proud one,
and as we have seen Spain had borne a leading part in the latest of
decisive naval victories, when the Turkish power in the Mediterranean was
shattered at Lepanto; King Philip might therefore reasonably look forward
to success for his great fleet, and if it could once secure the mastery of
the Channel, the invasion of England might be regarded as no very perilous
enterprise. For the Spanish infantry were the best soldiers of the day, and
the Duke of Parma, who was to command the land operations, was one of the
best and most experienced leaders in Europe.
Looking back on the events of the wonderful year of the Armada, we must try
to divest ourselves of the ideas of to-day, and see things as the men of
the time saw them. Philip counted on divisions among the people of England.
The event proved that he was mistaken, but he had reasonable grounds for
the view he took. A hundred years later another fleet conveyed a foreign
army across the narrow seas from the Netherlands to change effectively the
course of English affairs. It found a divided people, and the invading army
was welcomed by a party strong enough to effect a Revolution that was a new
starting-point in English history. Nor must we suppose that the policy of
Philip II was directed entirely by religious views. If kings were easily
swayed by such motives, there would have not been such difficulty about
organizing a League against the Turk.
Professor Laughton, in his introduction to the "State Papers relating to
the Defeat of the Armada," puts the matter so clearly that it is worth
while quoting his words at some length:--
"It is not strange that the action of the fleet was for long
misunderstood, and that the failure of the Spaniards should have
been represented--as it often is even now--as due to a
Heaven-sent storm. '_Flavit Deus et dissipati sunt_' was
accepted as at once a true and pious explanation of the whole
thing. It was, too, a flattering and economical belief. We were,
it has been argued, a nation peculiarly dear to the Almighty,
and He showed His favour by raising a storm to overwhelm our
enemy, when the odds against us were most terrible. From the
religious point of view such a representation is childish; from
the historical it is false. False, because the Spanish fleet,
after being hounded up Channel, had sustained a crushing defeat
from the English, a defeat in which they lost many ships and
thousands of men before they fled to the north.... Childish,
because in affairs of State Providence works by recognized
means, and gives the victory, not by disturbing the course of
nature and nature's laws, but by giving the favoured nation wise
and prudent commanders, skilful and able warriors; by teaching
their hands to war and their fingers to fight.
"But, in fact, much of the nonsense that has been talked grew
out of the attempt, not unsuccessfully made, to represent the
war as religious; to describe it as a species of crusade
instigated by the Pope, in order to bring heretical England once
more into the fold of the true Church. In reality nothing can be
more inaccurate. It is, indeed, quite certain that religious
bitterness was imported into the quarrel; but the war had its
origin in two perfectly clear and wholly mundane causes."
Professor Laughton then goes on to explain what these causes were: (1) the
attempts of Drake and Hawkins to break the Spanish monopoly of trade in the
West Indies by armed expeditions, which included the capture of Spanish
ships and the sacking of Spanish trading posts. The Spaniards regarded
Drake and Hawkins as smugglers and pirates, and in vain asked Elizabeth to
disavow and make amends for their acts.
(2) "The countenance and assistance which had been given by the English to
the King's rebellious subjects in the Low Countries."
The King was glad enough to put forward religious reasons as the motives
for his enterprise in the hope of thus enlisting new allies on his side,
but, like so many other wars, the conflict between Spain and England, which
began in 1585, arose largely from rivalry in trade.
The Marquis of Santa Cruz, the same who had commanded the allied reserve at
Lepanto, was then the most famous and the most trusted of King Philip's
admirals. Santa Cruz urged upon him the advisability of attempting an
invasion of England itself, as the only effective means of cutting off the
support given by Elizabeth to the revolt of the Netherlands, and checking
at their source the raids on the West Indies. In March, 1586, he submitted
to his master an elaborate plan for the operation. Santa Cruz's scheme was
an ambitious project for concentrating the whole force of the Spanish
Empire in an attack on England. Some 500 ships, great and small, were to be
assembled in the ports of the Spanish peninsula, and 85,000 men embarked on
them.
Philip II thought the scheme too vast, and, above all, too costly. He
substituted for it another plan, which was more economical. Santa Cruz was
to assemble in the Atlantic ports of the Peninsula a fleet of more modest
proportions, just strong enough to secure command of the Channel. This
done, he was to cover the transportation across the narrow seas of the
Spanish army that was already operating in the Netherlands, under the Duke
of Parma. The army of the Netherlands would be reinforced with all the
fighting-men that could be spared from the fleet. This was in its essential
points the plan of campaign of the "Gran' Armada" of 1588.
It was intended that the attempt should be made in the summer of 1587. It
was delayed for a twelvemonth by a daring enterprise of Francis Drake, a
memorable enterprise, because in proposing it he laid down the true
principle for the defence of England against invasion. His policy was that
of Edward III at Sluys, his principle that it was better to keep the enemy
occupied on his own coasts rather than await him on those of England. On 2
April, 1587, Drake sailed for Spain with only thirty ships, and surprised
and burned the half-armed transports and storeships collected at Cadiz for
fitting out the Armada. His dashing enterprise had made its departure for
that year impossible.
Before the preparations for the next summer's campaign were completed the
Marquis of Santa Cruz died, and Spain lost her best and most experienced
admiral. King Philip put in his place a great noble, Guzman, Duke of
Medina-Sidonia, who pleaded in vain to be excused, frankly declaring to his
sovereign that he felt unfit for such high command, as he had scant
knowledge of war and no experience of the sea. It is supposed that the King
persisted in the nomination because Medina-Sidonia's hereditary rank would
place him above the jealousies of the subordinate commanders, and he hoped
to supply for the Marquis's inexperience by sending veteran sailors and
soldiers with him as his staff-officers and divisional commanders.
By the middle of May, 1588, the Armada was at last ready to sail from the
Tagus. In England there had been the wildest reports as to its numbers and
strength. These exaggerations were repeated by the popular historians of
the fighting in the Channel, and have become almost a national tradition.
The Spanish galleons were said to be floating monsters, more like castles
than ships; the fleet was so numerous that it hid the sea, and looked like
a moving town; it "seemed as if room would scarce be found on the ocean for
so vast an armament."
The glory of the English victory was great enough to need no exaggeration
to enhance it. But in sober fact there was no such enormous disparity, as
is generally imagined, between the opposing forces.
Large and small, there were 130 ships in the Armada. The detailed
catalogue of them, from the list sent by Medina-Sidonia to Philip II, has
been reprinted by Captain Duro in his "Armada Invencibile," and by
Professor Laughton in his "State Papers relating to the Armada." From these
sources I take a summarized table giving the statistics of the Armada, and
then add some particulars as to various squadrons, ships, and
commanders:--
------------------------+--------+-------+------+----------+--------+----------
Divisions. | Ships. | Tons. | Guns.| Soldiers.|Sailors.|Total Men.
------------------------+--------+-------+------+----------+--------+----------
Armada of Portugal | 12 | 7,737 | 347 | 3,330 | 1,293 | 4,623
" " Biscay | 14 | 6,567 | 238 | 1,937 | 863 | 2,800
" " Castille | 16 | 8,714 | 384 | 2,458 | 1,719 | 4,171
" " Andalusia | 11 | 8,762 | 240 | 2,327 | 780 | 3,105
" " Guipuzcoa | 14 | 6,991 | 247 | 1,992 | 616 | 2,608
" " the Levant | 10 | 7,705 | 280 | 2,780 | 767 | 3,523
Squadron of "urcas" | 23 |10,271 | 384 | 3,121 | 608 | 3,729
(hulks or storeships) | | | | | |
"Patasses" and "zabras" | 22 | 1,121 | 91 | 479 | 574 | 1,093
(small craft) | | | | | |
Neapolitan galleasses | 4 | -- | 200 | 773 | 468 | 1,341
Galleys | 4 | -- | 20 | -- | 362 | 362
------------------------+--------+-------+------+----------+--------+----------
| 130 |57,868 |2,431 | 19,295 | 8,050 | 27,365
Rowers (in galleasses and galleys) | | | | 2,088
| | | | ------
Grand total, soldiers, sailors and rowers| | | | 29,453
-----------------------------------------+------+----------+--------+----------
The first point to note about the Armada is that it was almost entirely a
fleet of sailing-ships. The new period of naval war had begun. There had
been hundreds of galleys at Lepanto, seventeen years earlier, but there
were only four in the Armada, and none of these reached the Channel. The
long, low, oar-driven warship, that for two thousand years had done so much
fighting in the Mediterranean, proved useless in the long waves of the
Atlantic.[7] The only oared ships that really took part in the campaign
were the four galleasses, and in these the oar was only auxiliary to the
spread of sail on their three full-rigged masts. The galleasse has been
described in the story of Lepanto. It was an intermediate or transition
type of ship. It seems to have so impressed the English onlookers that the
four galleasses are given quite an unmerited importance in some of the
popular narratives of the war.
[7] Galleys were used in the land-locked Mediterranean and
Baltic up to the first years of the nineteenth century, but the
only sailors who ever ventured to take galleys into the wild
weather of the Atlantic were the Norse Vikings.
But the day of sails had come, and the really effective strength of the
Armada lay in the tall galleons of the six "armadas" or squadrons of
Portugal, the Spanish provinces, and the Levantine traders. The galleon was
a large sailing-ship, but even as to the size of the galleons the popular
tradition of history is full of exaggeration. Built primarily for commerce,
not for war, they carried fewer guns than the galleasses, though many of
them were of heavier tonnage. In those days every large trader carried a
certain number of guns for her protection, but such guns were mostly of
small calibre and short range.
[Illustration: THE "GREAT ARMADA" ENTERING THE CHANNEL
_From the drawing by W. H. Overend_]
The largest galleons were in the armada of the Levant. The flagship, "La
Regazona," commanded by Martin de Bertendona, was the biggest ship in the
whole fleet, a great vessel of 1249 tons. But she only mounted 30 guns,
mostly light pieces. Compare this with the armament of the galleasses,
and one sees the difference between ships built for war and galleons that
were primarily traders. The largest of the four galleasses was only of 264
tons, the smallest 169, but each of the four mounted 50 guns. In all the
six armadas of galleons there were only seven ships of over a thousand
tons. There were fourteen more of over 800, and a considerable number of
under 500 tons. But the galleon looked larger than she really was. Such
ships had high bulwarks and towering fore and stern castles, and they
appear to have been over-rigged with huge masts and heavy yards. A galleon
under full sail must have been a splendid sight, the bows and stern and the
tall "castles" tricked out with carving, gold and colour. Great lanterns
were fixed on the poop. The sails were not dull stretches of canvas, but
bright with colour, for woven into or embroidered on them there were huge
coats-of-arms, or brilliantly coloured crosses, and even pictures of the
saints with gilded haloes. From the mastheads fluttered pennons thirty or
forty feet long, and flagstaffs displayed not only the broad standard of
the Lions and Castles of Spain, but also the banners of nobles and knights
who were serving on board.
But the tall ship, with her proud display of gold and colour, was more
splendid than formidable, and the Elizabethan seamen had soon realized the
fact. Built originally for the more equable weather of the trade-wind
region in the South Atlantic, she was not so well fitted for the wilder
seas and changing winds of the North. She was essentially an unhandy ship.
In bad weather she rolled heavily, and her heavy masts and spars and high
upper works strained the whole structure, so that she was soon leaking
badly. With the wind abeam and blowing hard, her tall sides and towering
castles were like sails that could not be reefed, a resisting surface that
complicated all manoeuvres. The guns that looked out from her port-holes
were mostly small cannon, many of them mere three and four-pounders, of
short range and little effect. So small was the dependence the Spaniards
placed upon them that they carried only the scantiest supply of ammunition.
The fighting method of the galleon was to bear close down upon her
opponent, run her aboard, if possible, pour down a heavy fire of musketry
from the high bulwarks and castles, so as to bring a plunging shower of
bullets on the enemy's decks, and then board, and let pike and sword do
their work as they had done at Lepanto. These were, after all, the methods
of the soldier, the tactics of the war-galley. It was the merit of Howard,
Hawkins, Drake, and the other great captains, who commanded against the
Armada, that they fought as seamen, using their more handy and better
handled ships to choose their own position and range, refusing to let the
Spaniards close, and bringing a more powerful, longer-ranging, and better
served artillery to bear with destructive effect on the easy targets
supplied by the tall galleons. It is worth noting that while there were
more soldiers than seamen in the Armada, there were more seamen than
soldiers in the fleet that met it in the narrow seas.
If the Armada had a commander whose only merit was personal courage, the
admirals of the various squadrons were all men of long experience in war,
both by land and sea. Martinez de Recalde, the second in command and
admiral of the armada of Biscay, was a veteran seaman. Diego Flores de
Valdes, the admiral of Castille, was an enterprising and skilful leader,
and if his advice had been taken at the outset there might have been a
disaster for England. Pedro de Valdes, the admiral of Andalusia, had sailed
the northern seas, and Medina-Sidonia was told he might rely on his local
knowledge. Moncada, the admiral of the galleasses, was a "first-rate
fighting-man," and De Leyva, the general of the troops embarked, who had
taken command of the "Rata Coronada," a great galleon of 800 tons in the
Levant armada, showed that he was sailor as well as soldier.
The Duke of Parma, who commanded the army that was to be embarked from the
Netherlands, was counted the best general of the day, and his 30,000
Spanish regular infantry were the most formidable body of troops then in
Europe. His orders from the King were to build or collect a flotilla of
flat-bottomed barges to ferry his army across the straits under the
protection of the Armada, and for months thousands of shipwrights had been
at work in fishing ports and creeks, canals and rivers along the coast
between Calais and Ostend. The Dutch rebels held Flushing and the mouth of
the Scheldt, and they had a small but efficient fleet ready to do good
service as the ally of England--a fact often overlooked in our popular
stories of the Armada. Parma had proposed that he should attempt to reduce
Flushing and obtain command of the Scheldt, as a preliminary to the
enterprise against England. The Armada could then run for the Scheldt, and
make Antwerp its base of operations. But Philip was impatient of further
delays. Though the best of the Spanish admirals were against him, the King
insisted that the Armada need only run up Channel and obtain temporary
command of the straits to enable Parma to embark his army in the flotilla
even from an open beach. In the King's mind the necessity of destroying the
hostile sea power as a prelude to any scheme of invasion was disregarded or
was not understood.
On 30 May, in fine weather, the Armada at last sailed from Lisbon. The
reports sent back to Philip II by Medina-Sidonia, as the fleet passed Cape
Finisterre and stood out into the Bay of Biscay, told that all was well.
But a few days later a storm from the Atlantic swept the sea, and partly
dispersed the Armada. The storeships held on till they sighted the Scilly
Islands, and then, finding they had parted from the fleet, turned back.
Into the northern ports of Spain came scattered ships that had lost spars
and sails, some of them leaking so badly that only hard labour at the pumps
kept them afloat. Medina-Sidonia, with the main body, made for Corunna,
where he ordered the stragglers to reassemble. On 19 June he wrote to the
King reporting his arrival.
Then he sent letters betraying so much discouragement and irresolution that
one wonders he was not promptly relieved of his command. He proposed that
the whole enterprise should be abandoned and some means found for arranging
terms of peace. He reported that the fleet had suffered badly in the storm;
that there was much sickness on board; that large quantities of provisions
had gone bad, and must be replaced; and that the ships were short of water.
Instead of dismissing him from the command, the King wrote to his admiral
ordering and encouraging him to renew the attempt. The ships were refitted
and provisioned, and drafts of men collected to replace the invalided
soldiers and sailors. Early in July the Armada was again ready for sea.
The news that King Philip's Great Armada had been beaten back by the wild
Biscay gales reached England when the whole country was in a fever of
preparation for resistance. A commission of noblemen and gentlemen had been
appointed "to sett doune such meanes as are fittest to putt the forces of
the Realme in order to withstand any invasion." The Lord-Lieutenants of the
counties were directed to be ready to call out the local levies, which
formed a roughly armed, and mostly untrained, militia. Garrisons were
organized in the seaports, formed of more reliable and better equipped men,
and a small force was collected at Tilbury to oppose a landing in the
Thames estuary. Faggots and brushwood were piled on hill-tops from Land's
End to Berwick to send the news of the Spaniards' arrival through England
by a chain of beacon fires.
The best of the Queen's advisers, men like the Lord Admiral Howard of
Effingham, and such experienced seamen as Hawkins, Drake, and Fenner,
realized, and succeeded in persuading the Council, that it was on the sea,
and not on the land, that England must be protected from invasion. Their
letters in the Armada State Papers are full of practical lessons even for
the present time. While insisting that the main effort must be
concentrated on the fleet, they did not disregard the advisability of
subsidiary preparations on land, in case of accidents. But Howard insisted
that a few well-trained men were worth fourfold their number of irregular
levies, and wrote to the Council:--
"I pray your Lordships to pardon me that I may put you in
remembrance to move her Majesty that she may have an especial
care to draw ten or twelve thousand men about her own person,
that may not be men unpractised. For this she may well assure
herself that 10,000 men, that be practised and trained together
under a good governor and expert leaders, shall do her Majesty
more service than any 40,000 which shall come from any other
parts of the realm. For, my Lords, we have here 6000 men in the
fleet, which we shall be able, out of our company, to land upon
any great occasion, which being as they have been trained here
under captains and men of experience, and each man knowing his
charge and they their captains, I had rather have them to do any
exploit than any 16,000 men out of any part of the realm."
The fleet, from which Howard of Effingham was ready to land these trained
men if necessary, was even more numerous than the Armada itself, though the
average size of the ships was smaller. On the list there appear the names
of no fewer than 197 ships, ranging in size from the "Triumph" of 1100 tons
(Frobisher's ship) down to small coasting craft. The flagship, the "Ark,"
or "Ark Royal," was a vessel of 800 tons. Contemporary prints show that she
had a high poop and forecastle, but not on the exaggerated scale of the
Spanish galleons; and that she had four masts, and was pierced with three
tiers of port-holes for guns, besides gun-ports in the stern. She had a
crew of 270 mariners, 34 gunners, and 126 soldiers. Contrary to the system
on which the Armada was manned, the seamen in every ship of the English
fleet exceeded the soldiers in number. "The Ark" carried no less than 44
guns, namely, 4 "cannon" (60-pounders), 4 "demi-cannon" (30-pounders) 12
"culverins" (long 18-pounders), 12 "demi-culverins" (long 9-pounders), 6
"sakers" (6-pounders), and six smaller pieces, some of them mounted inboard
for resisting boarders at close quarters.[8] This was an armament equalled
by few of the Spanish ships, and the fact is that the English ships as a
rule were better armed than the Spaniards.
[8] These old wooden ships had a much longer life than the steel
battleship of to-day, which becomes obsolete and is broken up
after twenty years. The "Ark," launched in 1587 (and built at
the cost of L5000 = L50,000 in the money of to-day), was
refitted and renamed the "Anne Royal" (after James I's queen) in
1608; was the flagship of the Cadiz expedition of 1625, and was
broken up in 1636. Hawkins's ship, the "Victory," was launched
in 1561; she sailed as the "Resolution" in Blake's fleet under
the Commonwealth; was renamed the "Royal Prince" at the
Restoration, and was burned in 1666 during Charles II's Dutch
war. She was then over a hundred years old and still fit "to lie
in the line of battle."
But few of Howard's fleet were of heavy tonnage. There were only two ships
of over 1000 tons; one of 900; two of 800; three of 600; five or six of
500, and all the rest less than 400 tons, many of them less than 100. But
though the English ships were smaller than the Spaniards, they were better
at sailing and manoeuvring, thoroughly handy craft, manned by sailors who
knew how to make them do their best, and who were quite at home in the
rough northern seas.
The main body of the fleet under Howard of Effingham assembled at Plymouth.
Detached squadrons under Lord Henry Seymour and Sir W. Winter watched the
Straits of Dover. Some of the captains thought Plymouth had been unwisely
chosen as the station of the main fleet, pointing out that a south or
south-west wind, which would be a fair wind for the Spaniards, would be a
very foul one for ships working out of the long inlet of Plymouth Harbour.
In June, Howard had news that the Armada was not only at sea, but far on
its voyage. Merchantmen ran for shelter to Plymouth, and told how they had
met at least two squadrons of large ships with great red crosses on their
foresails off Land's End, and in the entrance of the Channel. One ship had
been chased and fired on by a Spaniard. Then all trace of the enemy was
lost. There was no news of him in the Channel or on the Irish coasts. The
weather had been bad, and it was rightly conjectured that the squadrons
sighted off Land's End were only detachments of the Armada scattered by the
storm, and that the great fleet had put back to Spain, probably to Corunna.
This was soon confirmed by reports from France.
For a while there was an impression that the danger was over. Drake,
Hawkins, and other captains urged that now was the time to take the English
fleet to the Spanish coast and destroy the crippled and discouraged Armada
in its harbours. But the Queen and her Council hesitated to adopt so bold a
policy, and only a few ships were sent out to watch for the enemy in the
Bay of Biscay. These returned driven before a strong south wind, and then
fugitives from the Channel brought news that there was a crowd of ships off
the Lizard, and Howard in a short note reported that he had gone out to
engage them. The Armada had come in earnest at last.
After refitting at Corunna, Medina-Sidonia had sailed on 22 July with fine
weather and a fair south wind. Progress was not rapid, for the great
fleet's speed was that of its slowest ships. On the 26th, when the Armada
was well out to sea off the headlands of Brittany, the morning was dull and
cloudy, and towards noon the wind went round to the northward and increased
to half a gale, raising a heavy sea. The course was changed to the
eastward, and the ships were kept under shortened sail. The four galleys,
unable to face the rising storm, ran for shelter towards the French coast,
and never rejoined. They went southwards before the wind. One was wrecked
near Bayonne. The three others reached Spain.
All next day the gale blew heavily. The Armada, scattered over a wide
extent of sea, beat slowly to windward, working away from the dangerous
French coast. Many ships temporarily parted company. It looked as if there
would be another failure. But on Thursday the 28th (to quote the Spanish
admiral's diary) "the day dawned clear and bright, the wind and sea more
quiet than the day before. Forty ships were counted to be missing." The
admiral sent out three pinnaces to look for them, and next day, Friday, 29
July (19 July, O.S.), had news that all but one of them were with Pedro de
Valdes off the Lizard. This was the crowd of ships reported that same day
to Howard at Plymouth.
The missing ship, the "Santa Ana," the flagship of Biscay, rejoined later.
In the evening Medina-Sidonia saw the coast of England, and notes that it
was "said to be the Lizard." On the Saturday the admiral writes that "at
dawn the Armada was near with the land, so as we were seen therefrom,
whereupon they made fire and smokes."[9] The crew of a captured
fishing-boat later in the day told him they had seen the English fleet
coming out of Plymouth, and in the evening Medina-Sidonia's diary tells
that "many ships were seen, but because of the mist and rain we were unable
to count them."
[9] Macaulay, writing his ballad of the Armada before the full
English and Spanish records of the time were available,
represents the news as being brought to Plymouth by a
merchantman that had seen "Castille's black fleet lie heaving
many a mile" out by the Channel Islands, where the Armada was
never sighted. The "tall 'Pinta'" chased her for hours. There
was no such ship in the Armada. Macaulay took the name of one of
Columbus's caravels to adorn his ballad. Instead of the enemy
seeing "fire and smokes" at dawn, he describes with more
picturesque effect, how, in the night--
"From the deep the Spaniards saw
Along each southern shire,
Cape after cape in endless range,
Those twinkling points of fire."
A council of war had been held on board his flagship, the "San Martin." The
wind was south-west, the very wind to carry the Armada into Plymouth, and
dead against the English fleet coming out. De Leyva proposed that the
opportunity should be taken to attack the English in Plymouth Sound. Once
in the narrow waters the Spaniards could run them aboard and have the
advantage of their superior numbers of fighting-men in a hand-to-hand
conflict on the decks. The soldier's advice was good, but the sailors were
against him. They argued that the fleet must enter Plymouth Sound in line
ahead at the risk of being destroyed in detail, as the shoals at the
entrance (those on which the breakwater of to-day stands) left only two
narrow channels. De Leyva's bold plan was rejected, and it was decided that
the Armada should proceed up Channel.
[Illustration: VOYAGE OF THE ARMADA 1588]
Next day the fighting began. The wind had shifted to the north-west, a good
enough wind for working up Channel on the port tack. English contemporary
accounts say the Armada was formed in a half-moon, a centre and two wings
slightly thrown forward. Howard had as yet only brought part of his fleet
out of Plymouth, but though greatly outnumbered by the Spaniards, he had
his best ships and his most enterprising captains with him, and nothing
daunted by the grand array of the Armada, he began a series of harassing
attacks upon it.
It was Sunday morning, 31 July, according to the Spanish reckoning, the
21st according to the Old Style still used in England. It was a sunny day,
with just enough wind to help the nimble, seaworthy English ships in their
guerilla tactics. Howard's policy was to take full advantage of the three
factors that were on his side in the solution of the problem, better
seamanship in his crews, better gunnery, and handier ships. To close with
and grapple in the fashion of earlier naval battles would have been to risk
being crushed by superior numbers. His policy was to hang upon the flank or
rear of the Armada, close in and try to cripple one or more ships by
artillery fire, slip away if the enemy turned upon him, come on again as
they gave up the attempt to close, and he was ready all the time to swoop
down upon and capture any ship that might be detached from her consorts. At
the time arm-chair critics on shore found fault with what they considered
the half-hearted conduct of the admiral, and the Queen's Council inquired
why it was that none of the Spanish ships had been boarded. Sir Walter
Raleigh, who, as Professor Laughton notes, "must have often talked with
Howard, and Drake, and Hawkins, while the business was fresh in their
memories," thus explains and defends the admiral's conduct:--[10]
"Certainly, he that will happily perform a fight at sea must
believe that there is more belonging to a good man of war upon
the waters than great daring, and must know that there is a
great deal of difference between fighting loose or at large and
grappling. To clap ships together without consideration belongs
rather to a madman than to a man of war; for by such an ignorant
bravery was Peter Strozzi lost at the Azores, when he fought
against the Marquis of Santa Cruz. In like sort had the Lord
Charles Howard, Admiral of England, been lost in the year 1588,
if he had not been better advised than a great many malignant
fools were, that found fault with his demeanour. The Spaniards
had an army aboard them, and he had none; they had more ships
than he had, and of higher building and charging; so that, had
he entangled himself with those great and powerful vessels, he
had greatly endangered this kingdom of England. For twenty men
upon the defences are equal to a hundred that board and enter;
whereas then, contrariwise, the Spaniards had a hundred for
twenty of ours, to defend themselves withal. But our admiral
knew his advantage and held it; which had he not done, he had
not been worthy to have held his head."
[10] "Historie of the World," edit. 1736, ii, 565, quoted by
Professor Laughton, "State Papers relating to the Defeat of the
Spanish Armada," vol. i, Introduction, p. lxvi.
The shift of the wind to the north-west had given the English the weather
gage. They could run down before it on the enemy, and beat back against it
in a way that was impossible for the clumsy galleons. Thus Howard and his
captains could choose their own position and range during the fighting. It
began by a pinnace, appropriately named the "Defiance," firing a shot at
the nearest Spaniards, a challenge to battle. Medina-Sidonia held his
course and took no notice of it. Howard's squadron now swept past his
left, and then engaged his rear ships. The admiral himself in "The Ark"
steered for De Leyva's tall galleon, the "Rata Coronada," perhaps taking
her to be the flagship of the whole Armada. The two ships were soon in
action, the English gunners firing at the Spaniard's great hull, and De
Leyva's men aiming at the masts and yards of the "Ark" in the hope of
bringing down her spars and sails, crippling and then boarding her. The
better gunnery was on the English side. They fired three shots to the
Spaniards' one, and every shot told on the huge target. And shots in the
hull meant much loss of life and limb in the crowded decks.
As Recalde with the rear division shortened sail, and turned to the help of
De Leyva, the "Ark" and her consorts bore away, only to return again to the
attack, bringing their guns into action against Recalde's huge galleon, the
"Santa Ana," and Pedro Valdes's ship, the "Rosario," "Capitana," or
flagship of the Biscayan armada. These two had become separated from the
main body with a few of her ships that now formed a kind of rearguard.
Frobisher in the "Triumph" and Hawkins in the "Victory" were prominent in
the attack. On the Spanish side several of the flagships joined in this
rearguard fight. The admirals showed a chivalrous disposition to come to
close quarters, and thus Howard was engaged with some of the largest and
best commanded ships of the enemy. Oquendo, the admiral of Guipuzcoa, in
his 1200-ton galleon, called, like that of Recalde, the "Santa Ana," had
soon to draw out of the fight, with his ship on fire and badly damaged, not
by the English cannon, but by a powder explosion on his main gundeck.[11]
One only wonders that such accidents were not frequent on both sides, for
the powder was ladled into the guns from open gunpowder kegs, and matches
were kept burning beside each gun.
[11] "Her two decks and her poop were blown up: in which was the
paymaster of this Armada with part of the King's
Treasure."--Medina-Sidonia's narrative.
The "fighting loose and at large" went on for about three hours. Recalde's
ship was badly hulled, and also had her rigging cut up and one of her masts
damaged. Pedro Valdes's flagship, the "Rosario," was twice in collision
with a consort, with disastrous results. Her bowsprit was carried away, and
her foremast went over the side, the strain on the rigging bringing down
the main topmast with it. When the English drew off just before sundown,
Valdes was busy cutting away the wreckage. Medina-Sidonia shortened sail to
enable the rearward ships to rejoin, and then held his course up Channel.
Valdes sent a request to him that a ship should be detailed to tow the
disabled "Rosario," which otherwise could not keep up with the fleet. It is
generally stated that Medina-Sidonia took no notice of the message, and
abandoned Valdes to his fate, but in his narrative the Duke reports to King
Philip that he personally endeavoured to assist the disabled "Rosario," and
succeeded in removing the wounded from her, only failing to save her "owing
to the heavy sea and the darkness of the weather."
The English do not seem to have been troubled by the weather, and it cannot
have been very bad, or the wounded could not have been taken by boats from
Oquendo's ship. Evidently no great effort was made to succour the
"Rosario," and the ships detailed for the work did not like to lie in
isolation so near the English during the night. The impression in the
Armada certainly was that the gallant Valdes had been shamefully abandoned
by the admiral.
Before sunset a council of war had been held by Howard on board the "Ark."
It was decided to follow up the Armada through the short summer night. To
Drake in the "Revenge" was assigned the task of keeping touch with them and
guiding the pursuit by displaying a large stern lantern on his ship.
After dark Howard lost sight of the lantern, and then thought he had picked
it up again, but at daylight he found that he must have steered by a light
in the Armada, for as the day broke he lay with only a few ships perilously
near the main body of the enemy. Drake explained that in the darkness he
had thought that some ships of the enemy were turning back, and had
followed them. He had certainly failed in his important duty, and there was
a suspicion that the veteran buccaneer was really manoeuvring to make sure
of a prize, for at sunrise his ship, the "Revenge," lay near the crippled
"Rosario," which had been deserted by her consorts. He summoned Valdes to
surrender, and the Spaniard, with his ship helpless and menaced by the main
English fleet, hauled down his flag. The huge galleon was towed into
Weymouth, the first prize of the campaign.
Howard had drawn off from the enemy, helped to secure the "Rosario," and
rallied his own fleet, which had straggled during the night. This day,
Monday, 1 August (or 22 July, Old Style), there was no fighting, the Armada
working slowly up Channel, followed by the English out of cannon-range.
Medina-Sidonia formed a rearguard of forty galleons and three galleasses,
"in all 43 of the best ships of the Armada to confront the enemy, so that
there should be no hindrance to our joining with the Duke of Parma; and the
Duke with the rest of the Armada should go in the van, so that the whole
fleet was divided into only two squadrons, Don Alonso de Leyva taking the
rear under his charge." At 11 a.m. Oquendo's ship was reported to be
sinking. Her crew and "the King's money" were taken out of her, and the
"Santa Ana," largest but one of King Philip's galleons, disappeared under
the grey-green waves of the Channel. In two days the Armada had lost two of
its divisional flagships.
Howard had been reinforced during the day from the Western Channel ports.
After the free expenditure of powder and shot the previous day, his
magazines were half empty, and he husbanded his ammunition and followed up
the Spaniards out of fighting range, writing to Portsmouth to have all
ships there ready to join him. "We mean so to course the enemy," he added,
"that they shall have no leisure to land."
Seymour reported to the Council from Dover that the Armada was well up
Channel, and he feared they might seize the Isle of Wight. He asked for
"powder and shot" for his squadron--"whereof we have want in our fleet, and
which I have divers times given knowledge thereof." All the English
commanders felt this want of ammunition and supplies. The Queen's parsimony
was endangering the country.
On the Tuesday morning, 2 August (23 July, Old Style), the Armada was off
Portland. In the night the wind had gone round to the north-east, and as
the sun rose Howard's fleet was seen to be between the Spaniards and the
land and to leeward of them. Medina-Sidonia was no sailor, but his veteran
commanders saw the chance the shift of the wind had given them. The Armada
turned from its course up Channel, and on the starboard tack stood towards
the English fleet, hoping in Spanish phrase to catch the enemy "between the
sword and the wall."
It was an anxious moment for Howard and his captains when the Armada came
sweeping down on them, the galleasses in front pushing ahead with sail and
oar, behind the long lines of galleons with the wind in the painted sails
of their towering masts. It looked as if the Spaniards would soon be locked
in close fight with the English squadron, with every advantage on the side
of King Philip's floating castles. Led by the "Ark," the English ships
began to beat out to seaward with scant room for the manoeuvre. But just as
the close fight seemed inevitable and the tall "Regazona" had almost run
the "Ark" aboard, and while both ships were wrapped in a fog of powder
smoke, the wind suddenly shifted again, backing to the northward. Howard
was now working out well from the land, and every moment improved the
position.
There was a heavy cannonade on both sides, but as the range lengthened, the
advantage was with the better gunners of the English ships. The galleasses,
led by the great "Florencia," tried, with the help of their long oars, to
fall on the English rear, the galleons tacked and made one more attempt "to
come to hand-stroke," but, writes Sidonia, "all to little effect, the enemy
avoiding our attack by the lightness of their vessels." Good seamanship
told. Howard's ships were soon in a position to resume the "fighting loose"
tactics of the first battle, and the Spaniards knew that at this game they
were the losers. So the Armada bore away, resuming its course up Channel,
and the cannonade died down into dropping long shots, and then ceased, for
Howard had no ammunition to spare.
On the Wednesday the two fleets crept slowly up Channel, the English some
six miles astern of the Armada. Once they closed up, and a few shots were
exchanged with the galleasses in Recalde's rearguard. But Howard did not
want to fight. He was only "putting on a brag countenance," for he was
woefully short of ammunition, and writing urgently for much-needed
supplies. The wind had fallen, and in the afternoon some of the galleons
were drifting along, heeled over by shifting guns and stores to enable the
carpenters slung over the sides to plug shot-holes near the waterline.
On Thursday the fleets were off the Isle of Wight, and it was almost a
calm, with occasional flaws of wind to help them on their way. Welcome
reinforcements from Portsmouth joined Howard, and he received some
ammunition. Soon after sunrise there was a sharp fight. The "Santa Ana" and
a Portuguese galleon had fallen astern of the Armada, and Hawkins, in the
"Victory," supported by several other ships, attacked them. He had done
considerable damage to the "Santa Ana," and already reckoned her a prize,
when the ever-ready De Leyva, with the great "Rata" and the galleasses,
came to the rescue, and Hawkins reluctantly drew off. Howard, with the
"Ark," and his nephew, Lord Thomas Howard, in the "Golden Lion," had come
up to cover the retirement of Hawkins. They became involved in a fight with
the Spanish rearguard, and the "Ark" was damaged, according to one
account, by a collision, but it seems more likely that her steering gear
was temporarily put out of order by a chance shot. She fell behind her
consorts, and lowered boats to tow her out of action. For the moment the
wind was helping the Spaniards, and, led by Medina-Sidonia himself, several
galleons turned to attack the "Ark." But the wind freshened and changed
suddenly, and the English ships escaped from their dangerous position, and
so the fight ended.
On the Friday it was almost a dead calm. It was a bright summer day, and
from the hills of the Isle of Wight there was a wondrous spectacle of the
two fleets drifting idly over miles of sea, with the sails flapping against
the masts. On board the "Ark," now repaired and again fit for action, there
was a stately ceremony, the admiral, in the Queen's name, conferring
knighthood on Hawkins, Frobisher and several other of the captains who had
taken a leading part in the fighting. It was decided not to engage the
enemy again till the fleets had reached the Straits of Dover. Shortness of
ammunition was the reason for this decision.
Medina-Sidonia was anxious on the same score. He sent off a pilot-boat to
the Duke of Parma, asking him to send him a supply of "four, six, and
ten-pound shot," "because much of his ammunition had been wasted in the
several fights." The mention of such small weights shows with what light
artillery most of the galleons were armed. He also asked Parma to send
forty light craft to join the Armada, "to the end he might be able with
them to close with the enemy, because our ships being very heavy in
comparison with the lightness of those of the enemy, it was impossible to
come to hand-stroke with them."
At sunset the wind freshened, and at daybreak on Saturday the English were
seen following up closely, but there was no fighting, "the Armada sailing
with a fair wind and the rear close up, and in very good order." At 10 a.m.
the French coast near Boulogne was in sight. At four in the afternoon the
Armada was off Calais, and at five orders were given to anchor in Calais
roads, "seven leagues from Dunkirk," or between Calais and Gravelines. The
Spaniards noticed that some thirty-six ships had joined Howard's fleet,
which anchored about a league away. The new arrivals were Seymour's and
Winter's squadrons from Dover and the Downs.
Medina-Sidonia now believed that he had all but accomplished his task.
English writers say that the enemy were disappointed and discouraged when
they anchored off Calais, but there is no proof of this in contemporary
Spanish accounts. Medina-Sidonia thought it a success that he had got into
touch with the Viceroy of the Netherlands. He had sent off a messenger to
his head-quarters at Dunkirk, asking him to embark his army at once, and
declaring his readiness to convoy it across Channel.
But Medina-Sidonia was in a fool's paradise. His ignorance of war was the
ultimate source of his satisfaction with the outlook. Better men, like
Leyva and Recalde, realized that until the enemy's fleet was not merely
eluded, but effectively beaten, there could be no invasion of England. The
French Governor of Calais told the admiral that a change in the weather
might make his position very unpleasant, and Medina-Sidonia urged Parma to
act at once by telling him "that he could not tarry without endangering the
whole fleet."
But Parma was neither ready nor anxious for any prompt action. The fleet of
the Netherlanders, some fifty sail, was blockading most of the places along
the coast where he had prepared his flat-bottomed boats. He knew better
than to embark the force he had in hand at Dunkirk till Howard's fleet was
disposed of.
But Howard was determined not to leave the Armada undisturbed in its
exposed anchorage. He had no sooner been joined by Seymour and Winter than
he hurriedly prepared eight small craft in his own fleet to be used as
fireships, by turning over to them all the inflammable lumber he could
collect from the other vessels, and removing their guns, ammunition, and
stores.
Medina-Sidonia had spent the Sunday writing pressing letters to the Prince
of Parma, and obtaining fresh water and other supplies from Calais. When
the long summer twilight ended the Armada was still riding at anchor, the
irregular lines of dark hulls stretching for miles, with lanterns
flickering at yard-arm or poop, and guard-boats rowing about the outskirts
of the floating city. At midnight there was a cry of alarm passed from ship
to ship. The tide was running strong from the westward through the Straits,
and sweeping along on its current came eight dark masses, each defined in
the night by a red flicker of fire that rose higher and spread wider as the
English fireships came nearer and nearer.
Three years before, when Parma was besieging Antwerp, the revolted
Netherlanders had attacked the bridge he had thrown across the river below
the city by sending drifting down upon it a ship laden with powder barrels,
with a burning fuse and powder-train to fire them, and blocks of stone
heaped over them to increase the force of the explosion. The awful
destruction caused by this floating volcano made the Spaniards long after
fearful of the attempt being repeated elsewhere, and Medina-Sidonia tells
in his diary that when Howard's fireships came drifting through the summer
night off Gravelines, he and his captains thought that they were likely to
be _maquinas de minas_, "contrivances of mines," like the terrible floating
mine of Antwerp. With this suspicion, all idea of grappling them was
abandoned. As they drew nearer there was something like a panic in the
Armada. The admiral signalled to weigh anchor and make sail, but few of the
ships waited for the tedious operation of getting the heavy anchors up to
the cat-heads by slow hand labour on windlass or capstan. In most of the
galleons the carpenter's broad axe hacked through the cables and left the
anchors deep in Channel mud. Sails were hurriedly shaken out, and like a
startled flock of sheep the crowd of ships hurried away to the eastward
along the coast in wild disorder. Moncada, the admiral of the galleasses,
in the "San Lorenzo," collided with the galleon "San Juan de Sicilia," and
the great galleass dismasted and with shattered oars drifted on a back eddy
of the tide towards Calais bar. The fireships went aground here and there,
and burned harmlessly to the water's edge. Medina-Sidonia, seeing the
danger was over, fired a gun as a signal for the fleet to anchor, but most
of the ships had cut their cables, and had no spare anchors available on
deck, and they drifted along the coast, some of them as far as Dunkirk. The
sunrise on the Monday morning showed the great fleet widely scattered, only
a few of the best ships being with the admiral. Moncada's flagship had been
left by the falling tide hard aground on Calais bar.
The English attacked the stranded galleass in pinnaces and boats, Howard
with some of the larger ships standing by "to give the men comfort and
countenance." Some of the Spaniards escaped to the shore. The rest, headed
by Moncada, made a brave stand against the boarders, who swarmed up her
sides, led by one Richard Tomson, of Ramsgate. Moncada was killed, and the
ship taken. The English pillaged her, but the hulk was abandoned and seized
later by the French Governor of Calais.
During this fight on the bar Medina-Sidonia had reassembled about half his
fleet, which he formed in a great crescent off Gravelines. The wind was
from the west, and numbers of galleons were away to leeward. Some of them
were in dire peril of driving ashore. Howard saw his advantage, and the
whole English fleet bore down on the Spanish crescent. It was the nearest
thing to a pitched battle in the whole Armada campaign. The English came on
with wind and tide helping them and, with the confidence that was the
outcome of their growing sense of superiority, ventured to close quarters
with the tall Spaniards, while taking care never to give them the chance of
grappling and boarding. As the fight went on the Spaniards worked slowly
towards the north-east edging off the land, for their deep draught and the
fate of Moncada's galleass made them anxious about the Flanders shoals.
Howard and Hawkins led the English centre, Drake and Frobisher the right,
Seymour and Winter the left. Not a shot was fired till they were at musket
range, and then the English guns roared out in a well-sustained cannonade
in which every shot told. It was the first of modern naval battles, the
fights decided by gunfire, not by hand-to-hand conflict on the decks. The
Spaniards answered back with their lighter and more slowly served
artillery, and with a crackle of musketry fire. Before noon the Spanish
cannon were mostly silent, for sheer lack of ammunition, and the galleons
defended themselves only with musket and arquebuse, while striving in vain
to close and grapple with their enemies. Spars and rigging were badly cut
up, shots between wind and water were letting the sea into the huge hulls.
Just as the English thought the "San Juan de Sicilia" had been put out of
action and would be their prize, the galleon heeled over and went to the
bottom. Soon the fight was only sustained by the rearward ships, the rest
trying to extricate themselves from the melee, not for any lack of courage,
but because all their ammunition was gone, their decks were encumbered with
wreckage from aloft, and the men were toiling at the pumps to keep them
afloat.
The English at last drew off from their persistent attacks on the rearward
ships, only because after a hot cannonade of seven hours they were running
short of ammunition; so they used the advantage of position and better
seamanship and seaworthiness to break off from the battle, Howard hanging
out the "council flag" from the "Ark," as a signal to his leading captains
to come on board and discuss the situation with him.
Medina-Sidonia, in his diary of the day, says nothing of the sinking of the
"San Juan de Sicilia," but he goes on to tell how the "San Felipe" and the
"San Mateo" were seen drifting helplessly towards the shoals of the Zealand
coast; how efforts were made to take off their crews, but these failed,
"for the sea was so high that nothing could be done, nor could the damage
be repaired which the flagship had suffered from great shot, whereby she
was in danger of being lost." This talk of rough seas shows that, brave
though he undoubtedly was in battle, the Duke had the landsman's
exaggerated alarm at the choppy waves of the Channel, and regarded as a
gale and a storm what a sailor would call fine weather with a bit of a
breeze. None of the English commanders thought that there was a high sea
that summer afternoon.
In the night it blew somewhat harder from the north-west, and as the early
dawn came it was seen that the Armada was in a perilous position. The
galleons, many of them with badly damaged spars and rigging, many more
without anchors at their cat-heads ready to bring them up, were being
forced nearer and nearer to the low sandy shores that were marked only by
the white foam of the breakers, and the leadsmen were giving warning that
the keels were already dangerously near to the shelving bottom along the
outlying fringe of shoals. The English ships, with plenty of sea-room,
looked on without closing in to attack. Little ammunition was left, and
Howard and his captains were not going to waste good powder and shot on
ships that seemed doomed to hopeless destruction. Some of Medina-Sidonia's
captains proposed that he should show the white flag and obtain the help of
the English to tow the endangered vessels off the lee shore, but he refused
to hear of such base surrender, and told them he was prepared for death. He
tells in his journal of the day how a sudden change of the wind saved the
fleet:--
"The enemy held aloof, seeing that our Armada must be lost. The
pilots on board the flagship--men of experience of that
coast--told the Duke at this time that it was not possible to
save a single ship of the Armada; for that with the wind as it
was in the north-west, they must all needs go on the banks of
Zeeland; that God alone could prevent it. Being in this peril
and without any remedy, God was pleased to change the wind to
west-south-west, whereby the fleet stood towards the north
without hurt to any ship."
The deliverance was not quite as complete as the Duke supposed. Far astern
the great "San Mateo" had grounded on the shoals "between Ostend and
Sluys." Next day three English ships came to take her, but the Spaniards,
notwithstanding their helpless plight, made a desperate fight for two hours
before they surrendered. Don Diego de Pimentel was in command, with several
nobles among his officers and volunteers. These were spared, for the sake
of the ransom they might fetch, but no quarter was given to the common
crowd. William Borlas, one of the captors, wrote to Secretary Walsingham:
"I was the means that the best sort were saved; and the rest were cast
overboard and slain at the entry."[12] These Elizabethan sea-fighters were
as cruel as they were brave.
[12] "Entry" = boarding the ship.
Other ships drifted ashore or found their way into ports along the low
coast to the north-eastward, but all these were taken by Prince Maurice of
Nassau, admiral of the United Provinces, who with some thirty sail gleaned
up the wreckage of the Armada, though he had taken no part in the fighting,
only blockading Parma's flotillas as his share of the service.
Meanwhile, saved by the shift of the wind, the main body of the Armada was
speeding into the North Sea, led by Medina-Sidonia in the leaky "San
Martin." Howard and the English fleet held a parallel course, shepherding
the enemy without closing in to fire a single shot. Howard was again, to
use the phrase of the time, "putting on a brag countenance," for he was in
no condition for serious fighting, even against such crippled opponents.
The magazines of the English fleet were all but empty, its "cannon,
demi-cannon, sakers, and falconets" doomed to useless silence, food and
water short in supply, and much sickness among the tired crews, who were
complaining that they were badly fed and that the beer was undrinkable.
In the evening Medina-Sidonia held a council of war on board the "San
Martin." Soldiers and sailors, veterans of many wars, and the chief pilots
of the fleet sat round his cabin table, and there was anxious debate. No
one could say how long it would be before Parma's army was ready;
ammunition and provisions were short, men falling sick, ships badly
damaged, though only a dozen had been actually lost. The wind was
increasing from the south-south-west, and the pilots urged that the best
course was to run up the North Sea, round the north of Scotland, reach the
open Atlantic, and so return to Spain without further fighting.
Some of the best of the officers, men who had been throughout in the thick
of the fighting, protested against this course, to which their admiral was
evidently inclined. Recalde, Oquendo, and Leyva spoke for the brave
minority. Most of the great fleet was still safe, and Recalde begged the
Duke to lie off and on till the wind blew fair for the Channel again, and
then risk another fight. Leyva supported him, and said that though his own
ship, the "Rata Coronada," had been sorely battered, was leaking like a
sieve, and had only thirty cartridges in her magazine, he would rather take
her into action again and sink fighting than see the Armada run away
northward like a pack of cowards. But what seemed the easiest course
prevailed. Medina-Sidonia saved his conscience as a soldier by summing up
the resolution of the council as a decision to sail northward, but turn
back and fight if the wind and weather became favourable.
So in the following days the Armada sped northward before the south-west
wind, which sometimes blew hard and raised a sea that increased the
distress of the Spaniards. Howard followed with the English fleet, just
keeping the Armada in sight. If the Spanish admiral shortened sail to
collect his rearward stragglers, Howard followed his example, making no
attempt even to close and cut off the nearest ships. He was still
reluctantly compelled by empty magazines and half-empty lockers to be
content merely "to put on a brag countenance." His shortness of supplies
forced him at last to lose touch of the enemy. Off the Firth of Forth he
abandoned the pursuit.
When the English ships returned to their ports the captains were not at all
sure what had become of the Armada. Some thought it might have gone to the
harbours of Norway and Denmark to winter and refit there, and renew the
attempt next spring. One sees in the letters of Secretary Walsingham the
uncertainty that prevailed among the Queen's counsellors, and some
disappointment that the victory was not more complete, though this was the
result of himself and his colleagues leaving Howard so ill supplied. On the
same day (8 August, Old Style) Walsingham writes to Lord Burghley: "It is
hard now to resolve what advice to give Her Majesty for disarming, until it
shall be known what is become of the Spanish fleet"; and to the Lord
Chancellor: "I am sorry the Lord Admiral was forced to leave the
prosecution of the enemy through the wants he sustained. Our half-doings
doth breed dishonour and leaveth the disease uncured."
Meanwhile, the Armada had held its course to the northward, sometimes
sighted far off from a Scottish headland. On 20 August (10th, Old Style),
twelve days after the battle off Gravelines, it was passing between the
Orkneys and Shetlands, heading for the Atlantic, helped by a change of wind
which now blew from the east, filling the great sails, but chilling the
southern sailors and soldiers to the bone. Though it was summer, the cold
was like that of winter, and the bitter weather grew even worse as the
galleons sailed on into the North Atlantic. The great ships straggled for
miles over grey foam-flecked seas, under dull cloud-packed skies that sent
down showers of sleety rain. Men huddled below in the crowded gundecks, and
in fore and stern castles, and there were days when only the pilots kept
the deck, while gangs of men took their turn at the never-resting pumps.
There were semi-starvation and fever in every ship. The chaplains were busy
giving the last consolations of religion to dying men, and each day read
the burial service over a row of canvas-shrouded dead, and "committed them
to the deep."
The Armada no longer held together. Small groups formed haphazard
squadrons, keeping each other company, but many ships were isolated and
ploughed their way alone over the dreary sea. Many, despite hard work at
the pumps, settled lower and lower in the water each day, and at last sank
in the ocean, their fate unknown and unrecorded till, as the months went by
and there was no news of them, they were counted as hopelessly lost. Of
others the fate is known.
In his sailing instructions Medina-Sidonia had been warned that he should
take "great heed lest you fall upon the island of Ireland for fear of the
harm that may happen to you on that coast," where, as a sixteenth-century
sailor wrote, "the ocean sea raiseth such a billow as can hardly be endured
by the greatest ships." There was heavy weather in the "ocean sea" that
August and September, but even so the galleons that steered well to the
westward before shaping their course for Spain, and kept plenty of sea-room
by never sighting the "island of Ireland," succeeded in getting home,
except where they were already so badly damaged and so leaky that they
could not keep afloat. But along the coasts of Scotland and Ireland there
was a succession of disasters for those who clung to, or were driven into,
the landward waters.
The first mishap occurred when the Armada was rounding the north of
Scotland. The "Gran Grifon," the flagship of Juan Lopez de Medina, admiral
of the _urcas_ or storeships, drove on the rocks of Fair Isle, the solitary
cliff-bound island in the channel between the Orkneys and Shetlands. Here
such few as escaped the waves lived for some six weeks in "great hunger
and cold." Then a fishing-boat took them to Anstruther in Fifeshire, where
they surrendered to the bailies. Lopez de Medina was among this handful of
survivors. Melville, the Presbyterian minister of Anstruther, describes him
as "a very reverend man of big stature and grave and stout countenance,
grey haired and very humble like," as he asked quarter for himself and his
comrades in misfortune.[13]
[13] In some histories of the Armada and in more than one
standard book of reference Lopez de Medina is confused with
Medina-Sidonia, and it is stated that it was the flagship of the
whole Armada that was lost on Fair Isle.
Other distressed ships fled from the Atlantic storms for shelter inside the
Hebrides. Three entered the Sound of Mull, where one was wrecked near
Lochaline, and a second off Salen. The third, the great galleass
"Florencia," went down in Tobermory Bay. The local fishermen still tell the
traditional story of her arrival and shipwreck. She lies in deep water,
half-buried in the sand of the bottom, and enterprising divers are now busy
with modern scientific appliances trying to recover the "pieces of eight"
in her war-chest, and the silver plate which, according to a dispatch of
Walsingham's, was the dinner-service of the "Grandee of Spain" who
commanded her.
But it was on the shores of the "island of Ireland" that the most tragic
disasters of the Armada took place. Its wrecks strewed the north and west
coasts. Fitzwilliam, the "Deputy" or the Viceroy, in Dublin, and Bingham,
the Governor of Connaught, had taken precautions to prevent the Spaniards
finding shelter, water, and food in the ports by reinforcing the western
garrisons. Bingham feared the Irish might be friendly to the Spaniards, and
industriously spread among the coast population tales that if they landed
the foreigners would massacre the old and carry the young away into
slavery. The people of the ports, who had long traded with Spain, knew
better, but some of the rude fisher-folk of the west coast perhaps believed
the slander. Where shipwrecked crews fell into the hands of Bingham's men
no mercy was shown them. He marched four hundred prisoners into Galway, and
his troops massacred them in cold blood, and then he reported that, "having
made a clean despatch of them both within the town, and in the country
abroad, he rested Sunday all day, giving praise and thanks to God for Her
Majesty's most happy success in that action, and our deliverance from such
dangerous enemies."
One of the _urcas_ came into Tralee Bay in an almost sinking condition,
with her crew reduced to twenty-three men, ill and half starved and unable
to work the ship. Sir Edward Denny, the Governor of Tralee Castle, was
absent. The Spaniards surrendered to Lady Denny and her garrison. The men
begged for their lives, and some said they had friends in Waterford who
would pay ransom for them; but the lady had them all put to the sword,
because "there was no safe keeping for them."
In all, some twenty-five galleons were dashed to pieces under the giant
cliff walls of the Irish coast, or on outlying skerries and rocky
headlands. In a few cases the Irish coast folk helped the survivors, but
too often they were as cruel as the English, and killed and plundered them.
Sir George Carew wrote to the Queen, rejoicing that there was now "blood
between the Irish and the King of Spain." The Government troops marched
along the coasts hunting for Spaniards. The Lord-Deputy Fitzwilliam
accompanied one of these parties, and told how in Sligo Bay he saw miles of
wreckage, "timber enough to build five of the greatest ships that ever I
saw, besides mighty great boats, cables, and other cordage, and some such
masts for bigness and length, as I never saw any two could make the like."
Fitzwilliam fairly revelled in the destruction of the Spaniards. He wrote
to Secretary Walsingham: "Since it hath pleased God by His hand upon the
rocks to drown the greater and better sort of them, I will, with His
favour, be His soldier for the despatching of those rags which yet
remain." At last he got tired of this miserable kind of "soldiering," and
proclaimed mercy for all Spaniards in Ireland who surrendered before 15
January, 1589. Numbers of ragged and starving men surrendered. Others had
already been smuggled over to Scotland, still an independent country, where
they were well treated and given transport to Spain.
The gallant Alonso de Leyva, after escaping from the wreck of his good ship
the "Rata Coronada" in Blacksod Bay, was steering for Scotland in one of
the galleasses that had rescued him and his comrades, when the ship was
driven by a storm against the wild cliffs of Dunluce Castle, near the
Giant's Causeway. The galleass was shattered to matchwood, and Leyva
perished with all on board save five who swam ashore.
In the last days of September the surviving ships of the Armada came
straggling into the northern ports of Spain with starving, fever-stricken
crews. Medina-Sidonia had kept some fifty sail together till 18 September.
He had resigned all active duties of command to his lieutenants, Flores and
Bobadilla, for he was ill and broken in spirit. His hair had whitened, and
he looked like an old man, as he sat all day in the "great cabin" of the
"San Martin," with his head in his hands. A Biscay gale scattered the
remnant of the Armada, and on 21 September the "San Martin" appeared alone
off Santander. The wind had fallen; her sails hung loose from the yards,
and the long swell that followed the gale was driving the ship towards the
rocks outside the port. Some boats went out and towed her in. Most of the
crew were sick. Nearly two hundred had been buried at sea.
Recalde and Oquendo brought their ships home, but landed broken with the
hardships of the terrible voyage, and only survived it a few weeks. Every
ship that arrived told of the many buried at sea, and landed scores of
dying and fever and scurvy-stricken men, so that all the northern ports
were like great hospitals. When the last galleon had struggled into
harbour, fifty-five great ships were still missing. The best of the leaders
were dead. Not more than a third of the sailors and soldiers survived. It
was a disaster from which Spain as a naval power never really recovered.
For fifty years to come the Spanish infantry still upheld their claim to be
invincible on the battlefield, but the tall galleon had ceased to be the
mistress of the seas.
The campaign of the Armada is remarkable not only for inaugurating the
modern period of naval war, the era of the sail and the gun, but also
because, though it ended in disaster for one side and success for the
other, there was from first to last in the long series of engagements in
the narrow seas no battle "fought to a finish." In all the fighting the
English showed that they had grasped the essential ideas of the new
warfare, and proved themselves better sailors and better gunners, but the
number of the ships they took or destroyed was insignificant. Howard was so
crippled by parsimonious mismanagement on the part of his Government that
he had to be content with "half-doings," instead of decisive results. But
there was worse mismanagement on the Spanish side, and this led first to
failure, then to disaster.
The story of the Armada is full of useful lessons, but for England its
message for all time is that her true defence against invasion lies not in
armies, but upon the sea. The Elizabethan captains knew well that if once
Parma's veterans landed in Kent or Essex, the half-trained levies gathered
by the beacon fires could do little to stop their onward march. So they
took care to make the narrow seas an impassable barrier to the enemy by
harrying the covering fleet and making it hopeless for Parma even to think
of sending his transports to sea. The lesson is worth remembering even
now.