THE GREAT ARMADA
Drake’s raid upon the Spanish coast made it impossible for the Armada
to sail in 1587. But after waiting so long Philip made his preparations
with an almost feverish haste. The death of his great general, Santa
Cruz, hindered his plans very much. Santa Cruz was a commander of
experience and renown, and the man most fitted, both by his rank and
his qualities, to undertake “the enterprise of England.”
The man chosen to succeed him was the Duke of Medina Sidonia, whose
exalted rank seems to have been his chief claim to the difficult place
into which he was thrust by Philip. He had no desire to take the place;
he wrote to Philip and told him quite simply that he was no seaman, and
knew little about naval fighting and less about England. But he was
ordered to take the fleet into the English Channel and take possession
of Margate. He was then to send ships to bring the Duke of Parma and
his army in safety to England, when Parma was to assume the command of
the expedition.
But, after all, the Armada was not ready to sail till July 1588, and
the months between then and January were filled by the English with
preparations for defence. They had to face the difficulties, much
greater then than now, of keeping both men and ships on the seas, and
yet fit for action. Life on board ship tried the men very severely. We
have seen how often sickness broke out among the sailors if they were
kept long to their crowded, unhealthy quarters. The feeding of both
navies seems to have been a task of great difficulty. This was due to
the hurried demand for vast quantities of stores, such as biscuit and
salt meat The Spaniards, too, owing to Drake’s foresight, had lost
their water-casks, and had to depend on new ones of unseasoned wood,
which leaked.
Lord Howard, a cousin of the Queen, was made Lord High Admiral
of England, and Drake was his Vice-Admiral and John Hawkins his
Rear-Admiral. With them served many other famous men, such as Fenner,
Frobisher, Wynter, and Seymour, and many younger men from noble
families. All were working hard, with spirits stretched to an unusual
pitch of endurance. In the letters they wrote about the business in
hand to the Queen and her Ministers of State there is a note of high
courage and defiance; and a distant echo comes down to us from the
dim old letters of all the stir and bustle as the men gathered to the
ships, and of the hum of excitement about the clamouring dockyards. The
shipwrights were working day and night Lord Howard says he has been on
board every ship “where any man may creep,” and thanks God for their
good state, and that “never a one of them knows what a leak means.” Sir
William Wynter tells how badly the ships had suffered in the winter
storms, but adds: “Our ships doth show themselves like gallants here. I
assure you it will do a man’s heart good to behold them; and would to
God the Prince of Parma were upon the seas with all his forces, and we
in the view of them; then I doubt not but that you should hear we would
make his enterprises very unpleasant to him.”
The ships are always spoken of like live creatures, and their personal
histories are well known and remembered. Lord Howard says of his Ark
(which was bought of Sir Walter Raleigh by the Queen): “And I pray you
tell her Majesty from me that her money was well given for the Ark
_Ralegh_, for I think her the odd (only) ship in the world for all
conditions; and truly I think there can no great ship make me change
and go out of her.” And again: “I mean not to change out of her I am in
for any ship that ever was made.”
Drake had “her Majesty’s very good ship the _Revenge_” which was so
famous then and afterwards. Lord Henry Seymour writes from on board
“the _Elizabeth Bonaventure_, the fortunate ship where Sir Francis
Drake received all his good haps.” Howard and Drake, with other
commanders of experience, were of one mind; they wanted to go out and
meet the enemy upon the coasts of Spain, and so prevent the Spanish
fleet from ever reaching England.
Howard pressed this opinion as that of men whom the world judged to
be the wisest in the kingdom. But the Queen was unwilling to send the
fleet away, and she still talked of making peace.
Both the Spaniards and the English were persuaded that God was
fighting with them. Philip told the Duke of Medina Sidonia, that as
the cause was the cause of God, he could not fail. In England Drake
was saying that “the Lord is on our side”; and Fenner wrote to the
Queen: “God mightily defend my gracious Mistress from the raging enemy;
not doubting that all the world shall know and see that her Majesty’s
little army, guided by the finger of God, shall beat down the pride of
His enemies and hers, to His great glory.” Nowadays we do not look upon
our enemies as necessarily the enemies of God.
Howard’s letters show a very noble mind. He grudged no time or labour
in the ordering of his fleet, down to the smallest matters. He is full
of care for the mariners, and is anxious that they should be well paid
and fed. He takes the advice of Drake and the other seamen of greater
experience than himself.
The fleet did at last go out, but was driven back by the winds; and
suddenly, after the fret and worry and strain of all those months,
there is a pause, and Howard writes: “Sir, I will not trouble you
with any long letter; we are at this present otherwise occupied than
with writing. Upon Friday, at Plymouth, I received intelligence that
there was a great number of ships descried off the Lizard: whereupon,
although the wind was very scant, we first warped out of harbour that
night, and upon Saturday turned out very hardly, the wind being at
south-west; and about three of the clock in the afternoon, descried
the Spanish fleet, and did what we could to work for the wind, which
by this morning we had recovered.... At nine of the clock we gave them
fight, which continued until one.... Sir, the captains in her Majesty’s
ships have behaved themselves most bravely and like men hitherto, and
I doubt not will continue, to their great commendation.... Sir, the
southerly wind that brought us back from the coast of Spain brought
them out.”
William Hawkins, then Mayor of Plymouth, writes that the “Spanish fleet
was in view of this town yesternight, and the Lord Admiral passed to
the sea and out of sight.” They could see the fleets fighting, the
English being to windward of the enemy. He was sending out men as fast
as he could find ships to carry them.
There is a legend that Drake and his officers were playing bowls on
Plymouth Hoe when the news that the Armada was in the Channel was
brought to him by the captain of a pinnace. Drake calmly finished his
game, the story says, saying there was time to do that and to beat the
Spaniards too.
As the Spanish ships lay in the English Channel, blinded with the mist
and rain, the Duke sent a boat to get news. Four fishermen of Falmouth
were brought away who had that evening seen the English fleet go out of
Plymouth, “under the charge of the English Admiral and of Drake.”
The Spaniards had come out ready to fight in the old way, in which they
had won so many brilliant victories. They had always fought their naval
battles with great armies on great ships, much as they would fight on
land. The soldiers despised big guns, and liked better the bravery of a
close fight, “with hand-thrusts and push of pike.” The sailors were not
prepared to fight at all, but with the help of slaves they sailed the
big galleys and fighting ships, and the swarm of smaller troop-ships
and store-ships that swelled the numbers of the fleet which carried an
army.
[Illustration: Drake at bowls on Plymouth Hoe]
The numbers of the ships on both sides are now said to have been
not so very unequal. If the Spaniards could have fought in their own
way, they must have been easily victorious. But the English had got the
wind at their back and the enemy in front of them, and being better
masters of their ships, they had the choice, and they chose to fight
at a distance, and never to board the big ships till they were already
helpless.
Their ships were newer, and built on different lines, and could sail
faster. They were smaller than our modern men-of-war, but carried more
guns for their size. They were, as the Spaniards said, “very nimble and
of good steerage, so that the English did with them as they desired.
And our ships being very heavy compared with the lightness of those of
the enemy, it was impossible to come to hand-stroke with them.”
The English ships were manned with sailors and gunners who could both
sail the ships and fight the enemy. The guns were fired at the hulls
of the Spanish ships and not wasted on the enemy’s rigging, which was
harder to aim at.
The fleets met on the 21st of July, and there followed a week of
fighting and of disasters to the Spaniards. Yet as the news of their
coming up the Channel came to those on shore, who watched beside the
beacon fires with anxious hearts, the danger must have seemed little
less fearful than before. Those who viewed the “greatness and hugeness
of the Spanish army” from the sea, considered that the only way to move
them was by fire-ships.
Sidonia had steered his great fleet magnificently through the dangers
of the Channel; he anchored outside Calais to await the answer to the
urgent messages he had sent to the Duke of Parma. But, as we know, the
“Narrow Seas” were well watched by the English, and they were so helped
by the Dutch that Parma never reached the shores of England.
Eight fire-ships were hastily prepared and sent down upon the Spanish
fleet, “all burning fiercely. These worked great mischief among the
Spanish ships (though none of them took fire), for in the panic their
cables and anchors were slipped.”
The great fight took place off Gravelines, on the Flemish coast, where
most of the scattered ships of the Armada had drifted in the general
confusion. The English hastened to take advantage of this confusion,
while Sidonia was forming his fleet again into battle order. They “set
upon the fleet of Spain (led by Sir Francis Drake in the _Revenge_)
and gave them a sharp fight,” while Lord Howard stopped to capture a
helpless ship, the finest, they said, upon the sea. “And that day, Sir
Francis’ ship was riddled with every kind of shot.”
The fight went on from nine in the morning till six at night, when the
Spanish fleet bore away, beaten, towards the north. Howard says that
“after the fight, notwithstanding that our powder and shot was well
near all spent, we set on a brag-countenance and gave them chase as
though we had wanted nothing (or lacked nothing) until we had cleared
our own coast and some part of Scotland of them.”
Drake was appointed to follow the fleet, and he writes, “We have the
army of Spain before us, and mind, with the grace of God, to wrestle
a pull with him. There was never anything pleased me better than the
seeing the enemy flying with a southerly wind to the northwards. God
grant you have a good eye to the Duke of Parma: for with the grace of
God, if we live, I doubt it not but ere it be long so to handle the
matter with the Duke of Sidonia as he shall wish himself at St. Mary
Port among his orange trees.”
At the end of this letter he says, “I crave pardon of your honour for
my haste, for that I had to watch this last night upon the enemy.” And
in another letter to Walsingham he signs himself, “Your honour’s most
ready to be commanded but now half-sleeping Francis Drake.”
Many of the Spanish ships, being so crippled, were wrecked in stormy
weather off the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, which were unknown to
them, and thus the more dangerous. Not half of those who put out to
sea ever reached Spain again. Many men were killed in battle or died
of their wounds, and they were the most fortunate, for others were
drowned, or perished miserably by the hands of the natives of the
coasts. Some who escaped were put to death by the Queen’s orders, and
some lingered in the foul prisons of that time. The instinct of savage
cruelty revives, even in highly civilised races, in time of war, and
spreads, like an infection.
[Illustration: Fighting the Great Armada]
We get a glimpse, in an old list of plunder taken from the Spanish
prisoners, of the brave looks of the vanished host, that included
the flower of Spanish youth and chivalry. There were “breeches and
jerkins of silk, and hose of velvet, all laid over with gold lace,
a pair of breeches of yellow satin, drawn out with cloth of silver,
a leather jerkin, perfumed with amber and laid over with a gold and
silver lace, a jerkin embroidered with flowers, and a blue stitched
taffety hat, with a silver band and a plume of feathers.”
For some time England was haunted by fears that the Armada would return
to her coasts, or that Parma would avenge himself. But the reports of
the many wrecks and of the massacre of Spanish soldiers eased this
present anxiety. And it was well, for fever and sickness broke out
in the English ships, and the men were dying in hundreds, “sickening
one day and dying the next,” as the letters say. The ships had to be
disinfected and many of the men dispersed.