IN CALAIS ROADS
/War/ was not so immediate as Gervase had supposed. Indeed, there were
good reasons why neither Spain nor England should desire irrevocably
to engage in it.
King Philip, however urged by the Pope to do his duty as the secular
arm of the Faith and dethrone his excommunicated sister-in-law, was,
after all, anything but a fool and not unreasonably self-seeking. He
must therefore pause to ask himself what profit would accrue to
himself from such an enterprise. God and Time and he--King Philip
liked to contemplate that conjunction--made up a slow-moving trinity.
It was not as if there were any prospect of making England a Spanish
province like the Netherlands. The only temporal result would be to
place Mary Stuart upon the English throne, and the political
consequences of this would be to strengthen the French influence which
Mary Stuart represented by virtue of her French alliances. The only
way to avoid this and to profit Spain would be for Philip to marry
Mary and share her English throne. But Philip had no wish to do
anything of the kind. He may have observed that the lady’s husbands
were not lucky. He did not, therefore, see why Spanish blood and
Spanish gold should be poured out for the profit of France. From the
temporal point of view, the business was much more the concern of the
French King than it was Philip’s. There remained the spiritual point
of view: the importance of restoring the unadulterated Catholic Faith
to England and bringing her spiritually once more under the subjection
of Rome. Now this was Rome’s business, and if the Pope wanted Philip
to do Rome’s business for him, it was fitting that the Pope should
bear the expenses of the enterprise. But when Philip laid this
reasonable argument before the Pope, His Holiness--the great Sixtus
V--fell into such a rage that he flung his dinner plates about the
room.
That was the situation in Spain through the autumn and winter of 1586.
In England nothing could be farther from the intention or wish than to
declare war. Spain was, after all, the mightiest empire of the day.
Her possessions were vast, her wealth fabulous, her strength colossal.
The inexhaustible riches of the Indies were at her command, the finest
troops in the world served under her banners. Clearly this was not an
empire to be challenged. But since danger threatened from it,
preparations must be made to meet that danger, if only in obedience to
the old Roman maxim that who desires peace should prepare for war.
Hence those naval activities to which Gervase Crosby was summoned; the
shipbuilding, the drilling, the storing of arms, the manufacture of
gunpowder, and all the rest. The conflicting orders from Court
reflected the uncertainty of the outlook. On Monday came instructions
to mobilize the fleet, on Wednesday to disband it, on Saturday to
mobilize it again, and so on interminably. But the adventurers, the
privateers, took no heed of these ever-fluctuating orders. They went
steadily ahead with their preparations. It may have been in the mind
of Sir Francis that if war did not come there would still be work for
his hands in plucking some more feathers from Spain’s rich Indian
plumage. He was, there can be no doubt of it, a pirate at heart. Let
England not reproach him with it, but be thankful.
In the early part of the year, the whole aspect of the situation was
changed by the execution of the Queen of Scots. It was deemed that her
removal, so long advocated by far-sighted statesmen, by putting an end
to plots and intrigues which aimed at enthroning her, and the Catholic
religion with her, in England, must remove the menace of a war which
was to be waged for this very purpose.
The effect, however, was the exact opposite. King Philip took the view
that, if he were now to exert himself as the secular arm of the
Church, the fruits of his endeavours would no longer fall into the lap
of France. There being no longer a Queen of Scots to be placed upon
the throne of England, King Philip might occupy it himself, converting
England into a Spanish province so soon as he should have done his
duty by executing the bull of excommunication and deposition which had
been launched against his heretical sister-in-law. Now that a direct
profit was perceived from the affair, the arming for a crusade against
heretical pravity went forward amain, the brothers of Saint Dominic
were sent up and down the land to preach the sanctity of the cause,
Catholic adventurers from every country flocked in to offer their
swords. The hounds of God were straining at the leash. At last King
Philip was to loose them at the throat of heretical England.
It occurred to Sir Francis Drake that common-sense demanded that
something should be done to mar these preparations. To sit back in
patience while your avowed enemy arms himself at all points to destroy
you is the attitude of the insane.
So Sir Francis went off to London and the Queen. His proposals made
her nervous. She was still negotiating a treaty of peace with King
Philip through the Spanish Ambassador. King Philip, she was assured,
wanted peace, on the strong advice of the Prince of Parma, who was
finding more than enough to do in the Netherlands.
‘So do we want peace, Madam,’ the blunt Sir Francis answered. ‘I might
do something to ensure it.’
She questioned him as to his intentions. He had none. He didn’t know
what he should do until he got there--he did not quite know where--and
saw for himself what might be possible. In any treaty of peace she
would get the best terms by showing her strength, and so removing all
suspicion that she treated because of weakness.
‘We’ll put on a brag, Your Grace,’ the sailor laughed.
He was a difficult man to resist when his long, steady grey eyes were
upon you. A sturdy fellow of middle height, now in his fortieth year,
too powerfully built for grace, but of an engaging countenance with
his crisp brown hair and the pointed beard which dissembled the
inflexibility of his mouth. The Queen yielded, if reluctantly.
Because he perceived the reluctance, he lost no time in fitting out,
and he was away in the Buonaventura with a fleet of thirty sail at his
heels on a fine April morning, not more than a few hours before the
arrival of a courier to detain him. Perhaps he had word that these
countermandings were on the way.
Six days later, he was in Cadiz Roads discovering for himself what
there was to be done, and seeing it clearly there before him in the
shipping that crowded the harbour. Here lay the elements of that great
expedition against England: the transports, the provision vessels,
even some of the mighty ships of war that were now fitting.
What was to be done was as clear to him as how to do it. He went in on
a flood tide. He took them unawares. Such an act as this was the last
audacity Spain could have expected even from one so audacious and
endemonized as El Draque. They ran the gauntlet of the hail of shot
from the Spanish batteries, sank the guardship with a broadside,
scattered a fleet of galleys that ventured momentarily to oppose them,
and swooped down upon their prey.
Twelve days they stayed in Cadiz harbour, during which at his leisure
Drake stripped the ships of all that could be useful to him, then set
them on fire and so destroyed a million ducats’ worth of shipping.
When he sailed out again, having in his own words thus singed the
beard of the King of Spain, he did so in the assurance that the Armada
would not sail that year. Not that year would the troops of the Prince
of Parma be landed on English soil.
He was correct enough in his estimate, for it was not until May of the
year following that the Invincible Armada of a hundred and thirty
vessels sailed out of the Tagus in the wake of the San Martín, the
stately flagship of the Admiral, the Duke of Medina Sidonia. The fleet
sailed in a state of grace. Every man of the thirty thousand
distributed through the ships had confessed himself, received
absolution of his sins, and had communicated. Every ship had been
especially blessed by the Primate of Spain; every main masthead
carried a crucifix; on the great banner flown by the Admiral, the
red-and-gold standard of Spain, the figures of the Virgin and her Son
had been embroidered and the motto, ‘Exsurge Deus et vindica causam
tuam’; there was great provision for the care of the souls of those
crusaders--greater than the provision for the care of their bodies;
for whilst the ships carried two hundred priests they carried fewer
than a hundred surgeons. Majestically this mighty fleet, as formidable
in spiritual as in temporal armament, advanced on the blue water.
There were delays and difficulties; enough of them to have suggested
that the Deity was none so eager to vindicate His cause at the bidding
of Spain or through the arm of Spain.
But at last, at the end of July the invincible fleet was in the
Channel and the season of English waiting was at an end. It had not
been wasted so far as Drake and the privateers were concerned. Most of
them had been at their stations ever since the return from Cadiz, and
they had found abundant work for their hands.
They slipped out of Plymouth without any kind of ostentation, and some
fifty of them, low-hulled ships, gave the towering Spaniards an
exhibition of close-hauled sailing which made them rub their eyes.
Reaching easily to windward, their low hulls offering comparatively
little target, they crossed the Spanish rear, and whilst themselves
out of range of the Spanish cannon, they poured from their own more
powerful guns broadside after broadside with deadly effect into those
great floating castles. The Spanish ships suffered the greater
mortality from being overcrowded; this because they counted upon
time-honoured boarding tactics. But the English, outsailing them, and
refusing to grapple or to be grappled, showed them a new and
disconcerting method of sea-fighting. In vain the Spaniards cursed
them for cowardly dogs who would not come to hand-grips. The English
answered them with broadsides and slipped away through the water to go
about and empty into them the guns on the other quarter.
To Medina Sidonia this was all very exasperating in its difference
from all that he had expected. The good Duke was not a sailor, nor
indeed a fighting man of any kind. He had pleaded his incompetence
when the King had placed this responsibility upon his shoulders. He
had been abominably seasick when first they put to sea, and now he and
the mightiest fleet the waters of the world had ever seen were being
chased up the Channel, like a herd of bullocks before a pack of
wolves. The Andalusian flagship, with her commander Don Pedro Valdez,
the ablest, as he was the most gallant admiral in that fleet, had come
to grief and had been constrained to surrender; other vessels had
suffered dreadfully from the damnable tactics of these endemonized
heretics. Thus closed the first day of action, which was Sunday.
On Monday both fleets were becalmed, and the Spaniards licked their
wounds. On Tuesday the wind had veered and the Spaniards had the
weather gauge. Now was their chance to sail the English down and
grapple them. At last, in the wind He sent them from the east, God
lent a hand to the vindication of His cause. But the Devil, it became
clear to them, fought on the side of the English. Sunday’s history was
repeated in spite of the wind from the east. English broadsides
continued to crash through Spanish bulwarks from ships that were
either out of range or else so low in the hull that they offered no
target at all, and by vespers the noble San Martín was leaking like a
sieve through her fractured timbers, six feet of solid oak though they
were.
On Wednesday there was another pause. On Thursday a further hammering,
and on Friday at last the Duke saw nothing for it but to endeavour to
establish communications with the Prince of Parma, from whom he would
require supplies and what other assistance the Prince could bring him.
With this intent he brought his battered fleet to anchor on Saturday
in Calais Roads, neutral waters into which the English would not dare
to follow him.
But that the English did not mean to lose sight of him he understood
when he perceived them at anchor a couple of miles astern.
The Spaniards were licking their wounds again; cleaning up the ships,
effecting repairs where possible, tending the wounded, putting the
dead overboard.
The English, half a league away, were considering the position. In the
main cabin of the Ark Royal, the flagship of the Lord Admiral, Howard
of Effingham, his lordship sat in council with the principal officers
of the fleet. They were under no delusion as to the Spaniard’s reason
for anchoring in Calais Roads, or the danger to themselves and to
England in allowing him to remain there. The Armada after all was not
yet sensibly impaired. She had lost but three ships, and could easily
spare them. What she could spare less easily was the confidence which
had been shaken by those first knocks exchanged, or indeed the lives
that had been lost; but men could be replaced by Parma; courage and
confidence could be restored by rest; damages could be repaired; the
ships could be revictualled, and Parma could renew also their
ammunition, which must be running low. Here was one set of reasons why
the Duke of Medina Sidonia must not be left in peace where he now lay.
Another was in the fact that the English supplies were becoming
exhausted, and they could not wait here indefinitely for the Spaniards
to come out of neutral waters. Something must be done.
Drake was for burning them out. A strong flood tide was due that night
setting towards the Spanish anchorage. This could be used to float a
fleet of fire-ships down upon them. Seymour, Sir John Hawkins,
Frobisher, and the Lord Admiral himself were heartily in accord. But
it would be blindfolded work unless first by daylight they took some
more accurate observation of the Spanish position than was possible at
their present distance. Therein lay the difficulty. Hawkins offered a
suggestion. The Lord Admiral weighed it, and slowly shook his head.
‘Too desperate a chance,’ said he. ‘The odds are a hundred to one, a
thousand to one against his return.’
‘It depends upon whom you send,’ said Drake. ‘Odds of that kind are to
be reduced by skill and courage.’
But Howard would not yet hear of it. They discussed other means, and
dismissed them one by one, returning at last to that first suggestion.
‘I think it’s that or nothing,’ Hawkins submitted. ‘Either that or we
go to work blindfolded.’
‘We may have to go to work blindfolded after that,’ Lord Howard
reminded him, ‘and we shall have sacrificed some gallant lives.’
But Drake had an answer to this. ‘Every man of us makes a gamble of
his life. We should not be here else, or being here we should never
engage in action. I am of Sir John’s opinion.’
Lord Howard’s fine eyes considered him. ‘Do you know of a man for such
an enterprise?’
‘I have him under my hand here. He came aboard with me, and is waiting
now on deck. A strong lad of his hands, with brains to act quickly in
an emergency. He hasn’t yet learnt to be afraid of anything, and he
can handle a boat with any man. I first proved his mettle at San
Domingo. He’s been with me ever since.’
‘Almost too good a man to lose in this affair,’ Lord Howard
deprecated.
‘Nay. He’s the sort of man that won’t be lost. I’ll send for him if
your lordship says so, and we’ll put the matter to him.’
And that is how Mr. Crosby comes into this famous council of war and,
as it were, into history. His youth, his inches, and his gallant
bearing when he presented himself won him the sympathy of those
hard-bitten seamen. His seemed too fair a life to offer up on the
ruthless altar of Bellona. But when Drake had expounded to him the
task ahead, the laugh with which he took it for a jest, an escapade,
won him the love of those hard-bitten men, and most of all of Drake
because the lad so nobly justified his captain’s boast of him. Aglow
with eagerness, young Crosby listened to a recapitulation of what was
required and how he was to obtain it. Himself he suggested that as the
afternoon was waning no time should be lost. He had best start at
once.
Lord Howard shook him by the hand at parting. The Admiral’s lips
smiled, but his eyes were wistful as they surveyed this smiling,
audacious lad whom he might never see again. He strove to say
something for a moment.
‘When you return,’ he said--and keen ears might have noted that he
stressed the ‘when’ as men do when a word is changed between thought
and utterance--‘When you return, sir, I shall be glad if you will seek
me.’
Gervase bowed to the company, flashed them a last smile, and was gone,
the sturdy Sir Francis labouring after him up the companion ladder.
They went back to Drake’s ship the Revenge. The boatswain piped all
hands on deck. Sir Francis told them what was needed: a dozen
volunteers to go with Mr. Crosby and ascertain the exact position of
the Spanish ships. There was not a man would have refused to follow
Gervase; for many of them had followed him before and knew him for a
leader who never flinched.
That afternoon the Duke of Medina Sidonia, moodily pacing the poop of
the San Martín with a group of officers, beheld to his amazement a
sailing pinnace detach herself from the English lines to bear down
upon the Spanish anchorage. He and those with him stood at gaze. So
did others on the Spanish ships, in the utter inactivity of men who
can but observe the unfolding of a marvel they do not understand.
Straight towards them came the little craft, rippling through the
light waves, straight for the Spanish flagship.
It must be, opined the Duke, that she bore him a message from the
English. Perhaps his guns had mauled them more than he suspected.
Perhaps the loss of life had been such that they would be willing to
make terms. Fatuous imaginings possible only to a landlubber. Politely
his mistake was pointed out to him; also that this pinnace bore no
flag of truce as she must have done if she sought a parley. Whilst
they were still conjecturing, she was under their counter.
Gervase Crosby stood in the stern sheets, himself handling the tiller.
With him sat a youth with a writing-tablet and a pen. In the bows a
gun had been mounted and a gunner stood with lighted match beside it.
The little craft sped on, circled the San Martín completely, and as
she circled fired a shot at her. Drake would have described this as
putting on a brag. The object of that piece of swagger was to deceive
the Spaniards as to the real purpose of the visit. Meanwhile Gervase’s
eyes were measuring the distance from the shore, and taking in the
position of the other ships relatively to the flagship, and his
details were rapidly being written down by the improvised secretary.
It was done, and he was already leaving the Spaniards astern before
one of their officers recovered from his surprise at this impudence to
ask himself if something else did not lie behind it. Whether impudence
or not, something was due here. He commanded it, and a gun executed
the command. But trained too hastily, its shot, which could easily
have sunk the frail boat, tore harmlessly through her mainsail. Other
ships roused themselves, and there was a cannonade. But it was loosed
too late by at least five minutes. The pinnace was already beyond the
short range of the Spanish guns.
Drake was in the waist of the Revenge awaiting him, when Gervase
climbed aboard.
‘I ask myself,’ said Sir Francis, ‘what particular kind of luck
protects you. By all the laws of war and of chance and of common-sense
you should have been sunk before ever you got within a cable’s length
of them. What’s this?’
Gervase had proffered the sheet of notes which he had dictated.
‘Lord!’ he said. ‘You bring the methods of the counting-house with
you. Come away to the Admiral.’
That night eight vessels thickly coated with pitch drifted down in the
dark upon the tide, controlled by long sweeps in the wake of their
leader, which was steered by Gervase Crosby. This, a trivial task from
the point of view of danger compared with his earlier one, he had
almost insisted upon undertaking as being the logical corollary to his
inspection of the positions. At comparatively close quarters, slow
matches were lighted aboard each vessel. The crews slipped silently
overboard to the waiting pinnace, and the ships were left to drift
down the short remainder of the way upon the Spaniards.
When as they got amongst them they suddenly broke into flame one after
the other, they scattered panic through the invincible fleet. These
English, it seemed, had every resource and artifice of hell at their
command. It was conceived, reasonably enough, that the fire-ships were
full of gunpowder--as indeed they would have been if the English had
possessed powder to spare--and knowing the fearful havoc they would
work upon exploding, the Spaniards, without waiting to weigh anchor,
cut their cables and stood out to sea.
At dawn, Medina Sidonia found the English bearing resolutely down upon
him, and on that day was fought the most terrific action that the seas
had ever known. When evening fell, the power of the Armada was
definitely broken. Thereafter, in the days that followed, it but
remained to drive into the high latitudes of the North Sea, where they
could do no harm, the seventy surviving ships of the hundred and
thirty that had sailed so proudly from the Tagus as the instrument by
which God should vindicate His cause.
Medina Sidonia asked nothing better than to be allowed to go. He had
endured all the sea-fighting to which his stomach was equal, and was
glad enough to drive before the wind away from any further risk of
action. Like sheep-dogs herding a flock, the English ships hung on
their heels until they were past the Forth; then left them to the
winds and the God in whose name they had sailed forth on their
crusade.