THE DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA - PART THREE
THE DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA – PART THREE
Not only was Medina Sidonia unqualified to command such a major naval expedition, but he knew it. He wrote to the king making it very plain that he knew nothing about the sea, was seasick on the rare occasions when he had to travel by ship, and in any case was totally unable to supply any funding towards the expedition, as Spanish commanders were expected to do. Furthermore, he said that the whole concept was a recipe for disaster and could not possibly succeed. His letter never got to the king, being intercepted by his councillors who were horrified at its contents and did not show it to the king, writing themselves to Medina Sidonia threatening him with all sorts of repercussions if he did not accept the command. Bowing to the inevitable, the duke took himself off to Lisbon to try to meet the king’s increasingly hysterical orders to get going, with departure dates that came and went. He did manage to recruit competent squadron commanders to serve under him, and he ordered that foreign ships in Spanish and Portuguese harbours should be impounded and their names changed to something in Spanish, these to augment the 120 ships of the existing fleet. Meanwhile the Duke of Parma was complaining to Philip that the coming expedition was common knowledge in Flanders and must also be in England. The only light at the end of this tunnel of gloom for Philip was that in July 1588 Pope Sixtus, who was actually a fervent admirer of Elizabeth, at last accepted that he could not persuade her to return to the Catholic faith and renewed her excommunication, announcing that Philip was now king of England with all the rights that went with that office.
Eventually the Armada (Spanish for fleet) concentrated in Lisbon consisted of 129 ships, of which sixty-eight were major warships, big galleons, heavily armed and with high towers at bow and stern. The rest were either merchantmen fitted for war by the installation of cannon, or stores ships and troop transports and included a hospital ship and four galleys propelled by oars and manned by reluctant Portuguese. Embarked were 26,000 soldiers, including 2,000 Portuguese, who had never accepted Philip’s usurpation of the Portuguese throne and would have been much happier fighting for the English rather than against them. Included were 125 gentlemen volunteers with 450 servants. Manning the fleet were 8,000 sailors but although the fleet carried 2,500 cannon, with fifty rounds of ammunition per gun, there were only 170 trained artillery officers, one or two to each vessel, who would supervise the handling of the guns by partly trained gunners. Six months’ worth of rations were loaded, and although the daily ration per man included a pint of wine, it only allowed three pints of water ‘for all purposes’ and the salt meat or bacon allowance was considerably less than that laid down in the English navy. Included amongst the passengers were 180 priests and as the ostensible purpose of the expedition was to restore England to the true faith, strict rules as to daily religious observance were laid down, along with a prohibition on swearing, which must have restricted conversation somewhat.
At last, with much parading of sanctified standards and lots of empty rhetoric, on 30 April 1588 the fleet sailed from Lisbon. The winds were not favourable, and in any case the fleet moved at the speed of the slowest stores ship, and after almost six weeks at sea it had only reached the north west tip of the Iberian Peninsula, when a fierce storm struck. The fleet made for Corunna, whose harbour could not accommodate all the ships, so that those forced to anchor offshore were exposed to weather that got worse by the day. Many captains put out to sea to avoid being blown onto the rocks and were scattered, so that when the weather eventually abated, much time was spent trying to locate them and round them up. Added to the damage and discomfort caused by the storms was the result of Drake’s burning of barrels. Those made of unseasoned wood had leaked and much of the food had begun to rot, with men going down with dysentery. Some fresh rations were loaded at Corunna, as was more water, and the damage done by the storm was repaired. A disadvantage of the harbour of Corunna was that even with a company of troops deployed on shore, a number of men, soldiers and sailors, managed to desert, being replaced by raw levies from Galicia.
The Armada finally set sail from Corunna on 21 July and although losing a day when they were becalmed when the wind died completely, Medina Sidonia, who had been seasick for the entire voyage and was only now beginning to find his sea legs, agreed that the fleet would cross the Bay of Biscay and sail straight up the Channel in the traditional crescent formation with the slower ships in the centre and heavily armed galleons on the flanks.
In England Howard, the Lord High Admiral, with Drake as his second-in-command, was concentrating a Royal Navy fleet in Plymouth and organising the mobilisation of sailors. Altogether Howard had thirty-eight naval ships, of which twenty-two were recent builds to a new English design, making them sleeker, faster and more manoeuvrable and with a lower silhouette than older vessels. To augment this port authorities had been ordered to produce ships, ranging from warships, or merchant ships converted for war, to ships intended to carry resupply, to pinnaces designed for reconnaissance and communication, and with these the fleet now numbered around 100 ships. Hearing from fishermen that the Armada was around Corunna, on 4 July Howard had sailed with part of his fleet intending to catch them unawares, but had been blown back to Plymouth by the same storms that had scattered the Spanish. A second fleet, the ‘Narrow Seas Squadron’ of twenty less modern but perfectly serviceable ships under the command of Sir Henry Seymour, (a distant cousin of the Queen through Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour) would remain based in Dover to defend against any attempted crossing by Parma and his Flanders army.
On shore there was a certain amount of panic; defence works were found not to have been completed due to a shortage of everything from wheelbarrows to baulks of timber, and the Lord Mayor of London ordered all foreigners to remain in their houses. Already the Queen and her government were concerned at the cost of keeping the fleet and the militia in being. The men had to be rationed and paid, and storm damage repaired, and the treasury was empty. A forced taxation of the richer elements of English society and a loan from the city of London at 10% interest enabled wages to be paid, but it was not only Walsingham who fervently hoped that whatever the Spanish intended, they should do it soon. All was not doom and gloom, however. The Dutch agreed to provide ships to augment the Narrow Seas Squadron, and James VI of Scotland, no doubt with an eye to the succession, assured Elizabeth of his total support, not that there was much that he could do, but the thought was there.
On 27 July the Armada was hit by yet another storm, which damaged some ships and swamped a number of the oars-driven galleys, which were never designed for rough seas. On 29 July the fleet was off the Lizard, and in a council of war on the flagship some of Medina Sidonia’s more experienced captains recommended that they should blockade Plymouth thus preventing the English fleet from engaging. This was rejected on the grounds that the main task of the expedition was to give cover for Parma’s army to cross the channel and effect a landing. By now the Golden Hinde, one of the ships in the English screen, had spotted the Armada, and on the south coast the beacons were lit. The story of Howard and Drake playing bowls on Plymouth Hoe and claiming ‘time to finish the game and beat the Spaniards too’ is just that – a story – but they did now bring the fleet out of harbour and deploy it ready for action. On the 30th July the channel was enveloped in a thick mist, so the Armada, having taken up a crescent formation about five or six miles from flank to flank, hove-to. The wind was still behind them and when the mist cleared they would be able to carry on up the channel. Thus it was with considerable consternation that when the fog cleared next morning and Medina Sidonia could look behind him, he saw the English fleet deployed to his rear and with the wind behind them.
The Spanish had been warned that the English would not follow the accepted norms of naval warfare – close, batter and board – but either did not believe it or had not passed the intelligence on. Although they had to reverse the fleet to face the enemy, with the wind now against them, most Spanish captains were convinced that superior numbers and their hard-bitten and experienced marines would compensate for any lack of steerage. The English had no intention of closing, nor of attempting to board the much higher Spanish vessels, and when their ships opened fire at ranges of from 600 yards and then turned away, hitting their targets and collapsing rigging and killing sailors, those who had doubted the wisdom of the expedition in the first place were now even more convinced, while those optimists amongst the Armada began to wonder if they had been right. All morning the English gunners loaded and fired, and their superior guns allowed them to damage their opponents long before the Spanish could get close enough for their cannon to take effect. At around 1300 hours the English fleet broke off the action, running short of ammunition and needing to replenish. Although no Spanish ships had been sunk, considerable damage had been inflicted on them and on morale, and any question of blockading or attempting to capture Plymouth was gone. The Armada was still a fleet in being, however, and it continued majestically onwards up the Channel. Although no ships had been destroyed by the English, one was badly damaged by a collision with another and had to be abandoned, while the ship carrying the Armada’s pay was almost destroyed when it blew up, probably through careless handling of gunpowder, and was only just saved from burning to the waterline by firefighters from other ships. Survivors in the water were picked up, officers first, and individual English ships constantly harried the rear of the crescent, while never approaching close enough for the Spanish to retaliate.
TO BE CONTINUED