THE DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA - PART FOUR
THE DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA – PART FOUR
On 31 July night fell, and as Drake was the most experienced navigator in the English fleet he was instructed to follow the Armada with a light on the stern of his ship so that the rest of the fleet could follow. In an astonishing example of dereliction of duty, Drake extinguished his light and took off with some of his own privateers and captured the stricken Spanish treasure ship, transferring the Armada’s pay into his own vessel. When he eventually re-joined Howard he made excuses for his conduct which would have had him arrested, court martialled and, at the very least, cashiered had he been just any old captain. But Drake was England’s best known naval hero and Howard felt that he could not take action against him. Because of Drake’s disobedience, however, the English fleet had fallen far behind the Armada which was now off the Devon coast.
Skirmishing continued as the Armada sailed up the channel, with neither side inflicting a decisive blow, but the advantage being with the English, with their longer range guns and better trained gunners delivering a higher rate of fire. More might have been achieved by Howard were it not for a constant shortage of powder and shot, and the fleet often had to break off to have resupplies ferried out from the coast. As it was, however, the constant sniping and harrying prevented the Spanish from getting much sleep, and they were unable to affect a landing on the Isle of Wight, something that Medina Sidonia had considered. Both fleets had suffered losses in men, the Spanish more than the English, but as the practice of commanders failing to declare casualties so as to continue to draw their pay was rife in both navies, it is not possible to determine accurate figures. Meanwhile on shore the Trained Bands were being concentrated in Kent and Essex, areas where a landing was thought to be most likely, and efforts to complete the defence works were accelerated.
At last, fourteen weeks after setting sail from Lisbon, on the afternoon of 7 August 1588, the Armada dropped anchor off the coast of Calais, twenty miles from Parma’s main embarkation port of Dunkirk further up the coast. Medina Sidonia had lost ships, had others damaged and men lost, but he still had a powerful fleet, stationed between the English and the projected crossing. It did not have to defeat the English navy. It had merely to prevent interference with Parma’s army crossing the Channel and landing on the English shore, which now looked very likely. Howard’s fleet, joined by that of Seymour, hove-to well out of cannon shot. In number of ships the English now mustered around the same number as the Spanish but were they to give battle in the old way by closing and attempting to board, the larger Spanish vessels and their experienced marines would probably prevail. What the English needed to do was disperse the tightly packed Armada so that individual ships could be picked off by superior English gunnery. Some means had to be found to force the Armada to disperse.
Wooden ships are extraordinarily difficult to sink – wood floats – but all sailors and ship masters of the time were terrified of fire. With acres of canvas sail, miles of tarred rope and many tons of wood, fire on board could very swiftly reduce a once proud galleon to a charred hulk. There was nothing new about the use of fireships. The tactic was to pack old and unwanted ships with flammable material, wait for the wind to blow in the right direction, steer the fireships towards the enemy, light the fuse and abandon ship, escaping by longboats towed behind. If the fireships got into the middle of an anchored fleet the results could be spectacular, and the defence was to station a few fast cutters with grappling irons which would attempt to tow the fire ships off course, and as these latter tended to be old and slow, alert defenders often succeeded. Drake insisted that the only chance of a successful attack by fire ships would be to use new, fast vessels, rather than adhering to the usual practice of getting rid of ships due to be cast anyway. After much argument as to who would pay, Howard accepted that he would sacrifice ships of his own fleet, modern, fast, and less likely to be grappled and towed away. Eight ships, all armed merchantmen, modern in design and chartered for the campaign, were selected and sailed behind the main fleet so that their preparation was hidden from the Spanish. The ships were packed with barrels of tar, old rags and firewood, with their guns loaded so that the fire would ignite the charges. Just after midnight on 8 August 1588 the tide turned and the wind was blowing from the south west. Skeleton crews on the fireships steered their charges for the centre of the anchored Armada and when about half a mile away lit the fuses and abandoned ship.
The Spanish did react: fast cutters managed to grapple two of the fire ships and tow them into shallow water where they went aground, but six came on. To the captains of the Spanish ships the sight of six ships in line, blazing away with sparks flying up and cannons firing at random bearing down on them initiated a fully understandable panic – they had to get away and get away quickly. There was no time to up anchor, and most simply cut their anchor cables with axes, hoisted all sail and fled north, away from the oncoming danger. Whether the Armada captains were ordered to cut cables and flee or whether they made their own decision is immaterial: when dawn broke on 8 August the Armada was scattered, some ships had run aground, others had collided and what had been a compact fleet was now a collection of ships heading away north as fast as they could. Now the English fleet could act, and again the superior range and faster loading and firing would allow more damage to be inflicted on the Armada ships, without their being able to retaliate.
Although the English did not know it, it was that very night that the Duke of Parma had begun to embark his invasion force on their barges to cross the Channel and land on English soil. Had the Armada stood its ground, or more properly its water, some ships would have been lost to the fire ships – perhaps as many as twenty or thirty at the most – but the fleet could still have prevented Howard from breaking through and interfering with Parma’s crossing. Parma would have been able to break the Dutch blockade of Dunkirk and effect a landing in England. The arrival of Spanish troops would almost certainly have initiated a rising by some of Elizabeth’s subjects mainly, but not all, recusant Catholics, resentful that her initial toleration had given way as a result of the Papal Bull against her. Despite Elizabeth’s personal bravery, and her inspiring rhetoric at Tilbury, which may or may not have been accurately reported by an army chaplain, it is hard to see how the Trained Bands and the rural militia could have stood against a combination of internal opposition and a landed Spanish force of experienced Spanish and mercenary soldiers. The launch of the fireships, and particularly the decision to use modern, fast ships, really did change history. That was the tipping point.
Trying desperately to rally his dispersed ships into a defensive formation with the wind against him, Medina Sidonia had little time to do so, for by 0700 in the morning the English were on him, each of Howard’s ships sailing to within a few hundred yards, firing their bow cannon and then turning to port before loosening a broadside, each gun firing as it came to bear, and then turning away to reload and make good any damage, although being out of range except for lucky shots from Spanish cannon or musketeers there was little of that. Medina Sidonia might have considered a last-ditch attempt to marshal his fleet and sail back in the direction of the French coast, pushing the English before him and allowing Parma, who had wisely disembarked his troops once he realised what was happening, to make another attempt at crossing. The Spanish admiral was unaware that the English were by now very short of powder and shot, but the wind was against him, his ships were too dispersed and too damaged, in any case morale was such that many captains might not have heeded the call and instead sailed for a friendly French port or made an attempt to evade the English and make for home.
Surprisingly, perhaps, most of the fleet was gathered together by around mid-morning, and in the usual Spanish crescent formation, but all that Medina Sidonia could do was to try to get his fleet back to Spain without more loss, and the only way he could do that was to sail north, round the top of Scotland, west of Ireland and back to Spain, while avoiding the treacherous under-surface sandbanks off the Flanders coast. English ships continued to snap at the heels of the Armada, and there were now very few Spanish ships that had not sustained damage and suffered casualties. The Armada limped on, with the weather worsening daily, and Howard followed, having left Seymour and his Narrow Seas squadron behind at Dover to guard against Parma making an attempt without the Armada.
In the ships of the Armada provisions and water meant to last a few weeks, (the time to get the fleet from Corunna to England), were running short, and although some resupply from Calais had been achieved, if it was to last the six weeks or so that it was estimated to reach a home port, the daily ration had to be cut and cut again. Halfway up the North Sea it was decided that one way to eke out the water supply would be to get rid of the horses and mules, which were tipped overboard. Punishment was now to be meted out to those thought to have disobeyed orders or to have behaved in a cowardly manner. One captain was sentenced to death and hanged from his yardarm, others demoted in rank or sent to the galleys, whose oarsmen were slaves or criminals chained to their oars. By 13 August the Armada was rounding the Orkneys and Howard, now completely out of ammunition and seeing that the wind, blowing from the south west and showing no signs of abating, would prevent the Armada from reversing course and getting into the Channel, ordered the English fleet home. On 18 August the English fleet docked at Harwich and Margate.
The Armada was faced with a long and treacherous voyage home, in increasingly bad weather. Rations intended for a few weeks were rotting and water contaminated. Scurvy, typhus, influenza and soon near starvation was rife. Two ships were blown onto the north coast of Scotland with many of the crews drowned trying to get ashore, but worse was to come as the fleet sailed west of Ireland. While some of the Armada’s ships had spare anchors, many that had slipped their cables off Calais did not, and so could not anchor to ride out storms. While sailors of the time knew how to fix latitude, longitude could only be estimated, and thus Spanish ships sailed too close to the Irish coast and many were blown onto the rocks, or foundered and sank in the huge waves of the appalling gales that beset them. Many, probably most, of those soldiers and sailors who managed to get ashore were either plundered and then massacred by the indigenous Irish or executed by English soldiers. In late September and October the survivors reached Spanish ports. Of the 129 ships that had set out only sixty-seven got back. Of these only thirty-four were major warships, their crews sick and starving, and most were in such bad condition that they could only be sent to the breakers’ yard. It has been estimated that up to five thousand Spaniards died during the voyage home, mostly from disease, or starvation, or drowning, or the cold, or killed having been shipwrecked and come ashore in Ireland. Added to that the numbers killed, drowned or deserted during the naval battles in the Channel and the toll of dead and missing rises to perhaps 10,000. It was the worst military disaster ever in Spanish history. In contrast, the English lost eight fire ships and perhaps 200 men killed.
Both sides explained what had happened in their own way. In England it proved the racial superiority of Englishmen over the ‘dons’, a great victory brought about by the Queen’s navy and its doughty commanders, and proof that at heart God was an Englishman. In Spain king Philip said that he had sent his Armada to fight men, not wind and waves, and blamed the cowardice of his commanders.
Certainly the duke of Medina Sidonia was no sailor, but he was accompanied and advised by men who were, however the king’s constant exhortations to the fleet forcing it to leave before it was ready and fully equipped; the shortage of seasoned barrels in which to store water and foodstuffs; the lack of communication between Parma and the approaching Armada; the irritating refusal of the English navy to fight in the way to which the Spanish were accustomed and, above all, the weather were all contributory factors to the failure of the expedition and the destruction of the fleet, but the tipping point was the fireships. Drake may have been a rogue, motivated more by greed than by patriotism, but it was his insistence on sacrificing swift, modern ships that panicked the Spaniards into cutting their anchor cables and fleeing north. Had Drake not been able to convince Howard that fire ships be used, and that they should be modern, fast vessels, the Armada would have remained in position and Parma’s army could have crossed unmolested, with little to oppose it on English soil. As it was, after the fire ships were launched an invasion was impossible.
In Spain there was much loose talk of a second, refitted and rearmed Armada to be sent against England, and while there were two further, much smaller, attempts to invade in the coming years they never looked like succeeding. There were not the ships, nor the men, nor, more importantly, the money for any serious repeat effort. A ‘counter armada’ by England the following year was unsuccessful and such Spanish naval rebuilding that did occur was concentrated on protecting the convoys from the Americas, which did reduce somewhat the ability of English privateers to intercept them, and the two nations remained in an indecisive state of war until the treaty of London in 1604.
Once the Armada was defeated, Elizabeth was now secure. She reigned for another fifteen years and although there were still plots fomented by the Spanish or the French against her she was never again seriously challenged and her reign, and the great victory against the Armada, were the beginnings of England’s rise from being just a small trading entrepot off the coast of Europe to a mighty world power. Were it not for the tipping point of the fireships, it could have all been very different.