The Pirate Queen (50 page)

When Medina Sidonia finally sailed again from Corunna on July 12, 1588, with his remaining 131 vessels manned with 7,000 mariners and 17,000 soldiers, he had a fraction of the 510 ships and 35,000 men demanded by Santa Cruz. Philip’s plan was to have Medina
Sidonia “join hands” with Parma from Dunkirk and Nieuwport, and invade England. Parma’s assault force was around seventeen thousand men, whom he would somehow embark on the fly boats and skiffs to join Medina Sidonia.
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If for any reason the “joining hands” did not succeed, the Spanish fleet was to take the Isle of Wight, secure it, and communicate with Parma from there for an alternative plan.
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Elizabeth has frequently been criticized by many strategists and historians for her intrusive, and at times contradictory, orders to her fleet. In part, this is because Drake finally persuaded her (with the active connivance of Howard) that it was foolhardy to divide the English ships, with Howard guarding the Narrow Seas, and Drake the entry to the Channel at Plymouth, called the Western Approaches. Yet after the order had been given in the spring to attempt to catch Philip sleeping in Lisbon, the queen’s “interference” was minimal, particularly in comparison with the King of Spain, who had an alternative plan for nearly any contingency. If there was one thing the Queen of England did at this point, it was to trust her commanders once they had put out to sea. Burghley, now quite old and gnarled with gout and arthritis, wrote gloomily at the time, “a man would wish, if peace cannot be had, that the enemy would no longer delay, but prove (as I trust) his evil fortune.”
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The wait was getting to everyone.

But Burghley was always a pessimist. Sir William Winter wrote, “Our ships doth show themselves like gallants here…. I assure you, it would do a man’s heart good to behold them.” Lord Admiral Howard, too, remained confident, boasting, “I have been aboard of every ship that goeth out with me and in every place where any may creep, and I thank God that they be in the estate they be in, and there is never a one of them that knows what a leak means….”
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The entire country prepared for war in its own way. Across the south coast, bonfires were erected on all the high peaks leading from Land’s End to London and manned around the clock. At the first sight of the Spaniards, the order to light the first beacon would be given from a salvo let off at Plymouth, and it would take under fifteen minutes for the torchlight warnings to carry the news to court. It was a tried and tested method used since ancient times, and it would be used again and again until the advent of telecommunications.
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Then, suddenly, on the morning of July 19, 1588, a seaman named Captain Thomas Fleming was cruising with his ship, the
Golden Hind,
off the coast at the Lizard when he spied a massive line of ships in the distance off the Isles of Scilly with their sails struck, as if in wait for more ships. It must have been an incredibly impressive sight. Despite a royal warrant for his detention as a pirate, Fleming headed into port to warn the fleet at Plymouth.

Legend has it that Drake was playing a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe when Fleming broke the news, and that he allegedly said that there was more than enough time to finish the game and beat the Spaniards. There is no evidence from any English source at the time or later that anything of the sort happened. After fifteen months of waiting to engage the enemy, it is highly unlikely that Drake, in particular, did anything other than scramble his men to their ships and their battle stations, while ordering the beacons to be lit to carry word to London. While, strictly speaking, Fleming should have been clapped in irons, since a warrant had been issued for his arrest for piracy, it is more likely that he had, in fact, been engaged by Howard and Drake to act as their scout.
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The Armada made for a formidable sight. The Spanish ships ranged two miles in breadth, and with their huge fore and after castles towered over the English. In the six battles that followed, the history of naval combat evolved into the modern era. Gone forever were the days of oarpowered ships over sail. Grappling and boarding, too, was replaced by superior firepower and long-range weaponry. The death knell was also tolled for the English crossbow archers as the country’s most lethal fighting force aboard ship.
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Yet despite superior maneuverability and firepower, the English made little, if any headway, on the first day of battle (July 20). The next day, though, the English got lucky. One of the Spanish warships, the
Nuestra Señora del Rosario
, was lost. The
Rosario
, a colossal 1,150 ton
nao
, a multipurpose ship armed for war with fifty-two guns and a crew of over four hundred men, lost its bowsprit, foreyard, halyards, and forecourse after a series of collisions in the fleet due to their tight formation. Her commander, Don Pedro de Valdes, fired off his guns to let Medina Sidonia know his plight, but all efforts to save her failed. Valdes watched helplessly as the Armada slowly
pulled away to the east, leaving him to his destiny. This was a huge blow to the Spaniards, since she was one of the largest ships in the Armada, and carried a third of the treasure taken along to pay the mariners and soldiers.
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While the English had seen that the
Rosario
had been left behind, at their council of war that night, Howard gave the order to keep their formation and follow the main body of the Spanish fleet. It was Drake’s turn to lead the watch that night, and so his poop lantern was lit at his stern for the other ships to follow. Nonetheless, Watts’s Londoner, the
Margaret and John
, broke formation and ranged alongside the
Rosario
. His arrows and muskets at close range met with the ferocious reply of several Spanish guns, and the
Margaret and John
’s captain replied with a broadside. They were so close that they could hear the Spaniards whispering after the crash of the cannonball into the
Rosario
’s hull. Though disabled, she was still over four times the English ship’s size, and the men voted to return to the English fleet.
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Meanwhile, Howard blithely followed the lantern, unaware that all was not as it should be. The lookout had lost sight of Drake’s lantern, and instead of advising the admiral, who had gone below, he waited and strained his eyes into the dark distance before he saw the lantern again, but this time much farther forward than expected. Fogs suddenly bubbled up all the time in the Channel, and so the watch thought nothing more of the episode until morning. Drake, meanwhile, had sailed away. His own watch aboard his ship, the
Revenge
, had reported that there were three or four ships sailing abreast of them. Could it be the Spaniards working to windward in the dark? Drake ordered his lantern extinguished to surprise the ships that dogged him, and to avoid taking the whole of the fleet on a wild-goose chase, and lose the Armada.

His prey turned out to be German freighters, and Drake claimed to be rejoining the fleet when he spied the
Rosario
and pulled up alongside her. He summoned her captain to surrender, and when the Spaniard asked for terms, Drake replied that he had no time to parlay, but that they had the word of Sir Francis Drake that they wouldn’t be harmed. Twenty years later, when Drake’s heirs were arguing over his estate, testimony from his sailors that night reported:

The said Sir Francis entertained the said Don Pedro in his cabin, and there, in the hearing of the deponent, the said Sir Francis did will his own interpreter to ask the said Don Pedro in the Spanish tongue whether he would yield unto him or no and further to tell him if he would not yield he would set him aboard again. Whereupon the said Don Pedro paused a little while with himself, and afterwards yielded unto the said Sir Francis Drake and remained with him as a prisoner.
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The Spaniards were transferred to the
Revenge
and her sister ship, the
Roebuck
, while the
Rosario
’s treasure was lowered into the
Revenge
, where Drake could keep his eye on it. It is believed that the haul amounted to some 55,000 ducats ($3.74 million or £2.02 million today) as well as jewels, silver plate, and fine apparel, though no one knew for sure how much was truly there. When the treasure passed into the lord admiral’s hands, only half that sum was counted. When Frobisher later learned of the incident, he was incandescent with rage. Frobisher’s rescue by Drake near the Isle of Wight was a even more bitter pill to swallow.

But on that day, Drake hadn’t returned as yet by dawn, and it was only when Howard came above decks that he quickly saw that he hadn’t been following Drake’s poop lantern after all, but the one of the Spanish Armada instead! The English account of how he extricated himself and what, if anything, he said to Drake when he rejoined him is ambiguous. All we know for sure is that Drake did rejoin, Howard did take possession of the treasure, and that Drake was again on several occasions entrusted to act as lead ship with his poop lantern alight to guide the fleet.

That same day, Howard himself peeled off from the fleet and picked up the
San Salvador
, which was sinking after an explosion in her gunpowder stores ripped through the ship. She should have been scuttled, but Howard ordered instead that Captain Fleming (the pirate who gave the first alert) should bring her into harbor at Weymouth, Dorset.
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After the first two battles, the Spaniards were already very low on powder and shot. The gunpowder magazine’s explosion aboard the
San Salvador
spelled further disaster. Frobisher in the largest English ship, the
Triumph
, was nearly cornered at the Isle of Wight,
but rescued at the end of the day by Drake’s sharp maneuvering. By the time the Armada had reached the Calais Roads, it was seriously depleted of food and water as well. The English had learned from their battles to stay just out of gun range while the Spaniards tried to sink them. English rates of fire were only one or one and a half rounds per gun per hour, where the Spanish managed only one to one and a half rounds per day. With its superior firepower, the English ships slowly made inroads into the invincible Armada. But it was Philip’s strict order to Medina Sidonia not to make any independent landing without Parma that committed the Spanish Armada to failure—not the English fleet.

Parma had too few armed vessels to protect his army sailing out of harbor to meet the Armada, and he knew he and his soldiers would be sitting ducks for the Dutch, who had now joined the English side. On the Sunday night, the English loosed eight fire ships into the tightly packed Armada and watched the Spaniards grapple themselves free while they stood out to sea. Despite incredible Spanish courage, the elements were against them. A great storm brewed up, allowing the English to herd them toward the Zealand Banks—shallows that could shipwreck the entire fleet.

Then as Tuesday dawned, the wind changed direction to southward, allowing the entrapped Armada to escape to the north. No one believed that it would be the end of the action. In fact, Howard wrote to Walsingham, “Their force is wonderful great and strong, yet we pluck their feathers by little and little. I pray to God that the forces on the land be strong enough to answer so puissant a force.”
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But it was the end. The Spanish Armada sailed around to the north of the British Isles, and west again around Ireland, with several of their galleons shipwrecked there. At least one-third of the men were dead, and half of those who returned were sick or dying. Only Recalde landed safely in Ireland with a small squadron, and got away to tell the gruesome tale of the Armada’s destruction on Ireland’s western coast. But even the great Recalde fell victim to sickness on his return to Spain, dying within weeks, it was claimed, of a broken heart. Spain fell into deep mourning, for the loss of the Armada was a national catastrophe. The loss of her men was irreplaceable. The
loss of the treasure and the ships was barely considered in the public psyche. Where Spain mourned, England rejoiced. Even at the time, there were many who claimed that the defeat of the Armada was the moment when Spanish maritime expansion ceased, and the English were on the rise.

For the Queen of England, it was a vindication by God of all she represented. In the ten days that the Spanish Armada threatened England, God had smiled down on His Protestant queen.

37. America Again…and Again?

As Salomon said, “Riches are a stronghold, in the imagination of the rich man.” But this is excellently expressed that it is in imagination, and not always in fact.

—SIR FRANCIS BACON,
Essays
, NO. 34 “OF RICHES”

R
aleigh’s role in the Armada campaign was largely supportive, even selling the
Ark Ralegh
to the queen to use as the renamed
Ark Royal
for Admiral Howard. After it was all over, he somehow was charged with selling the captured Armada wines as agent to his half brother, Sir John Gilbert. While it must have been a highly profitable transaction for both men, Raleigh’s real interest was with the casks. “I must also pray you to set aside twenty-five tons of the iron hooped cask for me,” he asked Sir John, “priced in such reasonable sort as you may, for I shall have great use of them. And if my Lord of Cumberland or any other make means to have them, you may answer that they are priced and sold, or that Her Majesty has given them to me….”
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