The Spanish Armada (22 page)
Read The Spanish Armada Online
Authors: Robert Hutchinson
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Great Britain, #Military, #Naval, #General
Spy fever gripped England. The mayor and jurats of Dover had arrested one Adrian Menneck, ‘lately arrived with Calais’ who they believed was an agent working for Parma. Suspiciously,
he had been found with a ‘map or charts of all the coasts of England, Scotland and Ireland’.
There was no up-to-date hard intelligence about the Armada’s movements or intentions and if the turbulent weather had played cruel tricks on Medina Sidonia’s ships, it had succeeded
in frustrating the English navy too.
Drake reported on his reconnaissance in the Channel approaches in a letter to Burghley dated 6 June and written from ‘her majesty’s good ship
Revenge
’ now safely back
in Plymouth Sound. For seven days they had suffered ‘a great storm’, which the vice-admiral considered unusual weather for early summer. They met a hulk, returning to her home port of
San Lúcar, which sixteen days before had encountered:
a great fleet of ships which came from Lisbon, having the wind northerly and so coming to the westward . . . The skipper and the company . . . saw so
many as they could not number [count] them.
Either we shall hear of them very shortly or else they will go to the Groyne [Corunna] and there assemble.
Drake concluded: ‘I daily pray to God to bless her majesty and give us grace to fear Him so shall we not need to doubt the enemy, although they be
many.’
41
Three days later, Walsingham passed on to Howard Elizabeth’s firm instructions not to sail to Bayonne ‘to watch the proceedings of the Spanish fleet’. The queen feared that the
Armada could slip past her ships unnoticed and therefore recommended that her fleet ‘ply up and down between the English and Spanish coast so as you may be able to answer any attempt that the
fleet shall make either against this realm, Ireland, or Scotland’.
42
Howard, still beset by storms, argued that ‘it was the opinion of
all [his] most experienced commanders that they ought to proceed at once’ to the Spanish coast. Moreover, the delay in awaiting the Armada would consume all their provisions. Nonetheless, he
would obey orders.
43
First news of the Armada came on Monday 23 June when a barque from Mousehole, laden with a cargo of salt for France, ‘encountered nine sail of great ships between Scilly and Ushant,
bearing north-east’ towards the Cornish coast – some of the Armada ships blown north from Corunna.
Coming near unto them, he, not doubting they were Spaniards, kept the wind of them. They . . . began to give him chase . . . three of them followed him so near that the
Englishman doubted hardly to escape.
At his first sight of them, there were two flags spread which were suddenly taken in again . . . Their sails were all crossed over with a red cross. Each of the greater ships towed astern
them either a great boat or pinnace without a mast.
44
The previous day, ‘One Simmons of Exeter’ declared ‘that on Friday last he was chased [by] a fleet of great ships, having some of his men hurt with shot from
them’. He escaped, landed in Cornwall, and hurried to Plymouth to inform the lord admiral.
45
At the other end of the Channel, Seymour was alert for any sign
of Parma’s sortie out of Flanders. In late June he spent thirty hours off Gravelines, during which he
spotted two small ships leaving Dunkirk.
Two of our pinnaces chased them, with the discharging of some saker shot and yet [they] would not strike [their sails] till at last one of our shot struck down the mainmast
of one of these vessels, being a French bottom [vessel] belonging to Calais.
I demanded what he meant not to strike his sails and to come to the queen’s ships, knowing us so well. He answered that he took us for the King of Navarre’s fleet, making himself
ignorant what to do.
I replied that if the Duke of Parma or the Duke of Guise should do the like, I would sink them or they would distress me – adding further that my sovereign lady was able to defend her
country against the Holy League, besides able to master any civil discord and so dismissed them with some little choler [anger].
The second fugitive ship ran aground and the crew fled, wading through the surf. ‘My boat, which I manned with some [musketeers], came upon their skirts but a little too
late. Yet there came very near a hundred men, horse and foot but dare not approach . . .’ But suddenly the wind rose, forcing Seymour to seek shelter from ‘marvellous foul
weather’ for thirty hours in a Kent harbour.
46
Howard now received hard intelligence that the Armada was regrouping at Corunna. Forgoing the loading of all his stores, he took advantage of a prosperous north-easterly wind to depart Plymouth
with sixty ships on 4 July. He set course for Spain, hoping to give battle off Corunna, but again bad weather intervened, with storms and southerly gales off the Scillies and Ushant. The English
fleet was driven back to Plymouth five days later, short of supplies and some of the ships leaking. Howard was quick to defend John Hawkins, one of his captains and Treasurer of the Navy:
I have heard that there is in London some hard speeches against Mr Hawkins because the
Hope
came in [to] mend a leak that she had.
I think there were never so many of the ships so long abroad and in such seas with such weather as these have had with so few leaks.
The
Hope
’s leak was so small ‘that I would have dared to have gone with it to Venice’, he added dismissively. Some of the hired
merchantmen needed new spars and cordage and some ships reported sickness amongst their crews.
47
In London, events had moved on and there were graver problems than a slight leak in one of her majesty’s ships. A new crisis was confronting Elizabeth’s government: they were almost
bankrupt. In January 1588, she had extorted a forced loan from her richer subjects that had brought £75,000 into her hard-pressed exchequer. Three months later, the queen borrowed
£30,000 from the City of London, repayable at 10 per cent. Now, that money was long gone.
On 19 July, Burghley, grievously afflicted with gastric pains, wrote to Walsingham describing his desperate straits in finding cash to keep the fleet at sea:
I find my mind as much troubled to write as now I do as commonly my stomach is against purging but I cannot conceal from you the causes which will shortly bring forth desperate effects.
Burghley had paid out £6,000 that week for wages and foodstuffs for the ships, but then had received demands for more than £19,000 for naval pay up to 28 July. Old debts of
£13,000 for provisions had been demanded too, but the treasurer had persuaded the creditors to take postponed, staged payments. ‘I marvel that where so many are dead on the seas, the
pay is not dead with them or with many of them,’ Burghley wrote ruefully. On top of all this, costs of the army totalled nearly £11,000:
I shall but fill my letter with more melancholy matter if I should remember what money must be [paid to] 5,000 footmen and 1,000 horsemen for defence of the enemy landing in
Essex . . .
A man would wish if peace cannot be had, that the enemy would not longer delay but prove (as I trust) his evil fortune, for as these expectations do consume us, so I would hope by
God’s goodness upon their defect, we might have on half a year’s time to provide for money.
He had talked with two London bankers, Sir Horatio Palavicino
48
and Richard Saltonstall, about a loan amounting to £40,000
or £50,000, repayable at 10 per cent interest, ‘but I find no probability how to get money here in [gold] specie which is our lack but by exchanging to have it out of the parts beyond
[the] sea which will
not be done in a long time.’ Burghley also had hopes that English merchants at Stade, on the River Elbe, near Hamburg,
49
might lend £20,000 or £30,000.
50
Medina Sidonia had his own worries. Using Captain Don Rodrigo Tello de Guzmán as his courier, he had sent another message to Parma on Monday 25 July, reporting his progress. At dawn the
following day there was a dead calm before heavy squalls forced the Portuguese galley
Diana
to head for a Spanish port after her oar-slaves mutinied and she began to take in water. These
long narrow ships, designed to operate in calmer waters, could not cope with the long Atlantic rollers; under constant battering, the seams of the hull planking were beginning to spring apart. The
other three galleys disappeared from sight and fresh storms on the 27th scattered the Armada yet again. The captain-general reported:
The sea was so heavy that all the sailors agreed that they have never seen its equal in July.
Not only did the waves mount to the skies but some seas broke clean over the ships and the stern gallery of Diego Flores’ flagship [
San Cristobal
] was carried away.
We were on watch all night, full of anxiety lest the Armada should suffer great damage but could do nothing more.
It was the most cruel night ever seen.
Next day, when the seas were less rough and visibility had improved, Medina Sidonia looked out at his fleet and realised that forty ships were missing – all of Pedro de
Valdés Andalusian squadron, all the hulks and some of the
pataches
. The captain-general had suffered his first casualties.
The galley
Bazana
was wrecked at the entrance to Bayonne harbour and her sister ship
Diana
beached.
51
The Biscayan flagship
Santa Ana
lost her mainmast and sought refuge in the French port of La Hogue on the Cherbourg peninsula; she later moved to Le Havre, where she was to spend the rest of the Armada campaign
immobilised.
52
The galleass
San Lorenzo
had a damaged rudder; Medina Sidonia noted with just a touch of fatalism: ‘These craft are
really very fragile in heavy seas.’ He had lost three of his ships before a shot had been fired.
Friday dawned fine but hazy, clearing later in the day. At four that
afternoon the Lizard peninsula was sighted and the fleet shortened sail to allow the stragglers to
catch up.
The following day Medina Sidonia offered up prayers in thanks for ‘bringing us thus far’. ‘God Almighty grant that the rest of our voyage may be performed as we and all
Christendom hope it will be,’ he told Philip in a letter.
6
–
Sir, for the love of God and our country, let us have, with some speed, some great shot sent us of all bigness
[sizes]
, for this service will continue long
– and some powder with it.
Lord High Admiral Howard to Sir Francis Walsingham,
Ark Royal
‘thwart Plymouth’, 31 July 1588.
1
E
arly on Saturday 30 July, as his fleet lay hove to within sight of the enemy coast, Medina Sidonia summoned a council of war on board his flagship
San
Martin
.
2
While the admirals were saluted with proper naval ceremony, the lookouts atop the warship’s mainmast could see the drifting smoke
of the warning beacons on high points along the Cornish coast. Everyone in the battered, creaking ships of the Armada knew that, at last, action was imminent and their thoughts inevitably turned to
divine protection. At prayers that morning, prompted by their ministering friars, the crews had knelt reverently upon the wet decks, ‘beseeching Our Lord to give us victory against the
enemies of His holy faith’.
3
Their king, fretting and fussing in Madrid, would have heartily approved of their piety, had he but known. There was the rub. The lack of news on the Armada’s fortunes had substantially
increased his anxieties, and rumours abounded throughout Europe about the fate of his ships. One account, circulating in Antwerp, said the ‘English and Spanish armadas have met on the English
coast and the Spanish . . . have been beaten’. The gossip in Turin, on the other hand, was that the Armada had sailed up the English Channel and successfully rendezvoused with Parma. A third
version, in Prague, had the fleet sailing home to Corunna having been stricken by an outbreak of bubonic plague.
4
That report had reached the ears of
King Henri III
of France while he was dining in state at Rouen in late July. ‘That is a fine story!’ he sneered. ‘It is only because they had seen the
English fleet and were frightened.’
5
How was the Armada going to triumph over the heretics of the English fleet? Much has been written about that morning’s heated discussion as the Spanish fleet lay poised at the entrance to
the English Channel. We know that afterwards the captain-general reported to Philip that it was decided to: ‘proceed slowly . . . as far as the Isle of Wight and no further until I receive
[news from] the Duke of Parma informing me of the condition of his force’.
All along the coast of Flanders there is no harbour or shelter for our ships [and] if I were to go from the Isle of Wight thither . . . our vessels might be driven on to the
shoals, where they would certainly be lost.
In order to avoid so obvious a peril I have decided to stay off the Isle of Wight until I learn what the duke is doing as the plan is that at the moment of my arrival he should sally with
his fleet without causing me to wait a minute.
Medina Sidonia was astonished to have heard nothing from Parma: ‘During the whole course of our voyage we have not fallen in with a single vessel . . . from whom we could
obtain any information and we are consequently groping in the dark.’
6
Unbeknown to all those arguing around the table in the
San Martin
that morning, the vital coordination between the two arms of Spanish naval and military might – upon which the success of the ‘Enterprise of England’ hinged – was already
fatally flawed. The bitter seeds of disaster had been sown and Spain would reap a lethal harvest in the days and weeks to come.
