Under the Bloody Flag (42 page)

When set against the heavy human losses, amounting to more than one-third of the expedition’s company, this cast a shadow over the ability of the English to sustain such a conflict against Spain over a prolonged period. In addition, the failure of North American colonization, partly as a result of the counter-attraction of maritime depredation, left the development of a transatlantic strategy in disarray. The confusion was compounded with the Queen’s reluctance to exploit the advantage against Spain. In the immediate aftermath of the expedition she claimed that Drake had ‘exceeded his instructions’.
¹⁴
In these circumstances it appeared likely that the latter would continue hostilities in the service of Don Antonio, possibly with the assistance of the Dutch.

Nonetheless, the expedition had far-reaching diplomatic and international implications, placing England at the head of the forces of international Protestantism which were arrayed against Spain. Its value as anti-Spanish propaganda was underlined by the publication of an edited account of the voyage by Walter Bigges, with Latin and French editions in 1588, followed by English and German versions during 1589. Dedicated to Robert Devereux, 2
nd
Earl of Essex, Bigges’
Summarie and True Discourse
was intended to maintain morale at a critical time while promoting the cause of the war party, by demonstrating ‘what great victories a fewe English men have made upon great numbers of the Spaniardes, even at home in their owne countreyes’.
¹⁵

Drake’s celebrated raid on Cadiz during 1587 appeared to provide strong support for a forward campaign at sea, despite the Queen’s caution and misgivings. The raid, an amphibious expedition of royal and privately owned vessels, was meant as a pre-emptive strike against the Armada which was assembling in Spanish and Portuguese ports for the invasion of England. As a reprisal venture, partly promoted by private adventurers, it was also intended to provide its backers with a profit. While there was no apparent incompatibility between these strategic and financial goals, the underlying uncertainty over their priority was a source of tension which may have been reflected in divided leadership and rivalry between Drake and the Queen’s leading officer, Vice Admiral William Borough, which flared into open hostility during the voyage.

Drake left Plymouth in April 1587 at the head of a fleet of twenty-three vessels. Of these, six were owned by the Queen and eight belonged to London merchants, including four from the Levant Company. Drake contributed three of his own vessels, while the Lord Admiral furnished another. Despite the Queen’s late and abortive attempt to stop it sailing, the fleet departed on a wave of high expectation. The company, Drake informed Walsingham, was united as ‘one body to stand for our gracious Queen and country against Antichrist and its members’.
¹⁶

An account by Robert Long, a volunteer with the expedition, provides a fascinating narrative of the voyage, which employs classical and biblical allusions to portray Drake as the champion of England against the enemies of the gospel. Such propaganda seems to represent Drake’s increasingly strident fundamental Protestantism, though it also concealed the innate flexibility and potentially hazardous nature of the enterprise. On leaving England the expedition sailed for the coasts of Spain and Portugal, where Drake acquired valuable information from two Dutch ships about the shipping and provisions which were being assembled in Cadiz. Three days later the English sailed into Cadiz harbour, sinking and burning about thirty vessels. Although the expedition encountered resistance, unexpectedly Spanish naval forces inflicted little damage on the fleet. Despite the dangerous and unfavourable location, the galleys of Spain were ineffective against a force of sailing vessels. Thereafter Drake sailed to Cape St Vincent, where he put ashore a company of 800 men who captured and set fire to local fortifications. Faced with little opposition at sea, the fleet cruised along the coast, anchoring unchallenged in sight of Lisbon, while taking prizes and laying waste to the coastal fisheries.
¹⁷

The raid on Cadiz was a tactical success, but it failed to provide Drake with sufficient plunder to make the voyage profitable. Consequently, after sending sick members of the expedition home, he sailed for the Azores in search of richer prey. Within twenty or thirty leagues of the islands he captured a Portuguese carrack, the
San
Felipe
, using tactics widely employed by pirates and corsairs. It was a profitable catch. The ship was laden with cloth, silks and spices, subsequently valued at £100,000; a casket of rich jewels was retained by Drake for the Queen. He also freed 400 Africans aboard the carrack, who were apparently intended as slaves in Portugal and Spain, providing them with a vessel ‘to goe whether they lyst’.
¹⁸
The capture of the
San
Felipe
deeply alarmed the Portuguese and Spanish. The latter were reportedly in despair at the threat to the Indies fleet. For Drake, however, the expedition had fulfilled its aims, and by the end of June 1587 he was back in Plymouth.

The expedition was a provocative challenge to Philip II. It exposed serious weaknesses in Spanish sea defences in home waters, and revealed the vulnerability of Portuguese shipping returning from the East Indies. Among the Spanish, the shock and disbelief fed suspicions that Drake worked with a familiar, while English reports claimed that the action at Cadiz hastened the death of the Spanish High Admiral, the marques of Santa Cruz, the intended leader of the armada. At the same time the venture served to affirm the striking effectiveness of the English sea war, demonstrating the profitable and tactical benefits of rapid mobilization and action. For Drake in particular, it underlined the case for aggressive action against Spain, and in a way that defined the defence of the realm with the godly cause. During April he wrote several letters to supporters and friends in England about the raid on Cadiz and other recent events. One, addressed to Walsingham, contained news of the fleet that the King of Spain was assembling, ending with an urgent appeal to ‘prepare in England strongly, and most by sea. Stop him now, and stop him ever’.
¹⁹
Another was addressed to John Foxe, the preacher and martyrologist, and appealed to the clergyman for his remembrance and spiritual support, so ‘that we may have continual peace in Israel’.

While the raid on Cadiz delayed and disrupted preparations for the Armada, possibly with critical consequences for its leadership, it did not prevent its departure in 1588. After the raid, moreover, Drake was less concerned with inflicting further damage on Spain than with ensuring that the voyage made a profit. His angry dispute with Borough, culminating in dangerous accusations of mutiny and desertion, may have grown out of the latter’s cautious approach to the attack on Cadiz, but it seems to have originated in the jarring tension between commanders of different maritime traditions and service, with differing perceptions of the sea war and naval command. In the short term the implications of this tension were papered over by the need to prepare for the Armada, but they became increasingly difficult to reconcile as the war proceeded.
²⁰

In these circumstances the departure of the Armada was testimony to the resources and resilience of the Spanish monarchy, as well as to the religious mission of Philip II, for whom the enterprise of England represented a crusade as much as a means of protecting the integrity of Iberian territory and trade. In place of the original commander, Santa Cruz’s unwilling successor, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, was saddled with a difficult, possibly unworkable, plan for the Armada to convey an invading force of veteran Spanish troops from the Netherlands across the Channel. Regardless of English maritime defences, the success of the expedition depended on precision, timing, logistical support and a knowledge of north-western European waters that tested to the limit Philip’s grand strategy against a resourceful opponent.
²¹

While the English had yet to develop a clear strategic shape or direction for the war at sea, as a counter to the threatened Armada leading members of the war party urged the regime to adopt offensive action against Spain. Concerned at the apparent hesitation of the Queen, and aware of the mounting charge of the navy, in February 1588 Hawkins presented Walsingham with a choice between ‘a dishonourable and uncertain peace … or … a settled war as may bring forth and command a quiet peace’.
²²
To achieve the latter he argued in favour of maintaining a naval presence on the coast of Spain to seize local shipping and to lie in wait for the returning Indies fleet. A force of six of the Queen’s ships was continuously to patrol the coast, based on a regular period of service lasting four months. It was to be supported by a fleet of six smaller vessels which would cruise between Spain and the Azores. Although Hawkins estimated the monthly cost, in wages and victuals, at £2,700, he claimed that it would be more than covered by the capture of enemy prizes. It was an imaginative and appealing argument for a naval blockade of the enemy, to create the conditions for a peace ‘with honour, safety and profit’, though it was not without risk and had little chance of being implemented, at least in the short term.

Hawkins’ radical plan for re-shaping the conflict at sea was accompanied by a call for a declaration of open war, which was an implicit condemnation of the Queen’s diplomatic determination to maintain the confusing fiction that England was engaged in a campaign of legitimate reprisals against Spain. To some extent it was supported by Drake, who claimed that ‘the continual going to the seas of the smaller sort of … shipping daily upon letters of reprisal … can do little good’.
²³
Not only was there a lack of suitable prizes along the coasts of Spain, as most shipping sailed in convoy with provisions for the Armada, but also English raiders faced the risk of capture by fleets of Flemish men-of-war from Dunkirk. As the threat of the Armada loomed, Drake appealed to the council, at the end of March, to be allowed to sail for Spain with a fleet of fifty vessels. He repeated the appeal to the Queen several times during the following month, hoping to seize the ‘advantage of time and place’ by fighting the enemy in his own waters.
²⁴

At this very time, however, the regime was struggling to assemble shipping to assist in the defence of the realm. Appeals from the council to local officials in the ports for a levy of vessels, particularly belonging to merchants and shipowners who had benefited from reprisals against Spain, met with a mixed response. During April the council received reports, ranging from Hull to Exeter, about an inability to provide ships for service. The mayor and aldermen of Poole begged to be discharged from the responsibility of providing one ship and a pinnace for service. In their defence, they claimed that as local merchants were not involved in reprisal venturing, they had gained nothing from the war at sea. Moreover the town was suffering from a lack of trade, losses at sea and robberies by pirates who haunted Studland Bay. Although officials in the neighbouring port of Lyme Regis sent a pinnace of 40 tons to Plymouth, they insisted that no one of the town had received ‘any benefit by reprisals, except one stranger very lately come in amongst us’.
²⁵
The mayor and aldermen of Southampton likewise drew attention to their poverty, exacerbated by losses from reprisals of at least £4,000, and warned of murmuring and unrest among local inhabitants at the anticipated charge of providing two ships and a pinnace. In Ipswich, indeed, there was open resistance from one local gentleman to the attempts of the bailiffs to collect a rate for the levy of three vessels. Local recalcitrance tended to collapse in the face of angry reprimands from the council; inadvertently, however, it may have reinforced the Queen’s determination to prevent the costs of the campaign from spiralling out of control.

Against a Spanish fleet of 130 vessels, which was manned with 22,000 sailors and soldiers, the English mobilized a force of about 180 ships. The English fleet was a hybrid complement of naval and maritime resources: thirty-four of the Queen’s vessels were reinforced by a large body of private shipping, including thirty that were roughly equal, in terms of tonnage and armament, to the former. The English fleet was commanded by Howard, with Drake serving as his Vice Admiral, supported by a host of sea captains of varied experience. This seaborne militia collectively represented a tradition of maritime and naval enterprise that favoured flexibility and initiative against an inflexible and less adaptable fleet and strategy. Although there may have been a degree of crude parity between the rival forces, the campaign of 1588 exposed differences in the organization, armament and employment of seaborne forces that aided the English, despite early warning signs of logistical and financial problems affecting the supply of recruits and gunpowder.
²⁶

Lyme Bay, Dorset. During the 1560s and 1570s pirate groups were able to operate along exposed and vulnerable coastlines with little fear of arrest. The region was an important recruiting ground for pirate ships, particularly during the 1560s and 1570s when growing numbers of mariners were seeking employment. Small ports, such as Lyme Regis, continued to be involved in organized plunder during the 1580s. The
Julian
of Lyme Regis, for example, seized two prizes during 1589 which were valued at £30,000. (Author’s collection)