After midday some of the narrow shady streets would be impassable for sleeping men, and others diced in groups or gambled cross-legged over greasy cards. At nights there were noisy scenes and much crime and vice. Militia patrolled the main streets at certain hours, but their times were known and they were easily avoided. Priests were everywhere and kept the churches open for constant masses.
Over all and above everything was the white dust. It covered the world with a fine film; one’s hands were coarse with it. one’s teeth gritted, one’s hair was powdered. It lay on food and wine and book and seat and bed.
During the month I came to know by sight many of the Spanish admirals and captains who were to command the fleet. Don Diego Brochero, who was to be Vice-Admiral of the expedition, was a fiery and vivid man; Bertendona, who had borne the brunt of the great fight with Revenge when Sir Richard Grenville died; Oliste, Urquiola and Villaviciosa were all men of great sea-going experience, none of them amateurs elevated to command because of their birth. The Spanish, as Ralegh often pointed out, did not make the same mistake twice.
The Adelantado himself was a tall and austere man of fifty or so with a concern for detail, and one could imagine him having little patience with inefficiency; but it was Brochero who had the passion and the fire. Whenever he came through the Commissariat it was as if a vitalising wind had blown. He it was who was in charge of discipline, and every day a new body would dangle from the gallows on the quay. A soldier had deserted, a sailor had been guilty of indiscipline, a dockyard worker had been caught stealing. Yet no punishment seemed to stop the abuses.
I thought often of writing to my father, but could not find the words. I could not beg him to change his mind without betraying my own. I could not write that I had thrown in my lot with Spain and was glad he had done the same. I could not write without mentioning these terrible decisions, for such a letter would have been without meaning and content. Nor could I bring myself to write to Sue: the main issue was impossible to speak of yet too great to ignore.
Gradually in settling down one came to appreciate currents of opinion which made themselves felt in the town. The foreign captains were in no hurry to sail. Memories still existed of the battle in the Channel nine years ago: and there were fresher memories of the storm which had defeated them last autumn; they had not so much to gain from a Spanish victory; their own countries lived in uneasy alliance with, or subjugation to, Spain. They would gladly see the Catholic faith triumphant but would have preferred others to play the leading role.
Then there were the fanatics like de Soto who lived only for the day, who smarted everlastingly under the defeat of ’88, and the sacking of Cadiz last year, and knew that their destiny and their only fulfilment was to launch another Armada at England’s throat. Such men predominated in the leadership. But His Excellency Don Martin de Padilla, Conte de Gadea, supreme Adelantado of Castille, steered a middle course. A sober general with the weight of the whole campaign on his shoulders, he was not to be hurried. Not for him the obloquy which was heaped on the name of Medina Sidonia. He did not underestimate England or the hazards ahead. So every preparation must be made down to the last detail. Then and only then, when the time came, whether it be August or even September, he would issue the orders and the great Armada would sail.
In that first month it built gradually. Three more of the ‘Apostle’ galleons arrived: San Bartolomeo, and the smaller San Marcos and San Lucar; Almirante from Ivella, the biggest of all; Misericordia, the flagship of Portugal; ten German and Flemish urcas; and a dozen other galleons of various sizes. By now the fleet was more powerful than the English one which had taken Cadiz; and in the next week another 3.000 infantry arrived, with some 500 cavalry and field artillery, and mules and oxen and a great quantity of ammunition and stores. Here I perceived the Adelantado to be in a dilemma. Such great forces as he now possessed were self-consuming. If he waited for even greater forces, what he had would likely eat itself away.
That week—it was the last in July and the summer at its greatest heat—several important councils were held and there was dissension at them. De Soto came away from the last of them in a towering rage. That day an English fleet was sighted off Coruña.
If any testimony had been needed to the impression made by last year’s capture of Cadiz, it was manifested now in the consternation which ruled in El Ferrol. Orders and counter-orders flew about, ships were manned, batteries mounted, regiments assembled. A screen of flyboats was thrown out to report on the imminence of attack. On the second morning from a high rock above the biscuit manufactory I could count a dozen sail. I stood in the hot morning sun talking quietly to Enrico Caldes and silently praying to my Protestant God.
He did not hear. The flyboats reported twenty ships: five royal galleons, including Due Repulse and Hope, thirteen other big vessels and two flyboats. Due Repulse had been Essex’s flagship at Cadiz but the Spanish said she was not flying his pennant. The fleet was sailing provocatively backwards and forwards between El Ferrol and the Sisargas Islands, west of Coruña, as if challenging the Spanish to come out. Already half a dozen small vessels had been captured as they came unsuspectingly round Cape San Adrien.
The Adelantado had received orders from the King that week to prepare his Armada for immediate sailing; to this he had replied that his fleet was as yet far from complete—stores, further military reinforcements, more ships, had all been promised; in particular the thirty-two ships of the Seville squadron under Admiral Don Marcos de Arumburu, another veteran of the battle with Grenville, with the division of the Andalusian guard aboard; and Prince Andrea Doria was making his way round from Italy with a fleet of galleys and a strong force of seasoned Italian soldiery; it would be madness to move without all these.
So the Adelantado had argued. Now with the appearance of an English fleet at his very door he might change his mind. Would he be right to do so? Brochero urged an immediate attack, as did most of the captains. But Bertendona was against it, and so in the end was Don Martin. His view was that the English fleet was not big enough. To sail out of harbour at this stage, losing perhaps ten ships in destroying or disabling twenty, giving a fair picture of one’s strength and wasting valuable stores and ammunition, would be playing the English game …
So for nearly a week we waited in great tension. Once or twice in every day the look-outs reported the English fleet in sight off Betanzos Bay. Then the alarm would abate as they bore away again. On the sixth day they did not appear. They had left us in peace. EI Ferrol began to return to its normal routine of unorganised preparation.
In the first week of August Captain de Soto left for Madrid. On the same date I was transferred to the galleon San Bartolomeo, which I was rowed out to daily. There fifty Irish were working on alterations and repairs. None of them spoke Spanish; they had come over in a shallop from Cork as volunteers for Spain, and I was used as a go-between translating the overseer’s orders. In the same week Captain Pedro de Zubiaur, perhaps the greatest living expert on galley warfare, was dispatched for Blavet with seven galleys, two supply ships and 2,000 infantry, where they could wait for the coming of the Armada. It helped in a small way to ease the supply problems of El Ferrol. That week a Spanish spy, an Englishman called Pennell, arrived in Coruña aboard a Danish ship and came to report to the Naval Council in El Ferrol. He spoke little Spanish, and I was told to be present to interpret. There were four other men at this interview: Don Martin himself, Father Sicilia his confessor, Admiral Brochero and General de Guavara.
Pennell had been in Plymouth a week ago, and knew all that had been happening there. The English fleet which had cruised off Betanzos Bay for five days had been commanded by Lord Thomas Howard, and had been part of a much larger expedition—as great as the one of last year—which had been scattered by a terrible storm off Ushant. Sir Walter Ralegh had turned back to Plymouth with his squadron badly damaged. The Earl of Essex, with his flagship Mere Honour almost sinking under him, had put in to Falmouth with some thirty or f
orty other of his fleet in like trouble. (Merciful God, that gave me a twinge!) The Dutch admiral had also given up. Only Howard’s squadron, missing the greatest intensity of the storm, had ridden it out and made for the arranged rendezvous. There he had stayed, as we had seen, sailing up and down waiting for the others and daring the Spanish fleet to emerge. Now he was back in Plymouth again, refitting with the rest.
Did they intend another expedition this year? Assuredly, Pennell replied, if the Queen continued her permission. Their intention when they came? It was to attack El Ferrol, possibly with fire ships, and then go on to the Azores to await and capture the Treasure Fleet. One result of the Spanish non-emergence to fight, Pennell said, had been to give the impression that they were still far from ready to sail and indeed would not come out this summer.
Pennell was a well-spoken man who had been a seaman all his life and at some time must have commanded a craft. But his hands trembled now, and one could watch how only the drink steadied him. The questions came near home and I dreaded to hear the name Killigrew mentioned. Once or twice I was tempted to give some wrong emphasis to a reply, for Pennell’s, information had a ring of truth about it. but I decided it was not a justifiable risk. This was as well, for the next time I saw Father Sicilia he was talking a passable English to the Irish priest who had come over with the volunteers …
De Soto came back from Madrid well pleased with his visit. It became known soon after his return that the Armada would not sail for at least two weeks more. It was puzzling that this delay should satisfy him.
Pennell was lodged in the house where I slept, which was distasteful to me, for the presence of a genuine traitor made me more ashamed of my own position. He would have made a friend of me, but I could not stand the sight of his thin pitted face, the bloodshot blue eyes, the unsteady hands. I knew that the Spaniards, for all they had to make use of such creatures, despised them. Had he been placed here to spy upon me?
The weather had been less settled for some time, and now it set in blustery and wet. Ships putting in from Biscay reported storm conditions and unseasonable cold for early August.
One day when being rowed out to San Bartolomeo we passed a pinnace which was being re-painted. Some alterations were taking place aboard and her name Cabagua painted out. As we re-passed on the way home the name Mark of Gloucester was being painted in. I asked one of the Spanish sailors, who shrugged and said: “She was a prize, captured in the spring. She is English built, Señor.”
“But why is she being given her English name again?”
“The ways of man are inscrutable, Señor.”
“That is an English style of rigging she is being fitted with, surely.”
“Yes, surely, Señor.”
The harbour and docks of El Ferrol had now become a sea of masts. There were 150 large ships besides the many small ones. The bad weather brought in coasters and fishing vessels for shelter, and there were collisions and damage in the roads. A powder vessel sank at her moorings and a Portuguese galleon went ashore on the shoals above the town. Fever had broken out both in the ships and ashore. I avoided it, but Enrico Caldes was gravely ill, and some hundred men died before the. middle of August. Many men still continued to desert, and the severest measures Admiral Brochero could apply did not prevent them. I thought of Ralegh’s trouble pressing crews in the Thames. Many of the conferences to which the foreign captains were invited—which were not conferences dealing with grand strategy but with ordinary details of supply—broke up in disagreement and frustration.
The Spanish had one advantage over the English: a supreme commander who had absolute authority; but from what I saw of events it became clear that Brochero, always pressing his forward policy, was at loggerheads with His Excellency Don Martin and in this he was abetted by de Soto, Antonio de Urquiola, and several of the other influential captains.
A few days after first seeing the Mark of Gloucester I saw Pennell aboard her, and that night, swallowing my dislike, I sat down with him over a mug of burnt wine and encouraged him to talk.
“What?” he said. “ Mark of Gloucester? Yes, well, I have been useful to them, my friend. You understand? I have brought them the latest news, so in reward they’re giving me back a little ship of my own. Of course it’s a small and ill-found craft compared to what I commanded in my prime, but I shall be able to eke out a living carrying between one port and another.”
“They will release you?” I said.
“Release me? I was never in captivity, my friend. They are giving me this ship for myself in payment of services rendered.”
“With what crew?”
“Crew? Oh, that offers no problem, my friend. I need ten, that’s all. I have already an Irish master’s mate, two Flemish seamen, a Dane and a Frenchman.”
“And the Spanish are willing that these men should go?”
“Why not? A dozen more or less, what is that?”
While he drank I watched him. He was a drunkard, but drunkards like madmen are astute enough outside the area of their particular weakness. What if I said to him, Take me? Would he betray me to the Spanish?
The following day I was called off San Bartolomeo to help again in the Commissariat and Captain de Soto was there.
“So Killigrew, you have escaped the fever. Look at this establishment: decimated! I want you to copy out this order for requisitions—three times. They must be ready within the hour.
When they are done come aboard San Pablo, I have work for you there.”
That night I supped with junior officers aboard the galleon and listened to their lively talk. They were a handsome friendly group. For them the present delay was outrageous. They wanted only to sail and challenge the enemy in his home waters. To them, proud and brave as they were, it was humiliating and frustrating to wait, as one put it, until the English were “ knocking on their front gate”.
“It is not quite that,” said an older lieutenant. “Wars are not won by gestures, they are won by preparation, by strategy, and only at the last by fighting.”
“Oh, hark at Rodrigo!” another said. “This is not to be a joust such as you went on nine years ago! We no longer have wax in our ears. We’ll fight the English fleets and defeat them before ever we get sight of their coasts. It’s said they will sail this week.”
“Even so I doubt we shall meet them.”
They pressed him then, but he glanced in my direction, so I got up.
“You can speak more freely if I leave?”
“No, no. You are with us, I know that. I can only say that I have heard that efforts are to be made to lure the English fleet away from our shores so that we may sail to England without battle first. If it can be done I’ll tell you it will be worth doing. We should not defeat them in straight battle without grievous loss on both sides, and if it can be avoided I have no fancy to continue into northern waters with our sails in ribbons and our bows holed at the water-line. However great the victory might be, the weather could be the final victor. It was last time.”
There was silence then. My mind flew over the information and found it instantly true: it explained De Soto’s willingness to wait.
Next day I again worked on board San Pablo to which De Soto had temporarily transferred. At length I could be in ignorance no longer.
“Sir, I see efforts are being made to decoy the English fleet when it enters these waters. Can I not help in some manner? I know my countrymen and their ways.”
De Soto finished reading the letter his scrivener had written and took up the wax to seal it.
“Who told you anything of this? Captain Pennell in his cups?”
“No. But Mark of Gloucester is not being re-named for nothing.”
De Soto pressed the wax down with the naval seal. “So you think I should explain it to you?”
“I hoped I could help.”
“You cannot help. There will perhaps be other duties for you; who knows? I cannot tell you, for I am not told.”
The scrivener returned then
but went out again almost at once.
“But since you have observed this piece of strategy, no greater harm will come of your knowing the rest. As the weather moderates we shall throw out a screen of small vessels to await the arrival of the English. They will be foreign vessels, manned by English, Irish, Flemish, and in due course some of them will be captured. They will all report that the Adelantado has sailed with his fleet to the Azores to protect the new treasure fiota coming from the Indies. It is hoped and believed that your Admirals will ‘follow’ him.”
Again we were interrupted but it was impossible to keep what he had said out of my mind.
“But, Señor, if you succeed in this—this plan, who is to say the English will not take the opportunity of attacking Cadiz or Lisbon instead?”
“Two things, Killigrew. One, naval success and greed of gain have always been uppermost in the minds of your English. admirals. Two, their evacuation of Cadiz after they had captured it last year proves that the conquest of Spain territorially is quite beyond their resources—or their desires … So we believe they will sail for the Azores and leave England open for our invasion.”
The Grove of Eagles Page 50
