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 –
ACTION THIS DAY
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
Early 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.
The polished courtly phrases of the captain-general’s formal dispatch gave no hint of the impassioned debate that had taken place during the council of war. Some commanders – Recalde, Alonso de Leyva and Oquendo among them – had urged the captain-general to immediately attack or blockade Plymouth by deploying fireships, particularly if English ships were caught inside the harbour.7
Medina Sidonia, ever mindful of his royal master’s instructions to protect Parma’s amphibious landing, was still fretting about the lack of a safe haven for the Armada, particularly after the latest bout of storm damage to his fleet. But, like Borough before Drake’s attack on Cadiz the previous year, the captain-general judged his admirals’ plan to be too perilous. The entrance to Plymouth harbour was believed to be narrow and hazardous, only permitting entry by three ships sailing abreast. Moreover he feared the firepower of the defending shore batteries and was anxious to avoid further damage or loss of his ships before achieving his primary objective of safely escorting the Flanders army across the Dover Straits. His view was supported by Pedro de Valdés, commander of the Andalusian squadron.
Therefore, with the wind in the south-west, orders were issued to press on up the English Channel in a tight half-crescent formation, with Bertendona’s Levantine ships in the vanguard, followed by the main force under Medina Sidonia, with the Guipúzcoan and Andalusian squadrons stationed on either wing. The slower transport hulks were protected in the centre of this lunula and the Biscayan ships formed a rearguard. A number of ships were also designated to form a socorro, a tactical battle group designed to be deployed to reinforce the formation wherever danger loomed.
Howard already knew of the Armada’s arrival. Thomas Fleming, on board the barque Golden Hinde, was part of the screen of English ships positioned in the south-west approaches to provide early warning of the Spanish onslaught. Around three o’clock that Saturday afternoon, Fleming sailed into Plymouth with news of the enemy fleet off the Lizard.
His may have been the impudent and audacious English ship that had darted daringly between the warships in the Spanish vanguard before heading eastwards, defiantly pooping off one round from a cannon and ignoring the more powerful shots fired in reply by the Levanter Rata Santa María Encoronada. Worried by this incident, Medina Sidonia sent the English-speaking Ensign Juan Gil in his flagship’s oared tender to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of the English fleet, which he confidently expected to be 250 miles (402.34 km) away, concentrated in the Dover Straits, ready to prey upon Parma’s invasion barges. He also believed that the much-feared El Draque commanded only a small squadron off the Devon coast.
Legend has Howard and Drake enjoying a quiet game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe when the information they had been anxiously awaiting finally arrived via Captain Fleming.8 This immortal incident was first recorded more than forty years later and the naval hero’s calm, almost throwaway response – ‘We have time to finish the game and beat the Spaniards too’ – first appeared in print two centuries after the event.9
The story may be apocryphal, but there are facets of that afternoon’s events that suggest it has some veracity. News of the Armada had been spread by Cornwall’s beacon system and the warning pealing of church bells, calling the local militia to arms. The shore defences were alerted and such few batteries of guns as existed were manned and loaded. Faced with adverse winds and a flood tide running into Plymouth harbour, the English fleet were prevented from leaving their moorings until the tide began to ebb early that evening. Moreover, the enemy ships were too distant to take advantage of the flood to attack Plymouth, so the English mariners found themselves with a few precious hours in which to complete provisioning and arming their ships, or, with true English sang froid, to finish that game of bowls.
Howard and Drake spent the afternoon and evening gainfully by slowly and laboriously warping10 their ships out of harbour and collecting them in the shelter of Rame Head, ready for battle at first light. They now mustered a powerful force: with the arrival of reinforcements, the English fleet numbered more than one hundred vessels.
Just after midnight, Ensign Gil returned to the Armada with a captured Falmouth fishing smack and its crew of four. Under interrogation, the Cornish prisoners disclosed the unwelcome news that not only had Howard and Drake joined forces, but their ships had departe
d Plymouth and were readying for action. Diego Flores Valdés, the fleet’s naval adviser, cautioned Medina Sidonia that, given the Armada’s current speed and course, he was liable to run on ahead of the enemy and risked being attacked from behind, as well as surrendering the tactical advantage of the weather gauge.11 Accordingly, the Spanish ships spent the remainder of the night anchored in the lee of the 400-foot (120 metre) headland of Dodman Point, notched with its Iron Age earthen ramparts, near Mevagissey in Cornwall. It was to be a busy night for Captain Uceda, the officer charged with rowing out to each ship in the fleet to deliver detailed orders for battle on the morrow.
Dawn broke on Sunday 31 July with the sea shrouded in mist, soon dispersed by a west-north-westerly wind that freshened, bringing thick drizzly rain. Medina Sidonia was astounded, if not mortified, to see at least eighty-five English ships windward of him, five miles (8 km) west of the Eddystone Rock, his enemy having gained the weather gauge. More worrying still, a fifteen-strong enemy squadron was tacking close inshore between the Armada and the Cornish fishing village of Looe, with the clear intention of luring some Spaniards out of line, that they might easily be picked off. The captain-general fired a signal gun, ordering his fleet to take up battle stations, then he hoisted the royal standard to his maintop as a signal to engage the enemy.
The Spanish fleet smoothly fell into the lunula fighting formation, each vessel hoisting the personal colours of its captain or squadron commander to strident trumpet calls and the beating of drums. Guns were run out and nets stretched across the upper decks to prevent the enemy scrambling aboard. Leyva’s squadron formed the vanguard or northerly horn of the crescent and Recalde’s Biscayans the southerly, with Medina Sidonia’s galleons stationed in the centre to guard the transport ships. From horn to horn, the width of the Armada lunula probably stretched about six miles (9.6 km).
With its garish multicoloured sails, ensigns and streamers, the lunula presented a daunting, if not deadly sight. To many, the slow-moving crescent resembled a dense infantry formation, the forest of masts like a mass of soldiers’ pikes. The speed and precision of the manoeuvre and the sheer magnitude of the Armada in full battle array amazed and overawed all those on the decks of the closing English ships. Henry White, captain of the 200-ton armed merchantman Barque Talbot, commented: ‘The majesty of the enemy’s fleet, the good order they held and the private consideration of our own wants did cause, in my opinion, our first onset to be more coldly done than became the value of our nation and the credit of the English navy.’ Another seaman described his astonishment more candidly: ‘We never thought that they could ever have found, gathered and joined so great a force of puissant ships together and so well appointed them with their cannon, culverin and other great pieces of ordnance.’12 An Italian eye-witness called Bentivollo was more graphic: ‘You could hardly see the sea . . . The masts and rigging, the towering sterns and prows which in height and number were so great that they dominated the whole naval concourse [and] caused horror, mixed with wonder.’13
In the twenty-first century, such diplomatic niceties as a formal declaration of war before hostilities commence appear to have fallen out of fashion.14 At best, an enemy country might expect an ultimatum or a menacing United Nations’ resolution before the shooting starts or the bombs begin to fall. Even the word ‘war’ is now shunned, hidden behind such bland euphemisms as ‘conflict’ – doubtless because somewhere down the line, lawyers and expensive litigation may become involved.
This is a far cry from the sixteenth century when war was more gentlemanly – but just as bloody. Howard felt compelled to observe the chivalrous etiquette then expected on such famous occasions as the meeting of two enemy fleets at sea, each one prepared to give battle. He therefore dispatched his own 80-ton barque Disdain to issue a formal challenge or ‘defiance’, as it was called, to the Spaniards. The little ship bravely sailed to within hailing distance of the tightly packed Spanish ships in the bulging centre of the lunula and fired a single, symbolic shot at de Leyva’s Rata Santa María Encoronada, before beating a hasty retreat back to the safety of the English fleet.
This civility properly fulfilled, Howard gave the order to attack at around 9 a.m. Wary of the potentially deadly trap between the crab-like pincher claws of the flanking horns of the Armada, his preferred tactic was to harry the rear of the enemy centre while Drake’s and John Hawkins’ squadrons launched assaults on the more vulnerable tips of the crescent. As a precursor, Howard, in Ark Royal, led an attack on the Spanish southerly wing with the aim of engaging Medina Sidonia’s flagship – in line with the gentlemanly code that dictated commanders should always fight someone of equal rank.
His ships swept across the Armada’s rear, initially trading shots with Leyva’s vanguard, and Howard opened fire on the Rata Santa María Encoronada at a range of four hundred yards (437 metres) in the mistaken belief that she was San Martin, the Armada flagship. After a flurry of cannonades, he then engaged Recalde’s rearguard on the northern side of the crescent, in support of the attack by Drake’s forty-strong squadron.
Pedro de Calderón, the chief purser of the Armada, witnessed this artillery duel from the 650-ton transport ship San Salvador, vice-flagship of the hulks squadron. He described how Rata tried to close on Drake’s Revenge, ‘which . . . allowed herself to fall off towards [her] but they could not exchange cannon shots, because the enemy’s ship, fearing that the San Mateo would bring her to close quarters, left the Rata and bombarded the San Mateo’.15
Naval battles carry their own brand of particular terror, especially for the inexperienced sailor. The jarring, deafening crashes of repeated cannonades. The sickening, heart-stopping thumps of enemy roundshot smashing into the timber hull of your ship amid the heat, smoke and confusion. The terrible wounds caused by wooden splinters flying through the air like deadly arrows. The piercing screams of the wounded, their limbs torn off by iron or stone cannonballs. The all-pervasive stench of copiously spilt blood, spent gunpowder and naked fear. The disorientation of sudden and unexpected changes in course as ships manoeuvre to press home an attack or avoid a devastating enemy salvo. Dominating all was the horror of fire breaking out – perhaps triggering the explosion of a magazine that would blow your ship out of the water, raining down debris and body parts into the waves. All these sights, sounds and smells constantly assailed every one of the senses. For those on board, driven almost out of their wits by the madness and pandemonium around them, there was nowhere to run to. In a ship fighting a close-quarter battle, there were no hiding places.
No surprise then that the ferocity of Drake’s assault, which included the mighty Triumph and Victory, unnerved the Biscayan ships. Panic set in, causing some to break station and seek shelter within Medina Sidonia’s centre. These were probably the vessels Calderón had in mind when he described ships ‘basely’ taking to flight ‘until they were peremptorily ordered by the flagship to luff16 and face the enemy’.
At around 10.30, Recalde, in the Armada’s 1,050-ton vice-flagship San Juan de Portugal, shortened sail and turned his ship to bring all guns to bear on the attackers, receiving in turn concentrated fire from eight English ships that had closed to a range of 300 yards (274 metres). Recalde was clearly hoping to board one of his enemies, but the English, wary of his cannon and the well-armed soldiers on board, were content to stand off at a distance and pound his ship for about an hour.
Isolated from the remainder of the Spanish fleet and suffering continual damage, Recalde later estimated that in excess of three hundred rounds were fired at him ‘damaging key parts of the rigging, including the mainmast stay’. One shot smashed through his foremast ‘from one side to the other’.17 But he had not yet sustained many casualties: only ‘Captain Pedro de Ycaina and others were wounded’, according to Calderón. These were patently gentlemen; the purser did not bother to mention the fifteen crew members who had been killed.
Realising the danger in Recalde’s position, Medina Sidonia struck his flagship’s fore
sail, slackened her sheets and put his helm hard over to steer for the threatening mêlée on his northern flank. Some of the Andalusian and Guipúzcoan ships in the socorro followed his lead, together with the Biscayan El Gran Grin and the four Neapolitan galleasses, San Lorenzo, Napolitana, Zúñiga and Girona. San Martin came under immediate attack by two of the English galleons.
The action continued furiously for another ninety minutes until shortly before one o’clock, when the English broke away, possibly because they were running low on ammunition and powder. Despite Medina Sidonia lowering his topsails as an invitation to continue the battle, the first day’s action was now over. The former spy Nicholas Ousley, now aboard Revenge, acknowledged that the Spanish ‘keep such excellent good order in their fight [and] if God do not miraculously work, we shall have to employ ourselves for some days’.18 Medina Sidonia was surprised at the English tactics and the agility of their ships, noting in his diary how they fired cannon salvoes ‘without attempting to grapple’.19
The Armada’s threat to Plymouth may have been neutralised, but Howard and Drake nonetheless must have been left anxious. They had not been successful in penetrating and disrupting the Armada’s defensive crescent, and their long-range bombardment had failed to inflict any real damage on their enemy. Worryingly, expenditure of cannon shot and gunpowder was greater than anticipated. (Captain Vanegas, the Spanish flagship’s gunnery officer, estimated that the English had fired 2,000 rounds against just 750 from his own side.)20 On a positive note, however, the English vessels had proved faster, more nimble and manoeuvrable than the lumbering Spanish warships, and they had frustrated every enemy attempt to board them.
The Spanish Armada Page 17
