by Angela Hunt
All in all, the Ark Royal was a ship built for conquerors, with decks aplenty for captains and admirals to supervise the progress of a battle at sea. A twinge of bitter regret struck White as he thought of Raleigh’s dedication to the splendid vessel, and he resolutely turned his face out to sea so that none aboard the ship might guess at his thoughts. Raleigh could have devoted the funds invested in this ship to rescue my daughter, he thought, cynicism battering his brain. But no, he chose instead to buy greater favor with the Queen.
The low and elegant galleon moved confidently across the surface of the waters. From his position on the poop deck, Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, chief in command against the approaching Spanish Armada, shouted orders to his scurrying crew. Howard had agreed to allow White on board as a favor to Raleigh, and probably had no idea that White waited for the outcome of the sea battle for more than patriotic reasons. If the British faced defeat, White knew his chances for returning to Roanoke would evaporate like smoke from a ship’s cannon. But if the English fleet decimated the Spanish Armada, the seas would once again be safe for exploration.
“God in Heaven,” White prayed quietly, squinting into the July sun as Portsmouth slipped away beside him, “the holy scriptures say you have spread out the heavens and tread upon the waves of the deep. You divide the ocean with your power, you have dominion from sea to sea. Trusting in your power, I trust that you will return me to Roanoke. May victory be ours in this battle, and may your grace provide me with a safe passage to my friends and loved ones.”
After two years of preparation to outfit the greatest armada the world had ever seen, Philip II of Spain awarded command to the massive fleet to the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, Alonzo Perez de Guzmán. Philip’s ambition extended to more than victory at sea. Inspired by the exhortations of his priests, he determined to conquer the rebellious island of England and silence forever the voice of heretical Protestantism.
Philip’s plan, carefully orchestrated over the past months and finally ready for implementation, involved a two-pronged attack. The Armada would break the lines of English resistance at sea, and once the English navy could no longer protect the country’s vulnerable shores, an army of thirty thousand Spanish soldiers waiting with the Duke of Parma in the Netherlands would cross the channel and invade the shores of England.
On the nineteenth day of July 1588, Philip cracked his knuckles in nervous anticipation as Medina-Sidonia bowed before him. He quickly pressed his hand upon the admiral’s head to impart a royal blessing. Beside him, the King’s counselor murmured a Latin prayer, and Medina-Sidonia lifted his head and smiled in confident pleasure.
“We have been thwarted before, my King,” he said, referring to the disastrous attempt to launch the attack three months earlier. The fleet had been scattered by a gale and required nearly a month to refit and regroup in Coruña. “But now, Sire, we are ready.”
Philip lifted his hand in a silent, regal salute, and Medina-Sidonia swirled away to board his ship. When the room had cleared of all but his counselors, Philip rose from his throne and went to the window. The harbor teemed with life; one hundred and thirty-one great and small warships awaited their commands, and upon their decks eight thousand sailors and nineteen thousand soldiers had armed themselves for battle. It was the most impressive fleet ever assembled in history; and his Armada would surely be invincible.
Philip’s counselor pointed with a long finger to the admiral’s ship. The sails of Medina-Sidonia’s galleon snapped and filled first, then the harbor bloomed with canvas. Philip glanced toward his Father Confessor for a sign of approval, but the priest crossed himself in prayer and made no promises.
The booming of cannon from a lookout ship to the south brought the activity aboard the Ark Royal to a momentary halt. “So it begins, then,” John White muttered, scanning the southwestern horizon. Lord Charles Howard glanced up toward the seaman in the crow’s nest. “Ahoy, Captain!” the seaman cried out, pointing southward. “Hither come fifty, mayhap sixty ships. I can’t count them, sir!”
Howard snapped his attention to the officers standing near him. “Time to show the poxy Spaniards what we Englishmen are made of,” he said, nodding stiffly. “Every man to his station and ease up the main sheets. We will not let them one league nearer to England than they are right now!”
White felt his mouth go dry as his heart began to pound. Many of Elizabeth’s courtiers had brashly predicted that Philip would never actually dare to attack. Yet Spanish galleons had claimed the horizon, and the armored fleet was sailing inexorably up the English Channel toward them.
God in heaven, what would this day bring?
Amid the explosions of gunpowder and the furious splash of cannon fire, the English fleet got to windward of Medina-Sidonia’s Armada. With the wind full in their sails, the English pressed their smaller, more agile ships away from the Spanish, while their superior guns battered the Armada mercilessly. The English cheered every time a Spanish ship was struck, but on the flotilla came, a seemingly impenetrable cluster of towered ships that moved relentlessly up the Channel.
In a tight formation, the Armada moved as a gigantic shark through the water, and only the ships on the perimeter were exposed to direct contact with English guns. In three major engagements the English were unable to do major damage, but then the Ark Royal and her fellows drove the Spanish fleet into the Calias roadstead where the Spanish ships anchored. The roadstead was not as enclosed and protected as a harbor, but Howard did not dare attack the Spanish while they lay at anchor off the coast of France. He determined to wait, a clever, sly mouse awaiting his confrontation with an arrogant, clumsy cat.
On the evening of July twenty-eighth, John White stood at the deck of the Ark Royal as her sailors worked in silent darkness. Eight small shallops, collected from the Royal and several other English vessels, were tied together in a single line and filled with rotting, oil-soaked canvas. At Howard’s command, the shallops were towed by a crew of seamen to the mouth of the Calias roadstead, then ignited.
The pregnant silence of the night erupted into cheers as the tide propelled the fire ships toward the sleeping Spanish fleet. White heard the long, slow chuckle of Lord Charles from the deck above as the burning shallops drifted to the immobile Armada and pandemonium ensued. Unclothed men, rousted from sleep, frantically climbed the tall ships’ rigging, and Spanish sails jerked upward from yardarms atop the masts as cables were cut and anchors abandoned.
One burning boat nudged a sizeable warship, and a stream of sparks flew up into the night and ignited oil on the deck. Within seconds, huge tongues of flames leaped into the air and men scrambled to vault overboard in the fire-tinted darkness.
Aboard the Ark Royal, Lord Charles Howard stopped laughing and gave the order to make sail in pursuit of the frantic Spanish.
Had a violent storm not sprung Howard’s carefully set trap, the entire Armada might have been captured. But heavy winds and bucking waves allowed many of the enemy vessels to escape. The English pursued the Spanish warships into the early morning hours. As soon as dawn rendered it possible to positively identify targets, the boom of cannon resounded over the waters and a fierce gun battle ensued. By keeping his ships out of range of the floating Spanish arsenals and using his long-range guns effectively, Lord Charles managed to put five principal ships out of action. Aboard other English ships, Howard’s officers utilized the maneuverability of the low English galleons to outrun the hulking Spanish vessels that dared to pursue them. By sailing quickly and turning at the last moment, English captains ran two of the Spanish ships aground.
John White saw Lord Charles kiss his fingers in delight when a sudden change in the wind threatened to drive the Spanish fleet onto the Ruytingen Shoals, but the wind shifted again, and Medina-Sidonia escaped in a headlong flight to the North Sea. The Ark Royal and a dozen other ships followed the remnant of the disabled Armada as far as the Firth of Forth, then broke off their pursuit outside the Scottish bay.
Exultant in victory, Lord Charles
clapped White on the back and invited him to the captain’s cabin for a celebratory drink. White accepted, his own heart filled with gratitude to this clever captain. As they lifted their glasses of ale in a celebratory toast, the bosun burst into the tiny cabin, a list in his hand. “In ten days,” the officer said, barely suppressing a cocky grin, “our enemy has lost sixty-three ships.”
“And we?” Howard asked, turning to the bosun. “Tell the good governor how many ships we have lost.”
“None,” the officer replied.
While Lord Charles pompously propped his boots on the desk and lifted his mug to toast his victory, White breathed a silent prayer of thanks. If Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth had lost none of her galleons and won the naval battle of the century, there was no reason a fleet would not be soon available for renewed journeys to America.
“The Honorable John White, Governor to Her Majesty’s Colony at Roanoke Island, Virginia, begs an audience with the Queen of England, Wales, and Ireland.”
White felt his stomach tighten as his name echoed through the throne room of Richmond Palace, but he stepped obediently forward, drawn by the sight of the diminutive red-haired queen in the chair by the window. The circle of courtiers and counselors inclined their heads in polite interest as he approached; only the eyes of the queen remained aloof.
Before her, he knelt on one knee and bowed his head. “Your Majesty. I have a boon to ask of thee.”
“Rise, John White.”
He felt as awkward as a schoolboy before her, the virgin queen who had just conquered the world. Her dark blue eyes were upon him now, as clever as a terrier’s. Her delicate hand paused on a bauble that hung from a gold chain about her neck, and she lifted her chin slightly. “What would you ask of us?”
“Permission to sail.” He should not have been so blunt; he felt the dark, disapproving glance of Sir Walter Raleigh fall upon him. Elizabeth had to be courted, he had been told, she must be flattered and warmed to the subject at hand. Those who succeeded with her acknowledged her beauty, purity, devotion to God and the reformation of the church . . .
But John White was no diplomat. “Your Majesty, last year I left my daughter and granddaughter on the shores of Virginia in order to hasten here and accrue supplies for the English venture at Roanoke. The colonists are depending upon me, and I must return to them shortly. I pray you, I beseech you, let me return to them with a fleet of well-supplied ships.”
The small hand paused on the bauble and her pale skin colored slightly. “The costs of colonization are high,” she said, her voice falling carefully upon dozens of intently listening ears. “‘Twas my understanding that private investors were to finance this venture.”
“They are, Your Highness, but only you can grant permission for the fleet to sail. I had assembled a fleet in March, but your order from the Privy Council forbade my ships to sail—”
“Think you that I should have left England defenseless against the Spanish?”
“No.” He hung his head in what he hoped was an attitude of humility. “But I have been aboard the Ark Royal with Lord Charles Howard, and I have seen the Spanish defeated. You are victorious, my queen, and I—”
The hand upon the bauble lifted; the index finger wagged in a gentle warning. “The Spanish have disappeared along the Irish coast. I need Sir Richard Grenville, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Lord Charles Howard to maintain their vigilant watch. What if the Spaniards capitalize on Irish disaffection for this throne? I cannot risk another attack, John White. At this time, I cannot grant this liberty for your venture.”
She nodded in curt dismissal and White bowed again, his face burning in humiliation and defeat. If he could not convince Her Majesty the Queen to remember and care for her abandoned colonists, he would have to find a way to provide for them himself.
The English queen and her captains did not realize how little they had to fear from the Spanish. As the Duke of Medina-Sidonia attempted to reach Spain by circumnavigating the British Isles, severe storms battered the crippled remnant of the Armada along the rocky Scottish, Irish, and Norwegian coasts. Storms broke up fully half of the remaining fleet, and only a handful of ships limped back into Spanish harbors.
Philip II heard even worse news soon after his defeated sea captains came home. Sickness and disease had struck his army in the Netherlands, and of the thirty thousand men he had stationed there in anticipation of the English invasion, only seventeen thousand returned alive to Spain.
Overwhelmed by defeat, Philip lay prostrate on the carpet in front of the private altar in his chapel. Conqueror of Portugal and colonizer of America and the Philippines, he had gathered gold from the four corners of the earth and built the greatest naval fleet in history. How could God have allowed this ignominious destruction of his armada by Protestant English rebels?
THIRTY-SEVEN
The colonists at the City of Raleigh had no idea that the world’s two greatest civilizations battled for supremacy on the high seas, nor did they know that their fate and the naval battle were inextricably intertwined. England celebrated her supreme naval victory well into the fall of 1588, but the colonists at the City of Raleigh spent their time bringing in the harvest and preparing for winter. With each passing week they thought less about John White and the promise of English reinforcements, and depended more upon the kindness and wisdom of their Indian neighbors. And as the English and Indian cultures became more interdependent, Thomas Colman preached longer and harder against the sins of the colony.
When he first preached against buckskin, Indian beads, and dancing, most of the colonists had silently agreed with him. But as months passed and the villagers learned to appreciate the beauty and practicality of Indian ways, Jocelyn began to overhear complaints from her husband’s congregation. Torn between a desire to be loyal to Thomas and a desire to be reasonable, she decided to approach him with her concerns.
She waited until after supper one night, then put Regina into her trunk. The baby stood up, clutching the edge of the trunk for support, and her wide blue eyes followed every movement Thomas made as he sat at the table. A shining splotch of drool hung from her chin as she babbled at her father.
Suppressing a smile, Jocelyn pulled up a stool at the board while Thomas studied his Bible. After a moment, he looked up at her, his handsome face darkened by shadows thrown by the dim lamp.
“Thomas, I would speak with you.”
“Yes?” His voice was cool and detached.
“‘Tis about what I hear the others say.” She paused and bit her lip. How could she say these things without offending his sense of honor? “Mayhap you won’t like to hear this.”
“Tell me, Jocelyn. Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” His eyes fell from her face. “If you are my friend.”
His words cut her heart; how could he say such a thing? “I am, Thomas, and I don’t mean to hurt you. But think you that mayhap you are putting too much emphasis on—unimportant things?”
He folded his hands over his Bible and gave her a calm smile. “Unimportant things, Jocelyn? In truth, speak plainly.”
She waved helplessly. “Dancing. Singing. Wearing proper clothing. We did these things in England, Thomas, and never thought them sin. Why should they be sinful here? As long as a heart is pure before God, why does it matter if a man sings or a woman dances? Are we not commanded to make melody in our hearts? And did David not dance with joy before the Lord?”
His face flushed, but his expression did not change. “Have you anything else to say?”
She shook her head, feeling miserable.
“Then I must thank you for your insight,” he said dryly, lifting his hands from his Bible. “But God has burdened me with the spiritual oversight of this colony, and I must direct matters as I see fit. And I bid you good night.”
Without saying another word, Jocelyn left him and went to bed.
The next Sunday morning, Thomas stood before the crowd of sober-faced colonists and thrust his hands behind his back. “It has come to
my attention that there are those among you who feel I am too strict about sin,” he said, his voice carrying well beyond the crowd. “Welladay, I have given some thought to this matter, and would like to read to you the thoughts of a second century Christian who desired to follow God above all else.”
He pulled a book from the lectern and opened it. “Give up colored clothes,” he read. “Get rid of everything in your wardrobe that is not white. Stop sleeping on a soft pillow. Sell your musical instruments and don’t eat any more white bread. You cannot, if you are sincere about obeying Christ, take warm baths or shave your beard. To shave is to lie against him who created us, to attempt to improve upon his work.”
Several people in the congregation snickered, and Jocelyn had to admit that Thomas had used a clever illustration. But to what purpose?
“Have I asked you,” he said, putting the book back on the lectern, “to give up black, green, blue, or even red clothing? Have I asked you to toss out your mattresses of grass and straw to sleep on the ground instead? Have I asked any one of you to burn your harps or reed flutes, even those upon which you play praise to God? Have I asked any of you men—” He pointed to several of the men who were clean shaven, as he was, “—to surrender the blades with which you shave? Shall we all grow our hair long like the heathen so we will not bring the blade of scissors upon the hair that God has created? No! I have not asked any of these things.”
He opened his Bible. “But these are the words of God, and these are the things God asks of you: ‘When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be entirely obedient with the Lord thy God. For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the Lord thy God has not suffered thee to do so.”
