by Neil Hanson
The Bristol merchant Thomas Cely was employed “by my Lord Admiral and Sir Francis Drake” as a spy upon the coast of France and Spain and on 27 July he forwarded a report that the gales had caused some damage to the Armada. “There is two of their galleys left, and two of their galleasses have rolled their masts overboard and many of their fleet have broken their yards and other their tackling. Notwithstanding . . . they arm themselves as fast as they can to proceed in their wicked and malicious attempt . . . A sharp war and a short, although it be chargeable . . . is fit for England. The Queen’s subjects desire it. If I might have been heard, it had been done before this day, with a great deal less charges . . . if it had pleased Her Majesty. The King of Spain will make our mistress wise within few years, if it be not prevented.” He also complained that his earlier attempts to alert the Queen and her Privy Council to the threat from Spain had been spurned, one Counsellor telling him that if he “could do Her Majesty any service, so that it did cost money, or that if charges should arise upon it, never speak of it, for she will never consent to it. So I went my way with a flea in my ear.”
The English commanders all knew well enough the threat they faced. The winds that had driven them home were from the right quarter to speed the Armada towards England, and they made frantic efforts to resupply their ships with provisions and fresh men. On 27 July Howard reported that “Four or five ships have been discharged [of their men, for the] sickness in some is very great,” and bemoaned the shortages that had forced his fleet back into port at the most dangerous time of all. “If it had not been to water and that all the ships sent out by the coast towns wanted victuals, I would not have seen this town [Plymouth].” As if the shortages of men, munitions, food and beer were not bad enough, a fresh crisis was now brewing that threatened to cause a mutiny in the fleet. The seamen’s wages, which were in any event barely above subsistence levels, had remained unpaid for between five and sixteen weeks. Thomas Fenner sent an impassioned appeal to Walsingham for the necessary funds and supplies to be made available at once: “Now is the time, I beseech God move your Honour, to further and hasten our departure.” Similar appeals came from Howard, Hawkins and Seymour in the Narrow Seas. Hawkins complained that “the men have long been unpaid and need relief,” and Seymour urged Walsingham “to move the Lord Treasurer [Burghley]. Sir, You shall do very well to help us with a pay for our men, who are almost sixteen weeks unpaid; for what with fair and foul means, I have enough to do to keep them from mutiny.” Burghley replied the next day, complaining that the subject was causing him more distress than “purging” of his stomach, but professed a complete inability to pay the sums owed for wages and provisions, now totalling some £50,000. Even Mendoza and Parma could not have designed a more dangerous way to sabotage the English fleet.15
CHAPTER TEN
A Bad Place to Rest In
For four days after leaving Corunna, the Armada made good if slow progress, sailing northwards on a strengthening south-west wind, warmed by the sun shining from clear skies, and crossing calm seas that belied Biscay’s fearsome reputation. Medina-Sidonia complained that had he not had to govern his speed by that of “the scurviest ship in the fleet” he would have been “at the mouth of the Channel” by 25 July instead of still struggling north across the Bay of Biscay. On that day Medina-Sidonia sent “the captain Don Rodrigo Tello to Dunkirk to advertise the Duke of Parma of his coming and to bring back word of what state Parma should be in and where it seemed to him best for them to join their forces,” but the next morning the wind shifted into the north and grew steadily in strength. The Armada struggled on under a black and lowering sky, the wind screeching through the rigging and rain cascading from the sodden sails, flooding the decks. All that day and the next, the storm—the Spaniards called it a tormenta— battered the Armada, and many of its ships were again scattered.
In such heavy weather, conditions aboard the less weatherly of the Armada ships were almost intolerable. Many were “stiff boats”—slow to roll with the swell and quick to spring upright again—with a lurching motion that reduced even some of the experienced seamen to helpless seasickness. The huge Atlantic head-seas hit the broad bows of the lumbering hulks and merchantmen with a shock like an axe. The soldiers were discouraged from spending time on deck, where they might obstruct the work of the seamen handling the ship and cause yet more friction between them, but every inch of space on the crowded lower decks was contested. With the gunports and main hatches closed and caulked against the wild weather, the air was fetid and stifling, stinking of men’s sweat, vomit and the sour stench of bilgewater. The planking glistened with condensation and beads of moisture dripped from the beams overhead. A handful of lanterns, swinging through pendulum arcs as the ship rolled, gave the only illumination and in the semi-darkness ships’ rats made scuttling forays from nests and havens in the bilges and among the mountains of equipment in the holds. Men lay in their flea- and lice-ridden clothes, taking what rest they could among the jumble of great guns run in towards the centre line of the ship, the stacks of ramrods and powder scoops, armour, weapons and personal equipment. Anything not lashed down was thrown around as the ship pitched in the heavy seas and the ranks of whey-faced men must have prayed even for battle as a distraction from the woes of seasickness. The wild motion was greatly magnified in the towering sterncastle where the officers had their quarters, and even more in the rigging where men clinging to slippery yards fought to reef and furl the sails as spray and spume filled the air and the wind shrieked around them, cracking loose rigging like whips.
As the storm continued, “seas broke clean over the ships and the whole stern gallery of Diego Flores’ flagship [the San Cristobal] was carried away,” but the vice-admiral of the galleys, the Diana, “making so much water that she was unable to follow the Armada,” was the first ship to separate from the fleet. The captain made a desperate attempt to reach a safe haven but the Diana, wallowing low in the water, with waves coursing over the bows and half drowning the slaves and convicts at the oars, ran aground near Bayonne. Her guns were salvaged and the crew, even down to the slaves, were rescued, but the ship broke up under the pounding of the waves. The remaining three galleys—built for the placid waters of the Mediterranean and, even after being strengthened, too low-waisted, long and narrow for Atlantic conditions—were also forced to run for the coast as the seas grew heavier. “After nightfall when the weather became thick with very heavy rain, they were lost sight of and we have seen them no more.” They never rejoined the Armada. A Dublin merchant later reported that he had “found Spaniards upon the water and took them up and took off their clothes,” and their vessels were “so sore beaten with weather that they had the carpenters ten days repairing of the galleys” when they reached harbour in France.1
The fifth loss to the Armada was even more serious. The Santa Ana, flagship of the Biscayan squadron, had already been damaged in the earlier storm off Corunna, and the captain now chose to run before the gale into the Channel, seeking shelter in the Bay of La Hogue. He made no subsequent attempt to rejoin the Armada and the loss of the 30-gun warship with its complement of 300 sailors and fighting men was a serious blow. The battering of the waves had also damaged Don Hugo de Moncada’s flagship of the galleasses, the San Lorenzo, “her rudder being broken. These craft are really very fragile for heavy seas such as these.” Even the most powerful Armada ships suffered storm damage. “Not only did the waves mount to the skies but some seas broke clean over the ships . . . It was the most cruel night ever seen,” Medina-Sidonia complained with the hyperbole of a landsman experiencing his first major storm at sea. John Hawkins sailed through the same storm and described it as “a little flaw.”
On Thursday, 28 July, “the day dawned clear and bright, the wind and sea more quiet,” but in addition to the galleys, “forty ships were counted to be missing.” Just before the sun rose, the navigators had calculated the Armada’s position. When out of sight of land, they used a cross-staff or astrolabe to ch
art the position of the sun at noon or the Pole Star at dusk or dawn, and dead reckoning to calculate the distance sailed. When within sight of land, they navigated from headland to headland, using a rutter to help identify coasts that they did not know. The helmsman set his course from a compass mounted in a binnacle and lit by a lantern at night. But in unfamiliar waters, without a chart, a rutter or a local pilot, ships’ captains did “but grope as a blind man does, and if that they do hit well [find the place they were seeking], it is but by chance and not by any cunning that is in them.”
As the carpenters of the San Lorenzo and San Cristobal continued frantic repairs to their storm-damaged ships, Medina-Sidonia ordered soundings to be taken. The leadsman swung the heavy lead forward from the bows, hauled in the slack and took the reading as the line came to the vertical beneath him. Establishing the depth and comparing the sand, crushed shell or mud embedded in the cup-shaped, tallow-filled hollow in the lead’s base with the known nature of the sea bottom in an area helped to confirm—or deny—the position calculated by the navigators. In deeper waters a lead of twice the weight was used, attached to up to 200 fathoms of line, but it could only be used from a stationary ship. The leadsman “found bottom at 68 fathoms,” and fine white sand was embedded in the tallow, confirming that they were just outside the Channel approaches and still some distance from the Lizard. “One league off the Lizard the depth is forty fathom, coarse sand but clear, and the more to the westwards, the deeper the water and the finer the sand . . . the deepest water between Scilly and Ushant is 64 fathom, so unless there be 64 fathom when you ground, the Channel is not yet entered.” Medina-Sidonia then sent off three pinnaces, one to make for the Lizard and “see if the missing ships were there . . . another should discover land and examine the same, and the third was to turn back and order all the ships [behind] to make more sail.” Meanwhile the Armada departed under shortened sail.2
The next morning, Friday 29 July, the pinnace sent to the Lizard “returned with news that the missing ships were in front, under the charge of Don Pedro de Valdes, who had collected them,” and the Armada was reunited soon afterwards. The long, slow swell of the Atlantic was now giving way to the shorter, steeper, tidal chop of the Channel and there were growing signs of the closeness of land. Seabirds increased in numbers, a line of land clouds was visible to the north, dimly hazed with smoke, and even some miles from shore the dark tint of the deep ocean became paler and the water was faintly discoloured with silt washed down from Cornish rivers. Scraps of kelp and flotsam drifted past on the current and, in the distance ahead, a flock of gulls wheeled and cried in the wake of a fishing boat scurrying for harbour at the dread sight of the advancing Armada.
At four o’clock that afternoon “the coast of England was seen, and was said to be the Lizard,” for centuries the first landfall of ships entering the Channel. Even the stolid Medina-Sidonia must have been gripped by emotion at this, his first sight of the coastline of the country he had been sent to conquer, just visible as a dim, misted outline against the cloud-streaked sky before the weather again closed in and hid it from view. From this moment on, there could be no thought of retreat or return to Spain until the invasion was complete or the Armada vanquished. The sacred standard blessed by the Pope and carried in procession through Lisbon Cathedral before the Armada sailed was raised on the mainmast of the San Martin and the royal standard on the foremast, answered from all the other ships by a forest of flags bearing the dragons and shields of Portugal, the castles of Castile, and the flags of the other home provinces, together with the flags and pennants of the nobles and knights aboard, the emblem of the saint to whom each ship was dedicated and King Philip’s flag—the Burgundian red cross. Three signal guns were fired, calling every man to a prayer of thanksgiving for the Armada’s safe arrival and “beseeching Our Lord to give us victory against the enemies of His Holy Faith.”
There were still several hours of daylight remaining, but rather than pressing on with all speed while the advantage of surprise was with him, Medina-Sidonia chose to heave-to, allowing the repairs to the San Lorenzo and San Cristobal to be completed and the slow-moving hulks and converted merchant ships straggling behind to close up to the main formation. “I will set sail as soon as the flag galleass has been put in order,” he wrote to the King that night. With their sails furled, the ships of the Armada were rendered almost invisible below the horizon to any watchers scanning the seas from the Cornish coast, and the beacons on the cliffs and hilltops remained unlit. As the great ships rode the swell, Medina-Sidonia ordered a gun fired and a flag put out to signal a council of war and once more his senior commanders were rowed across to the San Martin. Their deliberations produced only one clear decision: in defiance of Philip’s specific orders issued before they sailed and repeated in the message he sent to Corunna, they determined “to proceed as far as the Isle of Wight and no further” until they had some indication of the state of readiness of Parma’s forces. “All along the coast of Flanders there is no harbour or shelter for our ships,” and if Parma’s troops were not embarked and ready, the Armada would be in a hopelessly vulnerable position. “Our vessels might be driven on to the shoals where they would certainly be lost.” It was an assessment shared by the English. “These huge ships that are in the Spanish army shall have but a bad place to rest in if they come to the eastward of Portsmouth.” Recalde had argued instead for taking Falmouth, Plymouth or Dartmouth “especially as the highly necessary reinforcements of men and stores will have to be sent from Spain, and isolated vessels will be exposed to much danger from the enemy higher up the Channel,” but Medina-Sidonia preferred, or was persuaded, to choose an anchorage closer to Flanders.3
Don Alonso de Leiva, supported by Recalde and Oquendo, two of the most experienced commanders, then urged an immediate attack on Plymouth, “where, by the report of a fisherman whom we took, we had understanding that the English fleet was at anchor. It was resolved we should make to the mouth of the haven and set upon the enemy if it might be done with any advantage, or otherwise keep our course directly for Dunkirk.” The mention of Dunkirk rather than “the Cape of Margate” was significant; Medina-Sidonia had now either realized or been persuaded by his commanders of the folly of contemplating a rendezvous within sight of the English coast, leaving Parma to cross forty miles of open ocean in barely seaworthy and undefended barges. An attack on Plymouth was again contrary to Philip’s explicit instructions, and Medina-Sidonia and others also feared the shore batteries guarding the narrow and difficult approaches to Cattewater, the mouth of the river Plym, where the English fleet lay at anchor. “The fleet was within the haven, whereof the mouth is so strait as not more than two or three ships could go in abreast, which was insufficient for that action.”
It was the sort of opportunity with which Drake had been presented at Cadiz: a fleet at anchor, still reprovisioning and held captive by the prevailing wind and tide. He had not hesitated for a second. Ignoring the cautious William Borough, he had pressed ahead at once, leaving his fleet to follow him as swiftly as it might, and by sailing into the enemy lair he had secured a famous victory. Had the Armada ships arrived off Plymouth in time and run the gauntlet of the shore defences, they would have had Howard’s fleet helpless. The English shore batteries might have given the Spaniards a pounding as they closed, but the Armada had troops enough to land a force to silence the guns and take the city—its population of barely two thousand could not have provided much resistance.
The English ships could not have escaped from the harbour against the south-westerly wind and flood tide that would have brought in the Spanish fighting ships, and in the tight confines of the upper Sound and the Cattewater, they could not have manoeuvred to avoid being boarded. Even if not silenced, the shore batteries could not have continued to fire for fear of hitting their own ships, and the Spanish troops, superior in numbers, equipment and close-combat experience, would then have made short work of their opponents. It would have been a gamble, for the hulk
s and merchantmen would have had to be left outside the Sound with only a modest force to protect them, but if the main English fleet was in harbour, the only other force that could have attacked the Armada’s hulks was the Squadron of the Narrow Seas, and there was not the slightest possibility that Sir Henry Seymour would have risked deserting his station in the Straits of Dover with Parma’s invasion force so close at hand.
Faced with such a dilemma, Santa Cruz might well have pressed ahead and attacked Plymouth. Hampered by his own cautious instincts and lack of naval experience, and bound by the rigid instructions of the King, Medina-Sidonia had chosen to heave to. Later that night the arguments about whether to attack or blockade Plymouth were rendered irrelevant when one of the Spanish pinnaces under the command of the Duke’s ensign bearer, Alferez Juan Gil, returned with four captured men—the terrified crew of a Falmouth fishing boat. Under interrogation they revealed that an attack would be pointless for “they had that evening seen the English fleet go out of Plymouth under the charge of the Admiral of England and of Drake.”4
At around four that afternoon, Friday, 29 July 1588, the same time that the Duke of Medina-Sidonia was taking his first sight of England, Thomas Fleming, captain of the 50-ton barque Golden Hind, “a pirate, who had been at sea pilfering,” dropped anchor in Plymouth and raced ashore. Although he would certainly not have spurned any prize that came his way, Fleming, together with Robert Scarlett, “Hill the Fisherman” and several others, had been assigned to patrol the western approaches of the Channel, forming a screen of fast ships and pinnaces, some of them disguised as innocuous merchantmen, “for discovery” of the Armada. At dawn that day Fleming’s lookout in his perch high on the mainmast had sighted a large flotilla of fifty Spanish ships near the Scilly Isles, their sails struck, “hovering in the wind, as it seemed to attend the rest of the fleet.” Fleming had at once set course for Plymouth, over a hundred miles away, piling on every scrap of sail, the masts and spars groaning and the stays taut as lute strings as the pinnace sped over the sea, its lines so sleek that it pierced the swell like a knife.
