by Neil Hanson
Other galleons were towed out behind their ship’s boats or winched by cables fixed at points along the shores of the harbour or St. Nicholas’ Island. It was back-breaking toil for the men at the oars and those at the capstans, but none complained or slackened his efforts. If the Armada reached Plymouth while the English ships were still warping out, the battle would be over before it had begun. The men at the capstans trudged in an endless circle, heaving at the wooden levers as the leathery soles of their bare feet strained for purchase on the planking, and the only mark of their progress was the rhythmic dry click of the capstan’s ratchets. The sound echoed across the water to the crowds lining the quays. Like seamen’s families and friends down the centuries, they had come to see their loved ones sail, a smile set like a rictus on every face, knowing in their hearts that many of these men would never return.
As each ship in turn emerged into open water with searoom to use the breeze, men sprang to the rigging, climbing aloft to unfurl the sails while the deckhands stood ready at the braces, sheets and falls. The great galleons were living things, constantly in motion and full of sound: the hollow, echoing thud of waves against the bows, the soft rush of water beneath the stem, the continual creaking and groaning of the timbers as the ship flexed with the swell, the faint hum of the rigging and the endless but ever-varying sound of the wind through the sails. The long “beak head” at the bow broke up head seas, and though the ships still pitched and rolled in the swell, their frames were flexible enough to withstand the effects of even the worst storms of the Atlantic and the North Sea. Yards and spars bent with the wind and, as the ship heeled before it, the mast swayed as much as a yard out of true. The rigging, stays and shrouds on the lee side slackened and hung loose, while those on the weather side were dragged as taut as bow strings. Ropes and rigging chafed and wore with every movement and had to be constantly renewed. The helmsman felt each tremor through the helm in his hands and was alive to every facet of the ship under his control, his gaze shifting constantly between the horizon on the weather side, the ocean ahead, and the spars, rigging and mastheads above him.
As the deckhands bent to their work, their leather jerkins gleaming with salt spray, the guncrews went below to check their weapons, stack further piles of shot and bring more powder and cartridges from the bow and stern stores. No one knew when the first encounter with the Armada might occur. It was now well over twelve hours since Thomas Fleming had first sighted it and, with the following wind to speed them, had the Spanish galleons come on under full sail they could easily have been bearing down on the English ships as they began to emerge from the Sound. However, the topmen peering into the darkness reported the night sea empty of hostile ships and one by one the fleet pulled clear of the Sound and anchored in the lee of Rame Head, all lanterns and torches extinguished, as the flood tide again began to run. The danger of at least a part of the fleet being trapped by a Spanish attack was far from past, particularly if the wind backed southerly, as a west wind often did on this coast, but the night passed without incident and the dawn light revealed no more than an empty sea.
During the morning, as the wind freshened and the tide again began to ebb, many more ships pulled clear of the Sound. At the head of a fleet of fifty-four ships, Howard was already beating out to sea, “very hardly, the wind being at south-west.” Even with the help of the tide, progress to windward was painfully slow, barely three knots an hour, and it was not until around three o’clock that they passed the Eddystone Rock, thirteen miles south of Plymouth. Soon afterwards Howard’s topmen caught their first tantalizing glimpses of the great Armada through the rain squalls sweeping up the Channel on the wind: “120 sail, whereof there are four galleasses and many ships of great burden.” Seamen swarmed to scale the rigging and see for themselves the fabled and long-awaited enemy, but a few moments later it was lost to sight again as the cloud and rain closed in once more.9
The Armada had resumed its progress up the Channel at dawn that morning, Saturday 30 July. On that very day thirty-four years earlier, another Spanish armada had landed in England to deliver Philip II to his wedding with Mary Tudor at Winchester. Diego Flores de Valdes had been at his side then, and would have needed no reminding of the significance of the date. As at first light every morning, “men of quick sight” were at the mastheads scanning the horizon for enemy ships and counting the sails of the Armada. If they discovered “any in excess”— enemy ships that had infiltrated the formation during the night—they would shout for the topsail to be dipped twice and a gun fired and the nearest ships to the intruders would take up the pursuit.
Other eyes were also scanning those dawn seas for enemies. Throughout the night, a watchman had been huddled on Pen Olver, a jumble of rough granite knuckles of rock rising above the sheer cliffs of the Lizard like the ruins of some ancient fortification. Even before the first faint hint of light in the eastern sky, the rising chorus of birdsong had given warning of the approaching dawn. There had been no other sounds to break the stillness of the night, no creak of timbers, no oars working in their rowlocks, no muttered voices. For months he and his fellows had kept watch here. Each time a sail appeared there was a frisson of doubt—was this the forerunner of the dread Armada, or just another of the traders or fishermen endlessly plying the Channel? Each time it had been no more than a false alarm but now, as dawn broke, he saw the mast tip and pennant of a ship heading up the Channel on the strong south-westerly breeze. He crept stiffly from his crude shelter, a gap between two boulders, roughly roofed with driftwood spars and turf. The dew glistened on the coarse serge of his coat as he leaned on the wind, a hand braced against a lichen-encrusted boulder, straining his keen eyes into the haze. He glanced away, then looked again as the ship inched into view with painful slowness. Another speck appeared behind it, and then another and another. As he stared, transfixed, more and more dark shapes were visible, wraiths shifting and changing like the eddies in the mist, then slowly coalescing into sails like great grey clouds drifting over the water. Beneath were the dark shapes of upperworks and hulls. He waited, his heart pounding, wanting to be sure.
All that year and the last there had been enough false alarms. The Hampshire militia had been called out as a result of a fire lit to smoke a badger out of its sett, and bored, disaffected or malicious people had ignited hilltop fires on a number of occasions, causing widespread panic. Coastal watchers had also caused the beacons to be lit at the approach of strange ships that proved to be only English galleons or merchantmen: “The country . . . up in arms and beacons lit in consequence of certain hulks having been sighted in formation.” One of Sir Walter Ralegh’s captains had sighted “more than 60 sail off the point of Cornwall” and sparked a frenzied embarkation of the fleet and embargoing of merchant ships. That fleet had proved to be only “a flotilla of 60 hulks belonging to Hamburg,” but this time the watchman was certain that these were no hulks or English men-of-war. He could now discern masts, crow’s-nests, even the tracery of rigging on the leading ships, and with every passing minute more and more came into view, until the sea seemed black with galleons, their fighting castles towering above the waves, the cream canvas of their billowing sails tinged orange in the low rays of the rising sun, but emblazoned on each one was a great blood-red cross, the symbol of the crusades.
There was no longer the slightest room for doubt. The watchman shouted to his fellow, no doubt dozing inside the shelter, despite the regulations forbidding it. He emerged bleary-eyed, then snapped to attention as he saw the great ships riding the sea. The other watchman reached into his shelter, snatched up a brushwood torch and his length of smouldering match—a thumb-thick length of soft oakum, loosely woven into a cord. As he straightened up, he must have hesitated, not because he doubted what his eyes were telling him but because of the orders they had been given. Few of the watchmen could read, but the orders issued from Elizabeth’s Court—a modification of the system introduced by Henry VIII to guard against a French invasion in the summer of 1
545—had been drummed into them until there was no possibility of a mistake. A single beacon fire meant that the Armada had been sighted. A second called the local militia to their assembly point. Three simultaneous fires meant that the Spaniards had landed or were about to land and commanded all militia and able-bodied men to make at once for the coast to repel them. But false alarms irritated both the men called needlessly from their work in the fields and the Queen and her Treasurer Burghley, who begrudged every penny legitimately spent, let alone those wasted to no purpose. As a result, only a Justice of the Peace could authorize the lighting of the beacons, having verified the threat with his own eyes. The watchman knew that it would take up to an hour for word to be carried to the justice, who would have to be roused from his bed and hurried to Pen Olver to see for himself. By the time the alarm was raised and the militias assembled, the Spaniards might already be ashore at Helford or Falmouth.10
He hesitated no longer. He held the match-cord in the wind to fan it into flame, kindled the torch and then stumbled over the granite boulders, climbed a crude ladder propped against the beacon and thrust the blazing torch into one of the three iron baskets of pitch-soaked gorse, driftwood, timber and lumps of animal fat set on poles high above his head. There was a thin trickle of smoke and then the fire ignited with a roar, spitting and crackling as flames rose into the sky and a plume of black, oily smoke was driven to the north-east on the wind. As soon as it was alight, he left his fellow to maintain the watch and ran along the path winding through the dew-sodden grass towards the cluster of cottages above Housel Bay. Within minutes a messenger was riding hard inland while a knot of men hurried back to Pen Olver with the watchman to see for themselves the appearance of the long-dreaded Armada.
Twenty miles to the north of Pen Olver, two more watchmen were huddled on a hilltop above the hamlet of Higher Manhay. Almost the whole of Cornwall was visible from this isolated vantage point. On this bleak and lonely summit, the wind soughing through the grass had a cutting edge even in high summer, and they were glad of the protection afforded by the crude stone shelter. A massive granite slab, twelve feet in length and nine across—a dolmen from the Celtic past—formed the roof, supported on a single huge boulder at the rear and by rough dry-stone walling at either side. The south side was also walled to chest height, leaving a broad slit commanding the views down the Lizard and of the coasts to the south-east and south-west.
In maritime counties a watch for hostile ships had been maintained throughout much of Elizabeth’s reign. Watchmen were at their posts day and night between the spring and autumn equinoxes when attack was more probable, and by day in winter. With the Armada at hand, the watch was strengthened. Four watchmen were designated to each beacon site, with two always on duty. They were paid eightpence a day, raised by a levy on the parish, and provided with the wood from three trees as fuel for their beacons. To ensure their alertness, they were forbidden to have dogs with them, lest they prove a distraction from their duties, and their huts contained no “seat or place of ease lest they fall asleep.” “Scoutmasters” were appointed to ensure that the watchmen were alert and at their posts; one in Essex reported that he found the Stanway beacon deserted and the watchmen poaching partridges in a nearby field. In particularly vulnerable areas such as the Isle of Wight, the watchmen had to sign in and out for their spells of duty, were subject to at least three unscheduled inspections during each duty period and “had to blow whistles or horns at least every fifteen minutes to indicate that they were still awake.” The watch was maintained with much less rigour away from the South Coast; in Lancashire, even in the Armada year of 1588, watchmen were paid only from 10 July to 30 September.11
The ground inside the shelter at Higher Manhay was thickly lined with soft moss and ferns sprouting from every crevice and it was dry enough for the watchmen to sit cross-legged by the flat rock that served as their table. On it lay the remains of their food, perhaps a hunk of stale black bread, a piece of cheese wrapped in fern leaves and a jug or leather bottle of ale, and a pouch of dry kindling, flint and matchcord. Half a dozen torches were stacked against the wall, the smell of pitch mingling with the musty scent of ferns. As they and their brethren had done throughout that long summer, each watchman stood up every few minutes, easing the stiffness from his limbs as he scanned the horizon from west to east before resuming his seat. Now, as he gazed south towards Pen Olver, his eyes were caught by a smudge of smoke. He continued to stare, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun, as his pulse beat a rising tattoo in his temple. The smoke strengthened and darkened and a single bright spark of flame was visible at its heart.
Either less brave or more prudent than the men who kept the watch on Pen Olver, they left the beacon fire unlit, and one of them hurried away down the hillside towards Manhay. Ten minutes later a hastily saddled horse was being ridden hard for Helston three miles away. Even when the Helston Justice of the Peace had been alerted, the beacon at Manhay remained unlit, for the justice could not authorize its firing until he had confirmed that the threat was genuine and not another false alarm. The justice at the Lizard merely had to ride the short distance to the coast to see the Armada for himself, but the Helston man had to send a messenger down the Lizard for confirmation. Even if he met a messenger riding up from the coast with a report, a minimum of two or three hours must have elapsed before word was at last brought to the Manhay watchmen to fire the beacon. By then two lights were burning at Pen Olver.
When authorization was at last given, one of the Manhay watchmen took a torch, struck a spark to kindle it into life, and, shielding it from the draught until the flame strengthened, he hurried outside. To the front of the great roof-stone and to the rear at either side, an iron-ringed spike had been driven into the granite. In each was a conical iron basket of pitch-drenched wood. He thrust his blazing torch into the heart of the central one and then the right, and stood back as they flared into flame, while droplets of burning pitch ran down the iron stems of the baskets and fell to the ground. Now well alight, the fires belched flame and black smoke into the sky, streaming away on the wind, visible almost from Penzance in the west to Bodmin in the east. The fires both summoned the local militias to their mustering points and relayed the alert to the adjoining county. As the warning of the beacon was read in the surrounding towns and villages, men began ringing out a discordant reverse peal of the church bells, sounding the warning to all within earshot. Men of Constantine and a score of other villages ran to the churches where the local weapons and armoury were housed.
The same pattern of delay was repeated from beacon to beacon across the county and the country. Since most were sited on isolated cliffs and hilltops—only in the flatlands of the Midlands and East Anglia were they sited on church towers in the heart of villages—there was an inevitable delay, often of hours, between the sight of a beacon flaring on one hill and the ignition of the next link in the chain. Most later accounts have claimed that, within minutes of the first sighting, beacons were ablaze along the chain of hilltops to the north and east, spreading the news of the Armada from Penzance to Dover and from Southampton to the Scottish border. It is an arresting image but not one borne out by the facts. The reality was that it was not hours but days before word of the coming of the Armada had spread across the country, and pinnaces travelling by sea and couriers riding “post” carried the news as fast or faster than the beacon fires. Had the Armada made a dash for the nearest landing site, Spanish troops might well have been arriving at the door of the local Justice of the Peace at the same time as the panting messenger was bringing news that the Armada had been sighted.
The Spaniards also saw the beacons—“The Armada was near with the land, so as we were seen therefrom, whereupon they made fire and smokes”—and Medina-Sidonia knew that attack could now come at any time. Many ships were glimpsed through the mist and rain, but the first clear sighting of an English warship came as a pinnace flashed across their bows, firing an insolent round from its puny cannon. T
he heavy guns of de Leiva’s La Rata Santa Maria Encoronada thundered in reply but failed to find their mark, and the pinnace skimmed away so fast over the grey-green swell that the Armada might have been at anchor. It continued its slow advance up the Channel for the remainder of that day, the Levant squadron and the galleasses leading the way, followed by Medina-Sidonia with a squadron of galleons. Then came the Guipuzcoans and the Andalusians guarding the flanks. The hulks were in the centre of the fleet, while the Biscayans and the remaining galleons protected the rear. The coast lay within sight for much of the day, as the gaunt sea cliffs, crags and tors of the far west gave way to a softer country of rolling, thickly wooded hills, neat villages, rich pastures, hay meadows and cornfields studded with wildflowers, a sight to make the Armada’s conscripts nostalgic for their own homes and fields. Silent, watchful men stared back at them from every headland and hilltop, drawn partly by fear, partly by curiosity, to see the long-threatened Armada. As the weather began to clear towards nightfall, in the distance to the east near the black, glistening rocks of the Eddystone the lookouts glimpsed the sails of English ships, shining with an eerie light as they caught the last rays of the setting sun. To the English topmen the Armada was a spiked black mass dimly outlined against the sky; so many ships, so close together, that they looked like some vast, floating fortress, bristling with menace.
The sight of the English fleet would not have troubled Medina-Sidonia and his commanders unduly, for the Armada had the weather gauge, the position that all captains strove to obtain. To ensure that they were not carried past the English by wind and tide during the hours of darkness, they came to anchor near Dodman Point, holding station there through the night, intending to engage the enemy at dawn. The men of both fleets used the evening hours to prepare themselves for battle. Soldiers cleaned their armour and weapons, and checked their cartridges, shot and powder flasks. The gunners filled their shot-lockers, checked the lashings on their cannons, each already “loaded with ball,” and filled buckets to swab the weapons. “Half-butts and hogsheads of water” were made fast in several places upon the decks and “old rags and blankets” were soaked and stacked nearby to stifle fires and burning powder remnants. Buckets of “fighting water” were also slung from hooks in the overhead beams at intervals along the gundecks. The water they contained was often rank and as battle raged and the guns thundered it was contaminated with gunpowder and even blood, but it was still drunk by the men toiling in the furnace heat of the gundeck.
