by Neil Hanson
Those men now dispersed to their battle stations, “some of them to the Master for the management of the sails, some to assist the gunners in the traversing of the ordnance, others to the corporal to ply their smallshot, some to fill powder in the powder room, others to carry it from thence to the gunners in cartridges, and to the musketeers in bandoleers; the carpenters, some of them being ready in the hold with sheets of lead, plugs and the like necessaries for the stopping of such leaks as shall there be made by any great shot received from the enemy, others of them between the decks for the like purpose, the surgeons in the hold also with their chests and instruments to receive and dress all the hurt men, as likewise the Minister to comfort and exhort them, especially those who are most dangerously wounded; every man taking strict notice of his particular station and task, from whence he is not to budge without leave.” Seamen scattered sawdust on the main and gundecks and even those facing their first battle at sea knew the significance of that action: to prevent the decks from becoming slippery with blood. The commanders took their stand on the poop deck, from where they could survey their ship and the battleground beyond, and communicate at once with the helmsman, even amid the thunder of battle.
The long-awaited battle began with actions harking back to the age of chivalry. Lord Charles Howard, Lord Admiral of England, sent his personal pinnace, the Disdain, captained by Jonas Bradbury, to “give the Duke of Medina defiance” by firing a token shot at the enemy, as if challenging the Spanish commander to a duel. The pinnace shook out its sails and raced ahead of the fleet, skimming over the waves, advancing towards the heart of the Spanish formation. There was a puff of grey smoke from its bow chaser and a moment later the sound of the explosion came rolling across the water. Even as the echoes were fading, the Disdain had come about and was tacking back into the wind. As it passed the Levant squadron on the Armada’s starboard wing, cannons thundered a reply, but the shots fell short, merely raising white columns of water around the Disdain’s wake, and it returned unscathed to the English lines. In response to the pinnace’s challenge, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, Captain General of the Ocean Sea, “put abroad the royal standard at the foremast” and hoisted to the maintop his sacred banner, signalling his fleet to engage the enemy.
The formal courtesies observed, the battle could begin. Medina-Sidonia “made an appearance of attacking the port [Plymouth]” to draw the English fleet into combat as the Spanish infantry—the San Martin alone had 200 arquebusiers and 100 musketeers—lined the bulwarks of the fore- and sterncastles and the rails in the waist of their ships, concealed from the sight of the enemy by the wooden screens and waistcloths. Other marksmen scaled the masts and rigging to take up sharpshooting positions in the fighting tops, and pikemen stood ready to repel boarders. In the past, sea battles were effectively land battles at sea, fought as if the ships were really floating fortresses. The fore- and sterncastles were exactly that: fortified redoubts; some even had crenellated battlements, and trompe l’oeil stonework painted upon them. The enemy had to lay siege to them with artillery and then storm their battlements, and the result was almost invariably decided by hand-to-hand combat.4
As the oar-powered galleys and galleasses closed on their prey, a single, close-range fusillade would be fired from their guns—bronze cannon firing iron cannonballs and pedreros discharging stone projectiles, which shattered on impact to send a blizzard of rock fragments scything through the enemy troops. Smaller “murdering pieces” firing iron or lead hail-, scissor- and dice-shot—cubes of iron encased in lead which caused horrific damage to human flesh—and other anti-personnel ordnance helped “to beat his cagework and kill his men on the upper deck.” Volleys of musket and arquebus fire caused further casualties and each galley then rammed its victim with its reinforced prow. Hand-thrown bombs and incendiary devices increased the panic and mortality among the defenders, and fire-pots—earthenware jars filled with gunpowder, spirit and resin—were hurled down to shatter on the enemy ship’s deck. Ignited by the burning fuses attached to the outside of the fire-pot, the combustibles would explode with the force of a modern Molotov cocktail. Bombas—long-handled, hollow wooden tubes packed with alternating bands of gunpowder and shrapnel—were used like hand grenades. Grappling irons were thrown, locking the ships together, and a flood of soldiers then swarmed aboard from the arrumbada—the platform above the prow.
Great ships carried out the same form of attack, using their heavier armaments to smash the upperworks of the enemy and disable its anti-personnel weapons. As the two ships came together, the massive short-barrelled bombards carried in the waist of the ship were fired at point-blank range—no more than a handful of feet—so close that the solid combustion products of the black powder were often as devastating among the ranks of enemy troops as the shot being fired. The blast effect alone was often enough to maim and even kill, and the terror and disorientation induced by the concussive force of the blasts stunned even uninjured troops into immobility for a few crucial seconds. Musketeers and arquebusiers caused further carnage by unleashing a hail of small-arms fire from the towering fore- and sterncastles, and the enemy troops in the “fighting tops”—the firing platforms high on the masts, commanding the deck—were particularly targeted. The huge iron hooks attached to the ends of the yardarms would then “tangle with the sails and rigging of the enemy ship, holding him fast for the close-range gunners and preventing him from escaping.”5
Men then poured aboard, clambering over the rails and swarming through open gunports. The most heavily armoured men were first aboard, followed by the rest, protected by no more than a leather jerkin. If the fusillades of fire had not swept the decks clean of defenders, the first troops aboard were met by a barrage of musket and arquebus fire and a forest of pikes and halberds. Vicious hand-to-hand fighting with pike, sword and axe would continue until the ship was captured or the attackers slaughtered. Spain had made successful use of these tactics when leading an alliance of “Christian states” to victory against the Ottoman Turks at Lepanto, and again off Terceira only half a dozen years before the Armada sailed, but those were the last great sea battles of a vanishing age. These tactics were now to be challenged in the first naval battle of a new era, by an English fleet reliant solely on its gunnery to defeat the enemy. It was an epochal moment; a system of warfare dating back to Roman times was now being supplanted by tactics forged in the dawning of the new industrial age.
Such was the Spanish dependence upon boarding and hand-to-hand combat that there was virtually no provision for reloading their heavier armaments during a battle. Only the breech-loading weapons used against human targets could be reloaded at speed, and only the lighter muzzle-loading guns could be readily swabbed clean and reloaded. The heavier cannon, all muzzle-loaded, were so large that they were difficult or impossible to haul inboards. A Dutch traveller aboard a Portuguese carrack of the same era noted that, after firing a cannon, “we had at least an hour’s work to lade it in again, whereby we had so great a noise and cry aboard the ship as if we had all been cast away.” Some even had to be reloaded from outside the ship by men straddling the barrels, a practice that could not be attempted in battle or heavy weather. Even the smaller cannon were difficult to haul inboards, since the Spanish two-wheeled gun-carriages were designed for use on land and were almost impossible to manoeuvre in the cramped, pitching confines of a ship’s gundeck at sea. The largest weighed almost as much as the huge guns they carried and were so long that they occupied half the width of the deck. The guns were also lashed to the ship’s hull before being fired and the strains that this imposed on the structure literally pulled some of the hulls apart.6
The Armada did not even use dedicated guncrews. The men responsible—six or more to each gun—were soldiers drawn from the boarding force of marines as and when required. Under the direction of the gunner, they were summoned from their stations at the bow or waist of the ship to scour and sponge clean the barrel, and load it with black powder, shot and wadding. The
y would use blocks, tackles and handspikes to work the massive gun into its firing position, and wedges to bring it to the correct elevation. It was then lashed to the hull with ropes to prevent the recoil sending the gun careering back into the gundeck; the system of allowing the recoil to bring the weapon inboard for reloading was not developed until the middle of the seventeenth century. The guncrew would then return to its boarding stations, leaving the gunner to apply the match to fire the weapon. Even if it was capable of being reloaded in combat, the gunner would have to recall the men to do so amid the tumult of battle. As a result, the Spanish heavy guns were fired no more than an average of two or three times during the course of a day-long engagement. By contrast, the English design of narrow, four-wheeled gun-carriages allowed cannons and culverins to be rapidly hauled inboards after firing and swiftly reloaded by seasoned, specialist guncrews, and the rate and accuracy of their fire was far in excess of anything that the Spaniards could achieve. In practice, the only constraints on the English gunners were the size of their stores of powder and shot, and the need to allow the gun-barrels to cool during repeated firing to prevent premature detonation of the black-powder charges.
As much as the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, Lord Howard was reliant on the advice and opinions of his subordinates, and he and his senior commanders had already decided upon their strategy and tactics. With no experience of battle, he would neither have grasped the subtler significance of the manoeuvres nor been able to factor in the calculations of wind, tide and current that were second nature to seamen such as Drake and Recalde, but he had already shown his willingness to defer to the greater experience and sea wisdom of Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher, and it is certain that they took the leading part in deciding the battlefield tactics. They chose not an all or nothing, death or glory policy but a measured, cost-effective means of ensuring that the Armada would not succeed. No written record was made of their deliberations, for all preferred to keep the “secrets of the services” among themselves. Even Walsingham and Burghley were not notified, avoiding the risk of the chosen course of action being argued over by warring factions or leaked to Spanish agents, as Philip’s gold lined too many English pockets for any secret to remain secure for long at Court. However, the subsequent events make abundantly clear both the tactics that the English commanders had chosen and the success with which they were put into practice.
Medina-Sidonia’s battle plan was unknown, but the English commanders believed that he would try to secure a safe anchorage before moving on to a rendezvous with the Duke of Parma. Their aim was to keep the weather gauge on the Armada, in order to use their edge in speed, manoeuvrability and gunnery to maximum effect, but since the prevailing winds were westerly, by so doing they would be allowing the Spaniards to make an unopposed advance up the Channel. The English fleet would therefore “course” and harry the Armada from upwind as it sailed eastwards, and plans were also laid to use their superior knowledge of the local winds, tides and inshore waters to launch substantial attacks on the approaches to each bay or harbour that might serve the Armada as a base. Once driven to leeward of each one, the prevailing winds and the poor sailing qualities of the Spanish ships would prevent them from returning.
The sheer size of the Armada, and of its great ships, limited the possible havens. There were no more than half a dozen on the South Coast large and deep enough to accommodate it, secure against bad weather and defensible against an English counter-attack. As far back as the previous November, a council of war had established “the dangerous places for landing of the enemy.” From west to east, they were Milford Haven, Helford, Falmouth, Plymouth, Torbay, Portland, and the Solent and the Isle of Wight. Milford, Helford and Falmouth were the least defensible, since they lay to the west—upwind—of Plymouth, but they were thinly populated, lacking in potential food supplies and poorly served by roads, “very noisome and tedious to travel in and dangerous to all passengers and carriages,” and they were also hundreds of miles from London and from Parma’s forces in Flanders. If the Spaniards did make a landing there, Elizabeth’s commanders on land and sea would have ample time in which to plan and organize a defence against them. The remainder of the potential landing sites were surrounded by good agricultural land and had relatively good roads or easily traversed country linking them to the capital. Of all the potential havens, Plymouth, and the Solent and Spithead separating the Isle of Wight from the Hampshire coast were felt to be the most plausible. “It is unlikely the King of Spain will engage his fleet too far within the Sleeve [the western Channel] before he has mastered some one good harbour of which Plymouth is the nearest to Spain,” while the Isle of Wight was the closest deep-water anchorage to Flanders and London. It was also “the only island off the English Channel coast large enough to accommodate an army and with the capacity to feed it, standing off far enough from the mainland to guard against a surprise attack, but within easy reach of a great extent of the English coastline.” The English commanders were determined to defend these harbours at all costs. 7
While the race-built galleons stood off and used their guns at long range, Frobisher was to deliberately place the Triumph—the largest vessel in either fleet and one of the few English ships with fighting castles close to the size of those of the Spanish great ships—in the most dangerous but crucial position, on the shoreward side of the Armada. He would be vulnerable to boarding and capture if the Spaniards could close with him, but he hoped to use the power of his armaments and his knowledge of the local currents, shoals and sea conditions to hold them at bay. Howard’s squadron would maintain pressure upon the Spanish centre, preventing Medina-Sidonia from massing his warships against Frobisher, while the fast and weatherly squadrons of Drake and Hawkins would launch ferocious surprise attacks on the Armada’s most vulnerable points. If the tactics were successful, the Spanish ships would be so harried and damaged that they would either scatter, be driven on to the rocks or, at worst, find themselves pushed by wind and tide past the havens they had hoped to secure. The great Falmouth anchorage of Carrick Roads was already well astern, but if Plymouth were taken by the Armada, the Western Squadron’s own home base and shore defences could be turned against it. Accordingly, at nine o’clock that morning, “the Lord Admiral gave them fight within the view of Plymouth,” leading his group of warships in an attack against the shoreward tip of the Armada’s formation. As he was to do for the next few days, John Hawkins sailed in close proximity to the flagship, lending his vast experience and expertise to the untested Lord Admiral.
If the Spanish formation and discipline in manoeuvring were alien to British eyes, the English tactics were equally new to the Spaniards. Spanish and Portuguese manuals of naval warfare had always stressed that their galleys and warships with their forward-facing guns, reinforced metal rams and boarding troops should engage the enemy in line abreast, giving each ship’s main armaments a clear field of fire. Commanders were warned never to expose their broadsides to the enemy, nor to attack in line astern “since only the ships in the van can fight.” Insofar as they adopted a formation at all, the commanders of Howard’s galleons preferred to make their attacks downwind in echelon or line astern, to maximize the impact of their broadside guns, but in this new kind of naval warfare, tactics were evolving and being refined as the battles were being fought.
Drake had earlier been censured by the Queen for allowing his men to practise rapid firing of their cannons, but the benefits of such drilling were soon apparent. As each gun was fired, it was hauled inboards and the barrel sponged and “wormed” clean of spent powder residue. The cartridge of black powder wrapped in cloth or paper royal was then rammed home and the barrel again sponged to remove spilt powder grains. The cannonball, wiped clean of dirt and debris, was inserted, rammed home and secured with hemp wadding, and the gun run out and lashed in place with ropes as thick as the crewmen’s arms. The gunner checked the aim and adjusted the elevation by means of wooden wedges and his assistant poured a trail of priming powder into t
he touch-hole. On the master gunner’s command, the assistant took his piece of smouldering match-cord gripped in the jaws of a linstock— a carved wooden holder that allowed the guncrew to keep at arm’s length from the gun as it discharged—and put it to the touch-hole to fire the weapon. Skilled gunners could complete the whole process in as little as two minutes, though the problem of the barrel overheating through continuous firing reduced the achievable firing rate to something like ten or a dozen shots per hour.
In battle, the helmsman adjusted his course at the orders of the master gunner, and each gun was fired as it came to bear in a rolling, near-continuous broadside rather than a single massive fusillade of shot. The bow chasers were fired first, then the broadside guns on the lee side of the attacking ship, then the stern chasers as it came about, and the windward guns as it began to tack back into the wind, before turning for another pass. The broadside guns could be “bowed” or “quartered”—angled forwards or backwards—to enable them to be fired at an approaching target or one astern, as well as being fired broadside on, and a squadron attacking in line astern maintained an almost continuous bombardment of enemy ships that, having discharged their initial fusillade, were virtually powerless to repeat it, as only their bow and stern chasers could readily be reloaded. The musketeers kept up a harassing fire aimed primarily at the gunports, to “beat her men from the traverse and use of her ordnance.” Fearing a musket ball more than the wrath of their officers, many guncrews would take no careful sights from a gunport rattled by musket shot and would often fire with the most cursory aim or simply abandon their station and retreat to a safer refuge. Much of the cannon fire was meanwhile aimed at the enemy’s “yards, masts, sails and tackling . . . [to] disable her from tacking about to bring any fresh broadsides” to bear.8
