by Neil Hanson
There was a curious suggestion from one quarter that not all the English commanders were eager to engage the Armada at all. Sir John Holles “was called to be present at all their councils of war, so great an opinion there was of him then. And particularly, he was present at that great debate whether they should fight the Spanish fleet or no: which was with difficulty carried upon the affirmative especially by the sound and resolute arguments of Sir Martin Frobisher.” No other published account supports this intriguing version of events; had it indeed occurred, the advocates of inaction would no doubt have wished their views to remain undocumented, but it is harder to imagine the choleric Frobisher remaining silent. At least one English captain was also openly critical—albeit in a letter to Walsingham rather than in the council of war—of Howard’s initial decision to engage the Armada at long range. “The majesty of the enemy’s fleet, the good order they held and the private consideration of our 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.” “In seafights you shall have some men, many times out of fear, some out of vain shows, that will discharge the broadsides upon an enemy ship when he is out of all reach . . . That is a very indiscreet wasting of shot and powder and but a bravado that discovers fear or folly to a wise and valiant enemy.”14
A cannonball fired from one of the English great guns might travel a considerable distance—a mile or even two—but its kinetic energy was rapidly dissipated. Cannons and culverins had to be fired at no more than 200 yards’ range to damage the upperworks, and the effective range at which they could do substantial harm to the stout hulls of the Armada’s warships was 100 yards at most. The English cannon fire had been far more sustained and accurate than that of the Armada, but they had fought at such a range that some of the cannonballs had literally bounced off the undamaged oak flanks of the Spanish galleons. They were formidably well built to withstand gunnery attack, for their four-inch oak planking was mounted on oak ribs a foot in diameter and set so close together that they almost touched. However, unlike the less heavily armoured English galleons, that great strength of construction also made the Spanish warships too rigid to flex with the waves. Unable to absorb the stresses from the relentless pounding of the seas, many of them were prone to shedding the caulking between their seams and springing sections of their planking, causing leaks that could then be exacerbated by the effects of gunfire.
There had undoubtedly been many casualties among the densely packed soldiers massed on the decks of the Armada’s great ships, but no ship had been crippled, let alone sunk, and Howard’s commanders were well aware that a stand-off suited the Spaniards far more than it served them. On the evidence of the first day’s fighting, if they kept the fight at long range, they might themselves suffer no harm but the Armada would proceed untroubled to its rendezvous with Parma. They drew consolation from the fact that they still held the advantage of the weather gauge and had prevented the Spaniards from entering Plymouth—if that had ever been their intention—but ahead lay Torbay, Portland, Poole and the Isle of Wight, all of which could provide the Armada with a safe anchorage and the possibility of replenishing their stores of food and water. It was essential that the English fleet be close enough at hand to prevent such a landfall.
After the council of war, Howard sent a message to Walsingham, a letter designed to put the best possible gloss on the day’s events. “At nine of the clock we gave them fight, which continued until one . . . we made some of them to bear room to stop their leaks; notwithstanding, we durst not adventure to put in among them, their fleet being so strong. But there shall be nothing either neglected or unhazarded that may work their overthrow . . . For the love of God and our country, let us have with some speed some great shot sent us of all bigness; for this service will continue long; and some powder with it.” Drake also sent a brief message to Lord Henry Seymour, Admiral in the Narrow Seas, warning of the advance of the Armada. “We had them in chase and so, coming up to them, there has passed some cannon shot between some of our fleet and some of them, and as far as we perceive, they are determined to sell their lives with blows . . . The fleet of Spaniards is somewhat above a hundred sails, many great ships, but truly I think not half of them men of war. Haste.” 15
As the fleets sailed eastwards, the Cornish militias stood down. The bulk returned home, pending another summons should a change of wind bring the Armada back to their coast. In theory at least, the pick of the troops began a slow march eastwards, ready to aid the neighbouring county if a Spanish landing was made: Cornishmen would march to the defence of Devon, Devon men to that of Dorset, and so on. In practice many men, seeing the immediate threat to their own homes removed, seized any chance to drift away or desert and return to their land to help gather in the hay or the harvest. With arms, armour, baggage and provisions to transport over roads that were still slathered in mud from the wet spring and summer, the remaining troops made a poor pace, slower even than the ponderous Armada offshore, and they dropped further and further behind the fleets.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Heavens Thundered
At the end of the English council of war that evening, “dismissing each man to go aboard his own ship, His Lordship had appointed Sir Francis Drake to set the watch that night.” Under battle conditions, ships showed no lights after dark, and the lantern on the poop deck of Drake’s ship, Revenge, was to be the guiding light by which the rest would navigate. In the last of the evening light, the Margaret and John of London, a 200-ton privateer captained by John Fisher, came upon the crippled Rosario , still with her escort of ships. The Margaret and John’s officers claimed that “accompanied neither with ship, pinnace or boat of all our fleet” they went to the attack, and “the sudden approach of our ship” caused the other Spanish vessels to flee. By making that claim they were staking their right to a share in the spoils, but the captain of a galleass would hardly have been frightened by a privateer one-third the size of his own ship, and it must rather have been the fear of the rest of the English fleet bearing down out of the darkness that put the Rosario’s escort to flight.
As the crew of the Margaret and John looked over the apparently deserted ship, they kept to windward, “hard under sides of the ship . . . which by reason of her greatness and the sea being very much grown, we could not lay aboard without spoiling our own ship.” The Rosario ’s sails were furled, all lights were extinguished and she did not answer her helm. “Seeing not one man show himself nor any light appearing in her . . . we discharged 25 or 30 muskets into her cagework, at one volley, with arrows and bullet.” That fusillade provoked some return fire. “They gave us two great shot, whereupon we let fly our broadside through her, doing some hurt.” The privateer drew off a little but remained close to the crippled Spanish ship until around midnight, when, “fearing his Lordship’s displeasure if we should stay behind,” the Margaret and John sailed away to rejoin the English fleet.1
A crescent moon silvered the waters and threw intermittent light on the scene, but it was often obscured by cloud, and visibility was poor enough that when the light on the poop deck of the Revenge was abruptly extinguished, the lookouts on the Ark could see no trace of Drake’s ship. Lord Howard was called back on deck at once and eventually the lookouts caught sight of the glimmer of a light ahead, although at some distance from them. The Ark put on more sail to close the gap and, accompanied only by the Bear and the Mary Rose, resumed the silent pursuit. The remainder of the fleet “being disappointed of their light by reason that Sir Francis Drake left the watch to pursue certain hulks . . . lingered behind not knowing who to follow.” Only when the eastern sky was lightening over the approaches to Torbay did Howard realize that he had been following the lantern of an enemy ship, and was so close, “within culverin shot,” that he was at risk of being enfolded within the trailing wings of the Armada. The rest of his fleet was miles behind—“the nearest might scarce be seen half-mast high and very many out of si
ght.” There was no trace at all of the Revenge.
The three English ships came about at once and used their greater speed and agility into the wind to pull clear of the Armada. There must have been at least a chance that the galleasses, powered by oars as well as sails, and able to make considerable speed directly into the wind over short distances, could have overhauled the Ark, and “Hugo de Moncada, Governor of the four galleasses, made humble suit unto the Duke of Medina that he might be licensed to encounter the Admiral of England.” But, still adhering rigidly to Philip’s orders, and perhaps also believing that honour required that he and not his subordinate should be the first to attack the English admiral, “this liberty the Duke thought not good to permit unto him.”
When Drake was eventually reunited with his commander, his explanation of his nocturnal disappearance was that “late in the evening” he had seen the dim outlines of ships passing to seaward. Afraid that the enemy might be taking a leaf from the English book and seeking to beat into the wind and gain the weather gauge, Drake had turned to starboard to challenge them, extinguishing his poop lantern to avoid leading the fleet astray. With him was only the Roebuck, a Plymouth privateer under Captain Jacob Whiddon, and two of Drake’s own pinnaces. The ships proved to be German merchantmen and Drake claimed that he had just set course to rejoin the fleet when dawn broke and he saw the crippled flagship of Don Pedro de Valdes no more than a cable length away.
The Rosario’s commander had at first attempted to bargain but was then told that he faced the legendary El Draque in person, who had not the “leisure to make any long parley.” He was also reminded of the rules of war that commanders on land and sea routinely adopted: those, both officers and men, who surrendered at once, were accorded every civility and respect; those who fought, however briefly, before surrendering or being overpowered, were dispatched without mercy. Pedro de Valdes then surrendered on an undertaking that he would be fairly treated and the lives of his men spared. The Sheriff of Devon, George Cary, was later to complain that the men should have been “made water spaniels [drowned] when they were first taken,” a practice that dated back at least to Chaucerian times. “What shall become of these people, our vowed enemies?” Cary said. “The charge of keeping them is great, the peril greater and the discontentment of our country greatest of all, that a nation so much disliking unto them should remain amongst them.”2
The value of the Rosario was not only the 55,000 gold ducats it carried as wages for the invasion force and its treasure, including a box of Toledo swords with jewelled hilts that Philip had sent as presents for the English Catholic lords, nor even its forty-six cannon and “great store of powder and shot.” Its capture also gave Drake and the other English commanders the opportunity to discover the nature and limitations of its armaments, particularly the difficulties in reloading them when in combat or heavy seas. Under interrogation, one of the ship’s company, Gregorio de Sotomayor, one of 2,000 Portuguese who had been forcibly conscripted for the Armada “on pain of death,” also revealed the parlous state of the Armada’s provisions. When George Cary took charge of the Rosario, he reported to Walsingham that “their provision . . . is very little and nought, their fish savours [smells] so that it is not to be eaten, and their bread full of worms.”
Having thoroughly inspected the Rosario, Drake took de Valdes aboard his own ship and then detached the Roebuck to escort the prize to Dartmouth, but the crippled ship could not make headway into the wind and it was taken into Torbay instead, where “for the better furnishing of Her Majesty’s navy with munition,” the powder and shot were at once removed and sent after the fleet. When news of the Rosario’s capture was brought to London, “bonfires were lit all over the city and the bells were rung,” and de Valdes and some of his fellow captives were later “taken in carts to London . . . so that the people might see that some prisoners had been captured.” The ship’s banners and flags, including a red damask standard of Philip’s coat of arms flanked by twin angels, were also sent to London, where they were paraded through the streets and later hung in St. Paul’s. Much of the Rosario’s other stores and equipment was looted as self-interest dominated the national interest. Cary complained that “12 or 13 pieces of brass ordnance” had been stolen, “Jacob Whiddon, captain of the Roebuck, had ten, and likewise several muskets and calivers. A pinnace of Plymouth that came from my Lord Admiral for powder and shot had another two pieces, and the Samaritan of Dartmouth had the other, as also 10 muskets and 10 calivers. The Roebuck also had several pipes of wine and two of oil . . . Watch and look never so narrowly they will steal and pilfer.” Howard also complained that the Earl of Huntingdon, the President of the Council of the North, had commandeered a load of powder aboard the Roebuck, intended for the fleet, and kept it to arm his own men in case of attack from Scotland.3
Like Drake’s conduct the previous night, such actions were an example of “the uneasy balance between the national and the private interest” that the use of privateers entailed. “Privateering was not merely an incidental by-product of this war . . . it was the characteristic form of maritime warfare, the essential embodiment of the private initiative and enterprise that dominated the sea war,” and it was all too easy for it to degenerate into an “indecorous scramble for private profits.” The search for plunder and easy fortunes had hampered Ralegh’s colonization attempts, while Frobisher’s search for the North-West Passage was motivated (and supported by Elizabeth) because of the belief that a “black earth” found in the north-west territories could be converted by alchemists into pure gold. He made three expeditions in succeeding years, but abandoned the search when the black earth was revealed to be iron pyrites—“fool’s gold”—useful only as the flints in wheel-lock muskets. Elizabeth’s commanders also “went to places more for profit than for service” and, whatever the national interest or the requirements of the sovereign, in such “joint-stock” warfare the first priority was to capture prizes, goods and treasure, and the second to carry it home with all possible speed. “The one thing certain about the merchant officers was that they were not reliable when called upon to risk their vessels for any higher purpose than privateering.” “We find it in daily experience that all discourse of magnanimity, or national virtue, or religion or liberty and whatsoever else has been wont to move and encourage virtuous men, has no force at all with the common soldier, in comparison with spoils and riches.” Even Drake’s reputation and success rate was not always enough to keep a fleet of privateers together. “The moment anything is undertaken other than robbery and plunder, they will abandon him.”4
Drake was something of an exception to the general rule, in that his religious fervour and his burning hatred for Spain would sometimes lead him to acts that had limited commercial justification but, faced with a rich prize, his “piratical instincts again proved irresistible.” The official account notes his breach of his orders without comment and, though the fiery Yorkshireman Martin Frobisher later made a stinging criticism of Drake, his complaint was mainly about the allocation of the spoils from the great prize. “After he had seen her in the evening, that she had spent her masts, then, like a coward, he kept by her all night, because he would have the spoil. He thinks to cozen [cheat] us of our shares of fifteen thousand ducats, but we will have our shares, or I will make him spend the best blood in his belly.” Either because of his threats or simply because it was his due, Frobisher later received the not insubstantial sum of £4,979 as his share of prize money from the Armada campaign. Whatever they may have thought in private, no other captain, and certainly not Drake’s admiral, Lord Howard, offered the slightest public complaint about his actions. He reported the capture in matter-of-fact terms. “There is a galleass [sic] of the enemy’s taken with 450 men in her . . . there is an hundred gentlemen . . . who for the most part were noblemen’s sons.” If there was any general feeling in the fleet it was one of envy, tinged with resentment, that Drake and his crew had secured a prize that all must have coveted.
; Pedro de Valdes’s behaviour is harder to explain. His ship had not been so seriously damaged that, eighteen hours after the collision, it should still have been incapable of answering its helm or making headway under a jury rig in place of its damaged masts and sails, yet no attempt seems to have been made to effect repairs. It was also a huge and powerful ship, one of the most heavily gunned in the entire Armada, carrying 300 soldiers in addition to its crew of 120, and with towering fore- and sterncastles that would have made it extremely hazardous for the smaller English ships to attempt to board. A robust defence would have held the English at bay for at least a day, but de Valdes’s fury at being abandoned by the Armada may have made him disinclined to risk his own and his men’s lives by resistance that might postpone but could not avert the inevitable capture or destruction of his ship. He himself claimed that after he had “resisted them and defended myself all that night . . . finding myself in so bad case, void of all hope to be relieved, out of sight of our fleet and beset with enemies . . . our last and best remedy” was to surrender.5
