by Neil Hanson
Whether de Valdes was bribed by Drake—during his later interrogation he claimed that the King’s Treasure aboard his ship was “near 20,000 ducats,” understating its true value by 35,000 ducats, according to the interrogations of twelve other members of his crew—or was a coward, a realist, or still nursing his anger over the way the Armada had abandoned him, has never been revealed. He remained on the Revenge for a further week, witnessing the battles between the fleets from Drake’s stern cabin, and was only sent ashore at the insistence of Walsingham and Burghley, alarmed that “the secrets of the services” might be revealed to one of the enemy’s senior commanders. Drake was reluctant to hand over his valuable prisoners, losing the right to the ransom money that could be obtained, but realistic enough to know that if the Queen required them for her own gain, he could not refuse, though one can almost hear the grinding of his teeth in his words: “Don Pedro is a man of greatest estimation with the King of Spain and thought next in his army to the Duke of Medina-Sidonia. If they should be given from me unto any other, it would be some grief to my friends. If Her Majesty will have them, God defend but I should think it happy.”
De Valdes and the other prisoners were closely questioned about the Armada’s tactics and aims, but their interrogators also showed a particular and wholly understandable interest in the intended fate of Protestant nobles if an invasion took place, and in the identities of English exiles, traitors and collaborators. The list of questions prepared by the Privy Council to be put to Spanish prisoners included: “What they meant to do with the noblemen, gentlemen and other subjects of quality, as well of our religion as of the other? What the Englishmen should have done that came with them; and whether they had not especial direction whom they should spare and whom they should kill or where were they to receive it; and what it was? Whether the King of Spain would have retained this realm for himself or given it to any other, and who that is?” Whatever his motives in surrendering, de Valdes was enough of a patriot to mislead his interrogators about the fighting strength of the Armada and gave no worthwhile information about its proposed method of invasion, landing site, or the English collaborators aboard or ashore. Curiously, he came to be viewed as something of a hero both in England and in Spain, where he was widely regarded as an innocent victim of the callous decision to abandon him.6
The English fleet must have been planning to launch a further attack on the Armada that Monday morning, 1 August, as it approached its next possible refuge in Torbay; Frobisher referred to “the morning, when we should have dealt with them” in his diatribe against Drake. The disarray caused by the separation of Drake and Howard from the fleet ensured that no such attack occurred, but in the event the Armada did not deviate from its eastward course and sailed on past Torbay. At eleven that Monday morning, it lost a second crucial prize to the English fleet when the San Salvador was abandoned. The explosion that had destroyed her afterdecks had also sprung her seams and the few surviving members of the crew were unable to staunch the leaks; water was pouring in faster than the pumps could deal with it. Medina-Sidonia ordered “the King’s money and the people to be taken out of her and the ship to be sunk,” but the captain “was badly wounded and the men in a hurry to abandon the ship, so that there was no one to sink her; besides which, she had many wounded and burnt men on board, who could not be rescued as the enemy was approaching.” The able-bodied crewmen, the money and some of the stores were taken off, but the injured men and the munitions were left aboard, and the ship was not scuttled but merely left to drift astern. For the second time in twenty-four hours, Medina-Sidonia had allowed one of his great ships to fall into the hands of the enemy and, like the Rosario, it was liberally supplied with powder and shot, for though the stern powder store had been destroyed in the explosion the store in the bows was intact.
The San Salvador was at once seized by the pursuing English ships “in sight of the Armada.” Lord Thomas Howard, the twenty-seven-year-old nephew of the Lord High Admiral, and Sir John Hawkins went aboard, “where they beheld a very pitiful sight—the deck of the ship fallen down, the steerage broken, the stern blown out and about 50 poor creatures burnt with powder in most miserable sort. The stink in the ship was so unsavoury and the sight within board so ugly that the Lord Thomas Howard and Sir John Hawkins shortly departed.” The San Salvador was in such a parlous state that the pumps had to be worked day and night to keep her afloat, but Thomas Fleming, captain of the Golden Hind, the pinnace that had brought the first warning of the Armada, managed to take the sinking hulk in tow and bring her safely into Weymouth harbour, “to the great joy of the beholders,” though it prompted immediate complaints from the Town Council. “The burnt Spanish ship called Le San Salvador is much splitted and torn and the charge will be great in keeping her here for we are forced to keep therein ten persons continually to pump her for fear of sinking . . . We humbly beseech your Lordships to give some speedy direction what shall be done with them [the Spanish crew], for that they are here diseased, naked and chargeable.”7
The 88 barrels of fine-corned black powder and 1,600 shot were removed as soon as the San Salvador came to anchor and sent to the fleet in “a bark of Dartmouth,” and a further 600 shot, six of the ship’s 14 cannon, “a ton of match” and 40 more barrels of powder were sent to the fleet the following day, “in Captain Fleming’s pinnace.” Even more could have been provided, but at least some Weymouth citizens had followed the example of England’s naval hero and their fellows in Torbay, and ensured they were not out of pocket. “Surely in the stealing of her ropes and casks from her, and rotting and spoiling of sails and cables, etc, the disorder was very great. It is credibly thought that there were in her 200 Venetian barrels of powder . . . and yet but 141 [the inventory records only 132] were sent to the Lord Admiral.” Even so, the powder retrieved from the Rosario and the San Salvador represented around a third of the total supplied to the English fleet, and it is far from fanciful to suggest that the final defeat of the Armada could not have been achieved without that Spanish powder and shot. An attempt was later made to move the San Salvador to Portsmouth for repairs, but the battered hulk sank during the voyage. “The great Spaniard, she was lost at Studland, but God be praised, there is saved 34 of our best men and there was lost 23 men, whereof six were Flemings and Frenchmen that came in the same ship out of Spain.” A merchant from Portland was blamed for the sinking, having failed to provide the foresail he had promised, leaving the ship dangerously unmanageable. “All those who are saved will depose that he was the casting away of the ship and the death of the men.”
Late on the Monday afternoon, Medina-Sidonia raised a flag to signal another council of war with his commanders. All that day fresh sails had been appearing over the horizon as more and more ships joined the English fleet and it appeared that Howard was calling for every reinforcement available. In response, Medina-Sidonia now divided his fighting ships into the “two squadrons, vanguard and rearguard” that Pedro de Valdes had earlier unavailingly proposed as the most efficient formation. The larger and more powerful grouping, “the best ships of the fleet,” were to guard the rear, under the temporary command of Don Alonso de Leiva. He would cede control to Recalde when repairs to the San Juan were completed. A smaller group of fighting ships led by Medina-Sidonia himself took up position in the vanguard of the Armada. To stress his determination that the fleet should maintain its formation whatever the circumstances, preventing a recurrence of the previous day’s incident when several ships had fled and left Recalde’s ship to fight the enemy alone, Medina-Sidonia sent pinnaces through the Armada bearing written orders for each captain “that any ship which did not keep that order, or left her appointed place, that without further stay they should hang the captain of the said ship.” In order to emphasize the threat, “the Provosts Marshal and hangmen necessary for carrying out this order,” dressed in the robes of their calling, accompanied the messengers.8
Medina-Sidonia expected at any time to meet the remainder of the En
glish Grand Fleet (as he thought under the command of John Hawkins, but actually commanded by Lord Henry Seymour), and hoped that this formation would enable him to repel an attack even if it came simultaneously from ahead and the rear. In fact, at the orders of his Queen, Seymour was maintaining a blockade of the Flanders coast, despite the dangers to his squadron in those waters. “How uneasily the lying of our ships against Gravelines, much more Dunkirk, I can say no more than I have many times written. But seeing it is Her Majesty’s pleasure, we will endeavour to perform it as near as wind and weather will give us leave.” Sir William Wynter, commanding the Vanguard in the same squadron, was even less sanguine about the task. “I humbly pray you that . . . you do not danger us here . . . I know there has been such as has promised . . . that he would ride athwart of Dunkirk all weathers . . . but I assure your Honours, his judgement and skill for that matter is neither grounded upon skill or reason.” Seymour also complained at the lack of ships and—inevitably—supplies allocated to him. “Send us powder and shot forthwith, whereof we have want in our fleet and which I have several times given knowledge thereof . . . Our victuals do end the last of this month, yet upon extremity, now we know the enemy at hand, we will prolong that little we have as long as we can.” Six vessels of his fleet had already been discharged for want of the provisions to feed the crews and a further four had been detached to escort the cloth fleet to Stade, near Hamburg. It was a further example of the uneasy balance of public and private concerns; the protection of powerful vested interests was to take precedence over the needs of the fleet. “Our fleet being from the first promised to be 78 ships . . . we have not above 20,” Seymour complained. “If the wind come without the land, our merchant ships are enforced to forsake us as not able to ride, so that our trust for this service is only upon Her Majesty’s ships, in number eight.” 9
Much was riding on them, in English eyes at least. “The only hope I can contain of this country is if my Lord Harry is always in their face when they shall attempt to come out of haven. They have just 37 ships with tops [sails] and such as common port ships are, not able to stand against Her Majesty’s.” As if to prove the truth of that assertion, while maintaining his blockade of the coast Seymour had chased, intercepted and fired on two ships emerging from Dunkirk after they refused to strike their sails when challenged. The crew of one vessel abandoned ship and waded ashore over the sandbanks, carrying their sails in their arms. The other struck its sails after a shot fired by one of Seymour’s pinnaces brought down the mainmast. It was a French ship operating by permit from the Governor of Calais, but the ease and alacrity with which both vessels had been hunted down must have given Parma further pause for thought about the advisability of exposing his troop barges to the mercies of either the Dutch or the English fleets.
Philip’s only reference to the means by which Medina-Sidonia could communicate with Parma as the Armada approached was to state that either a zabra—a pinnace—carrying dispatches could sail to and from Dunkirk, Nieuport or Gravelines, or a rowing boat could land a messenger “by night . . . on a beach in Normandy.” Late that evening, Medina-Sidonia again dispatched a pinnace, commanded by Juan Gil, with a further message for Parma. “I beseech your Excellency to send with the utmost speed some person with a reply . . . and supply me with pilots for the Coast of Flanders.” Pending a reply, he could only hope and pray that the invasion force was indeed assembled.
During the evening the wind died away, the sea abated and the skies cleared. The sea glittered in the starlight and the sails of the English ships, grit-grey against the night sky, were faintly visible a mile or so to windward. When the three-quarter moon rose towards midnight, it cast sufficient light to delineate the enemy’s ships and enable friend to be distinguished from foe. At one o’clock that morning, de Leiva, Recalde and Oquendo were rowed across to the San Martin and persuaded their Captain General to order Hugo de Moncada’s galleasses to attack the nearest English ships. This, it was hoped, would force the other English ships to come to their support and provoke the general mêlée that the Spaniards sought. To seek a battle was counter to Philip’s orders, but the avoidance of the enemy over the preceding days must have irked Medina-Sidonia’s pride and sense of honour as much as it did his commanders’. To salve Moncada’s pride over the earlier refusal of permission to engage Howard’s flagship, Medina-Sidonia reinforced his orders with the offer of an estate worth 3,000 ducats in the event of a successful action. Moncada, who considered himself the master of galley warfare and was still nursing his grievance, retorted that his honour required him to engage no lesser opponent than the admiral of the enemy. Such was his right and his duty and he would not demean himself by fighting some lesser opponent. He may or may not have made an outright refusal, but the galleasses did not row to the attack, as Lord Howard noted from the bridge of the Ark. “They might have distressed some of our small ships which were short of our fleet, but their courage failed them, for they attempted nothing.” The moon set, the wind began to stir again and the chance was lost.10
By the time dawn broke on Tuesday 2 August, the wind had reversed its direction and was blowing stiffly from the north-east—the land breeze that could be expected at that hour. For the moment at least the Armada now had the weather gauge, but its topmen could see by the first light that the English fleet was already reacting to the change in the wind. Frobisher led a group of ships, close-hauled to the north-north-east “over against St. Albans, about five o’clock in the morning,” sailing between the Armada and the shore in an attempt to forestall any attempted landing at Weymouth. But unlike off the Eddystone three days earlier, the Spaniards were now sufficiently alert to the manoeuvre and close enough to shore to try to cut him off. Howard and Hawkins led their group eastwards, tacking against the wind, to engage and “fix” Medina-Sidonia and the Spanish centre, while Drake’s squadron set a course downwind, racing past the seaward wing of the Armada. Heartened by the wind in his favour, Medina-Sidonia ordered his fleet to the attack. The distance between the fighting ships narrowed to cannon and even small-arms range and great volleys of gunfire broke out from both sides. A pall of smoke from the guns hung like fog over the water and the cannon roar was a relentless assault on the eardrums, so continuous and so deafening that voices and signal guns were drowned, indistinguishable from the general din, and even on deck or high in the rigging the men were so deafened that a shouted order or the shrill blast of a whistle was inaudible from a few paces away. Amid the chaos and thunder of battle, signal flags often went unseen, lost in the swirling clouds of gunsmoke. “There was never seen so vehement a fight, either side endeavouring, through a headstrong and deadly hatred, the other’s spoil and destruction. Although the musketeers and arquebusiers were in either fleet many in number, yet could they not be discerned or heard . . . by reason of the more violent and roaring shot of the greater ordnance, that followed so thick one upon another.”
Not a man on either side had ever witnessed such a ferocious cannonade: “Blaze of burning darts flying to and fro, leams of stars coruscant, streams and hails of fiery sparks, lightnings of wild fire on water and land. Flight and shoot of thunderbolts, all with such countenance, terror and vehemence that the heavens thundered, the waters surged, the earth shook.” The gunners’ view of the battle was confined to snatches of the action glimpsed through the gunports, but in any event they had no time to assess the effects of their work; each cannon was no sooner fired than it was being hauled back and swabbed ready for reloading. From the upper decks men could see the flashes and puffs of smoke from enemy gunports and the plumes of water as cannonballs fell short. Their ears told them where a successful shot had found its mark: the dull bass thud of a ball striking the hull, the rending crash as a shot ripped through the upperworks, the whipcrack of a severed stay, the sound like a dry cough as a shot punched a hole through a sail, and the rattle of small-shot ripping through canvas, like hail drumming on a tile roof. Running beneath it was the constant sound of human voices, t
he cadence of shouted orders relayed through the ship, grunts of effort, curses and imprecations, and groans of pain, all drowned in the boom of outgoing shots as the guns came to bear, each detonation sending a physical tremor right through the ship. A deaf man gripping the rail could have timed each broadside through the vibrations under his fingers.11
If the intensity of the gun battle was ferocious, the speed was pedestrian. Unless a strong breeze was blowing, ships reliant for their motive power on the wind or on men straining at the oars moved with agonizing slowness. Captains sparred for position with the deliberation of chess masters, and five or ten minutes might elapse before it was apparent who had gained an advantage. A commander might see one of his ships under attack less than a mile from his own position and set a course to go to its aid, but if he was downwind, it might take him half an hour or more to cover that small distance—if he was able to make ground towards it at all. If his ship was poor at sailing into the wind, as most of the Armada vessels were, he might even be compelled to drop an anchor or lie to with his sails furled or flapping loose, until the set of the wind and tide brought the other ships drifting to him.
Again and again the Spaniards tried to close, grapple and board their enemies, but once more the English ships were able to evade their lumbering opponents while still maintaining the ferocious assault with their guns. The Spanish soldiers, armoured and armed with musket, arquebus, pike, axe or sword, remained at their boarding stations throughout the battle, waiting for the close-quarter, kill-or-be-killed combat that never came.
As the battle raged, the sun rose higher in the sky and the land breeze began to abate and back southerly. As it swung first into the south-east, it set both fleets drifting slowly into Lyme Bay, while a separate, much smaller battle was taking place right in the lee of Portland Bill, a talon of rock extending into the Channel four miles beyond the coast. There Martin Frobisher had brought his ship to anchor, flanked by five armed merchantmen: the Merchant Royal, Centurion, Margaret and John, Mary Rose and Golden Lion. The Triumph was better placed than any other English vessel to resist boarding, for it had the high fore- and sterncastles of the Armada’s fighting ships, but seeing his four huge galleasses “being carried by the current almost within culverin shot, [Medina-Sidonia] sent them order that by oar and sail they should endeavour to close with the enemy.” In case Moncada should deem this too a prize unworthy of his talents, Medina-Sidonia’s messenger, Captain Gomez Perez, passed on a few further words to Moncada that “were not to his honour.” The galleasses duly rowed to the attack.
