The Confident Hope of a Miracle

by Neil Hanson

  The Zuniga remained in port throughout the winter and then attempted to sail home but, caught by yet another storm, lost her mast, boom and yards and sprang her timbers so badly that twelve guns and all the shot, anchors, cables, barrels of water and victuals were thrown overboard to keep her afloat. Half the oars, “which the convicts were ready enough to throw overboard,” were also jettisoned. The galleass limped back to Le Havre, where she again ran aground. After several more attempts, the Zuniga eventually reached Spain, but never put to sea again.

  Almost every other ship that sought shelter in Irish waters was wrecked. Many drowned as their ships sank and though some Irish were sympathetic to their traditional allies against the hated English, their sympathy often did not extend to rescuing those drowning in the sea. In many coastal areas—of England and Scotland as well as Ireland—there was a long-established belief that “the sea must have its due.” To save a man from drowning was to risk the sea claiming a member of your own family as its tribute instead. As a result, Irishmen sometimes stood impassively by as Spaniards weighed down with clothing, armour and the gold they carried drowned within sight and sometimes reach of the shore. Those who did manage to drag themselves ashore were far from safe. The Irish robbed and stripped them, and the English hunted them down and killed them.7

  The worst losses of all occurred in the Levant squadron, including ten Ragusan ships, creating “300 widows in Ragusa [modern Dubrovnik]” alone. De Leiva’s Rata Santa Maria Encoronada ran immovably aground in Tullaghan Bay, County Mayo, but almost all the crew were saved, together with most of their weapons, armour, plate and coin. De Leiva had the ship fired, took possession of a ruined hill fort and sent out scouts. They reported that inland lay a vast, featureless morass of peat bog and marsh, but that further up the coast on the far side of Blacksod Bay a hulk, the Duquesa, had anchored to make repairs. He then marched his men the twenty miles to the bay—a gruelling slog over rocky headlands and soft sand, and through rivers and quaking peat bogs—and they were taken on board the Duquesa. The hulk’s casks were filled with fresh, peaty water, the sweetest its starving, thirsting men had ever tasted, and it then put to sea unmolested, but grossly overloaded. The sea crossing to Spain was thought too long and dangerous and instead they attempted to use the prevailing winds to reach neutral Scotland, but, battered by westerly gales, the Duquesa was pushed back towards the shore and wrecked at Loughros Mor 100 miles to the north.

  Again the survivors struggled ashore, fortified a camp and sent out scouts. Eight days later came news that another Armada ship, the galleass Girona, had put in for repairs at Killibegs in Donegal Bay, twenty miles to the south. Once more de Leiva—lamed in the latest wreck and carried in a litter by relays of four soldiers—marched the surviving crews of the two ships there and went aboard. After a stay of almost three weeks, during which yet another wreck was stripped of its timbers to effect repairs to the Girona, the galleass set sail on 26 October, groaning under the weight of 1,300 men. De Leiva again hoped to reach Scotland but, as the creaking vessel crept north-eastwards, a storm wind began to blow from the north. The makeshift rudder of the galleass broke—the by now notorious weakness of the ships—and the oars were useless in the heavy seas. The crippled ship was driven south towards the Antrim coast and around midnight on 28 October she hit the reefs of the Giant’s Causeway. The Girona was torn apart in the boiling surf and almost all hands were lost. “Out of 1,300 men on board the galleass, only nine sailors were saved.” De Leiva and his retinue of young followers from almost every noble house in Spain were drowned. When the news of this disaster was communicated to Philip, he said that it meant more to him even than the loss of the Armada. For every noble who perished, scores of common soldiers and seamen also went to their deaths. Perhaps the most poignant memorial to them is the gold ring given to one of the ship’s company by a wife or lover and engraved with the message “I have no more to give you.”8

  Almost every part of the north and west coasts of Ireland claimed its share of the harvest of wrecks. The battle-scarred San Marcos, sheltering in the Shannon, caught fire or was put to the torch and burned down to the waterline before capsizing and sinking. Three ships—the Lavia, Juliana and Santa Maria de Vison—came to grief together on Streedagh Strand. They had sought shelter in the bay with its broad, sweeping beaches of fine white sand fringed by the Dartry Mountains, but it lay open to westerly gales and when a storm blew up the ships’ cables parted and they were pounded to pieces in the surf. “A great gale hit us broadside on, with the waves reaching the sky . . . Within the hour our three ships broke up completely with less than three hundred men surviving. Over a thousand drowned, among them many important people, captains, gentlemen and regular officers. Many were drowning in the ships, others, casting themselves into the water, sank to the bottom without returning to the surface; others on rafts and barrels, with gentlemen on pieces of timber; others cried out aloud in the ships, calling upon God; captains threw their jewelled chains and crown-pieces into the sea; the waves swept others away, washing them out of the ships . . . More than six hundred other corpses that the sea had cast up were left to be devoured by ravens and wolves with no one to give any of them burial.” The sea gave up even more of its dead over the following days and weeks. “I numbered in one strand of less than five miles in length, above 1,100 dead corpses of men which the sea had driven upon the shore.”

  Don Diego de Enriquez, “The Hunchback,” and three other nobles on the Lavia had themselves entombed beneath the deck of the ship’s boat along with their useless wealth, “more than 16,000 ducats in jewels and gold coins.” Sailors caulked the seams of the hatch and prepared to launch the boat, but over seventy crewmen then rushed it, seeking their own salvation. The grossly overloaded boat at once overturned. The crewmen drowned and the battered boat was washed up on the beach. The Irish peasants waiting on the beaches “were stripping any man who swam to shore,” but only when they broke up the boat the next day in search of salvageable timber and nails did they discover the bodies of the nobles, including Don Diego, who “expired in their hands,” and wealth beyond reckoning. More than one Connaught fortune was founded on Streedagh Strand that day.

  Two ships anchored outside Ard Bay, south-west of Carna in Galway, were said to have been lured onto the rocks by a signal fire lit either by the McDonagh family or Teigue na Buile (“The Furious”) O’Flaherty, who then plundered the ships and stripped the clothes and valuables from the dead bodies of the crew. Local legend claims that the sole survivor returned to Ireland years afterwards to wreak his revenge on the perpetrators. All along the coast, among the oyster-catchers, terns and gulls scavenging the tideline, were the inhabitants of every farm, village and crofter’s hut, scouring the beaches and the shallows for gold plate, coins, chains, rings and brooches, sacred objects, fine clothes, swords and daggers. Corpses were robbed where they lay and survivors who did manage to crawl ashore were stripped naked of their valuables and clothes on the beaches. Many of them remained alive for no more than days, hours or even minutes. Some were murdered, and many others died of shock, exposure and starvation, but even that was a more merciful death than the one meted out by the English soldiers and their Scots and Irish mercenaries hunting down the survivors.9

  Some thought the Irish were “more greedy of spoil than to harken after other things,” but the Deputy of Ireland, Sir William Fitzwilliam, had every reason to fear the sudden appearance off the coast of Spanish ships carrying troops and prominent Irish exiles. “The Irishry are grown very proud . . . and call themselves the Pope’s and King Philip’s men.” Savage English repression following the defeat of the Spanish and papal troops at Smerwick in November 1580, coupled with the effects of a terrible famine, had doused the flames of Irish rebellion in recent years, but Fitzwilliam feared that the landings could either be part of some new invasion attempt or would provoke a fresh Irish uprising. He reported a “diversity of rumours raised by the ill-affected to trouble and lead astray the min
ds of the people thereby to distemper the government . . . [by] those foreign designs . . . against this realm.” Rebel chieftains such as O’Doherty, O’Rourke and McSweeny McDoe—“a man of great power . . . and other neighbours of like disloyal minds . . . will join with them . . . great hurt will grow thereby.” His alarm communicated itself to Elizabeth, who issued orders to “the Lieutenants of counties, for putting men in readiness to march for Ireland within an hour’s warning.”

  Even if the Spanish soldiers were mere fugitives and survivors from the wreck of the Armada seeking food and water, enough were coming ashore to mount a serious challenge to the English garrison of this perennially rebellious territory. It was even conceivable that “Her Majesty [might] be dispossessed of Ireland.” “There are not 750 foot in bands in the whole realm . . . We look rather to be overrun by the Spaniards than otherwise.” It was a slight exaggeration. Some 670 horsemen and 1,250 foot soldiers were “furnished within the English Pale . . . against the Spaniards,” but even with mercenaries, Protestant settlers and Irish levies of dubious loyalty, Fitzwilliam could count on putting no more than 2,000 men in the field, and he never contemplated for a moment showing mercy to any survivors who came into his hands. “Such of the Spaniards as escaped the waves were cruelly butchered by order of the Lord Deputy.” His men were ordered to “apprehend and execute all Spaniards found, of what quality soever. Torture may be used.” Officers, seamen and soldiers who fell into English hands were slaughtered, cut down where they stood or hung like rotting fruit from the branches of every tree, “which so terrified the remainder that, though sick and half-famished, they chose sooner to trust to their shattered barks and the mercy of the waves, than to their more merciless enemies, in consequence of which multitudes of them perished.” 10

  Those governing the western provinces in Fitzwilliam’s name shared his grim determination. Sixty-four men, the only survivors of hundreds drowned in the wrecks of two hulks on the coast of Clare, were delivered to Boetius Clancy, the Sheriff of Clare, and at once hanged on the hill overlooking the town. Among the dead was Don Felipe de Cordoba, the son of Philip’s chamberlain, who would have fetched a rich price at ransom. A battered and waterlogged Spanish pinnace also ran aground in Tralee Bay. The twenty-four men of its crew were captured as soon as they rowed ashore. Sir Edward Denny, an English plantation owner in that remote territory, could see “no safe keeping for them” and all were summarily executed. According to local legend, his wife Lady Denny rode out with him and helped to carry out the task with particular relish.

  Another ship—an lang maol, the bare ship—with all its masts razed to deck level by gunfire and storms, ran aground in Broadhaven, County Mayo. There are no records of any survivors. El Gran Grin, the vice-flagship of the Biscayan squadron, carrying “50 pieces of brass, besides four great cannon,” was also wrecked on an island off the coast of Mayo, and though around 100 men reached shore, “whereof sixteen of the company of that ship landed with chains of gold about their necks,” most were slaughtered by Dowdarra Roe O’Malley. Edward Whyte, Clerk to the Council of Connaught, recorded the toll of ships along the Galway coast and the grim fate of survivors who reached land: “eighty were killed with his gallowglass [mercenary] axe by Melaghlin McCabb.” When news of his exploits was brought to London, a broadside was published celebrating “the valiant deeds of Mac-Cab an Irish man.” 11

  The Trinidad Valencera, commanded by Don Alonso de Luzon, “sprang a leak forward and for two days and nights they were at the pumps,” but the ship was driven ashore and wrecked on a reef in Kinnagoe Bay. Her complement numbered some 500 souls, “whereof many sick and weak, besides which 100 and upwards were drowned in coming to the shore, being common soldiers and mariners . . . They landed . . . as many of them as they could in a broken boat of their own, some swam to shore and the rest were landed in a boat of O’Doherty’s country [Drogheda], for the use of which they gave in money and apparel 200 ducats . . . He [de Luzon] and five more of the best of his company landed first, only with their rapiers in their hands, where they found four or five savage people—as he terms them—who bade them welcome and well used them until some twenty more wild men came to them, after which time they took away a bag of money containing 1000 reals of plate and a cloak of blue rash, richly laid with gold lace. They were about two days in landing all their men, and being landed, had very ill entertainment, finding no other relief of victual in the country than of certain garrans [horses] which they bought of poor men for their money, which garrans they killed and did eat, and some small quantity of butter that the common people brought also to sell . . . None were slain by the savage people.”

  De Luzon was leading the 400 or so survivors on a march along the coast, in hopes of sighting another Armada ship to rescue them, when they were intercepted by 200 well-armed English horsemen. After some preliminary skirmishing, de Luzon realized the hopelessness of his position and agreed to surrender in return for an assurance of fair treatment and safe conduct to Dublin, from where they could be ransomed and returned to Spain. “Their promise was not kept with them and the soldiers and savage people spoiled them of all they had.” Once disarmed, the Spanish officers were separated from their men, who were then slaughtered, some in a manner made notorious by the Army of Flanders. Stripped of their valuables and clothes, they were forced to run a gauntlet of English soldiers armed with swords, knives and clubs. Others were shot by arquebusiers or cut down by cavalry. Most were killed “with lance and bullet,” but a few managed to escape, though a claim that as many as 150, over a third of them, had fled seems implausible.

  They took refuge in the nearby castle of Duhort under the protection of Bishop Cornelius, “a most seditious papist and a man very likely to procure great aid to the Spaniards if he can,” and eventually escaped to Scotland, with the help of an Irish chieftain, Sorley Boy Macdonnell, from his stronghold of Dunluce Castle. The sons of many of the Irish lords and clan chieftains were held hostage in Dublin Castle as guarantors of their fathers’ conduct, and Macdonnell had prostrated himself before a portrait of Elizabeth in Dublin earlier that year, throwing down his sword and kissing Elizabeth’s feet in the painting as he vowed his allegiance and offering up his eldest son as hostage to his loyalty, but back in his own domain he continued to defy the English and aid the Spaniards.12

  Huge numbers of other Armada survivors perished, often at the hands of Sir Richard Bingham, the provincial governor of Connaught. A veteran soldier of fortune, Bingham had served with Don Juan of Austria at Cyprus and Lepanto, but had also fought alongside the Dutch rebels against the Army of Flanders, and commanded a ship, the Swiftsure, in the English counter-attack at Smerwick in 1580. Known as “the flail of Connaught,” Bingham issued a proclamation threatening “any man who had or kept Spaniards” with death, and revelled in the subsequent slaughter of Armada survivors. “By this may appear the great handiwork of Almighty God, who has drowned the remain of that mighty army, for the most part, on the coasts of this province . . . 700 Spaniards in Ulster were despatched . . . in 15 or 16 ships cast away on the coast of this province . . . there have perished at least 6,000 or 7,000 men, of which there have been put to the sword, first and last, by my brother George, and in Mayo, Thomond and Galway, about 700 or 800 or upwards . . . So as now—God be thanked—this province stands clear and rid of all these foreign enemies, save a silly [few] poor prisoners.” “Twelve ships that are known of and two or three more supposed to be sunk to the seaboard of the Out Isles. The men of these ships all perished save 1,100 or more who were put to the sword, amongst whom were officers and gentlemen of quality to the number of 50 . . . The Lord Deputy [ Fitzwilliam] sent me special direction to see them executed as the rest were, only reserving alive one Don Luis de Cordoba and his nephew till Your Majesty’s pleasure be known.”

  De Cordoba, who had received the Armada’s sacred standard from Medina-Sidonia’s own hand in Lisbon cathedral, was one of the few taken by the English to escape execution, and even the blood
thirsty Bingham made bold to complain of Fitzwilliam’s determination to eradicate every single survivor of the Armada wrecks. “My brother George had one Don Graveillo de Swasso and another gentleman by licence and some five or six Dutch boys and young men who, coming after the fury and heat of justice was past, by entreaty I spared them, in respect they were pressed into the fleet against their wills . . . But the Lord Deputy . . . caused both these Spaniards which my brother had to be executed . . . and the Dutchmen and boys, reserving none but Don Luis and his nephew.” Estimates of the number of dead varied but all witnesses were agreed on the scale of the tragedy that had overwhelmed the beaten Armada. “The miseries they sustain upon these coasts are to be pitied in any but in Spaniards, for there have been wrecked between Lough Foyle in Ulster, and the Dingle in Kerry, 16 sails, many of them great ships. Of those that came to the land by swimming, or were enforced thereto by famine, very near 3,000 . . . slain, besides about 2,000 drowned; so that it is supposed that there have perished of them in this land by sword and sea about 5,000 or 6,000.”13