by Neil Hanson
The Queen did not deign to comment on the criticisms made of her own conduct of the war against Spain—assuming that any were bold or foolish enough to bring them to her notice—but she was apparently far from satisfied with the performance of the Grand Fleet that had saved her throne and her neck. Undoubtedly annoyed that so few prizes had been taken to fill the royal coffers, she demanded to know, among a lengthy list of other questions forwarded to Drake’s brother Richard: “What losses of men and ships have been on the Spanish side . . . and what powder, munition and any treasure have been taken from them? What causes are there why the Spanish navy has not been boarded by the Queen’s ships? And though some of the ships of Spain may be thought too huge to be boarded by the English, yet some of the Queen’s ships are thought very able to have boarded several of the meaner ships of the Spanish navy.” She also wrote to the Governor of Calais demanding that the galleass San Lorenzo, or at least its guns, be yielded to her, but that demand was met by silence.6
It was evident that neither the Queen nor her ministers had the slightest comprehension of the tactics that had brought her fleet victory—Philip of Spain’s fighting instructions to the Armada showed that he at least understood them—and that the Queen’s hunger for prize money to fill her treasury and jewels and gold to adorn her was at least the equal of that of her most avaricious admirals. Elizabeth wanted her realm defended but she would lay out the bare minimum to do so, and then she wanted a return on her investment, just as she did from her privateers. The carping criticisms of the way the Armada had been fought led Sir Walter Ralegh to publish a strong defence of Howard’s conduct of the campaign, albeit one that did not see the light of day until after Elizabeth’s death.
“Certainly he that will happily perform a fight at sea must be skilful in making choice of vessels to fight in; must believe that there is more belonging to a good man of war upon the waters than great daring; and must know that there is a great deal of difference between fighting loose or at large, and grappling,” Ralegh wrote. “The guns of a slow ship pierce as well, and make as great holes, as those in a swift. To clap ships together without considerations belongs rather to a madman than to a man of war; for by such an ignorant bravery was Peter Strozzi lost at the Azores when he fought against the Marquis of Santa Cruz. In like sort had the Lord Charles Howard, Admiral of England, been lost in the year 1588, if he had not been better advised than a great many malignant fools were, that found fault with his demeanour. The Spaniards had an army aboard them and he had none, they had more ships than he had and of higher building and charging; so that, had he entangled himself with those great and powerful vessels, he had greatly endangered this kingdom of England. For twenty men upon the defences are equal to an hundred that board and enter. Whereas then, contrariwise, the Spaniards had an hundred for twenty of ours, to defend themselves withal. But our admiral knew his advantage and held it, which had he not done, he had not been worthy to have held his head. Here to speak in general of sea-fights (for particulars are fitter for private hands than for the press) I say that a fleet of twenty ships, all good sailers and good ships, have the advantage on the open sea, of an hundred as good ships and of slower sailing.”7
Ralegh’s views were not universally accepted, and ill-informed critics, at the time of the Armada and right up to the present day, have berated the English fleet’s failure to sink more ships, and it is true that a mere handful sank as a direct result of English gunfire, but those critics have misunderstood the nature of the battle, the ships, the weapons and the men doing the fighting. At no period in naval history, not even in modern times, when the destructive power of naval weaponry is far in excess of anything conceivable in Tudor times, has it been common for ships to be sunk by gunfire alone, and wooden ships are naturally buoyant and very hard to sink, even when pierced by shot. A French ship of the Trafalgar era, captured by the Royal Navy and used first as a ship of the line and later as a training ship, was kept in use for another 140 years. In 1949, at the end of its long life, the rotting hulk was towed out to sea to be scuttled. Powerful charges of modern explosive were laid and detonated but the ship remained stubbornly afloat. In the end they “practically had to blow the bottom out of her before she went down.”
Even if they could have achieved it, the intention of the English was not to sink the Armada. Most of the English ships were privateers, and although subsequent generations have hailed their commanders as great military strategists, the Elizabethan seamen were “sea-wolves that live on the pillage of the world,” driven not by patriotism or altruism but by the profit motive. They were at war in defence of England, but not at the expense of their own financial interests, as is amply demonstrated by the behaviour of Sir Francis Drake and Lord Charles Howard when faced with a choice between the tactical interests of their fleet and the chance of a rich prize. Their business was to capture Spanish ships and loot their valuables, ordnance and cargoes, and even the Queen’s ships were avid seekers of prizes, as much for their ever-demanding royal mistress as for themselves.8
In such a context, sinkings were not a success but a failure, for a ship at the bottom of the sea could not be plundered. The aim was never to sink the enemy ships but to cripple them, holing the hull, pulverizing their upperworks, blasting away sails, rigging and spars and inflicting casualties to the point where a ship was unable to make headway and could be isolated and forced to surrender. Some ill luck with the shifting winds off Flanders, the heroism of the Spanish fighting men, who, with the exception of Pedro de Valdes and a few others, appeared to prefer honourable death to surrender to the English heretics, and, above all, the shortages of munitions combined to prevent this from happening. The English fleet was forced to cease fire on several occasions for want of powder and shot, and finally to abandon the pursuit of the Armada altogether at the very point where the battle damage it had sustained at last made it vulnerable to wholesale capture or destruction. Had Howard, Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher been able to secure even one more day’s powder and shot to complete the work begun at Gravelines, they would undoubtedly have reaped a rich harvest of Spanish ships and swollen still more the numbers wrecked on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland.
While arguments about the performance of the English fleet continued at Court, the Dutch advanced their claims for a share of the credit for the defeat of the Armada. “Although he [Parma] was ready and his soldiers embarked, he has been and now is so closely locked in by our ships . . . that notwithstanding all his force, we hope by the grace of God that he will be unable to come out . . . Our service in keeping and locking in the forces of the said prince has been the chief cause of the overthrow of the said Armada.” However, they also expressed the very real fear that, deprived of a victory in England, Parma would turn his venom against them. “Your Lordships will also see how sure and certain it is that the Duke of Parma, understanding of the ill success of his enterprise against England will, in his fury, turn the great power that he has brought together in Flanders against this country, to revenge himself . . . for the loss and shame his master and he have had at the sea. We beseech your Lordships to . . . continue your favours to this afflicted country in the great need that now is, assuring your Lordships that on our part, we shall not fail to do the uttermost of our ability for the safety of Her Majesty and for our own safety.”
Seymour was still maintaining his patrols in the Narrow Seas, despite being “famished for lack of victuals. Although the same have been drawn at length [made to last as long as possible] yet by increase of soldiers the same is all wasted.” “This long foul weather past” had also caused much damage to the masts and sails of his fleet. He sent for a new topmast from Sandwich and begged for fresh supplies and munitions. Sir William Wynter echoed his concerns. “It were very necessary that victuals were provided, [and] munitions, powder, shot, match, lead and canvas to make cartridges, which are greatly wasted.” Seymour ended with a statement that, while expressing a required continued willingness to serve the Queen i
n the present crisis, also revealed his absolute determination that it would be the last time he would do so. “Spare me not while I am abroad; for when God shall return me, I will be kin to the bear, I will be hauled to the stake before I come abroad again.”9
Perhaps hoping to hasten his own return to England, Seymour also relayed Justin of Nassau’s comment that Parma’s fleet at Dunkirk did not “exceed 30 sails, altogether unfurnished of mariners, which he could never procure; so in his opinion his flat-bottom boats should never have enterprised anything upon England” unless the Armada had already defeated the English fleet. But had even part of the Armada still been off Dunkirk to protect Parma’s forces from the Dutch flyboats and Seymour’s Narrow Seas squadron, they would have found few other English ships capable of opposing them and, once they had landed, very few troops to block their march on London. The beacon fires had summoned the Trained Bands of the South West and South to the defence of their coastlines, and each in turn had armed themselves and assembled at their mustering points, then dispersed again after watching the Armada and the pursuing English fleet disappear up the Channel to the east, but Elizabeth’s main land forces in the counties further east, where a Spanish invasion was most likely to occur, had been woefully unprepared.
Logistics, tactics and sheer common sense pointed to Parma choosing the shortest possible sea crossing for the cramped shallow-draught barges that would carry his invasion force. That indicated a landing in East Kent, as had indeed been decided. By 9 August the English forces should have known exactly where the landing—if it came—was to be made, for captured Spanish officers from the San Lorenzo had divulged that information. “He [Parma] would be in readiness upon Tuesday following and come and join with them with intent to come over and land their forces in England about Margate in Kent as since I have thoroughly learned of the Spaniards that were taken in the chief galleass that the King had, hard under the jetty head at Calais.”
Yet Elizabeth and her advisers chose to base one of her main defence forces on a hill overlooking the bleak foreshore at West Tilbury in Essex, separated by some fifty miles and the width of the Thames estuary from the “Cape of Margate,” and the planned “bridge of boats” that would have enabled them to cross from Tilbury to Gravesend was incomplete. The reason for the choice may lie in the information supplied on 7 June 1588 by an agent at the Spanish Court, stating that the “King’s resolution is that . . . the Armada enter the Thames, which heretofore was intended upon the Wight and Portsmouth.” The intelligence was partially correct—once the English fleet had been defeated, the Armada was indeed to enter the Thames, but only after landing the invasion force at Margate. Had the plan succeeded, a great part of the English troops assembled to repel them would have found themselves on the wrong bank of the river.10
Giambelli’s boom to bar the Thames, fitted with explosive devices designed to detonate if rammed by enemy ships, and constructed from 120 masts bound together with chains and tethered by heavy cables to twenty anchors ranging from 500 to 800 lbs, had been constructed at the stupendous cost of £2,000, but had broken under its own considerable weight on the day it was completed, 31 July. Even if successfully repaired, “if two or three ships made of purpose should come against it with a full tide and a good strong gale of wind, no doubt they would break all and pass through.” The only other defence of the Thames was mounted by William Borough in a decrepit galley, who was ordered to keep station at “Land’s End”—the mouth of the Medway—commanding the Thames approaches. He was to give warning of the sighting of Parma’s invasion fleet by firing his guns and was then to row upriver to Gravesend, resist with his guns as long as possible and then block the channel by scuttling the galley in midstream.
The mobilization of the land forces mirrored these half-measures. Orders were not issued until mid-March to arm 10,000 citizens of London. “Hardly 10,000 were found fit” and many received only bows and arrows. Nothing further was done until high summer, with the Armada already at sea, when attempts were made to form a reserve army near London, but only by stripping the surrounding counties of some of their forces. Militia commanders were instructed that part of their force was “to repair to the sea coast . . . to impeach the landing, some other part of the said forces to join with such numbers as shall be convenient to make head to the enemy after he shall be landed.” The remainder, the greater part, was to be sent away from its home area “to join with the Army that shall be appointed for the defence of Her Majesty’s person.”11
On 28 June the Queen wrote to Lord Cobham, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and Lieutenant of the County of Kent, ordering him, “as the foreign army is already put to sea, to summon the best sort of gentry within his lieutenancy,” and on 8 July she issued a general proclamation calling on the lord lieutenants of every county to prepare to defend their country, their lives and liberty and their true religion. Three days after the first sighting of the Armada, her troops were at last summoned to the defence of the realm. Yet even in the face of peril no great urgency was shown, and, reluctant as ever to bear any cost that others could be forced to meet, Elizabeth left many of the militias in their home areas where they would be fed and funded by their own counties, since the Crown took responsibility for them only when they actually joined the national forces. Had Medina-Sidonia chosen to sail up the French coast, it is conceivable that the call to summon the militia would have come too late, with the Armada already at the door.
When the Queen’s Lieutenant and Captain General, the Earl of Leicester, arrived at Tilbury, there was no camp there and no soldiers beyond his own small retinue. Work on fortifying the site did not even begin until 3 August. There was no food or beer, and no arrangements to obtain supplies, and even the royal warrant giving Leicester his commission to command his phantom troops had not been sent. The Essex men who were to join his forces were sent first to Brentwood, and finally appeared at Tilbury five days later, to Leicester’s impotent fury. “If it be five days to gather the very countrymen, what will it be and must be to look for those who are forty, fifty and sixty miles off ?”
By the time the Armada was off Dunkirk and there was a spring tide to give Parma a favourable crossing if he should venture out, 4,000 foot and a few hundred horsemen from Essex had arrived at Tilbury, together with another 1,000 foot soldiers from London, and enough equipment to arm them with at least some sort of weapon. “An estimate of the several sort of weapons of Her Majesty’s forces presently at the camp at West Tilbury” included “32 Targets, 1,070 Muskets, 861 Halberds, 2,917 Pikes, 1,581 Bows, and 4,169 Calivers.” But provisions remained in short supply and Leicester was still complaining that “I am here cook, cater and hunt” for his entire army. Some “brought not so much as one meal’s provision of victual with them, so that at their arrival here there was not a barrel of beer nor loaf of bread for them.” The shortage of beer was a potentially crucial issue; British soldiers and sailors had refused to fight in the past when supplies ran low. An expeditionary force of 7,000 soldiers sent to Spain by Henry VIII mutinied when they found that beer was unobtainable there, and an invasion of Scotland in 1542 was twice postponed because the beer ships had not arrived from London. When they finally did, they brought only enough to sustain a four-day campaign. Despite meeting no resistance from the Scots, the English troops retreated as soon as the beer ran out. The Scots mistook the cause of the retreat, launched a premature invasion and were then slaughtered on Solway Moss.12
On 5 August orders had to be issued forbidding any more troops to arrive at Tilbury unless they carried their own provisions with them. The next day a force of 4,000 men stationed near Dover, who had been neither paid nor provisioned, began to desert in huge numbers. Meanwhile, their commanders could not even agree on a defensive strategy. Sir John Norris argued for concentrating all the forces at Canterbury, as defensible as any town in the South East, to “stay the enemy from speedy passage to London or the heart of the realm.” But the local commander, Sir Thomas Scott, preferred to dr
aw up all his forces along the Downs, within two miles of the shore in order to make “a show” within the sight of the Armada, and was in favour of scattering contingents right along the Kent coast, so as to be able to offer at least token resistance wherever a landing was made. How Parma would have relished such a prospect. It was the traditional defensive strategy, employed ever since Julius Caesar’s invading armies had been forced to fight their way ashore through the surf, but it was dismissed by Sir Thomas Wiltord, who recalled how “upon the firing of the beacons . . . the country people forthwith ran down to the seaside, some with clubs, some with pikes, staves and pitchforks . . . so inflamed with heat and fury as they would kill and slay all before they came near them, but if men might without danger see . . . how a few orderly soldiers would chase and pursue great numbers of the furious, inflamed, savage flock and herd, they would have second thoughts.”
The influence of seasoned commanders such as Norris eventually persuaded the Privy Council to concentrate such forces as were available at inland mustering points from which they could march en masse to defend key areas, particularly the great ports such as Plymouth and Portsmouth. Whether such crudely trained militia, stiffened by veterans from the Netherlands campaigns—many of whom had already deserted and taken refuge in the Cinque Ports—would have proved much obstacle to the Spanish invasion force was another matter, though Parma certainly did not underestimate the fighting qualities of English troops. “If I set foot on shore it will be necessary for us to fight battle after battle . . . my force will thus be so much reduced as to be quite inadequate to cope with the great multitude of enemies.” However, his comments about English strength should be seen in the light of his attempts to persuade Philip to defer or abandon the Enterprise of England until The Netherlands had been reconquered.13
