The Spanish Armadas

by Winston Graham

  It took the English fleet several days to reach home, for they ran into a westerly gale, which scattered them along the coast from Harwich and Margate to the Downs. Although casualties had been light – though not so light as was claimed – sickness had spread throughout the ships, and they arrived in their various ports exhausted and undermanned. Drake thought that possibly a fourth choice existed and that the Spaniards on the wings of the westerly gale might have made for Denmark. ‘If they should go to the King of Denmark and there have his friendship and help for all their reliefs, none can better help their wants in all these parts than he; for that he is a prince of great shipping.’ Drake perhaps more than anyone had seen at close quarters the devastation wrought in the Spanish ships, and he thought it unlikely that Medina Sidonia would dare to attempt the long northern route home without first trying to recover and refit.

  Elizabeth’s first letter to Howard, sent to greet him as soon as he reached port, asked as many detailed questions as any modern civil service could devise – most of them unanswerable – about the condition and numbers of her fleet, the amount of powder and shot used and the casualties suffered. It also inquired pointedly what Spanish ships and prisoners had been taken, also what treasure, and why the Spanish ships had not been boarded by the English – at least if the largest galleons were too big, why not some of the smaller ones?

  It is plain from the wording of this letter that neither the Queen nor any of her ministers had even begun to understand the strategy adopted by her fleet in this running battle. The last two great naval battles before 1588, those at Lepanto and Terceira, had both seen a grappling of ship with ship and a fight to the finish between boarding parties; and the Queen and her council had clearly expected the same now. (Oddly, Philip had appreciated the probable English tactics better, although he had assumed they could be overcome.)

  Ralegh in his History of the World, written twenty years later, does not mince his words on this point:

  He that will happily perform a fight at sea must believe that there is more belonging to a good man of war upon the waters than great daring, and must know there is a great deal of difference between fighting loose and grappling. To clap ships together without consideration belongs rather to a madman than to a ship 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 who found fault with his behaviour.

  If one were seeking an example to illustrate ‘Gloriana’s’meanness, one would look no further than this letter to the battle-worn yet victorious Howard. But in her defence it could be argued that throughout nearly two decades she had grown accustomed to her captains returning with prizes from their private wars with Spain and she had shared in the spoils. It is not perhaps to be wondered at that, not understanding the strategy of the battle, she should expect greater prizes from a national war in which she had sunk so much of her scanty revenues, and one in which clearly there were enormous pickings to be had both in bullion and in ransomable grandees. (Nor, in this climate of opinion, is it altogether surprising that Drake broke line to capture the Rosario and Howard to try to take the San Lorenzo.)

  For Elizabeth the safety of her realm was paramount; but she did not see at first why her commanders had only been able to ensure this by adopting a policy without profit to her.

  In the meantime, though Elizabeth was anxious to take the risk of disbanding her fleet in order to save the expense of keeping it together, her council and her admirals argued hotly against it. While the Armada was in being they could not relax. So the battle-worn ships lay in the little ports, and men died on them from typhus at the rate of a hundred a day. ‘ They sicken one day and die the next,’ Howard told the Queen.

  The hideous conditions in which men lived aboard made the spread of disease inevitable if the voyage or the time were long. Because of the complete lack of sanitary arrangements it was practically impossible to keep food and cooking uncontaminated; and when in port this was made worse because so-called fresh water, often itself bad in cask, was kept solely for drinking, and all other water used was drawn up from the harbour, which was filthy with excrement and even corpses.

  Disease now spread so sharply that it converted the admirals half way to Elizabeth’s line of thought, and it was decided to disband the auxiliaries and split the main fleet into two divisions, 1 one in the Downs and the other at Margate. Rumour flew throughout the Continent that Drake was captured, that Medina Sidonia was in London, that the Queen had been dethroned. Rumour in England told that the Armada had landed in Ireland, in Scotland, or was returning, miraculously refreshed, down the English coast to challenge Howard again.

  Then towards the end of August definite news filtered through that Parma at least had accepted defeat. He had ordered his men to return to Bruges, the victuals on board his fleet of barges and fly-boats to be unshipped, and the sails to be taken from the yards. Shortly following this, an English pinnace commanded by a man called Anthony Potts reported having sighted the great Armada sailing westward of the Orkney Islands. All immediate danger did at last seem to be truly over.

  So the Queen had her way, and most of the fleet was disbanded, with the result that the seaport towns of the south-east were swamped with sick and disabled and starving men begging for food and shelter. West Country ships were packed off home, unpaid and half manned, with sick and dying crews and one day’s supply of victuals aboard.

  Howard was absolutely furious. ‘It is a most pitiful sight to see,

  1 The Downs is that roadstead off Deal and between the North and South Foreland which is protected from bad weather on two sides by the curve of the coast and from the east by the Goodwin Sands.

  here at Margate, how the men, having no place to receive them into here, die in the streets. I am driven myself, of force, to come a-land, to see them bestowed in some lodging; and the best I can get is barns and outhouses. It would grieve any man’s heart to see them that have served so valiantly to die so miserably.’ He paid some of the seamen out of his own pocket. Greatly daring, he paid more of them out of the treasure found aboard de Valde’s Rosario. He pawned his own plate and spent his last guinea to keep the dying sailors alive, while now, all over the land, the victory, seen at last as a victory, was being celebrated with bonfires and processions and the ring of bells.

  Elizabeth has been much criticized for this disgraceful neglect of the men who had saved England; and, although in actual fact it was nothing directly to do with her, the payment being sanctioned by the Council and issued at the order of the Lord Treasurer, one cannot but be aware that a sharp intervention by her would have made all the difference. Her care for her homecoming sailors was so much less generous than Philip’s.

  Yet such was the scarcity of money at this time that she like Howard might have had to pawn her plate to pay them. Philip had nearly bankrupted himself to launch the Armada; Elizabeth with all her cheeseparing had come near to bankrupting England to defeat it. Philip had a wide empire to draw on for his revenue; Elizabeth had much smaller resources and she had no private fortune. She could not compel her people to pay their taxes – at least, not the rich ones – it was done on a semi-voluntary basis. A few years later Francis Bacon was to write: ‘ He that shall look into other countries and consider the taxes and tallages and impositions and assizes and the like that are everywhere in use, will find that the Englishman is most master of his own valuation and the least bitten in purse of any nation in Europe.’ In fact in 1588 by exceptional methods which could hardly be repeated Elizabeth had been able to raise her revenue for the year to £392,000. Her expenses in the Netherlands alone that year amounted to £120,000 and the cost of the Navy was £153,000. This left her about £120,000 for all other calls on her purse: the court, the army, the Yeomen of the Guard, the royal residences, the mews with its three hundred horses and
one hundred and thirty grooms, the ambassadors, Walsingham’s spies, subsidies, rewards for faithful service, the hundreds of incidental expenses falling upon even the most careful monarch.

  It was of course not nearly enough. But during the pre-war years when the risk of war was monthly growing, the Queen and Burghley had adopted a policy of frugality and retrenchment; the repair of the royal palaces was postponed, players and musicians at the court were dispensed with, the royal progresses through the land abandoned or curtailed, every detail of expenditure watched, so that by 1588 Elizabeth had built up a reserve fortune of about £300,000. This too went, and by the end of her forty-five years on the throne she had been compelled to sell nearly £900,000 worth of Crown lands to pay her way. Over all, her reign does not look like the reign of a mean woman but of a wise one who knew how to husband her resources and not oppress her subjects.

  So while responsibility lies on her for the unnecessary suffering of so many good men – immensely more died than were killed by the Spanish – it is a responsibility which everyone in the Council must share.

  In August there had been the great procession of the Queen to Tilbury with her review of the troops and her marvellous speech to them. There has probably never been another monarch with such a command of words, and few commoners: one thinks of Ralegh and Lincoln and Churchill. In November came the service at St Paul’s. It was another magnificent occasion; but whereas Tilbury had been a promenade of defiance, a splendid appearance before her people in their hour of greatest peril, this procession was before a victorious people who were joining with her in thanksgiving.

  She drove from Somerset House to the City in a chariot drawn by two white horses. Above the chariot was a canopy topped by an imperial crown, and a gold lion and dragon flanked the coach. With her were the Privy Council, most of her notable lords and the judges of the realm, the admirals who had won the victory, and heralds and trumpeters, all on horseback. The Earl of Essex, Master of the Horse, rode directly behind her, and he was followed by all the Queen’s ladies of honour. The streets were gay with blue streamers, and at the gate of the Temple the Lord Mayor and aldermen in scarlet robes were waiting to greet her and hand her the sceptre. Then with the City Livery Companies added to the procession she was drawn to St Paul’s, where at the great west door she knelt a time in prayer on the steps. Dr Pierce, Bishop of Salisbury, preached the sermon, and afterwards she dined in the bishop’s palace, and then returned in the falling November dusk in a torchlight procession to Somerset House. She was in truth Gloriana to everyone who saw her at that time. It was thirty years since her accession, and this might have been her jubilee.

  Earlier in the month she had with her usual aplomb and versatility composed a poem for the occasion, and this was sung at St Paul’s during the service of thanksgiving.

  Look and bow down thine ear, oh Lord,

  From thy bright sphere behold and see

  Thy handmaid and thy handiwork;

  Amongst thy priests offering to thee

  Zeal for incense reaching the skies

  My self and sceptre sacrifice.

  My soul ascend to holy place,

  Ascribe Him strength and sing Him praise

  For he refraineth Prince’s spirits.

  And hath done wonders in my days.

  He made the winds and waters rise

  To scatter all mine enemies.

  This Joseph’s lord and Israel’s god,

  The fiery pillar and day’s cloud,

  That saved his saints from wicked men

  And drenched the honour of the proud.

  And hath preserved in tender love

  The spirit of his Turtle dove.

  Before His Turtle Dove could quite relax there had been one more alarm for the English. The Armada had disappeared into the northern seas, no one knew whither. No one at that time could safely calculate that it would return home without a further attempt to justify its coming out. After it had been sighted off the Orkney Islands there was clearly little risk to the Channel ports. But England has a long and vulnerable seaboard. And there was still Scotland with its dissident Catholics. And there was still Ireland, passionately Catholic and already in semi-revolt.

  When therefore the news first reached England that great numbers of the enemy fleet were off Ireland, it was thought that the Spanish were about to land their troops there and begin a large-scale invasion. Twenty, forty, sixty ships, many of them still crammed with trained soldiers: it was a likely enough event. Only after a few days, as more messages came through, did it become clear that these were ships in distress seeking only succour. Some of the ships were already wrecked among the treacherous rocks off the Dingle and Donegal coasts. Some came in seeking food and water. Some were in a sinking condition and were just making landfall in time.

  It is clear that many of these ships had suffered from the rough weather, but it is not clear how rough the weather really was. What is evident is that crews and ships together had been so maltreated at Gravelines that they were in a condition to succumb to the first gale they met. Medina Sidonia’s orders, given to the fleet when north-east of Scotland and later taken from one of the wrecked vessels, ran:

  The course that is first to be held is to the north-north-east, until you be found under 61 degrees-and-a-half; and then to take heed lest you fall upon the Island of Ireland, for fear of the harm that may happen unto you upon that coast. Then patting from those Islands, and doubling the Cape in 61 degrees-and-a-half, you shall run west-south-west until you be found under 58 degrees; and from thence to the south-west to the height of 53 degrees; and then to the south-south-west, making to the Cape Finisterre, and so to procure your entrance into the Groyne or to Ferol, or to any other port of the coast of Galicia.

  The last direction is a mistake: south-south-west should have been southeast; but any ships which followed the instructions that far were not likely to fall into error.

  In the cold northern waters between the Faroes and Ireland, some two hundred and fifty miles north of the northernmost tip of Scotland, the limping damaged fleet was finally split by storm and it never came together again. Medina Sidonia’s San Martin, which, whatever the Duke’s detractors may say, had been in the thick of every fight since the beginning and the special target of the English whenever they could attack her, kept to the prescribed course, and those who stayed with her and followed her reached Spain safely again, albeit in however terrible a condition. Perhaps she was the strongest-built ship in the whole Armada; we do not know. (In fact, about the 4th September, Diego Flores transferred from the San Martin to another galleon, the San Juan de Avendano, and took Medina Sidonia with him: this because of the typhus and dysentery raging aboard the San Martin.) But at least they all arrived home together and apparently only had two days of storm, although the weather was constantly rough and blustery, with south-west winds prevailing.

  Whatever the cause, it is hardly Spanish seamanship that was at fault, though often their charts were inaccurate, and of course nine out of ten were sailing in waters they had never been in before. Some sixty-odd ships splintered from the main body of the fleet and drifted or were blown towards that island against which the Duke had expressly warned them. They came in ‘like flocks of starlings’, were wrecked or fought for their lives or were slaughtered as they struggled ashore. Most of them were killed by – or on the orders of – the English.

  The arrival of floods of Spanish soldiers – in whatever straits – upon the shores of this conquered but rebellious island threw the English on the spot into an understandable panic. They had fewer than two thousand troops in the whole of Ireland at the time, many of them half-trained, and with ancient muskets and rusty cannon, and gun carriages ‘rotting for want of men to maintain them’ and the universal and inevitable shortage of powder and shot. This force had to keep the peace in a country thirty-two thousand square miles in area, a country full of mountains, wild moors, lakes and treacherous bogs, and populated by about a million temperamen
tal and quarrelsome Gaels who hated the Anglo-Saxons and all they stood for.

  The Lord Deputy Fitz William, writing on the 22nd September, paints an even gloomier picture: ‘There are not 750 foot in bands in the whole realm. We cannot impress the few soldiers for the shoeing of their horses. We feel rather to be overrun by the Spaniards than otherwise.’

  England was at war with Spain. These were invaders, in whatever guise they came. If the position had been reversed English survivors would certainly have fared no better at the hands of the Spanish. What does stain the record is that the English on several occasions accepted the surrender of the Spanish survivors on fair terms, and then proceeded to hang them just the same. Of course the Spanish so far outnumbered their captors and there were so few stockades or keeps in which they could be safely imprisoned that their being merely alive was a menace to the security of the country. So at least argued – however inexcusably – Fitz William, Bingham and the rest; though Christopher Calleil was a noted and humane exception.

  It was fashionable for many years to put all the blame for the slaughter on the wild Irish who were said to have killed and robbed the Spanish as they came ashore. Now it is as fashionable to put all the blame on the English, where in truth most of it rests. But the accounts of the few Spanish survivors who have left their stories do not leave the Irish blameless – though essentially the natives mostly wanted Spanish clothes and gold and ornaments more than they wanted Spanish blood. All through these accounts the Spaniards refer to the native Irish not as potential allies but as ‘the savages’, much as a shipwrecked sailor would write of being cast away on the coast of Borneo. The Calendar of State Papers (Ireland) records the claim of one Melaghlin M’Cabb who stated that he killed eighty Spaniards with his galloglass axe.