A Column of Fire

by Ken Follett

  Two pinnaces now detached themselves from the screen and moved towards either end of the line of fireships. The crews, risking their lives, threw grappling irons onto the blazing vessels. As soon as they achieved a grip, each crew began to tow a fireship away. Even as he trembled for his own life, Rollo was awestruck by the courage and seamanship of those Spanish sailors. They headed for the open sea where the fireships could burn to ashes harmlessly.

  Six fireships remained. Two more pinnaces, repeating the pattern, approached the outermost of the fireships. With luck, Rollo thought, all six might be detached in the same way, two by two, and rendered ineffectual. Medina Sidonia’s tactic was working. Rollo’s spirits rose.

  Then he was shocked by a burst of cannon fire.

  There was certainly no one alive on board the fireships, but their guns seemed to be going off by magic. Was Satan there, loading the cannons as the flames danced around him, helping the heretics? Then Rollo realized that the weapons had been pre-loaded, and had gone off when the heat ignited the gunpowder.

  The result was carnage. Against the bright orange blaze of the fire he could see the black outlines of the men in the pinnaces jerk, like crazed devils cavorting in hell, as they were riddled with bullets. The cannons must have been loaded with shot or stones. The men appeared to be screaming, but nothing could be heard over the roar of the flames and the crash of the guns.

  The attempt to capture and divert the fireships collapsed as the crews fell, dead or wounded, to their decks and into the sea. The fireships, carried by the tide, came on relentlessly.

  At that point the Spanish had no choice but to flee.

  Aboard the San Martin, Medina Sidonia fired a signal gun giving the order to weigh anchors and sail away; but it was superfluous. On every ship that Rollo could see in the orange light, the men were swarming up the masts and setting the sails. In their haste many did not raise their anchors but simply cut the arm-thick ropes with hatchets and left the anchors on the sea bed.

  At first the San Martin moved with agonizing slowness. Like all the ships, it had been anchored head-on to the wind for stability; so first it had to be turned, a painstaking operation carried out with small sails. To Rollo it seemed inevitable that the galleon would catch fire before it could move away, and he got ready to jump into the water and try to swim to shore.

  Medina Sidonia calmly sent a pinnace around the fleet with orders for all ships to sail north and regroup, but Rollo was not sure many would obey. The presence among them of blazing fireships was so terrifying that most sailors could think of nothing but getting away.

  As they turned and the wind at last filled their sails, they had to concentrate on escaping without crashing into one another. As soon as they got clear, most ships fled as fast as wind and tide would carry them, regardless of direction.

  Then a fireship sailed dangerously close to the San Martin, and flying sparks set the foresails alight.

  Rollo looked down into the black water and hesitated to jump.

  But the ship was prepared to fight fires. On deck were barrels of seawater and stacks of buckets. A sailor seized a bucket and threw water up at the burning canvas. Rollo grabbed another bucket and did the same. Others joined them, and they quickly extinguished the flames.

  Then at last the galleon caught the wind and moved away from danger.

  It stopped after a mile. Rollo looked back over the stern. The English were doing nothing. Safely to windward of the flames, they could afford to watch. The armada was still in the grip of confusion and panic. Even though none of the Spanish ships had caught fire, the danger was so immediate that it was impossible for anyone to think of anything but saving himself.

  For the moment the San Martin was alone – and vulnerable. It was dark now, and no more could be done. But the ships had been saved. In the morning Medina Sidonia would face the difficult task of re-forming the armada. But it could be done. And the invasion could still go ahead.

  *

  AS DAWN BROKE over Calais, Barney Willard, on the deck of the Alice, saw that the fireships had failed. Their smouldering remains littered the Calais foreshore, but no other vessels had been burned. Only one wreck was visible, the San Lorenzo, drifting helplessly towards the cliffs.

  A mile or so to the north he could make out the silhouette of the Spanish flagship, the San Martin, and four other galleons. The rest of the stupendous fleet was out of sight. They had been scattered, and their formation lost, but they were intact. As Barney looked, the five galleons he could see swung east and picked up speed. Medina Sidonia was off to round up his strays. Once he had done that, he could return to Calais in strength and still make his rendezvous with the duke of Parma.

  And yet Barney felt the English now had a slim chance. The armada was vulnerable while its discipline was shattered and its ships were dispersed. They might be picked off in ones and twos.

  If at the same time they could be driven towards the Netherlands sandbanks, so much the better. Barney had often negotiated those sandbanks as he sailed into Antwerp, and Drake was equally familiar with them, but to most Spanish navigators they were uncharted hazards. There was an opportunity here – though not for long.

  To Barney’s profound satisfaction, Lord Howard reached the same conclusion.

  The Ark Royal fired a signal gun, and Drake’s Revenge weighed anchor and raised sails. Barney shouted orders to his crew, who rubbed the sleep from their eyes and went into action all at once, like a well-trained choir commencing a madrigal.

  The English navy set off in hot pursuit of the five galleons.

  Barney stood on deck, effortlessly keeping his balance in the heavy seas. The August weather was blustery, the wind constantly changing strength and direction, with intermittent driving rain and patchy visibility, as happened often in the Channel. Barney relished the feeling of racing across the water, the salty air in his lungs, cold rain cooling his face, and the prospect of plunder at the end of the day.

  The fast English ships gained relentlessly on the galleons, but the Spanish flight was not fruitless, for as they passed through the straits into the North Sea they picked up more of their scattered armada. Nevertheless, they remained outnumbered by the English, who drew ever closer.

  It was nine o’clock in the morning, and by Barney’s calculation they were about seven miles off the Netherlands town of Gravelines, when Medina Sidonia decided that further flight was pointless, and turned to face his enemy.

  Barney went down to the gun deck. His master gunner was a dark-skinned North African called Bill Coory. Barney had taught Bill everything he knew and now Bill was as good as Barney had ever been, perhaps better. Barney ordered Bill to prepare the gun crew of the Alice for a fight.

  He watched Drake’s Revenge bear down on the San Martin. The two ships were headed for a broadside pass like hundreds that had taken place in the last nine days with little effect. But this one was different. Barney became increasingly apprehensive as the Revenge took a course to bring it dangerously close to the Spanish ship. Drake had scented blood, or perhaps gold, and Barney feared for the life of England’s hero as he came within a hundred yards of his target. If Drake were killed in the first clash of the battle, it could demoralize the English totally.

  Both vessels fired their bow guns, small nuisance weapons that might disconcert and panic the enemy crew but could not cripple a ship. Then, as the two mighty vessels drew level, the advantage of the wind became apparent. The Spanish ship, downwind, heeled over so that its cannons, even at their lowest elevation, pointed up into the air. The English vessel, upwind, leaned towards its enemy, and at this close range its guns aimed at the deck and the exposed underbelly.

  They began to fire. The guns of the two ships made different noises. The Revenge shot in a measured tattoo, like a drumbeat, each cannon on the deck firing as it reached the optimum position with a discipline that gladdened the artilleryman’s heart in Barney. The San Martin’s sound was deeper but irregular, as if its gunners were saving ammu
nition.

  Both ships rose and fell on the waves like corks, but they were so close now that even in heavy seas their guns could hardly miss.

  The Revenge was struck by several huge balls. Because of the angle, the shots hit the rigging, but even that might cripple a ship if the masts were broken. The San Martin suffered a different kind of damage: some of Drake’s guns were firing a variety of unconventional ammunition – packets of small iron cubes called dice shot that shredded the flesh; pairs of cannonballs chained together that whirled through the rigging and brought down the yard-arms; even lethal shards of scrap metal that could destroy sails.

  Then the scene was obscured by the fog of gun smoke. Barney could hear the screams of maimed men between the bangs, and the taste of gunpowder was in his nose and mouth.

  The ships drew apart, firing their stern guns as they did so. As they emerged from the smoke Barney saw that Drake was not going to slow his pace by turning around to attack the San Martin again, but was making a beeline for the next nearest Spanish ship. Barney deduced with relief that the Revenge was not badly damaged.

  The second ship in the English line, the Nonpareil, pounced on the San Martin. Following Drake’s example, its commander drew breathtakingly close to the enemy vessel, though not close enough to permit the Spanish to grapple and board; and the guns thundered again. This time Barney thought the Spanish fired fewer balls, and he suspected their artillerymen were slow to reload.

  Barney had watched for long enough: it was time to join in. It was important for the Alice to be seen attacking Spanish ships, for that entitled Barney and his crew to a share of the spoils.

  The San Felipe was the next galleon in the Spanish line, and it was already surrounded by English ships that were pounding it mercilessly. Barney was reminded of a pack of hounds attacking a bear in the English people’s favourite entertainment. The ships were approaching so close that Barney saw one crazed Englishman jump across the gap to the deck of the San Felipe and immediately get cut to pieces by Spanish swords. He realized it was the only time in the past nine days that anyone had boarded an enemy ship – a measure of how the English had succeeded in preventing the Spanish from using their preferred tactics.

  As the Alice swept into the attack, following in the wake of a warship called the Antelope, Barney glanced to the horizon and saw, to his consternation, a new group of Spanish vessels appearing over the horizon and racing to join the battle. To come to the rescue of an outnumbered fleet took courage, but it seemed the Spaniards had plenty of that.

  Gritting his teeth, Barney yelled at his helmsman to approach within a hundred yards of the San Felipe.

  The soldiers on the galleon fired their muskets and arquebuses, and were near enough to score several hits among the men crowded on the deck of the Alice. Barney dropped to his knees and escaped unscathed, but half a dozen of his crew fell, bleeding onto the deck. Then Bill Coory started firing, and the guns of the Alice thundered. Small shot raked the deck of the galleon, mowing down sailors and soldiers, while larger cannonballs smashed into the timbers of the hull.

  The galleon replied with one large ball for the Alice’s eight smaller shots, and as it crashed into the stern, Barney felt the thud in the pit of his stomach. The ship’s carpenter, waiting on deck for exactly this moment, rushed below to try to repair the damage.

  Barney had been in battle before. He was not fearless – men without fear did not live long at sea – but he found that once the fighting started there was so much to do that he did not think about the danger until afterwards. He was possessed by high-energy excitement, yelling instructions at his crew, dashing from one side of the ship to the other for a better view, dropping down to the gun deck every few minutes to shout orders and encouragement to the sweating artillerymen. He coughed on gun smoke, slipped on spilled blood, and stumbled over the bodies of the dead and wounded.

  He looped the Alice around behind the Antelope and followed the larger ship on its second pass, firing the port guns this time. He cursed as a shot from the galleon struck his rear mast. A fraction of a second later he felt a sharp stinging pain in his scalp. He reached up and pulled a splinter of wood from his hair. He felt the warm wetness of blood, but it was only a trickle, and he realized he had escaped with a scratch.

  The mast did not fall and the carpenter hurried to brace it with reinforcing struts.

  When the Alice was clear of the sulphurous smoke, Barney noticed that the armada was slowly moving into its crescent formation. He was amazed that the commanders and crews could summon up such discipline as they took a hellish pounding. The Spanish ships were proving worryingly hard to sink, and now reinforcements were about to arrive.

  Barney looped the Alice around for another attacking run.

  *

  THE BATTLE RAGED all day, and by mid-afternoon Rollo was in despair.

  The San Martin had been hit hundreds of times. Three of the ship’s big guns had been dislodged from their mountings and rendered useless, but it had plenty more. The holed ship was being kept afloat by the divers, the bravest of the brave, who went into the sea with lead plates and hemp caulking to patch the hull while the gunfire raged. All around Rollo men lay dead or wounded, many calling on God or their favourite saint to release them from their agony. The air he breathed tasted of blood and gun smoke.

  The Maria Juan had been so terribly damaged that it could not stay afloat, and Rollo had watched in despair as the magnificent ship sank, slowly but hopelessly, into the grey waves of the cold North Sea and disappeared from sight forever. The San Mateo was close to the end. In the effort to keep her afloat the crew were throwing everything movable overboard: guns, gratings, broken timbers, and even the bodies of their dead comrades. The San Felipe was so badly damaged that it could not be steered, and it was drifting helplessly away from the battle and towards the sandbanks.

  It was not just that the Spanish were outnumbered. They were brave soldiers and skilled sailors, but they won their battles by ramming and boarding, and the English had figured out how to prevent them from doing that. Instead, they had been forced into a shooting battle, in which they were at a disadvantage. The English had developed a rapid-fire technique that the Spanish could not match. The larger Spanish guns were difficult to reload, sometimes requiring the gunners to hang from ropes outside the hull to insert the shot, and in the thick of a battle that was almost impossible.

  The result was disaster.

  As if to make defeat more certain, the wind had veered to the north, so there was no escape in that direction. To the east and south were only sandbanks, and the English were pressing them from the west. The Spanish were trapped. They were holding out bravely, but in time they would either sink under the English guns or run aground on the sandbanks.

  There was no hope.

  *

  AT FOUR O’CLOCK in the afternoon the weather changed.

  An unexpected squall blew up from the south-west. On the deck of Lord Howard’s Ark Royal, Ned Willard was buffeted by strong winds and soaked by rain. He could have put up with that cheerfully, but what bothered him was that the Spanish armada was now hidden behind a curtain of rain. The English fleet moved tentatively to the place where the Spanish ought to be, but they had gone.

  Surely they would not escape now?

  After half an hour the storm moved on as quickly as it had arrived and, in the abrupt afternoon sunshine, Ned saw to his dismay that the Spanish ships were now two miles north and moving fast.

  The Ark put on sail and gave chase, and the rest of the fleet followed, but it would take them time to catch up, and Ned realized there would be no more battle before night.

  Both fleets stayed close to the east coast of England.

  Night fell. Ned was exhausted and went to sleep, fully clothed, on his bunk. When dawn broke the next day he looked ahead to see that the Spanish were the same distance away, still racing north as fast as they could.

  Lord Howard was in his usual place on the poop deck, drinking w
eak beer. ‘What’s happening, my lord?’ Ned said politely. ‘We don’t seem to be catching up.’

  ‘We don’t need to,’ Howard said. ‘Look. They’re running away.’

  ‘Where will they go?’

  ‘Good question. As far as I can see, they’ll be forced around the northern tip of Scotland, then they’ll turn south through the Irish Sea – for which there are no charts, as you know.’

  Ned had not known that.

  ‘I’ve been with you for every hour of the last eleven days, yet I don’t understand how this has happened.’

  ‘The truth, Sir Ned, is that it’s very difficult to conquer an island. The invader is at a terrible disadvantage. He runs short of supplies, he is vulnerable as he tries to embark and disembark troops, and he loses his way on unfamiliar territory, or in unfamiliar seas. What we did, mainly, was to harry the enemy until the inherent difficulties overwhelmed him.’

  Ned nodded. ‘And Queen Elizabeth was right to spend money on her navy.’

  ‘True.’

  Ned looked across the water at the retreating Spanish armada. ‘So we’ve won, then,’ he said. He could hardly believe it. He knew he should jump up and down with joy, and he probably would when the news sank in, but for now he simply felt stunned.

  Howard smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ve won.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ned, ‘I’ll be damned.’

  27

  Pierre Aumande was awakened by his stepson, Alain. ‘There’s an emergency meeting of the Privy Council,’ Alain said. He seemed nervous, no doubt because he had to disturb the sleep of his snappish master.

  Pierre sat up and frowned. This meeting was a surprise, and he did not like surprises. How come he had not known about it in advance? What was the emergency? He scratched his arms, thinking, and flakes of dry skin fell on the embroidered bedspread. ‘What else do you know?’

  ‘We got a message from d’O,’ said Alain. The unusual name of François d’O belonged to King Henri III’s financial superintendent. ‘He wants you to make sure the duke of Guise attends.’