The Spanish Armada

by Hutchinson, Robert

  In their habitual fashion, the English immediately began to pillage the galleass but were interrupted by French troops, sent out from Calais to assist the San Lorenzo. Fearing loss of their loot, they fought the rescuers and the brawl only ended when the English heard that, unless they immediately withdrew, the shore batteries would blow them and the stricken galleass into smithereens. Some cannon shots were fired to reinforce the message.

  Richard Tomson, lieutenant of the Margaret and John, was one of the English boarders:

  We continued a pretty skirmish with our small shot against theirs, they being ensconced within their ship and very high over us; we in our open pinnaces and far under them, having nothing to shroud and cover us; they being three hundred soldiers [sic], besides four hundred and fifty slaves.

  Within half an hour, it pleased God, by killing the captain with a musket shot, to give us victory above all hope or expectation, for the soldiers leaped overboard by heaps on the other side and fled [to] the shore, swimming and wading.

  Some escaped with being wet, some and that very many, were drowned . . .

  Hereupon we entered with much difficulty by reason of her height above us and possessed us of her by the space of an hour and a half . . . each man seeking his benefit of pillage until the flood came that we might haul her off . . . and bring her away.

  After the French rescue party arrived, ‘some of our rude men fell to spoiling [them], taking away their rings and jewels as from enemies. Whereupon [the French] going ashore and complaining, all the bulwarks and [gun] ports were bent against us and shot so vehemently that we received sundry shot very dangerously through us.’ The San Lorenzo was armed with many brass cannon, two hundred barrels of powder and ‘of all other things great provision and plenty but very little or no treasure that I can learn to be in her’, Tomson added ruefully.82

  About fifty English and a similar number of Spanish and slaves ‘who made a terrible outcry’ were killed in three hours of fighting. William Coxe, master of the Delight, was the first to board the galleass and the first to die.83

  As dawn broke on Monday 8 August, the Armada was scattered far out to sea. The blackened ribs of six fireships still smouldered near the entrance to Calais harbour.

  At last, Howard had his chance to destroy his enemy.

  – 8 –

  FLEEING FOR HOME

  Their force is wonderful great and strong and yet we pluck their feathers, little by little. I pray to God that forces on the land [are] strong enough to answer so puissant a force.

  Lord Admiral Howard to Sir Francis Walsingham,

  Ark Royal, 8 August 1588.1

  At dawn on Monday 8 August, Medina Sidonia’s San Martin was one mile (1.61 km) north of the English fleet, her sea anchors struggling to hold her position against the strong current in rapidly worsening seas. Howard, fatally distracted by the abortive seizure of the stricken San Lorenzo, unwittingly provided the captain-general with two hours of grace to collect his ships and rebuild his defences against the coming onslaught. Lying just astern of the Spanish flagship were the Portuguese galleons San Marcos, San Mateo, San Felipe and Recalde’s San Juan. Medina Sidonia sent pinnaces to collect the Armada, now scattered seven miles (11.85 km) beyond Gravelines, instructing his ships to revert, as soon as possible, to the horned lunula as a protective formation. The wind was blowing south-south-west and, anxious to avoid the treacherous shoals and sandbanks off Dunkirk, he set a northerly course and prepared to fight a desperate rearguard action to allow time for the Armada to regroup.

  Howard meanwhile brought his one-hundred-and-thirty-six-strong fleet, still anchored off the Calais cliffs, to battle stations. The previous day’s council of war had agreed that he would lead the next attack, followed by Drake’s squadron and then Seymour’s ships. This could be their last chance to defeat the Armada and it was decided that the English ships should close on their adversaries and open fire at point-blank range. Today, the wind and tide were in their favour.

  First light brought a rude shock for the Prince of Asculi, still huddled on board his felucca with a companion, Captain Marco:

  I found myself in the midst of the enemy fleet and the Armada too far away for us to reach it. Whilst I was in this position, I saw a small pinnace . . . [that] had been sent to carry orders through the Armada for the ships to put themselves in fighting trim. I therefore went on board . . . with the full intention of making for the [flagship] and we clapped on all sail with that object. Both wind and tide were against us and the enemy were engaged with our fleet so I was cut off and in the rear of both fleets.2

  In the event, it was Drake in Revenge with Thomas Fenner in Nonpareil who first joined battle at about six o’clock that morning, leading the four queen’s ships in his squadron, closely supported by Frobisher’s flotilla. Medina Sidonia probably had half a dozen warships gathered around San Martin and Drake held his fire until he came within one hundred yards (91.43 metres) of the enemy flagship, first bombarding her with his bow guns, then coming around to loose off a rippling salvo from his port battery, a tactic repeated by his ships, struggling in the now heavy seas. But the Armada could still bare its teeth: Revenge was hit by more than forty cannonballs3 during this short engagement and Drake led his squadron off to the north-east.

  Was he cravenly fleeing to safety? Had he departed on another chase for plunder and prizes? Perhaps he had turned away to attack enemy ships that were standing off the shoals, waiting to safely form up on their flagship in deeper water. His unexplained and premature departure from the main action incensed the always hot-tempered Sir Martin Frobisher, coming up in Triumph. Later, during a heated argument ashore in Harwich, Essex, he could not stifle an angry outburst about his vice-admiral’s conduct off Gravelines:

  Drake reports that no man has done any good service but he, but he shall well understand that others have done good service as he – and better too. He came bragging up at the first . . . and gave them his prow and his broadside and then kept his luff and was glad that he was gone again, like a cowardly knave or traitor – I rest doubtful but the one I will swear . . .

  He lies in his teeth. There are others that have done as good as he and better too.4

  Back in the action off the Flemish coast, Frobisher loosed off cannonade after cannonade at the San Martin, while other ships of his squadron fired as they cut across her stern and bows. As San Marcos joined the fray around the embattled flagship, Hawkins’ squadron, headed by his flagship Victory, swept into attack, followed by Marie Rose, Dreadnought and Swallow, which broke through to the middle of the gathering Spanish fleet. Forty Spanish soldiers had been killed in San Martin, their bodies piled up on the upper deck. A 50-pound (22.68 kg) shot had also holed her below the waterline, through the seven planks’ thickness of timber of her lower hull. The Armada’s chief purser, Pedro Calderón watched anxiously:

  So tremendous was the fire that over two hundred balls struck the sails and hull of the flagship on the starboard side, killing and wounding many men, disabling and dismounting three guns and destroying much rigging.

  The holes made in the hull between wind and water caused so great a leakage that two divers had as much as they could do to stop them up with tow5 and lead plates, working all day.6

  For the first time in this inconclusive campaign, the Spanish ships were suffering serious damage and the fight between the two fleets was becoming a bloodbath. San Felipe and San Mateo, which brought up the rear of the Armada, were engaged by up to seventeen English ships which were coming so close, according to Calderón, that the ‘muskets and harquebuses of the galleon were brought into service, killing a large number of men on the enemy’s ships’. The English fire shattered the San Felipe’s foremast, disabled its rudder and blew five of her starboard cannon off their carriages as well as killing 260 of its crew and soldiers. Although his upper deck had been smashed, the ship’s pumps broken, and his command ‘almost a wreck’, the San Felipe’s captain Don Francisco de Toledo, ordered the grappling
hooks to be readied and dared the nearest English ship7 to come to close quarters with him.

  They summoned him to surrender in fair fight and one Englishman, standing in the maintop with his sword and buckler8 called out: ‘Good soldiers that you are, surrender to the fair terms we offer you.’

  But the only answer that he got was a gunshot which brought him down in sight of everyone and the . . . muskets and harquebuses were [ordered] to be brought into action.

  The enemy thereupon retired, whilst our men shouted out to them that they were cowards and, with opprobrious words, reproached them for their want of spirit, calling them Lutheran hens and desiring them to return to the fight.

  The San Felipe was rescued by the socorro battle group of San Luis, San Mateo and the La Trinidad Valencera. San Mateo came under heavy fire from both Sir William Wynter’s Vanguard and Seymour’s Rainbow, which had closed on the enemy vessel ‘and an Englishman jumped on board but our men cut him to bits instantly’.9 Calderón’s ship, the transport hulk San Salvador, also endeavoured to help the San Felipe but paid a penalty for such gallantry.

  Her bows, side and half her poop being exposed for four hours to the enemy’s fire, during which time she received no aid. She had a number of men killed and wounded and her sails and rigging, so much damaged that she was obliged to change her mainsail. She leaked greatly through the shot holes and finally the Rata Santa María Encoronada came to her assistance.10

  The majority of these ships, Medina Sidonia explained afterwards, ‘were so much damaged as to be unable to offer further resistance, most of them not having a round of shot to fire’.11

  On board the San Marcos, Pedro Estrada had lost one of his comrades in the fierce enemy fire: ‘This day was slain Don Felipe de Córdoba with a bullet [roundshot] that struck off his head and splashed [out] his brains. [He was] the greatest friend . . . and twenty-four men that were with us trimming our foresail [also died].’12 The upper deck of Bertendona’s Ragazona in the Armada rearguard was running with blood from her dead and wounded and her main battery guns had been blown off their mountings. She bravely fought on, with musketeers firing from high up in her maintops or from the deck, using the heaps of casualties as protective cover.

  Skirmishing around the Spanish flagship continued for about two hours whilst the Armada ships were rounded up by Don Alonso de Leyva in the Rata. On board San Martin, Friar Bernardo de Gongora (a refugee from the earlier casualty Rosario), was bewildered and terrified by the thunder of battle:

  It was the greatest war and confusion that there has been in the world, in respect of the great amount of fire and smoke . . .

  There were many ships that went on fighting in eight cubits of water.13

  All this day, we had been holding ourselves with the bowline held against the weather so as not to run aground on the banks and thus our ships could not ply their artillery as they wished.

  Some of the people died in our ship but none of quality and it was a miracle the duke escaped.14

  His fellow friar, Padre La Torre, also on board the flagship, said the hail of shot was so great ‘it was cut to pieces below and aloft. In the end, I saw myself in such sore straits that it was a miracle of God we escaped, for since the ships were so scattered and could not help one another, the enemy’s galleons came together and charged us in such numbers that they gave us no time for breath.’15

  But by ten o’clock, the Armada ships were grouped in the familiar horned crescent formation, bearing north-north-east as Wynter, in Vanguard, observed:

  They went into a proportion of a half-moon. Their admiral and vice-admiral . . . went into the midst . . . and there went on each side, in the wings, their galleasses, in the whole to the number of sixteen in a wing.16

  Wynter attacked the starboard or easterly horn and his fire drove some Spanish ships into the main body, with four ‘entangling themselves one aboard the other’. The Levantine San Juan de Sicilia had lost half her crew and her gun ‘port holes were all full of blood’. Another ship, Pedro de Ugarte’s 665-ton María Juan, of the Biscayan squadron, was badly damaged by Captain Robert Crosse’s Hope and while in ‘speech of yielding unto the captain before they could agree on certain conditions’, she sank – so quickly that only one boat with eighty survivors on board was picked up by the San Martin. Others who clung desperately to the upper spars and rigging went down with her and, in all, 188 crew were lost.17 She became the first casualty of English cannon fire.

  The battle continued until six that afternoon with Howard leading the Bear, Bonaventure and the Lion to attack the centre of the rearguard in close-quarter fighting. Vanguard had fired five hundred roundshot from her demi-cannon, culverin and demi-culverin at close range and when Wynter (who had been injured by the recoil of one of his cannon) ‘was furthest off in discharging any of the pieces, I was not out of the shot of their harquebus and most times within speech one of another’. He was certain the ‘slaughter and hurt they received was very great’.18

  The weather now changed for the worse with a succession of fierce squalls and heavy rain blowing in from the west-north-west, reducing visibility dramatically. The English fleet broke off the action and kept their distance, shadowing the Armada as it limped north-eastwards. The crew of Santa Ana, Oquendo’s flagship, had to man the pumps constantly to prevent her sinking. The Castilian San Pedro was also very badly holed. The dead were heaved over the side and the wounded tended as emergency repairs were undertaken by the exhausted Armada crews. For the Spanish, there still remained the imminent danger of shipwreck on the shoals off the Flanders coast. Padre Geronimo reported that ‘Hardly a man slept that night. We went along all wondering when we should strike one of those [sand] banks.’19 He was busy hearing confessions and there were constant appeals to the Blessed Virgin Mary for their survival against now seemingly impossible odds.

  Howard signalled his fleet to re-form and to remain on the Armada’s weather quarter. Weary from battle, he wrote to Walsingham bemoaning London’s bureaucratic requests that he should supply estimates of how much powder and shot he needed. His lack of munitions was as acute as ever with some of the smaller English guns firing scrap metal such as broken plough shares as makeshift antipersonnel munitions. ‘I have received your letter wherein you desire a proportion of shot and powder to be . . . sent to you, which for reason of the uncertainty of the service, no man can do. Therefore I pray you to send with all speed as much as you can.’ He then reported on that day’s fighting:

  We have chased them in fight until this evening late and distressed them much but their fleet consists of mighty ships and great strength. Yet we doubt not, by God’s good assistance, to oppress them.20

  Drake was more ebullient, if not cheerful:

  God has given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward as I hope in God the Prince of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia shall not shake hands this few days. Whensoever they shall meet, I believe neither of them will greatly rejoice of this day’s service . . . [which] has much appalled the enemy and no doubt but [it has] encouraged our [fleet].21

  Fenner, in Nonpareil, self-righteously believed that God Himself had ‘mightily protected her majesty’s forces with the least losses that ever have been heard of, being within the compass of such great volleys of shot, both great and small. I verily believe there is not three score men lost.’ He felt assured that God ‘will defend his [own] from the raging enemy who goes about to beat down His word and devour His people’ and this would be ‘a just plague for their wickedness and idolatry’.22

  Hawkins told Walsingham more soberly:

  All that day we followed the Spaniards with a long and great fight wherein there was great valour shown generally by our company in this battle . . .

  So the wind began to grow westerly, a fresh gale, and the Spaniards put themselves somewhat to the north, where we follow and keep company with them.

  In this fight there was some hurt done among the Spaniards.

  Our ships, God be thanked, h
ave received little hurt.

  Now their fleet is here and very forcible, it must be waited upon with all our force, which is little enough.

  There should be an infinite quantity of powder and shot provided and continually sent aboard without which, great hazard may grow to our country for this is the greatest and strongest combination . . . that was ever gathered in Christendom . . .

  The men have been long unpaid and need relief. I pray your lordship that the money which should have gone to Plymouth may now be sent to Dover.23

  Hawkins was right to be cautious about the true import of the Battle of Gravelines. The English fleet might have severely mauled the Armada but it had not defeated it.

  As darkness fell, the worst damaged of the Armada ships began to fall behind the protective crescent. San Mateo was fast flooding with seawater, not just from shot holes but also because her seams had sprung open through the shocks of the repeated recoil of her guns.24 That evening she had to be beached on a sandbank between Ostend and Sluis. Dutch sailors from the hoys attached to Justin of Nassau’s blockading fleet attacked her, but her crew fought them off for two hours before her captain, Don Diego Pimentel, requested surrender terms. He and his five officers were taken prisoner but the others were callously thrown overboard to drown or were hanged later. Among them was William Browne, a ‘gentleman adventurer’ and brother of the Catholic Viscount Montague, and ‘another Englishman’ who were both killed on the ship.25 The local commissioner for the States of Zeeland reported that this second man was ‘very rich who left William as his heir . . . There were other Englishmen who usually messed with Pimentel. One was called Robert, another Raphael, once servant to the . . . mayor of London, Thomas Tostal, or some such name. We do not know their surnames.’26