The Spanish Armada

by Hutchinson, Robert

  Parma was questioned by officials in Madrid about ‘the real truth as to the date when this army could have been ready to sail, if weather had permitted and the Armada had performed its task’. On 30 December, he wrote to Don Juan de Idiáquez from Brussels:

  I will reply frankly and freely to your question. Notwithstanding all that has been said or may be said by ignorant people or those who maliciously raise doubts where none should exist, I will say that on 7 August . . . I saw already embarked at Nieuport 16,000 foot soldiers and when I arrived in Dunkirk on Tuesday the eighth before dawn, the men who were to be shipped there had arrived and their embarkation was commenced.

  They would all have been on board with the stores . . . as everything was ready and the shipping was going on very rapidly if the embarkation had not been suspended in consequence of the intelligence received of the Armada.

  But for that, they might well have begun to get out of port that night and have joined those from Nieuport during [the] next day, so that together they could have fulfilled their task, as nothing necessary was lacking.

  It is true that, in consequence of the number of infantry having increased, there was little room for the cavalry, there being only twenty rafts for them, unless the Armada could aid us with accommodation for the rest.

  Even if this had been impossible, we should have tried to send the rest of the cavalry over in the other boats and no time would have been lost in the principal task and in taking a port for the Armada in the channel of London.

  Parma felt secure against any criticism of his conduct. He offered to supply certificates and sworn depositions by his commanders and local magistrates about the readiness of provisions and stores, adding: ‘You may truly believe that when I told [Medina Sidonia] that only three days would be required for the embarkation and the sailing, I did not speak lightly and I should have effected it in less time than I [predicted], with God’s help.’33

  There were other tactical causes for the Armada’s failure – some of them institutional or cultural. Despite Medina Sidonia’s late pleas to Parma for more small-calibre roundshot, ample stocks of all sizes of cannonballs have been discovered in the Armada wrecks so far excavated. The reason for this surfeit was their very slow, almost pedestrian, process of loading, aiming and firing the large-calibre guns on board each ship. The twenty-one cannon in the battery of the San Francisco fired just 242 rounds and her sister, Santa Catalina, 300 from her twenty-three guns, creating an average firing rate of three shots per gun per day. Santa Barbara managed a maximum of 8.37 rounds per gun during the Battle of Gravelines, but in earlier engagements she only achieved rates of between 1.1 and 2.35 rounds fired by each gun. None of this amounts to a deadly ship-smashing barrage. Of two hundred 10 lb (4.54 kg) cannonballs issued to the El Gran Grifón, ninety-seven have so far been recovered from her wreck site off Fair Isle, demonstrating just how few rounds were fired from her main armament.

  Cargo manifests, drawn up by diligent Spanish clerks, provide another strand of evidence that confirms the low firing rates achieved by the Armada. The Levantine Trinidad de Escala left Corunna with 10,808 lbs (4,902.4 kg) of gunpowder but fired only one hundred and four rounds in anger, expending 2,027 lbs (919.4 kg) of propellant, compared with the 2,527 lbs (1,100.74 kg) used for ceremonial salutes or distress signals.34

  In addition, poor casting by the gun-founders in Spain and Portugal, constantly chivvied for faster deliveries, resulted in some faulty guns being delivered to the ships; for example, one Italian saker recovered from the wreck of the Juliana off Streedagh Strand had suffered a catastrophic barrel explosion during firing, probably causing the loss of its crew.35

  Finally the Armada was armed with smaller calibre cannon, creating an overall effective firepower one-third less than Howard’s ships. The Spanish vessels had 138 guns of sixteen-pound (7.26 kg) calibre or above, compared with the English fleet’s 251.36 Hull for hull, the Spanish lacked punch in their broadsides compared with the queen’s ships.

  Unlike the English, whose guns were mounted on four-wheeled truckle carriages, the Spanish muzzle-loading cannon relied on awkward large-wheeled mountings with long trails, more suitable for operations on land than in the cramped conditions of a pitching ship’s deck. The size of these carriages required them to be pulled back and reloaded in a diagonal position, a difficult and inconvenient manoeuvre on a narrow, crowded gun deck. The only alternative would be to sponge out the cannon, reload, and ram down the charge and shot, while sitting precariously astride the barrel as it projected outboard, beyond the protective gun port in the side of the ship. As shot and musket bullets flew thick and fast in the height of battle, it would take a brave man to repeatedly undertake this task in such an exposed position.

  Furthermore, each gun had to be manhandled and served by six soldiers drawn from those detailed to fire muskets or harquebuses from the mast-tops or the main deck. Once the gun was ready to fire, they would return to their sniper duties, only to be recalled to reload their cannon. Inevitably this was a sluggish process and the consequential slow rate of fire was unlikely to sink, let alone seriously damage, an enemy ship. Medina Sidonia’s sailing orders laid down that guns should always be loaded; after that first shot was fired, many guns in the Armada probably only managed one further round whatever the heat of battle.37 Whether through inexperience or undisciplined panic, Spanish crews also tended to fire at extreme ranges, again reducing the efficacy of their barrage. However, the smaller, breech-loading guns, with an anti-personnel role, achieved much higher rates of fire because they were more easily served.

  Spanish cannonades therefore failed to inflict serious injury on the queen’s ships, as demonstrated by evidence that the cost of repairs to the queen’s ships before the fighting far exceeded government expenditure afterwards. A survey of the fleet by master shipwrights at Chatham in September 1588 reveals a preoccupation with decay – caused by the weather and natural wear and tear – rather than battle damage.

  Drake’s Revenge did need a new mainmast ‘being decayed and perished with shot’; Nonpareil’s ‘foremast, bowsprit with the main mizzen mast are all to be made new’ and Victory also required a new bowsprit and mizzen. Of the others, the hulls of the White Bear, Hope, Marie Rose, Dreadnought and Tiger, were all reported to be leaking, possibly caused by the shocks of their broadsides starting the caulked seams. Several ships’ boats were replaced; some of which may have been smashed by enemy fire while secured on the upper decks.38 More information is provided by Sir John Hawkins’ accounts for 1588 as navy treasurer. A total of just £3,500 was spent on structural repairs after the Armada campaign, out of a total of £92,000 for the year. Five hundred feet (152.4 metres) of four-inch (101.6 mm) planking and one thousand treenails used for hulls were required, suggesting only superficial damage from cannon shot. Most of the planking purchased was narrower and therefore only suitable for superstructures and internal decking, some of it to replace the decayed timbers identified by the shipwrights’ survey.39

  The better-trained English gunners, with a greater number of heavy cannon than the Spanish, were able to inflict grievous damage on their enemy through firing low and by exploiting their ships’ position to windward of the Armada to attack the lower area of the Spanish hulls as they heeled away. Had it not been for the English ships’ continuing and chronic shortage of gunpowder and ammunition, they would have destroyed more enemy ships.40

  Few heads rolled for this Spanish national disaster.

  The main casualties were the unpopular Armada naval adviser Diego Flores de Valdés, who was thrown in gaol in Burgos for eighteen months; several profiteering bakers, who were hanged for supplying biscuit bulked out with inedible lime; and the master of ordnance in Naples, who was found guilty of sending a boat ‘full of powder and other munitions to the Queen of England on the pretext of forwarding it to Spain’, and sentenced ‘to be torn asunder by four galleys’ rowing in opposite directions.41 There were also reports that ‘sundry officers of the vict
ualling department had been executed’.42 Medina Sidonia was harangued by angry youths in Valladolid where he stopped overnight on his way home. Outside his lodgings, they chanted unkind taunts of ‘Drake, Drake, Drake’ and dubbed him el duque de gallina – ‘the chicken duke’.43

  In Paris, Mendoza paid a bitter price for his earlier optimism about the Armada’s success. He scarcely dared show his face outside his ambassadorial residence as street urchins would mock him mercilessly as he rode along the city’s thoroughfares on his mule, crying out ‘Victoria! Victoria!’ – in a snide reference to his premature celebration of Medina Sidonia’s triumph.44 Hearing whispers that Philip was ‘little satisfied with his conduct and especially for the false reports which he scattered about’, Mendoza ‘asked leave to retire’ citing his blindness as a reason.45 The king, however, retained his diplomatic services in Paris until 1590 when Mendoza’s loss of sight became total.

  Abroad, Henri III praised ‘the valour, spirit and prudence of the queen of England, aided, as she was, by marvellous good fortune’. With a flustered Mendoza listening uncomfortably, the king added that what Elizabeth had achieved ‘would compare with the greatest feats of the most illustrious men of past times, for she had ventured, alone and unaided, to await the attack of so puissant a force as Spain, and to fight it’.46 Giovanni Mocenigo, Venetian ambassador in France, was brimful of admiration for English naval prowess: ‘[They] have shown that they are the skilled mariners which rumour reported them to be . . . for they have not lost a single ship.’ Unaware of Elizabeth’s havering and unwillingness to spend money on defence, Mocenigo reserved his special praise for England’s Gloriana:

  Nor has the queen . . . lost her presence of mind for a single moment, nor neglected aught that was necessary . . . Her acuteness in resolving on her action, her courage in carrying it out, show her high-spirited desire of glory and her resolve to save her country and herself.47

  In Lutheran Germany, woodcut caricatures were published in broadsheets, with this succinct description of the Armada’s tribulations: ‘She came. She Saw. She fled’ – a cutting, sarcastic nod in the direction of Julius Caesar’s immortal Veni, Vidi, Vici; ‘I came. I saw. I conquered.’48

  The Dutch rebels struck a number of commemorative medals to celebrate the defeat of the Armada. One, just over two inches (52 mm) in diameter, with an image of the terrestrial globe slipping from the hands of the Spanish king on the obverse,49 has an inscription that symbolises the Protestant belief that God was firmly on their side in this battle against popery. The words echo the thanksgiving sung by Moses and the Children of Israel after their escape across the Red Sea: ‘Flavit Jehovah et dissipate sunt’ or ‘God breathed [the wind] and they were scattered’.

  The great battle ensign of the San Mateo was hung as a war trophy in the choir of St Peter’s church, Leiden, for all to see and admire. Amid this euphoria, the States of Zeeland wrote to Elizabeth claiming that the blockade of Parma’s embarkation ports by Justin of Nassau’s ships was the ‘chief cause of the enemy’s failure. The defeat of the Armada was entirely due to [Parma’s] inability to succour and strengthen it with his forces.’50 One can imagine the queen’s scornful reaction.

  In England, twenty-four hours after the triumph of her Tilbury speech, Elizabeth ordered her army to be disbanded (despite her advisers’ grave misgivings), initially to six thousand men and then to 1,500 a week later.51 This was not merely a question of reducing the drain on her hard-pressed exchequer; after several years of famine, the levies were required at home to bring in the harvest. Five days later, the camp at Tilbury was dissolved.

  Many of Elizabeth’s bucolic would-be heroes went home unpaid and resorted to selling their weapons and armour to raise money. A proclamation promised miscreants that they would suffer her ‘heavy displeasure’ and face imprisonment if caught, or if they ‘most falsely and slanderously give out that they had received no pay’. Purchase of military equipment was declared illegal and anyone attempting to sell their armour was liable to be detained, delivered into the hands ‘of the nearest constable’ and imprisoned.52

  She also began to stand down her navy, discharging the hired ships and laying up others. The pitiful condition of the Spanish survivors was replicated among the 15,599 sailors in the English fleet. Howard told the queen on 31 August: ‘with great grief, I must write to you in what state I find your fleet. The infection is grown very great and in many ships is now very dangerous. Those that come in fresh are soonest infected – they sicken the one day and die the next.’ He reported to the Privy Council ‘that the most part of the fleet is grievously infected and [men] die daily, falling sick in the ships by numbers and that the ships of themselves be so infectious and corrupted as it is thought a very plague . . . Many of the ships have hardly men enough to weigh their anchors.’ Furthermore, those still well were greatly discontented because ‘after this so good service’ they hoped to receive all their pay, but this comes ‘scantly unto them’ breeding ‘a marvellous alteration amongst them’.53

  In Plymouth, of the Elizabeth Bonaventure’s original five hundred crew, two hundred had died. Sir Roger Townsend, of Elizabeth Jonas, had just one man living from the crew he had sailed with. Howard told Burghley: ‘It is a most pitiful sight to see, here at Margate, how the men, having no place to receive them, die in the streets.’ He had come ashore to help provide roofs over their heads: ‘the best I can get is barns and such outhouses. It would grieve any man’s heart to see them that have served so valiantly die so miserably.’54 The lord admiral sold some of his silver to provide money for his men and pleaded to ‘open the queen’s purse [for money] . . . to salve them’ as it ‘were too pitiful to have men starve after such a service. I know her majesty would not.’ After being so long at sea, many of the sailors had little clothing: ‘There [should] be a thousand pounds’ worth . . . of hose, doublets, shirts, shoes and such like sent down . . . or else in very short time, I look to see most of the mariners go naked.’55

  Howard’s hopes of charity from Elizabeth’s government were soon dashed. With the coldness of a lord treasurer constantly surrounded by urgent demands for money, Burghley responded that ‘by death, by discharging of sick men and such like, there may be spared something in the general pay’.56

  The men, like their Spanish counterparts, were dying from typhus and scurvy, but in those medically unenlightened times, Howard and his captains believed the cause was the sailors’ beer: ‘There was some great fault in the brewer [who] excused it by the want of hops.’ He added: ‘For my own part I know not which way to deal with the mariners to make them rest contented with sour beer, for nothing doth displease them more.’ Fresh beer was then brewed in Dover ‘as good as was brewed in London’.57

  A total of £80 was finally paid out to the wounded sailors from the exchequer, and if that seems parsimonious, consider the total of £5 that was shared among the hundred seamen who manned the fireships off Calais.58

  Howard resorted to issuing printed licences authorising his maimed sailors to beg for sustenance. One signed by him and addressed to vice-admirals, justices of the peace, sheriffs, bailiffs, constables and churchwardens, authorised William Browne ‘of London, gunner’ to beg in all churches for the space of one year. He had ‘lately served in her majesty’s service against the Spaniards in the barque [Hazard] of Faversham’ who ‘in that service was shot through his body and grievously wounded in sundry places and by means of the same maimed for ever’.59

  Far from the stench of death in the ports and the misery of the sick sailors, the English also struck a number of Armada victory medals, dated 1588, with arrogant words redolent of the achievement of a crushing triumph over their enemies. On the obverse of a one-inch (25 mm) diameter medal is the year, a family of four praying and the words: HOMO · PROPONIT · DEVS · DISPONIT – ‘Man proposes, God disposes’. On the obverse is the image of a sailing ship breaking up, with the inscription: + HISPANI · FVGIV’T · ET · PEREV’T · NEMINE · SEQVETE – ‘The Spaniard
s are put to flight and perish with no man in pursuit’.

  Another, designed by the Dutchman Gerard van Bijlaer, is a pointed attack on England’s enemies. The reverse shows a cabal of Sixtus V, a collection of Catholic bishops, Philip II of Spain, Henri III of France and the Duke of Guise seated in a room plotting against Elizabeth. They are blindfolded and the floor beneath them is studded with pointed spikes. The inscription reads: DVREM EST CONTRA STIMVLOS CALCITRARE or ‘It is hard to kick against the pricks’ taken from the Biblical Acts of the Apostles 9:5, ‘And [Saul, later St Paul] said: “Who art thou Lord?” And the Lord said: “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”’60 The medal’s reverse shows the Armada driven on to rocks with sailors being hurled into the sea with the legend, taken from Psalm 86, v.10: ‘T V DEVS MAGNVS ET MAGNA FACIS TV SOLVS DEVS’ – ‘Thou God art great and doest wondrous things; thou art God alone’.61

  The Privy Council went to St Paul’s Cathedral on 20 August to give thanks for the English victory and Dr Alexander Nowell, the dean of the cathedral, delivered a sermon of thanksgiving at the preaching cross in the churchyard. The queen was supposed to attend but at the last moment declined to go. Six days later a celebratory review of troops was held by Leicester, watched by Elizabeth and her general from the windows of a nearby house. The Genovese Marco Antonia Messia, who was spying for Spain, saw a parade by a company of sixty musketeers, the same number of harquebusiers and two hundred light horse, smartly dressed in orange uniforms with facings of white silk. The dragoons bore a proud ensign with the word ‘Hazard’62 embroidered upon it and the light cavalry carried one of red damask, ‘with a veil worked with gold on top, which, no doubt, was a lady’s favour’. There was jousting and a mock cavalry skirmish, pitting ‘one squadron against the other, lowering their swords as they approached, so as not to wound’.63