by Neil Hanson
Drake wrote to Walsingham the next morning as his flagship, the Elizabeth Bonaventure, was about to make sail. “I thank God I find no man but as all members of one body to stand for our gracious Queen and our country against anti-Christ and his members . . . If your Honour did now see the fleet under sail and knew with what resolution men’s minds do enter into this action as your Honour could rejoice to see them, so you would judge a small force would not divide them.” Even as he sailed, Drake showed his fear that those who advocated peace with Spain, whether through altruism, financial prudence or more sinister motives, might yet influence the Queen. “It is a hard measure to be reported ill by those which will either keep their finger out of the fire, or too well affect to the alteration of our government, which I hope in God that they shall never live to see . . . The wind commands me away, our ships are under sail. God grant we may so live in His fear that the enemy may have course to say that God fights for Her Majesty as well abroad as at home. Haste.”3
He was right to fear a change of heart by the Queen for, following the receipt of yet more disinformation from Stafford in Paris and fresh peace overtures from Parma in The Netherlands, she had already sent a courier riding hard for Plymouth with new instructions. In his previous orders Drake had been “particularly directed to distress the ships within the havens themselves.” The one unambiguous comment in the new message was a reminder that the Queen still expected her full share of any prizes, but Drake was also ordered to “forbear to enter forcibly into any of the said King’s [Philip’s] ports or havens, or to offer violence to any of his towns or shipping within harbour, or to do any act of hostility upon the land. And yet, not withstanding this direction, Her pleasure is that both you and such of Her subjects that serve there under you, should do your best endeavour (avoiding as much as may lie in you the effusion of Christian blood) to get into your possession such shipping of the said King or his subjects as you shall find at sea.”
Elizabeth wanted Spanish prizes, Spanish silver and gold, and the Armada hampered and damaged, but she also wanted to protest her innocence to Philip, just as she had done over the execution of Mary. Burghley was able to swear on his honour to Parma’s representative, de Looe, that the Queen had forbidden Drake to carry out any warlike act against the King of Spain—“So unwitting, yea unwilling to Her Majesty were those actions committed by Sir Francis Drake, for the which Her Majesty is as yet greatly offended with him”—and Walsingham could write to Stafford in Paris that Elizabeth had forbidden Drake even to enter any Spanish harbour, but there was no real hindrance on him. The pinnace bearing Elizabeth’s new orders did not leave Plymouth until nine days after Drake’s squadron had set course for Spain. A storm blew it back into the Channel and the captain, a distant relative of Drake, then abandoned all attempts to overhaul him, contenting himself instead with taking a Portuguese merchant ship laden with £5,000 worth of sugar and Brazilian hardwood as a prize. Meanwhile Drake was free to follow his instincts and his inclinations and make whatever attacks he chose.4
His squadron had been scattered by a storm off Finisterre but reassembled with the loss of only one pinnace. It claimed several prizes, including a Portuguese caravel. “Two ships of Middleborough” [Middleburg in The Netherlands] were intercepted off the Rock of Lisbon and their captains reported a great number of ships at Cadiz, preparing to join the Armada. By Wednesday, 29 April, Drake’s ships had rounded Cape St. Vincent and, with a south-westerly driving them on, were racing past the coastal salt marshes towards the long, rocky spit of land screening the great harbour of Cadiz. English naval standing orders stated that an admiral could not “take in hand any exploit to land or enter into any harbour of the enemy, but he shall call a council and make his captains privy to his device,” and Drake accordingly held a council of war aboard his flagship at four o’clock that afternoon. He asked his vice-admiral, William Borough, captain of the Golden Lion, whether they should enter the harbour at once or wait until the morning. Borough’s fence-straddling reply was that there was some argument for waiting but that the wind might fail in the meantime and there would still be daylight enough to reach the outer harbour that night.
A gentleman and a long-serving officer, expert navigator and cartographer, Borough had sailed with Sir Hugh Willoughby to the Arctic in 1553 and served on the ships of the Muscovy Company for twenty years. Prior to Drake’s voyage of circumnavigation, Borough had been regarded as the highest English authority on maritime affairs, and he had seen combat, commanding a fleet that fought and captured a notorious Baltic pirate, Hans Snarke. He must have expected the respect due to his experience and to his position as the Queen’s representative aboard the fleet, but Drake had fought twenty battles for every one that Borough had seen, and cared little for officers of gentle birth and even less for those who tried to restrict his freedom of action. It was Borough’s first experience of Drake’s leadership and he was rapidly made to realize that his commander had no time for prevarication, niceties or formalities, or indeed for opinions other than his own. “There are some would have us stay till morning; we shall not stay at all,” he said. That was the end of the council of war.
Drake immediately set sail for Cadiz, leaving the rest of his ships to form what order of battle they could as they followed him in. It was “in such confused order as was never heard of in such an action,” according to Borough, but they did have the element of surprise. The population of Cadiz was blissfully unaware of the looming threat, for who would dare to challenge the power and might of imperial Spain in one of its greatest harbours? Many of the citizens and nobles were in the town square, watching some strolling players and tumblers, and the crews of many of the ships at anchor were also ashore. Even when word was brought that a line of ships was passing the Pillar of Hercules guarding the entrance to the harbour, there was no alarm at first; they were assumed to be more Spanish ships, perhaps the Biscayans of Juan Martinez de Recalde, arriving to reinforce the Armada. But as they bore down on the harbour, “an hour before sun setting,” the realization began to dawn that these were not Spanish but English ships, undoubtedly led by the notorious El Draque (The Dragon) and advancing “with more speed and arrogance than any pirate has ever shown.”5
Further attempts at subterfuge were now useless and Drake and his captains broke out their English colours while his trumpets sounded a call to arms from the quarterdecks. Six Spanish galleys and a galliot commanded by Don Pedro de Acuna, newly arrived from Gibraltar, were sufficiently manned and prepared to cast off almost at once and form a defensive line across the entrance to the lower bay, and one galley was detached to challenge the enemy. It moved rapidly ahead, its banks of oars flashing in the light of the setting sun and its great bronze ram glinting, but, met at once by a hail of cannon fire, it was forced to turn tail and flee. The sight of the ships, the sound of gunfire and the mere whisper of Drake’s name were enough to throw the townsfolk into panic. Women, children, the old and the sick were ordered to take refuge in the old castle of Matagorda but, caught up in the general terror, the commandant shut his gates against them. In the panic and confusion twenty-five women and children were killed, trampled underfoot or forced off the path to fall into the sea. Such foot soldiers and cavalry as could be mustered in haste were stationed throughout the town and sent to guard Puental, a rough, rocky area outside the city walls that seemed to offer the English the best prospect of making a landing.
Having put the attacking galley to flight, Drake’s fleet was already engaging the defensive screen barring the way to the lower bay. In the summer of the previous year, five “tall and stout ships” of the Levant Company “intending only a merchant’s voyage” had fought and defeated eleven Spanish galleys of the Sicilian Guard after a battle lasting five hours. Three of those Levant ships were with Drake now and the Spanish galleys were even more disadvantaged. The galleys were fast and manoeuvrable—they could turn 360 degrees in their own length—but their rams, boarding troops and relatively light armaments were
of minimal use against heavily gunned English galleons that could destroy the galleys before their own weapons were even within range. The English cannon fire caused carnage among the banks of slaves and convict oarsmen chained to their benches. As de Acuna’s battered squadron fled, two galleys were so badly damaged that Drake was convinced they were sinking and the upperworks of the others were strewn with dead and wounded.
The galleys’ shallow draught allowed them to cross the sandbars and shoals guarding Puerta de Santa Maria, four miles from Cadiz on the other side of the lower bay, and there they were safe from further attacks, but the myth of the supremacy and invincibility of galleys, built up during a century of conflict in the Mediterranean, had been exploded. Never again would they dominate a naval battle. “Twelve of Her Majesty’s ships will not make account of [will not be troubled by] all his [Philip’s] galleys in Spain, Portugal and all his dominions within the Straits [of Gibraltar] although they are 150 in number. If it be to their advantage in a calm, we have made such trial of their fights that we perfectly see into the depth thereof.” So completely had the galleys’ once-fearsome reputation been demolished that when Sir Walter Ralegh led another raid on Cadiz nine years later, “the English fleet replied to the fire of the Spanish galleys with blasts of discordant derision from a band of trumpeters.”
The captains of the mass of vessels in the anchorage beyond the promontory of Puntales, fifty or sixty ships in total, were thrown into even greater panic by the flight of their defenders. There were five huge hulks—transport ships—laden with wine and ship’s biscuit for the Armada and several Dutch hulks embargoed by the Spanish for the same purpose. There were also Indies ships and merchantmen from northern Europe and the Mediterranean, some loading wine from Jerez, some laden with Mediterranean goods and merely waiting for a change in the wind to carry them north towards their destination. Those with crew and sea-room enough to manoeuvre made attempts to escape, either seeking shelter in water too shallow for the great English ships or making a run for the sanctuary of the upper bay, but the majority were trapped and helpless.
Only one offered armed resistance, a huge Genoese ship of 700 tons (though the English took her to be a Ragusan from her lines) laden with wood, hides, wool and cochineal, and heavily armed to protect her from corsairs. The captain’s defiance was a brave but futile gesture, denying Drake a valuable prize but only because, when his guns had finished their work, the ship, her cargo and her forty brass cannon lay at the bottom of the harbour. There is no record of any member of the crew surviving. They died “tumbling into the sea, heaps of soldiers so thick as if coals had been poured out of a sack in many ports at once; some drowned and some sticking in the mud . . . The spectacle was very lamentable on their side, for many drowned themselves, many, half-burnt, leapt into the water, very many hanging by the ropes’ ends by the ship’s side, under the water even to the lips, many swimming with grievous wounds, stricken under water and put out of their pain, and with so huge a fire and such of the ordnance in the great [ship] and the rest when the fire came to them, as if any man had a desire to see Hell itself, it was there most lively figured.”6
There was no further resistance. Drake’s squadron came to anchor and at once his men began to work their way methodically through the captured ships. The most valuable cargoes were transferred to his holds, the better ships added to his squadron and the remaining vessels towed off their moorings, set on fire and cast loose on the flood tide, “the sight of which terrible fires were to us very pleasant, and mitigated the burden of our constant travail.” The burning vessels swept in on the tide, causing fresh panic and havoc among the small ships still cowering in the inner harbour. In the gathering darkness, the glow from the burning ships cast a baleful light onto the white walls of the town. The cannon of the old fort and a battery of guns on the harbourside kept up a sporadic fire, but the range was too great and the weapons too inaccurate to threaten the English ships. However, under cover of the night the galleys crept from their sanctuary and, before Drake and his fleet were even aware that the attack was under way, they had isolated the captured Portuguese caravel at the rear of the English squadron, manned only by a small prize crew. The Spaniards riddled it with small-arms fire and when they boarded it only five men remained alive, all of whom were wounded. The recaptured caravel was towed to safety in shallow water beyond Drake’s reach, but it proved to be the only Spanish success.
The night was cold and dark and the smouldering wrecks of the burned ships and the barrels of pitch ignited along the waterfront gave only a fitful, smoky light for the watchmen lining the shore and peering into the darkness to detect the first sign of the expected landing by Drake’s men. The polyglot mixture of nationalities in the port heightened fears and suspicions of treachery, and every foreign or unfamiliar face was suspect. Around midnight the thunder of drums signalled an alarm that caused fresh panic in the streets, but the vessel that had caused it was not an English craft but a galley running aground on the shore. Drake sent two small boats to test the defences of the bridge over the San Pedro river—the only means of access for troops seeking to reinforce the town—but they were repulsed by two galleys that had taken refuge there.
There were no further attempts at a landing, but by dawn of the following morning, Thursday 30 April, the looting and destruction of the ships in the harbour was complete and, “with music, artillery and flags and pennants” flying, Drake led his squadron to anchor off Puental, guarding the entrance to the upper bay. Under interrogation, captured seamen and officers had revealed that the Marquis of Santa Cruz’s own fine galleon had just anchored there to take on board her guns and fighting troops. Intended as the flagship of the Armada, she was the greatest prize of all. Leaving his own flagship at anchor, Drake transferred to the Merchant Royal, one of the shallower-draught ships of the Levant Company, and led a force of frigates and pinnaces into the upper bay. Drake himself supervised the burning of Santa Cruz’s galleon while his pinnaces captured and burned many of the smaller craft that had escaped destruction the previous night. The smoke and flames were so thick and the heat so intense that it seemed to the people of Puental as if “a great volcano” were erupting before their eyes.7
A further forty ships lay at the furthest end of the bay, guarded by the gun batteries of Puerto Real. The inhabitants still feared an invasion but, alerted by messengers, reinforcements were now arriving from Jerez. A company of infantry and horsemen had marched through the night to reach Cadiz and there was word that the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, the commander of the land forces on this coast, was on his way with all the troops he could assemble. He entered the town towards noon with 3,000 foot soldiers and 300 cavalry. The town’s defenders were also manoeuvring two huge bronze culverins, eighteen feet long and weighing several tons, into a position from where they could fire on the English ships anchored off Puental. The nearest, the Golden Lion, was barely a mile away, well within range, and William Borough grew increasingly alarmed. There had been no word from Drake since that first perfunctory council of war and Borough went in search of him first on the Elizabeth Bonaventure, then in the upper bay, but did not overhaul him until Drake had returned to his own ship. Borough was then dismissed, his pleas that the fleet should sail at once ignored. When he returned to the Golden Lion, he found it under fire from the culverins on the headland. One shot had already pierced the hull and severed the leg of the Master Gunner.
In Borough’s absence the Master had already made preparation to warp out of range. Seeing a further chance to attack an isolated ship, the galleys made another foray, but the Golden Lion manoeuvred to give them its broadside and when Drake saw its danger he sent the Rainbow, six merchantmen and his own pinnace to its defence. With the advantage of numbers now with him, Borough cut off the galleys and forced them to seek the shelter of the Las Puertas reef in the outer channel. He then anchored his ship midway between the old fort and the shore batteries guarding Puerta de Santa Maria, threatening the galleys if they lef
t their shelter, but also leaving himself well placed for a swift escape from the bay if danger loomed.
Drake and his triumphant captains were now ready to put to sea, but they were betrayed for the moment by the wind. It died away and for twelve hours his ships lay almost motionless, completely becalmed, but still displaying their banners and sounding their defiance of the town and its feeble cannonade with their battle trumpets. The culverins and the most powerful cannons continued to fire on the fleet at extreme range and a few of the small ships in the shallows close to the castle walls were loaded with combustibles, set on fire and cast loose on the receding tide to drift towards Drake’s fleet. As night came on, more and more fireships were launched, once more illuminating the harbour and the town. Some of the galleys, at an advantage now using their oars against the becalmed fleet, towed the fireships into better positions and did their best to cover them with their guns. But by warping the ships—hauling in and releasing their anchor cables—the English galleons kept themselves broadside on to any menacing galleys, and their ships’ boats and pinnaces intercepted the blazing fireships and towed them away to burn out harmlessly on the shore. Unperturbed, Drake remarked that, by burning their own ships, the Spaniards were doing the Englishmen’s work for them, and his joke was shouted from ship to ship across the harbour.