by Neil Hanson
There were also four oar-driven galleys, linear descendants of the triremes of ancient Greece and Rome, and devastating fighters in shallow or sheltered waters but vulnerable in the great swells and storms of the open sea. Even though they had been reinforced for Atlantic use, they drew no more than four feet of water and were prone to swamping in heavy seas. If they could be brought safely to the Channel they would provide invaluable close support for the invasion force as it landed—Santa Cruz and Medina-Sidonia had both requested that substantially more galleys be added to the Armada to perform this role— but in storms their poor sailing qualities made them more of a liability than an asset. A squadron of thirty-four fast pinnaces—the Spanish called them zabras, fregatas and pataches —were available for scouting, carrying dispatches and inshore and shallow-water work. Bringing up the rear were twenty-three hulks, slow and ponderous freight-carriers, transporting provisions, munitions and horses. The Trinidad de Valencera and the other hulks carried the enormous siege cannon and the mountain of supplies needed for the siege train of the invasion force: gunpowder and great iron shot, gun carriages with huge iron-shod wheels as tall as a man, heavy timbers to construct gun platforms, palisades and fortifications, pointed stakes and pine trees with sharpened branches, used as later generations would use barbed-wire entanglements, and all the multiplicity of weapons and tools that the soldiers, gun-crews and engineers would need.
While the English fleet had recently been reconstructed on leaner, faster lines, the naval traditionalists had the ear of Medina-Sidonia and even the few Spanish ships that had been built on clean lines now had new fore- and sterncastles added. The ponderous merchantmen and hulks had also been fitted with fighting castles. They were invaluable in close-quarter combat and boarding actions, but severely compromised the ships’ speed and handling, especially to windward. The drag of the wind on the forecastle made it near impossible to keep a ship’s head to wind, and at anything approaching broadside on to the wind the surface area of the upperworks was so large that it negated most and sometimes all of the forward momentum the sails could generate. Some ships made modest progress to windward, some could only keep station and some were actually driven back on each tack; most hulks simply dropped anchor in a headwind and waited for a change in wind direction. Only when sailing downwind did the Spanish ships function with full efficiency, and even then they were far slower than the sleeker English galleons. The fastest progress the Armada made at any stage of its voyage was barely four knots, and much of the time it managed no more than half that—a slow walking pace, or even less.
This huge array of ships, drawn from all over Europe, also carried crewmen and soldiers speaking a dozen different tongues. There were Castilians, Basques, Sicilians, Italians, Portuguese, Dutchmen and Germans from the Hanseatic League, many pressed to serve against their will and all regarding each other with suspicion. “Among the artillery, it had been absolutely decided by the English that all should be of one nationality, one language and therefore one constant disposition to serve well, and we cannot consider that this was at all so among the enemy.” The division between soldiers and sailors—the captain and crew of every ship were under the overall command of the officers of the land forces and were in every respect regarded as the inferiors of the soldiers aboard—was another potential source of discord and division. “They brawl and fight commonly aboard their ships as if they were ashore,” and some soldiers in the Guipuzcoan ships turned the seamen out of their quarters, leaving them to find what shelter they could on the open deck.
In his painstaking, methodical way Medina-Sidonia drew up a report on the state of the Armada, listing each ship, its tonnage, guns, seamen and soldiers, the nobles and gentlemen adventurers on each ship and their “competent servants,” the priests and friars, the officers and strengths of the fighting soldiers, the siege train and all the great ordnance and small arms, cannonballs and gunpowder, right down to the bullets and match-cord. It was a formidable inventory: 130 ships carrying well over 30,000 men, including 19,295 soldiers—9,000 more than Santa Cruz had been able to assemble—8,450 mariners, 2,088 galley slaves and around 3,000 noblemen, gentlemen volunteers, priests, physicians, paymasters and officials, all with servants and retinues; Medina-Sidonia alone had 60 servants, Prince Ascoli 39 and Don Alonso de Leiva 36. There were 2,830 cannon, 123,790 cannonballs, 22,000 pounds of “great shot” and 2,000 tons of gunpowder. Medina-Sidonia also listed the provisions that the fleet carried—salt-fish, salt-meat, ship’s biscuit, rice, beans, wine, vinegar and water—and even the shoes and sandals that the soldiers would wear.8
Ten thousand of the Armada troops were trained and seasoned fighting men, unmatched throughout Europe, but the remainder were less impressive, no more than “vine-growers, shepherds and the like.” The mass of combat troops aboard the ships of the Armada reflected the preferred battle tactics of grappling, boarding and hand-to-hand combat as much as the eventual aim of landing an invasion force and, even before the Armada embarked a further 16,000 combat soldiers from Flanders, it was the most powerful fleet ever assembled, “a greater force than ever was known to be made . . . by any Christian prince within the memory of man.” The Spanish soldiers and seamen were divided into groups of eight camaradas who drew their own rations and prepared their own food. Allied to the vast numbers of landsmen unused to the sea, the chaos and confusion caused by this multiplicity of cooks fighting for space in the galley, and the waste and dirt that ensued, are among the reasons for the scathing comments made by English mariners—themselves no strangers to dirt and disease—about the conditions aboard the Armada ships. “Their ships are kept foul and beastly, like hog-ties and sheep-cots in comparison with ours.”
However, at the start of their voyage, the soldiers and crewmen were healthier than they had been at the time of Santa Cruz’s death and in better heart for the task that faced them. They had been paid and were better equipped with supplies and munitions—the King had ordered Medina-Sidonia not to leave himself “open to reproach as far as [the wages of] the crews are concerned since in that matter it is not merely a question of expense, but often at times, of victory. Do not therefore omit to pay great attention to the quality of the food.” For the first time, all the ships’ captains had been issued with rudimentary charts showing them the seas and coastlines they expected to be navigating. English navigators had the benefit of a “Waggoner”—an English corruption of the Dutch Lucas Janszoon Wagenaer, whose volume of charts covering northern Europe from the Baltic to Cadiz had been published in Holland in 1584 and 1585 and translated into English early in the Armada year of 1588. Every captain in the English fleet had a copy, but most of the Armada commanders had only the most limited charts. They had maps of the English coast from Land’s End to the approaches to the Thames, but their knowledge of the remainder of the coasts of England and Scotland was minimal and the charts of the little-known west coast of Ireland were dangerously misleading, placing parts of it as much as forty miles to the east of its actual position and failing to show the huge promontory of Mayo, Connaught and Galway at all. The Spanish captains remained unconcerned; their destination was the Channel, not those rocky shores.
The fleet was christened the “Felicissima Armada”—the most fortunate fleet—but it was soon being described as “La Invencible”—the Invincible Armada—and some felt the mere sight of it would be enough to make Elizabeth capitulate. As he prepared to sail for England, the greatest fear of a captain of infantry, Antonio de Taso Aquereis, was that there would be no chance for him to obtain the spoils of war. “Pray to God that he gives me a house of some very rich merchant where I may place my ensign, but I do fear that they will instantly yield and agree to all that the King will demand of them, for that the King’s force is marvellous great, as well by sea as by land.” So strong was Spanish confidence that Medina-Sidonia’s detailed inventory of the fleet, including its order of battle, was circulated throughout Europe. The propaganda purpose was presumably to impress the Vat
ican and neutral countries and terrify Spain’s opponents with the weight and power of the forces ranged against them, but it also provided the English fleet with invaluable strategic and tactical information; a copy was in Walsingham’s hands well before the Armada had been sighted off England. Not all were convinced of the Armada’s invincibility. As it prepared to sail, the Venetian ambassador in Madrid sent a dispatch to his masters, warning that “the Englishmen are of a different quality from the Spaniards, bearing a name above all the West for being expert and enterprising in maritime affairs, and the finest fighters upon the sea. A battle will in any case be very bloody; for the English never yield; and although they be put to flight and broken, they ever return athirst for revenge, to renew the attack so long as they have breath.” 9
Medina-Sidonia had done what he could to ready the Armada and the King’s patience would now stretch no further. In the early hours of 25 April 1588, the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, 650 arquebusiers were assembled in front of the Royal Palace in Lisbon, their armour and weapons polished and uniforms immaculate. As dawn broke they snapped to attention, the oak gates were thrown open and the Duke of Medina-Sidonia rode out alongside his most Catholic Majesty’s viceroy, the Cardinal Archduke, representing the King. Even on this day of destiny, Philip could not be lured from his cold stone palace to preside in person. Behind them snaked a long procession of great nobles, officers and gentlemen, each man’s position determined by the precedence due to his family titles or his rank, and every great house of Spain was represented. Almost without exception, the Portuguese nobility was absent, uninvited. A face-saving formula had been found— there was not room enough in the cathedral for all who wished to be accommodated—but the truth was that this was not a day that any but the most collaborationist of Portuguese would have wished to legitimize with his presence, an imperial march-past in Spain’s most recently conquered territory. Their absence was barely noticeable among the ranks of Spanish grandees; even this great and historic city had rarely seen such an array of noblemen.
Silent and near-deserted moments before, the air so still that the last tendrils of night mist clung motionless to the river, the city came alive in colour and sound. The grandees rode three, four, six abreast, the outside horses in each rank brushing past the guards of the Lisbon garrison, filling the air with the jingle of harness, the creak of leather and the warm smell of the stables. Groomed till their coats gleamed and richly caparisoned in the family colours of their riders, they wheeled into the Plaza Major, their clattering hooves striking sparks from the cobbles as they passed. As they emerged from the shadows, the first rays of the sun rising over the low hills of Évora to the east glinted from helmets and breastplates and lit up the crimsons and golds of the robes of the noblemen like fire. Behind them, bringing up the rear, trudged 180 priests and friars in habits of dark homespun, eyes fixed on eternity, God’s foot soldiers embarking with the Armada on its Holy Crusade. The Archbishop of Lisbon greeted Medina-Sidonia and the Cardinal Archduke on the steps of the cathedral, and celebrated Mass and gave his blessing to the Enterprise of England, then Medina-Sidonia knelt before the High Altar and took from it the sacred standard of the Armada, “woven by the ladies of Portugal.”
As he emerged once more from the cathedral at the head of the great procession, a guard of arquebusiers fired a volley in the air. Three hundred guns of the Armada ships moored in the Tagus and the guns of the Castillo San Jorge on the hill above the town boomed in echo. Small crowds had now gathered beyond the ranks of soldiers but they watched in silence and there were far fewer than might have been expected for such a momentous event, even at this early hour of the day. For the Portuguese commoners, like their lords, the memories of the last Armada that had sailed up the Tagus to complete Philip’s crushing annexation of Portugal were still too fresh and too bitter for them to join the celebrations, though most were more than happy to see the Armada on the brink of departure. For those who stood to gain financially—shipyards and ships’ chandlers, foundries and shot-mills, provision merchants, bar-owners, pickpockets and whores—the presence of the Armada and its sprawling, brawling mass of 30,000 men had been a blessing from God; for everyone else it had been a constant waking nightmare. Every kind of foodstuff was in desperately short supply and so expensive that it was beyond the reach of the poor. The streets were filthy, stinking and crime-ridden, and as soldiers and seamen fell sick or deserted, more and more Portuguese were pressed to replace them. Small wonder, then, that this was a day for the Spaniards to celebrate and for the Portuguese to keep behind their shutters.
The sacred standard was paraded across the Plaza Major to the Dominican Convent where Medina-Sidonia laid it on the altar in a personal dedication. It was then borne between lines of kneeling soldiers and sailors, as ranks of friars read the Papal Absolution and Indulgence granted to all those setting sail with the Armada. Medina-Sidonia embarked in his barge to another thunderous salute from the guns of his fleet, and was rowed out to his flagship, the San Martin— another scourge for the Portuguese, for the ship had once been the pride of their own royal fleet. It now rode at anchor at the head of an armada that filled the Tagus from bank to bank and for over a mile up-and downstream. A court poet was at hand to record the majesty of the Armada and the sanctity of its cause: “Oh floating forest, pleasing to our eyes, which the sheer faith of the Christian Ulysses draws away from Spanish shores against the falseness of a siren.” As Medina-Sidonia came aboard the San Martin, the standard was raised to the tip of the mainmast. It unfurled and stiffened in the breeze, revealing the royal arms of Spain flanked by images of the Virgin Mary and Christ crucified, above the Latin motto Exerge Domine et Vindica Causum Tuam—Arise O Lord and Vindicate Thy Cause.
The Armada’s destination had been known in every bar and back-street of Lisbon since the first ship had come to anchor there well over a year before, but the official silence had been maintained right up to the moment of embarkation. The captains now called their companies together and told them their objective, and the ships’ priests conducted prayers and preached sermons cataloguing the crimes and mortal sins of Elizabeth I, ruler of a nation of true Catholics waiting only for the Armada to liberate them from rule by a heretical clique. “God, in whose sacred cause we go, will lead us. With such a Captain we need not fear. The saints of heaven will go in our company . . . the holy patrons of Spain and those of England itself who are persecuted by the heretics and cry aloud to God for vengeance . . . With us too will be the blessed and innocent Mary Queen of Scotland who, still fresh from her sacrifice, bears copious and abounding witness to the cruelty and impiety of this Elizabeth.” The “groans of countless imprisoned Catholics, the tears of widows . . . the sobs of maidens . . . and the tender children who, suckled upon the poison of heresy are doomed to perdition” were also invoked in the Armada’s cause. Every soldier and seaman in the fleet had been “confessed and absolved, with due contrition of their sins,” and their bureaucratic King had even insisted that each man be issued with a form to certify that he had indeed been shriven. To emphasize the sacred nature of the Armada’s mission, there were even Christian watchwords for each day of the week, beginning with Jesus on Sundays and progressing through the Holy Ghost, Most Holy Trinity, St. James, the Angels, All Saints and Our Lady. Every day, on every ship of the Armada, the ship’s boys were to gather around the mainmast at dawn and dusk to sing Matins and the Ave Maria. The Salve with the Litany was to be recited “some days and at least every Saturday,” while priests of the monastic orders celebrated Mass.10
The King had instructed his Captain General that “as all victories are the gift of God Almighty, and the cause we champion is so exclusively His, we may look for His aid and favour, unless by our sins we render ourselves unworthy.” As further assurance of the necessary purity in thought and deed, Medina-Sidonia’s General Orders to the Fleet forbade any man to carry a dagger, or engage in fighting or feuds. “The order holds good with all disputes, even those of long s
tanding . . . this truce shall on no account be violated under pain of death for treason.” There were also strict prohibitions on gambling, swearing, blasphemy and that “nefarious sin” sodomy; infractions were to be met with “very severe punishment to be inflicted at our discretion.” All the ships were also searched to make sure no wives or whores had been hidden aboard, save on the Santiago, la urca de las mujeres—“the ship of the women”—a hulk that carried the wives of a number of married officers. They were the only women permitted to sail with the fleet, though one “Allemain” (German) somehow managed to smuggle his wife aboard the San Salvador, presumably disguised as a man, and “a lady and children” sailed with Oquendo’s second-in-command. Soldiers were to remain on deck or in their quarters to await the distribution of rations and not take them by force, and all food had to be consumed and cooking fires doused before nightfall, when the priests once more led the assembled ship’s company in prayers. The priests were aboard the Armada not only to ensure the spiritual well-being of the men. Once the invasion had succeeded, they were to begin the process of saving heretic souls and laying claim to the monastic property seized by Henry VIII at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Medina-Sidonia’s own chaplain carried a letter authorizing him to repossess all the confiscated properties of the Dominican order.11