The Confident Hope of a Miracle

by Neil Hanson

  If the Armada’s voyage was dedicated to God, its officers, soldiers and crewmen also sailed with some hope of monetary as well as spiritual reward, for “proclamation was made with the sound of three drums in every ship . . . at the commandment of the King” that any of the Queen’s ships that were captured would be the property of the King, but that all others would be the prize of their captors. Many Spanish nobles and English exiles were so sure of victory that they sailed with treasure chests and household effects aboard their ships, ready to take possession of the English properties that would soon be theirs. Around a thousand gentleman adventurers—300 in service with the King’s bastard son, the Prince Antonio Luis de Leiva Ascoli—joined the Armada seeking profit, adventure, excitement or merely escape from their stifling round of court duties and family obligations. The vastly experienced Juan Martinez de Recalde was scathing of commands being conferred upon them merely “because they are gentlemen. Very few of them, therefore, are soldiers or know what to do.” Undeterred by their lack of martial skills, they boarded ship with their servants and retinues, and “carrying with them their finest wear and innumerable jewels.” Even the common soldiers were “richly appointed”; credit was easy to obtain as bankers, tailors and shopkeepers shared the expectation that the Armada would return weighed down with plunder. All men of any substance also carried a store of gold ducats and many had them sewn into their clothes, a heavy burden at all times and a fatal one if their ship sank and they were cast into the sea, not that such thoughts can have crossed many minds; the over-confidence was so widespread that medals showing Philip crowned with a victor’s laurel wreath were struck before the Armada had even departed.

  The servants and retainers were at once at work erecting partitions to screen off areas of the deck and give their masters a semblance of privacy, and many soldiers had brought truckle beds aboard and set them up, further constricting the space available to the rest. The partitions and mounds of personal effects were another cause of friction between the men, and were damaging to the efficiency of the ships and a potentially lethal hazard in battle. Cannonballs smashing through the ship’s hull and striking the thin wood partitions would shower the decks with hails of dagger-like splinters. Before the Armada left Spanish waters, Medina-Sidonia ordered “all cabins, partitions, bunks, bed-steads and other erections between decks that may hamper the movements of the crew or the working of the artillery” to be torn down and stowed in the holds or thrown overboard.

  Among the crews and officers there were around two hundred Englishmen, including “seven or eight” in the Nuestra Señora del Rosario alone. Some were exiles hoping to reclaim estates or fortunes, some were priests eager to claim their livings and begin the work of converting the heretics, some were laymen motivated by religious fervour to join the crusade, but others were mercenaries and coastal pilots, indifferently selling their expertise to the highest bidder. The treacherous William Stanley, who had betrayed the city of Deventer in The Netherlands to the Duke of Parma, was reported to be aboard Medina-Sidonia’s flagship—“There was aboard an Englishman called Don William, a man of a reasonable stature, bald, and very like Sir William Stanley”—though he was also said to be in Dunkirk, commanding a contingent of the troops in Parma’s invasion force. And there were other, less fortunate Englishmen among the slaves at the oars of the galleys and galleasses. Like their peers, they rowed while seated on straw-filled cushions, and were watched over by physicians and fed a special diet of pulses, grains, bread and water, since meat and wine were thought to spoil their condition, though the concern for their welfare related solely to the need to keep them strong and healthy enough to work the oars. They wore fetters and were chained to their benches, and slept, and often urinated and defecated, at their oars. The conditions in which they were kept were so filthy that the stench of galleys and galleasses notoriously carried for miles on the wind. If their ships sank or ran aground the slaves were dependent on the presence of mind of their officers to order their release from their fetters before they drowned.12

  The consecration of the Armada’s standard did not herald the immediate departure of the fleet. For a further fortnight the waters of the Tagus were alive with small craft as provisions, munitions and men continued to be brought aboard. Only on 9 May did Medina-Sidonia give the order to depart. As the vast Armada set sail on the afternoon tide, the Pope’s special emissary to Lisbon sent a report to the Vatican of a conversation he had held with one of the highest officers in the Spanish fleet. “If you meet the English Armada in the Channel do you expect to win the battle?”

  “Of course.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “It’s very simple. It is well known that we fight in God’s cause, so when we meet the English, God will surely arrange matters so that we can grapple and board them, either by sending some strange freak of weather or, more likely, just by depriving the English of their wits. If we can come to close quarters, Spanish valour and Spanish steel (and the great masses of soldiers we shall have on board) will make our victory certain. But unless God helps us by a miracle, the English, who have faster and handier ships than ours and many more long-range guns, and who know their advantage just as well as we do, will never close with us at all but stand aloof and knock us to pieces with their culverins without our being able to do them any serious hurt. So, we are sailing against England in the confident hope of a miracle.” Never can such a vast enterprise have been launched on such a flimsy basis. 13

  CHAPTER SIX

  So Violent a Sea and Wind

  On 11 May, the Armada “took advantage of a light easterly wind” and at last moved downstream but, although Miguel de Oquendo’s squadron passed over the bar at the mouth of the Tagus and anchored off the fort of São João de Estoril in Cascais Bay, the rest of the Armada, including the flagship, got no further than the turreted tower of Belém, a fortress right at the water’s edge, near the mouth of the Tagus. There they were forced to drop anchor again, unable to proceed into the teeth of a strengthening wind, backing westerly and blowing directly into the passage to the sea. For almost three weeks, wild weather continued all around the coastlines of western Europe. English ships off Flanders were battered by storms, the Dutch flyboats ran for the shelter of Flushing harbour, certain that Parma’s invasion force would not dare to set out in such seas, and the Armada remained pinned off Belém, less than ten miles from its starting point and unable to make sail. Thousands of men aboard had never put to sea and as their ships rolled before the wind, many of them, even in the short, tidal chop of the estuary, must have succumbed to their first bouts of seasickness.

  All the time he remained there, Medina-Sidonia received a constant stream of communications, intelligence reports and commands. There were dispatches from Mendoza on the strength and likely disposition of the English fleet, and orders from the King covering almost every possible eventuality and every aspect of the conduct of the Armada, from its broad strategic objectives to the minutiae of the means by which the sins and baser instincts of the men herded aboard the ships of the fleet might be curbed. However, he was much less explicit about two crucial tactical considerations—how the rendezvous with Parma was to be effected and how the English fleet was to be engaged and defeated. All Philip offered were repeated warnings—also given to Medina-Sidonia by almost every commander—that the English ships were faster, more weatherly and had more long-range guns, and would endeavour to fight the Armada at long range. “There is little to say with regard to the mode of fighting and the handling of the Armada on the day of battle . . . it must be borne in mind that the enemy’s object will be to fight at long distance, in consequence of his advantage in artillery and the large number of artificial fires with which he will be furnished. The aim of our men, on the contrary, must be to bring him to close quarters and grapple with him, and you will have to be very careful to have this carried out . . . The enemy employs his artillery to deliver his fire low and sink his opponent’s ships, and you will
have to take such precautions as you consider necessary.”

  Medina-Sidonia would have to try to gain the weather gauge—the desirable position upwind of his enemies—and force them to fight at close quarters. However, the King also gave clear instructions that, while the Armada was not to avoid fighting the English fleet if an opportunity presented itself, it was not to seek a confrontation. “Even if Drake should have sailed for these waters . . . you should not turn back but continue on your course, not seeking out the enemy even if he should remain here. If, however, he should pursue and overtake you, you may attack him, as you should also do if you meet Drake with his fleet at the entrance to the Channel . . . It is understood that you will fight only if you cannot otherwise make secure the passage across to England of the Duke of Parma.”

  As the Armada waited at Belém for the wind to take them to sea, Medina-Sidonia wrote to the King seeking to clarify his orders. “The opinions of those whom I have consulted here is that the best course would be to break up the enemy’s sea-forces first. When this is done . . . the rest will be safe and easy.” Philip undoubtedly expected that the Armada would have to defeat the British fleet in battle; it was, he said, “the essence of the business,” but in his view reaching the Cape of Margate would guarantee such a battle, for the English fleet could not allow the Armada to control the Straits of Dover. There were to be no distractions or diversions from the Armada’s prime task, and no attempts to secure a safe haven to repair and reprovision his ships and rest his men, as Drake always sought to do on his voyages. Philip, the man who had once said, “I and time are one,” would now brook no delays whatsoever. The Armada must meet its destiny and make its rendezvous with Parma, relying for success on God’s grace and the confident hope of a miracle. Philip had also stressed to Parma the need to be ready “to do your share without delay . . . for until your passage is effected he [Medina-Sidonia] will have no harbour for shelter . . . he will be at the mercy of the weather.” Only if the attempt to land Parma’s forces had already failed was Medina-Sidonia to be permitted to “capture the Isle of Wight, which is not so strongly defended as to appear able to resist you . . . On no account should you try to capture the island on your journey eastwards without first having made a supreme effort to achieve success in the main task.”1

  On 28 May, the weather at last moderated and the wind shifted enough for the Armada to begin making its way out of the Tagus. Medina-Sidonia’s flagship, the San Martin, led the great fleet, the sun glinting from its gilding and new paintwork, pennants streaming from every masthead. As each ship in turn passed Castle St. Julian, the rolling thunder of guns fired in salute sounded over the water. The process of forming up the vast Armada was a lengthy one and it was dawn the next morning before the last ship had cleared the bar at the mouth of the river to reach the open sea. Forced to govern “our progress by the speed of the most miserable tub among us,” the Armada could then make only fitful, “inchworm progress” against a north-north-west breeze. Some of the more cumbersome ships made no headway to windward at all. Beating into the wind, the captain of a Hamburg merchantman returning from Cadiz recorded that it took him an entire day to sail past the Armada as it made its slow way north, strung out for miles over the ocean.

  By 1 June, after two further days’ sailing, the Armada was still south of the Rock of Lisbon, and it took a further thirteen days to reach Finisterre, a mere 160 sea miles to the north. That rate of progress must have been dispiriting enough for Medina-Sidonia without the other news he was given; just two weeks into a voyage of several months, provisions were already becoming a problem, for there was “great corruption and loss” of supplies. The corruption of the suppliers and provision merchants was partly to blame for that. Philip had ordered that “the fleet should be victualled for six months, but Luis Hezar and Francisco Duarte of Cadiz did victual them but for four months, and with that which was nought and rotten . . . The King commanded them to be apprehended and they remained prisoners in Portugal at our coming away.”

  Much of the Armada’s food had been in store or in barrel since the previous autumn, and large parts of it were already foul and contaminated. The effects of Drake’s raid on Cadiz the previous year were also still being felt. The destruction of over a hundred tunny-fishing boats had contributed to a shortage of salt-fish and the huge quantities of “hoops and pipe staves and such like” burned in bonfires on the foreshore had proved very difficult to replace. There was insufficient seasoned oak to be had at any price and the wood of many casks shipped with the Armada was either so green that it had warped or so old that it was rotten. Perhaps as many as half of the barrels proved to be neither air- nor watertight, and poor rotation of stocks during the fleet’s chaotic and prolonged preparations had further exacerbated the problems, leaving the ship’s biscuit, rice and other dry foods mouldy and crawling with maggots and worms, much of the salt-beef and salt-fish putrescent, the wine sour and the water foul and undrinkable. Many men refused to eat the food, and many of those who did were laid low with food poisoning, further fouling their quarters belowdecks.

  Medina-Sidonia sent frequent appeals to Philip for more funds and supplies, and ordered the whole of Portugal to be scoured for fresh provisions to be sent after the Armada without delay, together with whatever could be loaded at the northern ports they would pass. For four days he waited off Finisterre for the promised victualling ships to appear, while ever more alarming reports came in from every squadron of shortages of food and water. Large numbers of seamen and soldiers were falling ill with “the flux” and barrels of sardines, salt-fish and meat, cheese and bacon were “so rotten and stinking that many have been thrown overboard to save the men from pestilence.” The shortage of water was an even more serious problem. Medina-Sidonia wrote to Parma, “What I fear most is lack of water . . . I do not see where we can obtain any more. It will be necessary . . . to have all the butts that can be obtained, got ready and filled with water to send to the Armada as soon as it arrives.” 2

  On Sunday 19 June, almost three weeks after the Armada had set sail and still only 300 miles north of Lisbon, Medina-Sidonia ordered a signal gun fired and a flag flown “at the poop, near the lantern” to summon a council of war. The system of guns, flags and lights during the hours of darkness was also used to indicate when the flagship was shortening sail, lowering an anchor or going about onto a new tack, and “a great gun” and “a beacon signal” were used to warn the fleet that a ship was in distress. Pinnaces soon surrounded the San Martin as the senior officers were ferried to the flagship. Medina-Sidonia stood on the poop deck to greet them as they came aboard, flanked by Don Diego Flores de Valdes, his chief of staff, and Don Francisco de Bobadilla, the commander of the land forces. De Valdes, much older than Medina-Sidonia, was the commander of the galleons of Castile. Vastly experienced, he had sailed to England with the fleet carrying Philip to his marriage with Mary Tudor in 1554 and had been commanding the Indian Guard, the fleet that guarded the treasure ships from the New World, since 1567. In 1581 he had also sailed with 23 ships and 3,500 men to expel all foreigners from South and Central America and establish a fortress to bar the Straits of Magellan to foreign traders and privateers, but the expedition was a failure and he was accused of abandoning part of his fleet to its fate. For all his experience, he was one of the least popular men in the fleet, quarrelling continuously with his brother officers and nurturing a bitter feud with his cousin Don Pedro de Valdes, commander of the Andalusian squadron. Don Pedro had seen service against the French and Portuguese and survived a serious wound in an engagement with English ships off Ferrol in 1580, but he had been disgraced and briefly imprisoned by Philip because of the heavy losses of soldiers during his impetuous and unsuccessful attempt to capture the Azores in 1581. Now restored to a position of command, he was eager to remove the stain on his honour.

  The sixty-two-year-old Don Juan Martinez de Recalde, Knight of Santiago and a former commander of the Indian Guard, was Captain General of the Biscayan
squadron, but sailed in the San Juan de Portugal, the vice-flagship of Medina-Sidonia’s squadron. He was the oldest and most experienced officer in the fleet, and though infirm and suffering from sciatica, he remained a proud and bold commander, albeit one with an indifferent record of success, having failed to defeat the Dutch Sea Beggars off Zeeland in 1572, commanded a squadron in the disastrous landing at Smerwick in Ireland in 1580, and arrived too late to take part in the victory at Terceira in 1582. Miguel de Oquendo, fiftynine at the time of the Armada, was Captain General of the Guipuzcoan squadron and another proud and fierce old officer, nicknamed “The Glory of the Fleet.” At the battle of Terceira, he had saved Santa Cruz’s flagship by sailing his own ship between two enemy vessels and then boarding and capturing the French flagship.

  Don Martin Jiminez de Bertendona, forty-nine, was Captain General of the Levant squadron. His father, also a distinguished officer, had captained the ship that carried Philip to England for his marriage with Mary Tudor. Don Hugo de Moncada, commander of the galleasses of Naples, was another fiercely proud officer, who stood heavily upon his dignity. Don Diego Medrano, commander of the four galleys, and Don Alonso Martinez de Leiva, the youngest of the officers, completed Medina-Sidonia’s inner council. Although only twenty-four, the “tall, slim and handsome, dashing and hot-headed” de Leiva, Knight of the Order of Santiago, was a former Captain General of the Sicilian galleys and of the Light Cavalry of Milan, though he had purchased the latter title from the Count of Fuentes with the sole aim of outranking the other Armada squadron commanders. His ploy was entirely successful; Philip had appointed him commander of the invasion force and he also carried secret dispatches from the King, authorizing him to assume command of the Armada if anything befell Medina-Sidonia.