At four o’clock on the afternoon of April 19th, Drake on the Elizabeth Bonaventure led his ships into the harbour of Cadiz. He had behind him the four great galleons of the Queen’s Navy, the four London vessels and such others of his fleet as had managed to keep up with him.
An examination of the admirable chart which Borough made of the Port and of the positions of the ships engaged will enable the lay man to follow the battle with ease. The entrance to the harbour faces west, the seaward arm consists of a great spit of land of varying widths and height which bends to the south towards its end. At the very end by the column of Hercules a battery was placed. The old town of Cadiz stood up on the top of a cliff at the joint where the tongue of land begins to bend to the south. It was protected by an inefficient castle, the Matagorda, and a more efficient battery on the harbour front. Two great shoals guarded the entrance to the harbour — Las Puercas on the Cadiz and El Diaman on the northern side — opposite to an inlet, Port St. Mary, where stood the house of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, the Governor of Cadiz and afterwards the Commander-in-Chief of the Armada. Between these two shoals the entrance into the harbour lay, and ships sailing in must pass to their anchorage within range of the guns of the second battery. Beyond the city, the spit of land at that point called Puntales bellied out towards the mainland and made a narrow neck to a second inner harbour, shallow, strewn with rocks, and dangerous to any ship without a local pilot. In the north-west corner of this inner harbour there was yet another inlet and another small basin, Port Royal.
As Drake sailed in he could see in front of him a mass of sixty ships, ships of war, troopships, Dutch hulks to be used as victualling ships. Some were already loaded with biscuit, wine, oil and dried fruit, some were in the process of being loaded, many were without sails — their sails had been taken on shore to keep the sailors from deserting — and nearly all were waiting for their guns. A little to the south-east of this mass of ships, and therefore closer under the batteries of Cadiz, lay a cluster of small barks and caravels. Amidst the big ships and the small the appearance of this unexpected squadron from nowhere created a natural anxiety. They waited whilst two oared galleys, the small guardships of St. Mary’s Port, put off to enquire who the newcomers were and what was their business. They did not have to go alongside to get their answers. They received a salvo from Drake’s guns which sent them scurrying back as fast as the damage done to their masts and hulls allowed. At once dismay spread through the anchored ships. The dismay increased to a panic as a great ship of a thousand tons from Ragusa already loaded and armed with forty brass guns was caught under Drake’s broadside and sunk. Cables were cut, some of the smaller barks made away through the Puntal passage into the inner harbour and the protection of Port Royal; a few escaped to Port St. Mary; but the mass of them, ships with sails entangled with ships without sails, drifted helplessly, sheep rather than ships, and sheep at the mercy of the big bad wolf.
There were, however, ten galleys under the command of Don Pedro de Acuña lying close under Cadiz; and these put out to intercept Drake’s fleet. They put out in line abreast. Drake left the four ships from the City of London to deal with the sheep, and forming the four Queen’s ships in line ahead led them across the bows of the galleys. This manœuvre became famous in nautical tactics as crossing the T. As each ship in line ahead crossed the bows of the enemy in line abreast, it poured the full weight of its broadside upon an opponent who had only its bow guns with which to reply. Acuña’s galleys endured the onslaught once, but once was enough. Seven of them fled behind the Puercas reef, two escaped through the Puntal passage to Port Royal, and one was driven on shore in flames. Drake was left master of the outer roads. He brought his main fleet to anchor amongst the Spanish ships, the Bonaventure, the Lion and the Rainbow in a position to ward off any attack from the galleys. He sent forward the Merchant Royal with the smaller vessels and pinnaces to anchor outside the range of the Cadiz batteries and guard the Puntal entrance into the inner harbour. He had taken thirty vessels, five of them great ships from the ports of Biscay. Of these, four were already filled with provisions for the fleet at Lisbon, and the fifth, a galleon of a thousand tons, had a cargo of horseshoes, iron bands for water-casks, nails, marlinspikes. All these five he looted and fired. Ships fitted out with sails he kept, amongst them three flyboats of three hundred tons apiece and a bark of two hundred and fifty tons. That night he destroyed more than ten thousand tons of shipping, all destined either to supply the Armada or to fight as part of it. The ships in flames drifted on to the shoals and made the harbour light as day. According to the Spanish account, Drake cost the King of Spain twenty-four ships and three-quarters of a million pounds; and the Spanish accounts underestimated the Spanish losses with the enthusiasm of a Dr. Goebbels.
Vice-Admiral Borough was anxious to call it a day and be off. He was not lightly to be blamed. Although in the harbour of Cadiz the sea is smooth, the winds blow from the north across the flat land with a bitter violence. The space is small, and for a fleet of big ships manœuvring is dangerous and difficult. On the other hand, for small galleys it is admirable, and there were seven of them safe from Drake’s attack behind the Puercas reef. Moreover, the main body of the fleet was within the range of the city’s batteries.
Drake, however, had not done. In the inner harbour, and not very far from the mouth of it, a great warship of twelve hundred tons lay at anchor. She belonged to Santa Cruz himself, and no doubt was to fly his pennant on that proud day when the might of Spain sailed out from the Tagus. Amongst the crews of the captured ships there had been talk of her magnificence, of the calibre of her guns and the splendour of her equipment. Drake would hardly have been Drake had he found this lure one which he could resist. He gave orders that the fleet should lie quiet with its lanterns darkened throughout the night and expect his orders in the morning.
But at the very break of the morning he got the Bonaventure under way, and sailing past his fleet dropped his anchor just astern of the Merchant Royal. There were two of the galleys from Cadiz anchored off Port Royal at the bottom of the harbour, but an attack from them had to be risked; and from his knowledge of the dilatory Spanish could be safely risked. He transferred his flag to the Merchant Royal, and with his pinnaces following him dashed through the Puntal passage and made for Santa Cruz’s great ship upon his port beam.
How quickly he worked may be understood from the behaviour of the outraged Vice-Admiral Borough. This was not the way in which battles were fought by the Queen’s Navy. No consultation of Captains, no orders drawn up; the Flagship sliding past the fleet in the early morning on a private adventure. Such irregularities had never been heard of before. Vice-Admiral Borough ordered out his pinnace and followed Drake, ordering each ship as he passed it to get under way and make for the open Roads. He went alongside the Bonaventure. There was no Drake there. He carried on to the Merchant Royal, which was lying again at her old anchorage with the pinnaces about her and in the midst of them Santa Cruz’s great ship, a splendid prize. But Drake was already gone from the Merchant Royal. The unhappy Vice-Admiral returned to the Bonaventure and then found that Drake had come aboard.
Of the interview between the two, each has given his account; and to such extremes did the natural antagonism grow between these two representatives of different traditions that neither can be accepted without hesitation. Borough, said Drake, “in some trembling sort,” exposed to Drake the perilous position of the fleet, and demanded that it should set sail without delay. Borough, who was on his defence, declared that he was in a hurry to consult his Commander-in-Chief about the transference of stores from the Spanish ships. Although the ships provided by the London Companies were all completely found for six months, the Queen’s ships were only victualled for three. We should take the edge off that scornful phrase “in trembling sort,” and we should add a great anxiety that the work of transference should be quickly done to Borough’s request about the stores.
Drake, however, had not yet gutt
ed the galleon of Santa Cruz, and that good work must be complete and the ship herself blazing before he saw the last of the Puntal passage. Borough returned accordingly to the Lion, and to Drake’s surprise, drawing out of line, made for the harbour mouth. He gave as his reason that a gun had been moved down from the Cadiz battery to a point whence it commanded his ship and that he had already received one shot on the water-line and had a gunner wounded. As the distance between the Lion and the other Navy ships widened, Don Pedro de Acuña took heart behind the Puercas reef and led out his seven galleys to cut the isolated vessel off. Drake at once sent the Rainbow and five of his merchant ships to the rescue. With these reinforcements Borough drove the galleys away and then anchored them all close to the mouth of the harbour. It is not to be denied that this position was well chosen. For it was impossible now for Pedro de Acuña to attack either division without having the other on his back; and Drake was content to leave Borough’s manœuvre without a comment.
By midday the galleon of Santa Cruz was drifting where it would, an empty hulk in flames. Drake formed his remaining ships in line ahead behind him and gave the order to sail. The order had hardly been given before the wind died away and the whole squadron was left becalmed. It was the Spaniards’ opportunity. Through the night soldiers who should have been marching overland to Lisbon had been diverted to Cadiz. They moved the guns of forts down to sandhills and beaches which gave them clearer objectives and a closer range. They seized upon their own barks sheltering under the town, converted them into fire ships and sent them drifting with the tide upon the motionless enemy. “We were not a little troubled,” an unidentified combatant wrote, “to defend us from their terrible fire, which, nevertheless, was a pleasant sight for us to behold because we were thereby eased of a great labour which lay upon us day and night in discharging the victuals and other provisions of the enemy.” The galleys advanced once more, but were once more forced to retire by the broadside fire of the English ships. In spite of all these difficulties, Drake continued his work of destruction as long as the tide was flooding and the ships he set fire to would drop away from his own on to the shores of Puntales or the shoals of the inner harbour. At two o’clock in the morning the north wind began to blow again over the flats. Drake set sail, and joining Borough’s division swept out of Cadiz Roads. “Thus by the assistance of the Almighty and the invincible courage and industry of our General, this strange and happy enterprise was achieved in one day and two nights,” the same enthusiastic combatant wrote, “to the great astonishment of the King of Spain, which bred such a corrosive in the heart of the Marquess of Santa Cruz, high Admiral of Spain, that he never enjoyed good day after but within few months (as may justly be supposed) died of extreme grief and sorrow.”
One can hardly accept the naïve supposition that Santa Cruz died of a heart broken by the loss of his fine galleon. It is safer to believe that this swift and brilliant dash upon Cadiz did actually put off the sailing of the Armada for a year and gave to England, so invariably unready, an invaluable year of preparation. It was not only that fighting ships and provision hulks and the provisions with which they were loaded were destroyed. But Philip’s whole timetable was disarranged. Soldiers who should have sailed on transports from Cartagena and Cadiz must now march overland to Lisbon. Ships from Genoa or the Sicilies, which were to pick up their stores at Cadiz, must now wait in their home ports until at some harbour fresh supplies were accumulated and a guard provided which could cope with the devilman Drake.
The breeze failed again as soon as Drake was clear of the harbour, and what were left of the galleys came out “as it were in disdain of us to make some pastime with their ordinance,” but a slant of wind enabled Drake to turn back towards the harbour and thereafter he was left in peace. He rode for the rest of that day in sight of the town, completing the revictualling of his ships from the half-dozen prizes he had taken out with him and giving his crews a rest after their hard work. He sent in under a flag of truce to the Commander a proposal for the interchange of such English prisoners as he had rowing in his galleys for the Spanish prisoners which he had taken. The Spanish Commander replied, with presents of sweetmeats and many compliments on Drake’s seamanship and bravery, that he had no English prisoners at all; and Drake, after setting fire to the flyboats and hulks which he had taken out, sailed away to the west.
Spain is a country of long memories. I who am writing this book was cruising in the Mediterranean in the year 1915 as an officer under Admiral Sir Reginald Hall of the Naval Intelligence Division; and I could not but be aware of a special unfriendliness to the English shown in many quiet ways by the Governor of Cadiz. In the end he was asked with the due courtesies, why. The Governor received the question with profound astonishment that anything so inevitable should not have been understood; and he exclaimed with an incredulity which his good manners could not quite conceal, “Have you forgotten Drake?”
So strong was the hold which in that year before the Armada Sir Francis had established upon the imagination of Spain that his vanishings caused as much dismay as his irruptions. He had disappeared from Cadiz. Whither? On what business of Satan’s? Philip at Madrid thought that he could answer that question. In a few weeks the gold fleet would be due at the Azores, and unless it came safely home, even next year there would be no Armada sailing up the Channel. The Pope was obdurate, the bankers of Lombardy and Augsburg and Frankfurt had already too much of Philip’s paper unredeemed upon their hands, the gold fleet was a necessity and Drake was after it. Santa Cruz at Lisbon was bidden to interrupt his labours, man what ships of war were ready and hurry off to reach Terceira before Drake arrived. Santa Cruz replied that he had no ships ready. Ships which should have concentrated on Cadiz and moved together to Lisbon were now held up at Cartagena, at Genoa, at Naples. Those already at Cadiz were either burnt-out shells or cowering off Port Royal. Stores were destroyed, sailors were lacking, soldiers who should have sailed round Cape St. Vincent to Lisbon must now march overland. But Philip was wrong. Drake had learnt at Cadiz that Recalde, a veteran sailor of conspicuous worth, was cruising with eight ships off Cape St. Vincent to keep the sea-road to Lisbon safe, whether from the Levant, the Moluccas or the West Indies. Drake hoped to fall upon him by surprise. Santa Cruz, aware of Recalde’s danger, sent a frigate to call him back to Lisbon, and by the time Drake reached his cruising-ground, Recalde had gone.
The commanding position of Cape St. Vincent was quickly apparent to the Englishman. Supplies from many ports in the Mediterranean were streaming past it to the Tagus. There was no spot whence he could better fulfil his Commission and impeach the joining together of the King of Spain’s fleets out of their several ports. But he must have a base on land where he could land his crews and clean out his ships. For already disease had begun to cripple his crowded fleet. He sought it first of all in the Bay of Lagos.
On the very point of Cape St. Vincent stands, and stood, a great monastery. It was built on the edge of a high precipitous cliff, it was fortified, and for further protection was neighboured by the Fortress of Valliera. Just to the east of the point and between it and Cape Sagres lay a small bay. On Sagres, where now stands a signal-station, there rose a strongly built and well-armed castle. East of Sagres again curved the Bay of Lagos with a small seaport in the recess to the south-east. The key to this position was the castle of Sagres. It was in appearance almost impregnable. For on three sides the cliffs fell sheer from its walls a hundred feet to the sea. Only by the small neck of land on the north side could it be approached; and here high battlements and towers barred the way. The likelihood of a successful onslaught on this stronghold might well have seemed too slight even to Drake. To Borough it was midsummer madness.
A little more mad than otherwise, no doubt, because he learned of it first not from the mouth of the General but from the talk of the officers of the Bonaventure. On April 29th the fleet was hove-to sixteen miles to the north of Cape St. Vincent in the Atlantic. Recalde, answering without delay the
summons of Santa Cruz, had slipped away with his eight ships into the safety of the Tagus. The pursuit of him had failed. Borough, accordingly, went aboard the Flagship to consult and advise on the next movement, and there overheard the officers discussing an assault upon Sagres. It must have sounded to Borough’s ears a sudden and desperate shift to compensate for the escape of Recalde. But, as was generally the case with Drake, if the idea was an inspiration, the plan was prepared with a thoughtful accounting of his resources. In this instance he had indeed made provision for a rebuff.
Like many masterful people, Drake kept his schemes to himself until it was too late to dispute them. But they were not improvised. His error lay not in the scheme but in the leaving of his Vice-Admiral out of his confidence. Rear-Admiral Flick, who commanded the London squadron, might no doubt have nursed a grievance too. But there is no sign that he did. For one sufficient reason, he was a soldier. But Borough was in a different category. He was by career an officer of the Royal Navy and had reached high rank. “I have served in place as I do now—” he wrote in his protest to Drake “Admiral of the Sea unto the now Lord Admiral of England.” He should have been given his voice, even if the advice he gave was refused. But Drake had lost something of the comradeship which had distinguished him in the days of the Nombre de Dios expedition. He was still ready to draw and hale with the mariners, but with greater responsibilities and resounding success had come an arrogance of mind which was inclined to disregard some of the useful amenities. He told Borough what he was going to do, and Borough, after returning to the Lion, drew up a protest and sent it to the Flagship. It was long; it covered the whole expedition. There were no councils; the enemy was approached in a haphazard disarray; Her Majesty’s ships exposed to the swift manœuvres of galleys — Borough set too much stress both on the offensive capacity of these small vessels and on the valour of the Spaniards who manned them. As for the attack upon Sagres, his own land-officers had warned him that with a couple of guns and a hundred men the castle could be held against all corners. He ended with a prayer that his protest should be taken in good part as the discharge of his duty towards Her Majesty and the Navy.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 887