This was not known in Plymouth. None the less, the hope of bringing the Armada to battle in its rightful place off the Spanish coast exhilarated officers and men in Howard’s ships; and no one more than Drake, to whom the Isles of Bayona were an old playground. If only the wind would change, they would all hurry thither hungry and replenish their stores till the beams burst with the provisions of the defeated fleet. If only the wind would change!
But, before it did, an unexpected blow threw them into despair. A letter arrived by a pursuivant and written in the hand of Walsingham — of Walsingham of all men. One can picture the grief upon his long and melancholy face as under stress he wrote it. The Queen had gone back upon her policy and word. Who was at her ear, one wonders? Not Sir James Croft, the traitor. He was still talking terms of peace with Parma’s Commissioners in Flanders. Probably it was Burghley with his Foreign-Office reluctance to strike the first blow, however advantageous the blow might be to his country. There was no ingenious misinterpretation of the letter possible. It was too short and too precise.
The Queen had perceived that Lord Howard was minded to repair to the Isles of Bayona, there to abide the Spanish fleet, and feared that it might escape him by sailing west and north as far as the fiftieth degree of latitude, whence it could “shoot across to this realm.” She thought it, therefore, not convenient that he should go so far to the south as the said Isles of Bayona, but he should ply up and down between the coast of Spain and this realm, so that he might be able to answer any attempt made against England, Ireland or Scotland.
For some reason this letter, written upon the 9th of June, took a week to reach Plymouth, and with what consternation and anger it was received can be read in Howard’s reply. He did not a little marvel at it. The plan of going on the coast of Spain had been deeply debated by the men whom the world held the most experienced in England, Sir Francis Drake, Hawkins, who now commanded the Bonaventure, Frobisher and Thomas Fenner. The King of Spain was merely dragging out the pretended negotiations, first to perfect his arrangements, secondly to bring the French King in through the influence of the Duke of Guise, and thirdly to give the English fleet time to eat up its victuals. That must have been a nasty gibe at the Queen, and Walsingham must have found one of his few sad pleasures in repeating it to her. “I pray you, when our victuals be consumed in gazing for them, what will become of us?” Whether this would not breed great danger and dishonour, Lord Howard must leave to Her Majesty’s wisdom, but on the whole, he would rather never have been born, and there were many in Plymouth with the same wish. He then proceeded to demolish the Queen’s argument. To lie on and off between England and Spain with the wind in the south-west would simply mean that the English fleet would lie to leeward. Even if he cruised as far north as Cape Clear, he could not prevent them invading Ireland or Scotland and would open for them a clear way to the Isle of Wight. The fact is that, except by the practical navigators, the importance of retaining the weather-gauge was only vaguely beginning to be understood. Howard repeated Drake’s unanswered argument: “the seas are broad, but if we had been on their coast, they durst not have put off to have left us on their backs.” Howard ends his letter in a fine rage: “But I must and will obey; and am glad there be such there as are able to judge what is fitter for us to do, than we here.” As for his earlier instructions, he will put them up in a bag, and he will certainly do as he is told — only, God send that the wind did not force him on to the coast of Spain.
Howard must have felt a good deal better after he had sent off this obedient-disobedient letter, and in a week’s time, after one more abortive attempt to get clear of the Channel, he obtained real contentment. For on the morning of Saturday, June 22nd, a reply reached him from the Court restoring to him full authority to act as seemed to him best, so long, and so long only, as his war-council agreed. During the day of Saturday another letter was delivered to him, this time from Sir Francis Godolphin, the Member of Parliament for Cornwall; and it contained astonishing news. A bark belonging to Mousehole, a little cove in Cornwall, set out to France on Thursday for a cargo of salt. Early in the morning its skipper was hailed by a flyboat and warned, as he loved his life, not to proceed upon his errand, for the Spanish were on the coast. The Mousehole skipper, half inclined to think a joke was being played on him, and wholly inclined to see whatever there was to be seen, continued on his course, and between Ushant and the Scillies sighted nine great ships bearing north-east towards the coast of England. They were ships of from five to eight hundred tons and two of them were flying flags, but what flags they were, it was impossible to see. The skipper, having the wind of the nine ships, could afford to drop down nearer upon them. At once the two flags were hauled down and the squadron gave chase. The Mousehole bark only just managed to escape, and would not have done so had not each of the nine big ships dragged a small pinnace or a ship’s boat astern. The skipper noticed that the sails of these ships were painted with red crosses.
Information so circumstantial, however improbable — and it did seem improbable to Howard — was not to be neglected. The weather was changing, and to make that Saturday one to be marked by a white stone, at six o’clock in the evening the ten victualling ships swept round the Mewstone and anchored in the Sound. All through that night of Saturday the torches flickered over the water as the provisions were transferred to the ships of war. “No man shall sleep nor eat till it be dispatched,” said Lord Howard. All through Sunday the work went on. On Saturday another English ship from the west of Cornwall had been chased and fired upon by a strange squadron; and on Sunday as Howard, in the midst of his work, was writing a hurried letter to the Queen, a man of his, one Simons of Exeter, whom he had sent forward in a pinnace to lie between the Land’s End and Ushant, had seen two squadrons of Spanish ships and had been chased by one. Some of his mariners had been hurt with shot. The one squadron was made up of seven ships of eight to nine hundred tons. The other was of Biscay galleons of three hundred tons. This confirmation of the skipper of the Mousehole bark increased the ardour and the energy of the English sailors; and all the more because Simons of Exeter was known to Lord Howard as a wise man and of good credit. To Lord Howard, his Admirals and Captains, the truth was as clear as glass. In the storm the Armada had been scattered. There were two separate squadrons off the Scillies just waiting to be devoured. Howard finished his letter to the Queen with an ardent prayer that she should guard her own life — no one could persuade her to do that! — and gather an army of soldiers about her. The fear of Parma’s troops on the one hand, and of assassination on the other, was ever present in his mind. “For the love of Jesus Christ, Madam,” he writes passionately, “awake thoroughly and see the villainous treasons round about you.” Howard wrote a second letter to Walsingham who had applied for the names of the towns which had refused or failed to provide ships in this great danger. He could not answer, being overcharged with work. Drake had the names, but he was too busy to send them. “I mean to weigh presently and set sail.” And he adds a prayer to Walsingham to his prayer to the Queen that she should trust no more to Judas kisses. “Let her defend herself like a noble and mighty Prince and trust to her sword and not to their word and then she need not fear, for the good God will defend her.” He ends with a postscript, and it must have been past midnight on the Monday morning when he wrote it:
“Sir, God willing, I will cut sail within this three hours.”
The work went on through Sunday night and was not ended when the morning broke. But Howard could wait no longer. He had sent a pinnace forward on the day before to watch the enemy. The wind had veered round into the north-east, the very quarter for him. He ordered the provision ships to follow him, and with his fleet about him went bowling down the Channel towards the Scillies. But the north-east wind played him false. He was still in the Sleeve when it swung back again into the south-west and the fleet was brought to a standstill. Howard’s pinnace fell back. It had seen nothing of the enemy. Drake, who was on the left wing, was s
ufficiently forward to edge round Ushant and try out his luck along the coast of Brittany. But his luck was out. He beat back with the help of the tide, without having seen so much as a topsail on the horizon. The wind which had brought the English out from Plymouth had helped the Spaniards home to Coruña. But Howard knew now that the Armada had set sail upon the Enterprise. Sooner or later it would be encountered.
A council of war was held, and by a majority vote it was decided to stand on and off until the Spanish fleet was seen. It was Drake who protested against the decision. Between Ushant and Falmouth lie no more than a hundred miles of sea. With a fleet of this size, sea-room was needed for manœuvring. On going back to his ship, he wrote to Howard a formal protest. Did Borough, now guarding Thames’ mouth with a squadron of galleys, ever hear of that protest? But Howard, more sure of himself than Drake, was less than Drake inclined to suspect rebellion when he was pressed with advice. Howard accepted the protest from the most brilliant and the soundest sailor under his command. The fleet was flung forward on a wide front to the north-west of Ushant with a pinnace on the right wing in touch with the Scillies.
This station was taken on July 6th. On July 7th the wind veered again into the north. A second council of war was held. The wind stood fair for Spain, and Drake urged that they should make their profit of it. Lord Howard was doubtful. His provision ships were far behind. He had stores enough to reach Coruña, but very little more. Drake argued that they could replenish them at Coruña and put forward his calculation of the time which it must take Medina-Sidonia to get his fleet again into fighting trim. By three in the afternoon he had won, and the order was given to sail.
Throughout the night and the next day the greatest fleet which had ever put to sea from England ran bravely across the Bay to Spain. Another twenty-four hours and its guns would have been in action. But on the 9th the wind swept round into the south, and on the 10th it was blowing a full south-westerly gale. “My Lord was in a good way, if God had not sent a contrary wind,” Cely, Captain of the Elizabeth Drake, wrote to Burghley. A day was to come when the wind would be friendlier to the English cause, but the elements seem seldom to favour it at the first. Almost within view of Cape Ortegal the wonderful opportunity must be foregone. There was nothing to be added to Thomas Fenner’s laconic sentence. “Thereby bear up for England again.”
On July 12th the fleet was anchored again in the Sound. No one was disheartened. Sailors are patient, contemplative people, or were in the days of sail. Some time there would come a spell of fine weather with a northerly breeze, and they would run southwards across the Bay before it and make sport with the Spaniards. Meanwhile sails and rigging wanted attention, stores must be transferred from the victualling ships, more powder and more shot must be found for the guns. A week given over to these labours went quickly by, but on Friday the 19th, so the story runs, when the Lord Admiral and his chief officers were playing a game of bowls after dinner upon the Hoe, the captain of a pinnace which had been keeping watch in the west burst suddenly in upon the players with the news that the Armada was off the Lizard. A silence followed upon the cry, and all turned towards Drake, who was stooping with his wood in his hand and his eyes on the jack. He, quite unruffled, said, “We have time enough to finish the game and beat the Spaniards afterwards.”
The story is circumstantial in that the name of the Captain is given, Fleming, and the name of his pinnace, the Golden Hind. But it is none the less difficult to find contemporary authority for it. However, it would be as useless to argue about its truth as it would have been for a latter-day Spartan to argue about the Spartan boy and the fox, or for a latter-day Athenian to doubt the death of Pheidippides. As long as the English language is spoken, this tale of how Drake heard that the Armada had been sighted, and the answer which he made, will be told and believed. It is too racial to be forgotten. The Englishman’s confidence in himself as against the foreigner, his trust in his improvisation, his instinct that the men who can pull a game out of the fire are the men who can do the same for a war, are all expressed in it. And the story very probably is true. The fleet, with this week of respite, was no doubt as ready as it could be made. For whatever it lacked, the Council in London and the officials at Chatham were to blame. But the wind had fallen. In Lord Howard’s words it was very scant — and the fleet was not warped out of harbour until after nightfall. Now, if this game of bowls took place after dinner it took place soon after midday, and there must have been some other reason than the game of bowls why so many hours passed before the fleet was under way. There is only one explanation. The tide was running hard up-channel, and it would have been impossible to have warped these big ships out with no wind until the tide slackened. No man would have known this better than Drake. He lost no time by finishing his game, and seized the opportunity to inspire his comrades with his own confidence. But let no one confuse this story of the game of bowls with that foolish saying, “It’ll be all right on the night.” Drake’s whole history reveals that in all his audacity he was prudent, and that all the precautions which it was possible to take in order to ensure success had been thought over and taken before he went into action.
CHAPTER XIX
PROGRESS OF THE ARMADA. THE SKIRMISH OFF PLYMOUTH. THE BATTLE OF PORTLAND. THE BATTLE OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT.
THE DIVINE IRONY which waits upon presumptuous men had taken the English defenders into its chastening hands. The Lizard crawls down into the sea only forty-five miles to the west of Plymouth; the wind was in the west; the tide on the flow. The fleet off the Lizard had thus the supreme advantages of the sea-room and the weather-gauge. Howard’s ships, on the other hand, were in a crowded harbour on a lee-shore. They were in a trap. Moreover, they were short of food again, short of ammunition — that they always were — and disease was making havoc of the crews. They were in the same predicament at Plymouth as Philip’s Armada had been in a fortnight before at the Groyne. A change of weather saved Philip’s Armada. Spanish incompetence and English seamanship saved Howard, and with him the English people.
Medina-Sidonia, in spite of his Dunkirk pilots, had mistaken Land’s End for the Lizard. He was there with the bulk of his fighting ships, fifty miles still further to the west. What Thomas Fleming of the Golden Hind pinnace had sighted off the Lizard was the Andalusian squadron of fifteen galleons commanded by Pedro de Valdes. One of the best of the Spanish sailors, he had sailed straight to the appointed spot where the order of battle was to be taken. All that day he hung on and off. A pinnace from the San Martin, Medina-Sidonia’s flagship, found him in the afternoon, but it was not until the morning of the 20th that the Duke himself arrived and the united force moved on to the bold cliff of the Dodman on the western side of Fowey. There the Armada hove-to four leagues from the shore. There, too, from some high neighbouring point, probably Rame Head, the Mayor of Plymouth saw it and set to work to recruit from town and country men to fill up the muster of Howard’s crews. There, too, Medina-Sidonia broke out his consecrated banner at the main with the picture of Christ crucified upon the one side and the Virgin Mary upon the other. But neither he nor the Mayor of Plymouth saw anything but the Spanish fleet and an empty sea.
Medina-Sidonia called a council of war upon his flagship as it lay off the Dodman. There was no need for hurry. The information which they had was based upon the English Council’s plan of campaign before Drake forced his new strategy into acceptance. Drake with some thirty ships of war would be lying hidden in Plymouth, waiting for the Armada to pass. He would sally out as soon as the Armada had passed. The main fleet would be lying forward in the Narrow Seas, the design being to catch the Spaniards between the two fleets before he could make a junction with Parma and his soldiers at Dunkirk. The Spaniards, confident that this was the plan which they had to meet, could take their time to debate the way to defeat it. They were still to the west of Plymouth; they had still both the hostile fleets ahead of them; and the wind, such as there was of it — for it had fallen and the weather was becoming th
ick — still sighed rather than blew out of the west. The Spaniards had, in fact, the weather-gauge.
So in the Commander-in-Chief’s cabin they debated at their ease: Recalde, the Second-in-Command; Don Miguel de Oquendo, a brilliant young sailor in command of the squadron of Guipuscoa; Don Pedro de Valdes; no doubt also Hugo de Moncada, Lieutenant-General of the Galleys and a veteran from Flanders. With them would be Medina-Sidonia himself and his right hand, Diego Flores de Valdes. The Duke of Medina-Sidonia had no qualifications for his command. When old Santa Cruz died, he was pitchforked by Philip into a position for which he had neither ambition nor experience. He did his best to escape from it; he was much happier just being a Duke in his lemon groves at Port St. Mary. But he was an honest, undistinguished nobleman with a strong sense of duty towards his monarch. His expostulations on the ground of his inexperience were answered by the appointment of Diego Flores de Valdes, General of the Fleet in the West Indies and the Indian Guard, as his Chief of Staff. He was supplied with definite instructions by Philip, and in the end accepted his uncongenial office.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 892