At midnight Howard sounded the order to make sail; to Drake was entrusted the honour of keeping the watch; and for a time the great lantern burned on the poop of the Revenge at the head of the fleet. But only for a time. The Revenge led the way past Start Point and the Skerries Rock, and then at some point in Start Bay his light was seen no more. The Revenge, with Drake on board of her, had disappeared. In the fleet strung out behind her there was perplexity, dismay, confusion. The line lost its order; some ships hove-to, some changed their direction. Only Howard in the Ark Royal, the Bear and the Mary Rose held on their course; and when the short night of July ended these three galleons found themselves alone, with the Spanish fleet off Berry Head just a culverin’s shot in front of them, and no more than the topsails of any of their own company to be seen astern. Now, the range of a culverin at its furthest was eight hundred yards, and on the flat surface of the sea a ship eight hundred yards away is no more than your next-door neighbour. The trio of English craft was at the mercy of the Armada; and no lapse more clearly proves the unfitness of Medina-Sidonia for his great command than his failure to bear up and take his advantage when he could. He let his opportunity slip. He was too busy reshaping his formation. He divided his fleet into two squadrons only, with the victualling and hospital ships in between. The first he commanded himself, with Diego Flores de Valdes at his elbow to prompt the orders. The second, now that Recalde on the San Juan was occupied with repairing his shot-holes and keeping the Santa Ana afloat, he handed over to that dashing cavalry officer Alonzo de Leyva. He drew up the order which the ships were to keep, the space to be allowed between each; and, as if to show in what little estimation the seafaring members of a Spanish war-fleet were held, he appointed soldier officers and provost-marshals with full power to hang the Captains who failed to keep their positions.
Meanwhile, Howard’s missing navy began to collect about him. There was only a light wind blowing across West Bay, that bay of storms, and during the morning the Margaret and John drew alongside the flagship, and its Captain, John Fisher of Cley, came aboard with a petition.
It was the Margaret and John which on the evening before had caused the assisting ships to fly from Nuestra Señora del Rosario and leave her helpless with her foremast gone by the board and her mainyards wrecked. Captain Fisher declared that at nine o’clock he had come hard under the side of Don Pedro’s great galleon, but that it was too steep and too towering for a vessel less than a fifth of its size to grapple and board. There was no light burning on the deck and no man’s head showed above the bulwark against the skyline. Captain John Fisher argued that she was derelict, but to make sure he fired a volley with thirty muskets into her upper works. He was surprised to hear two great shots from a heavy gun fired harmlessly over his head. He replied with a broadside which holed Our Lady of the Rosary above the water-line, and then drew off and lay to. He was on the weather side of the Spanish ship, the waves high, the wind screaming through his rigging — and he heard voices calling to him in the darkness from the sea. If ever a sea-story carried in the telling its convincing evidence, here was one. For who on a sailing ship on black and stormy nights has not heard voices calling to him from the sea? The Margaret and John lowered an eight-oared galley to rescue this imagined Spaniard battling with the waves, but found no one. Stiff Fisher remained near to Don Pedro’s ship, drifting with the tide astern of Howard’s fleet which was hove-to for the council of war. When at midnight Howard gave the signal to sail — we must assume that by then the moon was shining out in a rift of clouds — Captain Fisher, who was now three miles astern, fearing the displeasure of the Lord Admiral if he disobeyed, abandoned his hope of a fine fat prize and made all sail to overtake him. Now, however, he asked permission, seeing the distressed state in which Our Lady of the Rosary was left, to return and take her.
Fisher was still making his plea when a pinnace brought up alongside and a Captain Cely climbing on board announced that Sir Francis Drake had during the night captured Don Pedro’s ship, with four hundred and sixty men, a great many guns, ammunition and treasure, and had sent her in to Dartmouth.
Towards nightfall of this day, Monday July 22nd, Drake in the Revenge caught up the fleet. He was rowed to the flagship in his galley with a stranger at his side, and he presented the stranger to the Lord Admiral. He was Don Pedro de Valdes, who was thereafter loud in his admiration for the courtesy which he received at the hands of both Drake and Howard, and contrasted it bitterly with the ingratitude and inhumanity of Medina-Sidonia.
We have seen Drake often enough behaving to a noble captive with an extremity of good breeding, seating him at his own table and playing the perfect host. There was nothing out of the way in that. But in all his fantastic career there is no action of his so difficult to account for as his absence during the best part of the last eighteen hours. He was the Vice-Admiral of the Queen’s fleet, and he was bound to her by his interests no less than by his duty. He had come fresh from a war-council which had decided to bring the Spaniard to battle at the earliest possible moment. He was actually leading the fleet through the night; and he had suddenly, without sending a message, disappeared from his post, and returned at the end of the next day with an intimation that he had taken a prisoner.
This was his explanation. Just before morning he had seen some big ships stealing by him to the west. There was a touch of east in the north wind now. He believed that they were ships of the Spanish fleet which had gone about and were trying in the darkness to get the weather of Howard. He followed them, thinking that his own fleet would come about behind him. He caught up the doubtful vessels and discovered them to be simple German merchantmen with whom the English had no quarrel. He left them, and was on the point of returning to his position when he sighted Nuestra Señora del Rosario, which had been all night repairing her injuries. She was a prize not to be missed. He made for her, having now in his company the bark Roebuck, and coming near enough sent a boat to summon her to surrender. Don Pedro wished to argue about terms. Drake replied that he would make no terms. Safety and comfort for everybody he would promise, but they must take the word of Sir Francis Drake and surrender, or he would blow them out of the water. The name of Sir Francis Drake was enough. The noblest Don of them all could extend the hilt of his sword to him without staining his escutcheon. Drake brought Don Pedro and some of his gentlemen on board the Revenge and sent Nuestra Señora del Rosario into Dartmouth under the escort of the Roebuck. The subsequent history of Don Pedro may be related here, and he can then disappear from this record. With some of his army captains he remained a prisoner on the Revenge for ten days. He was then sent to London, where the Queen, at Drake’s request, consigned him to the care of a relation, Richard Drake, from whom he received, according to his own account, “the best usage and entertainment that may be.” He was imprisoned once for trying to escape, but Francis Drake procured his release and he lived for three years five miles from London, hunting and enjoying other pleasure parties. At the end of three years he paid a ransom of three thousand pounds, and after returning to Spain was appointed to the Governorship of Cuba. This, however, is mere parenthesis.
Drake’s story of his night’s adventure was received by Howard without question or censure. No doubt the capture of a great ship like Our Lady of the Rosary, flying an Admiral’s flag, with twenty-eight battery guns and ammunition to match, modified any indignation he may have felt. He had something to show to Queen Elizabeth for his first day’s encounter with the Armada. But there were others who were not disposed to pass over the incident so lightly — Frobisher, for instance. Frobisher was an uncouth, illiterate Yorkshireman and a fine sailor, but his expeditions, whether to Africa or in search of the North-West Passage, had brought nothing but loss to the merchants who had sent him out; and his violent abuse of Drake as either a coward or a traitor and probably both was quite discounted by his unconcealed fear that he was, owing to Drake’s desertion of his post, likely to lose his share of the prize-money.
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p; “He thinketh to cozen us of our shares of fifteen thousand ducats; but we will have our shares or I will make him spend the best blood in his belly; for he hath had enough of those cozening cheats already.”
Some small attention to Drake’s conduct was given when the Armada had dispersed, for at Harwich, on August 11th, Lord Sheffield, one of Howard’s Captains, and Sir John Hawkins questioned a sailor, Matthew Starke, who had kept a watch on the Revenge that night. And the Captain, Master and Lieutenant of the Margaret and John, whilst admitting that Our Lady of the Rosary was Drake’s prize, put in a gentle little petition that, if anyone else was claiming a share in it, they of the Margaret and John should not be excluded. No action, however, was taken, and indeed no harm had been done. For not a shot on either side was fired during the third day of the pursuit. But there are questions which make one wonder a little whether, during the evening of the 21st, Drake had noticed the great Spanish galleon falling astern and some old urge from his privateering days had so mastered him that he had to obey it. Why, for instance, did the watch on no other of the hundred ships of Howard’s fleet see those German merchantmen passing to the west? And why did not Drake, if he meant the fleet to take order behind him, send a pinnace back to the next ship, expressing his intention? And why — the most difficult question of them all — why did he extinguish his lantern when he did go about?
Another event took place on the afternoon of the 22nd which stilled any cry of indignation but Frobisher’s. At eleven in the morning the Captain of the San Salvador sent word to Medina-Sidonia that his ship was sinking. The treasure-chests, the Paymaster-General, the officers and those members of the crew who were not too badly wounded, were removed from the galleon, and the galleasses were bidden to sink her. The San Salvador fell astern too quickly for the galleasses to do their work, and on the approach of the English vanguard they left her to drop away to leeward. Howard sent Lord Thomas Howard, his cousin, and Sir John Hawkins of the Victory to take possession of her, and they on boarding her were met with a very pitiful sight. The explosion had burst the main deck, the rudder was broken, the after-part blown away, and amidst this wreckage fifty men were lying horribly burnt. The stench and the ugliness of the spectacle drove Lord Thomas and Hawkins off the ship, and she was given into the charge of that Captain Thomas Fleming who, four days before, had interrupted the game of bowls. He kept her afloat and on the next day brought her into Weymouth with a cargo on board of more value to England at that moment than all the treasure-chests of Spain. For Medina-Sidonia’s officers had left in her fourteen brass cannon and four of iron, one hundred and thirty-two barrels of powder, two thousand two hundred and forty-six big cannonballs and six firkins of musket shot.
As the Armada lumbered across the forty miles of West Bay, the Spanish General completed his new formation. Forty-three of his best galleons, including the whole of the Indian Guard, now made up in his opinion a rearguard sufficient to keep off the English attack; and he sent forward Juan Gil, his ensign-bearer, in a pinnace to advertise the Duke of Parma at Dunkirk of his approach. As evening fell the light wind died away altogether, and the two fleets lay idle, separated by little more than the range of their heaviest guns; the Spaniards off the Bill of Portland, the English astern. But with daylight the wind sprang up in the north-east and gave to Medina-Sidonia the advantage of the weather-gauge. He hoisted once more his great standard at the main, whilst Howard led his fleet on a long board to the north-west, meaning to go about at the end of it when he could fetch to the east between the land and the Armada and recover the wind. But Medina-Sidonia followed him upon the same tack with his galleasses ahead of him and the fleet streaming astern. Howard, seeing his manœuvre anticipated, went about and beat to the east close-hauled on the port tack. He was followed by Hawkins in the Victory and some ten other ships, of which the last was Thomas Fenner’s Nonpareil. The rest of the English craft seem to have held on their first board to the north-west longer than Howard, so that the Admiral with his eleven vessels in line ahead became for the time a separate squadron. His course led him across Medina-Sidonia’s rearguard, of which Recalde, who had changed his flag from the battered Santa Ana to the San Juan, now shared the command with Alonzo de Leyva. Whether Howard hoped to weather this squadron he never told. But it is certain that the Spaniards now saw at last the opportunity of grappling and boarding and fighting with their soldiers a land battle on the sea, “wherein,” Medina-Sidonia wrote to King Philip, “was the only way to victory.” They came bowling along in line abreast with the wind behind them, Oquendo’s seven Guipuscoans and the nine Levanters with Don Martin de Bertendona in command on the Ragazzona, the biggest ship of both fleets. Once more the Spaniards were surprised by the accuracy and deadliness of the English gunnery. Their decks raked and their hulls shot through at close range, they bore up and passed astern of the Nonpareil, all except Martin de Bertendona. His was the outside ship of the rearguard squadron, a towering castle of twelve hundred tons with three hundred soldiers on board of her ready with pikes and muskets, and he held straight on to the Ark Royal. The Ark Royal could not weather him, and for a little while it was touch and go whether the battle would not be continued on the Ark Royal’s deck. But the Ark Royal was the handier ship and the better sailed. Howard checked the Levanter with a final broadside and bore away out of his reach. Howard had got away, but the English fleet was broken. During the night of dead calm Frobisher, who was on the left or shoreward wing, caught by some inshore current, had with five other ships drifted to the east; and Medina-Sidonia’s tactics in following Howard’s board to the north-west had cut Frobisher’s little squadron completely off from their friends. Frobisher lay opposite the Bill of Portland, to windward of the Armada, and therefore much more to windward of the English. There was no way by which Howard could come to his relief. On the other hand, Medina-Sidonia had his four great Neapolitan galleasses leading him. The galleasses with their powerful sweeps were the only vessels present which could drive into the wind and approach him. Medina-Sidonia drew abreast of Hugo de Moncada’s flagship — there seems to have been some trouble on a point of dignity already between these extremely blue-blooded Hidalgos — and let fly his orders to attack Frobisher in round and homely terms. The galleasses obeyed. Frobisher on the Triumph had none but converted merchant ships with him, the Merchant Royal, the Centurion, the Margaret and John, the Mary Rose and the Golden Lion, and for an hour and a half he was hard put to it to hold the Spaniards off. He had no speed of manœuvring which could compete in this limited space with the oared galleasses, and their weight of artillery greatly exceeded his. It was always understood that his defence was the most distinguished episode in the whole action.
Medina-Sidonia, leaving the galleasses to their work, then went about with his sixteen ships and joined in the pursuit of the Ark Royal and the rest of the English fleet. But in the smoke which was throwing a black and confusing screen about the battle he did not notice that Drake’s hybrid squadron of fifty ships which made Howard’s right wing was edging round Recalde’s and Bertendona’s rearguard squadrons. Whether Drake would have succeeded without the help of nature, no one can say. But nature did help. The wind from north-east switched to south-west. Drake could have asked for nothing better. He weathered the rearguard, and then something better did happen. From south-west the wind shifted 22½ degrees to south-south-west. The change enabled him to attack from the rear to the westward. The sudden appearance of his ships out of the black cloud of smoke was startling to his enemy, and the salvos of his guns forced them hurriedly to bear away and run eastward to form up on their leeward ships. They had lost the weather-gauge, and with it, as it seemed, the possibility of a victory. Worse still, Recalde was once more in trouble on the San Juan, as he had been two days before on the Santa Ana. Crippled by the broadsides of Drake’s ships, he was fighting a lone battle. But Frobisher, far away at the other end of the battle line, was still being harried by the four galleasses, and still to the east of the English fleet.
However, with the change in the direction of the wind it was easier to help him. Howard collected the Elizabeth Jonas, the Galleon Leicester, the Victory, the Dreadnought and the Swallow, and with the wind dead astern of him charged down towards the cluster of friends and enemies. Medina-Sidonia, with sixteen of his big galleons, lay in the centre of his fleet, and he too bore down towards the Bill to intercept the rescue party. But he dared not leave Recalde to his destruction. It was better to let the Triumph and her consorts escape, if he must, than to lose Recalde as he had lost Pedro de Valdes. Still it might be possible in both cases to succeed. Medina-Sidonia might be a poor sailor and a reluctant and unimaginative leader, but he was of a stout heart. He sent off his galleons to succour Recalde, and alone continued on his course.
Here was an opportunity for Howard which a blind man could not have missed. He bore up until he had the wind on his starboard quarter and the San Martin in front of him. The San Martin ran up into the wind and awaited his attack. It was not merely braggadocio, it was not merely a call upon the Spanish pride which prompted Medina-Sidonia to this quixotic proceeding. He had sent his sixteen galleons away, it is true, but his vanguard was fifty ships strong at the least computation. They should have been gathering behind him. But such was the confusion of this day, so many little engagements making up the one big battle, such a violent bombardment breaking out now here, now there, and so dense a pall of smoke creased and writhed and floated over all, that many of the Spanish ships were huddled together like sheep. The San Martin suffered terribly. Howard’s ship passed her giving her three broadsides, went about, repassed her and gave her the other broadside. The San Martin replied with her bow guns, but they were of little avail. She lost fifty killed and sixty wounded in this one phase of the battle. As the sixteen galleons reached seawards towards Recalde, Howard passed on to Frobisher and the galleasses, and Drake swept down to take Howard’s place. He too gave to the San Martin the full attention of his broadsides. The sacred banner at the main was ripped and torn, her hull was shot through and she was making water fast. The galleasses at last fled from Frobisher’s ships at Howard’s approach — and suddenly the battle ceased and the noise of it died away. Why? Howard had fired all his ammunition away, and the Spaniards, glad of this unexpected respite, gathered their crippled galleons in their midst and with a fair wind, but to leeward again of their enemy, sailed on past Weymouth Bay to St. Alban’s Head.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 894