Famous Sea Fights Part 7

Philip II was King not of Spain only, but also of Portugal and of the Two Sicilies, ruler of other European lands and "Lord of the Indies," the Sovereign of a widespread maritime Empire in Asia, Africa, and America, that had been won by a hundred years of enterprise on the part of sailors and soldiers like Columbus and Vasco da Gama, Cortes, Pizarro, and Albuquerque. The tradition of Spanish victory on the sea was a proud one, and as we have seen Spain had borne a leading part in the latest of decisive naval victories, when the Turkish power in the Mediterranean was shattered at Lepanto; King Philip might therefore reasonably look forward to success for his great fleet, and if it could once secure the mastery of the Channel, the invasion of England might be regarded as no very perilous enterprise. For the Spanish infantry were the best soldiers of the day, and the Duke of Parma, who was to command the land operations, was one of the best and most experienced leaders in Europe.

Looking back on the events of the wonderful year of the Armada, we must try to divest ourselves of the ideas of to-day, and see things as the men of the time saw them. Philip counted on divisions among the people of England.

The event proved that he was mistaken, but he had reasonable grounds for the view he took. A hundred years later another fleet conveyed a foreign army across the narrow seas from the Netherlands to change effectively the course of English affairs. It found a divided people, and the invading army was welcomed by a party strong enough to effect a Revolution that was a new starting-point in English history. Nor must we suppose that the policy of Philip II was directed entirely by religious views. If kings were easily swayed by such motives, there would have not been such difficulty about organizing a League against the Turk.

Professor Laughton, in his introduction to the "State Papers relating to the Defeat of the Armada," puts the matter so clearly that it is worth while quoting his words at some length:--

"It is not strange that the action of the fleet was for long misunderstood, and that the failure of the Spaniards should have been represented--as it often is even now--as due to a Heaven-sent storm. '_Flavit Deus et dissipati sunt_' was accepted as at once a true and pious explanation of the whole thing. It was, too, a flattering and economical belief. We were, it has been argued, a nation peculiarly dear to the Almighty, and He showed His favour by raising a storm to overwhelm our enemy, when the odds against us were most terrible. From the religious point of view such a representation is childish; from the historical it is false. False, because the Spanish fleet, after being hounded up Channel, had sustained a crushing defeat from the English, a defeat in which they lost many ships and thousands of men before they fled to the north.... Childish, because in affairs of State Providence works by recognized means, and gives the victory, not by disturbing the course of nature and nature's laws, but by giving the favoured nation wise and prudent commanders, skilful and able warriors; by teaching their hands to war and their fingers to fight.

"But, in fact, much of the nonsense that has been talked grew out of the attempt, not unsuccessfully made, to represent the war as religious; to describe it as a species of crusade instigated by the Pope, in order to bring heretical England once more into the fold of the true Church. In reality nothing can be more inaccurate. It is, indeed, quite certain that religious bitterness was imported into the quarrel; but the war had its origin in two perfectly clear and wholly mundane causes."

Professor Laughton then goes on to explain what these causes were: (1) the attempts of Drake and Hawkins to break the Spanish monopoly of trade in the West Indies by armed expeditions, which included the capture of Spanish ships and the sacking of Spanish trading posts. The Spaniards regarded Drake and Hawkins as smugglers and pirates, and in vain asked Elizabeth to disavow and make amends for their acts.

(2) "The countenance and a.s.sistance which had been given by the English to the King's rebellious subjects in the Low Countries."

The King was glad enough to put forward religious reasons as the motives for his enterprise in the hope of thus enlisting new allies on his side, but, like so many other wars, the conflict between Spain and England, which began in 1585, arose largely from rivalry in trade.

The Marquis of Santa Cruz, the same who had commanded the allied reserve at Lepanto, was then the most famous and the most trusted of King Philip's admirals. Santa Cruz urged upon him the advisability of attempting an invasion of England itself, as the only effective means of cutting off the support given by Elizabeth to the revolt of the Netherlands, and checking at their source the raids on the West Indies. In March, 1586, he submitted to his master an elaborate plan for the operation. Santa Cruz's scheme was an ambitious project for concentrating the whole force of the Spanish Empire in an attack on England. Some 500 ships, great and small, were to be a.s.sembled in the ports of the Spanish peninsula, and 85,000 men embarked on them.

Philip II thought the scheme too vast, and, above all, too costly. He subst.i.tuted for it another plan, which was more economical. Santa Cruz was to a.s.semble in the Atlantic ports of the Peninsula a fleet of more modest proportions, just strong enough to secure command of the Channel. This done, he was to cover the transportation across the narrow seas of the Spanish army that was already operating in the Netherlands, under the Duke of Parma. The army of the Netherlands would be reinforced with all the fighting-men that could be spared from the fleet. This was in its essential points the plan of campaign of the "Gran' Armada" of 1588.

It was intended that the attempt should be made in the summer of 1587. It was delayed for a twelvemonth by a daring enterprise of Francis Drake, a memorable enterprise, because in proposing it he laid down the true principle for the defence of England against invasion. His policy was that of Edward III at Sluys, his principle that it was better to keep the enemy occupied on his own coasts rather than await him on those of England. On 2 April, 1587, Drake sailed for Spain with only thirty ships, and surprised and burned the half-armed transports and storeships collected at Cadiz for fitting out the Armada. His dashing enterprise had made its departure for that year impossible.

Before the preparations for the next summer's campaign were completed the Marquis of Santa Cruz died, and Spain lost her best and most experienced admiral. King Philip put in his place a great n.o.ble, Guzman, Duke of Medina-Sidonia, who pleaded in vain to be excused, frankly declaring to his sovereign that he felt unfit for such high command, as he had scant knowledge of war and no experience of the sea. It is supposed that the King persisted in the nomination because Medina-Sidonia's hereditary rank would place him above the jealousies of the subordinate commanders, and he hoped to supply for the Marquis's inexperience by sending veteran sailors and soldiers with him as his staff-officers and divisional commanders.

By the middle of May, 1588, the Armada was at last ready to sail from the Tagus. In England there had been the wildest reports as to its numbers and strength. These exaggerations were repeated by the popular historians of the fighting in the Channel, and have become almost a national tradition.

The Spanish galleons were said to be floating monsters, more like castles than ships; the fleet was so numerous that it hid the sea, and looked like a moving town; it "seemed as if room would scarce be found on the ocean for so vast an armament."

The glory of the English victory was great enough to need no exaggeration to enhance it. But in sober fact there was no such enormous disparity, as is generally imagined, between the opposing forces.

Large and small, there were 130 ships in the Armada. The detailed catalogue of them, from the list sent by Medina-Sidonia to Philip II, has been reprinted by Captain Duro in his "Armada Invencibile," and by Professor Laughton in his "State Papers relating to the Armada." From these sources I take a summarized table giving the statistics of the Armada, and then add some particulars as to various squadrons, ships, and commanders:--

------------------------+--------+-------+------+----------+--------+---------- Divisions. | Ships. | Tons. | Guns.| Soldiers.|Sailors.|Total Men.

------------------------+--------+-------+------+----------+--------+---------- Armada of Portugal | 12 | 7,737 | 347 | 3,330 | 1,293 | 4,623 " " Biscay | 14 | 6,567 | 238 | 1,937 | 863 | 2,800 " " Castille | 16 | 8,714 | 384 | 2,458 | 1,719 | 4,171 " " Andalusia | 11 | 8,762 | 240 | 2,327 | 780 | 3,105 " " Guipuzcoa | 14 | 6,991 | 247 | 1,992 | 616 | 2,608 " " the Levant | 10 | 7,705 | 280 | 2,780 | 767 | 3,523 Squadron of "urcas" | 23 |10,271 | 384 | 3,121 | 608 | 3,729 (hulks or storeships) | | | | | | "Pata.s.ses" and "zabras" | 22 | 1,121 | 91 | 479 | 574 | 1,093 (small craft) | | | | | | Neapolitan gallea.s.ses | 4 | -- | 200 | 773 | 468 | 1,341 Galleys | 4 | -- | 20 | -- | 362 | 362 ------------------------+--------+-------+------+----------+--------+---------- | 130 |57,868 |2,431 | 19,295 | 8,050 | 27,365 Rowers (in gallea.s.ses and galleys) | | | | 2,088 | | | | ------ Grand total, soldiers, sailors and rowers| | | | 29,453 -----------------------------------------+------+----------+--------+----------

The first point to note about the Armada is that it was almost entirely a fleet of sailing-ships. The new period of naval war had begun. There had been hundreds of galleys at Lepanto, seventeen years earlier, but there were only four in the Armada, and none of these reached the Channel. The long, low, oar-driven warship, that for two thousand years had done so much fighting in the Mediterranean, proved useless in the long waves of the Atlantic.[7] The only oared ships that really took part in the campaign were the four gallea.s.ses, and in these the oar was only auxiliary to the spread of sail on their three full-rigged masts. The gallea.s.se has been described in the story of Lepanto. It was an intermediate or transition type of ship. It seems to have so impressed the English onlookers that the four gallea.s.ses are given quite an unmerited importance in some of the popular narratives of the war.

[7] Galleys were used in the land-locked Mediterranean and Baltic up to the first years of the nineteenth century, but the only sailors who ever ventured to take galleys into the wild weather of the Atlantic were the Norse Vikings.

But the day of sails had come, and the really effective strength of the Armada lay in the tall galleons of the six "armadas" or squadrons of Portugal, the Spanish provinces, and the Levantine traders. The galleon was a large sailing-ship, but even as to the size of the galleons the popular tradition of history is full of exaggeration. Built primarily for commerce, not for war, they carried fewer guns than the gallea.s.ses, though many of them were of heavier tonnage. In those days every large trader carried a certain number of guns for her protection, but such guns were mostly of small calibre and short range.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "GREAT ARMADA" ENTERING THE CHANNEL _From the drawing by W. H. Overend_]

The largest galleons were in the armada of the Levant. The flagship, "La Regazona," commanded by Martin de Bertendona, was the biggest ship in the whole fleet, a great vessel of 1249 tons. But she only mounted 30 guns, mostly light pieces. Compare this with the armament of the gallea.s.ses, and one sees the difference between ships built for war and galleons that were primarily traders. The largest of the four gallea.s.ses was only of 264 tons, the smallest 169, but each of the four mounted 50 guns. In all the six armadas of galleons there were only seven ships of over a thousand tons. There were fourteen more of over 800, and a considerable number of under 500 tons. But the galleon looked larger than she really was. Such ships had high bulwarks and towering fore and stern castles, and they appear to have been over-rigged with huge masts and heavy yards. A galleon under full sail must have been a splendid sight, the bows and stern and the tall "castles" tricked out with carving, gold and colour. Great lanterns were fixed on the p.o.o.p. The sails were not dull stretches of canvas, but bright with colour, for woven into or embroidered on them there were huge coats-of-arms, or brilliantly coloured crosses, and even pictures of the saints with gilded haloes. From the mastheads fluttered pennons thirty or forty feet long, and flagstaffs displayed not only the broad standard of the Lions and Castles of Spain, but also the banners of n.o.bles and knights who were serving on board.

But the tall ship, with her proud display of gold and colour, was more splendid than formidable, and the Elizabethan seamen had soon realized the fact. Built originally for the more equable weather of the trade-wind region in the South Atlantic, she was not so well fitted for the wilder seas and changing winds of the North. She was essentially an unhandy ship.

In bad weather she rolled heavily, and her heavy masts and spars and high upper works strained the whole structure, so that she was soon leaking badly. With the wind abeam and blowing hard, her tall sides and towering castles were like sails that could not be reefed, a resisting surface that complicated all manoeuvres. The guns that looked out from her port-holes were mostly small cannon, many of them mere three and four-pounders, of short range and little effect. So small was the dependence the Spaniards placed upon them that they carried only the scantiest supply of ammunition.

The fighting method of the galleon was to bear close down upon her opponent, run her aboard, if possible, pour down a heavy fire of musketry from the high bulwarks and castles, so as to bring a plunging shower of bullets on the enemy's decks, and then board, and let pike and sword do their work as they had done at Lepanto. These were, after all, the methods of the soldier, the tactics of the war-galley. It was the merit of Howard, Hawkins, Drake, and the other great captains, who commanded against the Armada, that they fought as seamen, using their more handy and better handled ships to choose their own position and range, refusing to let the Spaniards close, and bringing a more powerful, longer-ranging, and better served artillery to bear with destructive effect on the easy targets supplied by the tall galleons. It is worth noting that while there were more soldiers than seamen in the Armada, there were more seamen than soldiers in the fleet that met it in the narrow seas.

If the Armada had a commander whose only merit was personal courage, the admirals of the various squadrons were all men of long experience in war, both by land and sea. Martinez de Recalde, the second in command and admiral of the armada of Biscay, was a veteran seaman. Diego Flores de Valdes, the admiral of Castille, was an enterprising and skilful leader, and if his advice had been taken at the outset there might have been a disaster for England. Pedro de Valdes, the admiral of Andalusia, had sailed the northern seas, and Medina-Sidonia was told he might rely on his local knowledge. Moncada, the admiral of the gallea.s.ses, was a "first-rate fighting-man," and De Leyva, the general of the troops embarked, who had taken command of the "Rata Coronada," a great galleon of 800 tons in the Levant armada, showed that he was sailor as well as soldier.

The Duke of Parma, who commanded the army that was to be embarked from the Netherlands, was counted the best general of the day, and his 30,000 Spanish regular infantry were the most formidable body of troops then in Europe. His orders from the King were to build or collect a flotilla of flat-bottomed barges to ferry his army across the straits under the protection of the Armada, and for months thousands of shipwrights had been at work in fishing ports and creeks, ca.n.a.ls and rivers along the coast between Calais and Ostend. The Dutch rebels held Flushing and the mouth of the Scheldt, and they had a small but efficient fleet ready to do good service as the ally of England--a fact often overlooked in our popular stories of the Armada. Parma had proposed that he should attempt to reduce Flushing and obtain command of the Scheldt, as a preliminary to the enterprise against England. The Armada could then run for the Scheldt, and make Antwerp its base of operations. But Philip was impatient of further delays. Though the best of the Spanish admirals were against him, the King insisted that the Armada need only run up Channel and obtain temporary command of the straits to enable Parma to embark his army in the flotilla even from an open beach. In the King's mind the necessity of destroying the hostile sea power as a prelude to any scheme of invasion was disregarded or was not understood.

On 30 May, in fine weather, the Armada at last sailed from Lisbon. The reports sent back to Philip II by Medina-Sidonia, as the fleet pa.s.sed Cape Finisterre and stood out into the Bay of Biscay, told that all was well.

But a few days later a storm from the Atlantic swept the sea, and partly dispersed the Armada. The storeships held on till they sighted the Scilly Islands, and then, finding they had parted from the fleet, turned back.

Into the northern ports of Spain came scattered ships that had lost spars and sails, some of them leaking so badly that only hard labour at the pumps kept them afloat. Medina-Sidonia, with the main body, made for Corunna, where he ordered the stragglers to rea.s.semble. On 19 June he wrote to the King reporting his arrival.

Then he sent letters betraying so much discouragement and irresolution that one wonders he was not promptly relieved of his command. He proposed that the whole enterprise should be abandoned and some means found for arranging terms of peace. He reported that the fleet had suffered badly in the storm; that there was much sickness on board; that large quant.i.ties of provisions had gone bad, and must be replaced; and that the ships were short of water.

Instead of dismissing him from the command, the King wrote to his admiral ordering and encouraging him to renew the attempt. The ships were refitted and provisioned, and drafts of men collected to replace the invalided soldiers and sailors. Early in July the Armada was again ready for sea.

The news that King Philip's Great Armada had been beaten back by the wild Biscay gales reached England when the whole country was in a fever of preparation for resistance. A commission of n.o.blemen and gentlemen had been appointed "to sett doune such meanes as are fittest to putt the forces of the Realme in order to withstand any invasion." The Lord-Lieutenants of the counties were directed to be ready to call out the local levies, which formed a roughly armed, and mostly untrained, militia. Garrisons were organized in the seaports, formed of more reliable and better equipped men, and a small force was collected at Tilbury to oppose a landing in the Thames estuary. f.a.ggots and brushwood were piled on hill-tops from Land's End to Berwick to send the news of the Spaniards' arrival through England by a chain of beacon fires.

The best of the Queen's advisers, men like the Lord Admiral Howard of Effingham, and such experienced seamen as Hawkins, Drake, and Fenner, realized, and succeeded in persuading the Council, that it was on the sea, and not on the land, that England must be protected from invasion. Their letters in the Armada State Papers are full of practical lessons even for the present time. While insisting that the main effort must be concentrated on the fleet, they did not disregard the advisability of subsidiary preparations on land, in case of accidents. But Howard insisted that a few well-trained men were worth fourfold their number of irregular levies, and wrote to the Council:--

"I pray your Lordships to pardon me that I may put you in remembrance to move her Majesty that she may have an especial care to draw ten or twelve thousand men about her own person, that may not be men unpractised. For this she may well a.s.sure herself that 10,000 men, that be practised and trained together under a good governor and expert leaders, shall do her Majesty more service than any 40,000 which shall come from any other parts of the realm. For, my Lords, we have here 6000 men in the fleet, which we shall be able, out of our company, to land upon any great occasion, which being as they have been trained here under captains and men of experience, and each man knowing his charge and they their captains, I had rather have them to do any exploit than any 16,000 men out of any part of the realm."

The fleet, from which Howard of Effingham was ready to land these trained men if necessary, was even more numerous than the Armada itself, though the average size of the ships was smaller. On the list there appear the names of no fewer than 197 ships, ranging in size from the "Triumph" of 1100 tons (Frobisher's ship) down to small coasting craft. The flagship, the "Ark,"

or "Ark Royal," was a vessel of 800 tons. Contemporary prints show that she had a high p.o.o.p and forecastle, but not on the exaggerated scale of the Spanish galleons; and that she had four masts, and was pierced with three tiers of port-holes for guns, besides gun-ports in the stern. She had a crew of 270 mariners, 34 gunners, and 126 soldiers. Contrary to the system on which the Armada was manned, the seamen in every ship of the English fleet exceeded the soldiers in number. "The Ark" carried no less than 44 guns, namely, 4 "cannon" (60-pounders), 4 "demi-cannon" (30-pounders) 12 "culverins" (long 18-pounders), 12 "demi-culverins" (long 9-pounders), 6 "sakers" (6-pounders), and six smaller pieces, some of them mounted inboard for resisting boarders at close quarters.[8] This was an armament equalled by few of the Spanish ships, and the fact is that the English ships as a rule were better armed than the Spaniards.

[8] These old wooden ships had a much longer life than the steel battleship of to-day, which becomes obsolete and is broken up after twenty years. The "Ark," launched in 1587 (and built at the cost of 5000 = 50,000 in the money of to-day), was refitted and renamed the "Anne Royal" (after James I's queen) in 1608; was the flagship of the Cadiz expedition of 1625, and was broken up in 1636. Hawkins's ship, the "Victory," was launched in 1561; she sailed as the "Resolution" in Blake's fleet under the Commonwealth; was renamed the "Royal Prince" at the Restoration, and was burned in 1666 during Charles II's Dutch war. She was then over a hundred years old and still fit "to lie in the line of battle."

But few of Howard's fleet were of heavy tonnage. There were only two ships of over 1000 tons; one of 900; two of 800; three of 600; five or six of 500, and all the rest less than 400 tons, many of them less than 100. But though the English ships were smaller than the Spaniards, they were better at sailing and manoeuvring, thoroughly handy craft, manned by sailors who knew how to make them do their best, and who were quite at home in the rough northern seas.

The main body of the fleet under Howard of Effingham a.s.sembled at Plymouth.

Detached squadrons under Lord Henry Seymour and Sir W. Winter watched the Straits of Dover. Some of the captains thought Plymouth had been unwisely chosen as the station of the main fleet, pointing out that a south or south-west wind, which would be a fair wind for the Spaniards, would be a very foul one for ships working out of the long inlet of Plymouth Harbour.

In June, Howard had news that the Armada was not only at sea, but far on its voyage. Merchantmen ran for shelter to Plymouth, and told how they had met at least two squadrons of large ships with great red crosses on their foresails off Land's End, and in the entrance of the Channel. One ship had been chased and fired on by a Spaniard. Then all trace of the enemy was lost. There was no news of him in the Channel or on the Irish coasts. The weather had been bad, and it was rightly conjectured that the squadrons sighted off Land's End were only detachments of the Armada scattered by the storm, and that the great fleet had put back to Spain, probably to Corunna.

This was soon confirmed by reports from France.

For a while there was an impression that the danger was over. Drake, Hawkins, and other captains urged that now was the time to take the English fleet to the Spanish coast and destroy the crippled and discouraged Armada in its harbours. But the Queen and her Council hesitated to adopt so bold a policy, and only a few ships were sent out to watch for the enemy in the Bay of Biscay. These returned driven before a strong south wind, and then fugitives from the Channel brought news that there was a crowd of ships off the Lizard, and Howard in a short note reported that he had gone out to engage them. The Armada had come in earnest at last.

After refitting at Corunna, Medina-Sidonia had sailed on 22 July with fine weather and a fair south wind. Progress was not rapid, for the great fleet's speed was that of its slowest ships. On the 26th, when the Armada was well out to sea off the headlands of Brittany, the morning was dull and cloudy, and towards noon the wind went round to the northward and increased to half a gale, raising a heavy sea. The course was changed to the eastward, and the ships were kept under shortened sail. The four galleys, unable to face the rising storm, ran for shelter towards the French coast, and never rejoined. They went southwards before the wind. One was wrecked near Bayonne. The three others reached Spain.

All next day the gale blew heavily. The Armada, scattered over a wide extent of sea, beat slowly to windward, working away from the dangerous French coast. Many ships temporarily parted company. It looked as if there would be another failure. But on Thursday the 28th (to quote the Spanish admiral's diary) "the day dawned clear and bright, the wind and sea more quiet than the day before. Forty ships were counted to be missing." The admiral sent out three pinnaces to look for them, and next day, Friday, 29 July (19 July, O.S.), had news that all but one of them were with Pedro de Valdes off the Lizard. This was the crowd of ships reported that same day to Howard at Plymouth.

The missing ship, the "Santa Ana," the flagship of Biscay, rejoined later.

In the evening Medina-Sidonia saw the coast of England, and notes that it was "said to be the Lizard." On the Sat.u.r.day the admiral writes that "at dawn the Armada was near with the land, so as we were seen therefrom, whereupon they made fire and smokes."[9] The crew of a captured fishing-boat later in the day told him they had seen the English fleet coming out of Plymouth, and in the evening Medina-Sidonia's diary tells that "many ships were seen, but because of the mist and rain we were unable to count them."

[9] Macaulay, writing his ballad of the Armada before the full English and Spanish records of the time were available, represents the news as being brought to Plymouth by a merchantman that had seen "Castille's black fleet lie heaving many a mile" out by the Channel Islands, where the Armada was never sighted. The "tall 'Pinta'" chased her for hours. There was no such ship in the Armada. Macaulay took the name of one of Columbus's caravels to adorn his ballad. Instead of the enemy seeing "fire and smokes" at dawn, he describes with more picturesque effect, how, in the night--

"From the deep the Spaniards saw Along each southern shire, Cape after cape in endless range, Those twinkling points of fire."

A council of war had been held on board his flagship, the "San Martin." The wind was south-west, the very wind to carry the Armada into Plymouth, and dead against the English fleet coming out. De Leyva proposed that the opportunity should be taken to attack the English in Plymouth Sound. Once in the narrow waters the Spaniards could run them aboard and have the advantage of their superior numbers of fighting-men in a hand-to-hand conflict on the decks. The soldier's advice was good, but the sailors were against him. They argued that the fleet must enter Plymouth Sound in line ahead at the risk of being destroyed in detail, as the shoals at the entrance (those on which the breakwater of to-day stands) left only two narrow channels. De Leyva's bold plan was rejected, and it was decided that the Armada should proceed up Channel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VOYAGE OF THE ARMADA 1588]

Next day the fighting began. The wind had shifted to the north-west, a good enough wind for working up Channel on the port tack. English contemporary accounts say the Armada was formed in a half-moon, a centre and two wings slightly thrown forward. Howard had as yet only brought part of his fleet out of Plymouth, but though greatly outnumbered by the Spaniards, he had his best ships and his most enterprising captains with him, and nothing daunted by the grand array of the Armada, he began a series of hara.s.sing attacks upon it.