The Grove of Eagles by Winston Graham
Dawn, and we broke our fast with a mug of wine, some crumbling biscuit and salt fish. The fanfare of trumpets was late today. No parade of ships but a grim preparation for the last lap. Stumble on deck shivering and feeling sick. Dry Mass.
“Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth, Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua.”
Wind had shifted a point since yesterday; from a guess it was now north by east. By noon tomorrow we should be off the Scillies, but it would make beating up the Channel more difficult.
“Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te.”
We were kneeling on the quarter-deck, just abaft the mainmast, below us in the galleon’s waist were the soldiers in tight ranks, behind them the sailors and the gunners, then, back of all, the fifty Irish volunteers under a corporal and a master-at-arms. Two frigates close by were waving their masts out of unison.
“Quoniam tu solus. Sanctus tu solus, Dominus tu solus, Altissimus—Jesu Christe …”
Men’s voices chanting across the ring of ships; they rose above the wind; 20,000 at prayer.
We rose, still sleepy, stiff with the night, cold and damp with sea wind. The last conference aboard San Pablo; I was to go, and when I climbed up the side of the flagship Captain Elliot and Captain Burley were already there. With them were a dozen other Englishmen; some red-eyed, shifty and shabby, sweepings of the sea come to help the Spanish and reconquer England for gain; others plainly gentlemen exiled for their faith and hoping to return to a Catholic England; I looked for Thomas Arundell but he was not there.
We did not go below but were addressed by Richard Burley who seemed for all his uncouthness most inward of us all with the Spaniards. After it was over we stood about eyeing each other, one or two speaking but for the main part distrustful, more suspicious of each other than if we had been of different race.
While we were waiting the sky clouded over, and by the time the conference in the Adelantado’s cabin had broken up it was blowing hard. With the peculiarly unstable nature of an easterly wind, it had whipped up the sea into small white-flecked waves which broke as they moved among the ships and cast a drifting spray before them. San Pablo was not so much wallowing as leaning over.
We were rowed back to San Bartolomeo and clambered wetly aboard, but I could see that other captains going to galleons in more exposed positions were having hard work to make headway. At once sails were let go, and we dipped towards the open sea. Our two galleons led the way, followed by the galleass Santiago, four of Zubiaur’s galleys, two urcas, Aguila and Grifo, six large Syboats and seven supply ships. We were officially the advance guard of Diego Brochero’s squadron but had instructions to consider ourselves self-contained and to wait for no one.
As we made away from the lee of the land our ship heeled over, tucking her high bows into the water and throwing out great fans of spray. We were now passing the last ships of the Armada, near the island of Groix.
We were carrying too much sail, and from the quarter-deck Enrico and I watched the sailors swarming up through the ratlines to the main top-sail yard to take in the sail and then to unclamp the yard itself and lower it to the deck. Others were trimming the foresail, so that presently the galleon settled more comfortably on a northerly course; reaching across the wind. San Marcos was behind us, but Santiago and the two urcas were well up.
Towards noon a cold rain fell. Later the clouds broke and, although the wind persisted strong and cold, it was not gusty and we were making rapid progress. As the horizon cleared we saw the rest of our squadron on the sky line with Admiral Brochero’s yellow flag streaming like a snake.
There was much sickness between decks: the soldiers lay about vomiting, and the swabbers soon gave up their task. By now the whole ship was damp; sea had leaked in through the scuppers and the ports, and the lower gun-decks were running with water that had come down the hatchways. It had been the same on the way out in Warspite, but then the weather had been consistently warm; now the damp struck a heavy chill. As soon as we left the shelter of the coast the galley fires had been doused, so there was no warm food or drink.
About four I went below: there was nothing to do on deck, but the tiny cabin was already almost dark, and Father Donald was lying in his hamaca telling his beads and being sick. Enrico came in to say that evening hymns would be in half an hour, but I made an excuse of feeling unwell and remained below. Then I prayed to my own God to increase the wind and scatter and destroy this fleet—and if necessary me with it. Twenty-four hours more would be too late. By then the conquest would have begun and at least a part of the invading force landed. Also the act of treason would have been committed. From there on there was no retreat.
An uneasy night. Of the five of us in the tiny cabin three were sick, and it was not possible because of the sea to have the porthole open, so the air grew ever more stuffy and foetid. The big ship lurched and plunged, its timbers groaning, ropes and locks creaking and straining, water slopping in the bilges, and above all the high scream of the wind. I dreamed I was in Captain Buarcos’s chamber and that he was alive and sitting across the table from me and I had to kill him over again.
Morning broke in low cloud. The wind had eased but there was a short-pitched smoking sea and San Bartolomeo lurched and ducked and trembled like a wild horse tied three ways by ropes. I made a bruised and unsteady way up to the main gun-deck and looked out on a grey waste, with no land in sight anywhere. Three of our ships only had kept with us, the galleass Santiago, one of the urcas, Grifo, and a flyboat. We were under storm canvas, a reefed foresail and clewed main-sail only.
I climbed up the four ladders to the poop and found Captain Quesada there while a sailor studied the skyline. Another sailor moved to cut me off, but Quesada motioned him to allow me through.
I bade him good morning. “We have been scattered, sir.”
“It is not to be wondered at. We shall re-assemble in due time.”
For all his calm words he did not look as if he had slept; he was wearing a skull-cap instead of his usual high black hat; his beard was grey from the salt in it.
“Has the wind changed?”
“Yes, it is south and therefore more to our advantage.”
“Where are we, sir?”
“Our calculations put us at ten or fifteen leagues south of the Scilly Islands. If we need the shelter of the Islands we shall wait there until the others come up.”
“When did we lose touch with San Marcos?”
“Early in the night. Captain Chagres was falling behind at dusk: his ship was never fleet.”
“So we should perhaps reach Falmouth tonight?”
“Not tonight, Killigrew. Have patience. At dawn tomorrow.”
We made the Scillies at noon, but as by then the weather had moderated Captain Quesada decided his ships did not need the shelter of the roads. One would not hazard one’s ship among the many small rocky islets if the need for shelter were not pressing. By four the whole of our advance squadron had caught us up, with the exception of one transport. Before this we had been passed by Dolphin who stayed to, exchange a shouted word and then moved on to carry secret news of our coming.
At five we supped, on oatmeal, salt beef, biscuits and a can of sack. As the light was fading Admiral Brochero with the rest of his ships came up through the evening clouds, and the squadron spent half an hour in chanting and in prayer. In the afterlight, when ship and sail and spar and gun took on a brief flush of colour, the fifty ships in that tossing sea were like some new vision of creation, seed cast by a hand upon the waters to be swept along by the wind to carry a new life to an alien shore.
We sailed at seven, Brochero allowing a lapse of four hours to the advance squadron before he followed.
As I lay in the pitching cabin one more night—the last night—I thought that by now surely some news of the invasion would have reached England. We had likely been seen from the Scillies: they could send a fast pinnace to rouse the country. Even if no one knew where the Armada
I thought—and hoped—quite wrongly. No one throughout the length of England had yet any idea at all.
… The land slept in complete security. It was accepted everywhere that a part of the Adelantado’s fleet was in the Azores and the rest skulked in El Ferrol unable to make any move before the spring. All information from Essex downwards confirmed this. The last despatch from him had told that he was still seeking the Spanish ships and the treasure fleet. By now some great and glorious victory was likely to have been won and only waited the telling. Indeed, orders were then on the way to Essex not to hurry home if advantage could be gained by staying.
The day that Admiral Don Diego Brochero with his great fleet joined his advance squadron in the Scillies, the old Lord Admiral Howard at the age of 61, having crowned an illustrious career with the capture of Cadiz, was receiving his patent as Earl of Nottingham; and our Queen had just summoned Parliament to discuss what measures might be taken to meet the threat of next spring. The battleships not in the Azores were out of commission at Chatham; Sir Henry Palmer commanding the Channel squadron was ill; Sir Ferdinando Gorges ruled at Plymouth with a small garrison of trained soldiers; the other western ports were undefended.
In the Atlantic in stormy weather a disorganised English fleet, leaking, full of sickness and preoccupied with its own failure, was steadily gaining on the Spanish. Most of the battleships had stowed away their big guns in the hold to ease their strained timbers after all the storms.
And at Falmouth John Killigrew added up his debts.
Towards midnight the plunging and yawing of the galleon grew worse, yet there was no increase in wind. In after years I have sailed these waters again, and I know how, off the Land’s End, seas can build up. Conflicting tides and currents meet here and lurch together as if compelled by submarine up-heavals. In the cabin we could feel the galleon climbing up and up as if on a mountain-side, and then, as the rudder came out of the water, the whole ship twisted and strained and she lurched down into the trough in a panic slide that seemed to have no end.
I endured it until three and then crawled out past the crowded huddled figures of sleeping men. The decks were surprisingly dry: the waves were not breaking and they were too big to be split by the ship in her course. A broken ragged sky showed a few stars and the sickly light of an obscured half moon. Behind us our escort of twenty ships was in close attendance, where they could be seen among the lunatic waves. The wind was abeam and the waves going at twice our speed, so that we were constantly being overtaken by them and sailing like a helpless cork along their ridges before falling into the following trough. It was this which was straining the ship’s timbers past endurance; three men hung on to the helm struggling to keep her on course; Captain Quesada was beside them.
I did not go up to join them but went for’ard, slipping and sliding along her low waist, past a group of exhausted sailors hauling on a rope, climbed over the wooden bulkhead and mounted to the high square forecastle, slithered past the foremast as we yawed down into the next chasm, and fetched up against the rail beside the bowsprit.
From here the scene was a terrifying one, and I stayed fascinated until dawn, shivering and misted with spray, watching each climb and plunge.
As the sky reluctantly lightened I saw land six or seven miles off on our larboard bow. It was England, the long dark line of the Lizard Peninsula. If the wind held in its present quarter there was danger that we should not clear the head: in which case there would be little shelter or comfort for us in Mount’s Bay. But the wind was freshening with the prospect of dawn and seemed to be shifting a point or two north. If this continued and we rounded the cape we should in four hours be in the protection of Falmouth Haven. I looked back and counted fifteen of our twenty ships in sight. A substantial part of this force could be put ashore before dark: veteran soldiers, supplies, cannon, horses. Brochero would arrive during the night, and his troops, sure of their landing, could be brought in and fully deployed before dawn. By the time the Adelantado dropped anchor the whole of the first stage would be complete.
I looked up at the sky. It was a wild and ghostly dawn. Ink-black clouds mounted one on another in the north-west. The moon had set, but there was a metallic slash of light where the sun would rise and some stars winking in a patch of clear sky. The Spanish must have read the signs more accurate than I did for I saw a group of sailors swarming up the shrouds to shorten sail. They had hardly done so before the wind struck us like the blow of a fist.
I have heard it claimed by Puritan preachers that the winds which scattered the Armada of 1588 were the work of Divine Providence moving to the aid of a godly and righteous cause; if that were so they did not come to sweep the Armada away until it had been damaged and disabled in battle. Fewer have claimed the great gale of October 1597. A menace seen and an ensuing battle make so much more impress on the mind and the memory than a greater menace that is struck down just as the battle is about to begin.
San Bartolomeo had stripped her yards just in time. One of the clouds coming up out of the north-west burst over us, streaming hail before it in a stinging horizontal cloud, leaping and rattling where it struck, cutting out view of sea and sky so that the ship heeled over as if under the impact of a load of fine shingle flung in a gale. When we came through it the only sail we had carried was in cracking ribbons, one of the yards had snapped, men clung to rail and bulwark and stay, while a livid sun just risen cast a sinister light of brilliance and shadow among the mountains of the sea.
Thereafter in the space of an hour we were struck by three such storms. By then our mainmast was aslant and we were leaking for’ard. Through glimpses of torn cloud we could see twelve of our escort in like straits. Santiago, which had stayed close with us all through, being not so high charged as ourselves, had not suffered so severely, but both urcas were in trouble and one of the supply ships was low in the water and green seas were breaking over her.
Many of the soldiers had tried to struggle on deck for fear of drowning; bugles were blowing between decks; Captain Bonifaz and three other officers were on the poop with Captain Quesada; groups of men clustered in the lee of bulkheads, now knee-deep in water, now drenched with angry spray. Once or twice men lost hold and slithered across the decks to fetch up against some other obstacle and cling for life.
By now we had cleared the Lizard and its dangerous reefs, but were likely to be driven ever deeper into the Channel. Our mainmast had torn away part of the shrouds and the main yard pointed half to the sky. Quesada ordered some sailors to cut all away that they could, and men with axes in a lull in the wind, slithered for’ard and began to climb. It was a wickedly gusty gale, and as they climbed they were sometimes unable to stir, pinned like flies against the ropes, then a step at a time they’d go.
Once the sun shone brightly on them through a rent in the storm wrack, and their wet clothes glistened against the abysmal darkness of the clouds.
They cut through a mass of rigging, and the main yard swung wide, knocking one of the sailors with it. He writhed on deck before the tangled rigging netted him, then all were caught by a wave and crashed overboard; other figures leaped forward in a smother of sea and hacked at the ropes to free them and let them go.
I was stiff with cold, fingers freezing, stomach contracting. About twelve sailors were huddled on the forecastle near by. Father Donald and another priest had made their way to the poop and were trying to get the men to pray with them.
The supply ship was going. She was filling by the head, and the rolling combing seas toppled over her, burying her ever deeper. Once too often the water held her down; poop high in the air she plunged, masts and rigging lying sideways on the water for a few seconds; then she was gone, men swimming, scattered debris bobbing with them. The flyboats did their best, but were themselves concerned with survival. I saw a few men swarming up ropes but the rest were left. One rope had five men on it when it was overtaken by the sea; after the wave had
In another hour there were only four of our squadron in sight. The wind had backed more westerly again, so that between squalls the land was still in sight. I thought, there’s Arwenack, somewhere on that low dark land, perhaps I shall never see it now, and I ought to thank God if I drowned. (But what if the Adelantado and his main fleet escaped the worst of the storm and still arrived?)
“Holy Mary Mother of God,” said a voice beside me. It was a big Irishman, his teeth chattering with fright. “ Holy Mary, we’re sinking. In the name of the Father and of the Son …” His words were whipped away by the gale.
A mountain range of sea came out of a cloud which was already lying on the water. It foamed and bubbled and lifted us, but partly broke aboard; there was a rending sound and I thought we had gone the way of the supply ship. Between the forecastle and the poop there was no deck, only a few spars and struggling screaming men. The galleon heeled and dipped as if her back were broken, then heavily shook the water off her so that the main deck reappeared like a rock in a waterfall.
But mortal damage was done: the weight of sea had broached the hatchways, and the galleon was half full of water which was drained slowly from gun ports and scuppers.
As soon as she began to lift, men who had been kept below decks fought their way out through the hatchways, many of them making for the, forecastle to lash themselves to the foremast or any other part of the ship which might survive. From the noise and the behaviour of the galleon it was clear that some of the guns had broken loose between decks. The Irishman beside me who had been so terrified left his place of vantage and struggled to drag three of his injured friends to the rail beside me. I helped him tie them to the yard which had been taken down and lashed to the rail when the storm began.
The coast had gone except for a glimpse now and then of the Lizard far astern. Santiago still kept us company, but having suffered in the same sea as had mortally injured us she was looking to herself and gradually being blown ahead. One flyboat appeared and disappeared like a piece of flotsam a mile or so on our starboard bow.