The Spanish Armadas by Winston Graham
At dinner that afternoon – the Queen now having retired – a gentleman came in bearing a rod, and another carried a tablecloth and spread this upon the table with great veneration and then retreated. Two others followed, one again with a rod, the other with a salt-cellar and plate and bread. Then ‘a beautiful young lady (a countess) and another older woman’ came with a tasting fork and rubbed the plates with bread and salt with ‘as much reverence as if the Queen were there’. Then the Yeomen of the Guard came in, a hundred of the biggest men in England, bearing in at each turn a course of twenty-four dishes, served on silver-gilt. These were received by one of the first gentlemen and put on the table, where ‘a Lady tastes a mouthful of each dish that be brought, for fear of poison. During all this, twelve trumpets and two kettledrums make the hall ring for half an hour’. At the end of this a number of the Ladies in Waiting appeared to convey the food to the Queen’s inner chamber for her to make her choice. The rest of the food went to the ladies of the court. ‘The Queen dines alone with very few attendants.’
Round the Queen at this time, among her counsellors, an unusual and unexpected harmony prevailed, particularly with regard to England’s foreign policy. Burghley and his second son, Robert Cecil – recently created Secretary of State – though seeing peace with Spain as their ultimate objective, sided for once with the two fire-eaters: Essex, soon to be Earl Marshal of England, and Ralegh, just restored to his old post as Captain of the Queen’s guard. The latter two wanted to defeat Spain; the first two thought that one more blow now would bring an ultimate reconciliation nearer.
It is also possible that the quietly calculating Robert Cecil knew that naval adventures abroad involved not only physical hazard for the leaders but also – if they failed – damaged prestige. His position close to the Queen could hardly fail to become closer while her two favourites were off fighting the country’s wars.
So unanimity of counsel persuaded the Queen to sanction another expedition similar to last year’s. But its destination this year must be Ferrol, where the bulk of the new armada was assembling. After that the intention was to seize Terceira in the Azores and cut off the year’s treasure-flota. When this was planned it was also intended that a strategic reserve of some of the most powerful warships should be kept ready at Chatham, as in 1588, as a second guard against the Armada; but sheer lack of money and supplies prevented these ships from being commissioned. Indeed, a request made to the City of London – usually the most willing of donors – for a squadron to augment the royal fleet was met with an apologetic excuse and a plea of complete impoverishment.
This time, the Lord Admiral Howard pleading his age not to go, the expedition was to be led by Essex in undivided command, with Lord Thomas Howard as Vice-Admiral, Ralegh as Rear-Admiral and Admiral Van Duyvenvoord again leading a Dutch squadron. Although Sir Francis Vere went as Marshal, the military command was given, much to Vere’s chagrin, to Lord Mountjoy, one of Elizabeth’s younger favourites.
In France in March the Spanish under Archduke Albert took Amiens, and Henry IV’s position was materially weakened. Then the Spanish turned and threatened Boulogne. There was a partial mobilization in England to meet the new threat, and for a time it seemed that the old familiar counterstresses of the long war would prevent the naval expedition from sailing. But as in the previous year the English refused to be diverted and the fleet preparations went ahead. Seventeen royal warships – of which two were the Spanish ‘Apostles’ captured at Cadiz and modified to meet English ideas – twenty-four Dutch warships, a similar number of transports and supply ships and various ancillary vessels, made a total of ninety-eight, carrying six thousand soldiers and five thousand sailors.
It was the objective of both Philip and Elizabeth to be the first to strike; and news of the assembling fleet reached Coruña in May where the Adelantado was struggling to get the Third Armada into shape. But the Groyne, though an admirable harbour, was too distant from the centres of Spanish administration, and the accumulation of supplies went on with desperate slowness, for as soon as they were assembled they were consumed. Sailors deserted even faster than they did in England, and too many already lived in too confined a space, so that disease was endemic. About the bare hillsides the soldiers camped in tents, talking in a half dozen languages and dialects, spending their leisure dicing or sleeping, swearing or drinking or whoring, while the priests kept their temporary chapels open for Mass all day long, the militia patrolled, and the white dust settled over all.
The harbour of Ferrol, which is twelve miles from Coruña, is approached through a narrow channel that can be guarded from the rocks on either side, and it is even more defensible than Cadiz. When the news reached Padilla that the English fleet would be ready well before his own, he put out a screen of guard-boats, manned mainly by Ragusans – for he was desperately short of good Spanish sailors – and stationed four of his oldest and biggest merchant-ships ready to block the harbour entrance in case of surprise.
Ferrol was not of course to provide the fleet, but it was to be the assembly point and the nucleus. The galleys of Genoa were to make their way there under Prince Andrea Doria; also a strong Andalusian squadron under Don Marcos de Arumburu, with smaller contingents from Naples, Guipuzcoa, Vizcaya and Vigo. In the meantime the main fleet, under the supreme direction of the Adelantado, was to be led by Don Diego Brochero, Knight of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, and a man who in vigour and experience matched the Recalde of 1588. About forty-eight at this time, he had had a chequered career, having at one time served a prison sentence for privateering with his own galleon in the Mediterranean. An energetic advocate of reform in the Spanish navy, he was known as a leader of great courage and resource.
Below him, after Bertendona, were the new men: Urquiola, Oliste, Villaviciosa and Zubiaur. The last of these, a hardy and adventurous Basque of fifty-five, had been at sea since he was sixteen, but had interspersed his maritime life with periods spent in England. Coming first in 1580, as ‘a merchant of Seville’, overtly to negotiate the restoration of, or compensation for, some of the plunder brought to England by Drake, Zubiaur in fact had remained as a spy, reporting direct to Philip and by-passing Mendoza, the then Spanish Ambassador. Implicated in one of the unsuccessful attempts to assassinate William of Orange, he had been in and out of English prisons during the next few years, and in 1585 had been sent to the Tower for being involved in a plot to seize Flushing (from the early days one of the centres of Dutch resistance) and other activities directed against the state. After two years, during which he was tortured, he had been exchanged for English prisoners, and at the time of the First Armada was in Flanders. After he made his way home, and after the Spanish landing in Brittany, he had been put in charge of the Biscayan galleys which with notable success had for five years ferried supplies and reinforcements up to Blavet from the Spanish ports.
And behind the scenes of the Third Armada was the influential Captain Pedro Lopez de Soto, the newly appointed Secretary to the Adelantado, a fanatic to get to sea and a man in constant personal touch with the King. Indeed, such were his activities, that he might almost be looked on as approximating to the dark-suited man in the modern police state sitting behind the commander to see that he keeps up to scratch and toes the party line. In his confidential letters to the King de Soto frequently remarks that the Adelantado’s complaints about lack of supplies and the unreadiness of the fleet are exaggerated and defeatist and should be ignored.
In the first week of July the English fleet, which had been pinned in Dover and Chatham by contrary and violent winds for nearly a month, at last managed to get as far as Weymouth, where it picked up reinforcements and supplies before moving on to Plymouth. It left Plymouth for Spain on the Sunday afternoon of the 10th July, but almost immediately was scattered by a short but violent storm, and each squadron became separated from the others. There was a brief interval of good weather and then a worse gale than ever blew up from the south-west and almost destroyed the English fleet.
Then note they the ship’s sicknesses, the mast
Shaked with this ague, and the hold and waste
With a salt dropsy clogged, and all our tacklings
Snapping, like too high stretched treble strings;
And from our tattered sails, rags drop down so
As from one hanged in chains a year ago.
Ralegh was blown back into Plymouth, trying successfully to save the two ex-Spanish galleons which stood the gale even less well than the English ships. Essex, after a contest lasting a day longer, put into Falmouth with his Merhonour sinking under him. Van Duyvenvoord lost touch with his own squadron trying to keep company with the damaged Merhonour, and returned to port with Essex. Thomas Howard and his squadron missed the absolute worst of the storm and arrived off Ferrol as arranged; he cruised up and down for several days, putting the Spanish defences into a panic, before despairing of his comrades and returning to England.
This storm, which seemed to suggest that after all God might be impartial, was a signal respite to the Spanish, for several of the English ships needed extensive repairs – the Merhonour in particular – before they could be considered seaworthy again; and the raw ‘pressed’ English seamen ran through the fingers like sand, as Ralegh put it. Many of the gentlemen adventurers went home too.
Howard’s parade off Ferrol also lulled the English into a false sense of security. If the Adelantado could not come out to fight a half dozen English warships challenging him on his own doorstep – and this in July – there seemed little chance of his being ready to do anything offensive this year at all. So the leaders began to think less seriously of their original mission of attacking the assembling Armada, and more of capturing the treasure fleet again, or even of a West Indies raid in the old style of Drake. Even the news that the now famous Captain Pedro de Zubiaur had moved out of Ferrol and sailed along the Biscay coast to Blavet with seven galleys, some supply ships, and two thousand veteran soldiers did not seem to disturb them greatly, though the west country defences were strengthened against the possibility of another galley raid like last year’s.
When the English fleet at last got to sea again in mid-August it was much more a naval adventure than the month previous; but Elizabeth had left her commanders in no doubt that they were still expected to attempt Ferrol before they went off on any adventures in search of treasure fleets. She also insisted that Essex must not hazard his life in attacking the port, a prohibition which meant that Essex immediately lost interest in the attempt; and when transports were not ready to accompany the fleet, and there was a favourable wind, he insisted on sailing without them. It seems clear that despite the lack of success which had attended Drake’s Lisbon voyage of 1589, the leaders were bent on following in his footsteps, and if at all possible they intended to find an excuse to disobey the Queen.
Again the weather was unseasonably violent and the fleet was scattered. Ralegh’s Warspite lost a mainyard, the Repulse, with Essex in her now, was leaking badly, and the two ex-Spanish galleons were so damaged that they were only saved from wreck by taking refuge in La Rochelle. Then while the scattered ships were reassembling off Finisterre the wind set strongly east, making an attempt to beat back to Ferrol a long and difficult process. This was the excuse Essex needed, and after a brief consultation he followed Ralegh and Howard to Lisbon.
Cruising off there, attempting to catch one of the small Lisbon carvels to pick up information, they stopped instead an English barque which told them that Ferrol was in fact empty of their prey and that the Adelantado and most of his Armada were in the Azores to cover the return of the treasure-fleet. Whether the captain of the barque was misinformed or whether he was one of the renegades such as Burley and Elliot, deliberately sent out to spread false news, it is impossible to tell. But the news so exactly suited the commanders of the English fleet that they immediately and gladly acted on it. By the time the various units reached the Azores and assembled there it was the 18th September.
Chapter Fouteen
The Third Armada
It did not seem to occur to anyone in the English fleet that the reason the Adelantado did not respond to Lord Thomas Howard’s challenge was that he would not hazard some of his ships in a small and indecisive action off his own coast, nor did he wish to betray his strength or preparedness – or lack of it – to a scouting squadron of the enemy. The English assumed his weakness – and later his absence.
And the English at home felt equally secure, waiting for news of some great feat of arms from their own fleet, not at all worried, as they had been last year, about a possible visit from the Spanish. Sir Henry Palmer in charge of a small Channel squadron – the only defensive squadron at sea – was ill, and his place had been taken by Sir John Gilbert. The rest of the Queen’s ships were out of commission at Chatham. The military defences of the country, though in a far better state of organization than in 1588, were not on the alert.
In 1588 every Englishman knew that the great Spanish Empresa was coming to attack them. It was common knowledge throughout Europe, and everyone in England was at the stretch to meet the threat. Bonfires were tended and beacons manned day and night. The whole English fleet was either mobilized or on the verge of mobilization. In 1597 no one suspected or feared an imminent attack. If surprise is half the battle, then the Adelantado had a battle half won.
But in spite of an urgent command from Philip, who saw the possibilities plain, Padilla took his time. He still did not know his destination. No one in the fleet did – it was a matter on which even de Soto bitterly complained to the King. But intensive preparations were still going ahead. Every ship had been issued with an English flag, and all carried English-speaking personnel. The Proclamation still exists which was printed for the Adelantado for distribution and exhibition when he landed in England. It is the first printing ever done in Portugal in the English language, and the text was obtained some time later by a Cornishman, one John Billett, master of a trading vessel, who called in at Coruña and brought the paper away hidden in his shoe. The Proclamation promises freedom and fair treatment for Catholics and for all who turn Catholic and calls on them to rally to the support of the Spanish invaders.
The reason for the Adelantado’s delay in sailing in September is one of the most vital questions of the whole Anglo-Spanish war, and no absolute or single explanation can be given. For instance on the 4th July de Soto, writing one of his private letters to the King, says the fleet should be ready to sail by the middle of August with an effective landing in England on the 8th September. He gives the details of the ships available then: twenty-three large galleons, twenty-five smaller galleons, twenty-six supply boats, a number of galleyzabras and about seventy pinnaces to land soldiers rapidly – the force to consist of twenty thousand soldiers and four thousand sailors. And de Soto was on the spot in the midst of all the preparations, not writing airily from Madrid.
Yet in mid-September, when the greatest opportunity of the war presented itself, the fleet still remained in port. The reasons for the delay can only be speculatively listed: (1) The Adelantado was not only dealing with pressed men, as the English were, but with impounded ships and pressed captains. Whatever the hard core of Spanish fighting ships wanted to do, the Flemish and German hulks, the Italian and Ragusan supply ships, were not at all anxious to sail into those enemy waters where others of their kin had perished nine years ago. It is not easy to get a mixed fleet ready to sail as a unit when considerable parts of the unit are seeking cause for delay. (2) After a sudden and astonishing return to health during the summer, when he went hunting and had a wild boar turned loose for his own entertainment, the seventy-year-old Philip was taken seriously ill in early September; and as always happens when one hand alone holds all the power, the reins fell loose at a most crucial stage. (3) The appearance of the English fleet off Lisbon had put Portugal in a panic, and at least until news was conf
The Adelantado, not unnaturally at first, waited for his expected reinforcements to come up: it is not in many admirals to want to sail with two-thirds of a fleet. But Philip as soon as he recovered sent an urgent messenger spurring across the dusty Sierras and the mountains of Galicia to instruct padilla not to delay a moment longer but to leave at once. So embarkation began on the 25th September.
This took two days, and it was late in the morning of the 27th before the first galleon was able to make sail and be under way out of the narrow jaws of the harbour. The fleet had orders to assemble in Betanzos Bay, fifteen miles from Ferrol, and this took another thirty hours to complete in gusty and none too favourable weather. But there they at last were assembled in six lines, each line consisting of ten galleons of varying sizes and fourteen other ships, hulks, transports and flyboats; and there they were inspected by the Adelantado from a decorated barge rowed by twenty-four crimson-clad oarsmen. His own personal standard, an enormous swallow-tailed flag in green silk, fluttered and dipped from the maintop of the San Pablo of twelve hundred tons. The whole fleet was dressed with flags and standards, and the men lined the decks and cheered and guns were fired as the supreme commander passed. According to Agostino Nani, the Venetian Ambassador, the fleet consisted of forty-four Royal galleons, sixteen private galleons and fifty-two urcas or hulks, of a total tonnage of thirty-five thousand. In addition there were seventy-six smaller ships, and the complement was four thousand sailors and eight thousand six hundred and thirty-four soldiers, besides three hundred horses, together with mules, carts, mills, field artillery and siege material. Some historians put the final muster even higher than this. In Cheyney’s words, it was ‘ scarcely less in strength than the Armada of 1588’.