The Spanish Armadas by Winston Graham
Froude writes: ‘It was a treacherous interval of real summer. The early sun was lighting the long chain of the Galician mountains, marking with shadows the cleft defiles and shining softly on the white walls and vineyards of Coruña. The wind was light and falling towards a calm. The great galleons drifted slowly with the tide on the purple water, the long streamers trailing from the trucks, the red crosses, the emblem of the crusade, showing bright upon the hanging sails. The fruit boats were bringing off the last fresh supplies and the pinnaces were hastening to the ships with the last loiterers on shore.’
That was on the 12th July. By the afternoon of Friday the 19th they were off the Lizard. At sight of land the Duke of Medina Sidonia ordered his great flag to be hoisted, showing the crucifixion, with the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene kneeling beside the cross. It was the banner which had been blessed by the Pope. On that same afternoon Captain Thomas Fleming in the Golden Hind (fifty tons, with a crew of thirty), one of the screen of barques keeping watch in the Channel, returned in haste to Plymouth with news that the Armada, which was still thought to be in Coruña, was in fact in the Sleeve and advancing towards Plymouth.
Its arrival was a complete surprise – of the sort that Drake was fond of springing on his enemies – and it found the English fleet in the worst possible position: desperately low in all essential supplies, with the enemy to windward of them, themselves trapped in a harbour with an impossible south-west breeze blowing full into the port, and a neap tide flowing against them.
The story that Fleming found Howard and Drake playing bowls is substantiated by people who wrote within living memory of the occasion, and by the Spaniards themselves in 1624. Drake’s comment, made before his superior officer could speak, that there was time to finish the game and beat the Spaniards after, accords with the nature of the man. A quick tongue is almost as much an essential of leadership as a cool head. It was precisely the right thing to say to avoid the risk of panic. And, as so often with Drake when he said things which did not conform to the normal run of probabilities, he was absolutely right.
Chapter Six
The First Armada
The Christian Catholic crusading Armada was at last upon the English shores. All flags flying, bands playing, unscathed from its days at sea except for the four galleys, which had turned back, and one other ship, the Santa Ana, which had been unable to weather the storms of Wednesday. But otherwise intact, in good spirits and ready for battle. The Empresa, as Philip first called it. Then the Felicisima Armada. Then the Armada Invencible – a name later picked on by its foes and immortalized in much the way that one speaks of the Old Contemptibles.
What did this fleet, after all the early losses through storm and last minute additions, actually consist of? And who were the men, apart from the Duke, who commanded it?
The total of the fleet which eventually reached the Channel was about one hundred and thirty-seven, of which one hundred and nine were combat vessels, the others supply ships. The combat vessels varied from full war galleons of upwards of a thousand tons, with fifty guns and five hundred men; through ships of five hundred to eight hundred tons which were virtually converted merchantmen with rebuilt forecastles; to hulks – heavy built, slow-moving auxiliaries – and pataches and zabras, which were sloop-rigged, fast, and lightly armed.
This fleet was divided into nine squadrons. The first squadron under the direct command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia consisted of twelve ships: ten of the Royal Galleons of Portugal and two zabras. The Duke himself sailed in the San Martin, the fleet flagship, a vessel of one thousand tons with forty-eight guns and a complement of nearly five hundred men. The second was the Biscay Squadron of ten galleons (now reduced to nine) and four pataches, under the command of Admiral Juan Martinez de Recalde; the third consisted of the Galleons of Castile; fourteen fine ships, with two pataches, under Admiral Diego Flores de Valdes; the fourth was the Andalusian Squadron; two large ships, three galleons, five hulks and one patache under Admiral Pedro de Valdes; the fifth was the Guipuzcoan Squadron of nine big ships, one hulk and two pataches, under Miguel de Oquendo; the sixth was the Levantine Squadron of ten big ships under Martin de Bertendona; the seventh was the fleet of hulks – twenty-three of them, ranging from two hundred to eight hundred tons under Juan Gomez de Medina; the eighth was a full squadron of zabras and pataches, twenty-two in all, under Don Antonio de Mendoza; and the ninth was the four galleasses under Don Hugo de Moncada – these last each carried a mixed crew of around three hundred and fifty men, with three hundred galley slaves as oarsmen. The total tonnage of the fleet was about fifty-eight thousand – immeasurably the largest fleet that had ever sailed the seas – and it was manned by eight thousand sailors and nearly nineteen thousand soldiers. There were also some four thousand others aboard, of whom twelve hundred were the galley slaves in the galleasses, and the rest non-combatants of one sort or another: a hospital staff of sixty-two, one hundred and eighty monks, four hundred and fifty-six servants of the gentlemen adventurers – these adventurers including four English, one Irish and one German. (There were also among the salaried officers eighteen English or Irish and an Irish priest.) Many of the noblemen had long retinues of servants; the Duke of Medina Sidonia had fifty, the Prince of Ascoli – a natural son of Philip II – had thirty-nine, Don Alonso de Leyva had thirty-six, and so on down the list of diminishing nobility and importance.
And the men in command? For all Medina Sidonia’s administrative ability, even Philip’s commission could not make a seaman of him, so someone must stand at his side, someone who could support and guide him in the day to day conduct of the fleet at sea. For this post Philip had chosen Don Diego Flores de Valdes, the commander of the Galleons of Castile. Diego Flores was a very experienced officer (much older than the Duke) who had been responsible for the design of some of the latest galleons and who for more than twenty years had commanded the fleet known as the Indian Guard – that is the warships detailed to protect the treasure ships. He was also an expert on tides, seas and currents, and the choice so far seemed a good one. Yet his record was marred by a succession of quarrels with his brother officers, not least that one which had led to the failure of the expedition to the Straits of Magellan in 1581; and it is surprising that Philip did not know he was one of the most unpopular men in the fleet. He had a permanent feud with his cousin Pedro de Valdes, an equally distinguished officer, who commanded the Andalusian Squadron; and the King’s choice meant that, standing next to the skilled administrator, the noble figure-head of Medina Sidonia, was this narrow-minded, acrimonious man who by his mere presence would automatically undo much of the conciliatory work of his chief. Most of the time Flores de Valdes sailed aboard the San Martin beside the Duke.
By the wording of this appointment Philip also took something from the authority of Medina Sidonia’s second-in-command, who naturally was Recalde, Spain’s greatest living sailor. Born in Bilbao in 1526, Recalde had been Superintendent of the Royal Dockyards, had been second-in-command to Santa Cruz and had also commanded the Indian Guard. In 1579 he had been the admiral in charge of landing a thousand Spaniards in Ireland, and after doing this he had reconnoitred the English coast before returning to Spain. He had had considerable other experience of the northern seas and the Channel. It was he whom Drake had missed near Cadiz. If one thinks of a better alternative to the chief commander one looks no further than Don Juan Martinez de Recalde, Knight of Santiago. It is a view with which Recalde himself would have agreed.
Recalde did not sail in a ship of his own squadron either but in the vice-flagship of the Duke’s squadron, the San Juan de Portugal, a galleon of one thousand and fifty tons, with fifty guns and a crew of five hundred.
Pedro de Valdes, commanding the Andalusian Squadron, was also a seaman of long experience, having been in numerous fights against the French and the Portuguese, and having been seriously wounded in a grim little battle with two English ships which in 1580 took refuge in the estuary of Ferrol, near Coruña. He had
It would be incorrect to assume that Spain derived no benefit from Drake’s raid on Cadiz. The fighting there finally demolished the belief that galleys could hold their own against sailing ships. Without that demonstration a considerable number of galleys would have certainly accompanied the Armada. (Santa Cruz had asked for forty.) With it, even the most conservative of naval men were constrained to see the light, and even the four that eventually were sent were turned back by Wednesday’s storm. But a small squadron of four powerful galleasses accompanied the fleet, those oar and sail vessels which it was hoped would combine the best of both worlds, being heavily armed – as galleys could not be – and as manoeuvrable as galleys and independent of wind. This squadron was under Don Hugo de Moncada, a high-born veteran of the Netherlands campaign, with a long experience of galley warfare, sailing in his flagship, the San Lorenzo. But it was the Gerona, the third of these great ships, which was to make the saddest history for Spain.
Two other men had inevitably been appointed to high command. One, Don Miguel Oquendo, commanded the Guipuzcoan Squadron, sailing himself in his flagship, the Santa Ana (not the one that turned back). He was a sailor of great skill and dash, handling his ship, it is said, as if she were a light horse. In the battle of Terceira in 1582 he had fought beside Santa Cruz and had saved the Admiral from destruction by running his own ship under full sail between two of the enemy ships and boarding and capturing the French flagship, hoisting his own flag on her masthead above the smoke of the battle.
The other was Don Martin de Bertendona, commanding the Levantine Squadron, and sailing in his flagship La Regazona. The most gifted of the younger captains, his was a name which was to occur a number of times in English history. His father, an earlier Don Martin, had been in command of the Biscayan great ship which had brought Philip to England to marry Mary thirty-four years before. Three years hence, the younger de Bertendona was to take the leading part in the great fight off the Azores when Sir Richard Grenville in the Revenge took on the Spanish fleet single-handed and was at last overwhelmed. Between the first Armada of 1588 and the second and third of 1596 and 1597 a new generation of Spanish seamen grew up. De Bertendona is the only officer who commanded a squadron in all three armadas.
The last officer needing mention did not command a squadron but was in fact designated by Philip to take charge of the Armada if Medina Sidonia should die or be killed. This was the Lieutenant-General of the Fleet, a brilliant young soldier called Alonso de Leyva. A tall, slender, handsome man with a blond beard and smooth flaxen hair, he was a favourite at court, a hot-head, a dashing soldier; one thinks of him as the Spanish parallel to the Earl of Essex. De Leyva had already commanded the Sicilian Galleys, had been Captain-General of the Milanese Cavalry, and had resigned his high position in order to lead the army which was to sail in the Armada against England. His ship, the Rata Encoronada of eight hundred and twenty tons, complement four hundred and nineteen, was part of de Bertendona’s squadron. In her sailed the flower of Spain’s young noblemen.
Let us make no mistake: these men and the captains who sailed under them were not indolent gallants, not inefficient officers, not fair-weather sailors. It is true that they carried more than their share of ‘passengers’ – noblemen of high spirit but no knowledge of the sea; the servants of these dons; and a high proportion of trained and well-equipped soldiers who, because of the tactics of the English, were never to be utilized. It is also true that the sailors themselves were more used to the Mediterranean and the long runs with the trade winds to the West Indies and back. But anyone who supposes these waters are always calm can never have sailed on them. Mediterranean storms can be sudden and vicious; the Atlantic is the roughest ocean in the world; and the Bay of Biscay, which was home territory to the Spaniards, is as nasty as the English Channel any day. That a new style of sea warfare was in the process of being evolved and that their ships were ill-designed for this evolution is not a reflection on the people who manned them.
First among the admirals on the English side was the fifty-two-year-old Howard of Effingham, a personal friend as well as a cousin of the Queen’s. As soon as Elizabeth came to the throne his good looks and ability, together with his kinship, had brought him advancement and high office. Ambassador to France at the age of twenty-three, General of Horse under the Earl of Warwick in putting down the northern rebellion. Member of Parliament for Surrey from 1563 to 1573, a Knight of the Garter, Lord Chamberlain of the Household, a commissioner at the trial of Mary Queen of Scots and one of the strongest advocates for her execution; a grandson of the second Duke of Norfolk, the victor of Flodden, he was, unlike many of the Howards, a staunch Protestant.
There was no doubt about the family religion of his vice-admiral. Born about 1545 at Crowndale Farm near Tavistock, Francis Drake was the eldest of twelve children whose father, Edmund, having become a passionate Lutheran, was too ardent in his advocacy of the New Religion during the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1548 and had to decamp with his family to the safer areas of eastern Kent. There, during the reign of Mary, he lived with his multiplying family in one of the hulks on the river, in considerable poverty – and no little danger, since he read prayers and preached religious sedition to the seamen in the Queen’s ships. Young Francis was brought up in an aura of persecution where the identity of the persecutor was quite clearly the Scarlet Woman of Rome; and all through his life his utterances bore the mark of religious conviction and were adorned with the metaphors of the Reformed Church.
When only twenty-two he had sailed with his cousin John Hawkins on the voyage to the West Indies which ended in the disastrous events of San Juan de Ulua, where warships of Spain, under the direction of Don Martin Enriquez, the new Viceroy of Mexico, having first given the small English fleet a promise of safe conduct, treacherously set upon them; with the result that the English returned home with a hundred and fifty men alive of the six hundred who ventured, and about a quarter of their ships. From this point forward Spain became the practical enemy to Drake, ‘the wolf with the privy paw’, the embodiment of all that was worst in the Catholic faith. The results had since been plain for all to see. By nature an individualist, by necessity a privateer, Drake had so exercised his naval genius that the Spanish credited him with supernatural powers – powers of darkness of course – and felt they needed God’s help when fighting him. It was a considerable moral disadvantage for them.
Of equal importance in the English fleet – some would even say greater – was John Hawkins. A man of fifty-six at the time of the Armada, Hawkins had been born in Plymouth of a prosperous ship-owning family, and, almost more than Drake’s, the history of his career traces the burgeoning of English maritime enterprise in the sixteenth century. Always well dressed, unfathomable, courteous and charming, he claimed friendship with King Philip of Spain and argued that he was a loyal subject of Philip’s, dating from the time of the King’s marriage to Mary. Directly involved in the Ridolfi plot of 1571, which was one to assassinate Elizabeth and put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne, in which he was to provide naval cover for an invasion of Spanish troops under Alva, Hawkins had contrived to keep Elizabeth and Cecil informed of every step and yet was adroit enough to avoid suspicion by the Spanish that he had betrayed them, even when the plot was uncovered and the main conspirators arrested.
Partly as a reward for these services, Elizabeth two years later had appointed him Treasurer of the Navy, and in this position not only was he able to attack the abuses and dishonesty that he found at every level but he was largely responsible for building the ships which these last tense months had floated in dockyard and harbour, half-crewed and ill-provisioned, awaiting their greatest test. However starved they were o
Compared to those which preceded them, and to the Spanish ships they opposed, they were longer in relation to their breadth – a proportion of something like three to one – deeper in keel, and lying ‘low and snug’ in the water, with the forecastle and sterncastle greatly reduced and with the deep waist decked over. The mainmast was stepped further forward, the sails were flatter, and there was a reappearance of top gallants. Such ships could sail nearer the wind and were more manoeuvrable than any warships that had been built before. The English had not previously been renowned for original or creative ship design, and the predominant influence of sailors of great experience at the dockyards during this period of building and rebuilding was as vital to the survival of England as the development of the Spitfire three and a half centuries later.
Hawkins was fortunate, since he was able to take a prominent part in the battles in which his ships were put to the test. But perhaps too the spirit of Henry VIII breathed down over the scene. For it was Henry who introduced the broadside which so revolutionized war at sea; Henry who initiated the policy of putting guns of longer range into his ships so that future battles might be won by gunfire; and Henry who had laid down the dockyards without which it would have been impossible to build the ships of 1588.
The last of the great trio of seamen adventurers was also in his middle fifties at this time. Martin Frobisher was a Yorkshireman, though the family was originally Welsh. He had gone to sea as an orphan with Wyndham in 1553, and was one of only forty to survive the voyage. The following year, when with John Lok, he had been captured by Negroes and spent some months in a Portuguese gaol. When Queen Elizabeth came to the throne he was living as a merchant’s factor in Morocco. There had been a smack of real piracy about his middle years, when he had used southern Ireland as a base of operations and combined with like-minded gentlemen of the sea issuing from the Cornish coves and creeks. In the 1570s he had made three voyages to the Arctic, where Frobisher’s Bay is named after him, and he had sailed as Vice-Admiral under Drake, commanding the London merchantman Primrose, on the great West Indian voyage of 1585–6. A tough, irritable, unruly man, he combined ill with Drake; but when the Armada came he commanded the largest English ship of the time, the Triumph, of eleven hundred tons with a crew of five hundred, and was always in the thick of the fight.