But this very policy, well though it paid off in the end, meant that even the English gunfire was erratic and had the minimum of serious effect. It brought down a few spars and killed some men but it never completely disabled and it certainly did not sink. Something more had to be concerted to break up the Spanish discipline, to prevent them reaching their destination.
The gentlest of breezes persisted through Wednesday night, but dawn broke in a complete calm with the two fleets drifting a mile or two apart and about ten miles off the Needles, the westernmost tip of the Isle of Wight. Daylight showed a situation not unlike that of the day before. This time two Spanish ships had lagged behind: a Portuguese galleon, the San Luis, eight hundred and thirty tons, thirty-eight guns, and another hulk, the Duquesa Santa Ana, nine hundred tons, twenty-three guns. Nearest to them of the English fleet was the dreaded ‘Juan Achines’, as the Spaniards called him, commanding the Victory, of eight hundred tons and sixty-four guns. Thereupon began a battle in dead calm between ships dependent on wind for movement.
As soon as he saw game so near Hawkins put down boats, which began laboriously to tow him into range of the enemy. The rest of his squadron followed suit. Medina Sidonia at once countered by dispatching three of the four galleasses to the rescue, but, having noted how vulnerable the galleass, unsupported, was to saker and culverin fire directed at the banks of rowers, he had them tow along one of the great carracks to add to their firepower. This was de Leyva’s La Rata Encoronada, in which so many of Spain’s young noblemen sailed. It also, according to Artiñano, carried fifty-three guns and was ‘the Spanish ship with the most artillery’.
The Duke, watching the considerable conflict which now developed between a few heavy ships of both sides while the rest of the fleets looked helplessly on, had something on his mind greater than the outcome of this immediate action. He had already during the night called and listened to one council-of-war. For this was the day to seize the Isle of Wight if it were to be done at all. In his letter to the King of last Saturday, before any of the fighting began, the Duke had expressed himself quite plainly as having no intention of proceeding further up the Channel than the Isle of Wight until he had made contact with the Duke of Parma. It made good sense. It was a reasonable precaution to wait here until he received a reply to the messages he had sent on ahead. So far he had preserved his fleet splendidly intact. He should know Parma’s precise intentions before venturing into the narrows of the Channel, with no port of shelter or replenishment and the uncertain weather of the North Sea to face. Most of his officers were in favour of this plan.
But the Armada could not very well just anchor for several days in the Solent. The island could be captured, though at considerable cost, at considerable wastage of strength, especially with the English fleet still at large and undamaged. Yet, once the Isle of Wight was in his possession, the Armada had a sure base from which to emerge to meet Parma, a base to return to if things went wrong.
But the King’s letters were on the table before him. One was headed: ‘Secret Instructions for you, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, my cousin, my Captain General of the Ocean’ and signed ‘I, the King’. It said: ‘If God gives the success which is desired, as it is hoped that He will, you are to follow strictly the order of my public instructions to you. If, however, through our sins it should fall out otherwise, and the Duke, my nephew, should not be able to cross to England, nor you for that reason meet him, then, after communicating with him, you will see whether you are able to capture the Isle of Wight.’ Philip then goes on to outline the advantages of having a secure base but concludes by saying emphatically: ‘On no account should you try to capture the island on your journey eastwards without first having made a supreme effort to achieve success in the main task.’
So there it was – the precise instructions. So far the Duke had obeyed all his instructions, and had done so with complete success. Was he now to go against these instructions at the very last, and perhaps leave Parma high and dry, for lack of the courage to go on? All the King’s advice so far had been good. His knowledge of the English coast had proved correct in every detail, so had his predictions as to the tactics of the English fleet. The sailors and soldiers of the Armada were clearly anxious about their position, but not in poor heart. The swiftness of movement of the English fleet dismayed them, but losses so far had been slight. The weather, after the appalling early summer, was seemingly set fair; so far nothing could have been more favourable for their journey up the Channel. How many great military enterprises had failed for lack of resolution, from over-caution on the part of the commander-in-chief?
It is not clear what the Duke – or his council – would finally have decided, for the events of Thursday, operating on indecision, took the choice gradually out of their hands. The local battle in the calm of dawn gradually developed into a major clash. Hawkins, for a time outgunned by the arrival of La Rata and the three galleasses, was eventually supported by both Howard in the Ark and his cousin Lord Thomas Howard in the Golden Lion, who got themselves hauled by longboats into the battle area. Then the galleasses, in spite of English harassment, were able to get ropes aboard the two stranded ships and tow them away to safety, though not without damage to the galleasses. The Gerona was holed in the bows and had her lantern shot away, while the San Lorenzo, with Moncada aboard, again suffered heavy casualties.
The English were of course just as concerned as the Spanish about the Isle of Wight, and during the night Frobisher had edged himself so far forward in order to be between the Armada and the land that he found himself once again isolated and inshore, much as he had been off Portland yesterday. With no wind but a strong eastward current, the stronger the nearer it was to the land, he and a few supporting ships were only a mile or two off Ventnor and within range of the Spanish northern wing. He was quickly engaged by them and seemed in danger of being overwhelmed, so he dropped longboats, and others went to his assistance, there being in all eleven to take him in tow and drag him back out of range of the Spanish.
Then at last a light wind began to stir and, as movement in the fleets became possible, a confused battle developed. The breeze favoured the Spanish, and several of their galleons bore down on the Triumph again. But Frobisher’s ship, though somewhat damaged, immediately shook off her tow and, although pursued by two of the swiftest galleons in the Spanish fleet, drew away so quickly that, in Calderon’s words, ‘ our own ships seemed to be standing still’. Probably in this the Triumph was aided by the currents, which Frobisher knew how to utilize so well.
Meanwhile Medina Sidonia brought his main squadrons to bear on the English centre and in an hour’s mixed fighting drove them back westward. Howard in the Ark got the worst of this, and Fenner in the Nonpareil and Fenton in the Mary Rose stood between him and Recalde in the San Juan and Oquendo in the Santa Ana, who were eager to press home their advantage. There was nothing now, if he so chose, to prevent the Duke from swinging northwards and entering the undefended eastern arm of the Solent – that recommended to him by the King – and seizing Spithead. But again following the pattern of the previous day, Drake, little engaged so far, had used the new wind to claw himself out to sea, and from there with his squadron he now launched a fierce attack on the southern wing of the Armada, where first the San Mateo and then the Florencia bore the brunt. These ships retreated east and north towards the land, causing disarray in that wing of the Armada and bending the crescent so that its tip straightened and was in danger of breaking away.
There was still nothing to prevent Medina Sidonia from leading his biggest galleons straight up the Solent, but he would have done so at the risk of leaving the ships of his southern wing to fend for themselves and to see the defensive formation that he so much prized disintegrate under pressure. With so rigid a strategy there was really only one course open to him at this stage, and that was to re-group his ships back into their tight formation and sail to the rescue of his menaced southern wing. Once he had regrouped he could then in theo
ry turn if he so desired and sail up to Spithead.
When eventually the main Spanish fleet came up, Drake and Hawkins broke off the engagement. Their primary objective seems to have been to draw the Spanish fleet further from the mouth of the Solent and into a position where the flow of tide and current would make it difficult for them to turn and enter the estuary. In this they were successful. They may also, as has been suggested by many modern writers, have been trying to edge at least a part of the Spanish fleet on to the Owers Bank off the Bill of Selsey. If so, they failed in this, as they failed to disrupt the essential Armada formation.
There is no record, however, from any Spanish source that the Duke or his advisers had second thoughts about attempting to double back and take the Isle of Wight after all. We shall never know how far the scattered battles of Thursday, and especially Drake’s fierce attack which ended them, influenced the Duke in his decision to continue on his way without news from Parma. He may always have intended to do so. At any rate he sailed on with his four pilots, his sailing master, Captain Marolin de Juan, his naval adviser, Diego Flores, and his military adviser, Don Francisco de Bobadilla, at his side, towards his destiny in the narrows of the Channel.
What that destiny was the English did not know any more than the Spanish. Again there had been a day’s inconclusive fighting. Again the Armada proceeded on its way with a few ships damaged, a few hundred men dead and perhaps twice as many wounded. But still virtually untouched, considering its total size. Since the second day not a single ship had fallen out, not one prize for the English to claim. It was no story to tell the Queen.
Yet, rightly, the English celebrated Thursday as a great strategic victory, and on Friday Howard held a council-of-war at which he knighted Martin Frobisher, John Hawkins and several others. The Armada against all probabilities had forced its way up the Channel unbroken, but it was now past the last of the most suitable of invasion harbours and, although its attempted junction with Parma still remained a possibility, Howard knew that ahead of them was a new and unused English fleet under Lord Henry Seymour. This would be a reinforcement not of brave useless little fishing-boats armed with a pop-gun cannon apiece but of a powerful squadron of about twenty-four capital ships and eighteen others. None of these was large by Spanish standards or those of the Triumph or the Bear, but two at least were brand-new ships embodying the very latest principles of naval design, and all were fresh and fuming for a fight and might even conceivably carry some powder and shot to use in their guns.
Which Howard notably now had not. Friday was a superb day, brilliant and cloudless and hot; and not a shot was fired either then or on Saturday, when the weather clouded and there were a few showers. The only bombardment was Howard’s upon the sea-coast towns: of pinnaces with urgent messages demanding from the Earl of Sussex, Sir George Carey and the captains of the forts and castles along the coast that at all costs they should send him food for his guns and victuals for his men. Quite clearly there would be another and perhaps final trial of strength somewhere off Margate or Dunkirk; for this he must have ammunition and men with food in their bellies.
And men who had had some rest. In none of the accounts of the Armada is mention made of the fatigue and strain that the commanders and men of both fleets must by now have been suffering. For the best part of six days the two great fleets had accompanied each other up channel, never out of sight of each other except at nightfall, when the chance of accidental encounter increased, and almost always in the day fighting or manoeuvring to fight. The opportunity for sleep or even rest for any of the commanders was minimal. Medina Sidonia, it has been said, hardly left the taffrail during the whole time, receiving up there such food as he would eat, constantly consulting his advisers, usually in the thick of the battle or directing his own galleon to steer to that part of his fleet most directly menaced, sometimes snatching a few hours rest at dusk and then up again and leaning over the stern through the night.
If the strain was perhaps greatest of all for him, it can hardly have been much less for Howard, with all England to lose; and so on down the fleets.
Twice a day Medina Sidonia now sent off fast pinnaces to Parma, but so far had received no reply.
Parma, indeed, who had blown hot and cold over the Empresa for the last twelve months, was in no position to answer Medina Sidonia as the Admiral wanted and hoped. After the failure of this Armada and its return to Spain much of the blame for the failure was put on Parma’s shoulders for letting Medina Sidonia down. Indeed, from that time on Philip never really trusted him again. Later historians, studying the warnings that Parma had sent to Philip and the almost insuperable difficulties involved in ferrying the Spanish troops across the narrow seas with the obstacles that existed, have tended to absolve Parma of all blame.
Yet he must bear his full share of responsibility for what happened. Although others – like Alva and Don John of Austria – had thought of invading England from the Netherlands long before Parma suggested it, it was he who in the spring of 1586 first submitted his detailed scheme to Philip, outlining the possibility of a landing in Kent or Essex with thirty thousand infantrymen and five hundred cavalry, in flat-bottomed boats, screened by an escort of twenty-five warships. When later Philip decided to amalgamate this scheme with an Armada under Santa Cruz, Parma at first was in full agreement; and after the death of Mary Queen of Scots he wrote to Philip, as we have seen, assuming that the great Empresa would now go forward. Until March 1587, too, his own drive in the Netherlands had been northward; but from that time on he turned his eyes west, and the maps hanging in his headquarters in Brussels, instead of being of Leiden and Utrecht and Amsterdam, were of Flanders and the ports along its North Sea coast. After weeks of bloody and bitter fighting among the mud and tidal channels of Sluys he had at last forced the town into surrender – one of his dearest-bought victories. What could that victory be intended to further more certainly than the enterprise against England? After the capture of the town his troops began to dig the canals necessary to get the barges to Nieuport, so that from there they could be moved to Dunkirk while still under protection from the shore.
In November 1587 he wrote to Philip telling him that the barges – with fly-boats to escort them – were ready at Antwerp and Dunkirk, and that in two weeks he could launch the invasion – a palpable piece of wishful thinking if one does not use a harsher word. Then he moved his headquarters from Brussels to Bruges and discovered that his exits along the coast were all blockaded by Justin of Nassau, Admiral of Zeeland. He at once wrote to Philip, warning him of this and pointing out that Santa Cruz and the Armada would now necessarily have to clear a way for him before he could stir. He also later emphasized the extreme difficulty of the link-up, because galleons could not approach Dunkirk for lack of sea depth and Justin of Nassau could attack the troop-filled barges in the shallow water before they could gain the protection of the galleons.
Through the spring and summer many barges and fly-boats were certainly laid down at Dunkirk and Nieuport, but work on them proceeded with excruciating slowness. It is difficult to believe that Parma, who could achieve miracles of organization when he chose to, could not have hastened on this building programme. Yet he never appears to have let either Santa Cruz or Medina Sidonia know the true extent of his naval weakness. Certainly no general of Parma’s experience would have considered launching his troops in defenceless flat-bottomed barges into a sea patrolled by enemy fly-boats – though he made a token effort to do this when it was too late. But no general of Parma’s brilliance could not have advanced his preparations further than he did in the time at his disposal.
Perhaps he half thought the Armada would never come. (He did not know it had left Spain until it was off the Isle of Wight.) But in war you cannot afford to be caught in two minds. And it was Medina Sidonia who paid the price.
Chapter Eight
Gravelines
At its majestic crawl – about the speed of a rowing-boat – the Armada proceeded unharassed a
ll through Friday and Saturday, and in the evening of the latter day it came to anchor off Calais, still unbroken, still in its strong defensive formation. The English fleet dropped anchor half a mile away. The fine week of summer seemed to be over, and a fresh westerly breeze was bringing lowering clouds and a threat of rain.
Before darkness fell the English fleet was reinforced by the arrival of the new squadron of Lord Henry Seymour who, disobeying the Queen’s express instruction to continue his patrol duties off Dunkirk, gladly accepted Howard’s summons to join him. This meant that the English fleet was now increased by about a third, and that its numbers were for the first time something like equal to the Spanish. At the same time Justin of Nassau took over the guard duties of Seymour; but with his fleet of small tough shallow-draught warships of fifty to one hundred and fifty tons each he was able to keep a closer watch on Nieuport and Dunkirk than Seymour had done.
The night passed quietly, and on Sunday morning both admirals held councils-of-war. They both had cause for anxiety, for Howard, though stronger than he had ever been before, was well aware that the two Dukes were now only twenty-five miles apart by sea and little more by land. He had no certain knowledge of what Parma had been able to build during the last months or how many fly-boats he might have accumulated. A juncture between the two forces was at hand and this must be challenged at all costs. The Spanish had anchored rather dangerously inshore; but they, the English, were only half a mile further out and might also be in difficulties if the weather broke. Monsieur Gourdan, the Governor of Calais, was a known Catholic and an adherent of the pro-Spanish Guises, and would no doubt give the Spaniards ‘all help short of war’.