The bitter confusion of the fight is perhaps best described by an eyewitness, Calderon, who was on board the San Salvador, a ship of seven hundred and fifty tons attached to Oquendo’s squadron.
The enemy opened a heavy artillery fire on our flagship at seven o’clock in the morning, which was continued for nine hours. So tremendous was the fire that over 200 balls struck the sails and hull of the flagship on the starboard side, killing and wounding many men, disabling and dismounting guns and destroying much rigging. The holes made in the hull between wind and water caused so great a leakage that two divers had as much as they could do to stop them with tow and lead plates working all day.
The galleon San Felipe of Portugal was surrounded by 17 of the enemy’s ships, which directed against her heavy fire on both sides and on her stern. The enemy approached so close that the muskets and the harquebusses of the galleon were brought into service, killing a large number of men on the enemy ships. They did not dare, however, to come to close quarters [i.e. to board], but kept up a hot artillery fire from a distance, disabling the rudder, breaking the foremast and killing over 200 men in the galleon. This being noticed by the captain of the San Mateo, he brought his galleon to the wind and bravely went to the rescue. Then some of the enemy’s ships attacked him and inflicted much damage upon him. One of the enemy’s ships came alongside the galleon and an Englishman jumped on board, but our men cut him to bits instantly.
In the interim the Duke’s flagship, the San Martin, and the San Salvador luffed up as close as possible and went to the aid of the galleon. The San Salvador engaged an admiral’s and a commodore’s flagships, her bows, side, and half her poop being exposed for four hours to the enemy’s fire, during which she had a larger number of men killed and wounded, and her hull, her sails and rigging were much damaged. She leaked greatly through shot holes, and finally the Rata Encoronada, under Don Alonso de Leyva, came to her assistance, distinguishing herself greatly. On board the Rata there fell Don Pedro de Mendoza and other persons. They had to defend themselves against three flagships, a vice-flagship and ten or twelve other war vessels. This engagement lasted until four o’clock in the afternoon, the San Juan and the San Marcos suffering very severely. Don Felipe de Cordoba, son of Don Diego, his Majesty’s Master of the Horse, had his head shot off.
The Duke’s flagship lost 40 soldiers, and Sergeant Juan Carrasco, Alonso de Orozco and others. Diego Enriquez, who succeeded to the command of Pedro de Valdes’ squadron, also fought bravely in this engagement, and his ship suffered to such an extent that every one of his sails were destroyed. Don Pedro Enriquez had a hand shot away in this fight, and the ship’s company generally behaved with great gallantry.
We sailed between Dover and Calais in the direction of Norway with a W.N.W. wind. The enemy inflicted great damage on the galleons San Mateo and San Felipe, the latter having five of her starboard guns dismounted. In view of this, and that his upper deck was destroyed, both his pumps broken, his rigging in shreds and his ship almost a wreck, Don Francisco de Toledo ordered the grappling hooks to be brought out and shouted to the enemy to come to close quarters. They replied, summoning him to surrender in fair fight; and one Englishman, standing in the maintop with his sword and buckler, called out: ‘Good soldiers that ye are, surrender to the fair terms we offer ye.’ But the only answer he got was a gunshot, which brought him down in the sight of everyone, and the Maestro de Campo then ordered the muskets and harquebusses to be brought into action. The enemy thereupon retired, whilst our men shouted out to them that they were cowards, and with opprobrious words reproached them for their want of spirit, calling them Lutheran hens and daring them to return to the fight.
At seven o’clock in the evening, having lost 60 soldiers killed and 200 wounded, the San Felipe fired shots for aid to be sent her, and the hulk Doncella went to her. She found the galleon sinking and took on board 300 of her men. Captain Juan Poza, who was with them, said he believed that the hulk too was going down. The Maestro de Campo then replied that if that were the case they had better be drowned in the galleon than in the hulk, and they both went back to her. San Mateo had her hull so riddled that she was also in a sinking condition, the pumps being powerless to diminish the water. She came alongside the flagship and asked for help. The Duke sent a diver who stopped some of the leaks, but in the end the galleon was obliged to drop astern with the San Felipe and their subsequent fate is unknown; but it is said that they ran aground on the banks.
(In fact both ships did drift helplessly into the shore between Nieuport and Dunkirk where they were attacked by three Dutch fly-boats and after a three-hour battle were totally destroyed.)
This is a corner of the great battle, the corner of a page turned up and illumined by a narrator who survived. All over the area of sea between Gravelines and Dunkirk equally bitter fights were taking place, in a free-for-all in which the Spaniards were gradually shot to pieces, fighting almost everywhere with great courage but now without formation, in many cases after the first hours their big guns falling silent for lack of shot.
All the time too the English were edging the Spanish fleet nearer to the sandbanks of Dunkirk, the Spanish, under the leadership of Medina Sidonia and Diego Flores, luffing up into the wind and trying to edge further north.
When Howard himself came on the scene with his dozen fresh ships he charged at once into the mêlée. Seymour in the Rainbow with Wynter beside him in the Vanguard had attacked the enemy’s starboard, or inshore, wing – in so far as it remained a wing; and there had done battle with Oquendo in the Santa Ana and de Leyva in the Rata. The San Juan de Sicilia, one of the Levantine squadron, was so badly mauled that half her crew were dead, and eye-witnesses say that ‘her port holes were all full of blood’; yet she would not give ground and remained fighting on for three more hours. Martin de Bertendona in his flagship La Regazona was engaged alongside, but eventually her battery guns fell silent too as she ran out of shot. With blood spilling from her scuppers she refused to fall out of line but continued to fight with musketeers in her tops and crouching among the dead and the dying on her decks.
As the long day wore on, so the superiority of the English became more manifest. With rare self-control, after the mistake of boarding the galleass in the morning, they made no attempt to capture, or indeed to sink, individual ships; but once they had pounded them into semi-wrecks they moved on to the next target.
By four in the afternoon the battle had almost worn itself out. The English now as well as the Spanish were out of shot. The great Armada galleons were scattered, sometimes in groups of two or three, sometimes alone. For a time the San Martin herself was behind the English fleet, and it is said that Medina Sidonia, although wounded in the leg, climbed to the trees to discern for himself what was happening through the clouds of drifting smoke.
It still seemed likely that a total destruction of the Spanish fleet might be achieved, but a heavy squall about six accompanied by blinding rain forced both fleets to look to their sea safety; and when it was past the Armada by running before the wind had got itself temporarily out of range, and a little freer of the menace of the sandbanks. They had also miraculously contrived to re-form, so that once again they were steering in a fairly compact mass, and indeed Sidonia had the courage to shorten sail and wait for another English attack. Howard, however, did not attempt to close again but ordered his ships to shadow the Spanish fleet, of which one after another appeared to be in sinking condition.
Just before sunset the Maria Juan, six hundred and sixty-five tons, of Recalde’s squadron, which had had a long encounter with Captain Crosse in the Hope, signalled for help – she was going down. Somehow the Duke with his battered San Martin was still able to put on sail and go to her assistance. But it was too late. He was able to take off one boatload of her men and then she heeled over and sank, carrying with her two hundred and fifty-five men and her captain, Pedro de Ugarte.
So night fell, and the sea rose and the damaged leaking defeated fleet drift
ed parallel with the coast, putting its dead overboard, trying to minister to its many wounded, mopping the blood from its decks, replacing or patching its tattered sails, repairing rudders, stopping and caulking leaks, its unwounded sailors and soldiers in utter exhaustion, trying between tasks to eat such food as there was – much of it rotten biscuit – and drink the sour water.
No sleep for any, least of all for its commanders, with the English fleet close behind them (and preparing, for all they knew, a new attack at dawn) and the dreaded Dutch-occupied beaches on their starboard wing. It was a prospect which would have daunted any man.
As for the English, they were conscious of winning but not yet that they had won. They knew they had done great damage but only a half dozen of the enemy had gone down. Sir William Wynter, Seymour’s second-in-command, wrote to Walsingham: ‘Great was the spoil and harm that was done unto them … Out of my ship there was shot 500 shot … [my ship] was never out of harquebus shot of theirs and most often within speech of one another … no doubt the slaughter and hurt was great, as time will discover it; and every man was weary with labour and our cartridges spent and our munitions expended.’
Howard wrote cautiously to Walsingham: ‘I will not write unto her Majesty until more be done. Their force is wonderful great and strong; and yet we pluck their feathers by little and little.’
Drake wrote: ‘God hath given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward, as I hope in God the Duke of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia shall not shake hands this few days; and whensoever they shall meet, I believe neither of them will greatly rejoice of this day’s service … There must be great care taken to send us munitions and victuals whithersoever the enemy goeth.’
Hawkins wrote: ‘All that day Monday we followed the Spaniards with a long and great fight, wherein there was great valour showed generally by our company … In this fight there was some hurt done among the Spaniards … Our ships, God be thanked, have received little hurt … Now their fleet is here, and very forcible, it must be waited upon with all our force, which is little enough. There should be an infinite quantity of powder and shot provided … The men have long been unpaid and need relief.’
Richard Tomson wrote: ‘At this instant we are as far to the eastward as the Isle of Walcheren, wherein Flushing doth stand, and the wind hanging westerly, we drive our enemies apace to the eastward, much marvelling if the wind continue in what port they will direct themselves. Some imagine the river of Hamburg … There is want of powder and shot and victual among us which causeth that we cannot so daily assault them as we would.’
When dawn broke on a blustery and showery Tuesday morning, total destruction did indeed face the Spanish fleet. Overnight the wind had come north-west, and with the daylight it was seen that the shore of Zeeland was very close. And not only the shore; for everyone knew that, lurking among the banks and shoals, negotiating them with the familiarity of long experience, was a fleet of fly-boats under Justin of Nassau, whose policy towards the Spaniards – as theirs to
him – was one not of ordinary war but of complete extermination.
1 It must be said, however, in effect that the Dutch were not as merciless as they perhaps had reason to be; from the two big galleons which drifted ashore on the Monday some four hundred prisoners were taken. These of course included the high-born officers, who could be ransomed, but also many ordinary sailors and soldiers as well.
Behind them, scarcely two miles to windward, were the white sails and bobbing masts of the English fleet.
At the rearguard of the Armada, in the place of greatest danger, ready to meet the first shock of the expected new English attack, were as usual the relatively few fighting ships which had borne the brunt of the battle ever since the first clash at Plymouth: Medina Sidonia and Diego Flores in the San Martin, Recalde in the San Juan, de Leyva in the Rata Encoronada, Oquendo in the Santa Ana, de Bertendona in La Regazona and about two dozen others. With them were the three surviving galleasses, Napolitana, Gerona and Zuniga. The rest of the fleet struggled ahead under light sail, falling off to leeward ever nearer the shore.
Howard did not attack for the simple reason that he was saving what little shot he had scraped together for the final catastrophe when the Armada took the ground.
The San Martin was ‘sailing abaft of the rearguard, in consequence of having one of her anchors down, her lead having only reached seven fathoms and she being near the banks’. Various officers now came to Medina Sidonia and besought him to take one of the pinnaces and the much-torn Holy Banner and make for the safety of Spanish-held Dunkirk, but he refused. ‘Having confessed himself with his officers he prepared to die like a Christian soldier.’ Presently Oquendo in the Santa Ana came up and the Duke shouted to him: ‘We are lost. What shall we do?’ Oquendo said: ‘Ask Diego Flores. As for me I am going to fight and die like a man. Send me a supply of shot.’
The lead said six fathoms and then five. The pilots insisted they were helpless; with the wind as it was shipwreck was a matter of minutes. It was just a question of which ships would strike first.
Then occurred what appeared as a miracle to the Spaniards; the wind hesitated, gusted for a few moments, and began to back. From north-west it became south-west, and within what must have been only yards from shipwreck the Armada shook out its tattered sails and began to move out of danger towards the safer reaches of the North Sea. ‘God succoured us in our distress, as He always does,’ wrote Calderon. ‘ We were saved by God’s mercy,’ said the Duke. What the English thought has never been recorded. A simple change of wind deprived them by a matter of half an hour of that complete victory which the day before they had gone so far to earn. They were powerless to attack again, they could only fall in and shadow. Even the harassing tactics of the Channel were not possible.
As a result of this, no one knew for many weeks whether the threat to England was really over. And for the Spaniards that God-given change of wind meant the difference between annihilation on the Flanders sandbanks and the long-drawn-out agony of a return round the British Isles to Spain.
Chapter Nine
Irish Ordeal
For long the myth was fostered that the Armada was destroyed not by the English but by the storms of August and September. On the Spanish side it was a better excuse than to admit they had been defeated in battle. On the English side it was preferable to believe that winds provided by God in a righteous cause were more potent than the guns and ships provided by man. Yet the myth really did no honour to either side; neither to the seamanship of the Spaniards nor the gunnery and tactics of the English – nor to the bravery of both. In fact the Spanish were comprehensively defeated in the Battle of Gravelines, shot through, decimated, all but completely destroyed. It was this more than any storms which sank them on the way home.
Another myth is that the Armada was blown relentlessly north by an unceasing south-west wind and could not have returned to the Channel if it would. The wind remained roughly south-south-west from the Tuesday afternoon until Friday. Late on Friday it veered round to the north-west again and presented the Spanish with a favourable opportunity of retracing their course, indeed making it difficult for them not to do so. They did not do so.
On the Tuesday evening before sunset the Duke had summoned his generals and advisers for a council-of-war, and they had discussed the future. It cannot have been a cheerful gathering, and harsh words flew. Diego Flores was for returning as soon as the wind changed and making one more attempt to link up with Parma; but the majority was against him – as indeed was common sense. Without ammunition, and with no friendly port in which to rest and re-arm and re-equip, the move would have been suicidal. But perhaps, like Oquendo earlier in the day, the mood of some of the captains was suicidal. Better death in the jaws of the enemy than a long and dishonourable retreat.
But saner councils prevailed, and the pilots were called in. Theirs was not a hopeful outlook. It would be a long and laborious trek home, fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred miles
, days and weeks sailing in possibly stormy seas in that treacherous summer, in waters known only to a few of them, almost every ship damaged, every ship full of wounded men, the whole fleet desperately short of food and water and medical supplies; this prospect was almost as daunting as the first. But it was chosen; there was no other alternative but to surrender, and that course, in spite of the early example of Pedro de Valdes, was not even discussed. So they sailed on ever north and ever shadowed by ninety ships of the English fleet. When the wind changed on the Friday the English took advantage of it and, out of food and water themselves, ran for home, leaving only two pinnaces, one belonging to Drake, to continue to follow the enemy as far as the Northern Islands.
The Spanish made no such change of course. Sharing supplies among themselves, for some ships were better off than others, limiting the thousands of men, wounded and fit alike, to eight ounces of bread, half a pint of wine and a pint of water daily, they beat on slowly – at the speed of the slowest – up into the north.
There was no conviction in England that the danger was past. The very caution and modesty of the dispatches and letters sent by the English captains told against them. The Armada was still in being, and few realized how mortally it had been wounded. The English fleet had parted with the enemy off Newcastle, and there were three dangers still very much in English minds: (1) a return of the Spanish fleet to try again to link up with Parma, (2) a landing in the Firth of Forth, with Protestant James not so sure of the loyalty of his Catholics as Elizabeth had been of hers, or (3) a landing in Ireland, where a Catholic and rebellious population would be waiting to welcome them as friends and liberators.