Among the commanders of the Armada, Bertendona followed the Duke, as did Oquendo, though Oquendo died of typhus soon after he reached Spain. Diego Flores was of course with the Duke and was tried and imprisoned in Spain for the ‘bad advice’ that he had given Medina Sidonia.
The veteran Recalde was one of those who lost touch with the Duke and, in company with two other ships, found himself off the dreaded Blasket Islands at the jagged tip of the Dingle Peninsula, the westernmost point in Europe. His ship, the San Juan, like the San Martin, had been in the thick of the fighting all through and appears to have suffered more. Calderon says: ‘He was dreadfully in need of everything and his ship was in a very injured state.’ It is at least fairly to be assumed that Recalde would not have put in to the Irish coast willingly or unless driven by sickness or shortage of supplies.
Of the two ships with him one was a Castilian galleon, the San Juan Bautista, of seven hundred and fifty tons, with a complement of two hundred and forty-three men. On board her was the Paymaster and Controller of the galleons of Castile, Marcos de Arumburu, who survived to give an account of his adventures and also ultimately to command a Spanish squadron in the Armadas of 1596 and 1597. The second ship was the San Pedro el Mayor, a vessel of five hundred and forty-one tons and a complement of two hundred and forty men: one of the only two hospital ships in the Armada. No doubt at this date she was crowded to the ports with sick and wounded men. The two ships had sighted the San Juan de Portugal through the driving mists of a windy September morning and had attached themselves to her, recognizing Recalde’s ship and knowing his reputation for seamanship.
At first Recalde anchored between the Great Blasket and the shore, but this was no place to stop. In Irish waters the long Atlantic swells often run counter to the winds ruffling the surface, and this made navigation for sixteenth-century sailing-ships a matter of peculiar peril, even when in the peak of condition. Now Recalde, after edging his galleon closer to the inhospitable cliffs, veered away and approached the island of Inishvickillane, which is a smaller island than the Great Blasket about three miles to the south-west. This has a tiny rock-bound harbour big enough to take fishing-boats. In Arumburu’s words, Recalde ran into the port of Inishvickillane ‘through an entrance between low rocks, about as wide as the length of a ship, and so anchored. We came in behind her, and after us the tender … This day we saw another ship to leeward close to hand.’
It was a superb piece of seamanship performed with a badly damaged vessel and a half dying crew. How far an anonymous Scottish pilot was responsible, how far Recalde himself – who knew the coast – we can never be sure. Recalde at once sent a longboat to the mainland several miles distant with eight men under a Biscayan officer called Licornio to reconnoitre the situation. They were captured and after being questioned were executed by the small band of English soldiers guarding the coast. After waiting vainly for their return Recalde sent a bigger boat containing fifty arquebusiers, and these men, outnumbering the English, proceeded to spend three days ashore, obtaining fresh water and what little else might be gleaned of the bleak countryside. The English and the Irish watched them in enmity but did not attack.
There then blew up one of the worst winds of that windy month, and the two San Juans dragged their anchors in the tiny harbour and collided, doing each other further damage. On the wings of this storm the galleon Santa Maria de la Rosa, vice-flagship of Oquendo’s squadron, drifted in, her sails in ribbons, and sank before their eyes with the loss of the entire crew except for one man. Following her came yet another San Juan, which tried to anchor in the shelter of the island while the last of her tattered rigging blew to shreds. Presently, in spite of Recalde’s efforts to save her, she too went down with most of her crew.
As soon as the wind blew itself out Recalde, who was now almost too ill to rise from his bed, gave orders to set sail, and the three remaining vessels, still in bad condition but at least re-watered and their crews rested, crept out of the narrow harbour in the dark and began the next leg of their long journey home.
It was each one for himself. The San Juan Bautista after a hazardous and sickly voyage was the first to make port. Recalde and his San Juan de Portugal reached Coruña on the 7th October, one of the very last to come home; but Recalde was so far spent that he died four days after his return. So disgusted and humiliated was he at the fate of the great Armada that he did not wish to see even his family and friends before he died. The San Pedro el Mayor was even less fortunate. She was blown by contrary winds back into the English Channel and wrecked in Hope Cove, off Salcombe. Some of her crew and patients were drowned but the majority got ashore. Although not important enough to be ransomable, none was slain: they were hauled out of the water by the sturdy Devonshire villagers and were fed, albeit scantily, by the local magistrate, George Cary, at his own expense until the country took them over.
Higher up the Irish coast, in Clare, in Galway, in Sligo and in Donegal, the other Spanish ships had drifted in in their dozens, a few to shelter and to water and to be off again, but the vast majority to founder, with the whole of their crews either drowned or killed as they came ashore or hanged after capture. Among these ships was the Rata Encoronada, with de Leyva aboard and his cargo of dashing young men. De Leyva, like Recalde, and Medina Sidonia, had all the time been in the thick of the battle, and his great carrack, less stoutly built than the Portuguese galleons, had suffered the more. Separated from the main body of the fleet, he led three other ships to an anchorage in Blacksod Bay in Galway, far to the north of Recalde. It is a wild coast, smiling and green in fair weather, grim and deadly in bad, and for some reason he chose an exposed anchorage off Ballycroy.
De Leyva, like Recalde, sent a boat ashore to reconnoitre, and these men were set upon by one of the petty chiefs, Richard Burke, who robbed and maltreated them. A gusty wind and a heavy tide meanwhile snapped the hempen rope of the one serviceable anchor and the Rata drifted on to the beach. Almost all her crew landed safely, and with them brought such possessions as they could carry: plate, money, clothing, some armour, but precious little food. They camped one night on the beach and then took possession of a ruined hill-fort, called Doona, from which they began to scour the countryside for food and water. Presently scouts brought news of another Spanish ship, that hulk of Andalusia, the Duquesa Santa Ana of nine hundred tons, anchored beyond the next headland. This was the ship which on the Thursday morning of the Channel fight, together with the San Luis, had drifted out of the protective range of the rest of the fleet and had had to be rescued from the clutches of John Hawkins by three of the galleasses and the Rata Encoronada. Perhaps it was fitting that she should now offer hope of escape to the Rata’s distinguished company. De Leyva marched his men across and found the Santa Ana in fair condition but with already more than her full complement of men, for she had saved some from another sinking ship.
A council-of-war was held, at which the captains of both ships and the pilots were of the opinion that to attempt to sail to Spain with eight hundred men aboard and scanty provisions, and with the prevailing headwinds, would mean certain disaster. De Leyva therefore decided to sail north again, to skirt the savage Irish headlands and try to land on the west coast of Scotland. This being a neutral country, if not actually a friendly one, there was a good chance of making one’s way in due course to Flanders and thence back to Spain.
So at the first favourable wind the hulk weighed anchor and began to creep up the coast. Past Annagh Head and Erris Head and Benwee Head, each one as dangerous as the last, and then across the fifty-mile gaping mouth of Donegal Bay to Rossan Point, about a hundred miles in all, before another strong wind coming up out of the north-west drove the ailing Santa Ana on the rocks of Loughros More Bay.
This was a nastier shipwreck than the last: rocks, not a sandy beach; some were drowned and de Leyva himself ‘was hurt in the leg by the capstan of the ship in such sort as he was able neither to go nor ride’. But some of their arms were ferried ashore, and most o
f the men survived and once again made some sort of camp in the rainy September twilight and committed their souls to God.
The next morning the usual scouts were sent out. This force under de Leyva was the most dangerous to England of any that landed or attempted to land. Not only did it still contain all the vigorous and enterprising young noblemen but, in spite of its sore straits, it was the only one, because of de Leyva’s guidance, that kept a degree of cohesion and discipline; and if it were allowed to consolidate itself it could well become the nucleus of a major revolt. But the English, although aware of its existence, had not yet located it, and de Leyva was able to send his scouts out without hindrance. Once again there was a convenient ruin near, and the great mass of men set about converting it into a defensive position, de Leyva being carried about in a chair and directing operations. The neighbouring Irish, those who were friendly, gave what help they dared.
So they stayed for eight days until an Irishman brought information that just south of them across the mountains of the Malin Mor peninsula in Donegal Bay was the Gerona, one of the galleasses, not too badly damaged and with a complement of crew and galley-slaves. The following day de Leyva struck camp and made a forced march in rain over the steep pass of Ardara to Killibegs with his seven-hundred-odd men, he being carried in a chair by relays of four soldiers at a time.
When they arrived they found the Gerona in a poor condition and most of her crew camping on the beach beside her. Near them were the remains of yet another Spanish ship, and de Leyva at once ordered his men to strip her of everything useful to their purpose and with the timbers and ironwork and ropes to set about repairing the Gerona and making her ready for sea. His position here was eased by his making contact with the local chieftain, one of the O’Neils, who offered de Leyva the hospitality of his home. This de Leyva refused, on the grounds that when he was gone his host would suffer at the hands of the English; but he gladly accepted supplies, and after fourteen days of hard work the galleass was repaired and declared fit for sea.
By now the English were in full alarm, and the Lord Deputy Fitz William was directing as large a force as he could muster to attack them. So on the 14th October de Leyva put to sea again, this time in an even more over-crowded ship, there being eleven or twelve hundred men in all. This time in addition to his patched-up sails he had the oars to propel him and not more than three hundred miles to go.
But the galleass, heavy with fore and aft superstructure and weak in fundamental design, particularly of the rudder, was the prey to every wind, and they made but slow progress, inching north and east day by day. Then in the dark of the night, when they were past almost all the worst hazards and only about forty miles from Scotland, the rudder broke in a sudden squall and the great ship drifted on the rocks near the Giant’s Causeway. In the shadow of Dunluce Castle the ship broke to pieces and all but nine common soldiers of her enormous crew were drowned. Hardly a noble house in Spain did not lose a son or a nephew or a cousin in this great disaster. Philip, brooding over his defeat in the Escorial, said when the news was brought to him that the loss of Alonso de Leyva meant more to him than the loss of all the Armada.
One other story of the shipwrecks concerns Captain Francisco de Cuellar, captain of the galleon San Pedro. During the retreat from the English fleet in the North Sea, his and another ship disobeyed the explicit instructions of Medina Sidonia and broke line by sailing ahead of the others. He was brought before that harsh and hated disciplinarian General Bobadilla, who sentenced him to be hanged. This was repealed by Medina Sidonia, but de Cuellar was relieved of his command and transferred under open arrest to the Levantine vice-flagship La Lavia.
Nearly a month later, in company with two other ships, La Lavia found herself unable to make headway against the southerly winds so put into the Irish coast near Sligo Bay and dropped anchor off Streedagh Strand, a five-mile stretch of pale sand flanked by cliffs. There she stayed about a mile offshore for four days, hoping for better weather but with the surf too heavy for anyone to land. On the fifth day, instead of the wind abating, it grew worse and broke the frail cables which held the ships. With the sea ‘as high as heaven’ all three ships were driven ashore, and in an hour were broken into gaunt pieces by the thunderous surf. More than eleven hundred men were drowned and something fewer than three hundred reached the shore alive.
Diego Enriquez, the Camp Master aboard La Lavia, and a half dozen aristocrats carrying sixteen thousand ducats worth of jewels and coin, took to the ship’s tender, which had a covered deck, and ordered the hatch to be battened down and caulked behind them. This was done, but as usual in the panic more than seventy men clambered aboard hoping to reach the shore, with the result that the tender capsized and all were drowned. Later when she drifted ashore the Irish seized her and began to break her up for the sake of the nails and the ironwork, when they discovered not only the drowned men inside but the treasure. Joyfully they stripped everything and left the corpses unburied on the sand, anxious to get away before someone surprised them in their rich find.
As for Cuellar himself, he could not swim, but clung to the poop watching others drown around him, saw them clinging to rafts, hatches, spars, barrels, anything that would float, and saw the few who were lucky enough to reach the shore being set on by a horde of two hundred hungry Irish, dancing and leaping with delight, who knocked them down as soon as they reached shallow water and stripped them naked. Presently with the Judge Advocate beside him – that Judge whose prisoner he still officially was – he found a hatchway as big as a table, and between them they contrived to float themselves away on it. On the way ashore the Judge was washed off and, weighted down as he was with crown pieces sewn into his doublet and hose, was instantly drowned. But somehow Cuellar kept afloat, though by now his legs were crushed and bleeding from collision with a piece of wreckage.
When he landed on the beach, gasping and half drowned, there were so many others coming in around him that he was ignored by the ‘savages’ for more promising prey, and he was able to crawl away through his naked and groaning countrymen and find shelter among some rushes growing in the sandhills near a stream. He stayed there until dark, when he was joined by a young Spaniard, naked and shivering with the cold. Together the two crouched there, half dead with pain and hunger, while they heard a search in progress. A small English garrison at nearby Grange had now taken charge and was rounding up such of the enemy as were left alive.
After about half an hour the two Spaniards were discovered by a couple of villainous-looking Irishmen, one with a captured sword, the other with a great iron axe. They stared at each other in the light of a lantern for a few seconds, and then the savage with the sword swung it to cut down the rushes. These, with grass and reeds from near by, they piled on top of the two fugitives until they were hidden from sight; then they passed on.
All night lights flickered and horses neighed and there were the shouts of men and the crash of axes as the great crowd on the beach broke up and dragged away whatever was left of value on the wrecks. Cuellar at last fell asleep, and when he woke at dawn he saw that the young man beside him had died in the night. The beach was still occupied with a few scavengers picking among the remnants, but the great crowd had gone. The only other population was the hundreds of dead and naked bodies piled in heaps waiting for the ravens and the wolves.
He crawled away and began to limp inland, searching for some monastery or Catholic retreat where he might hope for succour. Two miles inland was Staad Abbey, a small monastic church, and Cuellar saw its grey stone walls through the misty sunlight and hastened towards it, hoping to find at least one kind monk to help him. When he pushed open the door he saw the inside of the church had been wrecked, images destroyed and crosses broken, and hanging from the iron grilles of the church were the bodies of twelve Spaniards.
In sick despair he fled from the place and began to make his way back to the beach in the hope that now it would be quite empty and there might be biscuits or bread being washed u
p by the tide. As he neared the shipwrecks he met two more Spaniards and together they returned to the beach. Here Cuellar came upon and recognized the body of Diego Enriquez, and he and his new companions made an attempt to bury their noble commander. While doing this they were surrounded by Irishmen who did not molest them, being chiefly interested in their occupation; but later in the day Cuellar was robbed of his clothes and the money that he had carefully secreted about himself: forty-five crown pieces and a gold chain worth a thousand reals. Then, through the intervention of a ‘beautiful girl of about twenty’, some of his clothes were restored to him, and he was at last given a piece of oaten bread to eat with butter and milk, and his wounds were dressed.
I set about putting on my doublet and coat again, but they had taken away my shirt and also some precious relics that I was carrying in a little vestment of the order of the Holy Trinity. The young savage woman had taken these and hung them round her neck, making signs to me that she wished to keep them, and telling me that she was a Christian, though she was no more a Christian than Mahomet was.
The following night he was given shelter in a hut by some men, one of whom was able to talk to him in Latin, and in the morning he was lent a horse and boy to guide him on his way. The road was so bad that there was ‘mud up to the girths’. But they had gone no distance before they had first to hide from a troop of English searchers, and then were discovered and surrounded by ‘forty savages on foot’ who wanted to hack him to pieces. The boy’s intervention saved his life but did not prevent him from being beaten with sticks and robbed of every stitch of clothing. After they had gone he found a piece of old matting and some bracken to try to protect himself from the cold, and went on alone.