As the demand increased, so did the price, and so did the flow of contraband. One Sussex ironmaster alone sold a hundred pieces of cannon to the Spaniards, and Bristol merchants sold them nine shiploads of culverins cast in the forest of Dean, together with powder, muskets and shot – all this during 1586 and 1587, and mainly routed through Naples.
With a military commitment in the Netherlands, however reluctantly maintained, and Mary executed, the forward party in the Council was in the ascendant. Drake had just returned from his great West Indies raid, during which he had first impudently called in and watered at Vigo, challenging the King of Spain to come and fight on his own doorstep, then had sailed to the Cape Verde Islands where he captured and burned Santiago and Porto Praya. Then he had crossed the Atlantic, and, although beset by sickness in his ships, had attacked and captured the supposedly impregnable city of San Domingo and lived there in luxury for a month with his crews before revictualling with Spanish stores and departing with additions to his fleet, two hundred and forty extra guns and a large number of freed galley-slaves, Turkish as well as Christian. From there he had sailed to Cartagena, the capital of the Spanish Main, which, being warned of his coming, had been heavily reinforced. But by a manoeuvre of sheer genius he had captured the place, had stayed there six weeks unmolested and had finally returned to England, after many other adventures, laden with spoil.
This voyage was in a real sense the one great setback to the Counter-Reformation in the years following the death of William of Orange, when all over Europe Spain and Rome seemed triumphant. It confirmed Drake as the foremost and only successful champion of the Protestant cause which everywhere else was in retreat. ‘El Draque’ was famous throughout Spain, being at once dreaded and respected; and ‘many princes of Italy, Germany and elsewhere, enemies as well as friends, desired his picture.’ The moral effect of this great adventure was much greater than the immediate physical damage done. It struck at the empire from which Philip drew so much of his wealth and authority, it damaged Spanish credit by preventing the treasure ships from sailing and thus starved Parma of the money to pay his army; it was rumoured that the Bank of Seville would be broken and that Philip would become bankrupt.
But Philip survived and quietly went ahead with his preparations while Parma continued to negotiate with Elizabeth. Drake, in spite of the various dramatic proposals he put forward for his own employment, was kept on a leash after his return; and it was nearly a year before the forward party at court succeeded in persuading Elizabeth to let her lion free again.
On the 2nd April 1587 Drake sailed with a mixed fleet of sixteen ships and seven pinnaces to do mischief upon the Spanish ports. His instructions were ‘ to prevent or withstand such enterprises as might be attempted against her Highness’s realm or dominion’, and these instructions he proceeded joyfully to carry out. After reaching Lisbon on the 16th, he learned that there was a great concourse of shipping in Cadiz just getting ready to sail, so he fled south under all canvas, instructing his fleet to follow to the best of their sailing abilities. Arriving off Cadiz in the afternoon of the 19th, accompanied only by those few who were as fast as he, he called a council aboard his flagship, the Elizabeth Bonaventure, and announced his intention of sailing in and attacking the harbour at once – this in spite of the strong opposition of his vice-admiral, William Borough, who considered the defences of Cadiz too strong, with batteries commanding the narrow entrance to the harbour, and at least a dozen powerful galleys in harbour, and one or more galleons much larger than the English ships.
According to the orders laid down by Henry VII, it was obligatory that an admiral in charge of a fleet should call a council-of-war and fully discuss policy and strategy with his captains before taking any such grave step as landing on enemy territory or forcing the entrance of an enemy harbour. But Drake’s councils were always perfunctory. It was said of him by a friend that though he was a willing hearer of other men’s opinions he was mainly a follower of his own. This time he barely listened. He gave his captains his instructions, and even Borough’s urgent request that they should wait until nightfall – not an unreasonable one – was unregarded.
Even while the ‘ council’ was in progress, the ships were nearing Cadiz, and, barely giving his captains time to leave, Drake stood in. The wind was favourable, the sky clear, the time four o’clock. The ancient town drowsed like a white cat in the afternoon sun. In the harbour was a scene of peaceful industry appropriate to a warm spring day. Something like a hundred ships, from small barques to armed merchantmen, were in port, of every type and nationality, loading up stores, being repaired, or ready and waiting orders to sail. Foreign ships which had been commandeered had no sails, for this was a useful way of ensuring that they should not slip away in the night. Others were without guns and some were without crews.
As soon as Drake’s ships were sighted two galleys put out to challenge them, but these in the open spaces of the bay were driven off. Once in the harbour it might be different – this sort of combat in an enclosed space had never taken place before. Galleys, though lightly built and lightly armed, were swift and dangerous and could out-manoeuvre any sailing ship – they could turn on their axis in their own length – and they had been the traditional ships of war for three thousand years.
Elizabeth Bonaventure sailed in under the barking cannons of the Matagorda fort, followed by Golden Lion, Rainbow and Dreadnought – the four Queen’s ships – and a group of armed merchantmen led by Captain Flick in Merchant Royal. In the port all now was sudden panic and chaos, as every ship that could move at all cut its cables and tried to find some sort of escape from the attack. Many collided, some went aground, a few smaller ones were able to retreat into water too shallow for the English ships to follow.
From opposite the town ten galleys appeared to attack the intruders. Drake ordered his armed merchantmen to deal with the panic-stricken ships in the harbour and turned the attention of the four Queen’s ships to combat with the galleys. The galleys opened fire as they approached from the single gun platforms mounted forward. Drake, handling his five-hundred-ton warship like a skiff in the fresh breeze, came about and discharged broadsides of demi-cannon and culverin, the guns firing eight at a time, into the packed benches of oarsmen. As one galley fell away the others pressed in to the attack, and were met with the same devastating fire from the English warships. In fifteen minutes it was all over, and history had been made. The long pre-eminence of the galley as a ship of war was ended. (Or at least the results of the very rare clashes between galleys and sailing ships during the last few years had been heavily and dramatically underscored.) One galley was sinking; the other nine retired under the shelter of the shore guns.
Of the many ships captured in the harbour, those with full equipment were taken as prizes, those without sail or otherwise thought unsuitable were set afire. As night fell Drake ordered his ships to anchor out of range of the town guns, which had been firing on him for three hours, and told his captains, who had come to consult him, that they must stay where they were until the morning. Vice-Admiral Borough, who was anxious to finish the work and move away from this land-trap while they were still free to do so, was not heeded.
At dawn, instead of making off with his prizes, Drake organized and personally led a flotilla of pinnaces into the inner harbour where he took and destroyed one of the largest Spanish galleons of the day, belonging to the Admiral, Santa Cruz, himself. In the meantime Borough, finding himself under fire from a shore gun, had edged further and further out of the harbour, until six galleys, seeing him separate from the rest, attacked him, and Drake had to send eight of his ships to the rescue. The galleys were beaten off, but Borough continued his slow retreat, taking with him the ships which had been sent to his aid, and finally anchored at the mouth of the harbour, where he could catch the fitful wind, and waited petulantly for Drake.
Drake was nearly ready. The galleon was burned down to the water line; thirty other ships had been destroyed and six
captured; his own ships were laden with whatever could be seized from deck or quayside, and food and wine to last his fleet three months. His loss in ships was nil and in personnel quite small. By now more and more Spanish troops were arriving from the mainland and marching across the narrow isthmus into Cadiz: it was time to go. And at that moment the wind dropped.
It was an awkward situation. A sailing ship without wind is an unwieldy hulk which can only be moved laboriously by oarsmen in ship’s boats straining to keep way on her. Or in shallow water anchors may be dropped and she can be warped forward or aft a few yards at a time. But her wings are suddenly clipped, and it is not comfortable at such a time to find oneself in an enemy harbour, almost surrounded by land which is rapidly being occupied by hostile troops. This was the time, too, for galleys to come into their own. Also it was known that somewhere not far away Juan Martinez de Recalde, after Santa Cruz the most experienced and notable Spanish admiral of his day, was abroad with a squadron of Biscayan galleons and might be nearing Cadiz. A calm, of course, is a calm; but there is more chance of light airs out at sea. There were also other squadrons about the coast, the main concentration being at Lisbon, where Santa Cruz, superintending the Armada preparations, now knew of Drake’s presence on the coast and might be coming to seek him. Ill fortune could bring a sufficiency of ships to Cadiz to imprison Drake’s fleet in the harbour and sink them.
It is not to be wondered if some of the English captains, and perhaps even Drake himself, watched the declining sun with an anxious eye. Borough was certainly in no doubts as to their danger, although his partial retreat had put him less at risk.
In the afternoon the Duke of Medina Sidonia reached Cadiz with another three thousand infantry and three hundred cavalry. The people of Cadiz, some of whom had trampled others to death in the panic of yesterday, breathed again, and began to help to manhandle new guns into position where their shot could reach the English ships. The galleys made another concerted onslaught on their now unwieldy adversaries. It was like dogs attacking a circle of bears. But by warping and paying out skilfully the English ships presented their broadsides constantly to the enemy, and the galleys after some hot exchanges again retired.
Then just before dark fire-ships were tried. These could have been disastrous, but they suffered from the prevailing lack of wind. They had to be towed in the direction of the English ships, and once they got within range they were necessarily abandoned, so the English small boats could take them in tow and beach them out of danger. About nine the galleys tried again, but again without success. Meanwhile the guns barked regularly, but only a few shots hit the English ships.
At midnight, just twelve hours after the wind dropped, a light breeze began to blow off shore, and Drake and his ships with flags flying, kettledrums beating and trumpets strident, slipped out to sea.
The adventure was not over yet; for, after further brushes with the opposing galleys, Drake sailed back to Cape St Vincent, landed a force of a thousand men on a sandy beach nearby and at the second attempt captured the impregnable Sagres Castle, the fortified monastery of St Vincent, and Valliera Castle, together with all supplies and guns. These the English carried away after burning the forts. They also captured and destroyed over a hundred fishing boats and coastal barques, thereby ruining the Algarve tunny fishing industry, on which any Spanish armada had to rely for its salt fish, and at the same time destroying the seasoned barrel staves being carried by many of the coastal vessels. The navies of the world relied on such casks for storing water and wine and salt meat and biscuits, and the lack of good barrels to keep provisions sweet was one of the notable deficiencies in the Armada when it sailed in the following year.
Nor was this all. Having appeared next off Lisbon and vainly challenged Santa Cruz to come out to fight him, Drake then with a part of his fleet – Borough in the meantime having mutinously sailed for home – succeeded in capturing the San Felipe, a huge Portuguese carrack homeward bound from Goa, laden with spices, ivories, silk and gold to a value of £114,000.
The voyage was an astonishing achievement, a success in everything that it was sent out to do – in which it was so different from most enterprises of those years. It disrupted Spanish plans and communications – no one knew where Drake was going to turn up next – and no one dared to take a chance, so no one moved. It hit precisely at the weakest links in the Spanish preparations for the invasion of England – indeed it delayed the sailing of the First Armada for a year – it shook Spanish confidence and added to the legend of El Draque; and finally it made a thundering profit for the Queen. As model of its kind, as an example of how much a small fleet may achieve, if brilliantly handled, in breaking up the preparations and organization for war of a powerful nation, it has probably not been equalled in history.
The adventure has come to be known as ‘Singeing the King of Spain’s beard’, from Drake’s famous comment. Drake had all the arrogance of genius, but, as Mattingly has pointed out, this was not intended as a boastful remark. After the Spaniards with their allies defeated the Turks in the great battle of Lepanto in October 1571 the Sultan said: ‘When the Venetians sank my fleet they only singed my beard. It will grow again. But when I captured Cyprus I cut off one of their arms.’ Drake was claiming a small victory, not a large. He knew the danger and he had seen the preparations afoot. He was under no illusions about the danger to England. And his great concern over the next twelve months was to dispel the illusions that still lingered in England, especially at court.
He had returned reluctantly from patrolling off the coast of Spain; weather, lack of reinforcements, sickness in his crews, the desertion of Borough, and lastly the capture of the great treasure ship, had brought him home. He expected to be allowed to resume his commission as soon as he had refitted and refurbished his fleet. The overwhelming success spoke for itself; this was the one sure – and wonderfully economical – way of continuing to disrupt Spain’s preparations. Indeed, with such tactics it seemed likely that an armada never would be got ready to sail against England. Although virtually an act of war, it made outright war less likely by preventing a confrontation. The Queen, of all people, must appreciate the brilliant logic of this.
But the Queen, influenced by Burghley, who had a temperamental antipathy to Drake and his bravado, was still intent on appeasing Philip rather than on fighting him. Whatever she may have felt privately, she hypocritically expressed strong displeasure to the Spanish at Drake’s violation of their coast, and Drake found himself a national and international hero in temporary eclipse.
Then by October the pendulum swung again and the English fleet mobilized, expecting the Armada that autumn. In the week before Christmas Lord Howard of Effingham as Lord Admiral took command of the English Fleet, and two days later Drake became his vice-admiral and was given command of an independent fleet to be based on Plymouth. (In January the English again partly disbanded, mainly in the interests of economy, but with some regard too to the impracticability of keeping large groups of men cooped up for months without epidemics; and Drake’s fleet did not materialize as promised but became a makeshift group that he assembled as and where he best could.)
Then on the 9th February 1588 the Marquis of Santa Cruz, Spain’s great admiral, died, followed a few days later by his vice-admiral, the Duke of Paliano, and it seemed for a time that the whole armada project would be abandoned. At least Elizabeth, on false intelligence from Spain and from France, allowed herself to be persuaded so, and peace commissioners were sent to Flanders to discuss terms with Parma. At the same time Drake was forbidden to leave the English coast. Philip, however, never had the least intention of abandoning his Armada, now it was so far forward. Nor was he to be deterred then or later by complaints from his commanders that all was not at a peak of readiness for the great adventure. Precisely similar complaints had reached him before Lepanto, that other great and victorious crusade. Slow to make up his mind, he was not a man to change it because of a few setbacks. The young prince of Elizabeth
’s memory, cautious but statesmanlike, wise, and essentially a lover of peace, had long since been submerged by the years; and it was a cardinal error on her part – one of the few she had made – to think of him as unchanged. To Philip the sailing of the Armada had become as holy an enterprise as any crusade of the middle ages. Indeed at one time he had intended to sail in it himself, so that he could be on the spot to dictate terms when the English collapsed.
To many Spaniards, high born and low, it was the same. To join the Armada was to join the popular cause, to embark on a Crusade. To proceed against the Infidel and try to recapture Jerusalem was an undertaking no more blessed of God than one to reunite Christendom and bring all Europe back into the bosom of the Church of Christ. Indeed, the people they were to fight were more ignoble than infidels, for they were ‘fallen angels’. Lutherans condemned the belief that one could pray to the Virgin and the saints to intercede for them with God. They condemned the worship of images and holy relics, and wherever they conquered they ruthlessly destroyed them. They condemned indulgences and a belief in purgatory. They condemned the confessional. They condemned almost everything that was fundamental to the Catholic religion. They were people who sinned not out of ignorance but who, having known the light, had set their face against it.
There were also of course the practical considerations mentioned already – and these were becoming more urgent with every year that passed. The Iberian mercantile economy would founder if a stop were not put to the depredations of the English pirates. The economy of Spain itself might collapse unless the Netherlands were regained. So Philip cast around among his distinguished admirals and his generals and his noblemen for the most suitable man to take the place of Santa Cruz.