The Spanish Armada (24 page)

The Armada’s threat to Plymouth may have been neutralised, but Howard and Drake nonetheless must have been left anxious. They had not been successful in penetrating and disrupting the
Armada’s defensive crescent, and their long-range bombardment had failed to inflict any real damage on their enemy. Worryingly, expenditure of cannon shot and gunpowder was greater than
anticipated. (Captain Vanegas, the Spanish flagship’s gunnery officer, estimated that the English had fired 2,000 rounds against just 750 from his own side.)
²⁰
On a positive note, however, the English vessels had proved faster,
more nimble and manoeuvrable than the lumbering Spanish warships, and they had
frustrated every enemy attempt to board them.

As the clearing acrid smoke rolled across the sea, Recalde moved his battered ship into the protective centre of the crescent to undertake emergency repairs. The Armada continued slowly
eastwards, its progress interrupted by forays from harrying English ships, firing occasional long-range shots.

Within minutes of the English breaking off the action came the first of two calamitous accidents that were to cost Medina Sidonia two of his major warships. Fearing that Recalde’s stricken
vessel would ‘not be able to abide any new fight if it were offered the same day’, Admiral Don Pedro de Valdés in the
Nuestra Señora del Rosario
was swiftly
cutting through the water to assist when he collided with one of the Biscayan ships, breaking the bowsprit and wrecking its steering. Then at around two o’clock, a catastrophic explosion tore
through another ship, carrying the Armada’s pay in gold. Calderón takes up the story:

With a bureaucrat’s worry for a colleague and his responsibilities, Calderón added that ‘Paymaster Juan de Huerta, his staff papers and some money in his
charge were saved’.
²¹

Sensational rumours swept the Spanish fleet. One suggested that a Dutch master-gunner, rebuked for poor aiming or rate of fire, had laid a powder trail to a barrel of explosives, coolly lit it,
and then jumped overboard. Another tale recounted how the gunner had been reproved for smoking on the quarter-deck by the captain and had
calmly knocked out his clay pipe
into the ubiquitous barrel of gunpowder. A third version said the master-gunner was a German who had been struck by a Spanish officer with a stick as a punishment for neglecting his
duty.
²²

A more florid report, written some time after the event by the Florentine Petruccio Ubaldino, concerned a gunner who had been cuckolded by a Spanish army officer and had taken his own,
devastating revenge:

Some support for this exciting story of lust, despair and terrible revenge is provided by an English report that a German woman was discovered among the survivors from the
958-ton
San Salvador
.
²⁴
So much for Medina Sidonia’s ban on women accompanying the Armada.

The explosion blew apart the ship’s stern castle and destroyed the two aft upper decks as well as damaging her rudder. The captain-general halted the Armada and sent
pataches
to
pick up survivors from the burning hull and the surrounding sea, beginning with ‘the principal persons’ – those of high rank. Calderón received thirty-five casualties on
his ship, mostly suffering from terrible burns, including the
San Salvador
’s captain, Don Pedro Priego. Directing operations from the
San Martin
’s poop deck, Medina
Sidonia ordered boats to transfer the
San Salvador
’s treasure to other ships and help turn her battered stern away from the wind to prevent the fire that was raging amidships from
blowing further forward. Forming human chains to pass buckets, the remaining crew, aided by volunteers, eventually managed to extinguish the blaze. They
were only just in
time: the fire was edging dangerously close to the magazine beneath the forecastle, holding seven tons of gunpowder. Two galleasses took the stricken ship in tow, its badly burned survivors still
on board, and the Armada continued its stately progress up the Channel.
²⁵

The day had not gone well for Medina Sidonia. Standing on
San Martin
’s poop deck, high above the waves, he probably reflected that although the Armada had survived the first
English attack, it was galling that the most serious damage to his ships had been caused by avoidable accidents rather than by enemy action. He had eaten nothing all day but some bread and
Sardinian cheese, brought to him in rare moments of quiet. If his cup of despair and disappointment had been full before, it now flowed over.

The wind turned squally, whipping up increasingly choppy waves. The damaged
Rosario
began losing steerage and at five o’clock she was involved in a second collision – this
time with her sister Andalusian galleon, the 730-ton
Santa Catalina
. Her foremast snapped off at its base and came crashing down on to the mainmast, reducing the upper deck to a tangled
mass of fallen timber and rigging. Pedro de Valdés’ ship was now uncontrollable and he fired a signal gun for assistance.

The
San Martin
came up alongside and her captain, Captain Marolín de Juan (also the Armada’s sailing master), ordered that the
Rosario
should be taken in tow. But
the sea had risen still further and within minutes of the tow being secured, the hawser parted. Medina Sidonia’s naval adviser Diego Flores de Valdés urged him to abandon the damaged
ship as any delay could jeopardise both the Armada’s mission and the fleet itself. This was a painful decision for Medina Sidonia. He was probably aware that there was no love lost between
his naval adviser and the
Rosario
’s commander – the two were estranged cousins who nursed resentment over ancient personal slights. Later he acknowledged ruefully: ‘If I
could have remedied the situation with my blood I would have gladly done so.’
²⁶

In stark naval tactical terms, the decision to abandon the
Rosario
was probably correct, although it damaged morale in the Armada. Word quickly spread that ‘no ship should take
any risks for if a ship had not received any relief who would rescue the rest from any danger in which they might place themselves?’
²⁷
Two
pataches
were
sent to take off the
Rosario
’s crew, but Pedro de Valdés rejected any aid, stubbornly refusing to abandon his ship with the enemy
so close. In addition to the admiral, those on board included Captain Vicente Alvarez, the owner of the ship, and 228 sailors, along with a military contingent comprising Captain Alonso de Zayas
and 122 soldiers of Antonio de Heria’s company, plus twenty more from Juan de Ibarra’s unit. The hold contained 50,000 gold ducats belonging to Philip II; curiously, Medina Sidonia, who
must have been aware of its existence, made no attempt to remove it.

There were seven other names on the
Rosario
’s manifest: English Catholic exiles who had joined the Armada to help depose Elizabeth.

As darkness fell, while survivors said their evening prayers on the heaving deck, the flagship departed to rejoin the Armada, which was now two hours’ sailing time ahead. Admiral
Agustín de Ojeda, commander of the auxiliary squadron, in his flagship
Nuestra Señora de Pilar de Zaragoza,
was detailed to stay with the helpless
Rosario
, together
with four pinnaces. A few hours later, the sound of cannon shots echoed across the waves.

Valdés was furious at being abandoned in the face of the enemy. Although his commander was ‘near enough to me and saw in what case I was and might easily have relieved me, yet he
would not do it’. He was left ‘comfortless in the sight of the whole fleet, the enemy being but a quarter of a league from me’.
²⁸

That night, Howard wrote to Walsingham from the
Ark Royal
, off Plymouth, describing the first day’s action:

In a hurried postscript, Howard referred to his earlier aborted
reconnaissance mission – ‘The southerly wind that brought back from the coast of Spain brought
them out’ – and revisited his fears of missing the Armada with the comment: ‘God blessed us with turning back.’
²⁹
The lord
admiral also added an urgent and impassioned plea for more cannon shot and gunpowder.

Drake, in a terse letter to Henry Seymour, still guarding the narrow seas off Flanders, recounted how ‘we had them in chase and so coming up to them, there . . . passed some cannon shot
between some of our fleet and some of them and as far as we perceive, they are determined to sell their lives with blows’. He warned Seymour to put his ships ‘into the best and
strongest manner you may and [be] ready to assist his lordship [Howard] for the better encountering of them in those parts where you are now’. He estimated the Armada to be ‘above one
hundred sails, many great ships but truly, I think not half of them men-of-war’.
³⁰

Howard called a council of war aboard the
Ark Royal
. The day’s events were discussed, including the problems they had encountered in penetrating the Armada’s defences. Drake
in
Revenge
was ordered to be lead ship of the English fleet tailing the Armada during the night, with a large lantern displayed at his stern so the remainder of the pursuing ships could
safely judge their distance from the enemy. This was an eminently sensible order by Howard, given Drake’s experience, navigational skills, and superlative seamanship. But he had not reckoned
with his maverick vice-admiral’s greed in the face of the enemy.

Medina Sidonia, in another letter to Parma, reported:

Reiterating his intention ‘with God’s help, to continue my voyage without allowing anything to divert me until I received from your
excellency
instructions as to what I am to do’, the captain-general requested Parma to supply pilots for the Flanders coast ‘as without them I am ignorant of the places where I can find shelter
for ships so large as these in case I am overtaken by the slightest storm’.
³¹
The message was entrusted to the redoubtable Ensign Gil, but
continuing rough seas delayed the departure of his pinnace until the following day.

Westwards, the
Rosario
continued to wallow helplessly, dead in the water. At around nine o’clock, the leading ship of the shadowing English fleet, the 210-ton
Margaret and
John
, a privateer financed by the City of London, scenting the rich sweet smell of prize money, closed on the stricken Spaniard. At the English fleet’s approach, Ojeda’s galleon
and four guardship pinnaces promptly abandoned their charge and headed back to the main body of the Armada, now south of Start Point in Devon. The disabled ship was showing no lights nor any sign
of life. John Fisher, the
Margaret and John
’s captain, cautiously brought his ship close in and fired several volleys of musket fire into the
Rosario
’s stern gallery.
It must have seemed like disturbing a hornets’ nest, for Valdés immediately fired off two cannon shots. The English vessel replied with its own salvo and, discretion being the better
part of valour, withdrew a short distance to await events.

Overnight there was a light breeze, probably with banks of fog hugging close to the surface of the sea. Howard, in
Ark Royal
, accompanied by two great ships, Lord Edmund
Sheffield’s 1,000-ton
Bear
and Edmund Fenton’s 600-ton
Marie Rose
, led the fleet as it followed Drake’s stern lantern.

Sometime in the early hours, the light disappeared.