The Spanish Armada (26 page)

Elizabeth’s ministers were also forced to intervene in the exasperating quarrel between the still warring Earl of Sussex and Marquis of Winchester in Hampshire, politely emphasising that
it was the queen’s pleasure ‘that they should dispose of themselves to better agreement, [it] being requisite that in this troublesome time that no unkindness should arise’.
Patiently, they explained that a thousand men ‘might suffice to defend Portsmouth until her majesty’s navy might come to give them succour if occasion served’. Sir John
Norris’s orders for its defence ‘should be observed and not altered for breeding inconvenience and contention’.
¹⁶

Sir Henry Seymour, awaiting Parma’s departure, was desperate for gunpowder, ‘humbly praying’ the council to send supplies for which he had begged ‘diverse times’
previously. The following day, his appeals were answered: ten lasts were sent to Kent for his ships, ‘five by carriage over land and five by sea . . . with all expedition’. But
Elizabeth had allowed the former monastic building of the Maison Dieu (God’s House) in Dover to fall out of use as a victualling establishment, so provisions for Seymour’s squadron had
to be sent by water from Rochester and London. Richard Barry, lieutenant of Dover, was instructed ‘to cause such provision of beer to be brewed . . . in Dover, Sandwich or other [of] the
Cinque Ports . . . for the use of her majesty’s navy’.
¹⁷
War at sea was a thirsty business.

In the first week of August, four thousand Essex militia arrived at West Tilbury, on the northern shore of the Thames estuary, ‘upon very good ground . . . for the defence of this
coast’ as Leicester
reported to Walsingham. ‘They [are] forward men and [are] all willing to meet with the enemy as ever I saw.’ Such was the hustle in
concentrating the army, that they carried no food with them ‘so that at their arrival here, there was not a barrel of beer or a loaf of bread for them. Enough after twenty-mile (32.19 km)
march to have been discouraged and to have mutinied, but all with one voice . . . said they would abide more hunger than this to serve her majesty and the country,’ Leicester noted
approvingly. He had sought one hundred tuns (large barrels) of beer to await their arrival but these had not been delivered, so he delayed the march of a further thousand men from London
‘till we may provide for them here’. Food and drink for the army was going to be a problem, as Leicester had discovered.

Reading the letters and dispatches written during those days of national peril, one senses something approaching a barely controlled panic gripping Elizabeth’s government.
Walsingham writes of ‘more travail than ever I was in before’ and was horrified when he heard of sailors deserting from Howard’s and Seymour’s ships. The spymaster had also
received reports that Parma ‘is looked to issue out presently’ and for security, ‘has suffered no stranger this seven or eight days to come to him or to see his army and ships,
but he has blindfolded them’.
¹⁹

Henry Carey, First Lord Hunsdon, lord chamberlain and the queen’s cousin, had also been appointed lieutenant general commanding the army to protect her person. This force, totalling almost
29,000 infantry and 4,400 cavalry, was to concentrate at St James, on the western edge of London. The counties would also contribute a further 10,000 reinforcements to be mustered in London by 7
August.
²⁰

Abroad, the Dutch parliament had answered Elizabeth’s appeals for assistance and had stationed their admiral, Justin of Navarre, with twenty-four ships to blockade the Flemish coast to
stop Parma’s force crossing the Dover Straits. Another thrity-two vessels were off Sluys and 135 were patrolling outside Antwerp. But some Dutch
leaders suspected that
Spanish troops would attack Holland and Zeeland rather than England and had stopped any reinforcements being sent to Nassau’s squadron. Seymour, in the Downs off Kent, observed wryly:
‘The Hollanders are not with us and . . . I think [the Dutch] desire more to regard their coast more than ours.’
²¹

King James VI of Scotland proved a stauncher ally, at least on paper. He wrote to Elizabeth – ‘Madam and dearest sister’ – promising everything at his command to assist
the fifty-four-year-old childless queen to defend her country. A cynic would suspect he already had his eye firmly fixed on the succession to the English crown, as he affirmed that ‘in times
of straits, true friends are best tried’ and he counted himself such a friend to Elizabeth and her subjects:

He prayed that Elizabeth could resolve the crisis ‘with all possible speed’ and wished her ‘a success convenient to those that are invaded by God’s
professed enemies’. James concluded: ‘I commit, madam and dearest sister, your person, estate and country to the blessed protection of the Almighty.’
²²

Meanwhile in the Channel, west of the Portland Bill isthmus in Dorset, Medina Sidonia had changed the shape of the Armada following another council of war late in the afternoon of Monday 1
August. Worried about the prospect of a simultaneous frontal attack by Seymour’s ships in the east and an assault from the rear by Howard’s squadrons, he divided his warships into two
flotillas to protect his hulks, travelling at only two or three knots in the centre of the formation. The larger rearguard of forty-three ships was commanded by Don Alonso de Leyva and included the
Portuguese galleons
San Mateo, San Luis
and
San Francisco de Florencia
and the Biscayan
Santiago
, together with the galleasses. The duke himself led
the smaller vanguard of about twenty galleons.
²³
With the memories of the Biscayan galleons fleeing during the previous day’s
fighting still raw in the captain-general’s mind, his written orders warned grimly that the commander of any ship that quit its station would be hanged immediately. Provost marshals and
hangmen accompanied the orders when they were delivered by
pataches
, to reinforce the import of his message.
²⁴

Howard wrote to Walsingham requesting urgent reinforcements: ‘I pray [you send] out to me all such ships as you have ready [for sea at] Portsmouth with all possible speed. They shall find
us steering east-north-east after the fleet. We mean so to course the enemy as that they shall have no leisure to land.’
²⁵

That night the wind dropped. Both combatant fleets found themselves becalmed in Lyme Bay, off the Dorset coast. Dawn at five o’clock on Tuesday 2 August brought a light north-easterly
breeze which later veered to the south-east. The Armada had Portland Bill almost abeam to port and the wind direction provided them with the weather gauge for the first time since they had passed
the Eddystone Rock. Medina Sidonia ordered Hugo de Moncada to attack the leading English ships with his Neapolitan galleasses, but possibly because of his rebuffed plea to attack Howard and his
isolated ships twenty-four hours earlier, he huffily declined. The English took advantage of this hiatus, with the lord admiral’s ship heading a line of galleons, sailing close to the wind,
to pass the Spanish left or northern flank inshore and win back the weather gauge. But Medina Sidonia led his squadron to cut him off, forcing the English ships to come about and head south-east.
Martin de Bertendona’s Levantine flagship
Ragazona
tried to board one ship, possibly
Ark Royal,
but she deftly turned seaward and quickly opened the range between them,
pursued by the
San Marcos, San Luis, San Mateo, Rata Santa María Encoronada
and other vessels of the
socorro
.

By nine o’clock, the engagement was four miles (6.44 km) off Portland and had developed into a confused series of skirmishes with Howard’s agile ships still out-manoeuvring any
attempts to board them. A separate English squadron of five armed merchantmen (
Centurion, Merchant Royal, Margaret and John, Marie Rose
and
Golden Lion
) led by Martin
Frobisher’s mighty 1,100-ton
Triumph,
found itself becalmed just south of Portland Bill and
the captain-general, seeing a possibly decisive naval coup, ordered
Moncada’s red-and-gold-painted galleasses to attack the group.

Frobisher’s ships were not as helpless as they seemed. They may well have been stationed as a trap, to take advantage of the notorious seven-knot tidal race that passes immediately south
of Portland Bill, caused by ‘The Shambles’, a shingle and shell bank just to the south-east. With Moncada’s
San Lorenzo
in the lead, the galleasses opened fire with their
powerful bow guns on Frobisher and a smaller ship which soon seemed to be in trouble, as her crew were seen jumping into their boats. But as much as the galleasses tried to close on
Triumph,
using their oars as well as sails, they were swept back, the turbulent waters of the Portland Race threatening to swamp them. The English gunfire had been directed at the rowers
and some had been cut to ribbons, their oars becoming hopelessly entangled as they slumped lifeless on their benches. An officer in the
Zúñiga
said that while they were
attacking Frobisher and two other ships

Medina Sidonia was unsympathetic at their plight. He sent a senior officer to Moncada to ‘say aloud to Don Hugo . . . certain words which were not to his
honour’
²⁷
and that night sent a note to him that declared harshly: ‘A fine day this has been! If the galleasses had come up as I
expected, it would have gone badly for the enemy.’
²⁸

The change in wind direction once more handed the weather gauge to the grateful English and Drake’s squadron attacked the rearguard forming the southerly flank of the Armada with
Recalde’s
San Juan
coming first under fire from a dozen English ships. Other Spanish ships gave way in the face of the galling cannonades and Recalde complained indignantly of this
lack of assistance ‘from any other ship in the fleet because they all seemed to want to take refuge one behind the other, so that they fled from the action and collided together. It is a
disgrace to mention it.’
²⁹
Eventually, fourteen large Spanish galleons were ordered to assist Recalde.

The English fleet switched its main attack on to Medina Sidonia’s
now isolated flagship,
San Martin
, firing at her as each vessel,
Ark, Elizabeth Jonas,
Leicester, Golden Lion, Victory, Marie Rose, Dreadnought
and the
Swallow
swept past. Calderón, in the hulk
San Salvador
, reported that the duke’s ship replied
with more than eighty shots from its forty-eight guns, but the enemy had fired ‘at least five hundred cannonballs, some of which struck his hull and others his rigging, carrying away his
flagstaff and one of the stays of his mainmast’.
³⁰
The holy banner was rent in two and the flagship began to take in water from roundshot
holes in the hull which were swiftly plugged by battle-damage teams.
San Martin
was so enveloped in gun-smoke that observers on other Armada ships could not see her for more than an hour.
Spanish vessels crowded around their flagship as the last of Drake’s squadron came up, shielding it from the English barrages, and the
San Martin
safely rejoined the Armada. During
this engagement, William Coxe, captain of the 50-ton pinnace
Delight
, ‘showed himself most valiant in the face of his enemies at the hottest of the encounter’, Howard reported.
‘At which assault, after a wonderful sharp conflict, the Spaniards were forced to give way and flock together like sheep.’
³¹

An English (probably official) account of the action said the fight ‘was very nobly continued from morning to evening, the lord admiral being always [in] the hottest [part] of the
encounter’.

Another narrative, by a sailor who spent two days with the Spanish fleet and later landed in Brielle, on the mouth of the New Maas in south Holland, confirmed these descriptions
of the furious artillery duel off Portland, claiming that the English ‘fired four shots to every one of the Spaniards’. He also reported some of the Armada ships in flames: ‘When
he left them and as long as they were in sight, there were great fires, as if several ships were burning.’ However, this is the only account of Spanish ships ablaze and he may have been
misled by the thick billowing smoke of gunfire.
³⁴