The Spanish Armada (29 page)

Yet, he could not stay much longer anchored off Calais and it was ‘impossible to continue cruising’ as the size of the Spanish ships, ‘cause [them] to be
always to the leeward of the enemy . . . It is impossible to do any damage to him, hard as we may try.’ Later, Don Jorge became involved in a fierce quarrel with Parma over his lack of
readiness and the general ‘was only restrained from laying violent hands’ on him by those around him.
⁷⁵

Nearly 2,500 yards (2,286 metres) away, Howard sat discussing future tactics with his commanders in the stern cabin of
Ark Royal.
The pressing need remained disrupting and dispersing
the densely packed Armada, so they could be picked off, ship by ship, by the now numerically stronger English fleet. Furthermore, some enemy ships could founder on the shoals immediately to the
north.

The effective answer was fireships. Local conditions favoured such an attack: that night fortuitous spring tides and a freshening westerly breeze would ensure the blazing vessels were swept into
the heart of the Armada, riding helplessly at anchor. The stratagem was a powerful weapon of destruction but also a potent means of attacking enemy morale. The Spanish remembered all too well the
‘hell-burners of Antwerp’ during their siege of the Dutch city in April 1585 when the Italian Fedrigo Giambelli had loaded vessels with explosives and launched them against a Spanish
pontoon bridge, killing over eight hundred of their troops and flinging wreckage over more than a square mile (259 hectares). The Spanish knew that Giambelli was in England but they were not aware
he was only occupied in building an ineffective defensive boom across the Thames.

A pinnace was dispatched to Dover, where Walsingham had
ordered fireships to be made ready. But these would not arrive in time to exploit the favourable wind and tide, so
Howard ordered eight vessels from his fleet, all displacing between 90 and 200 tons, to be converted. Drake and Hawkins immediately volunteered two of their own ships, the
Thomas Drake
and
the
Barque Bond
respectively. The remainder, Henry White’s
Barque Talbot,
William Hart’s
Hope Hawkins,
the
Bear Yonge, Elizabeth of Lowestoft
and
another vessel, only identified as ‘Cure’s Ship’, were all armed merchantmen, chartered for the campaign. The final designated fireship was a volunteer, the
Angel
of
Southampton. They were anchored in the midst of the fleet to hide the preparations and work began packing them with pitch, rags and old timber as combustibles and the masts and rigging were painted
with tar.

Medina Sidonia had recognised the danger and during the afternoon he stationed a screen of pinnaces outside his perimeter, equipped with grappling irons, to tow off any attacking fireships. In
the event of such an attack, he ordered his fleet to slip their anchors and stand out to sea while the fireships harmlessly burnt out.

That night Parma began to embark his men on the barges in Dunkirk and Nieuport.
⁷⁶

Off Calais, Medina Sidonia saw lights moving up and down the lines of English ships and, worried what the
edemoniada gente
– the ‘infernal devils’ – might be up
to, ordered a sharp lookout on his ships.

The tide turned at eleven o’clock. The English launched their attack soon after midnight, double-shotting the fireships’ saker cannon (to be set off by the heat of the blaze), to
increase panic in the Armada. The ships were commanded by a Devon man, Captain John Young (of the
Bear Yonge
), with the Cornish Captain Prouse as his deputy. They and their skeleton
volunteer crews steered the ships in a perfect line abreast towards their target and with about fifteen minutes before the first Spanish ship was reached, lit the fires and then escaped in five
boats towed behind the vessels. Because of the shortage of gunpowder, there were no explosives on board.

Two fireships, well ablaze, with fountains of sparks flying up against the moonless sky, were successfully grappled by Medina Sidonia’s pinnaces and towed into the shallows but six came
on, driven by the strong westerly wind, their guns firing roundshot in the
blood-red heat. The hoped-for terror spread like a deadly contagion among the Spanish ships.

Vice-Admiral Sir William Wynter, in
Vanguard
, watched the attack with great gratification:

Calderón was woken by the shouts of alarm:

In fact, it was Diego Flores de Valdés, panic-stricken like many in the Armada, who ordered the cables to be cut.

Medina Sidonia saw the six ships penetrating his defensive screen and, fearing that the fireships ‘might contain fire machines or mines’ ordered the
San Martin
to let go her
anchor cables. He had sent the Prince of Asculi
⁷⁹
out in a
felucca
to ensure that the ships had buoyed their anchors and, with an
extraordinary sense of bad timing, to summon his captains to a council of war. Recalde, in
San Juan
was having none of that. He shouted down that ‘this was no time for him to leave
his ship and [anyway] his advice counted for nothing’. The prince called back that ‘his vote did not count’ either.
⁸⁰

One after the other, the Armada ships ran before the wind, scattering in Calais Roads in a confused mêlée, some swept northwards by the current towards the sandbanks off the Flemish
coast.

Moncada’s flagship
San Lorenzo
had been tardy in cutting her anchor and once under way, collided with her sister galleass
Girona
before crashing her stern into the
Rata Encoronada
. Moncada’s poop deck was smashed and his rudder gear broken by becoming
entangled in the anchor cable of the Neapolitan, leaving him with no
steering. As the fireships sailed nearer, the soldiers on board escaped by climbing ropes thrown over the side of the
Rata.
The
San Lorenzo
’s convict oarsmen ‘began to
cry out pitifully and to hammer at their chains and fetters in the hope of escaping by jumping in the sea, preferring to die by water than by fire’.
⁸¹
Moncada tried ineffectively to repair his rudder and dismissed offers by two French pinnaces to take him in tow. Perhaps their price was too high.

The galleass squadron commander eventually paid a higher one. His drifting ship grounded on a sandbank just off the mouth of Calais harbour and was left marooned in the heavy surf. Her deck
heeled over at an increasing angle to landward as the tide fell with her port battery pointing skywards. The oars were a tangled mess. Howard sent a hundred-strong boarding party in eleven
ship’s boats and a pinnace to capture her, and a sharp fight ensued. The Italian sailors and artillerymen were the first to flee ashore and fewer than fifty crew ‘stood by the captain
to defend the ship’. Moncada fell, a bullet between the eyes, in fierce hand-to-hand fighting with needle-sharp half-pikes, swords and pistols. The
Margaret and John
, always on a
quest for plunder, joined the assault to capture the galleass, running aground in her eagerness to be in at the kill.

In their habitual fashion, the English immediately began to pillage the galleass but were interrupted by French troops, sent out from Calais to assist the
San Lorenzo
. Fearing loss of
their loot, they fought the rescuers and the brawl only ended when the English heard that, unless they immediately withdrew, the shore batteries would blow them and the stricken galleass into
smithereens. Some cannon shots were fired to reinforce the message.

Richard Tomson, lieutenant of the
Margaret and John
, was one of the English boarders:

After the French rescue party arrived, ‘some of our rude men fell to spoiling [them], taking away their rings and jewels as from enemies. Whereupon [the French] going
ashore and complaining, all the bulwarks and [gun] ports were bent against us and shot so vehemently that we received sundry shot very dangerously through us.’ The
San Lorenzo
was
armed with many brass cannon, two hundred barrels of powder and ‘of all other things great provision and plenty but very little or no treasure that I can learn to be in her’, Tomson
added ruefully.
⁸²

About fifty English and a similar number of Spanish and slaves ‘who made a terrible outcry’ were killed in three hours of fighting. William Coxe, master of the
Delight
, was
the first to board the galleass and the first to die.
⁸³

As dawn broke on Monday 8 August, the Armada was scattered far out to sea. The blackened ribs of six fireships still smouldered near the entrance to Calais harbour.

At last, Howard had his chance to destroy his enemy.

FLEEING FOR HOME

A
t dawn on Monday 8 August, Medina Sidonia’s
San Martin
was one mile (1.61 km) north of the English fleet, her sea anchors
struggling to hold her position against the strong current in rapidly worsening seas. Howard, fatally distracted by the abortive seizure of the stricken
San Lorenzo
, unwittingly provided
the captain-general with two hours of grace to collect his ships and rebuild his defences against the coming onslaught. Lying just astern of the Spanish flagship were the Portuguese galleons
San Marcos, San Mateo, San Felipe
and Recalde’s
San Juan
. Medina Sidonia sent pinnaces to collect the Armada, now scattered seven miles (11.85 km) beyond Gravelines,
instructing his ships to revert, as soon as possible, to the horned
lunula
as a protective formation. The wind was blowing south-south-west and, anxious to avoid the treacherous shoals and
sandbanks off Dunkirk, he set a northerly course and prepared to fight a desperate rearguard action to allow time for the Armada to regroup.

Howard meanwhile brought his one-hundred-and-thirty-six-strong fleet, still anchored off the Calais cliffs, to battle stations. The previous day’s council of war had agreed that he would
lead the next attack, followed by Drake’s squadron and then Seymour’s ships. This could be their last chance to defeat the Armada and it was decided that the English ships should close
on their adversaries and open fire
at point-blank range. Today, the wind and tide were in their favour.

First light brought a rude shock for the Prince of Asculi, still huddled on board his
felucca
with a companion, Captain Marco:

In the event, it was Drake in
Revenge
with Thomas Fenner in
Nonpareil
who first joined battle at about six o’clock that morning, leading the four
queen’s ships in his squadron, closely supported by Frobisher’s flotilla. Medina Sidonia probably had half a dozen warships gathered around
San Martin
and Drake held his fire
until he came within one hundred yards (91.43 metres) of the enemy flagship, first bombarding her with his bow guns, then coming around to loose off a rippling salvo from his port battery, a tactic
repeated by his ships, struggling in the now heavy seas. But the Armada could still bare its teeth:
Revenge
was hit by more than forty cannonballs
³
during this short engagement and Drake led his squadron off to the north-east.