The Spanish Armada (30 page)
Read The Spanish Armada Online
Authors: Robert Hutchinson
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Great Britain, #Military, #Naval, #General
Was he cravenly fleeing to safety? Had he departed on another chase for plunder and prizes? Perhaps he had turned away to attack enemy ships that were standing off the shoals, waiting to safely
form up on their flagship in deeper water. His unexplained and premature departure from the main action incensed the always hot-tempered Sir Martin Frobisher, coming up in
Triumph
. Later,
during a heated argument ashore in Harwich, Essex, he could not stifle an angry outburst about his vice-admiral’s conduct off Gravelines:
Drake reports that no man has done any good service but he, but he shall well understand that others have done good service as he – and better too. He came bragging up
at the first . . . and gave them his prow and his broadside and then kept his luff and was glad that he was gone again, like a cowardly knave or traitor – I rest doubtful but the one I
will swear . . .
He lies in his teeth. There are others that have done as good as he and better too.
4
Back in the action off the Flemish coast, Frobisher loosed off cannonade after cannonade at the
San Martin
, while other ships of his squadron fired as they cut across
her stern and bows. As
San Marcos
joined the fray around the embattled flagship, Hawkins’ squadron, headed by his flagship
Victory,
swept into attack, followed by
Marie
Rose, Dreadnought
and
Swallow
, which broke through to the middle of the gathering Spanish fleet. Forty Spanish soldiers had been killed in
San Martin
, their bodies piled up
on the upper deck. A 50-pound (22.68 kg) shot had also holed her below the waterline, through the seven planks’ thickness of timber of her lower hull. The Armada’s chief purser, Pedro
Calderón watched anxiously:
So tremendous was the fire that over two hundred balls struck the sails and hull of the flagship on the starboard side, killing and wounding many men, disabling and
dismounting three guns and destroying much rigging.
The holes made in the hull between wind and water caused so great a leakage that two divers had as much as they could do to stop them up with tow
5
and lead plates, working all day.
6
For the first time in this inconclusive campaign, the Spanish ships were suffering serious damage and the fight between the two fleets was becoming a bloodbath.
San
Felipe
and
San Mateo
, which brought up the rear of the Armada, were engaged by up to seventeen English ships which were coming so close, according to Calderón, that the
‘muskets and harquebuses of the galleon were brought into service, killing a large number of men on the enemy’s ships’. The English fire shattered the
San Felipe
’s
foremast, disabled its rudder and blew five of her starboard cannon off their carriages as well as killing 260 of its crew and soldiers. Although his upper deck had been smashed, the ship’s
pumps broken, and his command ‘almost a wreck’, the
San Felipe’
s captain Don Francisco de Toledo, ordered the grappling hooks to be readied and dared the nearest English
ship
7
to come to close quarters with him.
They summoned him to surrender in fair fight and one Englishman, standing in the maintop with his sword and buckler
8
called
out:
‘Good soldiers that you are, surrender to the fair terms we offer you.’
But the only answer that he got was a gunshot which brought him down in sight of everyone and the . . . muskets and harquebuses were [ordered] to be brought into action.
The enemy thereupon retired, whilst our men shouted out to them that they were cowards and, with opprobrious words, reproached them for their want of spirit, calling them Lutheran hens and
desiring them to return to the fight.
The
San Felipe
was rescued by the
socorro
battle group of
San Luis, San Mateo
and the
La Trinidad Valencera
.
San Mateo
came under
heavy fire from both Sir William Wynter’s
Vanguard
and Seymour’s
Rainbow
, which had closed on the enemy vessel ‘and an Englishman jumped on board but our men cut
him to bits instantly’.
9
Calderón’s ship, the transport hulk
San Salvador
, also endeavoured to help the
San
Felipe
but paid a penalty for such gallantry.
Her bows, side and half her poop being exposed for four hours to the enemy’s fire, during which time she received no aid. She had a number of men killed and wounded
and her sails and rigging, so much damaged that she was obliged to change her mainsail. She leaked greatly through the shot holes and finally the
Rata Santa María Encoronada
came to her assistance.
10
The majority of these ships, Medina Sidonia explained afterwards, ‘were so much damaged as to be unable to offer further resistance, most of them not having a round of
shot to fire’.
11
On board the
San Marcos
, Pedro Estrada had lost one of his comrades in the fierce enemy fire: ‘This day was slain Don Felipe de Córdoba with a bullet [roundshot] that
struck off his head and splashed [out] his brains. [He was] the greatest friend . . . and twenty-four men that were with us trimming our foresail [also died].’
12
The upper deck of Bertendona’s
Ragazona
in the Armada rearguard was running with blood from her dead and wounded and her main battery guns had been blown off
their mountings. She bravely fought on, with musketeers firing from high up in her maintops or from the deck, using the heaps of casualties as protective cover.
Skirmishing around the Spanish flagship continued for about two
hours whilst the Armada ships were rounded up by Don Alonso de Leyva in the
Rata.
On board
San
Martin
, Friar Bernardo de Gongora (a refugee from the earlier casualty
Rosario
), was bewildered and terrified by the thunder of battle:
It was the greatest war and confusion that there has been in the world, in respect of the great amount of fire and smoke . . .
There were many ships that went on fighting in eight cubits of water.
13
All this day, we had been holding ourselves with the bowline held against the weather so as not to run aground on the banks and thus our ships could not ply their artillery as they
wished.
Some of the people died in our ship but none of quality and it was a miracle the duke escaped.
14
His fellow friar, Padre La Torre, also on board the flagship, said the hail of shot was so great ‘it was cut to pieces below and aloft. In the end, I saw myself in such
sore straits that it was a miracle of God we escaped, for since the ships were so scattered and could not help one another, the enemy’s galleons came together and charged us in such numbers
that they gave us no time for breath.’
15
But by ten o’clock, the Armada ships were grouped in the familiar horned crescent formation, bearing north-north-east as Wynter, in
Vanguard
, observed:
They went into a proportion of a half-moon. Their admiral and vice-admiral . . . went into the midst . . . and there went on each side, in the wings, their galleasses, in
the whole to the number of sixteen in a wing.
16
Wynter attacked the starboard or easterly horn and his fire drove some Spanish ships into the main body, with four ‘entangling themselves one aboard the other’. The
Levantine
San Juan de Sicilia
had lost half her crew and her gun ‘port holes were all full of blood’. Another ship, Pedro de Ugarte’s 665-ton
María Juan,
of the Biscayan squadron, was badly damaged by Captain Robert Crosse’s
Hope
and while in ‘speech of yielding unto the captain before they could agree on certain
conditions’, she sank – so quickly that only one boat with eighty survivors on board was picked up by the
San Martin
. Others who clung desperately to the upper spars and
rigging went down
with her and, in all, 188 crew were lost.
17
She became the first casualty of English cannon fire.
The battle continued until six that afternoon with Howard leading the
Bear
,
Bonaventure
and the
Lion
to attack the centre of the rearguard in close-quarter fighting.
Vanguard
had fired five hundred roundshot from her demi-cannon, culverin and demi-culverin at close range and when Wynter (who had been injured by the recoil of one of his cannon)
‘was furthest off in discharging any of the pieces, I was not out of the shot of their harquebus and most times within speech one of another’. He was certain the ‘slaughter and
hurt they received was very great’.
18
The weather now changed for the worse with a succession of fierce squalls and heavy rain blowing in from the west-north-west, reducing visibility dramatically. The English fleet broke off the
action and kept their distance, shadowing the Armada as it limped north-eastwards. The crew of
Santa Ana,
Oquendo’s flagship, had to man the pumps constantly to prevent her sinking.
The Castilian
San Pedro
was also very badly holed. The dead were heaved over the side and the wounded tended as emergency repairs were undertaken by the exhausted Armada crews. For the
Spanish, there still remained the imminent danger of shipwreck on the shoals off the Flanders coast. Padre Geronimo reported that ‘Hardly a man slept that night. We went along all wondering
when we should strike one of those [sand] banks.’
19
He was busy hearing confessions and there were constant appeals to the Blessed Virgin Mary
for their survival against now seemingly impossible odds.
Howard signalled his fleet to re-form and to remain on the Armada’s weather quarter. Weary from battle, he wrote to Walsingham bemoaning London’s bureaucratic requests that he should
supply estimates of how much powder and shot he needed. His lack of munitions was as acute as ever with some of the smaller English guns firing scrap metal such as broken plough shares as makeshift
antipersonnel munitions. ‘I have received your letter wherein you desire a proportion of shot and powder to be . . . sent to you, which for reason of the uncertainty of the service, no man
can do. Therefore I pray you to send with all speed as much as you can.’ He then reported on that day’s fighting:
We have chased them in fight until this evening late and distressed them much but their fleet consists of mighty ships and great strength. Yet we
doubt not, by God’s good assistance, to oppress them.
20
Drake was more ebullient, if not cheerful:
God has given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward as I hope in God the Prince of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia shall not shake hands this few days.
Whensoever they shall meet, I believe neither of them will greatly rejoice of this day’s service . . . [which] has much appalled the enemy and no doubt but [it has] encouraged our
[fleet].
21
Fenner, in
Nonpareil,
self-righteously believed that God Himself had ‘mightily protected her majesty’s forces with the least losses that ever have been
heard of, being within the compass of such great volleys of shot, both great and small. I verily believe there is not three score men lost.’ He felt assured that God ‘will defend his
[own] from the raging enemy who goes about to beat down His word and devour His people’ and this would be ‘a just plague for their wickedness and idolatry’.
22
Hawkins told Walsingham more soberly:
All that day we followed the Spaniards with a long and great fight wherein there was great valour shown generally by our company in this battle . . .
So the wind began to grow westerly, a fresh gale, and the Spaniards put themselves somewhat to the north, where we follow and keep company with them.
In this fight there was some hurt done among the Spaniards.
Our ships, God be thanked, have received little hurt.
Now their fleet is here and very forcible, it must be waited upon with all our force, which is little enough.
There should be an infinite quantity of powder and shot provided and continually sent aboard without which, great hazard may grow to our country for this is the greatest and strongest
combination . . . that was ever gathered in Christendom . . .
The men have been long unpaid and need relief. I pray your lordship that the money which should have gone to Plymouth may now be sent to Dover.
23
Hawkins was right to be cautious about the true import of the Battle of Gravelines. The English fleet might have severely mauled the Armada but it had not
defeated it.
As darkness fell, the worst damaged of the Armada ships began to fall behind the protective crescent.
San Mateo
was fast flooding with seawater, not just from shot holes but also
because her seams had sprung open through the shocks of the repeated recoil of her guns.
24
That evening she had to be beached on a sandbank between
Ostend and Sluis. Dutch sailors from the hoys attached to Justin of Nassau’s blockading fleet attacked her, but her crew fought them off for two hours before her captain, Don Diego Pimentel,
requested surrender terms. He and his five officers were taken prisoner but the others were callously thrown overboard to drown or were hanged later. Among them was William Browne, a
‘gentleman adventurer’ and brother of the Catholic Viscount Montague, and ‘another Englishman’ who were both killed on the ship.
25
The local commissioner for the States of Zeeland reported that this second man was ‘very rich who left William as his heir . . . There were other Englishmen who usually
messed with Pimentel. One was called Robert, another Raphael, once servant to the . . . mayor of London, Thomas Tostal, or some such name. We do not know their surnames.’
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