The Spanish Armada (31 page)

The
San Mateo
’s sister ship, Don Francisco de Toledo’s
San Felipe
, had been secured alongside the
Doncella,
the 500-ton Guipúzcoan
urca
, to
evacuate her crew after firing cannon shots to indicate her distress. Three hundred were taken off before it was feared that the
Doncella
was also sinking, so the warship was forced to
cast off, but not before some rejoined the wallowing, damaged warship. ‘Captain Juan Poza . . . said that the hulk was going down. [Toledo] replied that if that were the case, they had better
be drowned in the galleon than in the hulk and they both went back to her.’
²⁷
San Felipe
was later also beached between Ostend and
Sluis, minus her mainmast and with her sails torn to shreds. After another fight with the Dutch, Toledo and ‘most of the other gentlemen’ escaped by boat to Nieuport, but only 127
‘poor mangled souls’ from her complement of 640 were saved from the surf. After botched Dutch attempts to refloat her, the
San Felipe
sank before she could be brought into
Flushing the next morning. A third ship, an unnamed
patache
, probably the
San Antonio de Padua
from Diego Flores’ Castile squadron,
also sank off the
castle and town of Rammekins in Zeeland.

The Spanish ships had been badly battered, losing four vessels in addition to the
San Lorenzo
off Calais harbour. Their casualty lists totalled more than a thousand killed and around
eight hundred wounded. Understandably, amid the screams of the injured and the moans of the dying below decks, morale on the ships slumped that night, even though the damaged fleet remained a
formidable fighting force and still represented a potent, fearsome threat to England.

Early the following day, Tuesday 9 August, the extent of similar disillusionment amongst the Armada’s high command became apparent. There was traitorous talk of surrender amongst Medina
Sidonia’s immediate subordinates, but the friar Padre La Torre, in
San Martin,
reported there was ‘no pinnace available [to communicate with Howard] which was a particular
favour from God and in any case, the duke did not want to follow this course, preferring to die like a knight’.
²⁸
Caught between the English
fleet and the coast, the Armada was in peril of wrecking itself on the Flanders Banks, a fear magnified by the leadsmen’s continual calls of ever shallower water lying beneath the keels as
they squatted in each ship’s bows, taking soundings. Luis de Miranda, a member of the captain-general’s staff, admitted: ‘We saw ourselves lost or taken by the enemy or the whole
armada drowned upon the banks. It was the most fearful day in the world, for the whole company had lost all hope of success and looked only for death.’
²⁹

San Martin
remained in the rear of the Spanish fleet, with the galleons
San Marcos
and Diego Flores’
San Juan,
together with the galleasses. Their enemy,
numbering 109 ships, followed astern at only half a league’s (2.78 km) distance. At one stage it seemed the English intended to attack, but the galleasses swept around to protect their
flagship and the enemy ships retired, perhaps believing that the Spanish ships were doomed anyway, as the line of white crested surf breaking on the deadly sandbanks was now visible to all in the
Armada.

With the depth at seven fathoms (12.8 m.), Medina Sidonia hailed one of his veteran commanders, Miguel de Oquendo, whose
Santa Ana
was coming up fast alongside the flagship:
‘Señor Oquendo, what shall we do, for we are lost?’ he called across the sweeping rush of the sea between the ships. He shouted back: ‘Let Diego Flores answer that’
– an indication of just how unpopular the naval adviser
had become in the Armada. ‘As for me,’ Oquendo continued, ‘I am going to fight and die like a
man. Send me a supply of shot.’
³⁰

Medina Sidonia fired two cannon to signal the Armada to regroup and sent
pataches
to order his vessels to keep their heads close to the wind. His pilots warned him grimly that ‘it
was impossible to save a single ship . . . as they must inevitably be driven by the north-west wind on to the banks of Zeeland’. He believed that ‘God alone could rescue
them’.
³¹

God indeed did save them.

The wind suddenly veered to the south-west, enabling the Armada to immediately steer a northerly course away from the coast and safely into the North Sea.

Howard summoned his commanders to
Ark Royal
. His perennial shortage of gunpowder and shot made it impossible to attack as they had at Gravelines. As one of his captains, Henry White,
complained later: ‘Our parsimony at home has bereaved us of the [most famous] victory that ever our navy might have had at sea.’
³²
They
decided unanimously to pursue the Armada ‘until we have cleared our own coast and brought the Firth [of Forth in Scotland] west of us and then to return back again, as well as to revictual
our ships (which stand in extreme scarcity) [but] also to guard and defend our coast at home . . .’
³³
The danger of Parma’s army
remained, so Howard left a reinforced squadron under Seymour to guard the Dover Straits, some of which could restock with provisions and munitions at Harwich. Seymour, still hungry for action,
obeyed the order very much against his will. Unbeknown to him and Howard, Parma had heard the cannonades of the previous day’s battle and had completed the embarkation of his 16,000 men.

That evening Medina Sidonia called his own council of war. Don Diego Flores argued strongly for a return to Calais, but they all resolved to return to the English Channel only ‘if the
weather would allow of it but if not, then they should obey the wind and sail to Spain by the North Sea, bearing in mind that the Armada was lacking all necessary things and that the ships, which
had resisted hitherto, were badly crippled’.
³⁴
Chief Purser Calderón had misgivings about the wisdom of sailing around the north of
Scotland, west of Ireland and then out into the Atlantic. He warned them they would have to sail seven hundred and fifty leagues (4,167 km) ‘through stormy
seas, almost
unknown to us, before we could reach Corunna’. Ever efficient, Calderón then investigated the Armada’s dwindling stock of provisions and water supplies. It would not be a
bountiful voyage.

Superficially, there was some sense in the selection of this course. Even though the voyage would take between a month to five weeks to complete, the commanders could reasonably expect the
season’s weather to be settled. They could be almost home in Spain by the time that the regular late September gales would blow up around the autumn equinox.

Thirty leagues (166.68 km) east of Newcastle, Medina Sidonia ordered that the horses and the forty artillery mules be thrown overboard as there was no more water for them.

In London, the tension and anxieties of the past month were beginning to recede. Earlier the Privy Council had sent a letter to John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, seeking public prayers to
be said against the success of the Armada.
³⁵
As the London citizens were so alarmed, Spanish prisoners, including Don Pedro de Valdés of the
Rosario,
detained after the first engagement, were paraded in carts through the streets ‘so that people might see that some prisoners had been captured’.
³⁶
Under questioning, Valdés said that none of the English exiles serving with the Armada were ‘privy to the secrets of the enterprise’ and
denied any knowledge of promises made by recusants to take up arms in support of invasion. Burghley, with a shrewd eye for telling propaganda, had dictated the questions to be put to prisoners
during interrogation. How would ‘the spoils of London and other towns be [divided]? What profit should be reserved for the king? Was it intended to impose ransoms [for English prisoners of
noble birth]?’ Valdés, however, maintained there was no permission granted for pillaging or looting once Spanish forces had landed.
³⁷

Although the bonfires burned in celebration in London after news of Gravelines arrived, the Armada was still perceived as an imminent threat by Elizabeth’s government. On 9 August George
Talbot, Sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, the lord lieutenant of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire, emphasised the vital need for constant vigilance, ordering: ‘All those who have the
custody of recusants must detain them close prisoners.’
³⁸
He also offered his services to the queen to resist the invasion: ‘though I be
old, yet her quarrel shall make me young again; though lame in body, yet lusty in heart
to lend her greatest enemy one blow and to live and die in her
service’.
³⁹
As late as 18 August, Sir Thomas Morgan warned the Earl of Leicester that Parma ‘has in readiness 30,000 or 40,000 men and
intends with the next spring tide to put out his forces for England, hoping to meet the king’s fleet’
⁴⁰
and the following day, Sir
Thomas Scott told Leicester that Drake had warned him ‘that the Spanish army did intend to land at Dungeness, near Lydd [Kent] and there to entrench themselves and to be supplied from time to
time out of France with victuals and all necessaries’.
⁴¹

There were mounting fears among her advisers and military and naval commanders that Elizabeth’s perpetually straitened finances and her natural parsimony would lower England’s guard
before it was safe to do so. Howard warned Walsingham: ‘Let not her majesty be too hasty in dissolving her forces by sea and land and I pray you send me with speed what [news] you have of
Dunkirk for I long to do some exploit on their shipping.’
⁴²
Drake was also worried that ‘some may advise the queen not to continue her
forces’ and he dared not ‘advise her to hazard her kingdom for the saving of a little charge’.
⁴³

Meanwhile the Armada was slowly heading northwards, watched by a reduced number of English ships. Medina Sidonia had some unpleasant business to settle. He had fired cannon three times to summon
his commanders but his signal was ignored. Eventually his boats collected the captains and Padre La Torre recounted their welcome on board
San Martin.
A furious captain-general asked them:
‘Did you not hear the gun?’ and they admitted they had. ‘Then why did you not rally?’ he asked and was enraged by their reply: ‘We thought your flagship was sinking
and that we should all hasten away to safety.’ There was a long silence. ‘Hang the traitors,’ ordered Medina Sidonia.
⁴⁴

There were other crimes to punish. On Thursday 11 August, twenty navy and army captains were arraigned for cowardice at Gravelines. Francisco de Cuéllar, captain of the Castilian
San
Pedro,
appeared before Don Francisco de Bobadilla, the Armada’s senior military commander, in
San Martin
⁴⁵
accused of not
keeping station with the fleet.

Cuéllar was reprieved. But Don Cristobal de Avila, captain of the hulk
Santa Barbara,
‘a gentleman of renown’ was ‘hanged with great cruelty
and dishonour’ – strung up from the masthead of a pinnace and his body paraded through the ranks of the Armada as a dreadful warning. Others were condemned to the galleys or reduced in
rank. Calderón noted: ’It is said that this was because on the day of the battle, they allowed themselves to drift out of the fight.’
⁴⁷

On the afternoon of Friday 12 August both fleets reached the Firth of Forth with the wind blowing from the south-south-west. Howard was worried that the Spanish might attempt a landing in
Scotland in support of Catholics wishing to depose James VI of Scotland. As the Armada continued north, he left two pinnaces to shadow it until they passed the Orkney and Shetland islands, and at
two o’clock he gratefully steered a course for home and much-needed food and water. He told Walsingham: ‘We are persuaded that either they [will] pass about Ireland and so do what they
can to recover their own coast or else they are gone for some part of Denmark.’
⁴⁸

Medina Sidonia recorded in his diary: ‘The enemy’s fleet was quite close to us but as they saw we were well together and that the rearguard had been reinforced, the enemy fell astern
and sailed towards England until we lost sight of him. Since then we have continued sailing with the same wind . . . and it has been impossible for us to return to the English
Channel.’
⁴⁹
The following day he ordered tighter rations with only eight ounces (226.8 grams) of bread and half a pint (0.28 litre) of wine
plus a pint of water each day. Rather desperately perhaps, he offered 2,000 ducats to a French pilot ‘if he would conduct him to a Spanish port’.
⁵⁰

In Rome, Philip’s ambassador Olivares was still facing an uphill struggle to extract any money from Sixtus V, despite him saying daily Masses for the success of the Armada. On 7 August he
stood
uncomfortably before the Pope and made a long speech seeking, yet again, an advance on the promised subsidy for the invasion. He reminded the diffident and restless
pontiff that it was he himself who had persuaded Philip to undertake the heavy task of the ‘Enterprise of England’: