The Spanish Armada (38 page)

There were other tactical causes for the Armada’s failure – some of them institutional or cultural. Despite Medina Sidonia’s late pleas to Parma for more small-calibre
roundshot, ample stocks of all sizes of cannonballs have been discovered in the Armada wrecks so far excavated. The reason for this surfeit was their very slow, almost pedestrian, process of
loading, aiming and firing the large-calibre guns on board each ship. The twenty-one cannon in the battery of the
San Francisco
fired just 242 rounds and her sister,
Santa
Catalina
, 300 from her twenty-three guns, creating an average firing rate of three shots per gun per day.
Santa Barbara
managed a maximum of 8.37 rounds per gun during the Battle of
Gravelines, but in earlier engagements she only achieved rates of between 1.1 and 2.35 rounds
fired by each gun. None of this amounts to a deadly ship-smashing barrage. Of
two hundred 10 lb (4.54 kg) cannonballs issued to the
El Gran Grifón
, ninety-seven have so far been recovered from her wreck site off Fair Isle, demonstrating just how few rounds
were fired from her main armament.

Cargo manifests, drawn up by diligent Spanish clerks, provide another strand of evidence that confirms the low firing rates achieved by the Armada. The Levantine
Trinidad de Escala
left
Corunna with 10,808 lbs (4,902.4 kg) of gunpowder but fired only one hundred and four rounds in anger, expending 2,027 lbs (919.4 kg) of propellant, compared with the 2,527 lbs (1,100.74 kg) used
for ceremonial salutes or distress signals.
³⁴

In addition, poor casting by the gun-founders in Spain and Portugal, constantly chivvied for faster deliveries, resulted in some faulty guns being delivered to the ships; for example, one
Italian saker recovered from the wreck of the
Juliana
off Streedagh Strand had suffered a catastrophic barrel explosion during firing, probably causing the loss of its crew.
³⁵

Finally the Armada was armed with smaller calibre cannon, creating an overall effective firepower one-third less than Howard’s ships. The Spanish vessels had 138 guns of sixteen-pound
(7.26 kg) calibre or above, compared with the English fleet’s 251.
³⁶
Hull for hull, the Spanish lacked punch in their broadsides compared
with the queen’s ships.

Unlike the English, whose guns were mounted on four-wheeled truckle carriages, the Spanish muzzle-loading cannon relied on awkward large-wheeled mountings with long trails, more suitable for
operations on land than in the cramped conditions of a pitching ship’s deck. The size of these carriages required them to be pulled back and reloaded in a diagonal position, a difficult and
inconvenient manoeuvre on a narrow, crowded gun deck. The only alternative would be to sponge out the cannon, reload, and ram down the charge and shot, while sitting precariously astride the barrel
as it projected outboard, beyond the protective gun port in the side of the ship. As shot and musket bullets flew thick and fast in the height of battle, it would take a brave man to repeatedly
undertake this task in such an exposed position.

Furthermore, each gun had to be manhandled and served by six
soldiers drawn from those detailed to fire muskets or harquebuses from the mast-tops or the main deck. Once
the gun was ready to fire, they would return to their sniper duties, only to be recalled to reload their cannon. Inevitably this was a sluggish process and the consequential slow rate of fire was
unlikely to sink, let alone seriously damage, an enemy ship. Medina Sidonia’s sailing orders laid down that guns should always be loaded; after that first shot was fired, many guns in the
Armada probably only managed one further round whatever the heat of battle.
³⁷
Whether through inexperience or undisciplined panic, Spanish crews
also tended to fire at extreme ranges, again reducing the efficacy of their barrage. However, the smaller, breech-loading guns, with an anti-personnel role, achieved much higher rates of fire
because they were more easily served.

Spanish cannonades therefore failed to inflict serious injury on the queen’s ships, as demonstrated by evidence that the cost of repairs to the queen’s ships
before
the
fighting far exceeded government expenditure afterwards. A survey of the fleet by master shipwrights at Chatham in September 1588 reveals a preoccupation with decay – caused by the weather
and natural wear and tear – rather than battle damage.

Drake’s
Revenge
did need a new mainmast ‘being decayed and perished with shot’;
Nonpareil
’s ‘foremast, bowsprit with the main mizzen mast are all
to be made new’ and
Victory
also required a new bowsprit and mizzen. Of the others, the hulls of the
White Bear, Hope, Marie Rose, Dreadnought
and
Tiger
, were all
reported to be leaking, possibly caused by the shocks of their broadsides starting the caulked seams. Several ships’ boats were replaced; some of which may have been smashed by enemy fire
while secured on the upper decks.
³⁸
More information is provided by Sir John Hawkins’ accounts for 1588 as navy treasurer. A total of just
£3,500 was spent on structural repairs after the Armada campaign, out of a total of £92,000 for the year. Five hundred feet (152.4 metres) of four-inch (101.6 mm) planking and one
thousand treenails used for hulls were required, suggesting only superficial damage from cannon shot. Most of the planking purchased was narrower and therefore only suitable for superstructures and
internal decking, some of it to replace the decayed timbers identified by the shipwrights’ survey.
³⁹

The better-trained English gunners, with a greater number of
heavy cannon than the Spanish, were able to inflict grievous damage on their enemy through firing low and by
exploiting their ships’ position to windward of the Armada to attack the lower area of the Spanish hulls as they heeled away. Had it not been for the English ships’ continuing and
chronic shortage of gunpowder and ammunition, they would have destroyed more enemy ships.
⁴⁰

Few heads rolled for this Spanish national disaster.

The main casualties were the unpopular Armada naval adviser Diego Flores de Valdés, who was thrown in gaol in Burgos for eighteen months; several profiteering bakers, who were hanged for
supplying biscuit bulked out with inedible lime; and the master of ordnance in Naples, who was found guilty of sending a boat ‘full of powder and other munitions to the Queen of England on
the pretext of forwarding it to Spain’, and sentenced ‘to be torn asunder by four galleys’ rowing in opposite directions.
⁴¹
There were also reports that ‘sundry officers of the victualling department had been executed’.
⁴²
Medina Sidonia was harangued by
angry youths in Valladolid where he stopped overnight on his way home. Outside his lodgings, they chanted unkind taunts of ‘Drake, Drake, Drake’ and dubbed him
el duque de
gallina
– ‘the chicken duke’.
⁴³

In Paris, Mendoza paid a bitter price for his earlier optimism about the Armada’s success. He scarcely dared show his face outside his ambassadorial residence as street urchins would mock
him mercilessly as he rode along the city’s thoroughfares on his mule, crying out ‘
Victoria! Victoria!
’ – in a snide reference to his premature celebration of
Medina Sidonia’s triumph.
⁴⁴
Hearing whispers that Philip was ‘little satisfied with his conduct and especially for the false reports
which he scattered about’, Mendoza ‘asked leave to retire’ citing his blindness as a reason.
⁴⁵
The king, however, retained his
diplomatic services in Paris until 1590 when Mendoza’s loss of sight became total.

Abroad, Henri III praised ‘the valour, spirit and prudence of the queen of England, aided, as she was, by marvellous good fortune’. With a flustered Mendoza listening uncomfortably,
the king added that what Elizabeth had achieved ‘would compare with the greatest feats of the most illustrious men of past times, for she had ventured, alone and unaided, to await the attack
of so puissant a force as Spain, and to fight it’.
⁴⁶
Giovanni Mocenigo, Venetian ambassador
in France, was brimful of
admiration for English naval prowess: ‘[They] have shown that they are the skilled mariners which rumour reported them to be . . . for they have not lost a single ship.’ Unaware of
Elizabeth’s havering and unwillingness to spend money on defence, Mocenigo reserved his special praise for England’s
Gloriana
:

In Lutheran Germany, woodcut caricatures were published in broadsheets, with this succinct description of the Armada’s tribulations: ‘She came. She Saw. She
fled’ – a cutting, sarcastic nod in the direction of Julius Caesar’s immortal
Veni, Vidi, Vici
; ‘I came. I saw. I conquered.’
⁴⁸

The Dutch rebels struck a number of commemorative medals to celebrate the defeat of the Armada. One, just over two inches (52 mm) in diameter, with an image of the terrestrial globe slipping
from the hands of the Spanish king on the obverse,
⁴⁹
has an inscription that symbolises the Protestant belief that God was firmly on their side in
this battle against popery. The words echo the thanksgiving sung by Moses and the Children of Israel after their escape across the Red Sea: ‘
Flavit Jehovah et dissipate sunt
’
or ‘God breathed [the wind] and they were scattered’.

The great battle ensign of the
San Mateo
was hung as a war trophy in the choir of St Peter’s church, Leiden, for all to see and admire. Amid this euphoria, the States of Zeeland
wrote to Elizabeth claiming that the blockade of Parma’s embarkation ports by Justin of Nassau’s ships was the ‘chief cause of the enemy’s failure. The defeat of the Armada
was entirely due to [Parma’s] inability to succour and strengthen it with his forces.’
⁵⁰
One can imagine the queen’s scornful
reaction.

In England, twenty-four hours after the triumph of her Tilbury speech, Elizabeth ordered her army to be disbanded (despite her advisers’ grave misgivings), initially to six thousand men
and then to 1,500 a week later.
⁵¹
This was not merely a question of reducing the drain on her hard-pressed exchequer; after several years of
famine,
the levies were required at home to bring in the harvest. Five days later, the camp at Tilbury was dissolved.

Many of Elizabeth’s bucolic would-be heroes went home unpaid and resorted to selling their weapons and armour to raise money. A proclamation promised miscreants that they would suffer her
‘heavy displeasure’ and face imprisonment if caught, or if they ‘most falsely and slanderously give out that they had received no pay’. Purchase of military equipment was
declared illegal and anyone attempting to sell their armour was liable to be detained, delivered into the hands ‘of the nearest constable’ and imprisoned.
⁵²

She also began to stand down her navy, discharging the hired ships and laying up others. The pitiful condition of the Spanish survivors was replicated among the 15,599 sailors in the English
fleet. Howard told the queen on 31 August: ‘with great grief, I must write to you in what state I find your fleet. The infection is grown very great and in many ships is now very dangerous.
Those that come in fresh are soonest infected – they sicken the one day and die the next.’ He reported to the Privy Council ‘that the most part of the fleet is grievously infected
and [men] die daily, falling sick in the ships by numbers and that the ships of themselves be so infectious and corrupted as it is thought a very plague . . . Many of the ships have hardly men
enough to weigh their anchors.’ Furthermore, those still well were greatly discontented because ‘after this so good service’ they hoped to receive all their pay, but this comes
‘scantly unto them’ breeding ‘a marvellous alteration amongst them’.
⁵³

In Plymouth, of the
Elizabeth Bonaventure
’s original five hundred crew, two hundred had died. Sir Roger Townsend, of
Elizabeth Jonas
, had just one man living from the
crew he had sailed with. Howard told Burghley: ‘It is a most pitiful sight to see, here at Margate, how the men, having no place to receive them, die in the streets.’ He had come ashore
to help provide roofs over their heads: ‘the best I can get is barns and such outhouses. It would grieve any man’s heart to see them that have served so valiantly die so
miserably.’
⁵⁴
The lord admiral sold some of his silver to provide money for his men and pleaded to ‘open the queen’s purse [for
money] . . . to salve them’ as it ‘were too pitiful to have men starve after such a service. I know her majesty would not.’ After being so long at sea, many of the sailors had
little clothing: ‘There [should] be a thousand pounds’ worth . . .
of hose, doublets, shirts, shoes and such like sent down . . . or else in very short time, I
look to see most of the mariners go naked.’
⁵⁵

Howard’s hopes of charity from Elizabeth’s government were soon dashed. With the coldness of a lord treasurer constantly surrounded by urgent demands for money, Burghley responded
that ‘by death, by discharging of sick men and such like, there may be spared something in the general pay’.
⁵⁶

The men, like their Spanish counterparts, were dying from typhus and scurvy, but in those medically unenlightened times, Howard and his captains believed the cause was the sailors’ beer:
‘There was some great fault in the brewer [who] excused it by the want of hops.’ He added: ‘For my own part I know not which way to deal with the mariners to make them rest
contented with sour beer, for nothing doth displease them more.’ Fresh beer was then brewed in Dover ‘as good as was brewed in London’.
⁵⁷