TRANQUIL and untroubled, the little cove of Castlehaven seems a highly unlikely backdrop for one of the greatest naval contests ever to take place between Queen Elizabeth’s fleet and a hostile Spanish armada intent on invading England.
It is one of those impossibly serene havens that seem to have remained at peace since the beginning of time. It is difficult to imagine that on the morning of 6 December, its silence was shattered by the roar of guns, the scream of red-hot cannonballs, the splinter of ships’ timbers, and the cries of the hundreds of men who died.
The Battle of Castlehaven was one of those ambiguous clashes that both sides claimed as a victory. Here’s one contemporary English account:
‘Sir Richard Leveson valiantly entered the harbour, drew near their fortifications, and fought the enemy for the space of one whole day, his ship being an hundred times shot through, and yet but eight men slain. God so blessed him, that he prevailed in his enterprise, destroyed their whole shipping, and made [Zubiaur] fly by land to another harbour.’
But here’s the Spanish take on the same battle:
‘Thanks to the support of the castle and the artillery they landed, [the Spaniards] drove the enemy away from the port.’ The Spanish added that they ‘sank the Queen’s flagship and greatly damaged the others. Two of our ships were sunk, but the men on board saved as well as their cargoes. We lost twenty men killed, and some wounded. The English then departed.’
Meanwhile, here’s how the Irish perceived it:
‘In this battle, 575 English fell … One Spaniard, a kinsman of Zubiaur’s, was killed, and two were wounded.’
And Zubiaur himself? He marked it down as ‘a victory’ for the Spanish … even as the English were toasting their great win.
So what are the facts?
Leveson arrived in Castlehaven at 10am on 6 December, determined to drive the Spaniards out. In his fleet were the fighting ships Warspite, Defiance, Swiftsure and Merlin. He entered the habour mouth with all guns blazing. However, Zubiaur’s Spaniards had been expecting him. ‘[Leveson] found eight pieces of artillery planted upon the shore attending his coming,’ wrote Vice-Admiral Preston. The hidden cannon blasted back at the English ships, reinforced by small-arms fire from six hundred musketeers ‘very near and thick on the shore’.
The roar of gunfire was so loud that its thunder could easily be heard in Kinsale. In Castlehaven itself, the noise must have been deafening. One English witness, Thomas Gainsford, claimed some Spanish thought the end of the world had come. Leveson ‘battered the walls so forcibly from his ships … that the enemy thought their Lady of Heaven was willing to affect us on earth’.
For the first few hours, Leveson rolled all over the Spaniards. Zubiaur’s flagship was driven onto the rocks with its rudder smashed and nearly three metres of water in its hold. The Spaniards’ second biggest ship was driven ashore where it ‘lies bulged and half sunk – never able to rise again’, according to Preston. Two other Spanish vessels, including the vice-admiral’s ship, also went aground. The Maria Francesca was sunk with its precious cargo of wheat, and the Cisne Camello was reduced to matchwood.
Eager to capitalise on his success, Leveson launched several landing craft and headed for shore to complete his takeover. But the tide of the battle was about to turn. Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare had been waiting 24 kilometres away and had received Zubiaur’s call just in time. He force-marched five hundred veterans to Castlehaven. Together with the Baltimore O’Driscolls, they arrived just as the English were closing in for the kill. Leveson saw the Irish relief force and had second thoughts. He stayed on board his ships.
Donal Cam’s nephew, Philip O’Sullivan, described what happened next. ‘Zubiaur, elated and emboldened, took his cannon from the vessels and for two days right vigorously bombarded the English fleet,’ he wrote. ‘Finally, the balls, rendered red-hot by the rapid firing, pierced the English ships which they struck from stem to stern, hurling men and planks into the sea.’
Leveson’s flagship, the Warspite, was riddled with cannonball holes. ‘Zubiaur’s first shot into this ship killed sixty men who were seated at table,’ claimed O’Sullivan. As the bombardment continued, ‘soldiers and sailors fell right and left’.
Leveson tried to retreat, but a pitiless wind kept blowing the Warspite back into range of the Spanish gunners. ‘[I was] forced to ride four and twenty hours within the play of those five pieces of ordnance,’ Leveson later recalled, ‘and received in that time about three hundred shot, through hulk, mast and tackle.’
He fought free only by cutting his cables, abandoning all his anchors and towing out his ships – a hideously dangerous task under fire – in order to find a usable wind. ‘He pulled out of Castlehaven on the 9th,’ wrote Preston, ‘but did not put out till he saw all his ships out before him.’ Leveson later explained that he left Castlehaven only because he had done ‘as much as might be done by sea’.
Miraculously, the Warspite did not sink but survived the journey back to Kinsale, where everyone was amazed by the hundreds of holes in its hull. With a precision worthy of John Lennon, the surgeon William Farmer had to count them all – a total of 209, he finally calculated.
English reports claimed that all Zubiaur’s Spanish ships were sunk ‘save one’ and that Zubiaur was forced to flee the port. The English lost just eight men. Spanish reports tell a dramatically different story. Zubiaur’s ship was badly damaged, but was already so high and dry that it could be repaired. Two of the Scottish merchantmen were also salvageable. Two ships were write-offs but the final ship, a French vessel, was almost unharmed. It was fitted with cannon and sent to Baltimore. The Spanish claimed that they lost forty men in the encounter.
Viewed realistically, the battle must have claimed many English lives: probably well into three figures, if not the 575 that some Spanish claimed. They didn’t win back Castlehaven and they didn’t wipe out the Spanish fleet. What they did do was place Zubiaur into much the same position as Águila in Kinsale: with his transport crippled, the Admiral could no longer simply sail home if things went wrong. His Spaniards were fighting with their backs to the sea, facing either victory or death.