1588
The Defeat of the Spanish Armada
The Sea Battle That Saved England, Began Its Long Rise to Maritime Supremacy, and Rewrote the Rules of Naval Combat
THE WEATHER HAD BEEN unseasonably cold all that spring and summer of 1588, with heavy storms and rain squalls rolling across England and turning the Channel into a cauldron of choppy waves and gale-force storms. The morning of July 29 dawned to unpromising gray skies. Mists hugged the ocean surface and fast-moving showers raced across the waves. Still, the watchers stationed at Lizard Point in Cornwall, at the southwestern tip of England, squinted dutifully off into the distance.
Later that morning, one of the guards, peering through his telescope, spotted the dark shapes of dozens of ships far out over the water. This was what they had been waiting for. Within minutes, torches were touched to piles of resin-soaked brush that stood at the ready. First one beacon burst into flame, then another and another, until a glowing necklace of fire lit up the southern English coastline, all the way from Cornwall to Plymouth, in whose harbor lay the English fleet. The fires were an alarm call, warning of the approach of the Spanish Armada, the great invasion fleet that had been expected for some time and which, the English knew, posed the most serious threat their nation had faced for centuries.
For their part, the Spanish in la felicísima armada — “the fortunate fleet” — could see the glow of the fires and guess what they portended. The Spanish high command sent out an English-speaking captain in a small tender, who returned that night with four terrified English fishermen in tow. They revealed that the English fleet led by the Lord Admiral, Charles Howard, Second Baron Howard of Effingham, and his famous second-in-command, Sir Francis Drake, was coming to make a fight of it.
The ensuing naval battle would become a part of English folklore — it has long been recounted how Drake calmly continued his game of bowls after hearing the news of the Armada’s approach, and how the whole of England reacted to the dark news with pluck and courage. But the battle also had a very real effect on subsequent events. Although more Spanish ships were eventually lost to gales and storms than to English cannon fire, England’s victory began its rise to the status of a first-class naval power; it also marked a major shift in naval strategy, away from close-in fighting to the use of accurate, long-range cannon fire.
DEEP DIVISIONS
Long-standing differences and a succession of disputes led to this extraordinary battle between England and Spain. In a sense, the countries and their differences were embodied by their two rulers — Elizabeth I of England and King Philip II of Spain. Elizabeth, daughter of King Henry VIII, was a Protestant, while Philip was a staunch Catholic who had once had close ties to England. He had been married to Mary Tudor, Elizabeth’s Catholic predecessor, and had even intervened with Mary to save Elizabeth’s life after a Protestant plot to put her on the throne instead of Mary was uncovered.
But after Mary’s death in 1558 and Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, the two monarchs and their countries had become enemies. This was partly the result of religious differences and partly because England had begun to flex its muscles, particularly at sea, which put it at odds with Spain, then the most powerful seagoing nation in Europe. English seafarers like Sir Francis Drake attacked Spanish shipping, seemingly with impunity; Elizabeth publicly turned a blind eye to such affronts to the Spanish pride and purse, but privately profited by them.
NO ORDINARY FLEET
The huge Spanish fleet that entered the Channel on July 29 was 125 ships and 30,000 men strong. About twenty-five of the ships were mighty fighting galleons, the rest armed merchantmen, transport ships and pinnacles for swift scouting and message-bearing between the larger ships. The Armada was commanded by the Duke of Medina-Sidonia aboard his flagship, the San Martín de Portugal. Philip had appointed Medina-Sidonia to the job after the previous commander, the Marquess de Santa Cruz, had died unexpectedly. Medina-Sidonia had a high social standing in Spain and was a brilliant administrator, but he was not an experienced sea admiral, although he had very able advisers.
As the Spanish ships passed by, the English fleet left Plymouth and deliberately fell in at the rear of the Armada so that it had the wind behind it and therefore an advantage if the Spanish turned to fight. Lord Admiral Howard was aboard his flagship, the Ark Royal, Drake on his ship, the Revenge. Their much lighter and more nimble fleet contained thirty-four royal warships and almost two hundred other vessels. However, most of these were small, privately owned and lightly armed pinnacles. In fact, although the English fleet was sizable, it was in a desperate position. For the Armada was no ordinary fleet of warships, but rather the most potent invasion force that had ever been pointed at England. Of its thirty thousand men, only seven thousand were sailors, the rest soldiers. The ships contained powerful land artillery, siege equipment, six months’ worth of food and wine, and tons of ammunition. At this point, however, the immediate objective of the Armada was not to fight the English fleet, but to head north and rendezvous with a second Spanish force in the Netherlands.
“GOD’S OBVIOUS DESIGN”
The Netherlands, or Low Countries, as it was also known, was the flashpoint in the feud between Philip and Elizabeth, a place where their contrasting cultures and religions clashed. It had been under Spanish rule for some time, and the Dutch Protestants there had been persecuted for their religion and forced into the role of second-class citizens. Under William of Orange, the northern provinces revolted. When the southern provinces declared their loyalty to Philip by signing the Union of Arras on January 6, 1579, seven of the northern provinces declared their independence a few weeks later with the Union of Utrecht, regarded as the founding document of the modern Netherlands.
In response, Philip had William of Orange assassinated in 1584, and, thereafter, Spanish control of the region began to increase once more. But in the following year, Elizabeth, alarmed at the Spanish presence so close to her northern shores, openly sent an army to the Netherlands after years of covert aid to the Dutch rebels. This helped the Dutch force a stalemate between rebel forces and those of the Duke of Parma — and enraged Philip.
Then, in 1587, Elizabeth’s execution of her cousin, the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, who was plotting against her, greatly heightened religious and political tension. In her will, Mary left her accession rights to the English throne to Philip, formerly her brother-in-law. Philip and his advisers subsequently convinced themselves that the security of Spain relied upon the destruction of Elizabeth’s regime and the restoration of a Catholic monarch to the throne of England. Even the Pope agreed. It was, as one Spanish noble put it, “God’s obvious design” that Spain rule England.
PACKING FOR AN INVASION
The invasion strategy had been cobbled together from two separate plans. The aggressive and strategically astute Duke of Parma had suggested placing thirty thousand men in seagoing barges in the Netherlands and making a surprise assault across the Channel. The Marquess de Santa Cruz, who commanded Philip’s Atlantic fleet, wanted instead to take a huge invasion force of some fifty-five thousand men from Spain and land in England or possibly southern Ireland.
It was Philip who decided to merge the two plans. The Armada was to sail up the Channel with part of the invasion force. When it reached Flanders, it would protect Parma’s men as they crossed to Kent, then unload its own forces. In total, some fifty thousand well-provisioned Spanish troops would then find themselves ashore in England, a force that Elizabeth would be hard pushed to resist. Many in Philip’s court envisioned a slaughter of the English. Some of the Spanish commanders even brought their finest china with them, thinking they would need it once they settled comfortably into English castles.
The only problem was, the massive buildup of the Armada had become the worst-kept secret in Europe. The English had already delayed the action once in the previous year when Sir Francis Drake had wreaked havoc among the Spanish ships at Cadiz, and Drake had sortied out twice in the summer of 1588 to attack the Spanish fleet on its own coast, only to be forced back by storms.
So when the sails appeared off Plymouth, the English, refitting in port, knew what was afoot. They also knew that if they did not stop the Armada before it reached the Netherlands, an invasion of England would almost certainly occur.
NEW RULES OF BATTLE
When the Spanish fleet saw the English coming out for them, they formed with startling precision into a crescent, something that had obviously been practiced, with the heaviest warships on the two horns of the crescent, and the slower ships within. The English attacked at about nine in the morning of July 31, just off Plymouth. Divided into two groups, one headed by Lord Howard, the other commanded by Drake, they struck at the flanks of the Spanish in single file, discharging their cannon at long distance.
This cannonade may be thought of as the opening blow of modern naval warfare. Traditionally, ships tried to get close to each other, attach themselves to the enemy with grappling hooks, and fight what were essentially mini-infantry battles at sea. But the English, under the influence of a radical naval thinker named John Hawkins (who was in Drake’s group at the battle), had recently overhauled their strategy, tailoring their ships to move fast, and so avoid being boarded, and to cannonade with accuracy. An English innovation helped greatly here — the replacement of fixed gun mountings by moveable carriages, which allowed cannon to be reloaded more rapidly.
Victory over the Spanish Armada provided the English with an enduring patriotic myth.
On July 31, however, the cannonading had little effect initially. The English were skittish, perhaps overawed by what must have looked like an extraordinary metropolis of ships, a veritable city on the sea. One powerful Spanish galleon came out almost tauntingly and challenged three English ships — Drake’s Revenge, Martin Frobisher’s Triumph, and John Hawkins’s Victory — to close and do battle. The English declined the invitation, preferring to lob shots from a distance.
As the engagement continued, the Spanish remained in control, outmaneuvering Howard and Drake. On August 6, after a week of running battle, Medina-Sidonia anchored his fleet off the port of Calais, waiting now for word from the Duke of Parma that he was ready to invade. The English, who were nearly out of ammunition, waited offshore, plotting their next move. In the meantime, Queen Elizabeth, needing to stir her people, famously appeared in front of her troops at Tilbury, telling them, “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King, and a King of England, too! And I think it foul scorn that Spain or Parma or any prince of Europe should dare invade the borders of my realm!”
FLUSHING OUT THE ENEMY
Unfortunately, despite the months of planning, the Duke of Parma had been slow in putting together his own invasion force, and his twenty thousand men were now being blockaded in their ports by Dutch rebels. To make matters darker for the Spanish, the water along the Flanders coast was so shallow that the deeper-draft Armada vessels could not strike close enough to shore to breach the blockade — something that the Spanish planners should have foreseen.
Around midnight on August 7–8, as Medina-Sidonia pondered his next move, the English sent eight fire ships into the anchored Spanish fleet. These vessels were not just drifting old pinnacles filled with pitch and tar, but warships running at full sail, holds full of gunpowder, ready to be set alight by their suicidally courageous crews, who leaped off at the last possible moment. Two of the English fire ships penetrated the Spanish defenses, wreaking havoc. The Spanish ships were forced to cut their anchor cables to escape and move to the open ocean — exactly where the English wanted them.
THE BATTLE OF GRAVELINES
On August 9, the English closed in for a pitched, decisive battle off Gravelines, a town in the far southwest of the Spanish Netherlands. The engagement lasted eight hours, with English and Spanish ships engaged in ferocious cannon duels, tacking back and forth in the shallow waters. Finally, the effect of the cannonading took its toll on the confused and scattered Spanish fleet. Four vessels were lost to English gunfire and the entire fleet was very nearly stranded on the sandbanks off Flanders.
When the wind turned to the west, pushing the ships off the sandbars, Medina-Sidonia was faced with a choice: cross to invade England on his own, return south through the channel, or head north and west, around the British Isles. With the prevailing winds against him, he chose this last course. Unfortunately for the Spanish, he did not know two things: one, Howard’s English fleet was out of ammunition and could not have withstood a Spanish attack; and two, horrible gales would face the Spanish on the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland.
During the long return voyage, thousands of Spanish sailors drowned in storms, and hundreds were killed by scavengers along the British coastlines. By the time it returned to Spain, the Armada had lost about half its invasion fleet, as well as fourteen thousand soldiers and seamen. During the battle, the English had lost only seven ships.
A PATRIOTIC MYTH
In the short run, the victory saved England from a Spanish invasion and a Roman Catholic monarch on its throne. It also helped preserve an independent Netherlands. Of the two royal adversaries, Elizabeth was to live longer, until 1604, while Philip, blinded by cataracts and with a crippled arm (probably from a stroke), died in 1598.
Eventually, the defeat of the Spanish Armada was seen as marking the beginning of English supremacy over the seas, which reached its full fruition after Admiral Lord Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar in 1805, as well as the demise of Spain as a great naval power. But more recently, historians have concluded that Spain’s demise did not really begin until the end of the Thirty Years’ War in the middle of the next century, and that England achieved its preeminence on the high seas only after a long period when the Dutch — whom they had saved — ruled the oceans.
Regardless of this, victory over the Spanish Armada provided the English with an enduring patriotic myth — much like Washington’s victory at Trenton or the French storming of the Bastille — that would be summoned back into the public consciousness again and again when the country faced dark days in the future.