CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

‘THE SOONER WE ARE GONE, THE BETTER WE SHALL BE ABLE TO IMPEACH THEM’

And Bartolo my brother

To England forth is gone

Where the Drake he means to kill,

And the Lutherans everyone

Excommunicate from God.

Contemporary Spanish Ballad

SOME WOULD CALL it ‘La Felicissima Armada’, that fleet Philip caused to be assembled for the enterprise of England. There were nine great Portuguese galleons, ten smaller ones from the Indian guard, four ships of the flota, four Italian galleasses, four Portuguese galleys, and forty-two armed merchantmen, in all a fighting force of seventy-three vessels, attended by over fifty freighters, dispatch boats and lighter craft, and they carried some 2,400 guns and nearly 30,000 men. Its keynote was faith. For the crews’ day began to the sound of Salve Regina and the sunset was serenaded by Ave Maria. Their watchwords were Jesus, Holy Ghost, Most Holy Trinity, Santiago, All Saints, the Angels and Our Lady. They were told that theirs was the most important mission ‘undertaken for God’s church for many hundreds of years. Every conceivable pretext for a just and holy war is to be found in this campaign … This is a defensive, not an offensive, war, one in which we are defending our sacred religion and our most holy Roman Catholic’s faith; one in which we are defending, too, the land and property of all the kingdoms of Spain, and simultaneously our peace, tranquillity and repose.’¹ Before they finally sailed every man aboard was confessed and communicated. Their standard was reverently brought from its resting place at the altar of the cathedral of Lisbon, its banner inscribed with the arms of Spain, the Virgin Mary and the Crucifixion, and the words, ‘Arise, O Lord, and vindicate thy cause.’²

Faith, indeed, had to be a basis for an adventure in which so many lacked confidence. Once he had committed himself to it, Philip II drove the project forward with a rare and almost pathological resolution. No excuses and no difficulties could swerve him from it. Not even the pessimism of his commanders deterred him. When his leading admiral, Santa Cruz, died in February of 1588 the responsibility for the fleet passed to the Captain-General of Andalucia, Don Alonso Perez de Guzman el Bueno, seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia. We have met him before, helplessly watching Drake gut the harbour of Cadiz, and on the face of it he seemed a strange choice. He had neither battle experience nor self-confidence, and he was sure the Armada would fail anyway. He said so, with brutal frankness. Besides, complained the anxious grandee when Philip first threatened him with the new post, he had few proven qualities of leadership; his health was poor and he would be sea-sick on the voyage; he had no personal fortune to spend on the fleet; he did not understand its business; and while he would serve if the king so ordered him, he would certainly make a mess of it! Few commanders have approached a task in such a spirit of self-denigration. Yet Philip would not have it otherwise. He knew that whatever Medina Sidonia’s shortcomings might be, he was an efficient administrator who had fitted out fleets before and who could bring some order to the chaos Santa Cruz had left behind. His loyalty, diligence and courage were beyond question, and he had something even more important – the social status to rule the more experienced naval men who had been appointed his subordinates and whose counsel would redress the commander-in-chief’s weaknesses. Surrendering to the inevitable, Medina Sidonia reluctantly took the appointment, but while he slowly nurtured the great fleet into being, he continued to harbour doubts about its fitness for the work at hand.

But if Medina Sidonia fell back upon his faith, so too did the other leader of the enterprise of England, Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma. There had been times when he had suggested that Philip call the whole thing off. He had complained until the king had refused to hear more of it. Yet he was no less important to Philip’s plans than Medina Sidonia, for he was to command the army that would invade England. In its final form, Philip wanted the Armada to seize control of the Channel, take up a station off Margate, and hold the narrow seas while Parma’s troops were shipped from Flanders to Kent. Medina Sidonia was ordered to fight the English fleet only if necessary, if it approached or followed him, and to attack it unprovoked only if it was encountered piecemeal and vulnerable. If his first attempt to join hands with Parma failed, Medina Sidonia might capture the Isle of Wight and use it as a base for a second effort. No one knew the flaws in this plan better than Parma. Certainly he had gained control of the coast of Flanders, excepting Ostend. And certainly he had a chain of canals from Sluys to Dunkirk along which his men might be brought in light-draught invasion barges to points of embarkation. It was also true that his 17,000 men, reinforced by the soldiers the Armada would bring, would be more than a match for the English levies Elizabeth had belatedly mustered. But he had no deep-water port capable of sheltering the Armada, and Medina Sidonia’s ships would have to ride off shore, vulnerable to attack and storm. Not only that, but if the Armada could not reach the army, no more could the army reach the fleet, for the two-hundred odd transport barges Parma had assembled were wholly unsuitable for use at sea, and as soon as they emerged from port among the shallows and banks that skirted the coast the Dutch would pounce upon them, with Medina Sidonia, confined to the deeper waters beyond, powerless to intervene. Even supposing the Armada did pass by Drake (the Spaniards always considered the English fleet synonymous with Drake), and supposing a miracle enabled Parma to cross the Channel into Kent, Medina Sidonia would still have to hold the seas to prevent the English ships cutting the Spanish army’s communications behind. It was an enormous gamble. As late as March 1588 Parma was complaining that while the enemy was alert, his assembled troops were being ravaged by sickness. He, a man who had captured Antwerp, who had many times achieved the doubtful and the hazardous, now seemed dispirited and strangely lethargic and irresolute.

There were other pessimists too, including the Pope, Sixtus V, whose ardour for the crusade against England was tempered by forebodings that Drake would defeat the Armada. Philip, however, was not listening. Between bouts of illness he prosecuted the campaign vigorously, suppressing any fears he might have entertained as ruthlessly as he flattened the protests of his commanders. Like Sixtus he was troubled by deep anxieties. He grew irritable, depressed and unreasonable, but he continued to grasp the nettle. This time, Philip was determined to fight.

Sir Francis Drake was no less spoiling for action. He had few doubts that the Armada would sail, and perhaps fewer that England’s best course was to meet it head on. But unlike Medina Sidonia and Parma, Drake rippled with confidence, indeed with over-confidence. He knew that Elizabeth’s warships were the best in Europe, and his successes had fed him with scant regard for the fighting abilities of his opponents. His men, it was said, were boasting that one English ship was the equal of three Spaniards. In the year after he returned home with the San Felipe, he saw war fever rising in England. Invasion was the talk of the land, and even the government was eventually forced to make preparations. Drake sat on Burghley’s war council, co-ordinating defences with soldiers such as Sir John Norris and Sir Roger Williams. County lieutenants, including Drake’s father-in-law, Sir George Sydenham, who acted for Somerset, were instructed to raise, arm and train the militia, and two armies came into being, one of 20,000 men under Leicester at West Tilbury on the Thames, and another in reserve to defend the queen. Beacons were constructed on hill-tops to carry word of the Armada’s approach across England. Everywhere, a sense of tremendous anticipation was abroad. The general opinion was that the battle would be won or lost at sea, and it was to Drake and the Lord Admiral, Howard of Effingham, that the country looked for leadership in their moment of crisis.

Throughout, Drake argued that the best defence was attack. He stood on his record. He had created turmoil and dismay on the Spanish coast, and promised to do it again if the Privy Council would allow him to make a pre-emptive strike against the Armada to forestall its preparations. From September 1587 the stocky seaman was hammering his views home at court and winning some converts. Briefly there was talk of Drake sailing for Spain with part of the fleet, or even reinforced by Howard, but for the moment the idea was too bold or expensive for the Privy Council to adopt.³ It took an alarm, false as it transpired, that the Armada was about to sail to push Elizabeth into a general mobilization of her fleet in December. Four days before Christmas Howard got his commission as overall commander of the English fleet, empowering him to attack, invade and sequester the territories of Spain, instructions that thus preserved the option of offence as well as defence. The Lord Admiral was already at work. He tested his ships for seaworthiness and took them into the Channel, and he scuttled between the fleet and the court discharging his duties to the utmost. Unlike Medina Sidonia, Howard was no spreader of gloom and despair. From the beginning his dispatches overflowed with the national confidence that Drake’s exploits had helped to create.

Howard’s appointment as overall commander may be surprising. After all, although he was a great noble he was relatively unknown, untested by battle, and Sir Francis Drake was a legend, the most celebrated Englishman of his time. However, Drake could not have been placed in total command of Elizabeth’s fleet. The option was never open. In an age in which even the monarch found it expedient to keep the influential peers satisfied, the position of Lord Admiral was a monopoly of the nobility. In 1585 when it became vacant after the death of the Earl of Lincoln the only credible successor had been Howard of Effingham. His pedigree was impeccable, for his family was among the greatest in the realm, and he had served on the Privy Council and as Lord Treasurer. Three of them, including Howard’s father, had already been Lord Admiral, and Howard himself was cousin to the queen. His status was betokened by a spectacular rise: a Member of Parliament at twenty-six, commander of horse at thirty-three, and admiral at thirty-four. But that was not all. Howard’s spare figure, his courtly background, his love of finery, and his tales of his youthful prowess in the lists did not disguise another qualification of this ageing dandy: he was also a sailor, with a genuine love of ships and the sea. True, his record had been pedestrian. He had never seen a battle, and most of his sea time had been spent shuttling dignitaries back and forth across the Channel, but he had trod the decks more than most nobles of his day. As a sailor with immense social prestige, a man bred to command, Howard was the obvious choice for Lord Admiral. Had a national crisis not arisen, he might have done little more than intersperse his routine administration of the navy with local voyages, but now that the country faced invasion it was naturally expected that he would lead the nation’s fleet into battle.

In 1588 Howard was still something of an unknown quantity. Over fifty, he had never been far from home, and even the Atlantic was largely foreign territory to him. He was also unbloodied. Time would prove him a competent Lord Admiral, diligent, tactful and firm, but his great strength lay in his educability. None knew better than Howard that the Lord Admiral was under-qualified, and while he never relinquished a jot of his authority, he listened and learned from his subordinates, and particularly from Sir Francis Drake, who became his vice-admiral.

Even if Sir Francis had not been debarred by birth from assuming Howard’s position, there would have been a good reason to appoint someone else to the supreme command in 1587. The most brilliant and experienced English officer, Drake was also viewed by many as a vulgar, low-born upstart, too fond of his own ideas, too contemptuous of regular form and too easily the focus of controversy. Doughty, Knollys, Borough … who would be next? John Hawkins had been big enough to accept his eclipse by the younger man, but Martin Frobisher, the quarrelsome and unimaginative Yorkshireman who had once served as Drake’s vice-admiral was no admirer of Sir Francis, and was honest and fearless enough to say so. On reflection the queen’s command structure worked well. As vice-admiral of the fleet, the leading fighting man on the English side, and Howard’s principal counsellor, Drake got his way with a Lord Admiral very aware of his own inexperience; and, as Lord Admiral, Howard could rely upon Drake’s energy and ideas, and employ his own noble standing, natural dignity and administrative skills to create the teamwork necessary for success. The two made a perfect complement.

In the early days that happy outcome might not have been predicted, for Drake, who was so much the greater seaman, was known to be a difficult subordinate. Indeed, Howard hesitated to tackle him. We can sense the Lord Admiral’s perplexity in a letter written to Walsingham on 27 January, 1588. Drake, Howard learned, had been drilling his gun crews, and Howard fretted about the shortage of powder. Yet how to broach it with Sir Francis? It was better that Walsingham, Drake’s friend as well as a member of the Privy Council, did the job. Thus the Lord Admiral wrote to Walsingham: ‘There happened a mischance in one of his [Drake’s] ships at Portsmouth, that a piece broke and killed a man, with some other hurt. If you would write a word or two unto him to spare his powder, it would do well.’⁴ The letter has often been used as evidence of Howard’s weakness, but it also denoted a strength – his diplomacy. He could not afford difficulties with the man upon whose reputation, experience and ability he must fundamentally depend, and the recourse to Walsingham neatly side-stepped the problem.

At the time that Howard was designated commander of the fleet, the Privy Council envisaged dividing their ships between the Lord Admiral and Drake, giving them an eastern and a western squadron respectively. In their instructions to Howard, dated 15 December, they were anticipating that Drake would ply between Ireland, the Scilly Islands and Ushant, guarding the entrance to the Channel and poised to intercept any attempt to menace Ireland or Scotland, while Howard would patrol the narrow seas, watching Parma. If, however, Howard learned that the Armada was too powerful for Drake, or that it had forced its way into the Channel, the Lord Admiral was to order Drake to fall back upon the narrow seas or to send him reinforcements.

A poorer plan could not have been devised, because it divided the English fleet before a powerful enemy for no good reason. Parma’s flat-bottomed boats and barges hardly needed Howard’s fleet to contain them. Even the Privy Council understood that: ‘for … the forces of the Duke of Parma will not be such but that you may with a convenient number of our own ships be able to impeach and withstand anything that he shall attempt either against this realm or Scotland.’ That being the case, there was no reason to leave Drake undermanned in the west, for whether the Armada threatened Ireland, the western peninsula or forced its way into the Channel that was where it would have to be met. The correct place for Howard was not in the narrow seas but in the front line with Sir Francis Drake at Plymouth. Equally remarkable was the Privy Council’s notion that if the Armada was too strong for Drake’s force Sir Francis might retire upon the eastern fleet – thus leaving the south-western part of the country exposed to a possible Spanish landing! The plan was dangerous, but few besides Drake seemed to realize it, and it remained the basis for the government’s thinking until the spring.⁵

As part of the plan, on 23 December Drake received a commission to command a western squadron of thirty sail, to consist of seven of the queen’s ships (the Hope, Nonpareil, Aid, Swiftsure, Revenge and two pinnaces) and a number of merchantmen and privately owned vessels called into service to meet the emergency. The names of some of these ships may be remembered from Drake’s previous campaign. Robert Flick’s Merchant Royal and James Lancaster’s Edward Bonaventure, owned by Thomas Cordell, had been with Drake before. Sir Walter Ralegh provided the Roebuck, and Drake himself the 60-ton Elizabeth Drake (Captain Thomas Cely) and the 200-ton Thomas Drake (Henry Spindelow). Aboard the fleet would be an estimated 2,820 men.

The Privy Council remained uncertain as to how they wanted Drake to perform. That he was to guard the western approaches was obvious, but Drake was constantly badgering them to authorize him to attack the Spaniards on their own coasts. Half persuaded, the Privy Council included in the admiral’s commission orders to distress enemy ships in their own ports, providing he proceeded with caution and avoided risk. If he met the Armada at sea, Drake was to send a warning home and then obstruct the Spaniards’ advance, attacking them if opportunity served, but again only if the assault might be made with impunity. These instructions were not unsatisfactory to Drake, if somewhat restrictive, and he apparently secured the approval of the Lord Admiral, who accompanied him as far as Rochester on his trip back to Plymouth at the beginning of January 1588.

Philip II’s efficient intelligence system soon had the gist of the English plans. Drake, it was believed, would attempt an offensive, but if the Armada reached the Channel before he could do so Howard would advance to reinforce him in the west, leaving Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Seymour with a reduced force to watch Parma. It was a reasonable statement of the English position, and Drake himself probably could have been little more precise. As his scouts sailed out to reconnoitre, his ships assembled, and powder, shot, provisions and men were found for the new campaign, his mind probably turned over a number of possibilities with one common principle: attack. The exact target, he decided, would have to be selected once he was on the Spanish coast, where he could assess the local circumstances.

But for the time being there was to be no campaign. Barely had Drake begun work than the queen thought better of it. She was, as we have seen, most reluctant to enter the war, and reached for the feeblest glimmers of peace. When it was learned that the Armada was not as ready as reports had once indicated, Elizabeth felt the expense of mobilizing her own fleet was not justified, and orders were given that half the ships be paid off and Sir Francis be prevented from sailing. The admirals were furious, even Howard, who complained to Walsingham that ‘we are like bears tied to stakes.’⁶ Yet worse was to follow, because in February of 1588 Parma made some transparent peace overtures, knowing the queen well enough to predict that she would find them irresistible. He was not disappointed. Elizabeth’s commissioners were soon on their way to the Netherlands to negotiate with him, while her admirals remained stymied and the Spaniards bought time. In the event the queen gained little by her vacillation, but she aroused the distrust of her Dutch allies, who suspected that she meant to betray them. Throughout the ensuing crisis the co-operation between the English and Dutch navies was far from exemplary, and important ships from Howard’s fleet were detailed to guard Parma, a job entirely within the interests and resources of the Dutch.

Drake’s plan to attack the Armada was frozen. ‘The stay that is made of Sir Francis Drake going out I am afraid will breed grave peril,’ wrote Howard.⁷ Nor, with the mobilization truncated, could Drake use the time for a thorough outfit of his force, although he did his best. As the queen’s ships that had been assigned to him arrived at Plymouth he had old William Hawkins use the spring tides to careen and tallow them, and he set his principal officers to selecting their berths. For his own flagship Drake chose the Revenge, perhaps the most famous of all Elizabethan warships. Built in 1577, she was one of the improved vessels the Navy Board had been producing, and had a length of 92 feet, a beam of 32 feet and a tonnage of about 470. She carried up to forty guns and 250 men, and was strikingly painted in a green and white harlequin design.⁸ John Gray was Drake’s master and Jonas Bodenham served as the ship’s lieutenant. Thomas Fenner, vice-admiral of the Western Squadron, raised his flag aboard the Nonpareil, and Robert Crosse took command of the Hope as rear-admiral.

While the impatience and frustration of Howard and Drake were understandable, Elizabeth has been both accused and vindicated for her refusal to allow an early mobilization of the fleet. In her defence it may be said that her ships had been mobilized very quickly the previous December, and perhaps they could be counted upon to do the same again, and that some of them needed dry-docking for refit. More important still, to have sustained a full mobilization for several months would have risked the spread of disease among the crews. As it was, the Armada found England’s ships in good shape and her men sufficient and healthy enough to man them. No doubt Elizabeth’s decision to pay off half the fleet had had little to do with these considerations. She was more interested in saving money, but her stringency may not have been without beneficial consequences.

Nevertheless, there were losses as well as gains in keeping a battle fleet idle. Centuries later Napoleon also endorsed the misconception that his fleet was better in port, secure from the rigours of the sea, while the British blockading squadrons were being battered to pieces by constant service. But he was wrong. The experience gained by the British at sea honed their skills of seamanship and gunnery to levels unattainable by adversaries who were recruited for specific cruises and then laid off, and it was these very skills that proved decisive in combat. Time and again French or Spanish ships, superior in design and strength, more heavily armed and generously manned, were overwhelmingly defeated by British opponents. It became obvious that material advantages were easily offset by skills that Continental crews, inexperienced and often sea-sick, lacked. Of course, the two situations are not strictly comparable. By Nelson’s time copper-sheathing had improved the durability of ships, and scurvy was at last being mastered. But this much can be said. The seamanship and teamwork of crews and the rates of fire and accuracy of gunners were never improved by ships sitting in port, and the fleet that fought the Armada was hardly a crack force. Fortunately, neither was the Armada.

No one was more mystified by the queen’s reduction of the fleet and her negotiations with Parma than Drake, for they occurred at a time when his own misgivings were increasing. The reports of the preparations in Spain and Portugal made a nonsense of Parma’s overtures. In an effort to induce his government into action, Drake kept forwarding intelligence of the Armada’s progress, and in March sent some prisoners taken by one of his scouts so that the Privy Council could hear for themselves. Some of these accounts were much exaggerated, such as the story that Lisbon sheltered 450 ships and galleys and nearly 90,000 men, but in March they convinced Drake that the various detachments of the Armada had been concentrated and would make a harder nut to crack. Originally, he had hoped to catch the different divisions of the Armada at various places about the Spanish coast, before they could unite, but now he was forced to consider tackling the bulk of the enemy fleet.

It is possible that the Spanish consolidation not only had Sir Francis revising his tactics but that it intensified his fears for the safety of Devon and Cornwall. That month Drake had joined a committee that underscored how exposed they were. Since it ‘is unlikely that the King of Spain will engage his fleet too far within the sleeve before he has mastered some one good harbour’, Drake and his colleagues agreed that Plymouth, Portland or the Isle of Wight were likely landing places for Spanish troops brought by the Armada. They recommended that 2,000 men be raised immediately for the defence of Plymouth, with the further 4,000 of the trained bands of Devon and Cornwall held as a reserve.⁹

All of this raised Drake’s concerns about England’s defence. With the fleet divided between Plymouth and the Straits of Dover, Sir Francis had the strength neither to attack the concentrated Spanish fleet nor to defend the West Country from it. He had to have more ships. And once again he began to speak out.

At court opinion was already divided about Drake’s ideas. The queen was as cautious as anybody, and it was with great difficulty that she could be brought to allow her fleet beyond her ken. In January she reportedly blew up about it to old Leicester, reminding him that ‘my ships have left to put to sea and if any evil fortune should befall them all would be lost, for I shall have lost the walls of my realm!’ On the other hand Burghley was coming out with some irresponsibly bold ideas. He remained committed to the division of the fleet, and even spoke of Drake getting in the rear of the Armada, following it and trapping it between himself and Howard. So much for concentration. There were stranger suggestions still – that while Howard defended England against the Armada, Drake might sneak behind to mount a counter-offensive against Spain, possibly by landing Dom Antonio to foment a rising in Portugal or by cruising to the Azores. Such a strategy would, of course, have separated the English at the very time that unification was most needed. It was preposterous.¹⁰

Nevertheless, towards the close of March the Privy Council seems to have decided that Drake should do something, even though the negotiations with Parma continued, for it issued a royal warrant authorizing him to purchase victuals for 2,900 men over a two-month period beginning 24 April. Yet they were unprepared for the additional demands Sir Francis now clapped upon them. On 30 March he addressed a letter to them, couched in his most obsequious style, but calling for a concentration of shipping and an offensive that would raise morale at home and disrupt Spain’s preparations:

My very good Lords, next under God’s mighty protection, the advantage and gain of time and place will be the only and chief means for our good; wherein I most humbly beseech your good Lordships to persevere as you have began, for that with fifty sail of shipping, we shall do more good upon their own coast than a great many more will do here at home, and the sooner we are gone the better we shall be able to impeach them.¹¹

When the queen asked for more details, Drake refused to commit himself to a precise plan. Now that the Armada appeared to have gathered in Lisbon, he was unsure about what could be achieved, although he envisaged a blockade of the coast and an attempt to harass or disrupt the Armada when it emerged from port. To Elizabeth he merely wrote that once he was upon the Spanish coast he would decide how best to serve her, and added with irresistible venom that much would depend upon the calibre of his men, for ‘one such flying now, as Borough did then [in 1587], will put the whole in peril.’ In short, she must trust him, but he needed four more of her warships and the sixteen ships and pinnaces then fitting in London to add to his existing thirty sail if he was to make the voyage:

If the fleet come out of Lisbon, as long as we have victual to live withal upon that coast they shall be fought with, and I hope, through the goodness of our merciful God, in such sort as shall hinder his quiet passage into England … The advantage of time and place in all martial actions is half a victory, which being lost is irrecoverable. Wherefore, if your Majesty will command me away with those ships which are here already, and the rest to follow with all possible expedition, I hold it in my poor opinion the surest and best course; and that they bring with them victuals sufficient for themselves and us, to the intent the service be not utterly lost for want thereof.

To rub in the last point, Drake noted that the two months’ victuals he had been awarded were insufficient for such an expedition, and remarked that ‘here may the whole service and honour be lost for the sparing of a few crowns.’¹²

Early in May Elizabeth summoned him to court. Rumours of the Armada’s sailing were then so rife that, shortly after the admiral left for London, Fenner moved the western fleet to a more forward anchorage in Plymouth and ordered that the seamen must remain aboard and the soldiers close by, in readiness for immediate service. French mariners were saying that they were surprised that Medina Sidonia was not already in the Channel. As he sped towards court, therefore, Drake knew that something very important underlay the call. He found the Privy Council humming with plans for the offensive Drake had demanded, but in a quandary as to what had to be done. Dom Antonio had been stirring it up again, and insisting with might and main that if he could be landed in Portugal with a few thousand soldiers the people of Lisbon would rally to his support. The pretender, as always, sounded convincing, and there were those, like Sir Walter Ralegh, with whom Dom Antonio had recently been consorting, who pointed out that if Lisbon rose against Philip it might be possible to attack the Armada as it sheltered there. Apparently Drake and Essex also favoured the idea, and it was said that Sir Francis and the pretender began meeting at the dead of night so that they could work out the details of the plan without arousing the suspicion of spies. But even Leicester and Walsingham had their doubts about Dom Antonio’s scheme. How many soldiers would be needed to attempt Lisbon at a time when it was bristling with arms, men and ships belonging to the Armada? Could they be raised in time? No, the matter was dropped. However, Drake’s more modest proposals for a voyage to Spain were more successful.¹³

In fact he succeeded too well, for the queen moved even more shipping to Plymouth than he had wanted, and the Lord Admiral to boot. On 13 May Howard was ordered to shift his fleet to Plymouth, leaving a token force under Seymour to guard the Straits of Dover, and ‘to dispose of our navy … in placing of the same between the coast of Spain and the west parts, as may best serve to impeach the great navy now prepared in Spain.’ Seymour was told that Howard was required to ‘lie upon the coast of Spain.’ Sir Francis Drake, who had returned to Plymouth, can only have been disappointed. His strategy had triumphed, and the English fleet – the combined force of Drake and Howard that would fight the Armada – was to be grouped in the west. But he had not bargained for the transfer of so many ships, nor for the arrival of the Lord Admiral. Once Howard reached Plymouth, Drake would lose his independent command, the emoluments that went with that position, and, most important of all, the complete control of his own expedition. Drake must have frowned, for Howard had been at court with him earlier that month, and had spoken against the offensive against Spain. The queen had backed the opinion of her greatest sailor, but it remained to be seen how far Howard would co-operate with a plan he had personally opposed.¹⁴

Howard, flying his flag aboard the Ark Royal, arrived at Plymouth with a detachment of sixteen ships, nearly 4,000 men and a month’s victuals on the morning of 23 May. Undoubtedly he was apprehensive at assuming command over Sir Francis Drake and a force that had learned to be loyal to him, but as the Lord Admiral approached the Sound he was greeted by a remarkable sight. Drake led some forty sail in three files, with banners streaming and music playing, to meet the newcomers, and escorted them into port in a style that would have befitted the queen. He had no intention of playing dog in the manger, and a few weeks later a relieved Howard was able to inform Walsingham that ‘I must not omit to let you know how lovingly and kindly Sir Francis Drake beareth himself, and how dutifully to Her Majesty’s service and unto me, being in the place I am in, which I pray you he may receive thanks for by some private letter from you.’¹⁵

Drake’s own fears were no less unjustified, for the Lord Admiral was willing to learn from his deputy, and after a council of war that lasted through 24 and 25 May, in which there was some opposition to Drake’s ideas, he proclaimed them as proudly as if they were his own. ‘Sir,’ Howard admitted to Walsingham, ‘you know it [has] been the opinion both of Her Majesty and others, that it was [the sur]est course to lie on the coast of Spain. I confess my error at that time, which was otherwise, but I did and will yield ever unto them of greater experience.’ Drake’s opinion had prevailed not only over the government and Lord Admiral, but over the leading seamen Howard had brought with him. Howard wrote:

The opinion of Sir Francis Drake, Mr [John] Hawkins, Mr Frobisher, and others that be men of greatest judgment [and] experience, as also my concurring with them the same, is that [the] surer way to meet with the Spanish fleet is upon their own [coast], or in any harbour of their own, and there to defeat them.

During the ensuing weeks an excellent relationship developed between the two commanders of the English fleet, with Howard acting on Drake’s advice (‘it hath pleased his good Lordship to accept of that which I have sometimes spoken,’ said Drake), and the Lord Admiral shoring up his own credibility by reference to the vice-admiral’s authority. Now we find Howard writing such phrases as ‘Sir Francis Drake and all here do think’, and even soliciting a testimonial from the vice-admiral on a letter he had written defending himself from imputations of negligence. There is nothing in the correspondence that indicates that at this time Drake and Howard worked other than in complete harmony.¹⁶

Shortly after his arrival, Howard formalized his advisory council, the men who would manage the campaign. Sir Francis Drake was there, of course, and with him John Hawkins of the Victory, serving as rear-admiral of the combined force, Martin Frobisher of the Triumph, and Thomas Fenner. There were, besides, three other members whose inclusion had to be defended to the government. Sir Roger Williams, a veteran of Sluys, was needed to advise upon land matters, Howard explained, and the remaining two were ‘gallant gentlemen, and not only forwards, but very discreet in all their doings.’ This could not hide the obvious nepotism behind the Lord Admiral’s last nominations, for one was his cousin, Lord Thomas Howard of the Golden Lion, and the other his nephew, Lord Edmund Sheffield of the White Bear. Neither had much to contribute. Lord Thomas was only twenty-seven and Lord Sheffield still younger at twenty-five, and both were inexperienced. Yet their inclusion had practical value to Howard, for both men could be counted upon to support him in a vote. Howard needed the advice of the sea-dogs, but he was careful to avoid being dominated by them. He was the Lord Admiral, in act as well as name.¹⁷

Drake’s offensive had conquered opinion, but other obstacles proved more stubborn. The shipping was mercifully in order. This was a service that promised hard fighting rather than financial return, and it had not been outfitted on the old joint-stock basis. In the national emergency the government had placed an embargo on ports, requiring them to furnish vessels for the fleet and to maintain them with a local tax. The towns affected naturally complained, but Drake had got his ships, from havens on both sides of the western peninsula. Nor was manpower deficient, despite the indifferent wage of 10 shillings a month paid to the seamen. Victuals, however, were a different matter. Sir Francis and other officials had been impounding munitions, powder, stores and provisions from ships trading with the enemy since the previous year, in Falmouth, Plymouth and elsewhere. While unjustified seizures were restored, some confiscated victuals found their way to the English fleet. But for the most part Drake and Howard depended upon royal warrants that authorized the purchase of provisions. Unfortunately, the increased demand stretched local supplies and inflated prices, and some merchants were reluctant to deal with so poor a payer as the Crown – three merchants who supplied goods totalling £1,481 in value were still claiming payment two years afterwards. Worse still, the government consistently sent their warrants late, forcing the fleet to eke out threadbare supplies. As we have seen, Drake had been victualled up to 24 June, but the arrival of Howard’s ships, predictably under-provisioned, meant he had exhausted his victuals by 15 June. There was no prospect of going to Spain in those circumstances.¹⁸

It was a combination of the weather and victualling problems that effectively postponed Drake’s attack. An unseasonal wind from the west and south-west blew gustily into the teeth of the English and prevented them sailing for the best part of a month. They tried to break out on 30 May but were beaten back within days, and it was while they sat in port fuming at their bad fortune that the remaining victuals were extinguished to no purpose. Drake had the feeling that his chance of pre-empting the Armada was slipping away. According to the crew of a ship from San Lucar that the English had encountered in their attempt to get out of the Channel Medina Sidonia was already at sea with two hundred ships. In reporting it to Burghley, Drake marked that ‘either we shall hear of them very shortly or else they will go to the Groyne and there assemble themselves.’¹⁹ It was his latter estimate that proved correct, and created the final opportunity for him to anticipate the Armada.

The prospect suddenly improved in the third week in June. The gales subsided and at midnight on the 22nd fifteen ships from London arrived with the needed victuals. The fleet broke into a frenzied activity, as the men laboured through the rest of the night by torchlight and during the following day to load enough of the new stores to put to sea. The air of expectation and excitement was increased as important fresh news suggested that Medina Sidonia had in fact put to sea but that his fleet was in disarray. Some mariners reported that about 19 June they had come upon nine large Spanish ships between the Scilly Islands and Ushant. To Drake and Howard it suggested that the gales had broken the Armada into companies, and they surmised that if they sailed immediately they might find the Spanish ships scattered along the French coast, vulnerable to attack. It was an opportunity they dare not forego. Without waiting to stow all the new provisions aboard they darted from Plymouth like hungry wolves running down stricken deer.

They were too late. Medina Sidonia had left Lisbon with 151 ships on 18 May, his flag aboard the San Martin, but winds had first driven his ships south and then scattered them, so that only a few reached the appointed rendezvous off the Scillies. They remained long enough to alert the English to the Armada’s predicament, and then turned back. Medina Sidonia got most of his fleet into Corunna, where they spent a month refitting, replacing bad food and water, and discharging the sick. The duke was close to despair, and again appealed to Philip to consider whether the campaign should be prosecuted further, but with no greater success than before. Sail the Armada would, insisted the king, and Medina Sidonia dutifully obeyed. Piecing his fleet together, he eventually led some 130 sail from Corunna on 12 July and steered towards England.

As Drake and Howard made their dash upon the Armada it was already retiring towards Corunna, and when the English reached the Scilly Islands they could find no trace of the Spaniards. The wind also turned foul again, swinging to south-south-west, and retarding further headway. Clawing his way along the French coast with a detachment of ten ships and three or four pinnaces, Drake came upon a Dublin bark that had brushed with a large Spanish force 15 leagues off the Lizard on 21 June. This confirmed the earlier reports, but it seemed clear to Drake that the enemy had since withdrawn, and he therefore proposed that the English press on to Spain at the first favourable wind. For two days Howard threw a screen of ships between Ushant and the Scillies to satisfy himself that the Spaniards had indeed retired, but time only vindicated Drake’s opinion and various French and English vessels they encountered gave out that the Armada had been dispersed into different havens. Here seemed the opportunity Drake had longed for prior to the concentration of Medina Sidonia’s fleet at Lisbon, an opportunity to attack disparate fragments of the enemy force or to frustrate its regrouping. The seventh of July saw the wind northerly and Howard and Drake forging towards Spain, but it was to no avail. The fickle elements veered powerfully to the south-west and there was nothing the English could do but run before them back to Plymouth.

This was the last of Drake’s efforts to intercept the Armada, and those in the English fleet who had imbibed his confidence were intensely disappointed. It is impossible to estimate what would have been the result had the encounter he had wanted taken place. The English did not doubt that they could give the Spaniards a drubbing and that their ships and gunnery were superior, but the battles ahead were to prove that they underestimated the Armada, and that it took far more powder and shot to deal with than they had bargained for. In a full-blown action off Spain, Drake and Howard could have exhausted their ammunition and been reduced to following Medina Sidonia ineffectually into the Channel. On the other hand, this may be an unduly pessimistic view. On many occasions the Spaniards had been in vulnerable positions. In March the Armada was in a chaotic state following the death of Santa Cruz, and some of its ships were in Cadiz and elsewhere. In June it had been scattered by storms, with portions of it as close to the English as the Scillies, while thereafter until 12 July most of the Spanish ships sheltered in Corunna, a haven Drake was to breach in a year’s time. And even if the English had met Medina Sidonia’s force at sea it is probable that Drake and Howard would have used the superior sailing qualities of their ships to keep the weather-gauge (i.e., remain in the windward position) with the prospect of picking up stragglers or falling upon groups of ships that became isolated. The fact is that Drake was denied his chance, and speculation about the possible outcome of the conflict is specious. Drake’s own optimism was as much the product of temperament and instinct as a careful evaluation of respective fleets. We can no more imagine him sitting happily at home waiting for Medina Sidonia than we can see Nelson pottering about Europe in 1805 awaiting the return of Villeneuve. Action and excitement, no less than salt, were in his blood.

Just what were the differences between the Spanish and English fleets in that momentous year of 1588, as Europe held its breath? Did the advantages lie with Howard or with Medina Sidonia? Nineteenth-century Britons thrilled to a tradition that told of a David and Goliath contest in which small English ships overwhelmed the great galleons of Spain, but like so many patriotic myths it disguised the reality. It is true that on the whole Philip’s fleet was composed of larger vessels, and their visual impact was enhanced by the huge stern-and forecastles that many of them carried as well as by the presence of four 600-ton Italian galleasses, which employed banks of blood-red oars to supplement their sails. The Armada must have been a terrifying sight. By comparison the English ships were lighter. Although England’s fleet had greater numbers of smaller vessels, it could dispose only fifty-one ships in excess of 200 tons’ burden against the ninety-three Medina Sidonia brought to the Channel. But the Armada was a giant that rested on distinctly shaky foundations. Its fighting core was deficient in speed and manoeuvrability, in guns and gunnery skills, the qualities that were to prove decisive in the battles ahead.

The nucleus of the English fleet was formed by the queen’s ships, twenty-five of which were over 100 tons’ burden. Created in the reigns of Henry VIII and Mary Tudor, and maintained thereafter, England’s navy had evolved into the best in Europe. Oared galleys, once the basis of Mediterranean sea power but quite unsuitable for mounting broadside guns or for service in the heavy rollers of the Atlantic, had been discarded, and only one survived in 1588. As we have seen it was assigned pedestrian duties in the Thames under William Borough, who had run afoul of Drake the year before. Even the design of the sailing ships that now constituted England’s fleet had undergone a period of experimentation and development by the time they fought the Armada. The changes have been attributed to John Hawkins, who became treasurer of the navy in 1578, but they had an older history and were evident from the first years of Elizabeth’s reign. If credit must be attached to particular individuals, it would more justifiably rest with William Winter, who had been surveyor of the navy from 1549, and with the royal shipwrights, Richard Bull, Peter Pett and Matthew Baker.

Whoever was responsible, the changes produced a new breed of ships, nimbler, faster, and capable of mounting substantial numbers of broadside guns. The large superstructures on the bows and sterns, traditionally the home of the soldiers who were expected to board enemy vessels as they grappled side by side, were reduced, and the low waists removed. The hull was lengthened in proportion to its breadth, until the ratio of the one to the other was a little under three-to-one; and the draught was deepened. The result was a long rather than a ‘round’ ship, more streamlined, more stable, handier, and able to sail closer to the wind. The new ships were generally smaller than their predecessors, but their main instruments of combat were broadside guns, and they did not need to carry large numbers of soldiers. They heralded a new and revolutionary mode of naval warfare. The ship should not be a mere transport, loaded with men, and placed beside an opposing vessel so that the battle could be decided by boarding. It was itself an agent of destruction, able to manoeuvre for position so that its guns could be used to defeat the adversary at a distance.

Slowly, from the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, these new ships had developed, and most of them were with Drake and Howard: the Elizabeth Jonas, Hope, Triumph, Aid, White Bear, Foresight, Dreadnought, Swiftsure, Revenge and Ark Royal, to name the largest. Some vessels bought from the merchant service and incorporated into the navy, such as Hawkins’s Victory and the Elizabeth Bonaventure, had been partially rebuilt along the new lines, as had older vessels such as the Golden Lion, Nonpareil, Swallow and Mary Rose. They gave the English an important advantage during the Armada battles, because the Spaniards had not only been slower to develop a purpose-built navy but had substantially embraced the older tradition of naval warfare, in which the soldier rather than the ship or the gun was the instrument of combat. Drake’s raid of 1587 had led them courageously to scrap their substantial galley fleet, which they recognized would be of little assistance in an artillery duel, but their sailing ships – for the most part armed merchantmen – were generally stubbier and clumsier than the queen’s ships. Indeed, instead of reducing the sterns and forecastles of their vessels during the months before the Armada sailed, the Spaniards provided loftier superstructures for ships they considered to be under-endowed. No, Medina Sidonia might have the larger vessels, but his principal fighting ships were seriously deficient in sailing qualities compared with the vessels of the queen’s navy.

Nor was this all, for there was a still more important difference between the two fleets. The Armada was heavily manned, but had both fewer and lighter guns than its opponents. Overall, the weight of metal it could fire was probably about a third less than that available to the English. At all ranges the Spaniards were at a disadvantage, and a massive disadvantage it was, because it was compounded by the inadequacy of their gunnery skills. They were still wedded to a battle of boarders rather than guns, and did not develop techniques of continuous fire. Rather, soldiers were drilled to discharge the pieces and then disperse to boarding stations, and so little attention was paid to recharging and refiring processes that the artillery was lashed to the ships’ sides and mounted on unwieldy carriages. When more regular firing did become necessary, the Spaniards found the larger guns too difficult to manoeuvre and resorted to the smaller pieces, thus exacerbating their own lack of fire power. And as if this was not enough, because the Armada’s guns came from foundries across Europe and had little standardization of bore, the supply of a sufficient quantity of appropriate shot was difficult to ensure. By comparison, however indifferent the English gunnery may have been (and Howard’s fleet had neither the battle experience nor the regular practice that could have made it more efficient), it was far superior to the Armada’s. The English depended upon the gun, not the soldier, and had long since mounted their pieces on smaller, more manageable carriages, easier to recharge and fire, and it was the duty of their gunners to maintain continuous fire. The advantage that this conferred upon them was invaluable. Even broadside for broadside Howard and Drake outgunned their opponents, but when they could deliver several discharges for every one of the enemy’s they were almost undefeatable.²⁰

Summing up, both fleets brought to the conflict weapons that reflected the tactics they intended to employ. Philip himself understood that, and in March had reminded Medina Sidonia that the English would have an advantage in artillery, and would endeavour to keep the battle at a distance, firing low into the hulls of the Spanish ships to sink them. The Armada, on the other hand, should try to close with the enemy vessels, grapple and board them. Accordingly, Drake and Howard’s ships were swift, better armed and manned by professional gunners; Medina Sidonia’s enjoyed a superiority in manpower, and carried generous reserves of soldiers. It was the English, however, who held the initiative. Their superior sailing qualities could dictate the course of the action, keep the fight at a distance while their guns pounded the Spanish ships, and deny Medina Sidonia the opportunity to employ his boarders.

The commander of the Spanish fleet was not even impressed by his own men, and bluntly told Philip so:

To undertake so great a task with equal forces to those of the enemy would be inadvisable, but to do so with an inferior force, as ours is now, with our men locking in experience, would be still more unwise. I am bound to confess that I see very few, or hardly any, of those on the armada with any knowledge of or ability to perform the duties entrusted to them. I have tested and watched this point very carefully, and your Majesty may believe me when I assure you that we are very weak.²¹

Perhaps Medina Sidonia exaggerated. He, like Howard, was a grandee rather than a battle admiral, but there were some tough, experienced officers to hand, men such as Juan Martinez de Recalde, the second-in-command, and Miguel de Oquendo, both of whom had served in the great battle of the Azores in 1582. It is often forgotten that the English themselves had little experience in full-blown naval warfare. England had no professional navy, no cadre of naval officers inured to years of combat, not a single man seasoned in fleet action. The men of 1588 were not naval commanders in the modern sense. They were traders, explorers or privateers, few of whom had seen sustained gun action. They were fine seamen, certainly, confident and brave, but largely unprepared for what lay ahead of them. George Fenner might speak of his victory over the Portuguese in 1567; John Hawkins remembered the battle in San Juan d’Ulua; and Drake, Thomas Fenner and Robert Crosse had done violence to various Spanish galleys during their cruise of 1587. But none of these actions approximated in scale or circumstance to the great conflicts in the Channel.

It was with a tremendous sense of occasion, of participating in a momentous episode in history, that Europeans on both sides of the religious and political divide waited for the clash that could determine not only the fates of England and the Netherlands but also the fortunes of the Reformation. Some shuddered at ancient prophecies that foretold 1588 as a year of cataclysm and revolution in which ‘empires will dwindle and from everywhere will be great lamentation.’²²

For the English fleet the days that followed the abortive expedition to Spain were occupied by refitting and revictualling the ships. The government continued to press supplies forward with reluctance, waiting until the middle of July to authorize the purchase of a further twenty days’ provisions, and were so late to ship extra powder from the Tower that it did not reach the fleet in time for the first engagement.

On the morning of 19 July Captain Thomas Fleming was cruising with some thirty men off the Lizard in his 50-ton Golden Hind. He may have been reconnoitring for Drake and Howard, but hard words have been said of him. William Monson, then a young officer aboard one of the queen’s ships, described him as a ‘pirate’ who was out ‘a-pilfering’ that summer morning, and although the remark has generally been dismissed, perhaps it was true. On 7 June the Privy Council had ordered his arrest for the taking of Thomas Nicolls’s 80-ton hoy, the Hope of Newhaven. Whatever, some time that morning he saw several ships in the distance, towards the Scillies, their sails struck as if they lay waiting for consorts to come up. Gradually, the Englishmen distinguished large crosses emblazoned on the sails of the strange vessels. Spaniards! It may have been the duty of the queen’s officers to seize Fleming if he put into port, but he promptly put about to carry the news to Plymouth. And soon alert watchers on the Cornish cliffs were lighting beacons to relay the same news. The great Armada was sailing into the Channel.

¹ Elliott, Imperial Spain, 288.

² Of the older studies of the Armada campaign, Mattingly’s Defeat of the Spanish Armada is the best. A plethora of works on the subject accompanied the quadri-centennial of 1988, but two are outstanding: Martin and Parker, The Spanish Armada, and Rodriguez-Salgado, et. al., Armada, 1588–1988.

³ Wroth to Burghley, 5 September, 1587, Hist. MSS Commission, ed., Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury, 3: 279; Hist. MSS Commission, ed., Foljambe Papers, 26. Other publications containing English documents on the Armada are Laughton, ed., State Papers Relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, and Naish, ed., The Naval Miscellany, vol. 4. This last prints a narrative of the campaign prepared for Drake by Petruccio Ubaldino.

⁴ Howard to Walsingham, 27 January, 1588, Laughton, 1: 48–50.

⁵ Instructions to Howard, 15 December, 1587, Foljambe Papers, 109–10.

⁶ Howard to Walsingham, 1 February, 1588, Laughton, 1: 56–8.

⁷ Howard to Walsingham, 9 March, 1588, Ibid, 1: 103.

⁸ Glasgow, ‘Revenge Reviewed’.

⁹ Brushfield, ‘The Spanish Invasion of 1588’, 276–9.

¹⁰ Tilton, ‘Lord Burghley and the Spanish Invasion, 1588’; Advice from England, January 1588, Hume, ed., Calendar of Letters and State Papers … in the Archives of Simancas, 4: 190–1.

¹¹ Drake to Privy Council, 30 March, 1588, Laughton, 1: 123–6.

¹² Drake to the queen, 13 April, 1588, Ibid, 1: 147–9.

¹³ Among several references to the plan to use Dom Antonio, see the intelligence of Antonio de Vega, 17, 21 May, 1588, Hume, 4: 298–300.

¹⁴ Queen’s letters to Howard and Seymour, 13 May, 1588, Foljambe Papers, 116; Lord Talbot to Shrewsbury, 7 May, 1588, Owen, ed., Bath MSS, 5: 90–1.

¹⁵ Howard to Walsingham, 14 June, 1588, Laughton, 1: 199–202.

¹⁶ Howard to Walsingham, 13 June, 1588, Ibid, 1: 256–8; Drake to Walsingham, 11 August, 1588, Ibid, 2:101.

¹⁷ Howard to Walsingham, 19 June, 1588, Ibid, 1: 208–12.

¹⁸ For seizures at sea, Dasent, ed., Acts of the Privy Council, and Butler, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 21 (part 4): 485. Claims of merchants, Salisbury, 4: 52–3, 79.

¹⁹ Drake to Burghley, 6 June, 1588, Owen, 2: 28.

²⁰ For ship design, guns and gunnery I have drawn upon Martin and Parker; Rodriguez-Salgado; Glasgow, ‘The Shape of the Ships That Defeated the Spanish Armada’; and Thompson, ‘Spanish Armada Guns’. It must be presumed that Drake approved of the improved design of English warships. In 1590 three more ships were built for the queen, the Merhonour, Garland and Defiance. Their keels were just under three times the length of the beam, and depths nearly half the beam. These would seem to have been regarded as the ideal hull proportions. The ships were designed by a committee composed of Drake, Winter, Hawkins, Howard, Borough, Fenton and the royal shipwrights. That Drake and Hawkins were satisfied seems to be implied by their choice of two of these new ships as flagships for their last voyage in 1595.

²¹ Medina Sidonia to Philip, 24 June, 1588, Hume, 4: 317–19.

²² Mattingly, 160.