Chapter 2
The Spanish Tragedy
The sailors who first spotted the Spanish Armada from the tops of their ships in the light of the setting sun on 30 July must have experienced a similar sense of awe and apprehension to that experienced 356 years later, on 6 June 1944, by German gunners on the coast of Normandy. The crowd of masts, sails and rigging would have made it difficult to count the 130 ships that were present, with brightly coloured banners flying to represent the provinces of Spain, and each ship carrying the Burgundian red saltire. The fact that the fleet carried vast numbers of guns, 8,000 seamen, 18,000 soldiers, five regiments of infantry, thirty-two companies of light troops and 2,000 Portuguese would have been of little consequence to the amazed onlookers as the huge fleet moved steadily onwards in its crescent formation.
That morning, Howard, the Lord High Admiral, had led his squadron of fifty-four ships across and ahead of the Armada’s line of approach, aiming to work to windward of the Spanish fleet. Drake in the Revenge had led his squadron of eight ships to the west. Although the main current on an ebb tide would set eastwards up the Channel, as a local Plymouth man, Drake knew that there would also be an inshore back current setting westward around Rame Head. This current would take Drake’s ships almost to Looe in Cornwall. He wrote to Lord Henry Seymour to inform him of his movements:
Right Honourable and My Very Good Lord,
I am commanded by my good Lord, the Lord Admiral, to send you the Caravel in haste with this letter, giving your Lordship to understand that the army of Spain arrived upon our coast the 20th of this present, the 21st we had them in chase; and so coming up into them there hath passed some common shot between some of our fleet and some of theirs; and as far as we perceive they are determined to sell their lives with blows. Whereupon his Lordship hath commanded me to write unto your Lordship and Sir William Wynter, that those ships serving under your charge should be put into the best and strongest manner you may, and ready to assist his Lordship for the better encountering of them in those parts where you now are …
Written aboard her Majesty’s good ship the Revenge off Start, this 21st, late in the evening, 1588.
Your good Lordships
poor friend ready to be commanded,
FRA: Drake
This letter, my honourable good Lord, is sent in haste; the fleet of Spaniards is somewhat about a hundred sails; many great ships, but truly I think not half of them men of war, haste, your Lordships, assured.
To the Right Honourable
the Lord Henry Seymour,
Admiral of her Majesty’s Navy in the narrow sea, or, in absence, to Sir William Wynter, knight, give these with speed – haste, haste, haste.1
The Spanish, for their part, had held a council of war at which it was decided that they would not sail further than the Isle of Wight until they had received word that the Duke of Parma’s troops were ready to embark. To attack Plymouth, although they had an opportunity to do so, would have been against the King’s orders.
The Spaniards’ fidelity to their orders and a high degree of seamanship by the English enabled the Navy Royal to get to windward of the Armada by first light on Sunday, 31 July, having taken advantage of a south-west wind that had blown up in the night.
Far from being penned in to Plymouth harbour, the English were now away to the south-west of the Armada, with the weather gauge in their favour. Howard could now set the terms of the battle and the Spaniards would have to contend with a loose lion rather than a caged one.
Despite the new threat, the huge Spanish crescent sailed inexorably onwards, maintaining its tight formation of three divisions, a vanguard, main battle squadron and rearguard. ‘The Spanish crescent, maintained with remarkable discipline, awed and baffled the English adversaries all the way up the Channel.’2
The van contained twenty ships of the Levant and Guipuzcoan squadrons, commanded by Don Alonso de Leiva, with Martín de Bertendona and Oquendo as divisional commanders. The main battle squadron was led by Medina Sidonia in the San Martín, with the Portuguese squadron, and the Indian Guard and galleons of Castile, commanded by Don Flores de Valdés. The rearguard consisted of twenty ships of the Biscayan and Andalucian squadrons, led by Juan de Martinez Recalde. In the centre of the crescent were the troop-carrying transports.
Having first sent the aptly named pinnace Disdain to lay down the gauntlet by firing a shot into the hull of the San Martín, Howard led his squadron in the Ark Royal to attack the southern, starboard tip of the crescent horn. They engaged with Don Alonso de Leiva’s 820-ton Levant ship, the La Rata Coronado.
Don Alonso’s ship, as well as the rest of the Levant squadron, turned northwards, while Howard’s ships, instead of closing in as the Spaniards expected them to, continued to sail on a parallel course, firing from a range of about 400 yards. Damage and casualties were light on both sides.
Similar tactics were adopted by Drake in the Revenge, who led his squadron against the Biscayan ships on the northern, port side of the crescent. These were commanded by Recalde in his 1,050-ton fifty-gun San Juan de Portugal. Recalde peeled off to challenge Drake but the rest of his squadron sailed on regardless, leaving their commander to the tender mercies of the Revenge, Victory and Triumph.
Again, instead of taking the opportunity to close on the stranded ship, the English stood off at about 400 yards, firing continuous broadsides into the San Juan de Portugal and into the Spanish reinforcements when they eventually arrived.
The Spaniards would no doubt have welcomed the opportunity to close the range with the English and to involve them in a mêlée with grappling hooks, short-range, ship-smashing guns and boarders. This would have effectively cancelled out the two major tactical advantages that the English possessed – their superior gunnery as well as their agility and freedom of manoeuvre. If any of the English ships had been tempted to close with the San Juan de Portugal they might not have been able to get away when the Spanish reinforcements arrived.
Revenge thus skipped away, having severely damaged Recalde’s ship but not crippled her. This raised a large question for the English: if they could not even sink a Spanish galleon that had been separated from the main body of the Armada, how could they hope to stop the inexorable advance of the colossus itself?
In pondering this conundrum, they would at least have been cheered by the series of setbacks that plagued the Spaniards that day. The 1,150-ton Nuestra Seãora del Rosario (Our Lady of the Rosary), flagship of Don Pedro de Valdés, collided first with one of the Biscayan ships and then with the 730-ton Santa Catalina. As a result, she lost her bowsprit and her foremast mainstay. Thus crippled, she was to be the centre of a curious incident involving Revenge later that night. In mid-afternoon the 960-ton urca San Salvador blew up, killing 200 men, wrecking the upper deck and blowing out the stern. The ship carried the Paymaster General and several chests full of gold, and the whole Armada was brought to a halt while boats were sent to take off the precious cargo and the surviving crew.
What the English could not achieve with their whole navy had been instantly brought about as if by Divine Providence. Nor was this the only time the Armada would be stopped. When the Rosario’s foremast finally gave way, the Armada had to be halted a second time while a tow was passed. The tow parted and the Rosario was left wallowing in the rough sea, to the consternation of the Armada captains.
At a council of war on Ark Royal that evening the English had few tactical options at their disposal. Although they could congratulate themselves on their seamanship, more damage had been inflicted on the Armada by accident than by English design. They had little choice but to follow in the wake of the colossus, watching for signs of weakness, like jackals judging their chances behind a lumbering herd. It was thought likely the Spanish would attempt to occupy the Isle of Wight and a number of other possible anchorages were discussed, including Weymouth and Poole.
In the meantime, at this hour of mounting national peril, Revenge was given the honour of leading the English fleet, the great lantern in her stern providing a beacon for the English captains in the encircling gloom. Behind Revenge was the Lord High Admiral himself in Ark Royal. One can imagine the lookout in Ark Royal straining his eyes and perhaps wondering whether a thick mist had enveloped Revenge, for, after a while, the light in her stern disappeared into the gloom. Confusion spread quickly through the fleet, with some ships backing their sails and coming to a halt while others shortened sail and continued tentatively on the same course. Howard himself persevered, with White Bear and Mary Rose in close touch.
Some time later, the Ark Royal detected a faint light far away to leeward and, despite the fact that Ark Royal was one of the swiftest vessels in the fleet, Howard assumed Drake had somehow managed to outsail him and he therefore headed for the light.
When dawn broke, Howard discovered to his consternation that the light he had followed belonged not to Revenge but to a Spanish galleon and that he was now about a gunshot away from the rear of the Spanish crescent, with his own ships several miles away to windward. Howard rapidly hauled round and beat a hasty retreat.
The mystery of the disappearing Revenge began to resolve itself during the course of the day. First, Captain John Fisher of the 200-ton armed merchantman Margaret and John, from London, appeared alongside Ark Royal. Fisher told Howard that he had come across the Rosario the previous evening, accompanied by a galleon, a galleasse and a pinnace, all three of which sheared off when they saw the Margaret and John approaching.
The Rosario was as quiet as a grave, with no lights and no sails hoisted. Although Fisher sent a boat alongside, rough seas and the Rosario’s sheer bulk precluded boarding. Only when Fisher ordered some muskets to be fired did the Spaniards show any signs of life: ‘Presently they gave us two great shot whereupon we let fire with our broadside through her doing her some hurt. After this we cast about our ship and kept close by the Spaniard until midnight, sometime hearing a voice in Spanish calling us.’
At about midnight, Fisher said he saw the Ark Royal in the moonlight and ‘fearing his Lordship’s displeasure if we should stay behind the fleet, we made all the sail we could and followed my Lord to overtake him, leaving the Rosario to her own devices.’
As Fisher requested permission to go back and take his prize, a pinnace arrived alongside Ark Royal with a messenger from Drake. There was to be no humble apology to his Admiral from the scourge of the Spanish empire. Drake’s explanation for his behaviour the previous night was, if nothing else, imaginative. Soon after midnight, he claimed, he saw unfamiliar sails passing to seaward and he assumed they must be Spanish ships slipping back down the Channel in order to get behind the English fleet. He therefore set off to intercept the interlopers, accompanied by the Roebuck and two pinnaces. Since he did not want the whole fleet to follow him, he extinguished the lantern in the Revenge’s stern.
When he caught up with the strange ships, he discovered that they were German merchantmen, so he called off the chase. While striving to catch up with the English fleet (who were depending upon him as a guide), he came upon a large enemy ship which proved, on closer inspection, to be the Rosario. Hailing the ship, Drake demanded her surrender, saying he was not ‘at leisure to make any long parley’. In view of the fact that the Rosario had 300 men on board as well as forty-six guns, this was a confident line to take. Perhaps impressed by his manner, and not considering it a dishonour to submit to El Draque himself, Don Pedro de Valdés agreed to surrender.
The Rosario was sent into Tor Bay under captain Whiddon, while Valdés and forty officers and gentlemen were taken on board Revenge.
Despite the tension and disappointment of their capture, the Spaniards may also have felt a sense of relief that they were no longer wallowing helplessly and ignominiously in the Channel, and that they had not been sunk. There is likely to have been a restrained mutual respect between the officers of the two great seafaring nations, which on the English side included the captain of the Revenge, Lieutenant Jonas Bodenham; the purser, Martin Jeffrey; and the boatswain, Richard Derrick. Nicholas Oaseley, not a regular member of the ship’s complement but a merchant who had been one of Sir Francis Walsingham’s agents in Spain, was also present.
Oaseley engaged Don Pedro in conversation and discovered that the Spanish captain, annoyed no doubt that he had been abandoned by his countrymen, was prepared to talk in some detail about Spanish plans. Don Pedro was to remain a gentleman prisoner of Drake’s until he was ransomed for £3,000 some years later.
It would not have taken Howard very long to sift the fact and the fiction from Drake’s tale. No other English ships in the fleet had seen Drake’s mystery sails to seaward and in any case it was not up to Drake to decide to disregard his orders so as to set off on a wild goose chase. If he considered there really had been a danger to the fleet he could have dispatched another ship to investigate or sent a pinnace to inform the Admiral.
It seems therefore that in a moment of dire national peril, Francis Drake had dumped the English fleet, the nation’s only real source of protection, in mid-Channel, in order to sail away after some rich financial pickings. Not only that, he had also placed the Lord High Admiral along with three capital ships in extreme danger, for it would have been highly possible for the Spaniards to have sent galleasses and galleons out from the rear of the Armada to intercept the English ships as Howard sailed unwittingly towards its mortal embrace. If Howard had been unable to make the clean escape that he did, it is unlikely that he would have let Drake off so lightly.
Drake’s detour in pursuit of the Spanish galleon Rosario at the height of the battle against the Armada is an immortal reminder of this conflict of loyalties. As it was, the only censure Drake had to face was from those captains, such as Frobisher, who envied him his prize:
He hath done good service indede, for he took don Pedro, for after he had seen her [the Rosario] in the evening, that she had spent her masts, then lyke a cowarde, he kept by her all nyght, because he would have the spoyle. He thinketh to cossen us of our shares of XC thousande duckatts, but we will have our shares, or I will make hym spend the best blood in hys belly, for he hath had enowgh of these cossenyng cheats already.
Martin Frobisher, partly one would guess because he had an eye on the booty himself, was particularly astringent about this episode. It seems it was not only for Francis Drake that duty was secondary to booty.
On Monday, 22 July, Medina Sidonia reorganized his formation, maintaining the crescent formation which had proved an effective defence, but strengthening the rearguard in order to provide an added deterrent to English attacks.
Having been becalmed on Monday night, the two fleets were stirred into action on the Tuesday morning by a brisk north-east wind, which gave Medina Sidonia the weather gauge. Howard attempted to lead his ships, close-hauled, towards the north-west, in order to round the landward tip of the crescent and gain the weather gauge but Medina Sidonia intercepted him and forced him to retrace his steps. This time he tried to get round the seaward tip of the crescent.
There was a fierce battle as Howard’s ship crossed the reinforced rearguard of the Armada, with the Ark Royal, Elizabeth Jones, Leicester, Golden Lion, Victory, Mary Rose, Dreadnought and Swallow forming a kind of ragged line-ahead formation, and each discharging a broadside as they passed the San Martín before turning and coming back for a second pass. Almost unwittingly they had performed the ‘line of battle’ tactic which was to be a staple of naval tactics for centuries to come.
The most stunning and original tactic was the initial use by the English of what the Spaniards called an attack en ala, that is, line ahead … Although they retained the initiative throughout this period, and frustrated any intention which Medina Sidonia may have had to enter the Solent, the English again failed to inflict any significant damage on the Spanish ships, or to disrupt their formation.3
Frobisher meanwhile had been forced to anchor near Portland Bill. Having tried unsuccessfully to cut the Spaniards off, he found himself at the mercy of unpredictable inshore tides and currents. Seeing his plight, the Spanish set upon him with four galleases and galleons to back them up. Before the highly manoeuvrable galleases could do any damage, however, Triumph raked them with gunfire, which sent them limping off for shelter.
In the afternoon, Revenge and the other ships under Drake’s command launched a surprise attack on the seaward edge of the crescent, Drake having correctly judged the change in the wind. The attack may have caught the Spaniards off their guard but it still failed to make a serious impression on the Armada.
On Wednesday, 24 July, Revenge was back in the thick of the action. The Spanish 650-ton urca Gran Grifón began to lag behind the rest of the fleet and, like a young lion upon a straggling ox, Revenge was upon her. Drake’s attack on the Gran Grifón was merciless. First he fired a broadside into her, then went ahead and turned round for another broadside. After this he crossed the Grifón’s stern and raked her upper deck with musket shot. By this time Recalde had ordered reinforcements to come to the Gran Grifón’s aid, while more English ships also appeared. Soon there was a general engagement with the Spanish right wing, during which Gran Grifón, no longer fit to sail on her own, was towed by a gallease back to the main body of ships while other galleases engaged Revenge.
Medina Sidonia soon appeared in the San Martín, along with some other ships, but the English once again refused to become embroiled in a general engagement and withdrew to long-culverin range.
In the afternoon, both fleets were becalmed off the Needles, with a throng of spectators lining the cliffs of the Isle of Wight, as if at some giant theatre.
The free-lance activities of Revenge, whether discreditable as with the Rosario, or laudable, as with the Gran Grifón, underlined the lack of central control in the English fleet. Howard, for example, having at one point chased his second-in-command’s spectre fruitlessly through the night, was also unaware that Revenge had gone into action against Gran Grifón and precipitated what could have developed into a major engagement.
Fortunately for England, rather than indulging in squabbles over control, it was agreed among the captains at the council of war that the fleet should be divided into four squadrons, each of about twenty-five ships, led by Frobisher in the Triumph, Lord Howard in the Ark Royal, Hawkins in the Victory and Drake in the Revenge.
Under pressure of circumstances, the commanders of the Navy Royal had quickly established a system that was to prove a major advance in naval tactics.
On this Wednesday, small craft plied to and from port to the Navy Royal ships, carrying round shot, powder, victuals and fresh water. They also brought young blood in the shape of the sons of noblemen who yearned to share in the hour of glory.
The gateway to England now seemed to be the Solent and in order to pre-empt a Spanish attempt in this direction, Howard planned to deploy Frobisher’s squadron forward to the landward side of the Armada.
As dawn broke on Thursday the 25th, the Armada’s commanders seemed to have read Howard’s mind and they proceeded up the Channel keeping as close inshore as possible. The English crowded behind, looking for an opportunity to overtake on the inside and block the entrance to the Solent.
The Santa Ana and San Luís struggled astern of the Armada and were engaged by Hawkins and Hood. Medina Sidonia in the San Martín, along with some other ships, came back to help them and the San Martín was in turn attacked by Frobisher in the Triumph. A change in the wind left Triumph cut off in the lee of the Armada and the Spaniards duly bore down on her like hounds on a stag. Fortunately the wind changed again just in time and Triumph skipped away.
Later in the morning, Drake and Hawkins, positioned out to seaward, attacked the right wing of the Armada, concentrating on the Portuguese galleon Sâo Mateus and the 52-gun Florencia. Revenge and her companions sent the two Spanish warships staggering back into the ranks of the supply ships they were supposed to protect. This action, along with the movements of wind and tide, contributed to manoeuvring the Armada into a position beyond the entrance to the Solent. This was a success in itself, but there seems to have been more to the intentions of Drake and Hawkins than this: they intended to drive the Spanish ships on to the dangerous shoals and rocks of the Owers Bank, stretching out from Selsey Bill.
As indicated in Medina Sidonia’s Relation, which he enclosed in a letter to the King, Medina Sidonia recognized the danger in time: ‘The Duke seeing that in the proposed assault the advantage was no longer with us, and that we were now near the Isle of Wight, discharged a piece and proceeded on his course, the rest of the Armada following in very good order, the enemy remaining a long way astern.’ The decorous tone of this account disguises what was most likely a sense of panic as the ships came nearer to the shoals and as they became aware of the real significance of the opportunity that had just been lost. The Spanish Armada had failed to penetrate the wooden walls of England and was now entirely dependent for the success of its mission on Parma being at the right place at the right time for transport across the Channel.
It was not surprising, therefore, as the next two days, Friday and Saturday, passed without incident, that the English became more and more celebratory or that by the end of Friday, Hawkins, Frobisher, Lord Thomas Howard and Lord Edmund Sheffield had all been knighted.
By Saturday the 27th, the Armada had been forced to lope off to Calais and, though undefeated and still almost as formidable as it was when it was first sighted of Land’s End, it had suffered a moral defeat. In order to raise morale, things would now need to work smoothly with Parma. He must embark his army and the walls of England must then be staved in as the Armada sailed towards its inevitable invincible destiny.
Once again, the English had other plans. Rather than rest on their laurels for even one night, they set about harassing the anchored Spanish fleet almost as soon as they arrived off Calais on Sunday night. The results were to be beyond their wildest expectations.
Medina Sidonia had already received bad news from Parma. The Duke’s army was nowhere near ready and it could be up to a fortnight before it was fully assembled. Medina Sidonia must have looked on with increased foreboding as Lord Henry Seymour’s squadron joined the main English force from the north.
The Spanish had every reason for trepidation. Federigo Gianibelli, designer of a particularly fiendish variety of exploding fireship, known to the Spaniards as a máquina de minas, was known to be in England – the anchored Armada presented the perfect target for such a device.
Sure enough, without even bothering to send for fireships from home, the English torched eight ships from their fleet and sent them down on the tide with loaded guns, towards the Spanish ships. The tide was flowing at nearly 3 knots, backed up by an extra three quarters of a knot of North Sea current. The distance to be covered was about a mile and a half. The Spaniards therefore had about thirty minutes in which to take evasive action.
Although the pinnaces sent out to windward by Medina Sidonia managed to tow two fireships clear, the remainder continued to bear down on the Spaniards like the hounds of hell. The flames set off guns and there were shattering detonations. Calais had become Gehenna.
Two [fireships] were successfully intercepted and towed aside, but the remaining six got through, and it was at that point that the hitherto excellent discipline of the Spanish fleet cracked. Only the flagship and four of its immediate neighbours successfully executed the planned manoeuvre and remained on station. The remainder cut their cables and scattered in panic, to the Admiral’s rage and chagrin.4
The Spaniards needed no further evidence that Gianibelli was upon them. With the flaming spectres bearing down, lighting up sky and sea, panic spread throughout the Armada. All of a sudden, the indomitable formation that had been held all the way up the Channel, defying English attempts to penetrate it, had been broken.
In the light of dawn, Revenge and the rest of the English fleet gave chase. Revenge herself came within a hundred yards of the San Martín and fired her bow guns at her before turning to fire a broadside that raked the upper deck. Then she sailed out of range, but not without receiving some damage in return.
One Spanish account relates that Revenge was ‘pierced through by cannon balls of all sizes above forty times’ and that Drake’s ‘very cabeen was twise shot thorow’. Drake himself used to tell the story of how ‘the bedde of a certain gentleman lying weary thereupon was taken quite from under him with the force of a bullet.’ The breathless exultation of the English can be sensed in another letter written by Drake from Revenge:
Drake to Walsingham
July 29, 1588
Right Honourable:-This bearer came aboard the ship I was in in a wonderful good time, and brought with him as good knowledge as we could wish. His carefulness therein is worthy recompense, for that God hath given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward as I hope in God the Prince of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia shall not shake hands this few days; and whensoever they shall meet, I believe neither of them will greatly rejoice of this day’s service. The town of Calais hath seen some part thereof, whose Mayor her Majesty is beholden unto.
Business commands me to end. God bless her Majesty, our gracious Sovereign, and give us all grace to live in His fear. I assure your Honour this day’s service hath much appalled the enemy, and no doubt but encouraged our army.
From aboard her Majesty’s good ship the Revenge, this 29th of July, 1588.
Your Honour’s most ready to be commanded,
FRA. Drake
There must be great care taken to send us munition and victual withersoever the enemy goeth.
Yours,
Fra. Drake5
Howard pursued the remains of the Spanish Armada as far as Newcastle before turning back, leaving the Spaniards to continue on that agonizing voyage round the top of Scotland and down the Irish coast, losing no less than sixty ships on the way. Medina Sidonia returned to Spain a broken man, both physically and morally, his closed litter being pelted with stones on the way back to his home near Cadiz.
The English commanders, by contrast, were fêted but, although God had appeared to indicate whose side He was on, a virulent disease sweeping through the English fleet seriously marred the celebrations and seemed to suggest that Divine punishments were not the monopoly of the other side.
Despite the apparent success of the campaign against the Armada, which had been left to break itself to pieces on the rocks of the British Isles, revenge was still in the minds of the English sea captains. The Armada had been shepherded away from the English coast by dint of masterly English seamanship, but the captains of the Navy Royal could not claim to have defeated it entirely through tactical genius or firepower. The elements had played a large part.
Drake himself seemed to acknowledge this sense of anticlimax when he stated rather lamely in a letter to Lord Howard:
August 11, 1588
Most Honourable,
The sudden sending for of my very good, my Lord Admiral, hath caused me to scribble these few lines, first, most humbly beseeching your honour to deliver this letter unto her Majesty as a testification of my Lord Admiral’s most honourable usage of me in this action, where it hath pleased his good Lordship to accept of that which I have sometimes spoken, and commanded that little service which I was able to deserve – wherein if I have not performed as much as was looked for, yet I persuade myself his good Lordship will confess I have been dutiful.
Your Honour’s faithfully
to be commanded,
Fra: Drake6
Perhaps in order to help reinstate his dashing and offensive reputation, together with Sir John Norreys, Drake presented the Queen in September with a plan for a counter-attack against Lisbon. Drake had chosen his partner well, for Norreys had built a formidable reputation as a military commander against the Duke of Parma, and he had badly dented the aura of invincibility maintained at that time by Spanish military arms. He had been brought back to serve as Leicester’s chief of staff during the Armada invasion scare.
As was to be expected, the expedition was not all about Queen and country. Drake and Norreys planned to place the Portuguese pretender Dom Antonio on the Portuguese throne and thereafter make the most of the access to the lucrative trade to the Far East that had been opened up by the Portuguese.
The plan was to finance the expedition through Royal funds and private venture. The City of London raised £10,000, topped up by £5,000 from Drake. The Queen provided £20,000 along with six naval vessels, two pinnaces, a siege train, arms and armour and three months’ victuals. Norreys managed to raise from the States-General of Holland 600 English cavalry, thirteen companies of English foot soldiers and ten companies of Walloons. When the Queen found herself in too deep for comfort, Parliament voted extra funds.
The fleet sailed in March 1589 and Drake even managed to persuade sixty Dutch flyboats that they met on the way to join in. When he pulled in to Plymouth, more ships joined, along with a host of young gentlemen volunteers seeking glory and a fortune. The final tally was eight Queen’s ships, seventy-seven armed merchantmen and the sixty Dutch flyboats. There were about 3,000 English and 900 Dutch sailors, along with 11,000 soldiers. The soldiers were formed into 115 companies in fifteen regiments.
The ships were organized in five squadrons, each composed of about fifteen English merchantmen and fifteen Dutch flyboats, each commanded by a ‘Colonel of the Squadron’. Drake flew his flag in the Revenge. His officers included Lieutenant Thomas Drake, Corporal Yonge, Captain of the Watch Webbe and Chief Master Thomas West. The other colonels of squadrons were: Sir John Norreys in the Nonpareil; Vice Admiral Thomas Fenner in the Dreadnought; Sir Roger Williams in the Swiftsure; and Sir Edward Norreys in the Foresight. Captain William Fenner in the Aid had a roving duty to ensure that ‘all the squadrons observe their prescribed orders’. The pinnaces formed a separate light division under a ‘Master of the Discoveries’, the equivalent of a Chief Intelligence Officer, with the rank of ‘Lieutenant-Colonel of the Pinnaces’.
After a delay of a fortnight due to contrary winds, which caused further expense for the Queen, the fleet sailed on 18 April 1589. They were short of food, though Drake pinned some hope on a good harvest in Spain and Portugal. He wrote to the Government:
By the end of the month, harvest will begin both in Spain and Portugal, which doth put us in good hope of relief, yet twenty thousand persons are not satisfied with small means. Upon my credit with your lordship there never was army in better order than this, nor greater hope of good, if God grant relief of victual, which I distrust not. The might of God is as great as Himself.7
His orders were that: ‘Before you shall attempt either Portugal or the Azores, our express pleasure and commandment is that you distress the ships of war in Guipuzcoa, Biscay and Galicia.’8
Drake arrived in Corunna Bay, six days after leaving Plymouth. Although, as the port of embarkation of the Armada, Corunna was a good place to exact revenge, the presence of the San Juan and two galleys provided him with little opportunity. He turned his attention, therefore, to the town itself, with boat parties being sent to seize landing points on the beaches across the bay from the town, while Sir John Norreys led an expedition to secure the approaches to the town itself.
At midnight an attack on the lower town was launched, 500 of its defenders were killed and the military commander, Don Juan de Luma, was captured.
The English scoured the countryside around for food and then got drunk on the contents of a wine store. The attack on the higher town was unsuccessful and what had begun as an incisive raid began to look like a time-wasting distraction. The English set light to the lower town and then set sail with their loot, including 3,000 pikes and fifty bronze cannon.
Santander was another potential target, 350 miles to the east, with about forty Armada ships, but it was heavily fortified and the assault would involve running the gauntlet up a narrow channel overlooked by guns.
On 9 May 1589, the fleet sailed to rendezvous at the Berlengas arquipelago, some 50 miles north of Lisbon, though some ships were deterred by a strong westerly wind. On the way, Drake was met by the Earl of Essex, sailing in Swiftsure, and Sir Roger Williams, accompanied by six other ships. Whether or not Drake welcomed the arrival of the Queen’s current favourite is not clear but, in any case, his main focus of attention was now on the capture of Lisbon.
Sailing from the Berlengas, the English landed at the port of Peniche, a town situated on a peninsula with a perimeter of about 10 kilometres. About 100 kilometres to the north was Figueira da Foz, where 219 years later the Duke of Wellington would land a British army to fight and eventually defeat the French occupying forces.
The extensive beaches of Peniche, though much appreciated today by surfers and body boarders, did not hold the same attraction for the English sailors and soldiers in the flotilla of boats sent ashore to seize the town. One boat was overturned in the breakers and its twenty-five occupants drowned, though the remainder of the boats succeeded in making a landing. The local resistance was fierce but brief and the castle was soon taken. The full army was then landed under Norreys, Essex and Dom Antonio and, after taking the salute, Drake sailed down to the mouth of the Tagus to await events.
Cooped up in their boats, soldiers and sailors were falling to a fever that was ominously similar to the one that had swept the English fleet after the defeat of the Armada. Sir Thomas Fenner wrote to Walsingham that of his ship’s company of 300 on the Dreadnought, fourteen had died and only eighteen were fit for work.
The expedition was also plagued with ill discipline. The Dutch shippers complained about the behaviour of the soldiers on board the flyboats, while Norreys’ force marching from the north seemed somewhat unconvincing, without even a siege train and only a handful of cavalry. Their numbers were further depleted by disease and desertion. Although the Spanish forces withdrew, without the expected popular uprising to support the pretender, Norreys felt he had little choice but to withdraw.
The expedition was not without the occasional stroke of good luck. They captured eighty French and Hanseatic merchant ships en route from the Baltic with grain and naval stores, although fair fortune seemed mostly to be sailing elsewhere. The Dutch flyboat captains were not long in recognizing which way the wind was blowing and they set off for La Rochelle. The Queen still refused to supply a siege train and, to add injury to insult, twenty-five Spanish galleys sailed out from the mouth of the Tagus and succeeded in capturing three of the smaller English ships.
Although he called off a Channel raid on the Azores, despite all the setbacks, Drake was able to summon enough vigour to launch an attack on Vigo. Having occupied and burned the town, a violent storm put paid to any second thoughts about the Azores and, by the time she reached Plymouth Sound, Revenge was barely afloat.
If the attack on Lisbon was supposed to consolidate the victory over the Armada, it failed. Its objectives had not been achieved, English ships had been captured and thousands of English seamen had been lost either through conflict or disease – the casualty rate was over 40 per cent. When the soldiers were disbanded with five shillings apiece, though they were allowed to keep their arms, 500 made their way to London where the Lord Mayor had to call out the train bands to keep order.
Despite all this, the perception abroad was not entirely negative. The opinion of the Venetian ambassador was that the King of Spain’s prestige had been damaged further by ‘a woman, mistress of only half an island, with the help of a common soldier and a corsair’. The presence of the English fleet had repercussions, leading even to a mutiny in Parma’s army when pay was withheld as a result of the delays to the Spanish treasure fleet.
The fact that Drake did not receive another command until the West Indies expedition of 1595, however, told its own story. During this period 236 English ships sailed out on various expeditions, taking over 300 prizes, while Drake did good works in his home town of Plymouth, strengthening the port, building mills and improving the water supply. He was not to sail in Revenge again, but that ship was soon to achieve immortality under a different master.