The Spanish Armada (28 page)
Read The Spanish Armada Online
Authors: Robert Hutchinson
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Great Britain, #Military, #Naval, #General
The Armada moved slowly forward, safely skirting the hazardous Owers reef six miles (10.16 km) south-east of Selsey Bill. Another fifty had been killed and seventy wounded in
the day’s fighting. The
official Spanish casualty list for the three actions since they entered the English Channel totalled 167 dead and 241 wounded. This must be a
dramatic understatement, given the losses when the
San Salvador
blew up, and may have been driven not only by the desire to put the best gloss on events, but more cynically, to allow
commanders to claim the pay of those killed but not yet reported dead. The practice was prevalent in both fleets, as Burghley noted grimly: ‘The men are dead but not the pay.’ On the
English side, Thomas Fenner, captain of the
Nonpareil
also played down his fleet’s losses, writing to Walsingham:
God has mightily protected her majesty’s forces with the least losses that ever have been heard of, being in the compass of so great volleys of shot, both great and
small.
I verily believe there is not three score men lost of her majesty’s forces.
God make us all majesty’s good subjects to render hearty praise and thanks to the Lord of Lords therefore.
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The fighting had been watched anxiously from the cliffs as the Wight’s small force of defenders prepared to repel any landing. Its governor, Sir George Carey, had only
three thousand men to protect the strategically important island and he must have worried what the day would bring. He sent his eye-witness account to London, which echoed others’ earlier
impressions of the intensity of the fighting:
This morning began a great fight betwixt both fleets south of this island six leagues
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which continued from five of the
clock until ten with so great an expense of powder and bullet that during the said time the shot continued so thick together that it might have been judged a skirmish with small shot on land
than a fight with great shot on sea in which conflict, thanks be to God, there has been [only] two of our men hurt.
The news in the fleet [is] that my Lord Harry Seymour is hardly laid unto by the Dunkirkers and that Scilly is taken by the French or Spanish.
(Neither of these rumours was true: Seymour had not been attacked by Spanish forces based in Dunkirk and the Scilly Islands had not
been captured.) The
two embattled fleets had sailed out of sight by three that afternoon.
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Both sides had fired a further four thousand rounds during the day’s fighting and Howard, like his enemy, was still short of gunpowder and shot.
For as much as our powder and shot was well wasted [used], the lord admiral thought it was not good in policy to assail them any more until their coming near unto Dover,
where he should find the fleet under . . . Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Wynter, whereby our fleet should be much strengthened and in the meantime, better store of munition might be
provided from the shore.
Walsingham, in response, ordered ‘twenty-three last [to be] sent unto him with a proportion of bullet accordingly’.
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That day the Privy Council also wrote to Howard promising more musketeers:
Her highness, being very careful that your lordship be supplied with all the provisions that may be had, has [ordered] that in the county of Kent, a good number of the best
and choicest shot of the trained bands . . . should be forthwith sent to the seaside . . . that they may be brought to you to double man the ships that are both with your lordship and the Lord
Henry Seymour.
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A battle at close quarters was now a priority in Howard’s tactical plan.
Further east in the Channel, Seymour was agitated about the weakness of his squadron. He told the Privy Council: ‘I have besides to signify to your Lordships that our fleet being from the
first promised to be seventy-eight sail, there was never yet when the same was [at] most thirty-six and now we have not above twenty.’ Of these, just eight were queen’s ships, apart
from pinnaces. ‘I am driven to write this much because in my former letters, your lordships, having many matters, do forget them.’
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Eight more armed merchantmen, hired in London, were sent ‘into the narrow seas’ under the command of Nicholas Gorges:
Susan Anne Parnell, Solomon, George Bonaventure, Anne Frances,
Vineyard, Violet, Samuel
and
Jane Bonaventure.
Seymour was right to be concerned; Sir Edward Norris reported
from Ostend that Parma ‘is looked for at Dunkirk now this full moon to see the shipping and the heights
of the water. All the cavalry that they can possibly make do march towards Dunkirk. The voyage [to] England now is spoken more assuredly than ever.’
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In London, the incarcerated Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, in his room in the Tower, allegedly secretly celebrated Masses for the success of the Armada. Information about these services came
from John Snowden, the other Englishman captured in the
Rosario
, who sought to save himself from a horrible traitor’s death on the Tyburn scaffold. He filched a missal and sent it to
Walsingham as proof of his changed loyalties. William Bennet, the old priest who purportedly said the Masses, was moved to another gaol, the Counter in Wood Street (one of the sheriff’s
prisons in the City of London), and questioned there. His confession, ‘written with his own hand’ but hardly freely given, was damning:
The Earl of Arundel [had] said: ‘Let us pray now, for we have more need to pray now than at any time. If it pleases God, the Catholic faith shall flourish. Now is the
time at hand of our delivery.’
Moreover, the earl said that he would make me dean [of St Paul’s Cathedral] if the Catholic enterprise took hold.
I call to mind that when the said earl [heard] of the discovery of the Spanish fleet, he desired me in the presence of Sir Thomas Gerard
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to
say Mass of the Holy Ghost that it would please God to send them good success.
So I said Mass to his lordship and he did help me say the same. At which Mass, Sir Thomas Gerard and Hammond,
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servant unto the earl, were
present.
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A confession was also extracted from Gerard who admitted:
[the earl] told us that the Spanish fleet was seen in the narrow seas, like unto a huge forest [of masts] and our fleet was not able to deal with them . . .
The queen and the council were greatly afraid of their approach and then [he] sorrowfully said: ‘God save my brother Thomas [who had volunteered to serve in the English fleet] . . .
and I hope,’ said the earl, ‘ere long . . . to say Mass openly and to see the Catholic faith flourish again.’
Arundel had also asked the other priests imprisoned in the Tower to pray ‘for the advance of the Catholic enterprise all the twenty-four hours of
the day’.
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When the earl was questioned on these allegations, Lord Hunsdon, one of his interrogators, was enraged by his calmness and composure, calling him a ‘beast and traitor and said rather than
he should not be hanged within four days, that he himself would hang him’. Arundel’s impeachment for high treason was unavoidable.
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Not all members of the Catholic nobility were so militant in their faith. A prominent papist, the sixty-two-year-old Anthony Browne, First Viscount Montague, had been thrown off the Privy
Council on Elizabeth’s accession and removed as lieutenant of Sussex in 1585 because of the invasion threat. Now one of his brothers was serving with the Armada. But on 2 August, Browne,
having heard of the firing of the beacon on Portsdown Hill above Portsmouth, volunteered himself and his retainers in Elizabeth’s defence, complaining that he ‘had not received letters
as others have done for attendance of her majesty’s person’.
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His willingness to serve against the Spanish was an enormous propaganda
coup for the English government.
Back in the Channel, Friday 5 August, coasters replenished Howard with munitions, as both fleets lay becalmed off the Sussex coast and undertook emergency repairs. That evening, as the wind
freshened, the lord admiral summoned another council of war and it was decided not to fight the Armada again until they reached the Dover Straits. Howard took advantage of the occasion to exercise
his prerogative as a commander and knighted Hawkins, Frobisher, Lord Thomas Howard, Lord Sheffield and the eighty-year-old captain of
Dreadnought,
George Beeston.
The wind continued to increase during the night and, with more speed, the Armada sighted the French coast at ten o’clock that Saturday morning. Medina Sidonia’s pilots had cautioned
him to anchor in the Calais Roads if he did not want to be swept into the North Sea by the strong currents. Accordingly, at about four o’clock that afternoon, the Spanish fleet dropped anchor
4 miles (6.44 km) off the French port of Calais and 24 miles (38.62 km) along the coast from Parma’s nearest embarkation port of Dunkirk. Howard’s shadowing English fleet anchored in
Whitsand Bay, just outside cannon
range, and Seymour’s thirty-five ships arrived a few hours later. To leeward lay shallow waters full of sandbanks, known as the
‘banks of Flanders’, which had been made still more perilous by the Dutch deliberately removing the buoys and navigation marks.
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Although the French were officially neutral, boats were seen going back and forth between the
San Martin
and Calais castle, headquarters of the town’s governor, de Gourdan. He had
earlier lost a leg fighting the English so it was no surprise that Medina Sidonia’s envoy, a Captain Heredia, returned with ‘friendly assurances and promises of service’. The
captain-general wrote to Parma, announcing his arrival off Calais but not hiding his exasperation at the continuing silence from Flanders.
I have constantly written . . . giving you information as to my whereabouts with the Armada and not only have I received no reply to my letters but no acknowledgement of
their receipt . . .
I am extremely anxious at this as [you] may imagine and to free myself of the doubt as to any of the messengers have reached you safely, I am now despatching this flyboat.
The enemy remained on his flank and was ‘able to bombard me, whilst I am not in a position to do him much harm’. Forty or fifty small ships from Parma’s fleet
were needed to augment the Armada’s defences in such shallow waters. When he finally sailed ‘we can go together and take some port where this Armada may enter in
safety’.
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Reports of the Spanish fleet’s progress had not yet reached Flanders, judging by the reaction of the English negotiators at the Bourbourg peace talks. At three o’clock that
afternoon, the English delegation received news of the first engagement off Plymouth six days before. They promptly packed their baggage and departed after making a voluble protest.
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Parma, in ignorance of the news, initially believed this was merely a negotiating ploy. ‘My efforts to induce them to continue the negotiations,
notwithstanding the presence of the Armada, were unavailing,’ he told the king.
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Medina Sidonia at last received a reply from Parma at dawn the following day. Don Rodrigo Tello’s pinnace was fired upon by some of the Armada ships, who mistakenly believed it an English
vessel, but after showing its colours, it delivered its message, which had been
written three days before. Its contents must have stunned Medina Sidonia into dumbfounded
silence.
Parma was not ready to sail. He had not even embarked ‘a barrel of beer, still less a soldier’. He would not be able to join forces with the Armada until the following Friday, 12
August.
Worse, a subsequent message warned that embarkation could take fifteen days.
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The delays were spawned by Parma’s attempts to hoodwink the Dutch, who were watching his every movement. His troops were held back from the embarkation ports to fool them into believing
his plan was to invade Holland or Zeeland. To create uncertainty about his port of embarkation, the invasion fleet was split between Sluis, Dunkirk, Nieuport and Antwerp, where there were seventy
ships, including Parma’s flagship and a large oared galley, which had been built on site. Pioneers had excavated a new canal, ten yards (9.14 metres) wide, to take the flat-bottomed barges
from Sluis to Nieuport. One hundred and seventy-three barges were at Nieuport, together with seven armed merchantmen, which would join almost one hundred transport vessels at Dunkirk for the
crossing.
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Parma had 15,300 men waiting at Dunkirk and a further 5,000 at Nieuport, with other units moving towards the harbours.
In a dispatch to Philip, Parma said his boats were
in a proper condition for the task they have to effect, namely to take the men across, although we have not so many seamen as we ought to have . . .
The boats are so small that it is impossible to keep the troops on board for long. There is no room to turn round and they would certainly fall ill, rot and die.
The putting of the men on board of these low, small boats is done in a very short time and I am confident there will be no shortcoming in your majesty’s service.
It grieved him to learn of Medina Sidonia’s position ‘without a place of safety in case of necessity, whilst the winds that have prevailed for so long still
continue. The wind will prevent our boats coming out, even if the sea were clear of the enemy’s ships. But I trust in God that He will aid us in everything and allow us shortly to send your
majesty the good news we wish for.’
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The next day, Sunday 7 August, while fresh water and food were being loaded into his ships (and some of his crews seized the opportunity to desert), Medina Sidonia sent
his inspector general, Don Jorge Manrique, to Parma to explain his predicament. His current position was dangerous
