Under the Bloody Flag (43 page)

As the Armada sailed up the Channel it was shadowed, and occasionally harried by the English, who had the weather gauge. Remarkably it reached the coast of northern France almost intact. One of the few Spanish losses was the
Nuestra Señora del Rosario
, which was disabled and subsequently taken by Drake in an operation that has been endlessly discussed. Although Drake’s decision to abandon his post, in order to seize the Spanish vessel, endangered the formation of the English fleet, leaving the Lord Admiral in an exposed position, it was an opportunistic, almost reflex action, by a commander whose experience was rooted in plunder. Nor was Drake condemned for his behaviour. Although Frobisher angrily insisted on receiving a share of the prize from Drake, threatening to ‘make him spend the best blood in his belly’, his comments were the product of petty rivalry between two men of similar background over a division of booty.
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The arrival of the Armada off Calais exposed fatal flaws in the Spanish plan. While Parma’s troops were being assembled, the activities of Dutch men-of-war along the coast presented an unforeseen and potentially crippling hazard to their embarkation. Under Justin of Nassau, the Dutch force effectively locked in the Spanish army, preventing it from leaving Dunkirk or Nieuport. Seizing the advantage, the English used fire ships to disperse the Spanish fleet. During the only sustained conflict of the campaign, off Gravelines, the superior gunnery of the larger English vessels inflicted significant damage on the Spanish. According to William Winter, about 500 shots of various kinds were fired from his ship during the course of the day. This was a rate of fire power that the Spanish were unable to match, though it left many English vessels dangerously short of powder and shot. Howard reported afterwards that the English sank three enemy vessels, while another four were so leaky and damaged that they were forced ashore. In disarray the Armada was inexorably driven north by the weather. Howard ‘set on a brag countenance and gave them chase’, at least until the Spanish vessels cleared the east coast of England.
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The Armada campaign battered both sides to near exhaustion. At times improvised, English provisioning appeared to be close to breaking down. As Howard followed the Spanish fleet in the North Sea with his supply of powder and shot nearly spent, some members of his company were reportedly forced to eat beans and drink their own urine.
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Inadequate supplies of victuals and fresh water encouraged the outbreak of sickness and mortality which spread rapidly among men who had been at sea for a prolonged period, with little pay or fresh clothing. The casualties among the company of one vessel, the
Elizabeth
Jonas
, amounted to more than 200, contributing to a groundswell of discontent over pay and conditions. On 26 August Hawkins reprimanded Burghley for seeking to save money by the death or discharge of sick men. Shortly after Howard complained of the shortages in provisions, and warned that future recruitment to the navy would be affected if there was no improvement. Many of the Spanish suffered worse. Severely weakened and scattered by autumn gales, the Armada was forced to return to Spain around the dangerous coasts of Scotland and Ireland, where as many as twenty vessels were wrecked with the loss of thousands of men. In Ireland widespread reports indicate that some of the survivors were robbed and killed, often along the sea shore.
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The failure of the Armada, despite the survival of nearly two-thirds of the shipping sent against England, was profoundly damaging to Spanish morale. As the scale of the failure became more apparent in England, relief and thanksgiving gave way to optimism and commemoration which were subsequently translated into myth and memory. The publication of Hakluyt’s
Principal
Navigations
in 1589, with its epic celebration of English maritime enterprise, appeared to capture the changing mood, although its attempt to revive interest in North American colonization was short lived. In any case the sea war continued to present more pressing, and potentially profitable opportunities.

In a bold attempt to exploit the defeat of the Armada, the Queen authorized a large-scale expedition against Spain under the command of Drake and Sir John Norris. Although one of its key aims was to complete the destruction of the Armada, the survivors of which were huddled in Santander and other harbours in the Bay of Biscay, following discussions between the leaders and Don Antonio a more radical and comprehensive scheme emerged. This included a plan to restore the Portuguese pretender with possible assistance from the King of Morocco, followed by an attempt to intercept the Indies fleet. In order to promote the expedition, in October 1588 Don Antonio offered Burghley the tempting prospect of establishing the East Indies trade in England. It was left to a group of London clergymen to affirm the legitimacy of Protestant support for the restoration of a Catholic ruler, following a disputation during November, but only as a means of weakening the ‘capital enemy’ of Spain.
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Against this shifting background the instructions for Norris and Drake, drawn up in February 1589, emphasized two purposes, which involved the destruction of Spanish ships in Santander and neighbouring ports and the seizure of the Indies fleet at the Azores. The restoration of Don Antonio was to proceed only after the leaders were satisfied that he would be supported by the Portuguese people. A council of experienced soldiers from the Netherlands, including Sir Roger Williams and Sir Edward Norris, and maritime adventurers, such as Thomas and William Fenner, was appointed to assist the leaders.
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The expedition represented a substantial investment in the business of war. Despite Burghley’s concern at its mounting costs, a force of about 100 ships, manned with more than 20,000 seamen and soldiers, some of whom were withdrawn from the Netherlands against Dutch protests, was assembled during 1589. The Queen contributed seven of the largest vessels. The rest of the shipping was owned by a diverse range of private adventurers, including Drake, his associates and supporters at court, and a growing number of merchants and shipowners who were acquiring a prominent role in the war of reprisals against Spain, such as Thomas Cordell and John Watts. The mobilization of such an impressive strike force seemed to demonstrate widespread support for offensive and potentially profitable action at sea, but it was based on confusing goals and high expectations of success. Such was the appeal of honour, profit and service that the Earl of Essex, a penurious, but leading representative of a younger generation of courtiers and Protestant champions, risked the Queen’s anger by volunteering to accompany Drake and Norris with his friends, followers and kinsmen.
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The expedition failed to accomplish any of its goals, raising questions about command and leadership, and demonstrating the difficulties of organizing the sea war when strategic objectives were confused with financial ambitions. Before departing from Plymouth, during April 1589, Drake and Norris informed the council of their intention to sail for the coast of northern Spain, following the receipt of information that 200 vessels of varied nationality had lately arrived with supplies for the enemy, effectively setting aside one of their key goals. By 24 April the expedition had reached Corunna. The English captured the lower town and wasted the surrounding countryside. The inhabitants set fire to a Portuguese galleon which had served in the Armada, while Drake seized several ships in the harbour. Unable to take the upper town, the English withdrew and sailed for the coast of Portugal, neglecting the opportunity of destroying about half of the survivors of the Armada which were harboured in Santander. On hearing news of the action at Corunna, the Queen caustically commented on the negligence of Norris and Drake in failing to perform what they had promised, preferring instead to raid ‘places more for profit than for service’.
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As the expedition sailed south for Lisbon the extreme heat took a heavy toll among the soldiers. Although the raiders met with little initial resistance, they were not welcomed as liberators by the Portuguese. Indeed, Sir Roger Williams complained that they did more harm than good. Soldiers and sailors were demoralized by the outbreak of disease, indecision among the leaders and a lack of supplies from England. Drake admitted that a ‘little comfortable dew from heaven, some crowns or some reasonable booty’, were needed to revitalize the company.
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While the expedition seized more than sixty vessels in the harbour, laden with corn and other provisions, it was unable to take Lisbon, which had been forewarned and reinforced as a result of the raid on Corunna. After a week of indecisive skirmishing ashore, Norris and Drake withdrew, intending to sail for the Azores, but the spread of sickness and contrary winds forced them back to England.

It was a costly and damaging failure, particularly for the Queen who had invested £49,000 in the expedition. It provoked bitter recriminations and fuelled debate over the character and direction of the sea war. Among the explanations offered for the failure of the venture, there was a tendency to use the opportunistic attack on Corunna as an excuse, though at least one report also drew attention to a lack of counsel and consultation. Anthony Wingfield’s discourse on the voyage indicates that the expedition went ahead despite misgivings and opposition in some quarters. Nonetheless, Wingfield was convinced that seaborne expeditions remained the best way to bring Spain to its knees, while forcing the enemy on the defensive, in order ‘to free ourselves from the war at our own walls’.
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Neither Drake nor Norris escaped censure for their conduct during the voyage. In October 1589 both men were charged by the council with failing to carry out their instructions. The expedition damaged the reputation of Drake, whose career in royal service seemed to be over. Above all, however, its failure exposed the underlying tension within the coalition of interests between the state and private enterprise, and the danger, as Elizabeth recognized, of strategic objectives being subverted in favour of spoil and profit.

The early years of the Anglo-Spanish War thus provided a real challenge for the English organization of the conflict at sea. Maritime and naval resources were rapidly mobilized and energetically deployed, but with mixed results. In particular there was little evidence that a conflict on this scale would be cheap or, as yet, capable of paying for itself. While the war generated strategic ideas and initiatives, they were overshadowed by the failure of the expedition of 1589. The poor success of squadrons despatched to the coast of Spain and the Azores during 1590 and 1591, in search of the Spanish silver fleet, also raised doubts about the value of offensive action at sea. By the early 1590s, moreover, the regime was faced with the alarming prospect of the land war spreading into northern France.
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In these circumstances the Queen’s enthusiasm for further large-scale seaborne expeditions cooled, leaving the maritime conflict in the hands of private adventurers who were ostensibly engaged in legitimate reprisals against the Spanish monarchy.

Reprisals and piracy during the 1580s and early 1590s

The war of reprisals which flourished during the later 1580s and 1590s was a powerful example of the Elizabethan regime’s ability to exploit private resources to weaken the enemy. A campaign of sustained plunder inflicted severe damage on Iberian trade and shipping, compensating for the disruption to English commerce, while providing employment for unemployed mariners and occasionally producing spectacular profits for promoters. But this was an improvised and indiscriminate way of waging a maritime war. English vessels sailing on reprisal voyages were subject to uncertain and self-interested supervision by the Lord Admiral and his officials; once at sea the conduct of English men-of-war essentially depended on self-regulation. From the outset, therefore, the maritime war was at risk from disorderly and illegal depredation. The vessels of friendly and neutral states were exposed to repeated spoil by English predators, on the grounds that they were supplying Spain with provisions identified as contraband. At the same time the sea war masked, but could not conceal, piratical enterprise of varying forms. Indeed, it created the conditions for an undercurrent of piracy to persist with increasing vigour into the early seventeenth century.
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To a considerable extent this private war at sea was promoted and planned by the merchants of London. Although the length of the war allowed for a considerable turnover of promoters and adventurers, overseas traders and shipowners played a leading role in maintaining the business of reprisals. A significant group of these adventurers had been heavily involved in the Iberian trades before the outbreak of hostilities. Among the London trading interest many seemed to represent a younger generation of merchants whose ambitions, aggressive drive and increasing interest in the potential profit of long-distance enterprise encouraged commercial expansion, while paving the way for a revival of interest in colonization after 1603. The more successful promoters, who included members of the Levant and Barbary Companies, combined commerce with plunder in a specialized but flexible form of enterprise, which was particularly suited to ventures that required larger, heavily armed vessels, such as in the Mediterranean and African trades.
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In London, John Watts was one of the most active merchant supporters of the sea war. By 1585 he was a well-established trader with extensive commercial interests in Spain, as well as with the Canary Islands and the Azores. Claiming losses of £15,000, as a result of the confiscation of five vessels in Spanish ports, Watts was soon involved in sending out ships on reprisal voyages. His partners included merchants and shipowners with similar interests, such as John Bird and John Stokes, with whom he sent out at least five ships against Spain during 1585 and 1586, though he was more regularly associated with members of his own family and household. As in the case of other leading adventurers, Watts’ interest in reprisals merged imperceptibly with the public, more official war at sea. He was a leading supporter of the expedition to Cadiz in 1587, during which three, possibly four, of his vessels served. Two of these ships stayed on the coast of Spain, following Drake’s return to England, seizing a number of rich prizes. During the Armada campaign, Watts served aboard one of his own ships, leading the scramble to share in the capture of a Spanish vessel which had run aground near Calais. Thereafter he became one of the leading promoters of ventures to the Spanish Caribbean. During 1595 four of his vessels sailed on Drake’s last voyage. The failure of that expedition was offset by the profit from James Lancaster’s daring raid on Pernambuco in Brazil, in which he was heavily involved. Furthermore, in 1598, he was a prominent supporter of an expedition led by George Clifford, 3
rd
Earl of Cumberland, which raided Puerto Rico. Among Cumberland’s fleet, six vessels were owned by Watts.
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