But Medina Sidonia’s anxieties were far greater. At last he had heard from Parma – a message expressing his ‘great joy’ that the Armada had forced the Channel passage and promising that his forces would be ready to take part in the invasion of England in about six days. But Don Rodrigo Tello de Guzman, Medina Sidonia’s relative and envoy, had found Parma in Bruges, not in Dunkirk, and he had a most depressing story to tell of the extent of the unpreparedness he had seen in Nieuport and Dunkirk. His own view was that nothing would be likely to be ready for at least fourteen days.
A fourteen-day stay off Calais Roads – or even six – was an impossibility for the Armada. Indeed Gourdan, who yesterday had driven cheerfully down to the shore with his wife in his coach hoping to be able to watch an immediate battle, sent a message of friendly greeting to Medina Sidonia on Sunday morning, pointing out that his present anchorage just east of Calais cliffs was an extremely dangerous one, because of the strong cross currents at the mouth of the English Channel.
Medina Sidonia dispatched a further urgent message to Parma: ‘I am anchored here two leagues from Calais with the enemy’s fleet on my flank. They can cannonade me whenever they like, and I shall be unable to do them much harm in return. If you can send me forty or fifty fly-boats of your fleet I can, with their help, defend myself here until you are ready to come out.’ Parma had in all fewer than twenty fly-boats, and some of those were not ready for sea.
Medina Sidonia also replied to the Governor of Calais, thanking him for his warning and for the present of fruit and fresh vegetables he had sent, and he requested that Monsieur Gourdan should sell them whatever powder and shot he could spare. Gourdan, sitting on the fence, refused this, but offered to sell them food or any other ‘non-combatant’ provisions they were short of. Stow in his Chronicles of England writes of that Sunday afternoon: ‘The Flemings, Walloons and the French came thick and three-fold to behold the Spanish fleet, admiring the exceeding greatness of their ships, and warlike order: the greatest kept the outside next the enemy, like strong Castles fearing no assault, the lesser placed in the middle-ward. Fresh victuals straight were brought aboard; Captains and Cavaliers for their money might have what they would, and gave the French so liberally, as within twelve hours an egg was worth fivepence, besides thanks.’
The figure of five pence was about twenty-five times what an egg was fetching in London at that date, so one perceives that the French, as usual, were not averse from making a profit out of casual callers.
One can visualize the scene, people flocking on foot or by horse or cart or donkey from the town and the neighbouring villages; a fine Sunday afternoon with something to gaze at, as they would have come to stare at a wreck – only this was more dramatic, a real treat, tension growing – sitting on the edge of the cliffs, hurrying down to the beaches with their produce or standing in clumps gossiping and speculating on a possible battle while the little boats went speedily back and forth plying their profitable trade.
Stow goes on; ‘Whilst this lusty Navie like a demi-Conqueror, rid thus at anchor, the Spanish faction in sundry nations had divulged that England was subdued, the Queen taken and sent prisoner over the Alps to Rome, where barefoot she should make her humble reconciliation.’ The first of many such rumours that spread through Europe during the next few weeks.
Another rumour had spread around the Armada – or had been deliberately started – that Parma was coming out to join them tomorrow. It was perhaps a necessary lie to try to relieve long pent-up tensions and fears and to revive flagging spirits. For now the strain was making itself apparent in the whole Spanish fleet. Throughout the long week up the Channel most of the hulks, the supply ships and the smaller armed merchantmen – that centre core to the Armada – had not been in action at all. Like sheep they had continued on their slow and ponderous way while the ring of great galleons, like guard-dogs, had protected them against the wolves. But they had witnessed the battles, they had seen – and reluctantly admired – the speed and mobility of the English fleet, and their nerves were wearing thin. A considerable proportion of the masters and crews of these ships was not Spanish; they had no particular relish for a fight and, being good seamen themselves, they were not comfortable anchored so close to a lee shore. Already there had been one desertion to the English, of the hulk San Pedro el Menor, of five hundred tons, and that under Portuguese command. There might soon be others.
Nor was the depression and the tension confined to the weaker members of the fleet. The obvious sailing superiority of the English at all times, the complete failure of the galleons even to close and board one English ship, the English reinforcements, their menacing position now off the weather flank of the Armada, all added to the nervousness and the depression. The greatest single calamity, of course, after the failure of Parma to come out, was the shortage of shot. There was powder in plenty yet, but some of the ships had only shot enough left for one short action, particularly for the heavier cannon which had so far kept the English at a distance. Medina Sidonia had obeyed his instructions and achieved his objective with the maximum fidelity and the minimum loss. But what now? Parma was not ready, and Sidonia’s pilots warned that to venture further out into the North Sea would be to add to the hazards of navigation.
It probably never entered Medina Sidonia’s head to take Calais. It needed a later century for man to discover the considerable advantage of attacking neutrals. But if one deducts two thousand for sickness and casualties, the Duke still had some eighteen thousand trained soldiers in his fleet. It would not have been difficult to pick a quarrel with Monsieur Gourdan and force the town: the fighting might have been fierce but it would have been brief. Then he could have sailed into a safe harbour, linked with Parma on land, and restored and refurbished his fleet and picked his time for an invasion.
By Monday anyway it was too late for such perfidy, for on Sunday night the English launched the fire-ships.
There was nothing new or original about fire-ships, no stroke of inventive genius bearing the stamp of Drake or some other master mind. They were a common arm of naval warfare, far more lethal to stout wooden ships than the inaccurate cannon of the day. Fire-ships had been attempted against Drake in Cadiz; the Spaniards had contemplated using them a week ago when considering an attack on the English fleet in Plymouth; Philip in one of his letters had expressly warned Medina Sidonia against the risks of such an attack. (He really did try to think of everything.)
The present situation was ideal for their use. A fresh breeze blowing steadily from the English fleet towards the Spanish, the Spaniards still in close defensive formation, a lee shore, the onset of night, and the turn of the tide at eleven p.m.
The decision to use the fire-ships had been taken at the council-of-war on board the Ark that morning. As soon as it was known that the Armada was succeeding in its attempt to force the Channel, Walsingham had given orders for a number of fishing-vessels to be requisitioned at Dover and laden with pitch and faggots, and immediately the decision was taken to use them Sir Henry Palmer was sent in a pinnace to bring them over. But the day wore on and evening came and there was no sign of Palmer, so it was decided to act without him while the best tidal conditions prevailed and to sacrifice some of the smaller ships of the fleet. Drake gave a two-hundred-ton vessel, the Thomas. Hawkins gave the Bark Bond of one hundred and fifty tons, and six others were contributed. These were all bigger than anything that had ever been used before; and as soon as darkness fell they were made ready for their work. An old Devonshire captain called John Young, one of Drake’s men, was put in charge of the fire-ships, and his second-in-command was a Cornishman called Captain Prouse. All the masts and rigging were tarred, all the guns were left on board double-shotted to go off of their own accord when the fire reached them.
Medina Sidonia and his advisers were alert for some such attempt. With the tide and the wind as it was, a special risk must exist, and they made all the preparations they could to meet it. A screen of patrol boats equipped with
grapnels was thrown out to cover the Spanish fleet from the seaward side, and one of the Duke’s most trusted officers. Captain Serrano, was put in charge. At the same time the Duke sent a message to every ship in the fleet that an attack by fire-ships might well occur that night. If such an attack came the fleet was not to panic, for the screen of patrol-boats would protect them; and if by any chance a fire-ship should get through they must have their own boats ready lowered to fend it off. Supposing even this failed they were to slip their cables, marking the position with buoys, and stand out to sea, then return to station and to pick up their cables once the fire-ships were past. The Duke could have done no more.
Unfortunately something worse than fire-ships was feared by the anxious captains receiving this message. Three years before at the siege of Antwerp an Italian engineer called Giambelli had devised ships called hell-burners which, when the fire reached the powder within them, had exploded and killed a thousand men, flinging the blazing wreckage of boats and bridges over a square mile of the city. It was the most destructive weapon that had ever been seen by man. And Giambelli, it was known, was in England and working for the Queen. (In fact he was in London and working innocently on its defences, but no one was to know that.)
Soon after midnight, with the tide racing, the eight ships were lit up and sent away. Almost immediately they were seen by the Armada and the alarm given. The eight ships were sailing in line abreast, and they bore down on the Spanish fleet with the flames already leaping and crackling all over them. Their very size was more than the Spaniards had ever reckoned with. A two-hundred-ton barque, with the wind and the current behind her, and manned by determined men until the last moment, is a very hard obstacle to stop. The Spanish patrol-boats had no motors to aid them, only sail and oar against the wind and the tide, and eight ships to deal with at once, all much larger than they were themselves. They got hawsers aboard one at either end of the line and pulled them off course. An attempt was made in the middle, but the fire on the blazing ships had now reached the guns which began exploding in every direction. This convinced the Spanish that they had not to deal with ordinary fire-ships but with the dreaded hell-burners all over again.
As the six ships came on, Medina Sidonia fired a warning gun and slipped his cables and luffed up close-hauled against the wind. A few others of his squadron did the same. But for the rest the long-imposed discipline at last broke. They did not wait to slip anchors; they cut them and shook out their sails and went with wind and tide, drifting past Calais out towards the North Sea and the low coastline of Dunkirk. In the confusion ship collided with ship and it was every man for himself. The fire-ships in fact did no material damage of themselves at all; they drifted harmlessly on to the beach to burn down to the water-line; but they had achieved what the English fleet in six days of fighting had failed to do, they had broken the disciplined defensive formation of the Armada, and it was never to be recovered.
As soon as he saw the fire-ships safely past, Medina Sidonia in the San Martin brought his ship back again to near his original anchorage, put out a sheet anchor and fired a gun to direct the rest of his fleet to follow suit. But very few did. The San Marcos, with the Marquis de Penafiel on board. The San Juan with Recalde. The Santa Ana with Oquendo. Two or three others. The rest had scattered over several square miles of water and most could not anchor if they would; they had had two anchors out against the swift-running tide and had cut both away in the panic. If they possessed a spare anchor it was stowed away and could not immediately be brought into use.
A gusty dawn showed a half dozen of the great galleons riding at anchor where dusk had left them and the other one-hundred-and-thirty-odd ships strung out eastwards towards the Dunkirk sandbanks. The big galleass San Lorenzo, with Hugo de Moncada on board, had fouled her rudder in a collision with the San Juan de Sicilia and had then run into another ship, with the result that she was now crawling in a crippled fashion just off the French coast and dangerously far in. The English fleet, of course, had not shifted.
With the first light there was instant activity. The Duke, knowing that the tight defensive grouping had so far been his salvation and that if his fleet were to survive it must at all costs reassemble before the English attacked, had sent off fast pinnaces during the night to make contact with the scattered ships and to order them to reassemble around him. But the dawn showed them still far scattered and a south-westerly wind blowing, which would make their return a difficult and lengthy matter. So the Duke, with the wind in his favour, weighed anchor to catch them up and try to regain formation somewhere off Dunkirk. And with the light the English, seeing for the first time the success that their fire-ships had achieved, at once attacked.
Thereupon began what has been described as one of the great decisive battles of the world. The English order of battle was never put to paper but was agreed orally among the commanders. However, it seems that they attacked by squadrons more or less abreast – with Drake, who had as usual contrived his anchorage nearest to the enemy, slightly in the van. The Duke’s small squadron of galleons, seeing themselves being overhauled by the English and perceiving that if they could hold the enemy here it would give time for the scattered Armada to reassemble, came about and formed line abreast also to meet the attack. In the meantime Howard, the commander of the whole English fleet, seeing the great galleass San Lorenzo in trouble near the Calais beach, allowed himself to be diverted from his main task of destroying the Armada by the lure of a rich prize and sailed with his whole squadron to attack the San Lorenzo. Both he and Drake – on different days – thus conducted themselves in a way which would have led to an instant court-martial in later times.
The injured galleass, crowded with three hundred and twelve oarsmen, one hundred and thirty-four sailors and two hundred and thirty-five soldiers, strained like an injured beetle to gain Calais harbour but ran aground on the bar and heeled over in the surf, pointing a host of slender oars to the sky. The water was too shoal for the Ark or any of her companions to reach her, so Howard launched his longboat with sixty men, many of these gentlemen adventurers hot for spoil and to prove their courage. Soon a dozen other small ships were following, including the two-hundred-ton London ship the Margaret and John, Captain John Fisher, which had been in the thick of the fighting throughout the week. This time, however, Fisher overplayed his luck and his ship went aground too, not far from the stranded galleass. Since the tide was still falling they could do nothing yet to refloat her, so half of her ninety crew piled into the boats to make a boarding-party.
In the galleass pandemonium reigned, with the galley-slaves fighting to get free, some of the soldiers and sailors leaping overboard and struggling through the surf to the safety of the beach, while Hugo de Moncada and his officers rallied the rest to resist attack. The English boats in the last fifty yards were fine targets in the bright morning light, and dozens of men were killed and wounded by small-arms fire. Richard Tomson, Lieutenant of the Margaret and John, says: ‘We continued a pretty skirmish with our small shot against theirs, they being ensconced within their ship and very high over us, we in our open pinnaces and far under them having nothing to shroud and cover us.’ After a bitter fight Moncada himself was killed outright by a musket-shot between the eyes, and after that resistance collapsed.
Moncada was the first of the high-born Spanish admirals to lose his life.
The English, about two hundred in number, having accepted the surrender of the remaining officers, proceeded to loot the ship and would have taken the ship as well had not the French, who had been watching the whole bloody battle with detached interest from the shore, now put in a claim that the ship was in French territorial waters and ship and guns at least belonged to them. The English, whose temper was up, were prepared to dispute this with their arms, but Monsieur Gourdan reinforced his rights with such accurate gunfire from Calais Castle and the ramparts above the beach that the raiders had to withdraw in haste. Howard now at last directed his squadron towards the main battle
. In capturing this one ship he had kept a dozen of the best English ships out of the decisive struggle for more than three hours.
The shape of the great battle of Gravelines is hard to determine from contemporary accounts. Indeed the one fact which emerges is that, after the first hour, it had no shape at all. This was the battle in which the English were determined at all costs to destroy the Spanish fleet. For a week they had been frustrated, knowing themselves more seaworthy but able to turn this to no advantage. Frustrated, aware that they had done nothing that had been so confidently expected of them at home, for ever up against the defensive wall and the Spanish challenge to ‘come and board us’, they now saw for the first time the Armada scattered and in disarray. Now in these next hours, before it could reassemble, they must tear it to pieces. And this is what they proceeded to do.
Drake in the Revenge was the first to close Medina Sidonia in the San Martin. It was a meeting of admirals, but this time there was no long-range firing. Drake had to get in to kill and Medina Sidonia was on his last supply of heavy shot. So when they did fire it was at close range, and in the thunderous cannonade which followed heavy damage was done to both ships. Drake’s ship was ‘pierced through by heavy cannon-balls of all sizes which were flying everywhere between the two fleets, and was riddled with every kind of shot’. Twice Drake’s cabin was pierced by cannon-balls, and rigging was brought down on the heads of the sailors. No sooner was the Revenge past than Thomas Fenner in the Nonpareil took his place. And then Lord Edmund Sheffield in the White Bear, and so on down the line while the San Martin fought each one in turn. Soon her decks were a shambles and she was holed both above and below the water-line. The San Juan and the San Marcos also became closely involved.
But this time Drake was not to be caught by the lure of a prize, even the prize of the ship bearing the Armada’s supreme commander. Already in answer to Medina Sidonia’s commands the Spanish ships were regrouping, forming that hard outer shell of the old crescent behind which the weaker ships could shelter. It was a notable feat in the conditions of the morning and, although never completed, was partially carried out in spite of the English challenge. Drake remained no longer fighting the first line of galleons but by-passed them and drove in to cut up the assembling groups behind. Frobisher, fuming with annoyance at this, took up the battle with the front-line ships, and behind him came Hawkins in the Victory, Edward Fenton, his brother-in-law, in the Mary Rose, Sir George Beeston in the Dreadnought, Hawkins’s son in the Swallow and a host of others, outnumbering the effective Spanish ships now by four to one.