26
Rollo Fitzgerald saw England again at four o’clock in the afternoon of Friday 29 July 1588. His heart lifted in joy.
He stood on the deck of the Spanish flagship San Martin, his legs adjusting to the rise and fall of the waves without conscious effort. England was just a smudge on the horizon to the north, but sailors had ways of checking where they were. The leadsman dropped a weighted rope over the stern and measured its length as he paid it out. It was just two hundred feet when it hit the sea bottom, and its scoop brought up white sand – proof, to the knowledgeable navigator, that the ship was entering the western mouth of the English Channel.
Rollo had fled England after the collapse of his plot to free Mary Stuart. For several nail-biting days he had been only one step ahead of Ned Willard, but he had got out before Ned caught him.
He had gone immediately to Madrid, for it was there that the fate of England would be decided. Continuing to call himself Jean Langlais, he had worked tirelessly to help and encourage the Spanish invasion. He had a good deal of credibility. The reports of Don Bernardino de Mendoza, Spain’s ambassador first to London, then to Paris, had made it clear to King Felipe that Langlais had done more than anyone to keep the Catholic faith alive in Protestant England. He was second in status only to William Allen, who would be archbishop of Canterbury after the invasion.
The launching of the armada had been postponed again and again, but it had at last sailed on 28 May 1588 – with Rollo aboard.
The king of Spain presented this as a defensive war: retaliation for the attacks of English pirates on transatlantic convoys, for Queen Elizabeth’s help to the Dutch rebels, and for Drake’s raid on Cádiz. But Rollo felt like a crusader. He was coming to free his country from the infidels who had seized it thirty years ago. He was one of many English Catholics returning with the armada. There were also 180 priests on the ships. The liberators would be welcomed, Rollo believed, by Englishmen who had stayed true, in their hearts, to the old faith. And Rollo had been promised the post of bishop of Kingsbridge, his reward for all those years of difficult and dangerous secret work under the nose of Ned Willard. Once again Kingsbridge Cathedral would see real Catholic services, with crucifixes and incense, and Rollo would preside over it all in the gorgeous priestly vestments appropriate to his status.
The admiral of the armada was the duke of Medina Sidonia, thirty-eight years old and prematurely bald. He was the richest landowner in Spain and had little experience of the sea. His watchword was caution.
When the position of the armada had been confirmed, Medina Sidonia hoisted a special flag on the mainmast, one that had been blessed by the Pope and carried in procession through Lisbon Cathedral. Then he flew the king’s flag, a diagonal red cross, on the foremast. More flags blossomed on the other ships: castles from Castile, dragons of Portugal, the pennants of the noblemen aboard each vessel, and the emblems of the saints who protected them. They fluttered and snapped bravely in the wind, proclaiming the gallantry and strength of the fleet.
The San Martin fired three guns to signal a prayer of thanksgiving, then furled her sails and dropped anchor, and Medina Sidonia summoned a council of war.
Rollo sat in. He had learned enough Spanish in the past two years to follow a discussion and even to take part, if necessary.
Medina Sidonia’s vice-admiral was the handsome Don Juan Martinez de Recalde, commanding the San Juan de Portugal. A lifelong naval officer, he was now sixty-two and the most experienced commander in the armada. Earlier today he had captured an English fishing vessel and interrogated the crew, and he now revealed that the English fleet was holed up in the mouth of the river Plym. This was the first large harbour on the south coast. ‘If we dash to Plymouth now and surprise them, we could destroy half the English navy,’ Recalde said. ‘It will be revenge for Drake’s raid on Cádiz.’
Rollo’s heart leaped in hope. Could it really all be over that quickly?
Medina Sidonia was dubious. ‘We have strict orders from his majesty King Felipe,’ he said. ‘We’re to head straight for our rendezvous with the duke of Parma and the Spanish army of the Netherlands at Dunkirk, and not get diverted. The king wants an invasion, not a sea battle.’
‘All the same, we know we’re going to encounter English ships,’ Recalde argued. ‘They will surely try to prevent us making our rendezvous. Given a perfect opportunity to devastate them, it would be foolish to ignore it.’
Medina Sidonia turned to Rollo. ‘Do you know this place?’
‘Yes.’
Many Englishmen would now regard Rollo simply as a traitor. If they could have seen him, on the flagship of the invading force, helping and advising the enemy, they would have sentenced him to death. They would not understand. But he would be judged by God, not by men.
‘The mouth of Plymouth harbour is narrow,’ he said. ‘Only two or three ships can pass through abreast, no more. And the entrance is covered by cannons. But, once inside, a few galleons could wreak havoc. The heretics would have nowhere to run.’
Spanish ships were armed with heavy, short-barrelled cannons, useless at any distance but destructive at close range. Furthermore, the decks of the armada were teeming with soldiers eager for action, whereas English warships were manned mainly by sailors. It would be a massacre, Rollo thought eagerly.
He finished: ‘And the town of Plymouth has a population of about two thousand – less than a tenth of our manpower. They would be helpless.’
Medina Sidonia was thoughtful and silent for a long moment, then he said: ‘No. We’ll wait here for the stragglers to catch up.’
Rollo was disappointed. But perhaps Medina Sidonia was right. The Spanish were overwhelmingly stronger than the English, so Medina Sidonia had no need to take risks. It hardly mattered when or where they engaged Elizabeth’s navy: the armada was sure to win.
*
BARNEY WILLARD was at Plymouth Hoe, a park on top of low cliffs that overlooked the entrance to the harbour. He was one of a small crowd of men accompanying the admiral of the English fleet, Lord Howard. From the Hoe they could see their fleet, many of the vessels taking on supplies of fresh water and food. The few warships of the royal navy had been augmented by smaller armed merchant ships, including Barney’s two vessels, the Alice and the Bella, and there were now about ninety craft in the harbour.
The breeze was from the south-west. It smelled of the sea, which always lifted Barney’s spirits, but its direction was, unfortunately, perfect for the Spanish armada coming into the Channel from the Atlantic and heading east.
Queen Elizabeth had taken a huge gamble. In a meeting with her naval commanders – Lord Howard, Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins – she had decided to send most of her navy to meet the Spanish armada at the western end of the Channel. The eastern end – the ‘Narrow Sea’, where the duke of Parma planned to cross with his invading army – was left weakly defended by a few warships. They all knew how risky it was.
The atmosphere on Plymouth Hoe was tense. The fate of England was in their hands, and they faced an overwhelmingly stronger enemy. Barney knew that in a sea battle all expectations could be upset by the unpredictable weather; but the odds were against them, and they were worried – all but one: the vice-admiral, Drake, whose famous insouciance was on display now as he joined a group of local men in a game of bowls.
As Barney looked anxiously across the water, a pinnace appeared in the Sound. A small ship of about fifty tons, she had all sails raised, and flew across the water like a bird. Barney knew the ship. ‘It’s the Golden Hind,’ he said.
There was a murmur of interest among the assembled company. The Golden Hind was one of several fast vessels assigned to patrol the westernmost approaches to England and watch for the invaders. There could be only one reason for her to dash back here, Barney thought, and apprehension prickled his skin.
He watched the ship enter the harbour, drop her sails, and moor at the beach. Before she was even tied up, two men disembarked and hurried into the town. A few minutes later, two horses moving at a brisk canter came up the slope to the park. Drake left his game and came across the grass, limping from an old bullet wound in his right calf, to hear what they had to say.
The senior man of the two introduced himself as Thomas Fleming, captain of the Golden Hind. ‘We met the Spaniards at dawn,’ he said breathlessly. ‘We’ve been running before the wind ever since.’
The admiral, Charles Howard, was a vigorous fifty-two-year-old with a silver-grey beard. ‘Good man,’ he said to Fleming. ‘Tell us what you saw.’
‘Fifty Spanish ships, near the Scilly Isles.’
‘What kind?’
‘Mostly big galleons, with some supply ships and a few heavily armed galleasses with oars as well as sails.’
Suddenly Barney felt possessed by a bizarre sense of calm. The event that had been threatened so often and feared so long had at last happened. The most powerful country in the world was attacking England. The end of doubt came as a strange relief. Now there was nothing to do but fight to the death.
Howard said: ‘In what direction were the Spaniards moving?’
‘None, my lord. Their sails were struck, and they seemed to be waiting for others to catch them up.’
One of the attendant noblemen, Lord Parminter, said: ‘Now, my man, are you sure of the numbers?’
‘We did not get close, for fear we might get captured and be unable to bring you the news.’
Lord Howard said: ‘Quite right, Fleming.’
Barney reckoned the Scilly Isles were a hundred miles from Plymouth. But Fleming had covered the distance in less than a day. The armada could not make the same speed, but they might get here before nightfall, he calculated anxiously, especially if they left behind their slower supply ships.
Parminter was thinking along the same lines. ‘We must set sail at once!’ he said. ‘The armada must be confronted head-on before it can make landfall.’
Parminter was no sailor. Barney knew that a head-on battle was the last thing the English wanted.
Lord Howard explained with courteous patience. ‘The tide is coming in, and the wind is in the south-west. It is very difficult for a ship to get out of the harbour against both wind and tide – impossible for an entire fleet. But the tide will turn at ten o’clock this evening. That will be the time to put out to sea.’
‘The Spaniards could be here by then!’
‘They could. What a good thing their commander seems to have decided to wait and regroup.’
Drake spoke for the first time. ‘I wouldn’t have waited,’ he said. He was never slow to boast. ‘He who hesitates is lost.’
Howard smiled. Drake was a braggart, but a good man to have alongside you in a fight. ‘The Spanish have hesitated, but they are not yet lost, unfortunately,’ he said.
Drake said: ‘All the same, we’re in a bad position. The armada is upwind of us. That gives them the advantage.’
Barney nodded grimly. In his experience, the wind was everything in a sea battle.
Howard said: ‘Is it possible for us to get upwind of them?’
Barney knew how difficult it was to sail into the wind. When a ship was side-on to the wind with its sails at an angle, it could travel briskly in a direction ninety degrees to the direction of the wind. So, with a north wind, the ship could easily go east or west as well as south. A well-built ship with an experienced crew could do better than this, and travel north-east or north-west with sails trimmed in tightly, or ‘close-hauled’. This was called sailing close to the wind – a challenge, because a slight error of judgement would take the ship into the no-go zone where it would slow down and stop. Now, if the English fleet wanted to head south-west into a south-westerly head wind, it would have to sail first south and then west in a zig-zag, a slow and tiresome process known as tacking.
Drake looked dubious. ‘Not only would we have to tack into the wind, we’d also have to stay out of the enemy’s sight, otherwise they’d change course to intercept us.’
‘I didn’t ask you if it would be difficult. I asked if it’s possible.’
Drake grinned. He liked this kind of talk. ‘It’s possible,’ he said.
Barney felt heartened by Drake’s bravado. It was all they had.
Lord Howard said: ‘Then let’s do it.’
*
FOR MUCH OF Saturday, Rollo stood at the port rail of the San Martin as it sailed before a favourable wind along the English Channel towards Portsmouth. The armada formed a wide column, with the best fighting ships at the front and back, and the supply ships in the protected middle.
As he watched the rocky shores of Cornwall pass, Rollo was swamped by conflicting feelings of exultation and guilt. This was his country, and he was attacking it. He knew he was doing God’s will, but a feeling at the back of his mind said that this might not bring honour to him and his family. He did not really care about the men who would die in the battle: he had never worried about that sort of thing – men died all the time, it was the way of the world. But he could not shake the fear that if the invasion failed he would go down in history as a traitor, and that troubled him profoundly.
This was the moment that English lookouts had been waiting for, and beacons burst into flame on the distant hilltops one after another, sending a fiery alarm along the coast faster than ships could travel. Rollo feared that the English navy, duly warned, might sail out of Plymouth harbour and head east to avoid getting trapped. Medina Sidonia’s cautious delay had lost him an opportunity.
Whenever the armada sailed closer to the shore, Rollo saw crowds on the cliffs, staring, still and silent as if awestruck: in the history of the world no one had ever seen so many sailing ships together.
Towards evening, the Spanish sailors observed the shoal water and menacing black rocks of the dangerous reef called Eddystone, and veered away to avoid it. The famous hazard was due south of Plymouth. Soon afterwards, a few distant sails in the east, reflecting back the evening sun, gave Rollo his first heart-rending sight of the English fleet.
Medina Sidonia ordered the armada to anchor, to ensure that his ships remained to windward of the English. There would surely be battle tomorrow, and he did not want to give the enemy an advantage.
Few men slept aboard the San Martin that night. They sharpened their weapons, checked and re-checked their pistols and powder flasks, and polished their armour. The gunners stacked balls in lockers and tightened the ropes that lashed the cannons in place, then filled barrels with seawater for putting out fires. Obstacles were moved from the sides of the ships so that the carpenters could more quickly reach holes in the hull to repair them.
The moon rose at two a.m. Rollo was on deck, and he stared into the distance, looking for the English navy, but saw only vague shapes that might have been mist. He said prayers for the armada and for himself, so that he might survive tomorrow’s battle and live long enough to become bishop of Kingsbridge.
The summer dawn came early, and confirmed that there were five English ships ahead. But as daylight brightened, Rollo looked back and suffered a frightening shock. The English navy was behind the armada. How the devil had that happened?
The five ships in front must have been decoys. The main body had somehow tacked around the armada, defying the wind, and now stood in the position of advantage, ready to do battle.
The Spanish sailors were astonished. No one had realized that the lower, narrower new design of English ships made such a difference to their manoeuvrability. Rollo was disheartened. What a setback – and so early in the battle!
To the north, he could see the last of the English fleet making its way along the coast to join the rest, with painfully short tacks to the south and north in the narrow passage available. To Rollo’s astonishment, when the leading vessel reached the southernmost point of its zigzag, it opened fire on the northern flank of the armada. It emptied its cannons then quickly tacked north again. None of the Spanish ships was hit, so the English had wasted their ammunition; but the Spanish were doubly amazed, first by the seamanship then by the audacity of the English captain.
And the first shots of the battle had been fired.
Medina Sidonia commanded the gun-and-flag combination signal for the armada to come into battle order.
*
IT WAS THE TURN of the English to be astonished. The Spanish ships, heading east away from Howard’s fleet, moved into defensive formation with a precision that no English navy had ever achieved. As if guided by a divine hand, they formed a perfect curve several miles across, like a crescent moon with its horns pointed menacingly back at the English.
Ned Willard watched from the deck of the Ark Royal. Ned was Walsingham’s man on the flagship. The Ark was a four-masted galleon a little over a hundred feet long. The explorer Sir Walter Raleigh had built it, then sold it to Queen Elizabeth, though the parsimonious queen had not paid him but instead had deducted five thousand pounds from the money she said he owed her. The ship was heavily armed, with thirty-two cannons ranged on two gun decks and a forecastle. Ned did not have a cabin to himself, but he did have the luxury of a bunk in a room with four other men. The sailors slept on the decks, and the crew of three hundred plus more than a hundred soldiers struggled to find places on a ship only thirty-seven feet across at its widest point.
Watching the near-magical Spanish manoeuvre, Ned observed that the supply ships were in the middle and the fighting galleons either front-and-centre or at the tips. He saw at once that the English could only strike at the horns of the crescent, for any vessel entering within the curve would be vulnerable to attack from behind, with the wind taken from its sails. Every vessel but the last was guarded by the one behind. It was a carefully thought-out formation.
The Spanish armada unnerved Ned in other ways. The ships gleamed with paint in bright colours, and even from a distance he could see that the men on deck were all in their best finery, doublets and hose in crimson, royal blue, purple and gold. Even the slaves at the oars of the galleasses wore bright red jackets. What kind of people dressed for war as if they were going to a party? On the English ships, only the noblemen wore fancy clothes. Even commanders such as Drake and Hawkins had drab workaday woollen hose and leather jerkins.
Lord Howard stood on the poop deck of the Ark, an elevated position behind the mainmast from which he could see most of his ships and the enemy too. Ned stood close to him. Behind them the English fleet formed an unimpressively ragged line.
Ned noticed a sailor spreading sawdust on the main deck, and it took him a moment to figure out that this was to prevent the wood becoming slippery with blood.
Howard barked a command, and the Ark led the fleet into battle.
Howard headed for the northern horn of the crescent. Far to the south, Drake’s ship Revenge chased the opposite tip.
The Ark came up behind the rearmost Spanish ship, a mighty galleon that Howard thought must be the Rata Coronada. As the Ark began to cross the stern of the Rata, the Spanish captain turned so that the two vessels passed broadside to broadside. They fired all their guns as they did so.
The boom of the cannons at close quarters was like a blow, Ned found, and the smoke from all that gunpowder was worse than fog; but, when the wind cleared the view, he saw that neither ship had scored any hits. Howard knew that the Spanish wanted nothing more than to get close enough to board, and in taking care to avoid this disaster he had kept too great a distance to do any damage. The Spanish fire, from heavier, shorter-range guns, was equally harmless.
Ned had experienced his first skirmish at sea, and nothing had happened.
The ships following behind the Ark now attacked the Rata and three or four galleons close to it, but with little effect. Some of the English fire damaged the rigging of enemy ships, but no serious harm was done on either side.
Looking south, Ned could see that Drake’s attack on the southern horn was having a similar result.
The battle moved eastward until the Spanish had lost all opportunity of attacking Plymouth, and with this objective achieved, the English withdrew.
However, it was a small gain, Ned thought gloomily. The armada was proceeding, more or less undamaged, towards its rendezvous with the Spanish army of the Netherlands at Dunkirk. The danger to England was undiminished.
*
ROLLO FELT MORE optimistic every day that week.
The armada sailed majestically eastwards, chased and harried by the English navy, but it was not stopped nor seriously delayed. A dog snapping at the feet of a carthorse can be a nuisance, but sooner or later it will get kicked in the head. The Spanish lost two ships in accidents and Drake, to no one’s surprise, deserted his post long enough to capture one of them, a valuable galleon, the Rosario. But the armada was unstoppable.
On Saturday 6 August, Rollo looked ahead over the bowsprit of the San Martin and saw the familiar outline of the French port of Calais.
Medina Sidonia decided to stop here. The armada was still twenty-four miles from Dunkirk, where the duke of Parma was expected to be waiting with his army and flotilla of boats ready to join the invasion; but there was a problem. East of Calais, shoals and sandbars reached as far out as fifteen miles offshore, lethal for any navigator not intimately familiar with them, and there was a danger that the armada could be forced too far in that direction by westerly winds and spring tides. The cautious Medina Sidonia decided again that he did not need to take risks.
At a signal gun from the San Martin the ships of the great fleet all dropped their sails simultaneously and came to a choreographed halt, then dropped anchor.
The English came to a less impressive stop half a mile behind.
Sailing along the Channel, Rollo had watched enviously as small vessels appeared from the English coast bringing supplies to their fleet, barrels of gunpowder and sides of bacon being manhandled onto the ships. The Spanish had not been resupplied since Corunna: the French were under orders not to do business with the armada, because their king wanted to remain neutral in this war. However, Rollo had passed through Calais many times on his travels, and he knew that the people of Calais hated the English. The governor of the town had lost a leg thirty years ago in the battle to win Calais back from its English occupiers. Now Rollo advised Medina Sidonia to send a little delegation ashore, with greetings and gifts, and, sure enough, the armada was given permission to buy whatever it needed. Unfortunately, it was nowhere near sufficient: there was not enough gunpowder in all Calais to replace a tenth of what the armada had expended in the past week.
And then came a message that made Medina Sidonia mad with rage: the duke of Parma was not ready. None of his boats had any supplies, and boarding had not begun. It would take several days for them to prepare and sail to Calais.
Rollo was not sure that the commander’s fury was justified. Parma could not have been expected to put his army on little boats and have them wait there for an indefinite period. It made much more sense to hold off until he knew that the Spanish had arrived.
Late that afternoon, Rollo was unpleasantly surprised to see a second English fleet sailing towards Calais from the north-east. This was the other part of Elizabeth’s pathetic navy, he reasoned; those ships that had not been sent to Plymouth to meet the armada. Most of the vessels he could see were not warships but small merchant ships, armed but not heavily, no match for the mighty Spanish galleons.
The Spanish armada was still much stronger. And the delay was not a disaster. They had already held off the English navy for a week. They just had to wait for Parma. They could manage that. And then victory would be within their grasp.
*
THE ENGLISH NAVY had failed, Ned knew. The Spanish armada, almost intact and now resupplied, was on the point of meeting up with the duke of Parma and his Netherlands army. Once they had done that, they were less than a day from the English coast.
On Sunday morning, Lord Howard called a council of war on the deck of the Ark Royal. This was his last chance to stop the invasion.
A head-on attack now would be suicide. The armada had more ships and more guns, and the English would not even have their slight advantage of greater manoeuvrability. But at sea, on the move, the crescent shape of the Spanish force seemed invulnerable.
Was there anything they could do?
Several men spoke at once, suggesting fireships.
It was a course of desperation, Ned felt. Costly vessels had to be sacrificed, set on fire and driven towards the enemy. Capricious winds and random currents could easily send them off course, or the enemy ships might be nimble enough to get out of the way, so there was no certainty that fireships would reach their targets and achieve the objective of setting the enemy fleet alight.
But no one had a better idea.
Eight elderly vessels were selected to be forfeited, and they were moved to the middle of the English fleet in the hope of masking the preparations.
The holds of the ships were packed with pitch, rags and old timber, while the masts were painted with tar.
Ned recalled talking to Carlos about the siege of Antwerp, at which a similar tactic had been used by the Dutch rebels, and he suggested to Howard that the fireships’ cannons should be loaded. The heat of the fire would ignite the gunpowder and fire the weapons, with luck at the moment when the fireships were in amongst the enemy fleet. Howard liked the idea and gave the order.
Ned supervised the loading of the guns in the way Carlos had explained, giving each a double charge, a cannonball plus smaller ammunition.
A small boat was tied to the stern of each fireship, so that the daring skeleton crews sailing towards the enemy could escape at the last minute.
The attempt to hide this activity failed, to Ned’s dismay. The Spanish were not stupid, and they figured out what was going on. Ned saw several Spanish pinnaces and boats being steered to form a screen between the two navies, and guessed that Medina Sidonia had a plan for protecting his armada. However, Ned could not quite figure out how it was going to work.
Night fell, the wind freshened, and the tide turned. At midnight, wind and tide were perfect. The skeleton crews hoisted sails and steered the lightless fireships towards the glimmering lamps of the Spanish armada. Ned strained to see, but there was no moon yet, and the ships were dark blurs on a dark sea. The distance between the two fleets was only half a mile, but the wait seemed interminable. Ned’s heart raced. Everything hung on this. He did not often pray, but now he sent a fervent request to heaven.
Suddenly light flared. One after another the eight ships burst into flame. Against the red conflagration Ned could see the sailors leaping to their escape boats. The eight separate blazes soon seemed to join together and become one inferno. And the wind blew the firebomb inexorably towards the enemy fleet.
*
ROLLO WATCHED WITH his heart thudding and his breath coming in gasps. The fireships approached the screen of small vessels that Medina Sidonia had deployed to hamper them. The smoke that filled Rollo’s nostrils smelled of wood and tar. He could even feel the heat of the flames.
Two pinnaces now detached themselves from the screen and moved towards either end of the line of fireships. The crews, risking their lives, threw grappling irons onto the blazing vessels. As soon as they achieved a grip, each crew began to tow a fireship away. Even as he trembled for his own life, Rollo was awestruck by the courage and seamanship of those Spanish sailors. They headed for the open sea where the fireships could burn to ashes harmlessly.
Six fireships remained. Two more pinnaces, repeating the pattern, approached the outermost of the fireships. With luck, Rollo thought, all six might be detached in the same way, two by two, and rendered ineffectual. Medina Sidonia’s tactic was working. Rollo’s spirits rose.
Then he was shocked by a burst of cannon fire.
There was certainly no one alive on board the fireships, but their guns seemed to be going off by magic. Was Satan there, loading the cannons as the flames danced around him, helping the heretics? Then Rollo realized that the weapons had been pre-loaded, and had gone off when the heat ignited the gunpowder.
The result was carnage. Against the bright orange blaze of the fire he could see the black outlines of the men in the pinnaces jerk, like crazed devils cavorting in hell, as they were riddled with bullets. The cannons must have been loaded with shot or stones. The men appeared to be screaming, but nothing could be heard over the roar of the flames and the crash of the guns.
The attempt to capture and divert the fireships collapsed as the crews fell, dead or wounded, to their decks and into the sea. The fireships, carried by the tide, came on relentlessly.
At that point the Spanish had no choice but to flee.
Aboard the San Martin, Medina Sidonia fired a signal gun giving the order to weigh anchors and sail away; but it was superfluous. On every ship that Rollo could see in the orange light, the men were swarming up the masts and setting the sails. In their haste many did not raise their anchors but simply cut the arm-thick ropes with hatchets and left the anchors on the sea bed.
At first the San Martin moved with agonizing slowness. Like all the ships, it had been anchored head-on to the wind for stability; so first it had to be turned, a painstaking operation carried out with small sails. To Rollo it seemed inevitable that the galleon would catch fire before it could move away, and he got ready to jump into the water and try to swim to shore.
Medina Sidonia calmly sent a pinnace around the fleet with orders for all ships to sail north and regroup, but Rollo was not sure many would obey. The presence among them of blazing fireships was so terrifying that most sailors could think of nothing but getting away.
As they turned and the wind at last filled their sails, they had to concentrate on escaping without crashing into one another. As soon as they got clear, most ships fled as fast as wind and tide would carry them, regardless of direction.
Then a fireship sailed dangerously close to the San Martin, and flying sparks set the foresails alight.
Rollo looked down into the black water and hesitated to jump.
But the ship was prepared to fight fires. On deck were barrels of seawater and stacks of buckets. A sailor seized a bucket and threw water up at the burning canvas. Rollo grabbed another bucket and did the same. Others joined them, and they quickly extinguished the flames.
Then at last the galleon caught the wind and moved away from danger.
It stopped after a mile. Rollo looked back over the stern. The English were doing nothing. Safely to windward of the flames, they could afford to watch. The armada was still in the grip of confusion and panic. Even though none of the Spanish ships had caught fire, the danger was so immediate that it was impossible for anyone to think of anything but saving himself.
For the moment the San Martin was alone – and vulnerable. It was dark now, and no more could be done. But the ships had been saved. In the morning Medina Sidonia would face the difficult task of re-forming the armada. But it could be done. And the invasion could still go ahead.
*
AS DAWN BROKE over Calais, Barney Willard, on the deck of the Alice, saw that the fireships had failed. Their smouldering remains littered the Calais foreshore, but no other vessels had been burned. Only one wreck was visible, the San Lorenzo, drifting helplessly towards the cliffs.
A mile or so to the north he could make out the silhouette of the Spanish flagship, the San Martin, and four other galleons. The rest of the stupendous fleet was out of sight. They had been scattered, and their formation lost, but they were intact. As Barney looked, the five galleons he could see swung east and picked up speed. Medina Sidonia was off to round up his strays. Once he had done that, he could return to Calais in strength and still make his rendezvous with the duke of Parma.
And yet Barney felt the English now had a slim chance. The armada was vulnerable while its discipline was shattered and its ships were dispersed. They might be picked off in ones and twos.
If at the same time they could be driven towards the Netherlands sandbanks, so much the better. Barney had often negotiated those sandbanks as he sailed into Antwerp, and Drake was equally familiar with them, but to most Spanish navigators they were uncharted hazards. There was an opportunity here – though not for long.
To Barney’s profound satisfaction, Lord Howard reached the same conclusion.
The Ark Royal fired a signal gun, and Drake’s Revenge weighed anchor and raised sails. Barney shouted orders to his crew, who rubbed the sleep from their eyes and went into action all at once, like a well-trained choir commencing a madrigal.
The English navy set off in hot pursuit of the five galleons.
Barney stood on deck, effortlessly keeping his balance in the heavy seas. The August weather was blustery, the wind constantly changing strength and direction, with intermittent driving rain and patchy visibility, as happened often in the Channel. Barney relished the feeling of racing across the water, the salty air in his lungs, cold rain cooling his face, and the prospect of plunder at the end of the day.
The fast English ships gained relentlessly on the galleons, but the Spanish flight was not fruitless, for as they passed through the straits into the North Sea they picked up more of their scattered armada. Nevertheless, they remained outnumbered by the English, who drew ever closer.
It was nine o’clock in the morning, and by Barney’s calculation they were about seven miles off the Netherlands town of Gravelines, when Medina Sidonia decided that further flight was pointless, and turned to face his enemy.
Barney went down to the gun deck. His master gunner was a dark-skinned North African called Bill Coory. Barney had taught Bill everything he knew and now Bill was as good as Barney had ever been, perhaps better. Barney ordered Bill to prepare the gun crew of the Alice for a fight.
He watched Drake’s Revenge bear down on the San Martin. The two ships were headed for a broadside pass like hundreds that had taken place in the last nine days with little effect. But this one was different. Barney became increasingly apprehensive as the Revenge took a course to bring it dangerously close to the Spanish ship. Drake had scented blood, or perhaps gold, and Barney feared for the life of England’s hero as he came within a hundred yards of his target. If Drake were killed in the first clash of the battle, it could demoralize the English totally.
Both vessels fired their bow guns, small nuisance weapons that might disconcert and panic the enemy crew but could not cripple a ship. Then, as the two mighty vessels drew level, the advantage of the wind became apparent. The Spanish ship, downwind, heeled over so that its cannons, even at their lowest elevation, pointed up into the air. The English vessel, upwind, leaned towards its enemy, and at this close range its guns aimed at the deck and the exposed underbelly.
They began to fire. The guns of the two ships made different noises. The Revenge shot in a measured tattoo, like a drumbeat, each cannon on the deck firing as it reached the optimum position with a discipline that gladdened the artilleryman’s heart in Barney. The San Martin’s sound was deeper but irregular, as if its gunners were saving ammunition.
Both ships rose and fell on the waves like corks, but they were so close now that even in heavy seas their guns could hardly miss.
The Revenge was struck by several huge balls. Because of the angle, the shots hit the rigging, but even that might cripple a ship if the masts were broken. The San Martin suffered a different kind of damage: some of Drake’s guns were firing a variety of unconventional ammunition – packets of small iron cubes called dice shot that shredded the flesh; pairs of cannonballs chained together that whirled through the rigging and brought down the yard-arms; even lethal shards of scrap metal that could destroy sails.
Then the scene was obscured by the fog of gun smoke. Barney could hear the screams of maimed men between the bangs, and the taste of gunpowder was in his nose and mouth.
The ships drew apart, firing their stern guns as they did so. As they emerged from the smoke Barney saw that Drake was not going to slow his pace by turning around to attack the San Martin again, but was making a beeline for the next nearest Spanish ship. Barney deduced with relief that the Revenge was not badly damaged.
The second ship in the English line, the Nonpareil, pounced on the San Martin. Following Drake’s example, its commander drew breathtakingly close to the enemy vessel, though not close enough to permit the Spanish to grapple and board; and the guns thundered again. This time Barney thought the Spanish fired fewer balls, and he suspected their artillerymen were slow to reload.
Barney had watched for long enough: it was time to join in. It was important for the Alice to be seen attacking Spanish ships, for that entitled Barney and his crew to a share of the spoils.
The San Felipe was the next galleon in the Spanish line, and it was already surrounded by English ships that were pounding it mercilessly. Barney was reminded of a pack of hounds attacking a bear in the English people’s favourite entertainment. The ships were approaching so close that Barney saw one crazed Englishman jump across the gap to the deck of the San Felipe and immediately get cut to pieces by Spanish swords. He realized it was the only time in the past nine days that anyone had boarded an enemy ship – a measure of how the English had succeeded in preventing the Spanish from using their preferred tactics.
As the Alice swept into the attack, following in the wake of a warship called the Antelope, Barney glanced to the horizon and saw, to his consternation, a new group of Spanish vessels appearing over the horizon and racing to join the battle. To come to the rescue of an outnumbered fleet took courage, but it seemed the Spaniards had plenty of that.
Gritting his teeth, Barney yelled at his helmsman to approach within a hundred yards of the San Felipe.
The soldiers on the galleon fired their muskets and arquebuses, and were near enough to score several hits among the men crowded on the deck of the Alice. Barney dropped to his knees and escaped unscathed, but half a dozen of his crew fell, bleeding onto the deck. Then Bill Coory started firing, and the guns of the Alice thundered. Small shot raked the deck of the galleon, mowing down sailors and soldiers, while larger cannonballs smashed into the timbers of the hull.
The galleon replied with one large ball for the Alice’s eight smaller shots, and as it crashed into the stern, Barney felt the thud in the pit of his stomach. The ship’s carpenter, waiting on deck for exactly this moment, rushed below to try to repair the damage.
Barney had been in battle before. He was not fearless – men without fear did not live long at sea – but he found that once the fighting started there was so much to do that he did not think about the danger until afterwards. He was possessed by high-energy excitement, yelling instructions at his crew, dashing from one side of the ship to the other for a better view, dropping down to the gun deck every few minutes to shout orders and encouragement to the sweating artillerymen. He coughed on gun smoke, slipped on spilled blood, and stumbled over the bodies of the dead and wounded.
He looped the Alice around behind the Antelope and followed the larger ship on its second pass, firing the port guns this time. He cursed as a shot from the galleon struck his rear mast. A fraction of a second later he felt a sharp stinging pain in his scalp. He reached up and pulled a splinter of wood from his hair. He felt the warm wetness of blood, but it was only a trickle, and he realized he had escaped with a scratch.
The mast did not fall and the carpenter hurried to brace it with reinforcing struts.
When the Alice was clear of the sulphurous smoke, Barney noticed that the armada was slowly moving into its crescent formation. He was amazed that the commanders and crews could summon up such discipline as they took a hellish pounding. The Spanish ships were proving worryingly hard to sink, and now reinforcements were about to arrive.
Barney looped the Alice around for another attacking run.
*
THE BATTLE RAGED all day, and by mid-afternoon Rollo was in despair.
The San Martin had been hit hundreds of times. Three of the ship’s big guns had been dislodged from their mountings and rendered useless, but it had plenty more. The holed ship was being kept afloat by the divers, the bravest of the brave, who went into the sea with lead plates and hemp caulking to patch the hull while the gunfire raged. All around Rollo men lay dead or wounded, many calling on God or their favourite saint to release them from their agony. The air he breathed tasted of blood and gun smoke.
The Maria Juan had been so terribly damaged that it could not stay afloat, and Rollo had watched in despair as the magnificent ship sank, slowly but hopelessly, into the grey waves of the cold North Sea and disappeared from sight forever. The San Mateo was close to the end. In the effort to keep her afloat the crew were throwing everything movable overboard: guns, gratings, broken timbers, and even the bodies of their dead comrades. The San Felipe was so badly damaged that it could not be steered, and it was drifting helplessly away from the battle and towards the sandbanks.
It was not just that the Spanish were outnumbered. They were brave soldiers and skilled sailors, but they won their battles by ramming and boarding, and the English had figured out how to prevent them from doing that. Instead, they had been forced into a shooting battle, in which they were at a disadvantage. The English had developed a rapid-fire technique that the Spanish could not match. The larger Spanish guns were difficult to reload, sometimes requiring the gunners to hang from ropes outside the hull to insert the shot, and in the thick of a battle that was almost impossible.
The result was disaster.
As if to make defeat more certain, the wind had veered to the north, so there was no escape in that direction. To the east and south were only sandbanks, and the English were pressing them from the west. The Spanish were trapped. They were holding out bravely, but in time they would either sink under the English guns or run aground on the sandbanks.
There was no hope.
*
AT FOUR O’CLOCK in the afternoon the weather changed.
An unexpected squall blew up from the south-west. On the deck of Lord Howard’s Ark Royal, Ned Willard was buffeted by strong winds and soaked by rain. He could have put up with that cheerfully, but what bothered him was that the Spanish armada was now hidden behind a curtain of rain. The English fleet moved tentatively to the place where the Spanish ought to be, but they had gone.
Surely they would not escape now?
After half an hour the storm moved on as quickly as it had arrived and, in the abrupt afternoon sunshine, Ned saw to his dismay that the Spanish ships were now two miles north and moving fast.
The Ark put on sail and gave chase, and the rest of the fleet followed, but it would take them time to catch up, and Ned realized there would be no more battle before night.
Both fleets stayed close to the east coast of England.
Night fell. Ned was exhausted and went to sleep, fully clothed, on his bunk. When dawn broke the next day he looked ahead to see that the Spanish were the same distance away, still racing north as fast as they could.
Lord Howard was in his usual place on the poop deck, drinking weak beer. ‘What’s happening, my lord?’ Ned said politely. ‘We don’t seem to be catching up.’
‘We don’t need to,’ Howard said. ‘Look. They’re running away.’
‘Where will they go?’
‘Good question. As far as I can see, they’ll be forced around the northern tip of Scotland, then they’ll turn south through the Irish Sea – for which there are no charts, as you know.’
Ned had not known that.
‘I’ve been with you for every hour of the last eleven days, yet I don’t understand how this has happened.’
‘The truth, Sir Ned, is that it’s very difficult to conquer an island. The invader is at a terrible disadvantage. He runs short of supplies, he is vulnerable as he tries to embark and disembark troops, and he loses his way on unfamiliar territory, or in unfamiliar seas. What we did, mainly, was to harry the enemy until the inherent difficulties overwhelmed him.’
Ned nodded. ‘And Queen Elizabeth was right to spend money on her navy.’
‘True.’
Ned looked across the water at the retreating Spanish armada. ‘So we’ve won, then,’ he said. He could hardly believe it. He knew he should jump up and down with joy, and he probably would when the news sank in, but for now he simply felt stunned.
Howard smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ve won.’
‘Well,’ said Ned, ‘I’ll be damned.’