On This Day: The Spanish Armada is sighted

July 29th, 1588: On this day in 1588, the fearsome Spanish Armada is sighted off England’s southern coast.

In late July of 1588, La Grande y Felicísima Armada - literally the “Great and Most Fortunate Navy” - sailed from Lisbon, a port city on the Atlantic coast in modern Portugal. This daunting war fleet was bound for England. The popular version of events - the one most likely found in school texts books - is that Philip II of Spain, deadly foe of Queen Elizabeth I of England, sent his huge Armada of ships to invade and return England to the Catholic faith. But the Spanish fleet was defeated by the plucky little English navy, whose courageous captains included Sir Francis Drake. It was crowning achievement of Elizabeth’s reign and a defining moment in English history - the moment we took on Europe and won! Or so the story goes because the popular version is not entirely true.

Philip, King of England

In 1588, Philip was 61, a devout Catholic and king of the largest empire in the world, reaching from South America to the Philippines. Elizabeth was in her 50s, still unmarried, still childless and ruling over a Protestant England in which Catholic plots were a constant threat. But in 1554, 34 years earlier, Philip had set sail from northern Spain to become part of the Tudor royal family. We often forget that before he was king of Spain, Philip II - the great villain in the Armada story - spent four years as king of England due to his marriage to Mary, Elizabeth’s older half-sister. Mary was desperate to secure England’s future as a Catholic country and dreaded the thought that she might die childless and leave the Protestant Elizabeth to take the throne. Philip, however, felt differently.

The alternative to Elizabeth, in the event of his and Mary’s marriage producing no children, was Mary, Queen of Scots. She was a Catholic, which was a plus, but due to her ancestry and close ties to the French court, she would have taken England firmly into the orbit of Philip’s French enemies, which was intolerable. Thus, the king of Spain rooted for his sister-in-law, persuading Mary to release Elizabeth from house arrest. When Mary lay dying, Philip realised, or at least believed, that the only way he could persuade Elizabeth to support Catholics was to marry her and get her to convert. And so, he proposed. Elizabeth, as ever, refused to commit herself. A few months later, hearing that Philip had “moved on” and started negotiations to marry a French princess, Elizabeth is quoted as saying: “He couldn’t have loved me all that much if he couldn’t wait a month or two for an answer.” Even so, despite the proposed match never happening, Elizabeth and Philip remained friends.

Why was the Spanish Armada launched against England? 

Over the next ten years, as Elizabeth and England became decidedly Protestant, there were rumblings from Rome. In the late 1560s, Catholics in northern England attempted an unsuccessful rebellion. To encourage them further, on February 25th, 1570 Pope Pius V (Jan 1566 - May 1572) excommunicated their Queen declaring "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime", to be a heretic - a non-believer in the Catholic faith - and released all her subjects from any allegiance to her, even when they had "sworn oaths to her", threatening to excommunicate any that obeyed her orders. Elizabeth now had a big target on her back. In the eyes of the church any English Catholic who rebelled against their Queen, or indeed killed her, would not have committed a “sin” and would be forgiven.

Philip was now under pressure from the Pope in Rome to topple Elizabeth, but with his vast empire to run, he had plenty of other priorities. Religion alone was not a strong enough reason for Philip to invade England. Even so, it is still alleged that the Spanish king supported plots to have Elizabeth overthrown in favour of her Catholic cousin and heir presumptive, Mary, Queen of Scots. These plans were thwarted when Elizabeth had Mary imprisoned. After eighteen and a half years in custody, in 1586 Mary was found guilty of involvement in a Catholic plot to assassinate the English queen. It is said Elizabeth reluctantly signed the death warrant that saw Mary beheaded the following year, 1587, at Fotheringhay Castle near Oundle in Northamptonshire. With Mary, Queen of Scots dead, Philip preoccupied with his empire, and religious differences not a strong enough reason to invade, what triggered the Spanish attack?

Protests and Privateers

Two things tipped Philip’s hand. Firstly, Elizabeth supported Philip’s rebellious Protestant subjects in the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Secondly, Elizabeth was funding privateers to plunder Spanish ships across the Atlantic. At the time Spain had colonies in the Americas and ships would cross the ocean to Spain laden with treasure - gold, silver, jewels, etc. The treasure ships were tempting targets for a cash-strapped English monarch.

Elizabeth issued Letters of Marque and Reprisal authorising attacks or the capture of enemy vessels and shipping during wartime. Individuals or ships in possession of such Letters were known as “private men-of-war” or Privateers. Significantly, privateering was a way of mobilising armed ships and sailors without having to spend treasury resources or commit naval officers. Moreover, privateers were of great benefit to a smaller naval power or one facing an enemy dependent on trade as they disrupted commerce and pressured an enemy to deploy warships to protect merchant trade against such “commerce raiders”. Usefully for a penny-pinching court the cost was borne by investors hoping to profit from prize money earned from captured cargo and vessels. The proceeds would be distributed among the privateer's investors, officers, and crew.

Cruising for prizes with a Letter of Marque was considered an honourable calling combining patriotism and profit, in contrast to unlicensed piracy, which was universally reviled. It has been argued that privateering was a less destructive and wasteful form of warfare, because the goal was to capture ships rather than to sink them. English adventurers Thomas Cavendish (ca. AD 1555-ca.1592), Francis Drake (ca. AD 1540-1596) and John Hawkins (AD 1532-1595) were celebrated privateers. Though each had Letters of Marque and Reprisal, Cavendish was the only one who confined his raids to wartime. Regardless, the Spanish and other nationalities regarded all three as pirates who, in contrast to privateers, committed warlike acts at sea without the authorisation of any nation.

Philip’s Response

Philip was goaded into action. He planned an expedition to invade England, overthrow Elizabeth and, if the Armada was not entirely successful, at least negotiate freedom of worship for Catholics and financial compensation for war in the Low Countries. Through this endeavour, English material support for the United Provinces, the part of the Low Countries that had successfully seceded from Spanish rule, and English attacks on Spanish trade and settlements in the New World would end. Importantly, the King was supported by the Pope, who treated the invasion as a crusade, with the promise of a subsidy should the Armada make land. As a devout Catholic, Philip thus felt it was his duty to invade and conquer England in order to convert the country back to the Church of Rome.

On July 21st, 1588, the Armada of 141 ships outfitted with 1,500 brass guns and 1,000 iron guns, and carrying ca. 10,000 sailors and 19,000 soldiers, set sail from Lisbon headed for the English Channel. The full body of the fleet took two days to leave port.

In the Spanish Netherlands, 30,000 soldiers awaited the arrival of the Armada, the plan being to use the cover of the warships to convey the army on barges to a place near London. In all, 55,000 men were to have been mustered, a huge army for that time. Meanwhile the English fleet stood prepared, if ill-supplied, at Plymouth, awaiting news of Spanish movements.

Bowls anyone?

You may have heard it was while Sir Francis Drake enjoyed a game of bowls on the greens of Plymouth Hoe that the Spanish Armada was first sighted on the horizon. The usual story has Sir Francis turning to Lord Effingham, commander of the English fleet, and saying that there was no need to hurry, there would be plenty of time to finish the game and thrash the Spaniards too.

Disappointingly none of the early accounts of the Armada mention anyone playing bowls at all. It was about 25 years later that one account - just one - finally describes sailors in Plymouth in July 1588 “dancing, bowling, and making merry” on the shore as the Armada appeared. Yet it is such an irresistibly juicy detail that, in the 1730s, a biography of Sir Walter Raleigh tells us that Drake was determined to finish his game of bowls - and from then on it became “history”.

Invincible fleet?

The Spanish fleet that Philip assembled is usually depicted as an “invincible” Goliath to England’s little David of a navy. In reality it was anything but. It was not even the biggest fleet ever to have attacked England: the Norman invasion fleet of 1066, and the French force that crossed the Channel in 1545 and sank the Mary Rose, both boasted more vessels. The Spanish had around 130 ships, but nearly half of these were not built as warships. Rather they were used for duties such as scouting and dispatch work, or for carrying supplies, animals and troops. Surprisingly the English fleet actually outnumbered that of the Armada by some 200 ships to 130. Nevertheless, the Spanish fleet outgunned that of the English, with its available firepower being 50 percent greater than that of the enemy.

The “invincible” Armada had sailed into trouble long before it had an opportunity to engage its English foes, however. Soon after departing from Lisbon in May 1588, they faced disease, rotting food and bad weather. Storms forced four galleys and one galleon to turn back, and other ships had to put in for repairs at A Coruña in northern Spain. From there, the commander of the fleet, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, wrote to Philip confessing that he could see “hardly any of those on the Armada with any knowledge or ability to perform the duties entrusted to them…we are very weak”. Philip insisted the invasion had to go ahead so, in July, the Armada set sail once more with the intention of navigating the English Channel towards its narrowest point. There it was to meet with an army of soldiers from the Netherlands led by the Duke of Parma, who were to be ferried across on barges to invade Kent. In the end only about 124 ships actually made it to the English Channel where the two fleets eventually met. Once again, the Spaniards began to experience more problems. Their first major casualties were self-inflicted: a crash and explosion lost two Spanish ships.

Battle is joined

The Armada was sighted in England on July 29th, when it appeared off the Lizard in Cornwall. The news was conveyed to London by a system of beacons that had been constructed along the south coast. The same day the English fleet was trapped in Plymouth Harbour by the incoming tide. The Spanish convened a council of war, where it was proposed to ride into the harbour on the tide and incapacitate the defending ships at anchor. From Plymouth Harbour the Spanish would attack England, but Philip explicitly forbade Medina-Sidonia from engaging, leaving the Armada to sail on to the east and toward the Isle of Wight. As the tide turned, 55 English ships set out to confront the Armada from Plymouth under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham, with Sir Francis Drake as vice admiral. The rear admiral was John Hawkins.

At daybreak on July 31st, the English fleet finally engaged the Armada off Plymouth near the Eddystone rocks. In two further encounters, off Portland Bill on August 2nd and off the Isle of Wight on August 4th, the English harassed the Spanish fleet at long range and easily avoided all attempts to bring them to close action. Given the Spanish advantage in close-quarter fighting, the English ships used their superior speed and manoeuvrability to keep beyond grappling range and bombarded the Spanish ships from a distance with cannon fire. However, the range proved too great for the manoeuvre to be effective, and at the end of the fighting neither fleet had lost a ship in action.

Fire ships!

By August 7th, the Armada was anchored off Calais in a tightly packed defensive crescent formation, not far from Dunkirk, where the Spanish army, reduced by disease to 16,000 men, was expected to be waiting. The army was not ready, and the Spanish fleet found itself increasingly vulnerable to attack. At midnight on August 7th/8th, the English set alight eight fireships, sacrificing regular warships by filling them with pitch, brimstone, gunpowder and tar, and cast them downwind among the closely anchored vessels of the Armada. The Spanish feared that these uncommonly large fireships were “hellburners”, specialised fireships filled with large gunpowder charges that had been used to deadly effect before. Two fireships were intercepted and towed away, but the remainder bore down on the fleet. The Armada's flagship and the principal warships held their positions, but the rest of the fleet cut their anchor cables and scattered in confusion. No Spanish ships were burnt, but the crescent formation had been broken, and the fleet now found itself too far downwind of Calais in the rising south-westerly wind to recover its position. The English closed in for battle.

At dawn on August 8th the English attacked the disorganized Spanish ships off Gravelines, and a decisive battle ensued. Retaining its superior maneuverability, the English fleet provoked Spanish fire while staying out of range. The English then closed, firing damaging broadsides into the enemy ships. The ships were close enough for sailors on the upper decks of the English and Spanish ships to exchange musket fire. Many of the Spanish gunners were killed or wounded by the English broadsides, and the task of manning the cannon quickly fell to the regular foot soldiers who were unfamiliar with their operation.

After eight hours, the English ships began to run out of ammunition, and some gunners began loading objects such as chains into cannons. Around 4 pm, the English fired their last shots and pulled back. Five Spanish ships were lost and many others severely damaged in what is known as the Battle of Gravelines. The Spanish plan for the fleet to link up with its army had been decisively disrupted.

“Stomach of a King”

Once the Armada was sailing northward up the Channel, the day after the battle off Gravelines, the next popular myth appears. It is the story of Elizabeth’s rousing address to her men at Tilbury on northern bank of the Thames. Her famous speech in which the Queen tells the assembled troops that she may: “have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of a king - and of a King of England too” has been dramatized in countless films. Elizabeth is often depicted riding a horse, dressed in white velvet, or even in armour. “I myself shall be your general“, she tells her men.

Once more, all is not what it seems. Elizabeth had indeed come up with the plan to address the troops while the Spanish were still in the Channel. Yet by the time she did so, it was 11 days too late, and the Armada was already staring defeat in the face - off the coast of Scotland!

Even better, the economy was struggling, and England was broke. Elizabeth could not afford to pay her troops and had to send them home. Fortunately, by the end of 1588 half of the English force were facing death from disease so, as Elizabeth’s chief advisor, William Cecil, put it: “If they’re dead, you don’t have to pay them.”

So, when Elizabeth uttered her famous words at Tilbury, what was left of the Armada was on its way home.  The only option left to the Spanish ships was to return to Spain by sailing round the north of Scotland and home via the Atlantic or the Irish sea.  

What also aided the English in defeating the Armada?

The Spanish ships were beginning to show wear from the long voyage, and some were kept together by having their damaged hulls strengthened with cables. Supplies of food and water ran short.

Off Scotland and Ireland, the fleet ran into a series of powerful westerly winds which drove many of the damaged ships further toward the shore. Because so many anchors had been abandoned during the escape from the English fire-ships off Calais, many of the ships were incapable of securing shelter as the fleet reached the coast of Ireland and were driven onto the rocks where local inhabitants looted the ships.

More ships and sailors were lost to cold and stormy weather than in direct combat. About 5,000 men died by drowning, starvation, and slaughter by local inhabitants after their ships were driven ashore on the west coast of Scotland and Ireland. Reports of the passage of the remnants of the Spanish Armada around Ireland abound with onerous accounts of hardships and survival. In the end 67 ships and fewer than 10,000 men survived.

Why is the 1588 battle with the Spanish Armada so famous? 

The English story of the Armada is one of rumour, spin and outright lies! With the action all taking place at sea, and communication from the English fleet to shore being pretty much useless, no one at home knew what was actually happening. Likewise, events were blown out of all proportion because, again, no one really knew what had happened. In the end people believed what they wanted to believe and the “fake news” - or “tabloid truths” - still resonate with us today.

In England, the boost to national pride from the defeat of the Spanish invasion lasted for years and Elizabeth's legend persisted, and grew, long after her death. Yet the Armada’s defeat did not bring victory in the war with Spain; in fact, that conflict dragged on into the 17th-century.

The English Armada 

The Spanish never really saw the Armada as a significant setback. That was because the English suffered an embarrassing naval disaster of their own in 1589. That year, Sir Francis Drake led a so-called “Counter Armada”, with the aim of destroying the remainder of Philip’s fleet while it was under repair in Santander. It was a fiasco, in which 15,000 Englishmen died, and many of the 86 ships were lost. Drake and his fleet were forced - just like Philip II’s own fleet a year earlier - to stop at A Coruña for lack of provisions. Here, a local woman, Maria Pita, led fierce resistance against the English navy.

Legacy

The legend of the defeat of the Spanish Armada created by the Tudors, and retold by generations after them, has had a powerful legacy. In times of crisis, from the Second World War to the Falklands Conflict in 1982, it has been used to convince Britons that this small island can take on superpowers, that we come from a long line of cool-headed and inspirational leaders, and that, small as we are, we can still play a mighty role on the world stage. True or not, this populist version of the Armada story convinces many to believe in that fantasy. Who knows where this impressive mingling of facts, fantasy, and fibs might take us next? Why does Boris’ Brexit spring to mind..? Bon appétit!