Failure of the Century: The Spanish Armada, Part Four - The Armada Sails

I've decided that this entry will just be narrative. I may do a Part Five on why the Armada failed, but I want to finish the story first; so here's the next bit.

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Motherfuckin' Francis Drake. Just wait.

It's 28 May, 1588. After decades of being pissed off at Elizabeth and England for many reasons (being Protestant, pirating Spanish ships, towns, and colonies, killing the Catholic pretender Mary, Queen of Scots, being Protestant, backing the Protestant Dutch in the Spanish-owned Netherlands, rebuffing his marriage proposal, being Protestant), King Philip II of Spain, with the support of Pope Sixtus V had dispatched the Spanish Armada, bound for England, and glory.

Or that was the plan.

Robert Burns wrote that the best-laid plans often go awry (well, he wrote 'agley', but he was probably a little bit drunk and definitely very much Scottish), and the Spanish Armada could stand as a gleaming testament to this quote if it had been planned better. The plan was to have the Armada sail the length of the English Channel from the south and escort 30 000 Spanish veterans from where they had been fighting Protestants in the Netherlands, across the Strait of Dover, and invade the shit out of England. What you are about to read is the story of the spectacular failure in this pursuit.

The Plan: Get better at MS Paint

As the Armada made the long trek north, England was preparing for war as well. Elizabeth was like the Kremlin of 16th-century spy work, or at least Philip and his guys really sucked at it. There's some great stories behind these statements, but the point is that Spain had a major tell, and Elizabeth saw them coming a mile away (or about a thousand miles as the crow flies). England's best ships (and every other ship) had been pulled into service, her best admirals alerted, and all along the coast Englishmen waited day and night for the first sign of the Armada, cleaning their muskets, dusting off their pitchforks, drinking tea and talking about how totally sweet Protestantism is.

England knew that its ships had to beat the Armada. If they didn't, Spain would invade, and on land, wearing armor, and pointing pikes and muskets, there wasn't an army in the West that could go man-for-man with Spain's veterans in the Netherlands. The Royal Navy was the first and only line of defense for the English. Fortunately for England, it was the Royal Fucking Navy.

In charge of the English fleet was a guy named Charles Howard, a politician and cousin to the Queen with impeccable French but no real fighting ability - fans of the Duke of Medina Sidonia will recognize this character type. But, Howard and the English had an ace in the hole. Sir Francis Drake was leading a squadron of ships in the fleet. Drake was a legendary leader of men, a combat veteran, and a seafaring, swashbuckling badass for the ages. I could write about him for hours, but we're here for the Armada, and I digress. 

On 20 July, 1588, the Armada was spotted off the southern coast of England, west of Plymouth.The English, stationed at Eddystone Rocks, near Plymouth, were downwind of the Armada, giving the Spanish a sizable advantage. Many ships of this era used rowers, often prisoners, to power the ship forward, but the big gunships like the galleass and galleon did not, and relied solely on their sails for propulsion - and even the galleys, with their oars, still needed a pair of sails to reach cruising speed. As you can see, the wind was a mighty ally in this environment. It was possible to go into the wind using a process called 'tacking', which involved zig-zagging at a snail's pace (highly unfavorable for an entire fleet to do while staying organized), but sailing with the wind was several times faster than tacking, and made maneuvering much easier as well.

So, with the Spanish Armada bearing down, the wind at their backs, an unbeatable opponent, what did the English do? Come charging out of Plymouth Harbour, guns blazing and ready to defend their homeland? Nope. They waited. Cook and Howard famously played a game of bowls (kind of like curling on a lawn) as the Spanish approached. This moment may have been the turning point of the entire expedition. The Duke of Medina Sidonia wouldn't have a better opportunity. Every advantage was his: he had more ships, more men, more guns, better soldiers, and, most importantly, the wind. The Spanish were ready to sweep in and deal a fatal blow to the English while their commanders played a silly English game of lawn bowling.

But they didn't.

Medina Sidonia's lieutenants urged him to attack. They pleaded with him. They would never get a better opportunity to defeat the English. Ship-to-ship, no man believed in the English fleet's chances: the Spanish troops were just too experienced. But here in the Channel, in the open water, at distance, the English still had a puncher's chance, and the Spanish council of war, Miguel de Oquendo and the aforementioned Recalde, wanted to snuff out that threat now - why worry about the fleet at all; crush them now and be done with it.

But the Duke had strict orders. Do not engage unless absolutely necessary. The ships were necessary to transport the lowland troops across at Calais, and they were not to be lost fighting naval battles. The invasion took precedent over pissing contests with Francis Drake on the high seas. So, the Armada sailed on.

The best metaphor for this I can think of is having your opponent grounded in front of you, holding a baseball bat aloft and ready to finish the fight, before suddenly helping him up, handing him the bat, and turning around and facing the other way. By sailing on past Plymouth, the Spanish now placed themselves not just downwind of the English, but facing away from them.

That night, the evening of 20 July, the English began to track the Spanish. The English had begun to enter the field of battle that day, as the Spanish sailed by, on the off-chance that Medina Sidonia changed his mind and attacked. The 50-odd ships split into two groups, one of 11 ships headed by Drake, the rest by Howard. The plan was for Howard to be ready engage while Drake tacked around to gain the weather gage (the upwind position).  Now, with the Spanish already passed and the English ships already in the Channel, the chase could begin.

The Armada had amassed themselves in a massive crescent formation, with the elite fighting groups on the tips, while the English approached from the rear in single-line fashion. The Spanish formation was supposed to help protect against broadsides, while the English were set up for speed and maneuverability. Essentially, the Spanish, with their ships brimming with experienced fighting men, wanted the English to have to get close. The English, meanwhile, with their smaller ships and smaller crews, wanted to part of the Spanish close up, and were going to try and fight from afar, using their cannon instead of their swords.

The English ships, in their two squadrons, closed on the powerful ends of the fleeing Spanish crescent, Howard toward the southern tip, Drake to the northern. They came in their single-file formation (dubbed 'line astern'.

On the morning of 21 July, the English closed the distance on the Armada. The view from the English ships must have been utterly cinematic. Ahead of them, fleeing into the rising sun, were bigger, more powerful ships than they had every encountered. A larger fleet had never been assembled in the history of Western Europe. At stake: their Queen, their country, their very religion.

The two lines of English ships managed to catch and surpass the tips of the crescent, and bombard the heavy ships of the line with cannonfire. The agility of the ships, and of the formation, worked brilliantly. The English managed to loose 2000 cannonballs without letting the Spanish return effective fire, or get a single ship close enough to grapple and board.

Unfortunately for the English, hitting a chunk of wood bouncing around in the open ocean with an unrifled shot fired from another frolicking chunk of wood at a quarter-mile distance was really goddamned hard. Of 2000 shots, not a single Spanish ship was sunk due to cannon-fire; though a shitty carrack managed to run into a galleon and become entangled, rendering both useless. After the English receded that evening, after an entire afternoon of battering the Spanish formation, Drake returned to the wrecks and pillaged them for powder and loot. I know, he would, wouldn't he.

Drake's inability to resist Spanish gold was very fortunate for him, as the ships were allegedly loaded for some reason, but proved disastrous for the rest of the English fleet. On the night of 21-22 July, Drake was supposed to lead the fleet with a lantern lit, providing a reference point for the rest of the fleet, so they could stay organized. When he went back to loot the ships, he took the fleet's positional gauge with him, and they fell into disarray. The English had to spend all day on the 22nd just reorganizing the fleet. The Armada trudged on toward Calais and the invasion force.

I don't know what this is

The English, though, had a significant speed advantage, as you've no doubt guessed at this point. The Spanish had massive ships, full of men, supplies, and cannon. They were heavyweights, built to deal out and sustain punishment. The English ships, however, were smaller, sleeker, quicker, and more maneuverable. Many were 'race-built' (cut down) galleons, frigates, merchant ships, or super-light Dutch flyboats. It took them only the night to catch the Spanish, and the two sides engaged once again near Portland on the 23rd.

English citizens gathered on the hills outside of Portland to witness a confrontation not unlike the one from two days earlier: the English peppered the Armada from a distance, but the Spanish, in their mighty formation, hardly seemed to notice. The wind changed and the Spanish, with a brief advantage, sought to close, but to no avail. The English ships were too nimble. The day was a wash - in fact, since the Spanish managed not to run into each other, this battle was even less significant than the previous one, as no damage was done on either side.

At this point, the Armada's trip seemed to be nearing its end. The English fleet had been unable to do too much more than pester them, and had certainly not displayed enough punching power to stop them. Everything was going well enough - but there was a hitch. They were less than 200 miles (about 300 km) from Calais, and the Duke of Medina Sidonia had not yet heard from the Duke of Parma, in charge of the Spanish veterans in the Netherlands. The Armada was closing on its target - but it had no idea if the army would be ready for transport.

As the Armada approached the Isle of Wight, the Duke of Medina Sidonia faced an enormous decision: station here and wait for word that the army was ready, or press on and hope that it was. You see, once past the Isle, there were no natural harbors for the Armada, and they would be stuck out on the open sea. There wasn't even anywhere to drop anchor on the Spanish-controlled coastlines of Flanders. Once past the Isle of Wight, it was Calais or bust.

Medina Sidonia, showing again his aversion to any sort of risk, decided to anchor in the Solent, the body of water between the mainland and the Isle. He tried to steer Armada around the Isle to the south, then turn north into the Solent. The British were two steps ahead:

Holy shit I'm bad at this

The black shit is land, the Isle on the left and the mainland to the right. As Medina Sidonia attempted to turn the Armada into safe waters, the English fleet split into four small squads. Drake promptly split from the mass and headed South. Howard went to the north and began strafing the northern tip of the Armada with fire, while two other squadrons charged the center and began firing upon the inside of the crescent. This three-pronged attack had little effect, however. The Spanish began to enter the Solent, and safety.

But then came Drake. Charging fast from the open sea, Drake pounced ferociously on the southern tip of the Spanish crescent. Fearing that his galleons were in serious danger to the English marauder, Medina Sidonia pulled the weight of his fighting ships in the center of the line south to deal with Drake. This was a mistake. Because the Spanish were busy rearranging their formation, there was something they weren't doing - entering the Solent. Instead, they headed for peril.

You'll see on my awesome map the black lines marked 'Owers.' These are the Owers sandbanks, one of the most treacherous landmarks of the Channel. Shortly after he dispatched reinforcements to the southern tip, Medina Sidonia realized his folly - he was headed straight for the Owers. In order to avoid running aground, and to keep the Armada together, he called a full retreat back to the open sea. The Armada would not be anchoring in the Solent, and though they had once again failed to sink any Spanish ships with their guns, Howard and Drake had succeeded in preventing the Spanish from setting foot on English soil.

And so, for the Spanish, the English, the Spanish troops in Holland, and for you, the reader, it was off to Calais for the final chapter in this tale. In Part Five we will view how this all shakes out, both the final leg of the Armada's journey, and some behind-the-scenes stuff that just might explain the folly of it all.

Failure of the Century: The Spanish Armada, Part Three - Enter the Duke

Part 1
Part 2

I have to apologize. By Episode 3 we should probably be wrapping this up, but here we are, just getting started putting the Armada together. It's easy to get caught up in the details (hey, I'm a history major), but the point of this shitty blog is succinctness.

Alvaro de Bazan, the Marquis of Santa Cruz

In any case, here we are. It is the spring of 1588, and Spain is ready to go back to war with England and the Protestant Queen Elizabeth, public enemy no. 1 for the Catholics and their enforcer, King Philip II of Spain. Placed in charge of constructing this massive project is the venerable seafaring legend of Spain, the mighty Marquis of Santa Cruz, Alvaro de Bazan. Yes, names were way sweeter back then.

Now, there are many, many reasons for the (spoiler alert) ultimate failure of the armada, and we will explore these, but there is one that has historically, and for good reason, taken the proverbial cake.

In 1588 Santa Cruz was 61 years old, had fought in countless battles and led a stressful life as top admiral in the largest empire on the planet, and had spent the previous winter working his fingers to the bone preparing for his magnum opus, a massive invasion of England. Unfortunately, this proved to be too much for the old man, and he died. Some sources claim that it was the stress of this final job that finished him off, but what is not in doubt is the fact that he stopped breathing in early February, and left Philip scrambling for a replacement.

'Replacement' is not a great word. 'Shadow' is more appropriate; maybe 'facsimile.' The Marquis of Santa Cruz was not easily replaceable. He had led a reserve of Allied Christian ships at Lepanto in 1571. He served as Philip's naval ringer during the takeover of Portugal in the 1580s. You could count his naval equals, on the face of the earth at this time, on one hand.

Hey, I'm Alvaro Perez de Guzman, Duke of Medina Sidonia

The Duke of Medina Sidonia, Alonso Perez de Guzman was not a seafaring genius or brilliant leader of men.

His ancestors, however, had been. The Guzmans were likely descended from Norse raiders in the 10th century, and ruled the Spanish district of Andalusia (southern Spain). Enrique Perez de Guzman, several issues before our hero Alonso, had been a general of the Reconquista, and died during the siege of Gibraltar. He was not alone, however: it is said that the Guzmans earned their nickname, "el bueno" (The Good) through military prowess. The Guzmans had produced generals and colonial governors - in all, the family  had almost 600 years of military heritage.

And so, in February of 1588, Philip II of Spain sent a messenger to somebody who had fighting in his blood. What the Duke of Medina Sidonia didn't have was any kind of military or naval experience, or really any desire to leave home. After his father died, Medina Sidonia became the richest noble in the kingdom, and he was perfectly content hanging out at his Spanish villa all day and not organizing an invasion of England. In fact, he did his very best to get out of Philip's scheme. Here is an excerpt from a letter Medina Sidonia sent to the king following his assignment:

"But sir, I have no health for the sea, I know from the small experience I have had afloat that I am always seasick and catch cold. Besides this... my house owes 900 000 ducats, and I am therefore quite unable to accept the command, I have not a penny I can spend on the expedition. Apart from this, neither my conscience nor my duty will allow me to take this service. The fleet is so great, and the undertaking so important, that it would be wrong for a person like myself, with no experience of seafaring or warfare, to take charge of it. ... I possess neither the aptitude, ability, health, or fortune for the expedition. The lack of any of these qualities would be enough to excuse me, and much more the lack of them all, which is the case with me at present."

How much of this is true is irrelevant: either Medina Sidonia was not cut out for the job, or he wanted no part of it; either way, he was the wrong choice. According to most stories, it is the former. Medina Sidonia threw himself into the project and did everything in his power to make it work, but he simply had no business being there - we'll get back to this. 

There are two stories that continue from here: one where the secretaries of the king dared not show the letter to Philip, and responded to Medina Sidonia telling him as much, and another version where the king replied, ignored his qualms, and told him to get his ass to Lisbon.

Speaking of Lisbon, Portugal plays its own part in this tale. I'll return to Medina Sidonia in a moment, bear with me. Philip had taken control in a play for the throne of Portugal in 1581, and ruled from Madrid through his nephew, Albert. The Spanish king was not particularly popular in Portugal, but he did do his best to run the place properly. He let the country mostly run itself, left the Portuguese Inquisition to its own devices, instilled Portuguese nobles in his own court, allowed middle-class secretaries to reach positions of influence in Portugal, and constructed a special council to advise him on the matters of Portugal. By all accounts, Philip wanted to be a good king.

This is all academic, of course. Portugal matters when it comes to the Armada for two reasons:

i) The Armada was launched from Lisbon, which is one of the sweetest natural ports in the world. This provided an excellent place to gather the fleet and an excellent place from which to launch it, the nearest great port to England that the Spanish had. It was at Lisbon that the banner of the Armada was blessed on 25 April, and it was at Lisbon that the Armada set sail on 28 May.

ii) The Portuguese are historically some of the best seamen on the planet. Their navy, which was seized in Philip's annexation of Portugal, was one of the finest in the world - their ships state-of-the-art, and their sailors brilliant at their craft. The Spanish inducted 12 ships of the line and four 50-gun galleys into the Armada, forming the Portugal Squadron, the elite group of the Armada. One of the 12 galleons was the San Martin, formerly the pride of the Portuguese navy, Sao Martinho. The San Martin was brand new, had two gun decks consisting of 48 cannon, was perhaps the greatest ship afloat, and was chosen by Medina Sidonia as his flagship.

And speaking of the good Duke, it's time to return to the narrative.

So the Duke of Medina Sidonia set off for Lisbon in a hurry, and immediately upon arrival set to work. Medina Sidonia was not completely out of his element at this stage: Philip had many reasons for choosing him (lineage, wealth, trust), but Medina Sidonia was regarded as one of the best organizers and delegaters in Spain, and his fingerprints were all over the formation of the Navy, even though he only got to it in its final stages.

Coordination, logistics, planning - this the Duke could do. What he didn't know about seamanship he would fake, or try to learn as fast as possible by surrounding himself with grizzled veterans from the Spanish navy. The official admiral for the Armada was a daring, fantastic old commander named Juan Martinez de Recalde, and Medina Sidonia shadowed him from the time he met him, soaking up every ounce of information that Recalde would share.

 The Armada was not built to succeed. It was made up of 130-odd ships, and some of these were fantastic galleons like the Portuguese Squadron - but many were shitty galleys, barely maneuverable, and constructed with the Mediterranean in mind - not the open black seas of the English Channel. At least those galleys were able to hold cannon, though - many of the ships in the Armada were commandeered merchant craft that had cannons strapped to every available surface. However, in this jury-rigged environment, the Duke of Medina Sidonia set to work.

Medina Sidonia completely reorganized the fleet, consolidating it into the grand armada we know from history, giving it more punching power and less maneuverability. He convinced Philip to add galleasses from Naples and even took ten galleons and four fighting merchant ships from the Indian Guard, the squadron that guarded Spain's silver shipments. These ships of the Indian Guard became the Squadron of Castile, which was likely the most competent group in the armada, after the Squadron of Portugal.

A Spanish galleon, the most powerful fighting ship in the ocean in the 16th century

The Duke upped supplies from what was initially distributed, which included raising the allotted shot from 30 rounds per gun to 50. Medina Sidonia was preparing for war and he wasn't messing around. The Duke gave a good account of himself as an administrator in the weeks before the launch, organizing what had been a thoroughly incompetent distribution of guns and ammunition. Even though he hated sailing and had never helmed a warship, the Duke had a little experience in this field as the Captain General of the Coast of Andalusia, and had prepared the ships of his own region to join the Armada in the previous couple of years.

I can't write about the preparations of the Armada much longer. What you need to know you've read, and if you're interested, here are the final tallies of the armada:

130 ships
59 000 tons
26 000 soldiers and sailors
2500 guns

By late spring, the fleet was as ready as it was going to be, and on 28 May, 1588, the greatest seafaring endeavor since Agamemnon set sail for Troy. And next time, we'll see just how well the Armada will fare.