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The Armada of 1597

With the energy of despair, Philip II raised another Armada in 1597 ; but this only brought Sir Francis Drake and his " sea-dogs" again to the Spanish coast. The armada of 1597 was well conceived and competently carried out. The English knew nothing about it, and only the gales which dispersed the fleet.

The position of the English in Ireland was extremely perilous at the opening of the year 1597. This, however, was not by any means the only point at which danger seemed to threaten from Spain, and the slowness of the Queen and her Ministers in responding to the urgent demands of the commanders in Ireland for warlike resources is explained by the fact that in the view of Englishmen at the center of government the first duty was to provide against the possibility of a successful attack upon the heart of the nation itself; and, moreover, the intelligence they received gave them the incorrect belief that the main Spanish attack in 1596 was to be on the Isle of Wight, the Irish expedition being only a diversion. Public opinion in England was indeed profoundly impressed by the supposed imminence of a renewed attempt at the invasion and conquest of the country by a foreign force.

The Spaniards had captured Calais only a year before, and even now the harbour was filled with flat-bottomed flyboats, which threatened an invasion of England. The King of France, too, offered the Queen the possession of Calais if she could wrest it from the Spaniards, and the soldiers clamored unanimously for a great land army to be sent from England to capture again England's ancient gate to the Continent.

All the recent glory of England, all her new-born potency and increasing wealth, had been gained on the sea; the people themselves were stirred at the idea of naval adventure and abundant loot; and the cost of fitting out a fleet would be largely met by "adventurers" on the chance of private gain; whereas the Queen herself would have to pay the entire cost of an army.

Essex laboured diligently, beset with many difficulties, mainly born of the Queen's parsimony, to commission and provision a new fleet. By June 1597 Essex found himself in command of a fleet consisting of three squadrons, one under his immediate orders, another under Lord Thomas Howard, and the third under Ralegh.1 Besides these experienced commanders the best of the young Protestant nobility were included in the officers on board.2 There are twenty Queen's ships, ten Dutch men-of-war, and a large number of merchant ships and victuallers, the entire force consisting of 120 sail with 5000 soldiers on board.

Failure dogged Essex from the first. Alternate calms and contrary gales kept him for a fortnight between the Downs and Plymouth, then supplies ran short and victuals went bad. Essex again grew hopeful; but such a summer "as was never seen by man" raged in the Channel, and although Essex managed to sail out of Plymouth on the l0th July, he encountered during the next ten days such foul weather as to reduce him to despair. The squadrons were scattered, and more than once the commanders "gave themselves up to God." At length Essex's squadron, battered, crippled, and disabled, regained Plymouth, whilst Ralegh's ships, in even worse case, sought shelter in Falmouth. Lord Thomas Howard's squadron crossed the Bay of Biscay almost to the Spanish coast, but he too was driven back and returned to England."

London was panicstricken at the disaster. Essex at length persuaded Queen Elizabeth to allow him to sail to the Spanish coast with a reduced force, for the sole purpose of sending some fire-ships into Ferrol harbor and burning the Spanish vessels there. The fleet remained at sea in vain, and came back to Plymouth, October 26, with only three rich merchantmen as prizes, barely sufficient to cover the cost of the expedition. Essex had not performed or seriously attempted the the tasks for which he went, the pecuniary result of his efforts was insignificant, and, worst of all, while he had sailing to the Azores, the Adelantado with the dreaded Armada of Spain had been almost within sight of the English coast.

No more vivid picture can be found of the utter demoralisation which had taken possession of Spanish officialdom than that presented in the series of papers and letters now in the British Museum relating to the preparations for the great Armada, which, as we have seen, in 1597 created so much alarm in England. They are mainly the letters and reports of Pedro Lopez de Soto, the Secretary of the Ade- lantado of Castile, who was to command the fleet; and their perusal enables us to understand fully, for the first time, the almost insuperable difficulties which Philip's system had created for himself.

The whole force, according to Lopez de Soto's estimate, would consist of 93 ships. Of these, 23 were to be of 600 to 1000 tons burden, 25 of 300 to 600 tons, 26 of 100 to 200 tons, with 20 galley zabras of 50 to 100 tons, besides pinnaces, victuallers, &c. The number of men which Lopez proposed to send in the fleet was 20,000 soldiers and 4000 sailors; and he advocated the seizure of a large number of pinnaces to enable the men to be thrown rapidly on shore.

The Armada of 1597 is described in "The depositione of Peeter Lemman" as 300 ships, 100 galleys and 120,000 men. These figures for the flotilla are, of course, much too high, but is it certain that it was a very large fleet, and it has been stated that it was even larger than the 1588 Armada, which consisted of about 130 vessels.

At length, when terrifying news came that the English had sailed in force again under Essex, and were first on the coasts of the Peninsula, and then cruising round the Azores to capture the treasure fleets, a last desperate effort was made by the Adelantado. The King was swept away by a passion for revenge for all the insults which he was constantly receiving: and so in a bad season, with a weak Armada, and without waiting for reinforcements, he resolved to carry out his object. The much-talked-of Spanish Armada of 1597, as incomplete as it was, put to sea from Corunna on the 18th October (N.S.); but with a military force very different from that foreshadowed by Lopez de Soto's sanguine estimate.

The report sent by the Venetian Ambassador to the Doge (28th October) says that the force that left Ferrol for Corunna consisted of : 44 royal galleons, of an aggregate tonnage of 12,686 tons; 16 merchantmen, of 5880 tons, 52 German and Flemish hulks for stores, of 15,514 tons, and 76 small craft. This fleet was to have carried 8634 soldiers and 4000 sailors ; but at least 600 of the former with 22 caravels failed to join from Lisbon.

Muddle reigned supreme from the first, but at length the Adelantado, with such forces as he had, came almost within sight of the Lizard on the 22nd October (N.S.), a fortnight before Essex landed at Plymouth (26th October O.S.). The orders were that in the name of God and St. James of Compostella, the fleet was to sail for Falmouth, which they were to take by surprise, or by the betrayal of its commander, and a land force was to march towards Plymouth. This plan for seizing Falmouth by surprise, or by questionable betrayal with a force so utterly inadequate as that at the disposal of the Adelantado, was not meant for an attempt at the serious invasion or the conquest of England, but as a means of frightening Elizabeth into the peace negotiation on the terms agreeable to Spain.

This third Armada was shattered by fierce storms. In the night of 22nd October the Armada began to part company and to scatter, each one thinking of his own safety; the sea unshipping their rudders, breaking their yards, carrying away their masts, and most gave themselves up for lost. For two days they knocked about without being able to make any harbor, and then, with a fair wind astern, they ingloriously sailed back in driblets to Corunna, beaten and cowed, though they had never seen an enemy nor fired a shot. The actual number totally wrecked seems to have been about ten vessels.

Cadiz was plundered and burned by Drake, who again destroyed its ships and stores. Drake again became the scourge of Spanish America, taking treasure-laden galleons and destroying settlements; but the English queen and people had no more fear of Spanish power.