The Butcher's Daughter, page 35
The queen’s gift to me was a beautiful cloak clasp wrought in the form of a serpent, a sea serpent poised to strike - my sea serpent - cast in fine gold with a pair of blood-red ruby eyes. I owned very little jewelry and none of it had value. I marveled at the clasp’s exquisite craftsmanship. I ran my fingers over the serpent’s delicate scales, etched with wonderful detail. My eyes must have sparkled as Martin plainly took pleasure in my reaction.
I would like to say my men and I contributed in some meaningful or decisive way to England’s lopsided victory over Spain and all her ships and fighting men at sea. But that would be untrue. In truth, my men and I saw very little action. And though I was there at the battle, which was a series of smaller, running engagements spanning several weeks, not one single clash of arms, I cannot say even now that I truly understand what happened as I only saw a fraction of the whole. Scholars and historians will no doubt have much to say about Gloriana’s Victory over the Armada. This much I know at least: the English were very brave and bold. They had their backs against the wall. They were fighting for hearth and home and family, for their beloved queen and for their Protestant faith. And they had the better ships. The Spanish, like the French I think, are more comfortable on land than at sea. England is an island after all and her people have forever loved - and have always understood - the sea. But in truth the Spanish beat themselves. Ah, then again, there are those who say the Almighty had a hand in the final outcome too…
The Grande y Felicisima Armada, the Great and Fortunate Navy as it was called, left Spain in July of 1588 with nearly one hundred and fifty ships carrying twenty-five hundred cannon and twenty-six thousand souls, including soldiers, sailors, marines, laborers, slaves and priests, all under the supreme command of Don Alonso Pérez de Guzmán y de Zúñiga-Sotomayor, the seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia. The fleet sailed for the Netherlands to rendezvous with a Spanish army there - thirty thousand strong - being assembled under the command of another one of King Phillip’s favored princes, a man named Alejandro Farnesio, the Duke of Parma and the Governor General of the Spanish Netherlands. The Spanish invasion plan was simple enough on paper. Medina Sidonia’s ships were to pick up Parma’s army and ferry his men across the narrow English Channel to topple the Protestant, heretic queen. After the demise of Elizabeth and all her nobles, a brotherhood of fanatical priests, the Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición, with the force of Spanish arms behind them, would be free to root out and eradicate English Protestantism wherever they found it. God’s will. But before the mighty Spanish Armada left the warm and friendly waters of Spain and Portugal, before the Armada had even weighed anchor, it all went very wrong.
The English drew first blood. I was there to see it.
Spain’s troubles first began in the spring of 1587 when Drake led a surprise attack against the Spanish while the grand Armada was still gathering all of its parts at the ports of Cádiz and A Coruña. Drake’s mission, handed down to him by the queen herself, was to harass and destroy whatever he could, to disrupt Spain’s preparations for war and buy the English a little more time to prepare their own defenses.
This was when I had first met the great English hero. I did not like him. He was humorless, pompous and vain. Modest in stature and plain of face, he surrounded himself with a gaggle of young English noblemen and sought their counsel on even the most trivial of matters. I thought him weak. But, I must confess, my opinion of Drake was tainted by what I knew about the massacre of the Clan MacDonnell at Rathlin Island. And it was plain Drake did not like me. He and his young cavaliers did not trust me or my Irish, Catholic crews, men he thought of as thugs and most likely traitors. He kept us at a goodly distance.
Drake’s raiding party numbered about thirty ships, give or take. He had four splendid Navy Royal galleons including his flagship, the Elizabeth Bonaventure, twenty smaller ships, mostly converted freighters owned by adventuresome London merchants looking to turn a profit, and a wonderful squadron of first-rate privateers, including my Phantom and Diablo. I had to leave Bella behind with MacGyver in Plymouth after an errant supply barge missed the dock, slammed into Bella’s stern and snapped her rudder off. Oh how the barge’s fool of a master, stinking of liquor, cringed in terror when I unleashed my unbridled scorn upon his head that day!
We first sailed south for the Bay of Cádiz where Drake assigned my two ships the thankless task of waiting outside the harbor to guard his flank, to keep his line of retreat open if things went poorly for him inside. I bit my tongue for once and I did as I was told.
Ignoring the Spanish shore batteries, and their woefully ineffective fire, Drake boldly sailed his fleet into the harbor at sunset and attacked a Spanish fleet of three powerful Spanish galleons and sixty smaller carracks head-on. My men and I were forced to watch the battle as best we could from afar. We were only spectators and saw no close action, which also meant we would share in no prize money.
The battle raged on all through the night and well into the afternoon of the next day. After sinking only a few minor scows, and capturing another four smallish vessels of dubious value, Drake decided to break-off the engagement to look for easier prey. The Spanish had fought valiantly. They had held their own throughout the first duel and had earned our admiration.
We sailed up the coast to Lisbon next, attacking any ships we crossed along the way and shelling any shore batteries we passed. It was all great fun, but we achieved very little.
And then a formidable Spanish squadron of swift warships sailing up from Cádiz in hot pursuit started gaining on us. Not liking the odds, Drake swung his ships due west and set a course for the Azores, betting that the skittish Spanish would never follow us out into the deep and wild Atlantic - even under warm and sunny skies - and he was right. The Spanish commander had no stomach for the Atlantic’s erratic mercy and refused to risk his squadron so far away from land. As I watched the Spaniard turn his ships around for home, I found myself wondering what kind of man would we face once the great invasion fleet set sail, a commander like the bulldog who had tenaciously fought us off at Cádiz, or more like the tepid squadron commander who turned tail and ran away from a brawl? Perhaps they were one and the same.
It was off the Island of São Miguel, the largest island in the Azores archipelago, where Drake’s fortunes truly soared. My lookouts were the first to spot a lone freighter plowing through the swells under full sail. I took my ships and we peeled away from the fleet to intercept her - until Drake raised the fleet’s signal flags, ordering me to stand down. He wanted to grab the honors for himself. I had a mind to ignore the Englishman but, at Hunter’s urging, I swallowed my pride, uttered a few curses and obeyed Drake’s outrageous order.
Elizabeth Bonaventure overtook the freighter with ease. The carrack was the São Filipe from Portugal and she had left the New World for Lisbon laden down with unbelievable quantities of gold, silver, spices, silks and the like. Incredibly, she had sailed without any armed escort. Drake put a prize crew aboard the São Filipe and wisely decided to hurry back to England with the carrack in tow.
Queen Elizabeth, holding Court at Nonsuch Palace in Surry, was delighted and amused by the news of Drake’s successful raid. The Filipe’s booty alone had made the whole expedition worthwhile. Her majesty took half the spoils for herself, a sum they say exceeded all the Crown’s customary revenues for the entire year, and gave Drake ten percent of the winnings, making him a very wealthy man. The investors and Drake’s men divvied-up the rest. My men and I didn’t see so much as a penny. But of far more importance to England than plundered treasure, Drake’s daring raid had set Spain’s invasion plan back many months, giving the English more time.
At his new palace El Escorial, in the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama north of Madrid, King Phillip they say was less amused by the attack inside Spanish home waters. He threw a royal fit. The name Drake had brought the Spanish monarch no joy over the years and in fact he so despised Drake, he dubbed the cunning Englishman El Dragón and placed a royal bounty of twenty thousand gold ducats on his head. Despite this sumptuous reward, El Dragón had eluded all attempts by the Spanish navy to corner him. The spectacular capture of the Silver Train at Nombre de Dios, back in 1574, the sackings of Santo Domingo, Veracruz and Cartagena, and the more recent audacious raids against the Azores and Cape Verde Islands, had all been by Drake’s hand.
And then, after Cádiz, Spanish ambitions suffered a second, ominous blow. Spain’s great Lord High Admiral, Álvaro de Bazán, first Marquis of Santa Cruz de Mudela, died unexpectedly in February 1588 on the eve of the great crusade. Santa Cruz, the principal architect of the Spanish galleon, a competent commander and a gifted sailor, had been one of the precious few gems in the Royal Navy’s officer cadre of pampered aristocrats, ne’er-do-wells and men of doubtful talent.
After Santa Cruz’s death, King Phillip turned to Medina Sidonia, a young, court interloper with little military experience at sea or on land, and handed the most powerful navy ever assembled over to the duke. The king’s choice was most curious. The newly minted admiral had never held command of any kind before. As High Lord Admiral, Medina Sidonia’s first order was to delay the invasion and Spain lost more time.
When Medina Sidonia finally set out for England in April 1588 - following Cardinal Archduke Albert’s blessings to the sounds of trumpets, fife and drum at High Mass held in the Santa Maria Maior de Lisboa with all the trappings of royal pageantry - Spain suffered yet another bitter serving of misfortune. A few days into the expedition a powerful spring gale swept over the Armada damaging many ships, forcing the Spanish to return to port to make repairs and more precious time was lost - a bad omen for those who knew how to read the signs. Fortune had sent King of Spain three.
Meanwhile the English, including my men and me, spent that spring and summer of 1588 in Devonport, waiting. I can’t recall ever being more bored. Even now my head rebels at the very memory of the monotonous card games, the hours of tedious, heavy drinking and the endless weeks of stubborn rain. We sat in port bored witless, anxiously waiting for English spies planted in Spain and Portugal to send word on the movements of the Spanish fleet.
Then, in late July, the dreaded day finally came. English picket ships spotted the Grande y Felicisima Armada in full glory off the Cornish coast. All along southern England sentries lit the beacon fires to warn London of the approaching tormenta español.
My ships sat shackled to the River Tamar when word reached us to make ready. I scrambled to assemble my men and scoured the markets and farms around Davenport, buying up all the fresh provisions we could lay our hands on. Privateers eat better than their English navy cousins and enjoy superior health. My men were no exception. I never pinched on victuals. My men and I ate well.
After calmly finishing his game of bowls at Plymouth Hoe, or perhaps he was just waiting for the outgoing tide, Drake led us out under fair skies and light winds into the English Channel to take on the Spanish juggernaut. Drake had the galleon Revenge, an impressive forty-six gunner, under his command and eleven warships of different sorts plus his squadron of privateers. Lord Howard Effingham joined us later with thirty-four more warships, including twenty-one powerful race-built galleons - the cream of the Navy Royal.
When I first laid eyes on the mighty Spanish fleet under full sail inexorably lumbering towards us, I felt my heart go faint. I had never seen such power. Masts and sails filled a vast expanse of sea. The enormous force bearing down on us looked unstoppable, looked invincible to me. A meager hodgepodge of fifty English ships faced one hundred and fifty Spanish. I did not like the odds.
Admiral Medina Sidonia had deployed his ships in a huge, sweeping arc resembling a crescent moon, or perhaps his formation was meant to be a scythe for mowing down Englishmen. The admiral had placed his powerful but slower galleons in the formation’s center and his smaller, faster escort ships, the zabras and pataches used to protect and resupply the galleons, at the wings, forming the crescent’s horns. The fleet stretched across the water for miles. The sea was planted thick with masts. Even now it is difficult for me to faithfully describe the sheer grandeur of what I saw. The Spanish must have looked down on our puny English fleet sailing out to stop them with confidence and contempt.
And the galleons of the Armada were nothing like what we had seen in the New World. These were huge battlewagons displacing nine hundred tons or better with thick, oak hulls, massive sails and were armed with batteries of demi-culverines, guns of enormous size capable of hurtling iron shot weighing thirty pounds or more at targets over a mile away. But compared to England’s swift and nimble warships, these brutes were also slow and clumsy. In fair seas or foul, a Spanish war galleon will never out-sail an English race-built galleon.
Just south of Rame Head near the Eddystone Rocks, a place of no military significance, is where the battle started. We stood off these hazards a little ways and opened fire on the Spanish with over a mile of water between us. We concentrated our bombardment on the huge Spanish galleons, lobbing our iron balls at them for several hours though I know not why. Except to waste good shot and powder, we accomplished very little at such long range with these antics. When we did manage to hit anything besides ocean, our iron simply bounced off the impenetrable Spanish hulls. The Spanish must have howled with laughter at our foolishness. But we did learn something of interest during that first skirmish. For every shot the Spanish fired, we answered them with three. Spanish gunners had been excruciatingly sluggish returning fire.
My topmen up in the ship’s rigging with a bird’s eye view of the action had been quick to spot the problem. Spanish decks were grossly overcrowded with supplies and provisions of every kind. Spanish gunners had struggled hauling in and reloading their great guns surrounded by stacks of clutter, by crates and barrels and bundles of every size and sort - a fatal flaw perhaps in tactics.
Following a long day of pointless gunnery, with no ships damaged on either side, we followed the Spanish up Channel well into the night. But when my men and I lost sight of the Revenge in the mist and the dark, I turned my three ships around and headed for Portsmouth, a port closer to us than Plymouth, to take on more shot and powder. Our magazines and ammunitions lockers were nearly empty and I didn’t trust the English to resupply us privateers.
After replenishing our stores, and buying more fresh victuals in Portsmouth, we set out on the first tide and caught-up to the English fleet a few days later sitting off Calais. The Spanish Armada had dropped anchor in the roadstead outside of the French port to, we all assumed, wait for Parma’s army. But Drake had other plans in mind for the Spanish.
That night Drake confiscated eight ships, ships he deemed expendable - including my poor Bella. He had in mind a sacrifice, something spectacular to warm Poseidon’s cold heart. At midnight, English sailors loaded the eight ships down with pitch, brimstone and tar, set them ablaze and launched the doomed squadron downwind towards the tightly packed Spanish ships riding anchor. The English call their fire ships Hell Burners and to the Spanish it must have looked like hell was coming for them. Panic jumped from ship to ship like the plague as crews watched the wall of fire drifting towards them with horror. When many captains gave the order to cut the anchor cables and move their ships well clear of the rolling conflagration, all good order within the Spanish fleet disintegrated. At first light the next morning, we saw a Spanish fleet in disarray, struggling to regroup. And when his ships were unable to reassemble in the fluky, ornery winds of that day, Medina Sidonia gave up on Calais and moved his fleet a little ways north along the Côte d’Opale, the Opal Coast, to Gravelines.
My men and I missed the hot action at Gravelines and again I felt cheated. Drake had sent my two ships farther north to join a Dutch fleet of thirty fly boats anchored just outside of Dunkerque. The Dutch were there to keep Parma bottled-up in port and we were there to deliver private dispatches, an absurdly menial task, to the Dutch fleet’s commander, Admiral Justin of Nassau. In addition to our duties as petty courier, we were to stay put and keep a watchful eye on our fidgety Dutch allies.
Gravelines was an epic struggle. The English launched an all-out assault against the Armada. For long hours, scores of warships traded broadside after broadside at close range, as close as one hundred yards they say. Across the Channel, some twenty miles off, Protestant Dutch refugees, French Huguenots and local town folk turned out by the thousands to stand along the White Cliffs of Dover to see what they could see of the life and death struggle. They watched the battle anxiously, too far away to be able discern who was winning and who was losing but knowing all the while that an English defeat meant their own doom. From twelve miles distance, my men and I had a clearer view.
Gravelines was an uneven match. With their faster ships and better crews, the English mauled the Spanish fleet. English gunners moved freely around their guns. They targeted Spanish gunners, decimating their ranks, and as causalities mounted Medina Sidonia’s commanders were forced to use marines to replace their losses. But Spanish marines had no experience working the navy’s great guns and the Armada suffered for it. The grueling butchery dragged on and on without letup until about four in the afternoon.
Two fine galleons, the San Mateo and the San Felipe, drifted away from the battle in bad condition and floated past us at Dunkerque. I took my ships and gave chase, hoping to snag ourselves a prize, but with a pair of Dutch warships chasing after me. When the galleons ran aground at Walcheren, the Dutch claimed the warships for themselves and found no reason to share the spoils with us Irish. That was the final straw for me.
Disgusted with the Dutch and with my own bad luck, and jaded with blockade duty, I took my ships without orders and sailed south to find the English fleet. When we cruised past Gravelines, we saw King Phillip’s grand fleet in shambles anchored in the roadstead. The Armada’s galleons in particular had been savagely mauled. Even from afar, we could see their crews feverishly trying to repair the damage, trying to ready their ships for action.
