Famous Sea Fights Part 8

It was Sunday morning, 31 July, according to the Spanish reckoning, the 21st according to the Old Style still used in England. It was a sunny day, with just enough wind to help the nimble, seaworthy English s.h.i.+ps in their guerilla tactics. Howard's policy was to take full advantage of the three factors that were on his side in the solution of the problem, better seamans.h.i.+p in his crews, better gunnery, and handier s.h.i.+ps. To close with and grapple in the fas.h.i.+on of earlier naval battles would have been to risk being crushed by superior numbers. His policy was to hang upon the flank or rear of the Armada, close in and try to cripple one or more s.h.i.+ps by artillery fire, slip away if the enemy turned upon him, come on again as they gave up the attempt to close, and he was ready all the time to swoop down upon and capture any s.h.i.+p that might be detached from her consorts. At the time arm-chair critics on sh.o.r.e found fault with what they considered the half-hearted conduct of the admiral, and the Queen's Council inquired why it was that none of the Spanish s.h.i.+ps had been boarded. Sir Walter Raleigh, who, as Professor Laughton notes, "must have often talked with Howard, and Drake, and Hawkins, while the business was fresh in their memories," thus explains and defends the admiral's conduct:--[10]

"Certainly, he that will happily perform a fight at sea must believe that there is more belonging to a good man of war upon the waters than great daring, and must know that there is a great deal of difference between fighting loose or at large and grappling. To clap s.h.i.+ps together without consideration belongs rather to a madman than to a man of war; for by such an ignorant bravery was Peter Strozzi lost at the Azores, when he fought against the Marquis of Santa Cruz. In like sort had the Lord Charles Howard, Admiral of England, been lost in the year 1588, if he had not been better advised than a great many malignant fools were, that found fault with his demeanour. The Spaniards had an army aboard them, and he had none; they had more s.h.i.+ps than he had, and of higher building and charging; so that, had he entangled himself with those great and powerful vessels, he had greatly endangered this kingdom of England. For twenty men upon the defences are equal to a hundred that board and enter; whereas then, contrariwise, the Spaniards had a hundred for twenty of ours, to defend themselves withal. But our admiral knew his advantage and held it; which had he not done, he had not been worthy to have held his head."

[10] "Historie of the World," edit. 1736, ii, 565, quoted by Professor Laughton, "State Papers relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada," vol. i, Introduction, p. lxvi.

The s.h.i.+ft of the wind to the north-west had given the English the weather gage. They could run down before it on the enemy, and beat back against it in a way that was impossible for the clumsy galleons. Thus Howard and his captains could choose their own position and range during the fighting. It began by a pinnace, appropriately named the "Defiance," firing a shot at the nearest Spaniards, a challenge to battle. Medina-Sidonia held his course and took no notice of it. Howard's squadron now swept past his left, and then engaged his rear s.h.i.+ps. The admiral himself in "The Ark"

steered for De Leyva's tall galleon, the "Rata Coronada," perhaps taking her to be the flags.h.i.+p of the whole Armada. The two s.h.i.+ps were soon in action, the English gunners firing at the Spaniard's great hull, and De Leyva's men aiming at the masts and yards of the "Ark" in the hope of bringing down her spars and sails, crippling and then boarding her. The better gunnery was on the English side. They fired three shots to the Spaniards' one, and every shot told on the huge target. And shots in the hull meant much loss of life and limb in the crowded decks.

As Recalde with the rear division shortened sail, and turned to the help of De Leyva, the "Ark" and her consorts bore away, only to return again to the attack, bringing their guns into action against Recalde's huge galleon, the "Santa Ana," and Pedro Valdes's s.h.i.+p, the "Rosario," "Capitana," or flags.h.i.+p of the Biscayan armada. These two had become separated from the main body with a few of her s.h.i.+ps that now formed a kind of rearguard.

Frobisher in the "Triumph" and Hawkins in the "Victory" were prominent in the attack. On the Spanish side several of the flags.h.i.+ps joined in this rearguard fight. The admirals showed a chivalrous disposition to come to close quarters, and thus Howard was engaged with some of the largest and best commanded s.h.i.+ps of the enemy. Oquendo, the admiral of Guipuzcoa, in his 1200-ton galleon, called, like that of Recalde, the "Santa Ana," had soon to draw out of the fight, with his s.h.i.+p on fire and badly damaged, not by the English cannon, but by a powder explosion on his main gundeck.[11]

One only wonders that such accidents were not frequent on both sides, for the powder was ladled into the guns from open gunpowder kegs, and matches were kept burning beside each gun.

[11] "Her two decks and her p.o.o.p were blown up: in which was the paymaster of this Armada with part of the King's Treasure."--Medina-Sidonia's narrative.

The "fighting loose and at large" went on for about three hours. Recalde's s.h.i.+p was badly hulled, and also had her rigging cut up and one of her masts damaged. Pedro Valdes's flags.h.i.+p, the "Rosario," was twice in collision with a consort, with disastrous results. Her bowsprit was carried away, and her foremast went over the side, the strain on the rigging bringing down the main topmast with it. When the English drew off just before sundown, Valdes was busy cutting away the wreckage. Medina-Sidonia shortened sail to enable the rearward s.h.i.+ps to rejoin, and then held his course up Channel.

Valdes sent a request to him that a s.h.i.+p should be detailed to tow the disabled "Rosario," which otherwise could not keep up with the fleet. It is generally stated that Medina-Sidonia took no notice of the message, and abandoned Valdes to his fate, but in his narrative the Duke reports to King Philip that he personally endeavoured to a.s.sist the disabled "Rosario," and succeeded in removing the wounded from her, only failing to save her "owing to the heavy sea and the darkness of the weather."

The English do not seem to have been troubled by the weather, and it cannot have been very bad, or the wounded could not have been taken by boats from Oquendo's s.h.i.+p. Evidently no great effort was made to succour the "Rosario," and the s.h.i.+ps detailed for the work did not like to lie in isolation so near the English during the night. The impression in the Armada certainly was that the gallant Valdes had been shamefully abandoned by the admiral.

Before sunset a council of war had been held by Howard on board the "Ark."

It was decided to follow up the Armada through the short summer night. To Drake in the "Revenge" was a.s.signed the task of keeping touch with them and guiding the pursuit by displaying a large stern lantern on his s.h.i.+p.

After dark Howard lost sight of the lantern, and then thought he had picked it up again, but at daylight he found that he must have steered by a light in the Armada, for as the day broke he lay with only a few s.h.i.+ps perilously near the main body of the enemy. Drake explained that in the darkness he had thought that some s.h.i.+ps of the enemy were turning back, and had followed them. He had certainly failed in his important duty, and there was a suspicion that the veteran buccaneer was really manoeuvring to make sure of a prize, for at sunrise his s.h.i.+p, the "Revenge," lay near the crippled "Rosario," which had been deserted by her consorts. He summoned Valdes to surrender, and the Spaniard, with his s.h.i.+p helpless and menaced by the main English fleet, hauled down his flag. The huge galleon was towed into Weymouth, the first prize of the campaign.

Howard had drawn off from the enemy, helped to secure the "Rosario," and rallied his own fleet, which had straggled during the night. This day, Monday, 1 August (or 22 July, Old Style), there was no fighting, the Armada working slowly up Channel, followed by the English out of cannon-range.

Medina-Sidonia formed a rearguard of forty galleons and three gallea.s.ses, "in all 43 of the best s.h.i.+ps of the Armada to confront the enemy, so that there should be no hindrance to our joining with the Duke of Parma; and the Duke with the rest of the Armada should go in the van, so that the whole fleet was divided into only two squadrons, Don Alonso de Leyva taking the rear under his charge." At 11 a.m. Oquendo's s.h.i.+p was reported to be sinking. Her crew and "the King's money" were taken out of her, and the "Santa Ana," largest but one of King Philip's galleons, disappeared under the grey-green waves of the Channel. In two days the Armada had lost two of its divisional flags.h.i.+ps.

Howard had been reinforced during the day from the Western Channel ports.

After the free expenditure of powder and shot the previous day, his magazines were half empty, and he husbanded his ammunition and followed up the Spaniards out of fighting range, writing to Portsmouth to have all s.h.i.+ps there ready to join him. "We mean so to course the enemy," he added, "that they shall have no leisure to land."

Seymour reported to the Council from Dover that the Armada was well up Channel, and he feared they might seize the Isle of Wight. He asked for "powder and shot" for his squadron--"whereof we have want in our fleet, and which I have divers times given knowledge thereof." All the English commanders felt this want of ammunition and supplies. The Queen's parsimony was endangering the country.

On the Tuesday morning, 2 August (23 July, Old Style), the Armada was off Portland. In the night the wind had gone round to the north-east, and as the sun rose Howard's fleet was seen to be between the Spaniards and the land and to leeward of them. Medina-Sidonia was no sailor, but his veteran commanders saw the chance the s.h.i.+ft of the wind had given them. The Armada turned from its course up Channel, and on the starboard tack stood towards the English fleet, hoping in Spanish phrase to catch the enemy "between the sword and the wall."

It was an anxious moment for Howard and his captains when the Armada came sweeping down on them, the gallea.s.ses in front pus.h.i.+ng ahead with sail and oar, behind the long lines of galleons with the wind in the painted sails of their towering masts. It looked as if the Spaniards would soon be locked in close fight with the English squadron, with every advantage on the side of King Philip's floating castles. Led by the "Ark," the English s.h.i.+ps began to beat out to seaward with scant room for the manoeuvre. But just as the close fight seemed inevitable and the tall "Regazona" had almost run the "Ark" aboard, and while both s.h.i.+ps were wrapped in a fog of powder smoke, the wind suddenly s.h.i.+fted again, backing to the northward. Howard was now working out well from the land, and every moment improved the position.

There was a heavy cannonade on both sides, but as the range lengthened, the advantage was with the better gunners of the English s.h.i.+ps. The gallea.s.ses, led by the great "Florencia," tried, with the help of their long oars, to fall on the English rear, the galleons tacked and made one more attempt "to come to hand-stroke," but, writes Sidonia, "all to little effect, the enemy avoiding our attack by the lightness of their vessels." Good seamans.h.i.+p told. Howard's s.h.i.+ps were soon in a position to resume the "fighting loose"

tactics of the first battle, and the Spaniards knew that at this game they were the losers. So the Armada bore away, resuming its course up Channel, and the cannonade died down into dropping long shots, and then ceased, for Howard had no ammunition to spare.

On the Wednesday the two fleets crept slowly up Channel, the English some six miles astern of the Armada. Once they closed up, and a few shots were exchanged with the gallea.s.ses in Recalde's rearguard. But Howard did not want to fight. He was only "putting on a brag countenance," for he was woefully short of ammunition, and writing urgently for much-needed supplies. The wind had fallen, and in the afternoon some of the galleons were drifting along, heeled over by s.h.i.+fting guns and stores to enable the carpenters slung over the sides to plug shot-holes near the waterline.

On Thursday the fleets were off the Isle of Wight, and it was almost a calm, with occasional flaws of wind to help them on their way. Welcome reinforcements from Portsmouth joined Howard, and he received some ammunition. Soon after sunrise there was a sharp fight. The "Santa Ana" and a Portuguese galleon had fallen astern of the Armada, and Hawkins, in the "Victory," supported by several other s.h.i.+ps, attacked them. He had done considerable damage to the "Santa Ana," and already reckoned her a prize, when the ever-ready De Leyva, with the great "Rata" and the gallea.s.ses, came to the rescue, and Hawkins reluctantly drew off. Howard, with the "Ark," and his nephew, Lord Thomas Howard, in the "Golden Lion," had come up to cover the retirement of Hawkins. They became involved in a fight with the Spanish rearguard, and the "Ark" was damaged, according to one account, by a collision, but it seems more likely that her steering gear was temporarily put out of order by a chance shot. She fell behind her consorts, and lowered boats to tow her out of action. For the moment the wind was helping the Spaniards, and, led by Medina-Sidonia himself, several galleons turned to attack the "Ark." But the wind freshened and changed suddenly, and the English s.h.i.+ps escaped from their dangerous position, and so the fight ended.

On the Friday it was almost a dead calm. It was a bright summer day, and from the hills of the Isle of Wight there was a wondrous spectacle of the two fleets drifting idly over miles of sea, with the sails flapping against the masts. On board the "Ark," now repaired and again fit for action, there was a stately ceremony, the admiral, in the Queen's name, conferring knighthood on Hawkins, Frobisher and several other of the captains who had taken a leading part in the fighting. It was decided not to engage the enemy again till the fleets had reached the Straits of Dover. Shortness of ammunition was the reason for this decision.

Medina-Sidonia was anxious on the same score. He sent off a pilot-boat to the Duke of Parma, asking him to send him a supply of "four, six, and ten-pound shot," "because much of his ammunition had been wasted in the several fights." The mention of such small weights shows with what light artillery most of the galleons were armed. He also asked Parma to send forty light craft to join the Armada, "to the end he might be able with them to close with the enemy, because our s.h.i.+ps being very heavy in comparison with the lightness of those of the enemy, it was impossible to come to hand-stroke with them."

At sunset the wind freshened, and at daybreak on Sat.u.r.day the English were seen following up closely, but there was no fighting, "the Armada sailing with a fair wind and the rear close up, and in very good order." At 10 a.m.

the French coast near Boulogne was in sight. At four in the afternoon the Armada was off Calais, and at five orders were given to anchor in Calais roads, "seven leagues from Dunkirk," or between Calais and Gravelines. The Spaniards noticed that some thirty-six s.h.i.+ps had joined Howard's fleet, which anch.o.r.ed about a league away. The new arrivals were Seymour's and Winter's squadrons from Dover and the Downs.

Medina-Sidonia now believed that he had all but accomplished his task.

English writers say that the enemy were disappointed and discouraged when they anch.o.r.ed off Calais, but there is no proof of this in contemporary Spanish accounts. Medina-Sidonia thought it a success that he had got into touch with the Viceroy of the Netherlands. He had sent off a messenger to his head-quarters at Dunkirk, asking him to embark his army at once, and declaring his readiness to convoy it across Channel.

But Medina-Sidonia was in a fool's paradise. His ignorance of war was the ultimate source of his satisfaction with the outlook. Better men, like Leyva and Recalde, realized that until the enemy's fleet was not merely eluded, but effectively beaten, there could be no invasion of England. The French Governor of Calais told the admiral that a change in the weather might make his position very unpleasant, and Medina-Sidonia urged Parma to act at once by telling him "that he could not tarry without endangering the whole fleet."

But Parma was neither ready nor anxious for any prompt action. The fleet of the Netherlanders, some fifty sail, was blockading most of the places along the coast where he had prepared his flat-bottomed boats. He knew better than to embark the force he had in hand at Dunkirk till Howard's fleet was disposed of.

But Howard was determined not to leave the Armada undisturbed in its exposed anchorage. He had no sooner been joined by Seymour and Winter than he hurriedly prepared eight small craft in his own fleet to be used as fires.h.i.+ps, by turning over to them all the inflammable lumber he could collect from the other vessels, and removing their guns, ammunition, and stores.

Medina-Sidonia had spent the Sunday writing pressing letters to the Prince of Parma, and obtaining fresh water and other supplies from Calais. When the long summer twilight ended the Armada was still riding at anchor, the irregular lines of dark hulls stretching for miles, with lanterns flickering at yard-arm or p.o.o.p, and guard-boats rowing about the outskirts of the floating city. At midnight there was a cry of alarm pa.s.sed from s.h.i.+p to s.h.i.+p. The tide was running strong from the westward through the Straits, and sweeping along on its current came eight dark ma.s.ses, each defined in the night by a red flicker of fire that rose higher and spread wider as the English fires.h.i.+ps came nearer and nearer.

Three years before, when Parma was besieging Antwerp, the revolted Netherlanders had attacked the bridge he had thrown across the river below the city by sending drifting down upon it a s.h.i.+p laden with powder barrels, with a burning fuse and powder-train to fire them, and blocks of stone heaped over them to increase the force of the explosion. The awful destruction caused by this floating volcano made the Spaniards long after fearful of the attempt being repeated elsewhere, and Medina-Sidonia tells in his diary that when Howard's fires.h.i.+ps came drifting through the summer night off Gravelines, he and his captains thought that they were likely to be _maquinas de minas_, "contrivances of mines," like the terrible floating mine of Antwerp. With this suspicion, all idea of grappling them was abandoned. As they drew nearer there was something like a panic in the Armada. The admiral signalled to weigh anchor and make sail, but few of the s.h.i.+ps waited for the tedious operation of getting the heavy anchors up to the cat-heads by slow hand labour on windla.s.s or capstan. In most of the galleons the carpenter's broad axe hacked through the cables and left the anchors deep in Channel mud. Sails were hurriedly shaken out, and like a startled flock of sheep the crowd of s.h.i.+ps hurried away to the eastward along the coast in wild disorder. Moncada, the admiral of the gallea.s.ses, in the "San Lorenzo," collided with the galleon "San Juan de Sicilia," and the great gallea.s.s dismasted and with shattered oars drifted on a back eddy of the tide towards Calais bar. The fires.h.i.+ps went aground here and there, and burned harmlessly to the water's edge. Medina-Sidonia, seeing the danger was over, fired a gun as a signal for the fleet to anchor, but most of the s.h.i.+ps had cut their cables, and had no spare anchors available on deck, and they drifted along the coast, some of them as far as Dunkirk. The sunrise on the Monday morning showed the great fleet widely scattered, only a few of the best s.h.i.+ps being with the admiral. Moncada's flags.h.i.+p had been left by the falling tide hard aground on Calais bar.

The English attacked the stranded gallea.s.s in pinnaces and boats, Howard with some of the larger s.h.i.+ps standing by "to give the men comfort and countenance." Some of the Spaniards escaped to the sh.o.r.e. The rest, headed by Moncada, made a brave stand against the boarders, who swarmed up her sides, led by one Richard Tomson, of Ramsgate. Moncada was killed, and the s.h.i.+p taken. The English pillaged her, but the hulk was abandoned and seized later by the French Governor of Calais.

During this fight on the bar Medina-Sidonia had rea.s.sembled about half his fleet, which he formed in a great crescent off Gravelines. The wind was from the west, and numbers of galleons were away to leeward. Some of them were in dire peril of driving ash.o.r.e. Howard saw his advantage, and the whole English fleet bore down on the Spanish crescent. It was the nearest thing to a pitched battle in the whole Armada campaign. The English came on with wind and tide helping them and, with the confidence that was the outcome of their growing sense of superiority, ventured to close quarters with the tall Spaniards, while taking care never to give them the chance of grappling and boarding. As the fight went on the Spaniards worked slowly towards the north-east edging off the land, for their deep draught and the fate of Moncada's gallea.s.s made them anxious about the Flanders shoals.

Howard and Hawkins led the English centre, Drake and Frobisher the right, Seymour and Winter the left. Not a shot was fired till they were at musket range, and then the English guns roared out in a well-sustained cannonade in which every shot told. It was the first of modern naval battles, the fights decided by gunfire, not by hand-to-hand conflict on the decks. The Spaniards answered back with their lighter and more slowly served artillery, and with a crackle of musketry fire. Before noon the Spanish cannon were mostly silent, for sheer lack of ammunition, and the galleons defended themselves only with musket and arquebuse, while striving in vain to close and grapple with their enemies. Spars and rigging were badly cut up, shots between wind and water were letting the sea into the huge hulls.

Just as the English thought the "San Juan de Sicilia" had been put out of action and would be their prize, the galleon heeled over and went to the bottom. Soon the fight was only sustained by the rearward s.h.i.+ps, the rest trying to extricate themselves from the melee, not for any lack of courage, but because all their ammunition was gone, their decks were enc.u.mbered with wreckage from aloft, and the men were toiling at the pumps to keep them afloat.

The English at last drew off from their persistent attacks on the rearward s.h.i.+ps, only because after a hot cannonade of seven hours they were running short of ammunition; so they used the advantage of position and better seamans.h.i.+p and seaworthiness to break off from the battle, Howard hanging out the "council flag" from the "Ark," as a signal to his leading captains to come on board and discuss the situation with him.

Medina-Sidonia, in his diary of the day, says nothing of the sinking of the "San Juan de Sicilia," but he goes on to tell how the "San Felipe" and the "San Mateo" were seen drifting helplessly towards the shoals of the Zealand coast; how efforts were made to take off their crews, but these failed, "for the sea was so high that nothing could be done, nor could the damage be repaired which the flags.h.i.+p had suffered from great shot, whereby she was in danger of being lost." This talk of rough seas shows that, brave though he undoubtedly was in battle, the Duke had the landsman's exaggerated alarm at the choppy waves of the Channel, and regarded as a gale and a storm what a sailor would call fine weather with a bit of a breeze. None of the English commanders thought that there was a high sea that summer afternoon.

In the night it blew somewhat harder from the north-west, and as the early dawn came it was seen that the Armada was in a perilous position. The galleons, many of them with badly damaged spars and rigging, many more without anchors at their cat-heads ready to bring them up, were being forced nearer and nearer to the low sandy sh.o.r.es that were marked only by the white foam of the breakers, and the leadsmen were giving warning that the keels were already dangerously near to the shelving bottom along the outlying fringe of shoals. The English s.h.i.+ps, with plenty of sea-room, looked on without closing in to attack. Little ammunition was left, and Howard and his captains were not going to waste good powder and shot on s.h.i.+ps that seemed doomed to hopeless destruction. Some of Medina-Sidonia's captains proposed that he should show the white flag and obtain the help of the English to tow the endangered vessels off the lee sh.o.r.e, but he refused to hear of such base surrender, and told them he was prepared for death. He tells in his journal of the day how a sudden change of the wind saved the fleet:--

"The enemy held aloof, seeing that our Armada must be lost. The pilots on board the flags.h.i.+p--men of experience of that coast--told the Duke at this time that it was not possible to save a single s.h.i.+p of the Armada; for that with the wind as it was in the north-west, they must all needs go on the banks of Zeeland; that G.o.d alone could prevent it. Being in this peril and without any remedy, G.o.d was pleased to change the wind to west-south-west, whereby the fleet stood towards the north without hurt to any s.h.i.+p."

The deliverance was not quite as complete as the Duke supposed. Far astern the great "San Mateo" had grounded on the shoals "between Ostend and Sluys." Next day three English s.h.i.+ps came to take her, but the Spaniards, notwithstanding their helpless plight, made a desperate fight for two hours before they surrendered. Don Diego de Pimentel was in command, with several n.o.bles among his officers and volunteers. These were spared, for the sake of the ransom they might fetch, but no quarter was given to the common crowd. William Borlas, one of the captors, wrote to Secretary Walsingham: "I was the means that the best sort were saved; and the rest were cast overboard and slain at the entry."[12] These Elizabethan sea-fighters were as cruel as they were brave.

[12] "Entry" = boarding the s.h.i.+p.

Other s.h.i.+ps drifted ash.o.r.e or found their way into ports along the low coast to the north-eastward, but all these were taken by Prince Maurice of Na.s.sau, admiral of the United Provinces, who with some thirty sail gleaned up the wreckage of the Armada, though he had taken no part in the fighting, only blockading Parma's flotillas as his share of the service.

Meanwhile, saved by the s.h.i.+ft of the wind, the main body of the Armada was speeding into the North Sea, led by Medina-Sidonia in the leaky "San Martin." Howard and the English fleet held a parallel course, shepherding the enemy without closing in to fire a single shot. Howard was again, to use the phrase of the time, "putting on a brag countenance," for he was in no condition for serious fighting, even against such crippled opponents.

The magazines of the English fleet were all but empty, its "cannon, demi-cannon, sakers, and falconets" doomed to useless silence, food and water short in supply, and much sickness among the tired crews, who were complaining that they were badly fed and that the beer was undrinkable.

In the evening Medina-Sidonia held a council of war on board the "San Martin." Soldiers and sailors, veterans of many wars, and the chief pilots of the fleet sat round his cabin table, and there was anxious debate. No one could say how long it would be before Parma's army was ready; ammunition and provisions were short, men falling sick, s.h.i.+ps badly damaged, though only a dozen had been actually lost. The wind was increasing from the south-south-west, and the pilots urged that the best course was to run up the North Sea, round the north of Scotland, reach the open Atlantic, and so return to Spain without further fighting.

Some of the best of the officers, men who had been throughout in the thick of the fighting, protested against this course, to which their admiral was evidently inclined. Recalde, Oquendo, and Leyva spoke for the brave minority. Most of the great fleet was still safe, and Recalde begged the Duke to lie off and on till the wind blew fair for the Channel again, and then risk another fight. Leyva supported him, and said that though his own s.h.i.+p, the "Rata Coronada," had been sorely battered, was leaking like a sieve, and had only thirty cartridges in her magazine, he would rather take her into action again and sink fighting than see the Armada run away northward like a pack of cowards. But what seemed the easiest course prevailed. Medina-Sidonia saved his conscience as a soldier by summing up the resolution of the council as a decision to sail northward, but turn back and fight if the wind and weather became favourable.

So in the following days the Armada sped northward before the south-west wind, which sometimes blew hard and raised a sea that increased the distress of the Spaniards. Howard followed with the English fleet, just keeping the Armada in sight. If the Spanish admiral shortened sail to collect his rearward stragglers, Howard followed his example, making no attempt even to close and cut off the nearest s.h.i.+ps. He was still reluctantly compelled by empty magazines and half-empty lockers to be content merely "to put on a brag countenance." His shortness of supplies forced him at last to lose touch of the enemy. Off the Firth of Forth he abandoned the pursuit.

When the English s.h.i.+ps returned to their ports the captains were not at all sure what had become of the Armada. Some thought it might have gone to the harbours of Norway and Denmark to winter and refit there, and renew the attempt next spring. One sees in the letters of Secretary Walsingham the uncertainty that prevailed among the Queen's counsellors, and some disappointment that the victory was not more complete, though this was the result of himself and his colleagues leaving Howard so ill supplied. On the same day (8 August, Old Style) Walsingham writes to Lord Burghley: "It is hard now to resolve what advice to give Her Majesty for disarming, until it shall be known what is become of the Spanish fleet"; and to the Lord Chancellor: "I am sorry the Lord Admiral was forced to leave the prosecution of the enemy through the wants he sustained. Our half-doings doth breed dishonour and leaveth the disease uncured."

Meanwhile, the Armada had held its course to the northward, sometimes sighted far off from a Scottish headland. On 20 August (10th, Old Style), twelve days after the battle off Gravelines, it was pa.s.sing between the Orkneys and Shetlands, heading for the Atlantic, helped by a change of wind which now blew from the east, filling the great sails, but chilling the southern sailors and soldiers to the bone. Though it was summer, the cold was like that of winter, and the bitter weather grew even worse as the galleons sailed on into the North Atlantic. The great s.h.i.+ps straggled for miles over grey foam-flecked seas, under dull cloud-packed skies that sent down showers of sleety rain. Men huddled below in the crowded gundecks, and in fore and stern castles, and there were days when only the pilots kept the deck, while gangs of men took their turn at the never-resting pumps.

There were semi-starvation and fever in every s.h.i.+p. The chaplains were busy giving the last consolations of religion to dying men, and each day read the burial service over a row of canvas-shrouded dead, and "committed them to the deep."

The Armada no longer held together. Small groups formed haphazard squadrons, keeping each other company, but many s.h.i.+ps were isolated and ploughed their way alone over the dreary sea. Many, despite hard work at the pumps, settled lower and lower in the water each day, and at last sank in the ocean, their fate unknown and unrecorded till, as the months went by and there was no news of them, they were counted as hopelessly lost. Of others the fate is known.