The defeat of the Spanish Armada

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On July 1588 King Philip II of Spain ordered the Spanish Armada on a mission to defeat protestant England lead by Queen Elizabeth I.  The "Enterprise of England", the plan to overthrow England, was not only meant to stamp out English Protestantism but also a message to the country's of western Europe that breaking from the Catholic church would not be tolerated.

In the end the plan to invade England proved to be an not only an expensive military expedition for the Spanish but would also ultimately marked the down fall the Spanish Armada as a world navel power.   And in doing so, also marked Spain's decline as a world power by the end of the war in 1604.

But for the English the fall of the Spanish Armada was a celebrated victory making Sir Francis Drake even more of a hero than he already was and even having an impact on Tudor Christmas celebrations!

At the time of Elizabeth I, Spain controlled what was called the Spanish Netherlands.  This consisted of modern day Holland and Belgium.

Holland didn't like being made to be Catholic and wanted it's independence from Spanish rule.  Protestant ideas had taken root in Holland and many of those in Holland were secret Protestants. If anyone had publicly stated their Protestant beliefs their lives would have been in danger.

Spain used the Inquisition to hunt out Protestants. However, during Elizabeth's reign, the English had been helping the Dutch Protestants in Holland. This greatly angered the king of Spain - Philip II - who wanted to put a stop Protestant beliefs.

He had for a short time been married to Elizabeth I's half-sister, Mary, and when they were married, England was Catholic. With England under his control, Philip could control the English Channel and his ships could have an easy passage from Spain to the Spanish Netherlands. Spanish troops stationed there could be easily supplied.

English 'sea-dogs' for some time had been causing a great deal of damage to Spain's trade in silver. Men such as Sir Francis Drake attacked Spanish shipping off of the West Indies and Spain lost a vast sum of money when the ships carrying silver sunk or had their cargo captured by Drake. To the English, Drake was a hero but to the Spanish he was nothing more than a pirate who, in their view, was allowed to do what he did with the full knowledge of the queen. This the Spanish could not accept.


In 1587, Mary Queen of Scots, was executed in England on the orders of Elizabeth I. Mary was a Catholic and Philip II believed that he had a duty to ensure no more Catholics were arrested in England and that no more should be executed. Mary, Queen of Scots, had also made it clear that if she became queen of England, Philip should inherit the throne after her death.

Hence his decision to attack and invade England.

The Armada had been delayed by bad weather, forcing the four galleys and one galleon to leave the fleet, and was not sighted in England until 19 July, when it appeared off St Michael's Mount in Cornwall. The news was conveyed to London by a system of beacons that had been constructed all the way along the south coast. On that evening the English fleet was trapped in Plymouth harbor by the incoming tide. The Spanish convened a council of war, where it was proposed to ride into the harbor on the tide and incapacitate the defending ships at anchor and from there to attack England; but Medina Sidonia declined to act, choosing to sail to the east and toward the Isle of Wight. Soon afterwards, 55 English ships set out in pursuit from Plymouth under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham, with Sir Francis Drake as Vice Admiral. Howard ceded some control to Drake, given his experience in battle, and the rear admiral was Sir John Hawkins.

Lord Henry Seymour , with Sir William Winter, was ordered with his fleet of forty English and Dutch ships, under command of Justin of Nassau, Admiral of Zealand, to lie off the coast of Flanders, to prevent the intended junction of the forces under the Dukes of Parma, with the Armada.

In a speech to prepare the English people of a possible invasion by the Spanish Queen Elizabeth writes:

"My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that we are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but, I do assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people.

Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself, that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects; and, therefore, I am come amongst you as you see at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of battle, to live or die amongst you all - to lay down for my God, and for my kingdoms, and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust.
I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a King - and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms - I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

I know already, for your forwardness, you have deserved rewards and crowns, and, we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. For the meantime, my Lieutenant-General Leicester shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my General, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of my God, of my kingdom and of my people."

On 27 July, the Armada anchored off Calais in a tightly packed defensive crescent formation, not far from Dunkirk, where Parma's army, reduced by disease to 16,000, was expected to be waiting, ready to join the fleet in barges sent from ports along the Flemish coast. Communications had proven to be far more difficult than anticipated, and it only now became clear that this army had yet to be equipped with sufficient transport or assembled in port, a process which would take at least six days, while Medina Sidonia waited at anchor; and that Dunkirk was blockaded by a Dutch fleet of thirty flyboats under Lieutenant-Admiral Justin of Nassa. Parma desired that the Armada send its light petaches to drive away the Dutch, but Medina Sidonia could not do this because he feared that he might need these ships for his own protection.

There was no deep-water port where the fleet might shelter — always acknowledged as a major difficulty for the expedition — and the Spanish found themselves vulnerable as night drew on. At midnight on 28 July, the English set alight eight fireships, sacrificing regular warships by filling them with pitch, brimstone, some 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, which had been used to deadly effect at the Siege of Antwerp.

Two were intercepted and towed away, but the remainder bore down on the fleet. Medina Sidonia'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 to leeward of Calais in the rising south-westerly wind to recover its position. The English closed in for battle.

The small port of Gravelines was then part of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, close to the border with France and the closest Spanish territory to England. Medina Sidonia tried to re-form his fleet there and was reluctant to sail further east knowing the danger from the shoals off Flanders, from which his Dutch enemies had removed the sea-marks.

The English had learned more of the Armada's strengths and weaknesses during the skirmishes in the English Channel and had concluded it was necessary to close within 100 meters to penetrate the oak hulls of the Spanish ships. They had spent most of their gunpowder in the first engagements and had after Wight been forced to conserve their heavy shot and powder for a final decisive attack near Gravelines. During all the engagements, the Spanish heavy guns proved unwieldy, and their gunners had not been trained to reload — in contrast to their English counterparts, they fired once and then jumped to the rigging to attend to their main task as marines ready to board enemy ships. In fact, evidence from Armada wrecks in Ireland shows that much of the fleet's ammunition was never spent. Their determination to thrash out a victory in hand-to-hand fighting proved a weakness for the Spanish; it had been effective on occasions such as the Battle of Lepanto and the Battle of Ponta Delgada (1582), but the English were aware of this strength and sought to avoid it by keeping their distance.

With its superior maneuverability, the English fleet provoked Spanish fire while staying out of range. The English then closed, firing repeated and damaging broadsides into the enemy ships. This also enabled them to maintain a position to windward so that the heeling Armada hulls were exposed to damage below the water line.

Five Spanish ships were lost. The galleon San Lorenzo ran aground at Calais and was taken by Howard after murderous fighting between the crew, the galley slaves, the English and the French who ultimately took possession of the wreck. The galleons San Mateo and San Felipe drifted away in a sinking condition, ran aground on the island of Walcheren the next day, and were taken by the Dutch. One carrack ran aground near Blankenberge; another foundered.

Many other Spanish ships were severely damaged, especially the Spanish and Portuguese Atlantic-class galleons which had to bear the brunt of the fighting during the early hours of the battle in desperate individual actions against groups of English ships. The Spanish plan to join with Parma's army had been defeated, and the English had afforded themselves some breathing space. But the Armada's presence in northern waters still posed a great threat to England.

The Armada sailed around Scotland and Ireland into the North Atlantic. The ships were beginning to show wear from the long voyage, and some were kept together by having their hulls bundled up with cables. Supplies of food and water ran short, and the cavalry horses were cast overboard into the sea. The intention would have been to keep well to the west of the coast of Scotland and Ireland, in the relative safety of the open sea. However, there being at that time no way of accurately measuring longitude, the Spanish were not aware that the Gulf Stream was carrying them north and east as they tried to move west, and they eventually turned south much further to the east than planned, a devastating navigational error.

Off the coasts of Scotland and Ireland the fleet ran into a series of powerful westerly gales, which drove many of the damaged ships further towards the lee shore. Because so many anchors had been abandoned during the escape from the English fireships off Calais, many of the ships were incapable of securing shelter as they reached the coast of Ireland and were driven onto the rocks. The late 1500s, and especially 1588, were marked by unusually strong North Atlantic storms, perhaps associated with a high accumulation of polar ice off the coast of Greenland, a characteristic phenomenon of the "Little Ice Age". As a result many more ships and sailors were lost to cold and stormy weather than in combat.

Following the gales it is reckoned that 5,000 men died, whether by drowning and starvation or by slaughter at the hands of English forces after they were driven ashore in Ireland; only half of the Spanish Armada fleet returned back home to Spain. Reports of the passage around Ireland abound with strange accounts of brutality and survival and attest to the qualities of the Spanish seamanship. Some survivors were concealed by Irish people, but few shipwrecked Spanish survived to be taken into Irish service, fewer still to return home.

In the end, 67 ships and around 10,000 men survived. Many of the men were near death from disease, as the conditions were very cramped and most of the ships ran out of food and water. Many more died in Spain, or on hospital ships in Spanish harbors, from diseases contracted during the voyage.