Dr. Funk
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Apr 30, 2007, 2:38 PM
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randomly posting about the spanish armada itt
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On May 28, 1588, the Armada, with around 130 ships, 8,000 sailors and 18,000 soldiers, 7,000 sailors, 1,500 brass guns and 1,000 iron guns, set sail from Lisbon in Portugal, headed for the English Channel. An army of 30,000 men stood in the Spanish Netherlands, waiting for the fleet to arrive. The plan was to land the original force in Plymouth and transfer the land army to somewhere near London, mustering 55,000 men, a huge army for this time. The English fleet was prepared and waiting in Plymouth for news of Spanish movements. It took until May 30 for all of the Armada to leave port and, on the same day, Elizabeth's ambassador in the Netherlands, Dr Valentine Dale, met Parma's representatives to begin peace negotiations. On July 17 negotiations were abandoned.
Delayed by bad weather, the Armada was not sighted in England until July 19, when it appeared off The Lizard in Cornwall. The news was conveyed to London by a sequence of beacons that had been constructed the length of the south coast of England. That same night, 55 ships of the English fleet set out in pursuit from Plymouth and came under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham (later Earl of Nottingham) and Sir John Hawkins. However, Hawkins acknowledged his subordinate, Sir Francis Drake, as the more experienced naval commander and gave him some control during the campaign. In order to execute their "line ahead" attack, the English tacked upwind of the Armada, thus gaining a significant maneuvering advantage.
Over the next week there followed two inconclusive engagements, at Eddystone and Portland, Dorset. At the Isle of Wight the Armada had the opportunity to create a temporary base in protected waters and wait for word from Parma's army. In a full-on attack, the English fleet broke into four groups with Drake coming in with a large force from the south. At that critical moment, Medina Sidonia sent reinforcements south and ordered the Armada back into the open sea in order to avoid sandbanks. This left two Spanish wrecks, and with no secure harbours nearby the Armada sailed on to Calais, without regard to the readiness of Parma's army.
On July 27, the Spanish anchored off Calais in a crescent-shaped, tightly-packed defensive formation, not far from Parma's army of 16,000, which was waiting at Dunkirk. There was no deep-water port along that coast of France and the Low Countries where the fleet might shelter - always a major difficulty for the expedition - and the Spanish found themselves vulnerable as night drew on.
At midnight of July 28, the English set eight fireships (filled with pitch, gunpowder, and tar) alight and sent them downwind among the closely-anchored Spanish vessels. The Spanish feared that these might prove as deadly as the 'hellburners'[6] used against them to deadly effect at the Siege of Antwerp. Two were intercepted and towed away, but the others bore down on the fleet. Medina Sedonia's flagship, and a few other "core" ships, held their positions, but the rest of the fleet cut their cables and scattered in confusion, with the result that only one Spanish ship was burned. But the fireships had managed to break the crescent formation, and the fleet now found itself too far to leeward of Calais in the rising south-westerly wind to recover its position. The lighter English ships then closed in for battle at Gravelines.
Gravelines was 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 owing to the danger from the shoals off Flanders, from which his Dutch enemies had removed the sea-marks. The Spanish army had been expected to join the fleet in barges sent from ports along the Flemish coast, but communications were far more difficult than anticipated, and without notice of the Armada's arrival Parma needed another six days to bring his troops up, while Medina-Sidonia waited at anchor.
The English had learned much of the Armada's strengths and weaknesses during the skirmishes in the English Channel, and accordingly conserved their heavy shot and powder prior to their attack at Gravelines on July 29. During the battle, the Spanish heavy guns proved unwieldy, and their gunners hadn't been trained to re-load - 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. Evidence from wrecks in Ireland shows that much of the Armada's ammunition was never spent.
In 2002 Dr Colin Martin of the University of St Andrews claimed that many Spanish ships carried cannon shot that was the wrong size for their cannon. The equipment had been gathered from a wide variety of sources in the Spanish Habsburg lands which were world-wide and, in Europe, scattered between the Heel of Italy, southern Portugal and the Ems estuary. The notion of standardization had barely been explored at this stage.
With its superior maneuverability, the English fleet provoked Spanish fire while staying out of range. Once the Spanish had loosed their heavy shot, the English then closed, firing repeated and damaging broadsides into the enemy ships. This superiority also enabled them to maintain a position to windward so that the heeling Armada hulls were exposed to damage below the water-line.
The main handicap for the Spanish was their determination to board the enemy's ships and thrash out a victory in hand-to-hand fighting. This had proved effective at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, but the English were aware of this Spanish strength and avoided it through their superiority in artillery and maneuverability.
Eleven Spanish ships were lost or damaged (though the most seaworthy Atlantic-class vessels escaped largely unscathed). The Armada suffered nearly 2,000 battle casualties, before the English fleet ran out of ammunition. English casualties in the battle were far fewer, in the low hundreds. 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.
On the day after Gravelines, the wind had backed, southerly, enabling Medina Sidonia to move the Armada northward (away from the French coast). Although their shot lockers were almost empty, the English pursued and harried the Spanish fleet, in an attempt to prevent it returning to escort Parma. On 12 August, Howard called a halt to the chase in the latitude of the Firth of Forth off Scotland. But by that point, the Spanish were suffering from thirst and exhaustion. The only option left to Medina Sidonia was to chart a course home to Spain, along the most hazardous parts of the Atlantic seaboard.
The threat of invasion from the Netherlands had not yet been discounted, and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester maintained a force of 4,000 soldiers at West Tilbury, Essex, to defend the estuary of the River Thames against any incursion up-river towards London.
The Spanish fleet 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 driven overboard into the sea. Shortly after reaching the latitude of Ireland, the Armada ran straight into a hurricane—to this day, it remains one of the northernmost on record. The hurricane scattered the fleet and drove some two dozen vessels onto the coast of Ireland.
A new theory suggests that the Spanish fleet failed to account for the effect of the Gulf Stream. Therefore they were much closer to Ireland than planned, a devastating navigational error. This was during the "Little Ice Age" and the Spanish were not aware that conditions were far colder and more difficult than they had expected for their trip around the north of England and Ireland. As a result many more ships and sailors were lost to cold and stormy weather than in combat actions.
Following the storm, it is reckoned that 5,000 men died, whether by drowning and starvation or by execution at the hands of English forces in Ireland. The reports from Ireland abound with strange accounts of brutality and survival, and attest on occasion to the brilliance of Spanish seamanship. Survivors did receive help from the Gaelic Irish, with many escaping to Scotland and beyond.
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 harbours, from diseases contracted during the voyage. It was reported that, when Philip II learned of the result of the expedition, he declared, "I sent my ships to fight against the English, not against the elements". Although dissapointed, he forgave the Duke of Medina Sidonia.
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