Thus each fleet believed the other to be inferior in strength, and consequently desired an early engagement. The Turkish fleet was made up of 210 galleys and 64 galliots and smaller craft, 274 sail in all, and its commander, Ali Pasha, was one of the veteran admirals of Suleiman's victorious days; 25,000 soldiers had been embarked under the Seraskier, or General, Pertev Pasha. Ali had organized his fleet in four divisions, centre, right wing, left wing, and reserve. All the ships had oars as well as sails, and though Ali had no huge floating batteries, like the six galleasses of Don Juan's fleet, the Turkish admiral could match the Christians with galley for galley, and have a surplus of 8 galleys and 66 smaller craft. Of these the 44 galliots were almost as useful as the galleys. Unlike the latter, which had two and often three masts, the galliot had only one, and was smaller in size. But the Turkish galliots, mostly belonging to the piratical states of North Africa, were as large as many of the Christian galleys of the second class; they could sail well, and they were manned by crews of fighting-men that had a long record of piratical warfare.

The organization of Ali's fleet was:—

- - Division. Galleys. Galliots. Smaller Craft. Totals. - - {Right Wing 54 2 56 { {Centre 87 8 95 { {Left Wing 61 32 93 Reserve 8 2 20 30 - - Totals 210 44 20 274 - -

The fifty galleys of the right wing were ships from Egypt, the ports of Asia Minor, and the arsenal of Constantinople, united under the command of Mohammed Chuluk Bey, Governor of Alexandria, known among the Christian sailors of the Mediterranean as Mohammed Scirocco. The centre, commanded by Ali in person, was made up of galleys from Rhodes and the Greek islands, and from Constantinople and Gallipoli, and the Tripolitan squadron under Djaffir Agha, Governor of Tripoli. The left under Ulugh Ali, the Viceroy of Algiers, included ships from Constantinople, Asia Minor, Syria, and the ports of North-west Africa. The reserve, chiefly composed of small craft, was under the command of Murad Dragut of Constantinople.

There were a good many Greek and Calabrese renegades among the captains of the galleys, but the Syrians and the mixed Arab race of Alexandria had learned the ways of the sea; some even of the Turks were good sailors, and the men of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers had made the sea their element. The thousands of rowers, who provided the propelling power of the galleys, were for the most part Christian slaves, chained to their heavy oars, by which they slept when the fleet anchored, living a life of weary labour, often half starved, always badly clothed, so that they suffered from cold and wet. Death was the immediate penalty of any show of insubordination, and the whip of their taskmasters kept them to their work. There were men of all classes among them, sailors taken from prizes, passengers who had the bad luck to be on board captured ships, fishermen and tillers of the soil carried off in coast raids. They were short-lived, for their masters did not spare them, and considered it a more economic policy to work the rowers to the utmost and replace them by other captures when they broke down.

The oarsmen of the allied fleet had also a hard lot, but not as bad as that of Ali Pasha's galley-slaves, because in the Christian fleet there was a considerable proportion of men hired for the campaign. But there was also a servile element, Turks taken prisoner in previous campaigns and chained to the oar in reprisal for the treatment of Christian captives by Ottoman commanders, and a considerable number of what we should now call convicts sentenced to hard labour, a rough lot of murderers, brigands, thieves, and the like. It must be remembered that in most European countries the sentence for such offences would have been death. The convict galley-slaves of Don Juan's fleet were encouraged by the prospect of winning either complete pardon or a remission of part of their sentences if there was a victory, and to enable them to co-operate in winning it, they were told that they would be freed from their chains and armed when the day of battle came.

The 25,000 fighting-men of Ali Pasha's fleet were chiefly militia. There were only a few thousand of the formidable Janissaries. And among the small arms of the Turkish fleet there were more bows and arrows than muskets. Don Juan had, on the other hand, a considerable number of arquebusiers on his ships. He had the further advantage that while even the largest of the Turkish galleys had only low bulwarks, the galleys of the allied fleet were provided with pavesades, large bucklers and shields, to be fitted along the bulwarks when clearing for action, and also permanent cross barriers to prevent a raking fire fore and aft.

When Ali left the roadstead of Lepanto, and brought his fleet out from behind the batteries of the "Little Dardanelles," he believed he had such a marked superiority over the allied fleet that victory was a certainty, and he expected to find Don Juan either at Gomenizza or in the waters of the Ionian Islands. Pertev Pasha and several of the admirals had opposed Ali's decision, and had urged him either to remain at Lepanto, or run out of the gulf, round the Morea, and wait in the eastern seas for the campaign of next year. Their reason for this advice was that many of the fighting-men were new levies unused to the sea. But Ali's self-confidence made him reject this prudent counsel.

On 2 October, Don Juan had made up his mind to leave Gomenizza, enter the Gulf of Corinth, and risk an attack on the passage of the Little Dardanelles. Accordingly in the afternoon he gave orders that the fleet should prepare to sail at sunrise next day. During the long delay in the island waters belated news came that Famagusta had fallen on 18 August, and with the news there was a terrible story of the horrors that had followed the broken capitulation. The news was now six weeks old, and this meant that the whole of the enemy's fleet might be concentrated in the Gulf of Corinth, but after the disasters of Cyprus an attempt must be made to win a victory against all or any odds.

At sunrise the armada streamed out of the Bay of Gomenizza, and sped southwards with oar and sail. The Gulf of Arta was passed, and the admirals were reminded not of the far-off battle that saw the flight of the Egyptian Queen and the epoch-making victory of Augustus Caesar, but of a sea-fight in the same waters only a few years ago that had ended in dire disaster to the Christian arms. Then through the hours of darkness the fleet worked its way past the rock-bound shores of Santa Maura, whose cliffs glimmered in the moonlight. The roar of the breakers at their base warned the pilots to give them good sea room. In the grey of the morning the peaks and ridges of Ithaca and Cephalonia rose out of the haze upon the sea, and soon after sunrise the fleet was moving through the narrow strait between the islands.

In the strait there were shelter and smooth water, but the wind was rising, backing from north-west to west, and raising a sea outside Cephalonia that sent a heavy swell sweeping round its southern point and into the opening of the narrows. As the leading ships reached the mouth of the strait Don Juan did not like the look of the weather, and decided to anchor in the Bay of Phiscardo, a large opening in the Cephalonian shore just inside the strait.

For two days the fleet lay weather-bound in the bay. During one of these days of storm Kara Khodja, the Algerine, tried again to reconnoitre the fleet, but was driven off by the guardships at the entrance of the strait.

On 6 October the wind shifted to the east and the sea began to go down. Don Juan refused to wait any longer. The fleet put to sea, under bare masts, and, rowing hard against the wind and through rough water, it worked its way slowly across to the sheltered waters on the mainland coast between it and the islands of Curzolari. Here the fleet anchored for the night, just outside the opening of the Gulf of Corinth. Not twenty miles away up the gulf lay the Turkish fleet, for Ali had brought it out of the Bay of Lepanto, and anchored in the Bay of Calydon.

When the sun rose on the 7th, the wind was still contrary, blowing from the south-east. But at dawn the ships were under way, and moving slowly in long procession between the mainland and the islands that fringe the coast. There was a certain amount of straggling. It was difficult to keep the divisions closed up, and the tall galleasses especially felt the effect of the head wind, and some of the galleys had to assist them by towing.

As the ships of the vanguard began to clear the channel between Oxia Island and Cape Scropha, and the wide expanse of water at the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth opened before them, the look-outs reported several ships hull down on the horizon to the eastward, the sun shining on their white sails, that showed like flecks of cloud on the sea-line.



The signal was sent back, "Enemy in sight," for the number of sails told it must be a fleet, and could be none other than that of Ali Pasha. The allied squadrons began to clear for action, and Don Juan displayed for the first time the consecrated banner sent him by Pius V, a large square flag embroidered with the crucifix and the figures of Saints Peter and Paul.

It was an anxious time for the Christian admiral. His fleet, now straggling for miles along the coast, had to close up, issue from the channel, round Cape Scropha, and form in battle array in the open water to the eastward. If the Turks, who had the wind to help them, came up before this complex operation was completed, he risked being beaten in detail.

While the fleet was still working its way through the channel, Don Juan had sent one of the Roman pilots, Cecco Pisani forward in a swift galley to reconnoitre. Pisani landed on Oxia, climbed one of its crags, and from this lofty outlook counted 250 sail in the enemy's fleet, which was coming out along the north shore of the gulf, the three main squadrons abreast, the reserve astern of them. Returning to the "Reale,"[6] the pilot gave a guarded report to Don Juan, fearing to discourage the young commander now that battle was inevitable, but to his own admiral, the veteran Colonna, he spoke freely. "Signor," he said, "you must put out all your claws, for it will be a hard fight."

[6] The flagship.

Then the wind suddenly fell and the sea became calm as a lake. The Turks were seen to be furling their now useless sails. The rapidity with which the manoeuvre was simultaneously executed by hundreds of ships excited the admiration of the Christians. It showed the enemy had well-disciplined and practised crews. But at the same time the fact that at a crisis, when every moment gained was priceless, the Turks had lost the fair wind, convinced the allies that Heaven was aiding them, and gave them confidence in the promises of their chaplains, grey-cowled Franciscans and black-robed Dominicans, who were telling them that the prayers of Christendom would assure them a victory. Their young chief, Don Juan, left the "Reale" and embarked in a swift brigantine, in which he rowed along the forming line of the fleet. Clad in complete armour he stood in the bow holding up a crucifix, and as he passed each galley he called on officers and men to spare no effort in the holy cause for which they were about to fight. Then he returned to his post on the poop of the "Reale," which was in the centre of the line, with several other large galleys grouped around her. As each ship was pulled into her fighting position, the Christian galley-slaves were freed from the oar and given weapons with which to fight for the common cause and their own freedom.

It was intended that the galleys of the left, centre, and right should form one long line, with the six galleasses well out in front of them, two before each division. These were to break the force of the Turkish onset with their cannon. But when the long line of the enemy's galleys came rushing to the onset, Don Juan's battle array was still incomplete. Barbarigo's flagship was on the extreme left under the land. His division had formed upon this mark, "dressing by the left," as a soldier would say. The tall galleasses of two gallant brothers, the Venetians Ambrogio and Antonio Bragadino, kinsmen of the hero of Famagusta, lay well out in front of the left division. All the ships had their sails furled and the long yards hauled fore and aft. Don Juan had formed up the centre division, two more galleasses out in front, the "Reale" in the middle of the line, the galleys of Veniero and Colonna to right and left, and two selected galleys lying astern, covering the intervals between them and the flagship. Only a few oars were being used to keep the ships in their stations. So far so good, but the rest of the allied fleet was still coming up. The reserve was only issuing from the channel behind Cape Scropha, and Doria was leading the right division into line, with his two galleasses working up astern, where their artillery would be useless. Thus when the battle began not much more than half of the Christian armada was actually in line. But for the sudden calm the position would have been even worse.



It was almost noon when the battle began. The first shots were fired by the four galleasses, as the long line of Ottoman galleys came sweeping on into range of their guns. Heavy cannon, such as they carried, were still something of a novelty in naval war, and the Turks had a dread of these tall floating castles that bristled with guns, from which fire, smoke, and iron were now hurled against them. One of the first shots crashed into the deck of Ali Pasha's flagship, scattering destruction as it came. The Turkish line swayed and lost its even array. Some ships hesitated, others crowded together in order to pass clear of the galleasses. Daring captains, who ventured to approach with an idea of boarding them, shrank back under the storm of musketry that burst from their lofty bulwarks. The Turkish fleet surged past the galleasses, broken into confused masses of ships, with wide intervals between each squadron, as a stream is divided by the piles of a bridge.

This disarray of the Turkish attack diminished the fire their bow-guns could bring to bear on the Christian line, for the leading galleys masked the batteries of those that followed. Along the allied left and centre, lying in even array bows to the attack, the guns roared out in a heavy cannonade. But then as the Ottoman bows came rushing through the smoke, and the fleets closed on each other, the guns of the galleys were silent. For a few moments the fight had been like a modern battle, with hundreds of guns thundering over the sea. Now it was a fight like Salamis or Actium, except for the sharp reports of musketry in the melee and the cannon of the galleasses making the Turkish galleys their mark when they could fire into the mass without danger to their friends.

The first to meet in close conflict were Barbarigo's division on the allied left and Mohammed Scirocco's squadron, which was opposed to it on the Turkish right. The Egyptian Pasha brought his own galley into action on the extreme flank bow to bow with the Venetian flagship, and some of the lighter Turkish galleys, by working through the shallows between Barbarigo and the land, were able to fall on the rear of the extreme left of the line, while the larger galleys pressed the attack in front. The Venetian flagship was rushed by a boarding-party of Janissaries, and her decks cleared as far as the mainmast. Barbarigo, fighting with his visor open, was mortally wounded with an arrow in his face, and was carried below. But his nephew Contarini restored the fight, and with the help of reinforcements from the next galley drove the boarders from the decks of the flagship. Contarini was mortally wounded in the midst of his success. But two of his comrades, Nani and Porcia, led a rush of Venetians and Spaniards on to Mohammed Scirocco's flagship, whose decks were swept by the fire of the arquebusiers before the charge of swords and pikes burst over her bows. The onset was irresistible. The Turks were cut down, stabbed, hurled overboard, Mohammed himself being killed in the melee.

By the time the great galley of Alexandria was thus captured the landward wings of the two fleets were mingled together in a confused fight, in which there was little left of the original order. There was more trace of a line on the allied or Christian side. The Turks had not broken through them, but they had swung round, somewhat forcing Mohammed's galleys towards the shore. When the standard of the Egyptian admiral was hauled down by the victorious Venetians, and the rowers suddenly ceased to be slaves and fraternized with the conquerors, some of the captains on the Turkish right lost heart, drove their galleys aground in the shallows and deserted them for the shore, where they hoped to find refuge among friends. On Don Juan's left, though the fighting continued in a fierce melee of ships locked together, and with crews doing wild work with loud arquebuse and clashing sword, the battle was practically won.



Meanwhile there had been close and deadly fighting in the centre. The main squadron of the Turks had, like their right division, suffered from the fire of the advanced galleasses. Several shots had struck the huge galley that flew the flag of the Capitan-Pasha, Ali, a white pennon sent from Mecca, embroidered in gold with verses of the Koran. Ali steered straight for the centre of the Christian line, where the group of large galleys, the "Reale" with the embroidered standard of the Holy League, Colonna's ship with its ensign of the Papal Keys, and Veniero's with the Lion-flag of St. Mark, told him he was striking at the heart of the confederacy. He chose Don Juan's "Reale" for his adversary, relying on the Seraskier Pertev Pasha, and the Pasha of Mitylene on his left and right, to support him by attacking the other two flagships.

Ali held the fire of his bow-guns till he was within a short musket-shot of his enemy, and then fired at point-blank. One of his cannon-balls crashed through the bow barrier of the "Reale," and raked the rowers' benches, killing several oarsmen. As the guns of the "Reale" thundered out their reply, the bow of the Turkish flagship, towering over the forecastle of Don Juan's vessel, came through the smoke-cloud and struck the Spanish ship stem to stem with a grinding crash and a splintering of timber, throwing down many of the crew. The Turkish bow dug deep into the Spanish ship, and in the confusion of the collision it was thought for a moment she was sinking, but a forward bulkhead kept her afloat. Ali's ship rebounded from the shock, then glided alongside the "Reale" with much mutual smashing of oars. The two ships grappled, and the hand-to-hand fight began. At the same time Pertev Pasha grappled Veniero's flagship, and another Turkish galley, commanded by Ali's two sons, forced its way through the line and engaged the two galleys that lay astern of the flagship. Then the Pasha of Mitylene closed upon Colonna's ship, and all along the centre the galleys came dashing together. The crash of broken oars, the rattling explosions of arquebuses and grenades, the war-notes of the Christian trumpets and the Turkish drums, the clash of swords, the shouts and yells of the combatants, rose in a deafening din. Froissart wrote in an earlier day that sea-fights were always murderous. This last great battle of the medieval navies had the character of its predecessors. In this fight at close quarters on the narrow space afforded by the galleys' decks there was no question of surrender on either side, no thought but of which could strike the hardest and kill the most. Nor could men, striving hand to hand in the confusion of the floating melee, know anything of what was being done beyond their limited range of view, so that even the admirals became for the moment only leaders of small groups of fighting-men. On the poop and forecastle of the "Reale" were gathered men whose names recalled all that was greatest in the annals of Spanish chivalry, veterans who had fought the Moor and voyaged the western ocean, and young cavaliers eager to show themselves worthy sons of the lines of Guzman and Mendoza, Benavides and Salazar. Don Juan, arrayed in complete steel, stood by the flagstaff of the consecrated standard. Along the bulwarks four hundred Castilian arquebusiers in corselet and head-piece represented the pick of the yet unconquered Spanish infantry. The three hundred rowers had left the oars, and, armed with pike and sword, were ready to second them, when the musketry ceased and the storming of the Turkish galleys began. From Ali's ship a hundred archers and three hundred musketeers of the Janissary corps replied to the fire of the Spaniards. The range was a few feet. Men were firing in each other's faces, and at such close quarters the arquebuse with its heavy ball was a more death-dealing weapon than the modern rifle. Such slaughter could not last, and the caballeros were eager to end it by closing on the Turks with cold steel.



Twice they dashed through the smoke over Ali's bulwarks, and for a while gained a footing on the deck of the enemy's flagship. Twice they were driven back by the reinforcements that Ali drew from the crews of galleys that had crowded to his aid. Then the Turks came clambering over the bows of the "Reale," and nearly cleared the forecastle. Don Bernardino de Cardenas brought up a reserve from the waist of the ship and attacked the Turkish boarders in the bows. He was struck by a musket-ball. It dinted his steel helmet, but failed to penetrate. Cardenas fell, stunned by the shock of the blow, and died next day, "though he showed no sign of a wound."

Don Juan himself was going forward sword in hand to assist in the fight in the bows of the "Reale," and Ali was hurrying up reinforcements to the attack. It was a critical moment. But Colonna just then struck a decisive blow. He had boarded and stormed the ship that attacked him, a long galley commanded by the Bey of Negropont. Having thus disposed of his immediate adversary, he saw the peril of the "Reale." Manning all his oars, he drove the bow of his flagship deep into the stern of Ali's ship, swept her decks with a volley of musketry, and sent a storming-party on to her poop. The diversion saved the "Reale." The Spaniards hustled the Turks over her bows at point of pike, and Ali, attacked on two sides, had now to fight on the defensive.

On the other side of the "Reale" Veniero's flagship was making a splendid fight. It is the details of those old battles that bring home to us the changes of three centuries. A modern admiral stands sheltered in his conning tower, amid voice tubes and electrical transmitters. Veniero, a veteran of seventy years, stood by the poop-rail of his galley, thinking less of commanding than of doing his own share of the killing. Balls and arrows whistled around him, along the bulwarks amidships his men were fighting hand to hand with the Seraskier's galley that lay lashed alongside. There were no orders to give for the moment, so he occupied himself with firing a blunderbuss into the crowd on the Turkish deck, and handing it to a servant to reload with half a dozen balls, and then firing again and again.

Here, too, in the main squadron were fighting the galleys of Spinola of Genoa, of the young Duke of Urbino, of the Prince of Parma, of Bonelli, the nephew of Pius V, of Sforza of Milan, and Gonzaga of Solferino, and the young heirs of the Roman houses of Colonna and Orsini. Venice had not all the glory of Lepanto. All Italy still remembers that every noble family, every famous city, from the Alps to Sicily, had its part in the battle.

Colonna's timely aid to the "Reale" was the turning-point of the fight in the centre. Led by Vasquez Coronada and Gil d'Andrada, the Spanish infantry poured into Ali's ship, and winning their way foot by foot cleared her decks. Not one of her four hundred fighting-men survived. Ali himself was one of the last to fall. One account says that when all was lost he cut his throat with his dagger, another that he was shot down at close quarters. His head was cut off, placed on a pike, and carried to Don Juan with the captured standard of Mecca. The chivalrous young admiral turned with disgust from the sight of the blood-dripping head, and ordered it to be thrown into the sea.

The battle had lasted an hour and a half. Don Juan saw in the capture of the enemy's flagship the assurance of victory. Like all great commanders, he knew the value of moral effect. He hoisted the consecrated banner of the League at the tall mast-head of the conquered galley, and bade his trumpeters blow a flourish and his men shout victory. In the confusion and uproar of the melee not many of the ships would see what was happening round the "Reale," but this demonstration would attract the attention of friends and foes in the centre of the fight. It was just one of the moments when, both parties becoming exhausted by the prolonged struggle, success would belong to the side that could put forth even for a while the more vigorous effort, and the sight of the papal standard fluttering from the Turkish mast, instead of the banner of Mecca, inspired this effort on the part of the Christians, and depressed and discouraged their adversaries.

Pertev Pasha had lost heavily under the fire of the Venetian flagship, and had failed in an effort to board her. He cut his galley adrift. Veniero let her go, and turned to attack other enemies. Pertev's ship drifted down on two Christian galleys, and was promptly boarded and taken. The Seraskier slipped on board of a small craft he was towing astern, reached another ship, and, giving up all hope of victory, fled with her from the fight. Veniero had meanwhile rammed and sunk two other galleys. He was wounded with a bullet in the leg, but he had the wound bandaged and remained on deck. The old man gave Venice good reason to be proud of her admiral.

Along the left and centre of the Christian armada there was now victory. Admirals and captains were busy storming or sinking such of the enemy's ships as still maintained the fight. On the left Barbarigo had been mortally wounded, and the losses had been heavy, but the success was so pronounced that large numbers of men had been landed to hunt down the Turkish fugitives on the shore. In the centre there was still some hard fighting. Here it was that Miguel Cervantes, leading the stormers to the capture of a Turkish galley, received three wounds, one of which cost him his left hand.

When the battle began at noon, first on the allied left, then in the centre, Doria, the Genoese admiral who commanded the right, was not yet in position. His orders were to mark with his flagship the extreme right of the line of battle so that the rest of his division could form on this point. But it was soon seen that he was keeping away, steering southward into the open sea, with his division trailing after him in a long line, the galleasses that should have been out in front coming slowly up behind the squadron. Ulugh Ali with the left wing of the Turkish fleet had also altered his course, and was steering on a parallel line to that taken by the Genoese. Some of the Christian captains who watched these movements from the right centre thought that Doria was deserting the armada, and even that he was in flight, pursued by Ulugh Ali.

Doria afterwards explained that, as he steered out from behind the centre to take up his position in the battle line, he saw that Ulugh Ali, instead of forming on Ali Pasha's flank, was working out to seaward, and he therefore believed that the Algerine was trying to get upon the flank of the allied line, in order to envelop it and attack from both front and rear, so as to crush the extreme right with a local superiority of force. His plan was, therefore, to confine himself to observing Ulugh Ali's movements, steering on a parallel course in the hope of eventually closing and meeting him fairly ship to ship. Doria was an old sailor, perhaps the most experienced leader in the fleet, except the veteran Veniero. If he had been less of a tactician, perhaps he would have come into action sooner. And it is strange that, while playing for position against Ulugh Ali, he did not realize that if, instead of continually increasing his own distance from the centre, he had at any moment turned back towards it, he could thus force the Algerine admiral either to close with him or leave him free to overwhelm the Turkish main squadron by enveloping its left.

It was Ulugh Ali, not Doria, who turned back and ventured on a stroke like this. The Algerine had, after all, outmanoeuvred the over-clever Genoese. The course taken by the two squadrons had, with the drift of the current, placed Ulugh Ali's rearmost ships actually somewhat nearer the seaward flank of the main fighting lines than Doria's galleys, which his squadron also outnumbered. A signal ran down the long line of the Turkish left, and while some of the galleys turned and bore down on Doria's division, the rest swung round and, before Doria had quite realized what was happening, Ulugh Ali, with the heaviest ships of his division, was rushing towards the fight in the centre.

The brunt of the Algerine's onset fell upon a dozen galleys on Don Juan's right flank. The furthest out, the flagship of the Knights of Malta, was attacked by seven of the enemy's vessels. Next to her lay the papal galley "Fiorenza," the Piedmontese "Margarita di Savoia," and seven or eight Venetian ships. All these were enveloped in the Turkish attack which engaged the line in front, flank and rear. There were no enemies the Algerines hated so fiercely as the Knights of Malta, but, even though they had the flagship of the Order at such a fearful disadvantage, they did not venture to close with it until they had overwhelmed the knights and their crew with a murderous fire of bullets and arrows at close quarters. Then they boarded the ship and disposed of the few surviving defenders. The commander, Giustiniani, wounded by five arrows, and a Sicilian and a Spanish knight alone survived, and these only because they were left for dead among the heaps of slain that encumbered the deck. Ulugh Ali secured as a trophy of his success the standard of the Knights. In the same way the "Fiorenza" and the "San Giovanni" of the papal squadron, and the Piedmontese ship, were rushed in rapid succession. On the "Fiorenza" the only survivors were her captain, Tomasso de Medici, and sixteen men, all wounded; the captain of the "San Giovanni" was killed with most of his men, and the captain of the Savoyard ship survived an equally terrible slaughter, after receiving no less than eleven wounds.

But Ulugh Ali was not to be allowed to "eat up" the line ship by ship. Reinforcements were now arriving in rapid succession. First Santa Cruz, with the reserve, dashed into the fight, and though twice wounded with shot from a Turkish arquebuse, drove his flagship into the midst of the Algerines. Don Juan cut adrift a captured ship he had just taken in tow, and with twelve galleys hastened to assist the reserve in restoring the fight. Doria, leaving part of his division to encounter the galleys Ulugh Ali had detached against it, led the rest into the melee. Colonna and Veniero were supporting Don Juan. The local advantage of numbers, which Ulugh Ali at first possessed, soon disappeared, but for more than an hour the fight continued with heavy loss on both sides. Then the Algerine admiral struggled out of the melee, and with fourteen ships fled north-westward, steering for Cape Oxia and the wide channel between Ithaca and the mainland. Santa Cruz and Doria pursued for a while, but a wind sprang up from the south-east, and the fugitives set their long lateen sails. Under sail and oar a corsair could generally defy pursuit.

The pursuers gave up the chase and returned to where Don Juan and the other admirals were securing their prizes, clearing the decks of dead, collecting the wounded, and hurriedly repairing damages. It was now after four o'clock, and less than three hours of daylight remained for these operations. Besides the handful that had escaped with Ulugh Ali, a few galleys had got away into the Gulf of Corinth, making for Lepanto, but the great Turkish armada had been destroyed, and the victorious armament was mistress of the Mediterranean.



The success had been dearly bought. On both sides the losses in the hard-fought battle had been terrible. The allies had about 7500 men killed or drowned, two-thirds of these fighting-men, the rest rowers. The nobles and knights had exposed themselves freely in the melee, and Spain, Malta, Venice, and the Italian cities had each and all their roll of heroic dead. The list of the Venetians begins with the names of seventeen captains of ships, including the admiral Barbarigo, besides twelve other chiefs of great houses who fought under the standard of St. Mark in command of companies of fighting-men. No less than sixty of the Knights of St. John "gave their lives that day for the cause of Christ," to quote the annalist of the Order. Several others were wounded, and of these the Prior Giustiniani and his captain, Naro, of Syracuse, died soon after. One of the knights killed in the battle was a Frenchman, Raymond de Loubiere, a Provencal. Another Frenchman, the veteran De Romegas, fought beside Don Juan on the "Reale," and to his counsel and aid the commander-in-chief attributed much of his success in the campaign. The long lists of the Spanish, Neapolitan, Roman, and Genoese nobles who fell at Lepanto include many historic names.

The losses of the defeated Moslems were still heavier. The lowest estimate makes the number of the dead 20,000, the highest 30,000. Ali Pasha and most of his captains were killed. Ali's two sons and several of his best officers were among the prisoners. Fifteen Turkish galleys were sunk or burned, no less than 190 ships were the prizes of the victors. A few galleys had escaped by the Little Dardanelles to Lepanto. A dozen more had found refuge with Ulugh Ali in the fortified harbour of Santa Maura. The Algerine eventually reached Constantinople, and laid at the feet of Sultan Selim the standard of the Knights of Malta, which he had secured when he was in temporary possession of Giustiniani's flagship.

Don Juan's best trophies of victory were the 12,000 Christian slaves found on board the captured galleys. They were men of all nations, and some of them had for years toiled at the oar. Freed from their bondage, they carried throughout all Christendom the news of the victory and the fame of their deliverer.

Hardly three hours of daylight remained when the battle ended, and the Christian admirals reluctantly abandoned the pursuit of Ulugh Ali. The breeze that had aided the Algerine in his flight was rapidly increasing to a gale, and the sea was rising fast. The Christian fleet, encumbered with nearly two hundred prizes, and crippled by the loss of thousands of oars shattered in the fight, was in serious danger in the exposed waters that had been the scene of the battle. By strenuous and well-directed efforts the crews of oarsmen were hurriedly reorganized. Happily the wind was favourable for a run through the Oxia Channel to the Bay of Petala. The prizes were taken in tow. Sails were set. Weary men tugged at the oar, knights and nobles taking their places among them. As the October night deepened into darkness, amid driving rain and roaring wind-squalls, the fleet anchored in the sheltered bay.

The gale that swept the Adriatic was a warning that the season for active operations was drawing to a close, and the admirals reluctantly decided that no more could be done till next spring. The swiftest ships were sent off to carry the good news of Lepanto to Rome and Messina, Venice and Genoa, Naples and Barcelona. The fleet returned in triumph to Messina, and entered the port trailing the captured Turkish standards in the water astern of the ships that had taken them, while pealing bells and saluting cannon greeted the victors.

Lepanto worthily closed the long history of the oar-driven navies. The galleasses, with their tall masts and great sails, and their bristling batteries of cannon, which lay in front of Don Juan's battle line, represented the new type of ship that was soon to alter the whole aspect of naval war. So quickly came the change that men who had fought at Lepanto were present, only seventeen years later, at another world-famed battle that was fought under sail, the defeat of King Philip's "Grand Armada" in the Narrow Seas of the North.





CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT ARMADA

1588

"Attend, all ye who list to hear Our glorious England's praise. I sing of the thrice famous deeds She wrought in ancient days, When that great fleet 'Invincible' Against her bore in vain The richest spoils of Mexico, The bravest hearts of Spain."

Thus Macaulay begins his stirring ballad of the Armada. The lines have helped to perpetuate a popular error—one of the many connected with the story as it is generally told in our English histories. It somehow became the fashion at a very early date to speak of the defeat of the so-called "Invincible Armada" of Spain. But the Spaniards never gave their fleet such a name. In the contemporary histories and in Spanish official documents it is more modestly and truthfully spoken of as the "Gran Armada"—"the great armed force." And, by the way, our very use of the word "armada" is based on popular ignorance of the Spanish language, and on the impression produced in England by the attempt of Philip II to make himself master of the narrow seas, and invade our islands. An "armada" is not necessarily a fleet. It is an armed force, an "army" either marching on land or embarked for service on the sea, in which case fleet and fighting-men are included in the word.

Philip II was King not of Spain only, but also of Portugal and of the Two Sicilies, ruler of other European lands and "Lord of the Indies," the Sovereign of a widespread maritime Empire in Asia, Africa, and America, that had been won by a hundred years of enterprise on the part of sailors and soldiers like Columbus and Vasco da Gama, Cortes, Pizarro, and Albuquerque. The tradition of Spanish victory on the sea was a proud one, and as we have seen Spain had borne a leading part in the latest of decisive naval victories, when the Turkish power in the Mediterranean was shattered at Lepanto; King Philip might therefore reasonably look forward to success for his great fleet, and if it could once secure the mastery of the Channel, the invasion of England might be regarded as no very perilous enterprise. For the Spanish infantry were the best soldiers of the day, and the Duke of Parma, who was to command the land operations, was one of the best and most experienced leaders in Europe.

Looking back on the events of the wonderful year of the Armada, we must try to divest ourselves of the ideas of to-day, and see things as the men of the time saw them. Philip counted on divisions among the people of England. The event proved that he was mistaken, but he had reasonable grounds for the view he took. A hundred years later another fleet conveyed a foreign army across the narrow seas from the Netherlands to change effectively the course of English affairs. It found a divided people, and the invading army was welcomed by a party strong enough to effect a Revolution that was a new starting-point in English history. Nor must we suppose that the policy of Philip II was directed entirely by religious views. If kings were easily swayed by such motives, there would have not been such difficulty about organizing a League against the Turk.

Professor Laughton, in his introduction to the "State Papers relating to the Defeat of the Armada," puts the matter so clearly that it is worth while quoting his words at some length:—

"It is not strange that the action of the fleet was for long misunderstood, and that the failure of the Spaniards should have been represented—as it often is even now—as due to a Heaven-sent storm. 'Flavit Deus et dissipati sunt' was accepted as at once a true and pious explanation of the whole thing. It was, too, a flattering and economical belief. We were, it has been argued, a nation peculiarly dear to the Almighty, and He showed His favour by raising a storm to overwhelm our enemy, when the odds against us were most terrible. From the religious point of view such a representation is childish; from the historical it is false. False, because the Spanish fleet, after being hounded up Channel, had sustained a crushing defeat from the English, a defeat in which they lost many ships and thousands of men before they fled to the north.... Childish, because in affairs of State Providence works by recognized means, and gives the victory, not by disturbing the course of nature and nature's laws, but by giving the favoured nation wise and prudent commanders, skilful and able warriors; by teaching their hands to war and their fingers to fight.

"But, in fact, much of the nonsense that has been talked grew out of the attempt, not unsuccessfully made, to represent the war as religious; to describe it as a species of crusade instigated by the Pope, in order to bring heretical England once more into the fold of the true Church. In reality nothing can be more inaccurate. It is, indeed, quite certain that religious bitterness was imported into the quarrel; but the war had its origin in two perfectly clear and wholly mundane causes."

Professor Laughton then goes on to explain what these causes were: (1) the attempts of Drake and Hawkins to break the Spanish monopoly of trade in the West Indies by armed expeditions, which included the capture of Spanish ships and the sacking of Spanish trading posts. The Spaniards regarded Drake and Hawkins as smugglers and pirates, and in vain asked Elizabeth to disavow and make amends for their acts.

(2) "The countenance and assistance which had been given by the English to the King's rebellious subjects in the Low Countries."

The King was glad enough to put forward religious reasons as the motives for his enterprise in the hope of thus enlisting new allies on his side, but, like so many other wars, the conflict between Spain and England, which began in 1585, arose largely from rivalry in trade.

The Marquis of Santa Cruz, the same who had commanded the allied reserve at Lepanto, was then the most famous and the most trusted of King Philip's admirals. Santa Cruz urged upon him the advisability of attempting an invasion of England itself, as the only effective means of cutting off the support given by Elizabeth to the revolt of the Netherlands, and checking at their source the raids on the West Indies. In March, 1586, he submitted to his master an elaborate plan for the operation. Santa Cruz's scheme was an ambitious project for concentrating the whole force of the Spanish Empire in an attack on England. Some 500 ships, great and small, were to be assembled in the ports of the Spanish peninsula, and 85,000 men embarked on them.

Philip II thought the scheme too vast, and, above all, too costly. He substituted for it another plan, which was more economical. Santa Cruz was to assemble in the Atlantic ports of the Peninsula a fleet of more modest proportions, just strong enough to secure command of the Channel. This done, he was to cover the transportation across the narrow seas of the Spanish army that was already operating in the Netherlands, under the Duke of Parma. The army of the Netherlands would be reinforced with all the fighting-men that could be spared from the fleet. This was in its essential points the plan of campaign of the "Gran' Armada" of 1588.

It was intended that the attempt should be made in the summer of 1587. It was delayed for a twelvemonth by a daring enterprise of Francis Drake, a memorable enterprise, because in proposing it he laid down the true principle for the defence of England against invasion. His policy was that of Edward III at Sluys, his principle that it was better to keep the enemy occupied on his own coasts rather than await him on those of England. On 2 April, 1587, Drake sailed for Spain with only thirty ships, and surprised and burned the half-armed transports and storeships collected at Cadiz for fitting out the Armada. His dashing enterprise had made its departure for that year impossible.

Before the preparations for the next summer's campaign were completed the Marquis of Santa Cruz died, and Spain lost her best and most experienced admiral. King Philip put in his place a great noble, Guzman, Duke of Medina-Sidonia, who pleaded in vain to be excused, frankly declaring to his sovereign that he felt unfit for such high command, as he had scant knowledge of war and no experience of the sea. It is supposed that the King persisted in the nomination because Medina-Sidonia's hereditary rank would place him above the jealousies of the subordinate commanders, and he hoped to supply for the Marquis's inexperience by sending veteran sailors and soldiers with him as his staff-officers and divisional commanders.

By the middle of May, 1588, the Armada was at last ready to sail from the Tagus. In England there had been the wildest reports as to its numbers and strength. These exaggerations were repeated by the popular historians of the fighting in the Channel, and have become almost a national tradition. The Spanish galleons were said to be floating monsters, more like castles than ships; the fleet was so numerous that it hid the sea, and looked like a moving town; it "seemed as if room would scarce be found on the ocean for so vast an armament."

The glory of the English victory was great enough to need no exaggeration to enhance it. But in sober fact there was no such enormous disparity, as is generally imagined, between the opposing forces.

Large and small, there were 130 ships in the Armada. The detailed catalogue of them, from the list sent by Medina-Sidonia to Philip II, has been reprinted by Captain Duro in his "Armada Invencibile," and by Professor Laughton in his "State Papers relating to the Armada." From these sources I take a summarized table giving the statistics of the Armada, and then add some particulars as to various squadrons, ships, and commanders:—

- Divisions. Ships. Tons. Guns. Soldiers. Sailors. Total Men. - Armada of Portugal 12 7,737 347 3,330 1,293 4,623 " " Biscay 14 6,567 238 1,937 863 2,800 " " Castille 16 8,714 384 2,458 1,719 4,171 " " Andalusia 11 8,762 240 2,327 780 3,105 " " Guipuzcoa 14 6,991 247 1,992 616 2,608 " " the Levant 10 7,705 280 2,780 767 3,523 Squadron of "urcas" 23 10,271 384 3,121 608 3,729 (hulks or storeships) "Patasses" and "zabras" 22 1,121 91 479 574 1,093 (small craft) Neapolitan galleasses 4 200 773 468 1,341 Galleys 4 20 362 362 - 130 57,868 2,431 19,295 8,050 27,365 Rowers (in galleasses and galleys) 2,088 Grand total, soldiers, sailors and rowers 29,453 -

The first point to note about the Armada is that it was almost entirely a fleet of sailing-ships. The new period of naval war had begun. There had been hundreds of galleys at Lepanto, seventeen years earlier, but there were only four in the Armada, and none of these reached the Channel. The long, low, oar-driven warship, that for two thousand years had done so much fighting in the Mediterranean, proved useless in the long waves of the Atlantic.[7] The only oared ships that really took part in the campaign were the four galleasses, and in these the oar was only auxiliary to the spread of sail on their three full-rigged masts. The galleasse has been described in the story of Lepanto. It was an intermediate or transition type of ship. It seems to have so impressed the English onlookers that the four galleasses are given quite an unmerited importance in some of the popular narratives of the war.

[7] Galleys were used in the land-locked Mediterranean and Baltic up to the first years of the nineteenth century, but the only sailors who ever ventured to take galleys into the wild weather of the Atlantic were the Norse Vikings.

But the day of sails had come, and the really effective strength of the Armada lay in the tall galleons of the six "armadas" or squadrons of Portugal, the Spanish provinces, and the Levantine traders. The galleon was a large sailing-ship, but even as to the size of the galleons the popular tradition of history is full of exaggeration. Built primarily for commerce, not for war, they carried fewer guns than the galleasses, though many of them were of heavier tonnage. In those days every large trader carried a certain number of guns for her protection, but such guns were mostly of small calibre and short range.



The largest galleons were in the armada of the Levant. The flagship, "La Regazona," commanded by Martin de Bertendona, was the biggest ship in the whole fleet, a great vessel of 1249 tons. But she only mounted 30 guns, mostly light pieces. Compare this with the armament of the galleasses, and one sees the difference between ships built for war and galleons that were primarily traders. The largest of the four galleasses was only of 264 tons, the smallest 169, but each of the four mounted 50 guns. In all the six armadas of galleons there were only seven ships of over a thousand tons. There were fourteen more of over 800, and a considerable number of under 500 tons. But the galleon looked larger than she really was. Such ships had high bulwarks and towering fore and stern castles, and they appear to have been over-rigged with huge masts and heavy yards. A galleon under full sail must have been a splendid sight, the bows and stern and the tall "castles" tricked out with carving, gold and colour. Great lanterns were fixed on the poop. The sails were not dull stretches of canvas, but bright with colour, for woven into or embroidered on them there were huge coats-of-arms, or brilliantly coloured crosses, and even pictures of the saints with gilded haloes. From the mastheads fluttered pennons thirty or forty feet long, and flagstaffs displayed not only the broad standard of the Lions and Castles of Spain, but also the banners of nobles and knights who were serving on board.

But the tall ship, with her proud display of gold and colour, was more splendid than formidable, and the Elizabethan seamen had soon realized the fact. Built originally for the more equable weather of the trade-wind region in the South Atlantic, she was not so well fitted for the wilder seas and changing winds of the North. She was essentially an unhandy ship. In bad weather she rolled heavily, and her heavy masts and spars and high upper works strained the whole structure, so that she was soon leaking badly. With the wind abeam and blowing hard, her tall sides and towering castles were like sails that could not be reefed, a resisting surface that complicated all manoeuvres. The guns that looked out from her port-holes were mostly small cannon, many of them mere three and four-pounders, of short range and little effect. So small was the dependence the Spaniards placed upon them that they carried only the scantiest supply of ammunition.

The fighting method of the galleon was to bear close down upon her opponent, run her aboard, if possible, pour down a heavy fire of musketry from the high bulwarks and castles, so as to bring a plunging shower of bullets on the enemy's decks, and then board, and let pike and sword do their work as they had done at Lepanto. These were, after all, the methods of the soldier, the tactics of the war-galley. It was the merit of Howard, Hawkins, Drake, and the other great captains, who commanded against the Armada, that they fought as seamen, using their more handy and better handled ships to choose their own position and range, refusing to let the Spaniards close, and bringing a more powerful, longer-ranging, and better served artillery to bear with destructive effect on the easy targets supplied by the tall galleons. It is worth noting that while there were more soldiers than seamen in the Armada, there were more seamen than soldiers in the fleet that met it in the narrow seas.

If the Armada had a commander whose only merit was personal courage, the admirals of the various squadrons were all men of long experience in war, both by land and sea. Martinez de Recalde, the second in command and admiral of the armada of Biscay, was a veteran seaman. Diego Flores de Valdes, the admiral of Castille, was an enterprising and skilful leader, and if his advice had been taken at the outset there might have been a disaster for England. Pedro de Valdes, the admiral of Andalusia, had sailed the northern seas, and Medina-Sidonia was told he might rely on his local knowledge. Moncada, the admiral of the galleasses, was a "first-rate fighting-man," and De Leyva, the general of the troops embarked, who had taken command of the "Rata Coronada," a great galleon of 800 tons in the Levant armada, showed that he was sailor as well as soldier.

The Duke of Parma, who commanded the army that was to be embarked from the Netherlands, was counted the best general of the day, and his 30,000 Spanish regular infantry were the most formidable body of troops then in Europe. His orders from the King were to build or collect a flotilla of flat-bottomed barges to ferry his army across the straits under the protection of the Armada, and for months thousands of shipwrights had been at work in fishing ports and creeks, canals and rivers along the coast between Calais and Ostend. The Dutch rebels held Flushing and the mouth of the Scheldt, and they had a small but efficient fleet ready to do good service as the ally of England—a fact often overlooked in our popular stories of the Armada. Parma had proposed that he should attempt to reduce Flushing and obtain command of the Scheldt, as a preliminary to the enterprise against England. The Armada could then run for the Scheldt, and make Antwerp its base of operations. But Philip was impatient of further delays. Though the best of the Spanish admirals were against him, the King insisted that the Armada need only run up Channel and obtain temporary command of the straits to enable Parma to embark his army in the flotilla even from an open beach. In the King's mind the necessity of destroying the hostile sea power as a prelude to any scheme of invasion was disregarded or was not understood.

On 30 May, in fine weather, the Armada at last sailed from Lisbon. The reports sent back to Philip II by Medina-Sidonia, as the fleet passed Cape Finisterre and stood out into the Bay of Biscay, told that all was well. But a few days later a storm from the Atlantic swept the sea, and partly dispersed the Armada. The storeships held on till they sighted the Scilly Islands, and then, finding they had parted from the fleet, turned back. Into the northern ports of Spain came scattered ships that had lost spars and sails, some of them leaking so badly that only hard labour at the pumps kept them afloat. Medina-Sidonia, with the main body, made for Corunna, where he ordered the stragglers to reassemble. On 19 June he wrote to the King reporting his arrival.

Then he sent letters betraying so much discouragement and irresolution that one wonders he was not promptly relieved of his command. He proposed that the whole enterprise should be abandoned and some means found for arranging terms of peace. He reported that the fleet had suffered badly in the storm; that there was much sickness on board; that large quantities of provisions had gone bad, and must be replaced; and that the ships were short of water. Instead of dismissing him from the command, the King wrote to his admiral ordering and encouraging him to renew the attempt. The ships were refitted and provisioned, and drafts of men collected to replace the invalided soldiers and sailors. Early in July the Armada was again ready for sea.

The news that King Philip's Great Armada had been beaten back by the wild Biscay gales reached England when the whole country was in a fever of preparation for resistance. A commission of noblemen and gentlemen had been appointed "to sett doune such meanes as are fittest to putt the forces of the Realme in order to withstand any invasion." The Lord-Lieutenants of the counties were directed to be ready to call out the local levies, which formed a roughly armed, and mostly untrained, militia. Garrisons were organized in the seaports, formed of more reliable and better equipped men, and a small force was collected at Tilbury to oppose a landing in the Thames estuary. Faggots and brushwood were piled on hill-tops from Land's End to Berwick to send the news of the Spaniards' arrival through England by a chain of beacon fires.

The best of the Queen's advisers, men like the Lord Admiral Howard of Effingham, and such experienced seamen as Hawkins, Drake, and Fenner, realized, and succeeded in persuading the Council, that it was on the sea, and not on the land, that England must be protected from invasion. Their letters in the Armada State Papers are full of practical lessons even for the present time. While insisting that the main effort must be concentrated on the fleet, they did not disregard the advisability of subsidiary preparations on land, in case of accidents. But Howard insisted that a few well-trained men were worth fourfold their number of irregular levies, and wrote to the Council:—

"I pray your Lordships to pardon me that I may put you in remembrance to move her Majesty that she may have an especial care to draw ten or twelve thousand men about her own person, that may not be men unpractised. For this she may well assure herself that 10,000 men, that be practised and trained together under a good governor and expert leaders, shall do her Majesty more service than any 40,000 which shall come from any other parts of the realm. For, my Lords, we have here 6000 men in the fleet, which we shall be able, out of our company, to land upon any great occasion, which being as they have been trained here under captains and men of experience, and each man knowing his charge and they their captains, I had rather have them to do any exploit than any 16,000 men out of any part of the realm."

The fleet, from which Howard of Effingham was ready to land these trained men if necessary, was even more numerous than the Armada itself, though the average size of the ships was smaller. On the list there appear the names of no fewer than 197 ships, ranging in size from the "Triumph" of 1100 tons (Frobisher's ship) down to small coasting craft. The flagship, the "Ark," or "Ark Royal," was a vessel of 800 tons. Contemporary prints show that she had a high poop and forecastle, but not on the exaggerated scale of the Spanish galleons; and that she had four masts, and was pierced with three tiers of port-holes for guns, besides gun-ports in the stern. She had a crew of 270 mariners, 34 gunners, and 126 soldiers. Contrary to the system on which the Armada was manned, the seamen in every ship of the English fleet exceeded the soldiers in number. "The Ark" carried no less than 44 guns, namely, 4 "cannon" (60-pounders), 4 "demi-cannon" (30-pounders) 12 "culverins" (long 18-pounders), 12 "demi-culverins" (long 9-pounders), 6 "sakers" (6-pounders), and six smaller pieces, some of them mounted inboard for resisting boarders at close quarters.[8] This was an armament equalled by few of the Spanish ships, and the fact is that the English ships as a rule were better armed than the Spaniards.

[8] These old wooden ships had a much longer life than the steel battleship of to-day, which becomes obsolete and is broken up after twenty years. The "Ark," launched in 1587 (and built at the cost of L5000 = L50,000 in the money of to-day), was refitted and renamed the "Anne Royal" (after James I's queen) in 1608; was the flagship of the Cadiz expedition of 1625, and was broken up in 1636. Hawkins's ship, the "Victory," was launched in 1561; she sailed as the "Resolution" in Blake's fleet under the Commonwealth; was renamed the "Royal Prince" at the Restoration, and was burned in 1666 during Charles II's Dutch war. She was then over a hundred years old and still fit "to lie in the line of battle."

But few of Howard's fleet were of heavy tonnage. There were only two ships of over 1000 tons; one of 900; two of 800; three of 600; five or six of 500, and all the rest less than 400 tons, many of them less than 100. But though the English ships were smaller than the Spaniards, they were better at sailing and manoeuvring, thoroughly handy craft, manned by sailors who knew how to make them do their best, and who were quite at home in the rough northern seas.

The main body of the fleet under Howard of Effingham assembled at Plymouth. Detached squadrons under Lord Henry Seymour and Sir W. Winter watched the Straits of Dover. Some of the captains thought Plymouth had been unwisely chosen as the station of the main fleet, pointing out that a south or south-west wind, which would be a fair wind for the Spaniards, would be a very foul one for ships working out of the long inlet of Plymouth Harbour.

In June, Howard had news that the Armada was not only at sea, but far on its voyage. Merchantmen ran for shelter to Plymouth, and told how they had met at least two squadrons of large ships with great red crosses on their foresails off Land's End, and in the entrance of the Channel. One ship had been chased and fired on by a Spaniard. Then all trace of the enemy was lost. There was no news of him in the Channel or on the Irish coasts. The weather had been bad, and it was rightly conjectured that the squadrons sighted off Land's End were only detachments of the Armada scattered by the storm, and that the great fleet had put back to Spain, probably to Corunna. This was soon confirmed by reports from France.

For a while there was an impression that the danger was over. Drake, Hawkins, and other captains urged that now was the time to take the English fleet to the Spanish coast and destroy the crippled and discouraged Armada in its harbours. But the Queen and her Council hesitated to adopt so bold a policy, and only a few ships were sent out to watch for the enemy in the Bay of Biscay. These returned driven before a strong south wind, and then fugitives from the Channel brought news that there was a crowd of ships off the Lizard, and Howard in a short note reported that he had gone out to engage them. The Armada had come in earnest at last.

After refitting at Corunna, Medina-Sidonia had sailed on 22 July with fine weather and a fair south wind. Progress was not rapid, for the great fleet's speed was that of its slowest ships. On the 26th, when the Armada was well out to sea off the headlands of Brittany, the morning was dull and cloudy, and towards noon the wind went round to the northward and increased to half a gale, raising a heavy sea. The course was changed to the eastward, and the ships were kept under shortened sail. The four galleys, unable to face the rising storm, ran for shelter towards the French coast, and never rejoined. They went southwards before the wind. One was wrecked near Bayonne. The three others reached Spain.

All next day the gale blew heavily. The Armada, scattered over a wide extent of sea, beat slowly to windward, working away from the dangerous French coast. Many ships temporarily parted company. It looked as if there would be another failure. But on Thursday the 28th (to quote the Spanish admiral's diary) "the day dawned clear and bright, the wind and sea more quiet than the day before. Forty ships were counted to be missing." The admiral sent out three pinnaces to look for them, and next day, Friday, 29 July (19 July, O.S.), had news that all but one of them were with Pedro de Valdes off the Lizard. This was the crowd of ships reported that same day to Howard at Plymouth.

The missing ship, the "Santa Ana," the flagship of Biscay, rejoined later. In the evening Medina-Sidonia saw the coast of England, and notes that it was "said to be the Lizard." On the Saturday the admiral writes that "at dawn the Armada was near with the land, so as we were seen therefrom, whereupon they made fire and smokes."[9] The crew of a captured fishing-boat later in the day told him they had seen the English fleet coming out of Plymouth, and in the evening Medina-Sidonia's diary tells that "many ships were seen, but because of the mist and rain we were unable to count them."

[9] Macaulay, writing his ballad of the Armada before the full English and Spanish records of the time were available, represents the news as being brought to Plymouth by a merchantman that had seen "Castille's black fleet lie heaving many a mile" out by the Channel Islands, where the Armada was never sighted. The "tall 'Pinta'" chased her for hours. There was no such ship in the Armada. Macaulay took the name of one of Columbus's caravels to adorn his ballad. Instead of the enemy seeing "fire and smokes" at dawn, he describes with more picturesque effect, how, in the night—

"From the deep the Spaniards saw Along each southern shire, Cape after cape in endless range, Those twinkling points of fire."

A council of war had been held on board his flagship, the "San Martin." The wind was south-west, the very wind to carry the Armada into Plymouth, and dead against the English fleet coming out. De Leyva proposed that the opportunity should be taken to attack the English in Plymouth Sound. Once in the narrow waters the Spaniards could run them aboard and have the advantage of their superior numbers of fighting-men in a hand-to-hand conflict on the decks. The soldier's advice was good, but the sailors were against him. They argued that the fleet must enter Plymouth Sound in line ahead at the risk of being destroyed in detail, as the shoals at the entrance (those on which the breakwater of to-day stands) left only two narrow channels. De Leyva's bold plan was rejected, and it was decided that the Armada should proceed up Channel.



Next day the fighting began. The wind had shifted to the north-west, a good enough wind for working up Channel on the port tack. English contemporary accounts say the Armada was formed in a half-moon, a centre and two wings slightly thrown forward. Howard had as yet only brought part of his fleet out of Plymouth, but though greatly outnumbered by the Spaniards, he had his best ships and his most enterprising captains with him, and nothing daunted by the grand array of the Armada, he began a series of harassing attacks upon it.

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 ships 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 seamanship in his crews, better gunnery, and handier ships. To close with and grapple in the fashion 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 ships 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 ship that might be detached from her consorts. At the time arm-chair critics on shore 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 ships 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 ships 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 ships 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 shift 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 ships. The admiral himself in "The Ark" steered for De Leyva's tall galleon, the "Rata Coronada," perhaps taking her to be the flagship of the whole Armada. The two ships 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 ship, the "Rosario," "Capitana," or flagship of the Biscayan armada. These two had become separated from the main body with a few of her ships 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 flagships 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 ships 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 ship 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 poop 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 ship was badly hulled, and also had her rigging cut up and one of her masts damaged. Pedro Valdes's flagship, 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 ships to rejoin, and then held his course up Channel. Valdes sent a request to him that a ship 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 assist 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 ship. Evidently no great effort was made to succour the "Rosario," and the ships 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 assigned the task of keeping touch with them and guiding the pursuit by displaying a large stern lantern on his ship.

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 ships perilously near the main body of the enemy. Drake explained that in the darkness he had thought that some ships 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 ship, the "Revenge," lay near the crippled "Rosario," which had been deserted by her consorts. He summoned Valdes to surrender, and the Spaniard, with his ship 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 galleasses, "in all 43 of the best ships 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 ship 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 flagships.

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 ships 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 shift 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 galleasses in front pushing 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 ships 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 ships were wrapped in a fog of powder smoke, the wind suddenly shifted 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 ships. The galleasses, 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 seamanship told. Howard's ships 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 galleasses 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 shifting 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 ships, 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 galleasses, 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 ships 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 ships 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 Saturday 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 ships had joined Howard's fleet, which anchored 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 anchored 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 fireships, 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 poop, and guard-boats rowing about the outskirts of the floating city. At midnight there was a cry of alarm passed from ship to ship. The tide was running strong from the westward through the Straits, and sweeping along on its current came eight dark masses, each defined in the night by a red flicker of fire that rose higher and spread wider as the English fireships 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 ship 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 fireships 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 ships waited for the tedious operation of getting the heavy anchors up to the cat-heads by slow hand labour on windlass 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 ships hurried away to the eastward along the coast in wild disorder. Moncada, the admiral of the galleasses, in the "San Lorenzo," collided with the galleon "San Juan de Sicilia," and the great galleass dismasted and with shattered oars drifted on a back eddy of the tide towards Calais bar. The fireships 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 ships 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 ships being with the admiral. Moncada's flagship had been left by the falling tide hard aground on Calais bar.

The English attacked the stranded galleass in pinnaces and boats, Howard with some of the larger ships standing by "to give the men comfort and countenance." Some of the Spaniards escaped to the shore. 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 ship 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 reassembled 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 ashore. 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 galleass 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 ships, 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 encumbered 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 ships, only because after a hot cannonade of seven hours they were running short of ammunition; so they used the advantage of position and better seamanship 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 flagship 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 shores 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 ships, 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 ships 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 shore, 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 flagship—men of experience of that coast—told the Duke at this time that it was not possible to save a single ship 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 God alone could prevent it. Being in this peril and without any remedy, God was pleased to change the wind to west-south-west, whereby the fleet stood towards the north without hurt to any ship."

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 ships 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 nobles 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 ship.

Other ships drifted ashore or found their way into ports along the low coast to the north-eastward, but all these were taken by Prince Maurice of Nassau, 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.