In the last days of September the surviving ships of the Armada came straggling into the northern ports of Spain with starving, fever-stricken crews. Medina-Sidonia had kept some fifty sail together till 18 September. He had resigned all active duties of command to his lieutenants, Flores and Bobadilla, for he was ill and broken in spirit. His hair had whitened, and he looked like an old man, as he sat all day in the "great cabin" of the "San Martin," with his head in his hands. A Biscay gale scattered the remnant of the Armada, and on 21 September the "San Martin" appeared alone off Santander. The wind had fallen; her sails hung loose from the yards, and the long swell that followed the gale was driving the ship towards the rocks outside the port. Some boats went out and towed her in. Most of the crew were sick. Nearly two hundred had been buried at sea.
Recalde and Oquendo brought their ships home, but landed broken with the hardships of the terrible voyage, and only survived it a few weeks. Every ship that arrived told of the many buried at sea, and landed scores of dying and fever and scurvy-stricken men, so that all the northern ports were like great hospitals. When the last galleon had struggled into harbour, fifty-five great ships were still missing. The best of the leaders were dead. Not more than a third of the sailors and soldiers survived. It was a disaster from which Spain as a naval power never really recovered. For fifty years to come the Spanish infantry still upheld their claim to be invincible on the battlefield, but the tall galleon had ceased to be the mistress of the seas.
The campaign of the Armada is remarkable not only for inaugurating the modern period of naval war, the era of the sail and the gun, but also because, though it ended in disaster for one side and success for the other, there was from first to last in the long series of engagements in the narrow seas no battle "fought to a finish." In all the fighting the English showed that they had grasped the essential ideas of the new warfare, and proved themselves better sailors and better gunners, but the number of the ships they took or destroyed was insignificant. Howard was so crippled by parsimonious mismanagement on the part of his Government that he had to be content with "half-doings," instead of decisive results. But there was worse mismanagement on the Spanish side, and this led first to failure, then to disaster.
The story of the Armada is full of useful lessons, but for England its message for all time is that her true defence against invasion lies not in armies, but upon the sea. The Elizabethan captains knew well that if once Parma's veterans landed in Kent or Essex, the half-trained levies gathered by the beacon fires could do little to stop their onward march. So they took care to make the narrow seas an impassable barrier to the enemy by harrying the covering fleet and making it hopeless for Parma even to think of sending his transports to sea. The lesson is worth remembering even now.
CHAPTER VII
THE BATTLE OFF THE GUNFLEET
1666
The decline of Spain as a great power was largely due to the unsuccessful attempt to coerce the Dutch people. Out of the struggle arose the Republic of the United Provinces, and Holland, won from the sea, and almost an amphibious state, became in a few years a great naval power. A hardy race of sailors was trained in the fisheries of the North Sea. Settlements were established in the Far East, and fleets of Dutch East Indiamen broke the Spanish monopoly of Asiatic trade. It was to obtain a depot and watering-place for their East Indiamen that the Dutch founded Cape Town, with far-reaching results on the future development of South Africa.
A Dutch fleet had assisted in defeating the Armada, but the rise of this naval power on the eastern shores of the narrow seas made rivalry with England on the waters inevitable. In the seventeenth century there was a series of hard-fought naval wars between England and the United Provinces.