A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

by David Hannay

On the ships there was much less of this promiscuous plunder than in the town, and the men, whether soldiers or sailors, were perfectly well aware of the fact. Essex excused himself for not seeing that the ships were taken possession of, by saying that he had instructed the sailors to follow up the galleons to Puerto Real, while the soldiers of the expedition were engaged in occupying the town. But the sailors were extremely unlikely to accept a division of labour which would have thrown a good deal of work, with a prospect of remote reward, on them, while it left the soldiers the exclusive enjoyment of the plunder of Cadiz. They were the less likely to do so, because experience had shown them that when the final division of the prize came to be made in England, Her Majesty would take very good care that the lion's share of it should fall to the Crown. Therefore, when once the example of attacking Cadiz was set by the Earl of Essex, the whole combined force, military and naval, hastened to the place where lay the largest and the most immediate share of profit.

Another explanation of the failure to make a thoroughly successful commercial speculation of the capture of Cadiz, is to be found in the rivalry between the chiefs. To this there was a chivalrous side. The eagerness with which Howard and Essex, Raleigh and Lord Thomas Howard, strove to outstrip one another for the foremost place in driving back the King of Spain's galleons, and storming his city, makes a very gallant story. They behaved much after the manner to be expected of spirited sixth-form boys. In that there was nothing dangerous to the interests of the service. But this emulation had another side, which is only to be accurately described by the less honourable name of rivalry. Essex and Raleigh were both courtiers who were endeavouring to excel one another in the favour of the queen by outdoing one another in the flatteries Elizabeth loved. They had come to open hostility already, and having been reconciled, they of course hated one another mortally. At Cadiz the evil consequences of their hostility were hardly apparent. But there was enough of it to prevent the campaign of 1596 from being as fully successful as it might have been. There was in the greater Elizabethan enterprises unity of sentiment and a vigour of energy which produced success in the main, but there was hardly what in the full sense of the word is called discipline. In addition to the rivalry between the leaders, there was a rivalry between the different types of men. The sailor and the sailor officer were opposed to the soldier. The latter grew impatient when the former endeavoured to overbear him by appeals to seamanship, and the conditions of war at sea which the military man only vaguely understood, while the sailor was apt to think himself sacrificed to the soldier.

Each of these forms of rivalry had a share in producing the failure of the next considerable naval effort of Elizabeth's reign. In 1597 Philip was still threatening England with attack, this time from the Basque Ports. After the loss of so much money in the previous year, Elizabeth was by no means disposed to renew the voyage to Cadiz. Indeed it is doubtful whether she could have repeated that attack without straining her popularity to a dangerous extent. Not she only, but London and the smaller ports, had been put to heavy expenses for small profit. If the queen had attempted to press ships from London and the out-ports, there would certainly have been a considerable outcry, and it was never her policy to give her subjects any excuse for being discontented, when it was in her power to avoid it. She therefore fitted out a moderate squadron of fifteen ships. It was put under the command of the Earl of Essex, and despatched to sea, with orders to look into the King of Spain's harbours. It was driven back by bad weather, but discovered enough to show that Philip's threats were not serious. Although the year was far advanced, it was decided to make another attempt to get possession of the Spanish plate-ships by one of the usual voyages to the "Isles." The greater part of the soldiers, recruited earlier in the year, were disbanded. A thousand seasoned men belonging to the old Low Country regiments were retained, and the squadron sailed a second time. It touched the Spanish coast near Ferrol, in the hope of drawing out the King of Spain's ships to action. But they did not stir. Essex then continued his voyage to the Azores, but the whole campaign was a failure. The ships separated; they either did not sight the Spaniards at all, or if they did, were unable to catch them. Ill luck was as usual pleaded as an excuse, but the true explanation of the failure of the expedition is to be sought elsewhere. Sir Walter Raleigh accompanied the expedition. He had taken to adventure at sea ever since he had deeply offended the queen's vanity, which expected all her courtiers to fall in love with herself alone, and had more reasonably offended her dignity by seducing her maid of honour, Miss Throgmorton. But he did not renounce the hope of regaining her favour, and was bitterly angered at finding himself supplanted in the queen's good graces by the Earl of Essex. Essex, for his part, had no love for Raleigh, and had already accused him of spoiling the full success of the Cadiz voyage for his own ends. Consciously or unconsciously, the two men were engaged in counteracting one another throughout the whole cruise. In such circumstances nothing effectual was likely to be done. The squadron finally returned without prizes. During its absence, a Spanish squadron had sailed against England, but had been driven back by storms from the neighbourhood of the Scilly Isles.

After 1597 the war began to die down. In 1598 the Royal Navy was idle, and in 1599 it did little beyond show how rapidly a squadron could be fitted for sea by the Navy Office when the queen called upon it to exert itself. A squadron of twenty vessels was "rigged, victualled, and furnished to sea in twelve days." Sir William Monson records that the feat excited the surprise and admiration of foreigners. In 1600, again, nothing was done. Spain and England were, in fact, both becoming exhausted. War had put a stop to what was then our most lucrative branch of commerce, and it had been found by experience that privateering did not compensate for the want of peaceful industry. Negotiations for peace were begun, and continued throughout the years 1599 and 1600. In the latter year three ships were sent to the Isles under the command of Sir Richard Levison, but the King of Spain took care to provide the flota with a powerful escort, and Sir Richard returned home without so much as a single prize. The negotiations for peace ended for the time in failure, but the naval war did not revive with any energy. In 1601 a Spanish squadron landed three thousand five hundred soldiers in Ireland for the purpose of co-operating with the Earl of Tyrone, who was then in full rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. This invasion of her dominions roused the queen to fresh exertions. She despatched a squadron under the command of Sir Richard Levison to the coast of Ireland, to prevent the Spaniards from reinforcing the detachment they had already landed. He had with him only five ships, but they proved sufficient for the work. The Spanish fleet had returned home after disembarking Don Juan del Aguila with his three thousand five hundred men, but a squadron which had followed with a reinforcement of seven hundred men was attacked in Kinsale harbour with success; and although the failure of the Spanish invasion was mainly due to the want of co-operation on the part of Tyrone, and the energy of the Lord Deputy Mountjoy, the navy rendered material assistance by cutting the communications with Spain.

The exhaustion of both parties now began to be shown by the small scale of the armaments on either side. The three thousand five hundred soldiers of Don Juan del Aguila, and the fleet that carried them to Ireland, were a great fall from the standard of the Spanish expeditions of earlier years. The squadron Queen Elizabeth sent in revenge to the coast of Spain was trifling. It consisted only of nine vessels under the command of Sir Richard Levison as admiral, with Sir William Monson as his second in command. Sir William in his Naval Tracts, which are the best authority for the history of the navy in Elizabeth's reign, has given a very prominent place to the cruise of this year, and in particular to his own very remarkable display of courage, energy, and sagacity. Sir William was no doubt an excellent officer, and the capture or destruction of the Portuguese carracks in the roadstead of Zizembre was a creditable bit of service, but it is hardly entitled to be told at length in a general history of the navy. In the following year the same two officers commanded the squadron in the Narrow Seas, but the war was over. Queen Elizabeth herself died in this year, and was succeeded by the peace-loving James I. Philip II. had been dead for four years, and his successor was a feeble prince, under whom the power of Spain went rapidly to decay. In France, Henry IV. had established his right to the throne at the point of the sword. Everywhere, except in Holland, which would not make peace unless its independence was secured, and except in the minds of the men of the stamp of Sir Walter Raleigh, to whom war was a source of income, there was a longing for the end of hostilities. The great Elizabethan epoch was over, and when England was next to be engaged in serious warfare at sea, it was with a very different enemy, and in quite another cause.

In telling the naval history of the great queen's reign from the Armada year forward, I have thought it better to leave aside the action of the adventurers except where they are found combined with those of the Royal Navy. But from 1588 to the end of the century these champions of our power on the sea were numerous, and in some cases brilliantly successful. There were, indeed, far more of them than are recorded. In the general suspension of trade, privateering voyages became a very important resource of merchants and seafaring men. Commerce with Spain did not indeed altogether come to an end. Although we did not, like the Dutch, keep up an open trade with the enemy, English merchant ships were not infrequently to be found in Spanish ports both in Europe and in the islands of the Atlantic. The West Indian harbours were indeed jealously closed to foreigners. But English merchant ships which adopted the simple precaution of flying the Scotch flag seem to have found little difficulty in trading with the Spaniards. Yet this resource had its dangers, and the temptations to seek a profit by pillaging the Spaniard were very great. Thus there were always swarms of now forgotten English privateers at sea. Sir William Monson assures us that the great majority of these adventures proved disastrous, or at least barren, and we can well believe it. Small privateers, measuring often no more than forty or fifty tons, were incapable of attacking not only the large and well-protected Spanish flotas, but even of dealing with a single fairly-armed galleon. They had not only their want of material strength against them, but also their want of discipline, and the fact that they were frequently fitted out by owners who were too poor to equip them properly. Their crews were largely composed of men who fled to them to escape the stricter discipline, and more limited opportunities of plunder afforded by the queen's ships. Such vessels, so equipped and so manned, would, in the ordinary course, come frequently to grief, and it is not likely that Sir William Monson was exaggerating when he said that a large proportion of them either perished unheard of at sea, or returned without so much as seeing a Spaniard.

Among these obscure men there were, however, a few whose achievements are memorable. Of these, by far the most brilliant was George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland. He has not in modern times had that measure of reputation which is his due. In truth, no man more fully illustrated what was most brilliant in the adventures of the Elizabethan epoch. Of some of the others—Drake, Hawkins, or Raleigh, for instance—we may doubt whether the hope of gain was not their main inducement. But the earl was a great noble, who did not indeed deny that he hoped to take prizes from the Spaniards, and make his profit by them, but who certainly was mainly influenced by a chivalrous love of adventure, and the feeling that it became a man of his rank to set an example. Certainly, his ten voyages undertaken between 1586 and 1597 will compare with the deeds of any of the seamen of his time. It is true that he did not sail in all the expeditions fitted out at his expense, but he did in many of them. Three are particularly interesting. In 1592 the earl's ships were at the taking of the great carrack Madre de Dios, which fell into the hands of a squadron of English privateers belonging, some to Cumberland, some to the Hawkins family, and some to Sir Walter Raleigh. It was a misfortune of the adventurers that one of the queen's ships was present at the capture. It was a very small vessel, and had very little share in the merits of the enterprise. In fact, but for the strenuous exertions of the privateers, she would have been carried off by the carrack. Her captain, Sir Robert Cross, ran the big Portuguese on board, who thereupon "lashed his ship fast by the shrouds and sailed away with her by her side." Hereupon Captain Norton, Cumberland's commander, boarded the carrack to save the queen's ship, and, being well supported by the others, carried her after a prolonged struggle. The Madre de Dios was brought to England, and her capture proved a fruitful event. She had come from the Portuguese possessions in the East Indies, and carried a cargo of "spices, drugs, silks, calicoes, quilts, carpets, and colours." The sight of it is said to have stimulated strongly the desire of the merchants of London to share in the trade of the East, and to have had a direct influence in the formation of the East India Company. The earl's profit was not in proportion to his hopes; for the queen, taking advantage of the fact that one of the least of her ships had had the smallest possible share in the capture, contrived, by a very characteristic mixture of force and fraud, to secure the lion's share for herself. She indeed was robbed by her own agents, but she forced Cumberland to put up with £36,000 as a free gift from her, in place of the greater sum he had expected to receive. The eighth voyage, which took place in 1594, was marked by two actions of extraordinary ferocity with Portuguese carracks. One, the Cinco Chagas, was burnt in action, after a scene of great horror. Another beat off the attack of the privateers. But the most memorable of the earl's enterprises, and indeed the most brilliant achievement of any subject in the queen's reign, was the earl's voyage to the West Indies in 1597, the year in which Essex and Raleigh were wrangling and failing at the Azores. His experience in 1592 had shown Cumberland the disadvantage of sailing with the queen's ships. Elizabeth was known to be very tender of her vessels, so that whoever sailed with them had to be in continual anxiety lest they should come to grief, while the queen was most apt to take advantage of their presence to deprive her partners of a fair share of the booty. The unsuccessful attack on the carracks in 1594 had also shown Cumberland the need for large vessels of considerable strength. He therefore built one for himself at Deptford. She was of 800 tons, at that time the burden of a ship of the first rank, and was named by the queen, who christened her at the launching the Scourge of Malice. In 1597 the earl raised a force of eighteen sail, and took the command in person. He sailed on the 6th of March, intending, if possible, to capture the Portuguese East India ships on their way out, but, failing that, to proceed to the West Indies, and there capture some island or town "that would yield him wealth and riches, being the chief end of his undertaking." The first part of his plan failed. After cruising for a time on the coast of Portugal to very little purpose, he sailed to the Canaries. Here, also, no booty was to be found, and the earl then told his men that he intended to go on to the West Indies, hoping to make profit, "by first the sacking of Margarita, which they knew was rich, then Puerto Rico, after that, San Domingo, then in July the outward-bound fleet would be in the Acoa, where we could not miss them, and if these gave us not content, in the end of July or August we should meet the fleet at Cape St. Antonio."

The earl did not seriously intend to attempt the execution of all parts of this extensive plan. In the fragment of a history of the voyage written by himself he confesses very candidly that he spoke "more to carry the men with good liking thither, than for any thought he had of them himself." But at that time it was never necessary to spend much pains in persuading Englishmen to sail to the West Indies. Cumberland's crews entered with "greedy desire and hopeful expectation" into his schemes. He therefore stretched over from Lanzarote, one of the Canaries, to Dominica in the Leeward Isles, where he cast anchor on the 23rd of May. A week was spent in recruiting the health of his men. The English traded with the Caribs, and bathed in the hot springs. They found the Caribs friendly, and the tropical luxuriance of the vegetation filled at least the more educated of them with delight. Cumberland would have wished to make use of the time for the purpose of drilling his men, who were still very raw. But the hillsides of Dominica are so steep, and the tropical forests were then so dense, that no convenient drill ground could be discovered. After a week's rest they went on, refreshed by food and hot baths, and reached the Virgin Islands in the course of three days of sailing to the north-west. Here at last Cumberland was able to set about turning the men he had collected into something approaching soldiers. A large proportion of them had no doubt served before, but as yet there were many who had no practice, and the whole body was still undivided into companies. What little could be done in the course of a few days was done, and the earl took occasion to make his men a speech. The burden of it was that the play was over, and the work going to begin. Hitherto he had borne with the many "gross faults committed among you, suffering every man to do what he would, and urging no man further than he listed." For this leniency the earl had several reasons, but now all were to understand that discipline must be maintained, and that no man should be allowed to infringe it. Having delivered this harangue "standing under a great cliff of a rock, his prospect to the seaward, stepped upon one of the greater stones, which, added to his natural stature, gave him a pretty height above the other company," Cumberland sent his men back to their ships, and prepared to carry out his attack on Puerto Rico. His social rank and his power to pay wages out of his ample revenue combined to give him a "pretty height above the other company," and he was able to introduce a degree of good order among his followers, which few plebeian adventurers could have attained. Therefore his capture of San Juan de Puerto Rico was a fine orderly operation of war, conducted with no less humanity than gallantry.

The island of Puerto Rico lies directly to the west of the Virgin Islands. The town of San Juan is on the northern side, about thirty miles to the west of the headland of San Juan, which is the easterly limit of the land. The coast runs almost due east and west. The town stands upon a little island of some two and a half miles long by a quarter wide, which itself lies parallel to the coast. At the eastern extremity of this little island it is connected with the mainland of Puerto Rico by a spit on which a bridge has now been built. At the south-east corner, the space between the lesser and the greater island is very trifling, and at this point there is a ferry. The town of San Juan de Puerto Rico lies at the western end of the little island, some slight distance away from the spit and the ferry. The small island is very rocky, particularly towards the sea front. The place is naturally strong, and only three years before had beaten off an attack by Drake. But at that time it was occupied by a strong detachment of soldiers sent to protect the treasure. At the time of the Earl of Cumberland's attack, it was left to its own resources, which, however, were not contemptible.

Standing over from the Virgin Islands, the earl sailed past the precipitous northern coast of Puerto Rico, till he came to the place where the hills turn inland, and the coast begins to afford landing-places. Here he sent forward two pinnaces under the command of one Captain Knotsford, an old seaman trained in Hawkins's service, with orders to choose a landing-place. Knotsford, being apparently in fear lest he should be carried to leeward of San Juan, lay-to too soon, and waited for the earl, who joined him by night. The choice of a landing-place was thus thrown upon Cumberland himself. He pitched on one, which seamen who had been there with Sir Francis Drake declared to be unmanageable, because the surf was at all times beating on the beach. They had probably judged too hastily from a single experience. The earl found the sea calm, and landed his men without the least difficulty. They were in number "not so few as a thousand." A day's march "through most unpassable rocks and cliffs" brought them to within sight of the island of San Juan at the east end. Their march had been observed by a handful of Spanish horsemen, who did not offer any effectual resistance, and who disappeared into the forest as the English approached the end of St. Juan.