Lord High Admiral of England in 1588, and official commander of the English fleet which defeated the great Armada.
From the portrait by Zucchero in the Painted Hall, Greenwich Hospital.
Sidonia, having confessed and prepared for death, turned to bay; but there was no heart left in the fleet to follow their Admiral’s example, though Leyva and Oquendo, brave to the last, at once supported him. The English fleet was holding off to let the Zeeland sandbanks do their deadly work, and Leyva and Oquendo urged Sidonia to at least make a show of attacking. It could not be. Discipline was gone. They cursed him in their despair, and shouted to the crew to throw Diego Valdes overboard! Nearer and nearer to the banks drifted the miserable throng of shattered, blood-stained hulks that now represented the Fortunate and Invincible Armada, when suddenly the wind shifted. The English could not understand it. Twice God had intervened to save the foe! The Armada was able to bear out from the shoals and steer a course to the northward in deep water.
So ended the great struggle. On the surface the Armada had suffered little; its numbers were not greatly diminished. But in fact nearly all its fighting ships were so mangled that they could hardly hope to survive a severe gale. They were mere floating dens of misery, full of men wounded, sick, and worn out. The loss of life at Gravelines can only be conjectured. The Spaniards admitted 1,400 killed and wounded. But it is known that the San Mateo and the San Felipe lost nearly all their companies, and the Maria Juan of Biscay over two-thirds of hers. Judging from such evidence as this, the total can hardly be estimated at less than 4,000.
Seymour, to his disgust, was left to watch Parma, while the English main fleet pursued the Armada until it was certain that it did not intend to put into the Forth. There was apparently some thought of fighting again. Howard’s squadron still had a fair supply of ammunition on board, but the others had expended nearly all theirs; and on August 2 Drake flew a flag of council to discuss the matter. ‘It was found,’ says Carey, ‘that in the whole fleet there was not munition sufficient to make half a fight.’ Compelled to be content, the fleet ran for home. It was time, for already disease was beginning to rage in the insanitary ships, and many men died before the fleet could be paid off.
The story of how the beaten Armada made its retreat round Scotland and Ireland is better known than that of its engagements with the English fleet. There was little water, and rations were reduced to starvation limit. The shattered vessels could not fight the Atlantic gales, and sank in the raging seas, or went ashore on the iron-bound shores of the Hebrides and Ireland. Such of the crews as succeeded in landing were massacred either by Irish kernes or English soldiers. Leyva perished near Dunluce. Some sixty ships only struggled through to the Biscayan ports. In some there was no water for fourteen days, and the wine was nearly out. The half-dead crews were often unable to work the ships, and they drifted helplessly into such harbours as lay in their aimless course. Recalde and Oquendo came home only to die exhausted and broken-hearted, and the roll of death was swelled by thousands who had survived England’s artillery and the Atlantic storms.
The popular impression of the catastrophe of the Armada still is that it was beaten by the English privateers. The Admirals did not think so. The pamphlet printed for general circulation, probably inspired by Drake, states that the work was done by the Royal Navy and a few merchants. Wynter said bluntly that the private ships were of hardly any use at all, and so another cherished idea fades into the limbo of ancient misconceptions. The real truth is set forth by the Italian writer Ubaldino, who points out that the English won because they had a properly organized Royal Navy, composed of excellent sailing ships, well armed with artillery, not cumbered with useless soldiers, and directed not by mediævally-minded soldiers, but by scientific seamen. In his summing-up lies a lesson to be remembered by Englishmen for all time.