Great Ralegh

by Hugh De Sélincourt

The English fleet was ready. "Their ships had warped out into the Sound on the evening of the 19th: on the 20th they had plied out, to windward, against a fresh south-westerly breeze; and the Armada running to the eastward all night had, by daybreak on the 21st, given the English the weather-gage for which they had been working."

On the afternoon of the 21st the battle began. The Ark-Ralegh, built on Sir Walter's own design, in which was the Lord High Admiral, Howard of Effingham, and three other ships sailed along the rear of the Spanish line, sending quick volleys into the great vessels, and sailed back. The Spaniards vainly tried to grapple with them: the English ships were too swift and easily manoeuvred. And then, on the very opening of the long battle, the Spaniards recognized their weakness, that their great vessels were cumbrous, and so crank that their cannon sent their balls on the weather side high into space, and on the lee side very nearly plump into the water. For a week (there was little sleep for the men during that week) the fleets fought down the Channel till the Spanish fleet lay at last at Calais, but not for long. The English sent fire-ships among them and drove them out. "This great preparation," writes Bacon, "passed away like a dream. The Invincible Navy neither took any one barque of ours neither yet once offered to land; but after they had been well beaten and chased, made a perambulation about the Northern seas, ennobling many coasts with wrecks of mighty ships; and so returned home with greater derision than they set forth with expectation."

Two things are specially worthy of notice about this great battle. The first is the continued ignorance of the commanders of various English ships as to the actual damage which had been inflicted upon the enemy. They had, of course, only their unaided eyes to trust to, and great difficulty in announcing news from ship to ship. Lord Howard writes as late as August 8: "Although we have put the Spanish Fleet past the Firth, and I think past the Isles, yet God knoweth whether they go to the Nase of Norway or into Denmark or to the Isles of Orkney to refresh themselves and so to return." And Drake, too, wrote on the evening of the battle: "God hath given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward, as I hope in God the Prince of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia shall not shake hands this few days."

And the second point is that though the English loss was small during the actual days of the battle, yet the strain and the food and the sanitation were such that directly they came to port, a frightful epidemic broke out among the men, who died, we are told, by hundreds in consequence.

In the actual fighting Ralegh probably took no part. When the first news came of the Armada's approach, he was in Ireland, attending to his duties as Mayor of Youghal. With the utmost speed at that time possible he sailed from Ireland and rode to the English coast. Certain it is, however, that he arrived too late for any official post to be assigned him, for the battle had been in progress for two days before his arrival. But many private gentlemen joined the fleet in craft hastily equipped for warfare, and it would be a thing to wonder at if Ralegh was behindhand when such doings were happening. No positive information is, however, forthcoming. Only it is known that the Lord High Admiral's ship was built from designs which Ralegh had matured, and that he agreed completely with the plan of the Lord High Admiral's attack. Many an evening Drake and Effingham and Ralegh would have spent in discussing the tactics of sea-battles, proud, as they well might be, of the swiftness and ease with which an English ship could be manoeuvred in comparison with the large unwieldiness of the carracks of Spain, who still considered herself (God help her) mistress of the sea.

In his "History of the World" occurs a passage about the tactics employed by the English against the Armada. There is a strong element of pathos in the idea of the man shut up in the little room in the Tower of London (he could watch the ships making their way down the Thames) writing of this great action, which he had seen, and writing with ardour, which nothing could extinguish. He had been recounting a fight between Roman vessels, heavy and slow, and the swift African galleys. Then he bursts out into this great paragraph of reminiscence, as though once again he were convincing some obstinate fellow of the patent rightness of the plan of attack.

"Certainly, hee that will happily perform a fight at sea must be skilful in making choice of vessels to fight in: he must beleeve that there is more belonging to a good man of war upon the waters, than great during; and must know that there is a great deale of difference betweene fighting loose or at large, and grapling. The guns of a slow ship pierce as well, and make as great holes, as those in a swift. To clap ships together without consideration, belongs rather to a madman than to a man of warre: for by such an ignorant braverie was Peter Strozzi lost at the Azores when he fought against the Marquesse of Santa Cruz. In like sort had the Lord Charles Howard, Admirall of England beene lost in the year 1588, if he had not been better advised than a great many malignant fooles were, that found fault with his demeanour. The Spaniards had an armie aboord them; and he had none; they had more ships than he had and of higher building and charging; so that had he intangled himself with those great and powerfull Vessels, he had greatly endangered this Kingdom of England.... But our Admirall knew his advantage, and held it: which had he not done, he had not beene worthy to have held his head. Heere to speake in generall of sea-fight (for particulars are fitter for private hands than for the Presse) I say, That a fleete of twentie ships all good sailers and goode ships have the advantage on the open Sea, of an hundred as good ships, and of slower sayling. For if the fleete of an hundred saile keep themselves neere together in a grosse squadron: the twentie ships charging them upon any angle, shall force them to give ground and to fall back upon their owne next fellowes: of which so many as intangle, are made unserviceable or lost. Force them they may easily, because the twentie ships, which give themselves scope, after they have given one broad side of Artillerie, by clapping into the winde, and staying, they may give them the other: and so the twentie ships batter them in pieces with a perpetuall vollie; whereas those, that fight in a troop, have no roome to turn and can alwaies use but one and the same beaten side."

And this is precisely what had taken place in the Armada. It is interesting to know that there was divergency of opinion about the proper tactics to follow, and it would be still more interesting to know who the "malignant fools" were, to whom Ralegh refers. Men who confuse the strategy of war with their own idea of manliness, are common to all times, and must indeed be the most desperate fellows for a proper soldier to convince. You can hear them saying, with that dreadful assumption of finality with which the pompous imbecile seems gifted, those runaway tactics may be very well for buccaneers, but are they seemly for the ships of the navy of England? Small wonder the memory of them once more exasperated Ralegh in his prison-room to renewed anger.

Before the Armada there had been many privateering expeditions against Spain on different waters; after the Armada these expeditions naturally became even more numerous, when they possessed the prestige of the Crown's authority.