Lord Lisle now saw the chance of fighting a battle on his own terms, in which his smaller fleet would be assisted by the fire of the land batteries. His heavy ships immediately moved out to join action with the French. In the process occurred one of the famous disasters of the English Navy. The Mary Rose, the vice-admiral, having discharged her guns on one side, went about to fire the other broadside, and, the ports on the discharged side not having been closed, as apparently they should have been, their lower edges dipped below the water as the ship heeled. In a moment the catastrophe happened; the sea poured in and heeled the ship still further until she capsized and sank so rapidly that only some thirty of a crew of five hundred were saved. Sir George Carew, the captain, was among the lost. A trustworthy authority states that the need for closing the lee ports was well known, but that owing to indiscipline no one thought proper to attend to it.
Undismayed by this disaster, the English presented a bold front to the enemy, and showed perfect willingness to continue the action. But d’Annebaut was not prepared to fight both fleet and forts at the same time, and, having rescued the galleys, the French retired to their former anchorage off the Isle of Wight.[[374]] The action was renewed at long range on the following day, but neither side would surrender the advantage of position and consequently there was no decisive result.
PLAN OF PORTSMOUTH, c. 1545.
From Cott. MS. Aug. I. ii. 15.
There was now no doubt as to the intentions of the French, and every nerve was strained to concentrate decisive forces at the point of danger. The king and the Privy Council had already moved down to the neighbourhood of Portsmouth before the French had arrived, and the king was aboard the Henry Grace à Dieu when their approach was first signalled. On July 20 orders were sent to the western privateers to make all speed to Portsmouth.[[375]] Some sixty sail of small but active fighting ships would thus be added to the English strength. At the same time the officials at the Tower were instructed to send down all the large ordnance and ammunition in that fortress.[[376]] The levies of the southern shires were also set in motion, but, as the event fell out, their services were not needed, and before long they were met by orders to disband, as the danger had passed away.
Time was now in favour of England. If a week were allowed to elapse in inaction on the part of the French, Portsmouth would be safe and the invasion would have failed. On the French side other factors pointed to the same conclusion. Disease in its most terrible forms had broken out in their crowded ships, and the maintenance of a blockade long enough to allow of the capture of Boulogne was an impossibility. Already the great ship Maitresse, strained by the seas and shaken by the discharge of her own guns, had been beached and abandoned to save her from the fate of the Mary Rose. D’Annebaut was not the man to hold on in face of difficulty as Howard had done at Brest in 1513. He seems to have realized that prompt action was the only alternative to eventual failure, and, after vainly seeking to draw the English into the open by landing and burning villages in the Isle of Wight, he proposed the desperate plan of sailing his whole fleet into Portsmouth harbour and attempting to carry the town by a coup de main. His pilots represented to him that the thing was an impossibility, that his ships, passing the narrow entrance in single file, would be smashed by the fire of the batteries on their flank, and that tides and shoals would prevent any retreat. After sending in a boat party to assure himself of the truth of these arguments, he submitted to the inevitable and began to think of withdrawal.[[377]]
Meanwhile there had been sharp skirmishing in the Isle of Wight. The smoke of the burning villages could be seen from Portsmouth, but the French were by no means unopposed. Small bands of native archers, perfectly acquainted with the country, ambushed them in the woods. Reinforcements were sent across, apparently by favour of the negligence of the French fleet, until 8,000 English troops were in the island, and a large force would have been necessary for its conquest.
D’Annebaut’s next move was to leave the Isle of Wight on July 21 and anchor his fleet along the western shore of Selsey Bill. His reasons for this move are not clear. It would seem that his original position was more advantageous until he should be forced by necessity to retire to France. He has been criticized for not permanently garrisoning the Isle of Wight, since he had a large number of supernumerary troops on board his fleet. But he was probably justified in not doing so. With no strong, well-provisioned fortress in which to hold out, the most powerful force imaginable would have been driven to surrender in course of time when deprived of the support of the fleet. With the imperfect firearms of that day improvised earthworks were not a sufficient defence, especially within a few miles of such an arsenal as Portsmouth.
Lord Lisle detected the weakness of the French anchorage off Selsey Bill and made plans to attack when the first south-westerly wind should place the enemy on a lee shore.[[378]] But he was preoccupied with attempts to refloat the Mary Rose, and, before the plan could be put into execution, the French received warning and slipped off in time to escape annihilation. D’Annebaut sailed for Boulogne, and landed his troops to assist in the siege, which was making very poor progress.
The great plan had now definitely failed, and its failure was undoubtedly due in the first place to the terrible mortality from plague, typhus, and kindred scourges, which afflicted the French crews, packed to suffocation as they were in their narrow quarters in sultry weather, and most probably badly fed. In a lesser degree the failure was ascribable to admirable leadership on the English side, although this would not have availed to save Boulogne if the French had been in a state to maintain a blockade for the necessary time. The Fabian conduct of the English fleet was exactly suited to the occasion; and the credit for it is due rather to Henry VIII himself than to his Admiral, who did nothing of his own initiative if he could by any possibility obtain instructions from the king.