Next morning the Duke of Ormond landed two thousand British infantry to take the forts and destroy the landward end of the boom, made of chain cables and spars which blocked the channel. These errands were accomplished with so much spirit and determination that the Grenadiers fairly chased the Spanish garrisons out of their works. Rooke did not wait for the finish of this task, but flew the signal to get under way, Vice Admiral Hopson leading in the Torbay. British and Dutch together, the wind blowing half a gale behind them, surged toward the inner harbor, stopped not for the boom but cut a way through it, and became engaged with the French men-of-war at close range. The hostile fleets were so jammed together that it was not a battle of broadsides. A Spanish chronicler related that "they fought with fires of inhuman contrivance, hand grenades, fire-balls, and lumps of burning pitch."
Within one-half hour after the English and Dutch had gained entrance to the bay, its surface was an inferno of blazing galleons and men-of-war. Some of the French ships were carried with the cutlass and boarding pike, but fire was the chief weapon used by both sides. The flaming vessels drifted against each other, some of them set purposely alight and filled with explosives. When the galleons tried to move further up the bay, British troops on shore raked them with musketry, and prevented the attempts to put some of the treasure on land. The lofty treasure ships, their huge citadels rising fore and aft, and gay with carving and gilt, burned like so much tinder.
The English had no desire to destroy these golden prizes, and as soon as the French fleet had been annihilated, every ship burned, sunk, captured, or driven ashore, heroic efforts were made to save the galleons still unharmed, "whereupon Don Manuel de Velasco, who was not wanting in courage, but only in good fortune, ordered them to be set on fire.... The enemy saw the greater part of the treasure sunk in the sea. Many perished seeking for riches in the middle of the flames; these, with those who fell in the battle, were 800 English and Dutch; 500 were wounded, and one English three-decker was burnt. Nevertheless, they took thirteen French and Spanish ships, seven of which were men-of-war, and six merchantmen, besides some others much damaged and half-burnt. There fell 2000 Spaniards and French, few escaped unwounded.
"The day after the bloody battle, they sent down into the water a great many divers, but with little result, for the artillery of the city hindered them. So setting to work to embark their people, and covering their masts with flags and streamers, they celebrated their victory with flutes and fifes. Thus they steered for their own ports, leaving that country full of sadness and terror."
It was a prodigiously destructive naval engagement, the costliest in point of material losses that history records. The victors got much booty to take home to England and the Netherlands, and were handsomely rewarded for their pains. Sir George Rooke carried to London the galleon Tauro which had escaped burning, and she had a mighty freight of bullion in her hold. Of this ship the Post Boy newspaper made mention, January 19, 1703:
"There was found in the galleon unloaded last week abundance of wrought plate, pieces of eight, and other valuable commodities, and so much that 'tis computed the whole cargo is worth £200,000."
All records of that time and event agree, however, that the treasure saved by the allied fleet was no more than a small part of what was lost by the wholesale destruction of the galleons, and chiefly interesting to the present day are the most reliable estimates of the amount of gold and silver that still rests embedded in the tidal silt of Vigo Bay. There were sunk in water too deep to be explored by the engineers of that century eleven French men-of-war, and at least a round dozen of treasure laden galleons. The French fleet carried no small amount of gold and silver which had been entrusted to the Admiral and his officers by merchants of the West Indies. As for the galleons, the English Post of November 13,1702, stated:
"Three Spanish officers belonging to the galleons, one of whom was the Admiral of the Assogna ships, are brought over who report that the effects that were on board amounted to nine millions sterling, and that the Spaniards, for want of mules to carry the plate into the country, had broke the bulk of very few ships before the English forced the boom."
The amount of the treasure is greatly underestimated in the foregoing assertion, for the annual voyage of the plate fleet had carried to Spain an average lading worth from thirty to forty million dollars, and this doomed flota bore the accumulated treasure of three years. Not more than ten million dollars in bullion and merchandise could have been looted by the Dutch and English victors, according to the most reliable official records. Our enthusiastic friend, Signor Don Carlos Iberti, he who had been "flying from province to province," in behalf of the latest treasure company of Vigo Bay, dug deep into the musty records of the "Account Books of the Ministry of Finance, of the Colonies, of the Royal Treasury, of the Commercio of Cadiz, of the Council of the West Indies," and so on, and can tell you to the last peso how much gold and silver was sent from the mines of America in the treasure fleets, and precisely the value of the shipments entrusted to the magnificent flota of 1702. A score of English authorities might be quoted to confirm what has been said of the vastness of this lost treasure. The event was the sensation of the time in Europe, and many pens were busy chronicling in divers tongues the details of the catastrophe and the results thereof. In a letter from Madrid which reached England a few days after the event, the writer lamented:
"Yesterday an express arrived from Vigo with the melancholy news that the English and Dutch fleets came before that place the 22nd past and having made themselves masters of the mouth of the river, in less than two hours took and burnt all the French men-of-war and galleons in the harbour. We have much greater reason to deplore our misfortune in silence and tears than to give you a particular account of this unspeakable loss, which will hasten the utter ruin of this our monarchy.