Drake's written plan proves that he was not only a daring raider but a very great admiral as well. It marked down for attack all the places in New Spain the taking of which would knock the sea trade there to pieces, because they were the same by sea as railway junctions are by land. More than this, he planned to hold Havana, so that the junctions he destroyed could not be made to work again, as from there he could pounce on working parties anywhere else.
Drake first swooped down on San Domingo in Hayti, battering the walls from the sea while Carleill attacked them by land. The Spaniards had been on their guard, so no treasure was found. Drake therefore put the town to ransom and sent his Maroon servant to bring back the Spanish answer. But the Spanish messenger ran his lance into the Maroon and cantered away. The Maroon dragged himself back and fell dead at Drake's feet. Drake sent word to say he would hang two Spaniards a day till the one who had killed his Maroon was hanged himself. No answer having come in next morning, two Spanish friars were strung up. Then the offender was brought in and hanged by the Spaniards in front of both armies. After this Drake burnt a fresh bit of the town each day till the Spaniards paid the ransom.
The next dash was for Cartagena on the mainland of South America. The Spaniards felt safe from a naval attack here, as the harbour was very hard to enter, even with the best of Spanish pilots. But Drake did this trick quite easily without any pilot at all; and, after puzzling the Spaniards by his movements, put Carleill ashore in the dark just where the English soldiers could wade past the Spanish batteries under cover at the weakest spot. When Carleill reached the barricade his musketeers fired into the Spaniards' faces and wheeled off to let the pikemen charge through. After a fierce hand-to-hand fight the Spaniards ran. The town gave in next day. Having been paid its ransom Drake sailed for the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine in Florida and utterly destroyed it, then went on to Sir Walter Raleigh's colony of Roanoke, in what is now North Carolina, and thence home.
He had missed the yearly treasure fleet by only half a day. He had lost so many men by sickness that he had no chance of taking and holding Havana. And the ransoms were less than he had hoped for. But he had done enough to cripple New Spain for the next few years at any rate. Arrived at Plymouth he wrote to London, saying, "There is now a very great gap opened, very little to the liking of the King of Spain."
But the King, stung to the quick, went on with his Armada harder than before, and in 1587 had it more than half ready in Lisbon and Cadiz. Then Drake "singed King Philip's beard" by swooping down on Cadiz and smashing up the shipping there; by going on to Cape St. Vincent, which he seized and held with an army while his ships swept off the fishing craft that helped to feed the great Armada; and by taking "the greatest ship in all Portugal, richly laden, to our Happy Joy." This was the best East Indies treasure ship, loaded with silks and spices, jewels and gold, to the value of many millions. But, better than even this, Drake found among her papers the secrets of the wonderful trade with the East, a trade now taken over by the Spaniards from the conquered Portuguese. With these papers in English hands the English oversea traders set to work and formed the great East India Company on the last day of the year 1600. This Company—founded, held, and always helped by British sea-power—went on, step by step, for the next two hundred and fifty-seven years, after which India, taken over by the British Crown, at last grew into the present Indian Empire, a country containing three times as many people as the whole population of the United States, and yet a country which is only one of the many parts of the British Empire all round the Seven Seas.
Crippled by English sea-power both in New Spain and Old, threatened by English sea-power in his trade with the Far East, and harassed by English sea-power everywhere between Spain and the Spanish Netherlands, where the Duke of Parma was preparing an army for the invasion of England, King Philip kept working on with murder in his heart. At last, in the summer of 1588, his Great Invincible Spanish Armada seemed to be as Great, Invincible, and Spanish as he could ever hope to make it. All the landlubbers, even in England, thought it very great indeed; and most of them think so still. The best Spanish soldiers, like all the few really good Spanish sailors, had very grave doubts. Those who knew the English Navy best expected nothing but disaster: their letters still remain to prove it. But most people, then as now, knew nothing about navies; and so the Armada went on collecting ships and men together, heartening the landsmen of Spain, and disheartening far too many landsmen in England.
The fatal weakness of the Great Armada was its being out of date. Though little better than an ancient floating army, it had to fight what then was the one really modern fleet; and this was its undoing. Time out of mind, as we have seen already, battles on the water had always been made as much like battles on the land as the wit of man could make them. They were fought by soldiers under generals, not by sailors under admirals. They were fought mostly on the platforms of huge rowboats called galleys; and the despised galley-slaves were almost the only seamen. Even the officers and men who handled the clumsy old sailing craft, or the still clumsier sail aboard a galley, were thought to be next door to nobodies; for their only work was to fit their craft together like so many bits of land in order that the soldiers might have the best imitation of a "proper field." The main bodies of these floating armies drew up in line-abreast (that is, side by side) charged each other end-on, and fought it out hand-to-hand on the mass of jammed-together platforms. No such battle was ever fought far from the land; for a good breeze would make the platforms wobble, while no galley could survive a gale.
These ancient rowboat battles on calm coastal waters lasted till Lepanto in 1571. Guns, muskets, and sailing craft were all used at Lepanto. But the main fighting was done on galley platforms, and not so very differently done from the way the Greeks and Persians fought at Salamis twenty centuries before. Then, after less than twenty years, the Armada, though better than the Spaniards at Lepanto, was sent across the open sea to fight a regular sea-going fleet, whose leaders were admirals, whose chief fighting men were sailors, whose movements were made under sail, and whose real weapon was the shattering broadside gun. It was ancient Spanish floating army against modern English Sea-Dog fleet.
Philip's silly plan was that the Armada should make for the Straits of Dover, where it would see that Parma's Spanish army had a safe passage from Flanders into England. Philip had lost his best admiral, Santa Cruz, and had put the Armada in charge of Medina Sidonia, a seasick landlubber, whom he ordered not to fight any more than could possibly be helped until Parma had reached England. Parma, who was a good soldier, saw at once what nonsense it was to put the army first and navy second in the fighting, because, even if he could get into England, his lines of communication with the bases in Flanders and Spain could never be safe until Drake's fleet had been beaten. He knew, as all soldiers and all sailors know, that unless you have a safe road over which to bring your supplies from your base to your front your fleets and armies must simply wither away for want of these supplies—for want of men, arms, food, and all the other things a fleet and army need. Therefore he wanted the fleet to fight first, so as to clear, or try to clear, safe roads across the sea. After these roads, or "lines of communication" between the bases and the front, had been cleared he would try to conquer England with his Spanish army.
But Philip went his own silly way; and Elizabeth, his deadly enemy, nearly helped him by having some silly plans of her own. She and her Council (all landsmen, and no great soldier among them) wanted to divide the English fleet so as to defend the different places they thought the Armada might attack. This would also please the people; for most people do like to see ships and soldiers close in front of them, even when that is quite the wrong place for the ships and soldiers to be. Of course this plan could never have worked, except in favour of the Spaniards, who might have crushed, first, one bit of the English fleet, and then another, and another, though they had no chance whatever against the united whole.