The Downfall of the Spanish Armada in Ireland

The Grand Armada Lost on the Irish Coast in 1588

Ken Douglas

• Publisher: Gill Books
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780717146161
• eBook ISBN: 9780717151493
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The English navy inflicted a narrow defeat on the Armada, but it was the Irish coast that encompassed its downfall.

'Heed that coast!' The Duke of Medina Sidonia wanted only to guide La Felissima Armada home safely. In the North Sea he issued sailing instructions, which, if they had been followed, would have given the Armada a safety margin of at least 300 miles. He particularly ordered them to '...take great heed lest you fall upon the island of Ireland for fear of the harm that may happen unto you upon that coast.' They were in no doubt that Ireland was to be avoided.

His words proved to be more than a warning: they were a prophecy, which was inexorably fulfilled. A siren of alluring beauty, the Irish coast also conceals deadly danger. Destiny was to conspire to transform it into an instrument of terrible destruction and tragic loss of life.

In the Atlantic the Armada encountered continuous southerly winds and unknown ocean currents. It was two centuries before it became possible to calculate longitude at sea, and they were unaware that they had not sailed far enough westwards to give themselves the prescribed safety margin. They became separated and lost, and when they at last turned southwards, scattered groups unintentionally descended on Ireland, arriving at fourteen different locations from Donegal to Kerry. Many found shelter, but a few were lost.

But on 21 September 1588 fourteen ships were destroyed by hurricane force winds: the only occasion during the entire voyage when ships were completely destroyed by the weather. 'A most extreme and cruel storm' the Irish described it. The Spanish recorded that 'in the morning it began to blow from the west with a most terrible fury, bright and with little rain.' Ships that had stayed at sea survived. In Donegal Bay the galleass Girona had sheltered with about 1, 000 men. In October, Don Alonso de Leyva arrived with almost 1, 000 more. His entourage included young men from all the noble families of Spain. After being repaired, the Girona departed for Scotland at the end of October, overloaded with 1, 300 survivors. She so nearly got there, but foundered near the Giant's Causeway with the loss of de Leyva and the flower of Spanish nobility.

In all, 24 Spanish ships were lost in Ireland and about 5, 000 men died, far greater losses than had been suffered in the English Channel. The English navy inflicted a narrow defeat on the Armada, but it was the Irish coast that encompassed its downfall. Long before it had been surveyed and charted, when it was almost as unknown to mariners as the surface of the moon, for a few brief months in the autumn of 1588, the Irish coast was caught in the headlights of history.

PART I

The Armada Sets Course for Disaster

Chapter 1

12 TO 21 AUGUST 1588
WHERE WILL THEY GO?

The Spanish Army bare away with all the sails they were able to make.

(SEYMOUR, WYNTER AND PALMER)

THE ARMADA, HOMEWARD-BOUND

On 18 August 1588 a bark of Southampton was fishing about 36 miles southeast of Sumburgh Head, Shetland, when the crew sighted the Spanish Armada approaching from over the horizon to the south. As they watched,

… they descried a very great fleet of monstrous great ships, to their seeming being about 100 in number, lying just west, with both sheets aftward, whereby their course was to run betwixt Orkney and Fair Isle, Shetland lying North and by East of Orkney 21 leagues …

‘Lying just west with both sheets aftward’ meant sailing westwards with a following wind from the east or northeast.

There is a similar statement in Spanish sources based on the report of Scottish fishermen. It confirms that the Armada passed between Orkney and Shetland. It was estimated that there were 120 ships in the fleet. Apparently the Spanish took all the fishermen’s dried fish and paid well for it. They also took some ‘shipmasters and pilots’, though qualified pilots are unlikely to have been out earning their living fishing. Likely it meant men familiar with local waters around the Northern Isles.

The Southampton crew stopped fishing and, after the Armada had passed, the bark headed south. The only method they had of reporting the news was to deliver it in person. It was important because it confirmed that the Armada was returning to Spain by sailing round Scotland. But the Southampton fishermen were delayed by winds from the south. It took them seven days to reach the Moray Firth, and it was 1 September before their report arrived in London.

The intervening news blackout aroused anxiety in the English fleet. They had tracked the Armada up the east coast, but on 12 August broke off around Tyneside and returned to station off the North Foreland. ‘About noon we headed west to recover our coast, the enemy going NW and by N as they did before’. Two pinnaces were sent to follow the Armada, but no news had come back from them as yet.

What was the Armada going to do? Technically it was still a threat. Out of the original complement of 130 vessels it had lost only six great ships and a few pataches had been sent off on communications duties, so there were roughly 120 ships left with the best part of 30,000 men on board. They were a menace and could not be taken lightly. Although all the ships had battle damage, the Armada was capable of being repaired, and could possibly return to the Channel to continue the fight.

The English captains were not slow to speculate and offer their opinions:

The only thing that is to be looked for is that if they should go to the King of Denmark, he is a prince of great shipping and can best supply their wants which now the Duke of Medina Sidonia standeth in need as great anchors, cables, masts, ropes and victuals. What the King of Spain’s hot crowns will do in cold countries for mariners and men you can best judge thereof.

(FRANCIS DRAKE in the Revenge)

… they have no place to go withal but for the Scaw in Denmark … I verily believe they will pass about Scotland and Ireland to draw themselves home.

(THOMAS FENNER in the Nonpareil)

… in my conscience, I speak it to your Honour, I think the Duke would give his dukedom to be in Spain again.

(WILLIAM WYNTER in the Vanguard)

There was some alarm on 26 August when Henry Seymour received a report that the Armada was in the Moray Firth. No one seemed to be sure whether the Firth was big enough to hold the ships. But they were just passing through.

The Southampton fishermen established beyond doubt that the Armada was on its way home, but the news had been 14 fractious days in coming. The immediate danger had passed, and there was a practical understanding that the ships should get home safely from there. There was hardly the remotest suspicion that Ireland might become involved.

All the English captains used tremendously vivid language in their letters, not only Howard, Drake and Hawkins, but also Wynter, Seymour, Frobisher, Fenner, Palmer and others. Often they wrote several letters every day. They all exhibit an underlying energy that communicates vitality even over the centuries. They had the same controlled aggression in battle; if not always attacking the enemy, then at least they were threatening them. They were always at them, showing relish for the fight. They had attitude. They were all characters.

Howard, the Lord Admiral, summed up the English spirit when he wrote:

… notwithstanding that our powder and shot were well near spent we set a brag countenance and gave them chase.

When old seadogs routinely illuminated their letters with such lively imagery it is not surprising that the same generation produced William Shakespeare.

Martin Frobisher, a Yorkshireman, had no time for Drake’s antics in taking the Rosario at night when the rest were laid to. ‘He thinketh to cozen us of our shares of fifteen thousand ducats, but we will have our shares … He hath used certain speeches of me which I will make him eat again or I will make him spend the best blood in his belly’. If their internal rivalries were capable of generating so much heat, the enemy had better look out.

When it came to the serious fighting off Gravelines it was this confidence in their superiority that defeated the Armada. The English naval guns of the time were not capable of sinking large wooden ships. They battered them, destroying masts and rigging, and hitting hulls hard enough to cause leaks. But the English were disappointed with their results: they expected to sink Spanish ships or at least smash them to pieces. In October an English master gunner, William Thomas, wrote a lengthy report to Burghley in which he lamented:

What can be said but our sins was the cause that so much powder and shot spent, and so long time in fight, and in comparison thereof so little harm?

Although only six great ships were lost, English gunners had done enough to convince the Spanish that they could not win here. Medina Sidonia’s letter to King Philip on 21 August seems so abject in the way it accepted defeat:

This Armada was so completely crippled and scattered that my first duty to your Majesty seemed to save it, even at the risk we are running in undertaking this voyage, which is so long and in such high latitudes … experience has shown how little we could depend on the ships that remain, the Queen’s fleet being so superior to ours in this sort of fighting, in consequence of the strength of their artillery and the fast sailing of their ships.

‘Brag countenance’ was their secret weapon.

ON BOARD THE SPANISH FLEET

On Friday 12 August at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, the Spanish watched the pursuing English fleet slacken sail and put about. They were at 55°N, just north of Newcastle, but apparently over the Dogger Bank because they were drawing only nine fathoms. The Armada faced a quandary about what to do next, a quandary that exercised the English captains at the same time.

The leading generals and admirals were summoned to a council headed by the Duke of Medina Sidonia on his flagship the San Martin. Most senior were Don Alonso de Leyva and Juan Martinez de Recalde, but there were also Miguel de Oquendo, Don Diego Flores de Valdés, Don Francisco de Bobadilla, Martin de Bertondona and, very wisely, several pilots and seamen. Bobadilla had been Medina Sidonia’s consultant tactician throughout the voyage. There was some farcical posturing from Oquendo who declared that he was going to return to the battle and ‘fight and die like a man’. Diego Flores de Valdés thought that it might be possible to return to Calais. But presumably the sensible advice came from the pilots. It was resolved that the Armada should set its course for Spain even though they were all made aware it would be a laborious journey and would take them round Scotland and Ireland, ‘750 leagues through stormy seas almost unknown to us’. It seems the Spanish pilots were already prepared to experience navigation difficulties in unfamiliar waters.

Next day, 13 August, it was recorded that Medina Sidonia offered 2,000 ducats to a French pilot if he would guide them to a Spanish port. Later that same day he issued his sailing orders for the voyage ahead. It is almost certain that these were based on advice from this French pilot since, as it had already been acknowledged in the Spanish fleet, these waters were almost unknown to them. No one else would have had the experience to prescribe such detailed directions as to courses and latitudes, certainly not the Duke himself. The orders were copied to every ship in the fleet, and one of these copies was recovered in Ireland in the possession of one of the men taken prisoner, most likely Don Luis de Cordoba. It read:

The course that is first to be held is to the north-northeast, until you be found under 61 degrees and a half; and then to take great heed lest you fall upon the Island of Ireland for fear of the harm that may happen unto you upon that coast. Then parting from those islands and doubling the Cape in 61 degrees and a half you shall run west-southwest until you be found under 58 degrees; and from thence to the southwest to the height of 53 degrees; and then to the south-southwest (sic), making to the Cape Finisterre, and so to procure your entrance into the Groin or to Ferol, or to any other port of the coast of Galicia.

This would have been translated from the Spanish in Ireland (or as they said then ‘Englished’) and later transcribed by various secretaries. It appears to have been taken in Galway where David Gwyn was acting as an interpreter. Not only was he an unreliable translator, he was also a bombastic showman and was soon in serious trouble when he purveyed scurrilous accusations against Francis Walsyngham. His involvement is a pity, because the published version of this important document in the Irish State Papers contains at least one glaring mistake—the final sailing direction obviously should have been ‘south-southeast’, not ‘south-southwest’. The similarity between ‘este’ and ‘oeste’ perhaps makes it understandable, but it should surely have been corrected at an early stage. References to Ireland leave an impression that the French pilot did not really know where Ireland was, or he would not have been warning the ships to ‘take great heed’ of it when they were at 61° 30’N, bearing in mind that Malin Head, the most northerly point in Ireland, is at 55° 23’N. The advice was clear enough however: Ireland was to be avoided.

On Thursday 18 August when the Armada ships cleared the Scottish mainland they found they had an unusually favourable wind from the northeast. It was therefore a perfectly sensible decision to take advantage of it and make their way through the Fair Isle Channel out into the Atlantic. Fair Isle is at 59º 30’n, well south of the ‘61 degrees and a half’ directed by the sailing instructions issued only five days previously. It was, nevertheless, an important accomplishment to have turned the whole Armada westwards into the Atlantic without mishap.

This took three days, and it was on Sunday 21 August that Medina Sidonia felt relieved enough to write to King Philip and send him what he thought was good news:

We have therefore run through the Norwegian Channel and between the Scottish islands, and I am at present in this place, whence I have set my course for La Coruña so as to make the voyage as short as possible.

He seems to be saying that he consciously disregarded his own orders to go to 61° 30’N in order to take advantage of a favourable wind and in the interests of curtailing the voyage, which was fair enough.

Some of the men, however, thought they had indeed been as far north as 61°30’N, and gave estimates of their later positions that were wildly inaccurate. Others cannot have failed to notice that the sailing orders were first breached by the Duke himself.

These sailing instructions have acquired a disproportionate importance in some Armada histories. For most of the twentieth century it was axiomatic that the Armada followed the course laid down for it, even to the extent in many cases of showing it going round the north of Shetland. Virtually every historian accepted and used the map of the course drawn by W. Spotswood Green in 1906, and presumed it to be correct. It seemed they could not contemplate anything other than that Medina Sidonia’s directions would be obeyed to the letter. Unfortunately the map makes a bad start by getting the first part of the course wrong, and then goes on to a position in the Atlantic that fails to explain why so many Armada ships came in contact with Ireland. It will become apparent that these sailing instructions were less sacrosanct to the Spanish captains, who were aware that they were only the recommendations of a Frenchman.

The truth is that, other than for a few miles in the North Sea, the Armada never followed the course in the sailing instructions—neither the main fleet nor those ships that were separated from it. The instructions are interesting, especially as they emphasize the order to avoid Ireland, but they have proved to be a prodigious red herring for Armada historians. How tempting to find the actual route of the Armada! What a gift! Unfortunately it just did not happen that way. But there are some clues to the actual course followed and, if assembled systematically, they can lead to a more realistic interpretation of the Armada voyage. These clues are examined in detail in the next chapter.

THE SPANISH LEADERSHIP

There have been some eccentric choices for military command throughout the course of history, but the appointment of the Duke of Medina Sidonia to lead the Spanish Armada must stand out as one of the strangest.

Don Alonso Perez de Guzman El Bueno was the 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia. The family estates were (and still are) at Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Andalusía on the south bank of the Guadalquivir where it widens into a sea estuary. In January and February 1588 the Duke had been involved in helping Armada ships to fit out with men, munitions and victuals, while they were sheltering in the Guadalquivir prior to moving round to their eventual rendezvous at Lisbon. He was a conscientious administrator and carried out his responsibilities well.

The designated lea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: The Armada Sets Course for Disaster
• Part II: September to November 1588. The Spanish Armada on the Coast of Ireland
• Part III: The Discovery of the Armada in the Twentieth Century
• Part IV: Appendices
• Select Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Dating
• New Style Calendar Autumn 1588
• Author’s Note
• Spanish Ship Names
• Maps
• Copyright
• About the Author
• About Gill & Macmillan