The Armada

English ships and the Spanish Armada
English school, artist unknown.
Public domain.

There is an account of the Armada here. For this post, I am indebted to general histories by John Guy and Susan Brigden, and also to Garrett Mattingly's classic, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada and Henry Kamen's Philip II of Spain.

What was it about?

Philip II believed that he had been provoked into war by England's forays into the Netherlands and the New World. The preparations were already underway at the time of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, but her death made it a certainty.

Meanwhile the war in the Netherlands was going badly for England. At the end of 1587 Leicester resigned his commission and returned to England. The zealously propagated myth of the death of Philip Sidney could not disguise the political reality: English intervention in the Netherlands had achieved nothing, yet it was regarded in Spain as an act of war. From the end of 1585 Philip had been gathering maps and intelligence, and receiving optimistic reports of Catholic support for invasion. This might have been wishful thinking, but it was certainly true that the English forces were weak and unprepared.

The preparations for the Armada could hardly be kept secret, but  many believed it was intended for a final assault on the Netherlands. But the secret plan was for the conquest of England, which would itself assure the conquest of the Netherlands. The Armada was to sail 1500 miles to the ‘Cape of Margate’ and link with Parma to secure the safe passage of the army from Flanders. If he landed unscathed, his orders were to march through Kent, capture London and await Catholic risings. 

Most historians believe the plan could never have worked - there were too many incalculable forces. 

1. It depended on highly efficient communications, which were not available in the early-modern period.
2. It ignored the geography of the Flemish coast - the lack of natural harbours, the treacherous sandbanks.

Spanish preparations

The Marquis of Santa Cruz, one of the great military commanders of the age, a veteran of the great naval victory of Lepanto and the successful Portuguese campaign of 1580, was given the task of mustering ships and men. However the Armada was delayed by Drake’s surprise incursion into Cadiz harbour on 29 April 1587 (his ‘singeing of the king of Spain’s beard’), in which he destroyed between two and three dozen Spanish ships. This made it impossible to prepare the Armada for action that year and won a valuable few months for England. All this was extremely bad for Spanish morale. 




In February 1588, shortly before he was due to sail, Santa Cruz died. He was replaced by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who was sceptical about the mission and reluctant to take it on.  He wrote to Philip: 

My health is not equal to such a voyage, for I know by experience of the little I have been at sea that I am always seasick and always catch cold. 

An assault force of 4,000 Spaniards, 3,000 Italians, 1,000 Burgundians, 1,000 English Catholic exiles and 8,000 Germans and Walloons was assembled in the ports of Flanders to await the arrival of 131 vessels, manned by 7,000 seamen and 17,000 troops. Medina Sidonia hoped to defeat the English fleet in battle so that Parma could transport his army unimpeded to England in barges.

Alonso Pérez de Guzmán,
Duke of Medina Sidonia.
Public domain.

Spain had the most efficient army in Europe. It was the only state wealthy enough to provide medical care, marriage allowances and welfare services.  It could have beaten any other organised fighting force in the world at this time. If it got ashore in England, it was assured of an easy victory. The problem was - how to get to England. 

The Armada was not a naval fleet in the modern sense of the term – it was an invasion task-force intended to transport an army. It was formidably well-equipped. As well as warships (galleons, galeasses, galleys and large, armed merchant ships), it also included cargo ships which carried stores of food and drink, siege guns and other weapons, horses, mules, tents and other supplies. Two of the ships were to act as hospital ships. The large ships of the Armada were served by smaller vessels, which took messages from ship to ship and from ship to shore and also sailed ahead as scouts.

A Spanish galleon. Public domain.

On 25 April Medina Sidonia went to the cathedral of Lisbon to take from its altar the blessed standard of the expedition. The archbishop said mass and pronounced a general benediction. Friars read a papal absolution and indulgence granted to all partakers in the enterprise. 

English preparations

England was in a better position to resist than she had been a generation before, as the 1560s and 70s had seen some serious militia training, but it had no forces comparable to the Spanish army, no standing army and no paid bureaucracy. About a quarter of a million able-bodied men between 16 and 60 were theoretically liable for service, but the burden of fighting rested with the ‘trained bands’ selected from a total of nearly 200,000 men registered in national musters. Equipment costs were met by the localities, though in the emergency there was also an exchequer grant. 


Defence at sea was taken more seriously. The navy and not the army was the first line of defence, and had the first call of money and talent.  The programme of naval expansion begun under Mary was continued under Elizabeth. She was surrounded by expert mariners from the Lord High Admiral downwards, and all had real influence. A ring of modern artillery forts covered the English coast, denying anchorages to an  invader.

When the Armada sailed up the Channel, its progress was shadowed by mobile units of infantry and cavalry along the south coast. An army of 16,500 was assembled at Tilbury under Leicester (not a successful commander!). It had very few professionals or men with combat experience.

The progress of the Armada

The Armada – 130 ships and nearly 30,000 men - left Lisbon on 30 May 1588. On 19 June, it reached La Coruña, which it left in July. On 19 July, it was sighted off the Scillies. It entered the Channel on 20 July in a defensive formation. 

It was faced by ninety ships including most of the Royal Navy vessels under the Lord Admiral, the Queen's cousin, Lord Howard of Effingham, with Drake as Vice-Admiral, which formed the Western Squadron off Plymouth, and a Narrow Seas Squadron  guarding the Downs at the mouth of the Thames. 

The Spaniards’ most powerful asset was the fact that their ships were packed with soldiers. Their strategy was to get alongside enemy ships and overwhelm them by physical assault. The key to the English success had to be not men but artillery - the cannon manufactured in the furnaces and forges of the Weald; Wealden ironmasters were producing 800 guns a year, and, contrary to what was once believed, the Spaniards could not compete. The largest guns used by the Spanish and English fleets were broadly the same size, but the English had more of them.  Furthermore, the Spaniards were not equipped or trained to fire their guns repeatedly during battle. Their carriages were designed for one-off use. The English on the other hand, had developed compact, four-wheeled carriages which could be loaded and fired repeatedly during battle by trained gun-crews. 

At first Howard’s fleet was confined by the lack of wind to Plymouth harbour. In leaving the harbour they had to ziz-zag against the wind in short tacks. This skilful manoeuvre enabled them to slip past the enemy on the night of 20 July with the result that next morning they were lined up to the west of the Spaniards and had the wind behind them. This meant that they could decide when and where the engagement would begin. They could hover astern and pick the Spaniards off on the flanks without risking damage to their own ships. (This would have been very lucrative as most of the ships were privately owned and they hoped for rich pickings.) But in response, the Spaniards adopted a complicated crescent formation. In three encounters (off Plymouth, 21 July, off Portland Bill, 23 July, and off the Isle of Wight, 25 July) the English harassed the Spanish fleet at long range, but were unable to inflict serious damage on the crescent formation.  

As the Armada passed up the Channel towards the Calais Roads and the rendezvous with Parma, the English commanders decided not to engage in battle. Only one Spanish ship, the Rosario, was boarded.  It was the largest ship in the fleet and the most heavily armed. When the English boarded it, they realized that they had less to fear from Spanish artillery than they had imagined. But they could not break up the tight crescent formation imposed by Medina Sidonia (he hanged one captain for breaking it) and therefore they had to follow the Armada as it sailed. 

It is a myth that the English had fewer and smaller ships. In fact the numbers were about equal and the English ships were as big as or bigger than the Spaniards’, but they were faster and more manoeuvrable.

Pursued by the English fleet, Medina Sidonia anchored the Armada off Calais on 27 July. He had successfully fulfilled the first part of his mission, and he expected Parma to break cover and attempt the Channel crossing. But Dutch flyboats controlled the banks and shoals off the Flemish coast and frustrated three attempts at embarkation. 

As the Spaniards waited for the meeting that never came, the English sent fire-ships against them, formidable floating bombs that struck terror into the sailors. Panicked, the Armada scattered, re-formed and engaged the English fleet in a nine hour engagement off Gravelines on the 30th, where the English used their artillery at close range. The Armada lost only four ships, but many others were damaged and there were 2000 casualties. 

The Armada scattered

A change of wind cut the fighting short. Now at the mercy of the weather, the Armada sailed north with the English following, though the pursuit was only nominal as they had run out of ammunition and stores. After the Armada rounded Orkney on 10 August, gales and the loss of anchors wreaked havoc. They were then blown to Ireland - see here for details of the galleas, La Girona, shipwrecked off the Antrim coast in October.  By October 1588 it is estimated that as many as 25 ships were lost off the rocky coast of Ireland.

The effects of the Armada

Spain: In the third week in September Medina Sidonia staggered into Santander with eight of his galleons. By mid-October most of the fleet of 130 ships returned to Spain. This was two thirds of the fleet - a surprisingly high number – though many were beyond repair. As many as 15,000 men were lost, mainly from privation and disease. In Spain there was a period of mourning. A monk of the Escorial described it as: 

one of the most notable disasters ever to have happened in Spain, and one to weep over all one’s life… For many months there were only tears and lamentations throughout Spain. Quoted Kamen, Philip II, p. 275

The traditional view of the Armada as the supreme disaster of Philip's reign is probably correct. Spanish morale sank and the greatest monarchy in Europe no longer seemed invincible. The king was depressed for weeks. English shipping continually harassed the northern ports of Spain, forcing them into steep economic decline. 

England: On 9 August, after the Spaniards were in flight, but before fear of their return had subsided, Elizabeth addressed the troops at Tilbury in a speech that was later printed as broadsheet and became famous: 

Let tyrants fear: I have so behaved myself that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects ... I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too—and take foul scorn that Parma or any other prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm. 

On 24 November at a thanksgiving for the defeat of the Armada, Elizabeth rode into the City on a chariot throne under a canopy.  Commemorative medals were struck. 

Both English and Spaniards saw the hand of God in every victory and defeat. Drake rejoiced in England’s providential deliverance and in the Armada portrait and the commemorative medal, the victory was ascribed to a divinely sent wind - rather than the meteorological phenomenon known as the North Atlantic oscillation. 

The Armada Portrait: God sends the storm,
Elizabeth rules the world.
Public domain.

Some believed that parsimony had prevented England from inflicting an outright defeat. Lack of provisions had left the victory inconclusive; the Spanish navy lived to fight another day. Walsingham saw ‘the disease uncured’. Viewed coldly, the war with Spain can be seen as representing a defeat for Elizabeth. She had failed to keep England out of the European war. Against her will, she had taken up the role of a warrior queen, and events had slipped out of her control. She was compelled to submit to the judgement of the military experts who took decisions on the ground. She was forced to triple taxes and to preside over a period of economic crisis. 

The Armada as symbol

For both Spain and England, the Armada held great symbolic value.
If Spain over-emphasised the disaster, England came to see it as a
defining moment. From the 1620s the commemorations took firm root in the form of bonfires and bells, parades and spectacular fireworks. 

The celebration of God’s providential mercies operated as a kind of cultural cement, a ligature linking the learned culture of Protestant elites with the street culture of those they condemned as the 'carnal multitude’. Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (2001), p. 247.