A fleet of 130 Spanish ships, commanded by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, carrying 20 000 soldiers and 8500 sailors, sent by Philip II of Spain to invade England in 1588. The invasion was in retaliation for English support of Protestant rebels in the Netherlands, the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1587), and raids on Spanish shipping, such as Drake's at Cádiz (1587); Philip's aim was to gain control of the English Channel. The fleet, delayed by storms and hampered by orders to rendezvous with Spanish forces in the Netherlands, anchored off Calais on 6 August. The following night the English sent fireships into the anchorage, causing the Spanish fleet to scatter. The next day the Spanish fleet was routed by English attacks commanded by Charles Howard off Gravelines (78 Aug); 44 ships were lost in battles and during the flight home around Scotland and Ireland under heavy storms. Although a victory for the English, counter-armadas were unsuccessful, and the war lasted until 1604.
The Spanish Armada or "Great/Grand Armada" (Old Spanish: Grande y Felicísima Armada, "large and most fortunate navy"; but dubbed by the Spanish, with ironic intention, la Armada Invencible, "the Invincible Fleet") refers to the Spanish-controlled fleet which sailed against England in 1588, with the intention of escorting an invading army across the southern North Sea, near the Strait of Dover.
The Spanish fleet, which consisted of about 130 warships and converted merchant ships, was not crushingly defeated by the English Navy, but in the Battle of Gravelines, in the North Sea off the coast at the border between France and the Spanish Netherlands, was scattered by an English fire-ship attack followed up with the use of artillery.
Execution
On May 28, 1588, the Armada, with 150 ships and 18,000 soldiers, 7,000 sailors, 1,500 brass guns and 1,000 iron guns, set sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel. However, the English fleet was prepared and waiting in Plymouth for news of Spanish movements.
The English Channel
The Armada, having been delayed by bad weather, was not sighted until July 19. In order to execute their "line ahead" attack, the English tacked behind the Armada to place them upwind of the Spanish, thus gaining a significant maneuvering advantage. This left two Spanish wrecks near the Isle of Wight and, with no safe harbours, forced the Armada to Calais, whether the Spanish army was ready or not.
At the same time, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was assembling a force of 4,000 soldiers at Tilbury Fort, Essex, to defend the estuary of the River Thames in the event of a Spanish landing.
Calais and the fire ships
On July 27, the Spanish anchored off Calais, not far from Parma's waiting army of 16,000 in Dunkirk, in a crescent-shaped, tightly-packed defensive formation.
At midnight of July 28, the English set eight pitch- and gunpowder-filled ships alight and sent them downwind among the closely-anchored Spanish vessels. Spanish morale was damaged and, more importantly, the scattered Spanish ships were now too far to leeward of Calais in the rising south-westerly wind to recover their position.
Battle of Gravelines
| Battle of Gravelines | |||||||
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| Part of the Anglo-Spanish War | |||||||
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Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588-08-08 by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, painted 1796, depicts the battle of Gravelines. |
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| Combatants | |||||||
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England Dutch Republic |
Spain Portugal |
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| Commanders | |||||||
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Charles Howard Francis Drake |
Duke of Medina Sidonia | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
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34 warships 163 merchant vessels |
22 galleons 108 merchant vessels |
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| Casualties | |||||||
| 500 dead or wounded |
600 dead, 397 captured, 1,000 wounded, 3 merchant ships sunk 1 merchant ship captured |
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Gravelines is now in France but in 1588 it was in Flanders, part of the Spanish Netherlands, close to the border with France.
The English had learned much of the Armada's strengths and weaknesses during the skirmishes in the English Channel. Eleven Spanish ships were lost or damaged (though the most seaworthy Atlantic-class vessels escaped largely unscathed), and the Spaniards suffered nearly 2,000 casualties from the battle as well as illness and exposure, before the English fleet ran out of ammunition. Consequently, given the greater maneuverability of the English fleet, it was possible to provoke the Spanish to fire but to stay out of effective range until the heavy shot was loosed before closing and firing repeated and damaging broadsides into the Spanish ships.
English casualties were much lighter, initially in the low hundreds from the battle itself, but a raging typhus epidemic soon swept throughout the defensive fleet, killing thousands of English sailors. Although the Gravelines engagement itself was largely an indecisive stalemate, it afforded the English defenders some breathing space as Medina-Sidonia, unaware of the scarcity of English ammunition, soon directed the Armada northward, away from the Flemish coast, pursued by the bluffing English fleet with its empty shot lockers.
In 2002 Dr Colin Martin of the University of St Andrews claimed that many Spanish ships carried cannon shot that was the wrong size for their cannon.
Pursuit
By the day after Gravelines, the wind had backed, southerly, enabling Medina Sidonia to move the Armada northward (away from the French coast). The English pursued and harried the Spanish fleet, preventing its properly reforming and returning to escort Parma, but again ammunition proved the limiting factor and the English were compelled to disengage.
The Return to Spain
The Spanish fleet sailed around Scotland and Ireland into the North Atlantic. (see Protestant Wind)
A new theory suggests that the Spanish fleet failed to account for the effect of the gulf stream.
Following the storm, it is reckoned that 5,000 men died, whether by drowning and starvation or by execution at the hands of English forces in Ireland.
Consequences
English losses were minimal and none of their ships were sunk.
Although the victory was acclaimed by the English as their greatest since Agincourt, an attempt in the following year to press home their advantage failed, when the English Armada returned to port with little to show for its efforts.
Two more fleets sent by the Spanish in 1596 and 1597 were dispersed and forced back by fierce Atlantic storms. Nonetheless the Spanish had learned from the expedition, constantly rebuilding their fleet with English innovations in mind, and managed to secure dominance of the Atlantic while England's navy went into decline.
Fifty years after the Armada expedition, the Dutch, who had been steadily increasing their naval power, broke the back of Spanish dominance at sea (Battle of the Downs), and it was only during the Napoleonic Wars that the British navy finally established its overwhelming mastery, at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
England's treasure was used in a brutal war in Ireland (the Nine Years' War, 1595-1603), which was fitfully supported by Spain and proved the most expensive military campaign waged by the English for over a hundred years;
In 1595, a Spanish infantry force of about 400 men landed in Cornwall.
By the end of the long war with England in the Treaty of London of 1604 Spain had achieved some of its aims that had originally been intended by the failed "knockout" blow of the Armada, but England remained true to its Protestant revolution and was now free to pursue its commercial interests in North America.
Ships involved
England and the Netherlands
Ark (flag, Lord High Admiral Charles Howard)
Elizabeth Bonaventure
Rainbow (Lord Henry Seymour)
Golden Lion (Thomas Howard)
White Bear (Alexander Gibson)
Vanguard (William Winter)
Revenge (Francis Drake)
Elizabeth (Robert Southwell)
Victory (Rear Admiral Sir John Hawkins)
Antelope (Henry Palmer)
Triumph (Martin Frobisher)
Dreadnought (George Beeston)
Mary Rose (Edward Fenton)
Nonpareil (Thomas Fenner)
Hope (Robert Crosse)
Galley Bonavolia
Swiftsure (Edward Fenner)
Swallow (Richard Hawkins)
Foresight
Aid
Bull
Tiger
Tramontana
Scout
Achates
Charles
Moon
Advice
Merlin
Spy (pinnace)
Sun (pinnace)
Cygnet
Brigandine
George (hoy)
34 merchant ships
30 ships and barks
33 ships and barks
20 coasters
23 coasters
23 coasters
Disdain (included in above)
Margaret and John (included in above)
30 Dutch cromsters blockading the Flemish coast
Fireships expended 7 August: (included in above)
Bark Talbot
Hope
Thomas
Bark Bond
Bear Yonge
Elizabeth
Angel
"Cure's Ship"
Spain and Portugal
Portuguese
São Martinho 48 (section flag, Duke of Medina Sidonia)
São João 50 (section vice-flag)
São Marcos 33 (Don Diogo Pimental or Penafiel) — Aground c. 8 August near Ostend
São Felipe 40 (Don Francisco de Toledo) — Aground 8 August between Nieupoort and Ostend, captured by Dutch 9 August
San Luis 38
San Mateo 34 — Aground 8 August between Nieupoort and Ostend, captured by Dutch 9 August
Santiago 24
Galeon de Florencia 52 (or San Francesco ex-Levantine, Niccolo Bartoli)
San Crístobal 20
San Bernardo 21
Augusta 13
Julia 14
Biscayan
Santa Ana 30 (section flag, Juan Martínez de Recalde)
El Gran Grin 28 (section vice-flag) — Aground c. 24 September, Clare Island
Santiago 25
La Concepcion de Zubelzu 16
La Concepcion de Juan del Cano 18
La Magdalena 18
San Juan 21
La María Juan 24 — Sunk 8 August north of Gravelines
La Manuela 12
Santa María de Montemayor 18
María de Aguirre 6
Isabela 10
Patache de Miguel de Suso 6
San Esteban 6
Castillian
San Crístobal 36 (section flag, Diego Flores de Valdés)
San Juan Bautista 24 (section vice-flag)
San Pedro 24
San Juan 24
Santiago el Mayor 24
San Felipe y Santiago 24
La Asuncion 24
Nuestra Señora del Barrio 24
San Linda y Celedon 24
Santa Ana 24
Nuestra Señora de Begoña 24
La Trinidad 24
Santa Catalina 24
San Juan Bautista 24
Nuestra Señora del Rosario 24
San Antonio de Padua 12
Andalusian
Nuestra Señora del Rosario 46 (section flag, Don Pedro de Valdés) — Collided with Santa Catalina c. 31 July, captured by Revenge 1 August
San Francisco 21 (section vice-flag)
San Juan Bautista 31
San Juan de Gargarin 16
La Concepcion 20
Duquesa Santa Ana 23 (hulk) — Wrecked 29 September, Ireland
Santa Catalina 23 — Collided with Nuestra Señora del Rosario c. 31 July
La Trinidad 13
Santa María de Juncal 20
San Bartolome 27
Espiritu Santo
Guipúzcoan
Santa Ana 47 (section flag, Miguel de Oquendo)
Santa María de la Rosa 26 (section vice-flag) — Damaged 8 August, wrecked 16 September, Blaskett Sound, Ireland
San Salvador 25 — Damaged by explosion and captured c. 31 July
San Esteban 26 — Wrecked 20 September, Ireland
Santa Marta 20
Santa Bárbara 12
San Buenaventura 21
La María San Juan 12
Santa Cruz 18
Doncella 16 — Sank at Santander after returning to Spain
Asuncion 9
San Bernabe 9
Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe 1
La Madalena 1
Levant
La Regazona 30 (section flag, Martín de Bertandona)
La Lavia 25 (section vice-flag)
La Rata Santa María Encoronada 35 (Leiva)
San Juan de Sicilia 26 (formerly Brod Martolosi) — Blew up (possibly sabotage from English agent) 5 November Tobermory Bay, Scotland
La Trinidad Valencera 42 — aground 8 August
La Anunciada 24 (formerly Presveta Anuncijata) — Scuttled 19 September at Shannon River mouth
San Nicolas Prodaneli 26 (formerly Sveti Nikola)
La Juliana 32
Santa María de Vison 18
La Trinidad de Scala 22
Hulks
El Gran Grifón 38 (section flag, Juan Gómez de Medina) — Aground 8 August
San Salvador 24 (section vice-flag)
Perro Marino 7
Falcon Blanco Mayor 16
Castillo Negro 27
Barca de Amburg 23 — sank
Casa de Paz Grande 26
San Pedro Mayor 29
El Sanson 18
San Pedro Menor 18
Barca de Danzig 26
Falcon Blanco Mediano 16 (Don Luis de Cordoba?) — Wrecked c. 25 September
San Andres 14
Casa de Paz Chica 15
Ciervo Volante 18
Paloma Blanca 12
La Ventura 4
Santa Bárbara 10
Santiago 19
David 7
El Gato 9
San Gabriel 4
Esayas 4
Neapolitan galleasses
San Lorenzo 50 (Don Hugo de Moncado) — Aground, captured 8 August, distracting the English fleet
Zúñiga 50
Girona 50 — Wrecked in Ulster
Napolitana ("Patrona"
22 pataches and zabras (Don Antonio Hurtado de Medoza)
4 galleys of 5 guns each (Diego de Medrano)
vessels under Parma
The Spanish Armada in art
The Grainuaile Suite (1985), by Irish composer Shaun Davey, contains an exquisite lament on the Spanish landings in Ireland following the retreat from the English channel.
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