Spanish Armada
gigatos | May 27, 2022
Summary
The Spanish Armada (armada is Spanish for “armed” fleet) is the fleet with which Spanish King Philip II attempted to invade England during the Spanish-English War in the spring and summer of 1588. The fleet sailed from Spain through the English Channel to accompany an invasion army that had to be ferried from Flanders to England on barges. Upon arrival, that army proved unwilling to embark because Dutch ships were blocking the ports. Shortly thereafter the waiting Armada was attacked and dispersed by the English fleet. She was so badly damaged that it was decided to make a detour around Scotland to return home. On the return trip many ships perished on the Irish coast. The failure was a serious setback for Philip, but the Spanish naval forces recovered quickly in the following years.
In the Netherlands, there is also talk of a Second Armada of 1639, the sole purpose of which, however, was to bring troops to Flanders.
With the invasion, Philip II wanted to overthrow the Protestant English Queen Elizabeth I and seize the English throne himself. The Spanish merchant fleets and especially the silver and gold transports from the Americas were regularly attacked by English and Dutch privateers and pirates, usually on direct orders from the English high nobility and crown and using lent English warships. In the process, Elizabeth provided covert support to insurgents in the Low Countries at the beginning of the Eighty Years” War. When Philip placed himself on the Portuguese throne through military intervention in 1580, he thereby acquired the naval power needed to effectively fight England. As early as August 9, 1583, the Spanish admiral Álvaro de Bazán suggested an ambitious plan for the invasion of England with a fleet of 556 ships and 94 000 sailors; however, the cost, budgeted at 3.8 million ducats, the Spanish treasury could not bear. On August 30, 1585, Elizabeth began to openly support the Dutch Republic with the Treaty of Nonsuch. Thereafter, the English privateer Francis Drake was dispatched for a raiding party along Spain”s northern coast. Although no explicit declarations of war would ever follow, Philip hereafter considered himself at war with England.
Alessandro Farnese, the commander of the Habsburg troops in the Low Countries, now came up with a much cheaper plan to invade England: he would assemble his army of 34 000 men at Dunkirk, after which it could be transported in one night on seven hundred barges, protected by only 25 warships. However, Philip thought that was far too risky and he began to combine the two plans with his own hands: a medium-sized war fleet, itself accompanied by a small landing army, was to convoy Farnese”s large army to England.
Throughout 1586 and early 1587, preparations for the expedition were slowly being made. It took a lot of effort to gather enough cargo ships without harming the Spanish trade. The Spanish therefore hired many foreign vessels, including 23 ”urcas” from Ragusa, or flatly confiscated them. Philip was at first strongly hesitating whether to go through with the whole enterprise. A major problem was that Elizabeth held the Catholic Scottish ex-queen Maria Stuart prisoner. After a victory, he would not escape honoring her right to the English throne as great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England. However, Mary was also the mother of the Scottish King James VI and the daughter of the French Princess Marie de Guise. It has often been suggested that anti-Protestant considerations would have been a decisive motive in the invasion plans. In fact, however, Philip preferred a Protestant Elizabeth to a Scottish-English-French power bloc that could pose a much greater threat.
On February 18, 1587, however, Mary Stuart was beheaded. She had in her will transferred her claim to the English throne to Philip II. Now that a successful invasion would make him king of England and that he could give the appearance of punishing the injustice done to the “Catholic martyr,” Philip began to put more urgency into the operation, having recovered from a severe case of pneumonia in the summer of 1587. Farnese, now Duke of Parma, on the other hand felt less and less for the plan. He had captured Sluis in that summer. From there he had the canal system to Nieuwpoort improved. This way he could take barges to the coast of Dunkirk behind Ostend, which was still in the hands of the insurgents. In the process, he had obtained a good and disturbing picture of the real situation on the ground. He warned Philip that, if he succeeded at all in making sufficient vessels seaworthy, the Armada would in any case first have to eliminate the blockade fleet of Justinus of Nassau, but that because of the many sandbanks and the greater draught of the Spanish ships it would probably not succeed. Also, his army had been severely under strength due to illness and losses. Philip, however, would not let himself be deterred from his plan: Parma would just have to improvise when the time came and otherwise they would rely on God. Parma”s proposal to first let the Armada conquer the harbor of Flushing, of which the roadstead had sufficient depth, was rejected. Communication between the Netherlands and Spain was very slow and there was no good coordination between fleet and army.
Meanwhile, the English did not sit idly by as Philip built up his fleet. In the spring of 1587, Drake attacked the Spanish port of Cadiz and destroyed 24 ships, as many as 37 by his own account. Elizabeth, however, did not want to provoke Philip to the extreme. Lacking the money to vigorously reinforce English defenses, she tried to reach an understanding with the Spanish king. In secret negotiations, she offered to bring the Netherlands back completely under his control, albeit with religious freedom for two years if, in exchange, he would leave England alone. Philip, however, no longer intended to make any concessions. He did, however, stretch the negotiations to deceive Elizabeth until the last moment.
Philip wanted to attack as early as the winter of 1588, but it appeared to him that De Bazán had failed to make the fleet combat-ready in time; in February the overworked admiral died. The necessary delay meant that prepared Catholic revolts in Scotland and by the League of Henry I of Guise in France, came too soon and would ultimately fail. The expedition now came to be led by Philip”s nephew, Alonzo Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who protested his appointment with: “No soy hombre de mar, ni de guerra” (“I am a man of neither sea nor war”). Although captain general of Andalusia, he had never really fought before and was without any sea experience. However, Philip knew that the loyal Medina Sidonia would follow his orders to the letter and also that he was a skilled administrator. Within months, the duke had increased the number of ships from 104 to 134 and significantly improved the state of armaments, ammunition and powder supplies, despite an increasingly acute shortage of money. Philip tried to defuse the financial crisis by asking Pope Sixtus V for a loan of one million ducats to serve the common Catholic cause. Sixtus, however, had no confidence in the purity of Philip”s motives, nor in the feasibility of the whole operation. To prove to the pope that he was not concerned with his personal power, Philip promised to place his pious daughter Isabella of Spain on the English throne. Sixtus then agreed to the loan, but said he would not actually make the money available until after Parma”s army had landed; he did not believe the English could be defeated by sea.
The Armada eventually consisted of 137 ships, 129 of which were armed. Only 28 of these were specialized heavy warships: twenty galleons or older kraken large enough to serve as the flagship of a squadron, four galleys and four galleons. In addition, there were 34 light pinas. The worst armed were the 28 pure cargo ships or hulks, among them the Ragusan urcas, which had no gun deck. The remainder consisted of 39 merchantmen, kraken that had been converted to warships by adding additional artillery and building high fore and aft castles. The armament consisted of 2830 guns, equipped with 123 790 cannonballs and two thousand tons of gunpowder. All this was manned by 8450 sailors and 2088 galley slaves, reinforced by 19 295 soldiers – and of these, half were untrained recruits, mostly unemployed farm workers, beggars and criminals who had been recruited in the weeks before. Some three thousand nobles, clergy and officials were also on board, accompanied by their servants. This brought the total number of people on board to over 35,000.
The Spaniards had given great publicity to the expedition in order to frighten their opponents. They even published a special pamphlet with precise information that was supposed to impress the reader with the great strength of the force. Indeed, at the time, no fleet of this size had ever ventured into the Atlantic Ocean, with a displacement of approximately 58,000 tons of water – within a few generations, however, such a size would no longer be a problem. The fleet was officially called the Grande y Felicísima Armada (“great and most fortunate war fleet”). The flag officers, as well as Philip himself, were well aware that the fleet was already totally obsolete in design.
By the middle of the 16th century, a major change in ship technology and tactics had occurred. A new type of ship, the galleon, with a straight front over a lowered bow, allowed for the concentration of great firepower in the ship”s direction of movement. Making the vessel lower and longer, with three or four masts, made it faster yet more maneuverable. A slower enemy ship of the older squat type could not prevent a galleon from firing at its weakest point again and again at close range. A galleon was especially dangerous when equipped with a new type of cannon, the upright cast hose, or its shortened version the cartwheel, in which the fluid pressure during casting strengthened the bronze or iron in the rear so that more powerful propellant charges could be used. Both improvements combined to make the cannon the decisive weapon in naval combat, whereas it had previously been primarily a supporting weapon in boarding.
The Spanish
Both sides assumed that a landing by Parma would be followed by a swift English defeat. Parma”s army was considered the best in Europe; the English, on the other hand, had no standing army at all. Elizabeth could call on the people”s militia, the Trained Bands, but they were usually armed only with handbows, and of the twenty thousand militiamen in southeast England, in reality only a few thousand could be deployed in time against an enemy army, partly because many thousands had been recruited for the fleet. In addition, it had its own royal guard and members of the nobility had their personal armies at their disposal. All in all, it did not provide a coherent field army that had any chance of winning a battle against Parma. Falling back on strong fortified cities was also not an option because there were none. London still had high medieval city walls, without earthen ramparts, which Parma”s siege artillery would quickly demolish. Parma hoped to reach the capital within eight days; once it had fallen, English resistance would collapse because the north and west of the country were still predominantly Catholic. All the English” hopes were therefore pinned on the fleet.
On April 26 the fleet began to embark and on May 11 the Armada departed from the port of Lisbon. One was then left hanging by the Torre de Belém due to headwinds and the first vessels did not reach the high seas until May 28. The fleet was so large and slow that it took two full days for all ships to set sail. The Armada consisted of nine squadrons – a reflection of the large number of Habsburg possessions whose navies had been joined together – mostly commanded by experienced and famous mariners.
In addition to these 125 squadroned ships, there were four galleys and eight unarmed ships, including a hospital ship.
Progress was agonizingly slow. Speed was limited to that of the slowest cargo ships, not more than three knots even before the wind. Only around June 14 did they reach Finisterre, the northwest cape of the Iberian Peninsula. From there, the crossing to England could begin, but the fleet was broken up by a heavy storm. In the process, drinking water was almost exhausted and the meat supplies were found to be insufficiently salted so that they began to rot. The crew suffered from dysentery and, mostly malnourished even before the voyage began, showed the first signs of scurvy. On June 19, Medina Sidonia decided that the situation had become untenable and ordered the fleet to reassemble in the port of La Coruña, where fresh water and food could be immediately stocked. There he wrote a letter to Philip asking if he didn”t think that after such bad omens the expedition should be cancelled, also because it was now clear that the cargo ships could not sail on the Atlantic. On July 6, he received an answer: the Spanish king patiently pointed out that this kind of ships regularly sailed to England and that the duke should not lose heart. On July 19, when all ships had rejoined the main force, the fleet put to sea again.
Arriving in the middle of the Bay of Biscay, the fleet was again hit by a storm on July 25, this time with much more serious consequences: the galley Diana was shipwrecked near Bayonne on the French coast and the other three galleys were also forced to seek shelter there, as well as De Recalde”s Santa Ana; however, because of an earlier damage, the admiral had already had his flag transferred to the San Juan (São João). None of those four ships would rejoin the fleet. The number of heavy warships thus decreased to 23. On July 29, the English coast came into sight. There, fire beacons were lit to warn the country, but contrary to legend, the news did not spread very quickly as a result. To prevent abuse, a justice of the peace had to be obtained at each beacon to grant permission to light the fire. In fact, pillar beacons provided the first warning.
The squadron commanders now held a council of war in which they decided to sail no further into the Channel than the Isle of Wight. Once there, they were to wait until Parma reported that he was ready for embarkation; they sent a pinas ahead with a messenger to reach him via France. Philip”s detailed instructions had not provided for such a wait: they assumed that the fleet would sail as quickly as possible to the Strait of Dover. The commanders, however, had no intention of spending weeks at anchor in such a vulnerable position. They did, however, adhere to Philip”s instruction to sail along the English coast instead of the French.
Meanwhile, the English fleet had been trying to prepare for the Spanish attack. It had been decided to split the naval force: the main force would station itself in the west under the command of the Lord High Admiral Baron Charles Howard; one squadron, under Admiral of the Narrow Seas Lord Henry Seymour, would blockade Dunkirk eastward. The main force had as Vice Admiral Drake and as Rear Admiral (Rearadmiral) the privateer John Hawkins, who had organized the fleet build-up in previous years. On news that the Armada had been spotted off Finisterre, they had started cruising the Bay of Biscay from July 4 in the hope of intercepting the Spanish. When these did not show up – after all, they had had to fall back to La Coruña because of the storm – lack of provisions had forced the English to return to Plymouth on July 22. Elizabeth had become so optimistic because of the setbacks with the Spaniards that she first decided to dismiss the crews of most of the ships. An enraged Howard had at least been able to dissuade her from this retrenchment measure, but the food situation remained bad; the ships” powder stocks were standard – but thus only enough for a few days of fighting; there was no replacement stock.
In the evening of July 29, Medina Sidonia decided, under pressure from the other commanders, to deviate from Philip”s instructions on a second point as well: they would try to surprise the English fleet in the port of Plymouth. However, the latter had already been informed of the Armada”s approach that afternoon by the pirate Thomas Fleming, captain of the Golden Hind. According to legend, Drake was engaged in a game of skittles and responded, “We have plenty of time to finish the game and also defeat the Spanish.” In reality, the fleet rushed out of the harbor, but was hampered by a southwest wind. By having sloops cast their anchors a little farther and farther, the ships pulled out to open sea during the night against the wind.
On the evening of July 30, the Armada thus encountered the English fleet, 54 ships strong, at Dodman Point (Cornwall, near Mevagissey) and anchored west, hoping for a decisive battle the next morning. That night, however, the English lurched west of the Armada and won the windward battle. The windward position, on the side from which the wind is blowing, offers great advantages in sail combat. Attacking downwind, one can impose the moment and place of the confrontation on the defender; in doing so, the ship rolls much less, greatly increasing the purity of the cannon shot. Howard had deliberately kept the fleet as westerly as possible; he wanted the Armada to always attack from behind during her trip through The Channel rather than be driven back defensively.
Also read, battles – Battle of Culloden
First skirmish on July 31
On July 31, therefore, the Spanish fleet was forced to sail eastward in a defensive formation. For this purpose they chose the half-moon: the galleys went in front, the cargo ships remained in the middle, and on the left and right there were two slanting horns to the rear containing the strongest galleys. These would encompass the enemy, should they try to reach the vulnerable transport ships. Those horns, of course, were themselves vulnerable to attack and were about twelve kilometers apart at the ends.
The English had neither a fixed formation nor a squadron arrangement. Howard”s fleet consisted of sixteen regular naval vessels supplemented by merchantmen and privateers, which now came in from all ports, eager for booty: within a week his force would grow to 101 ships; that day eleven had already arrived. Discipline was poor and the ships had never fought together in a fixed relationship. Each captain”s first concern was to win prizes (loot ships) for himself, and no one was blamed if he put his personal interest above the general. As a result, the superior firepower and maneuverability of the English ships was not exploited for a decisive joint maneuver. The leading captains did show great ingenuity in using personal initiative to create opportunities to capture a Spanish ship. As was customary in piracy, they made case-by-case agreements with lighter ships on support and the distribution of loot money.
Howard, on the Ark Royal (formerly Ark Ralegh), attacked the Spanish right horn from astern and put Alfonso de Leiva”s Rata Encoronada in trouble but that ship was quickly unseated by others. The left horn of the Armada was attacked by a group of ships under the explorer and pirate Martin Frobisher on the Triumph, the strongest ship in the English fleet, which was partnered with Drake on the Revenge. The Recalde now turned the bow of the San Juan and single-handedly challenged the English squadron, presumably hoping that the enemy would attempt to take his ship, which could end in a much more advantageous general boarding battle between the two fleets for the Spanish. The San Mateo (São Mateus) of its vice-admiral Diego Pimentel followed suit but the English kept a good distance while firing at both ships, thereby without too much effect.
Medina Sidonia now ordered its fleet to stand still to restore order. As the cloistered ships drifted towards the Armada again due to the westerly winds, the English ceased their attack. Medina Sidonia now tried for a few hours to pursue the enemy westward but the faster English ships could not possibly be caught up and so the Spaniards turned back.
Around four o”clock, two serious accidents occurred in quick succession in the Armada. First, Pedro de Valdés” flagship, the giant squat Nuestra Señora del Rosario, collided with the Catalina: its bowsprit broke off and the jib mast snapped loose. A few minutes later, an explosion knocked off the stern of the San Salvador. While two galleons were taking this badly damaged galleon in tow, a sudden heavy sea swell made the Rosario stagger so much that the funnel mast broke and fell aft into the main mast, rendering the ship rudderless. A tow with the San Martín coming to the rescue broke. On the advice of Diego Flores de Valdés, Pedro”s cousin and personal enemy, Medina Sidonia then decided to leave the ship behind with a small group of ships to still try to bring it to safety. The number of heavy ships was thus reduced to 22.
Also read, biographies – Kęstutis
August 1
On the night of August 1, the Armada continued to sail east. Howard decided to follow at night, a risky maneuver. Drakes Revenge had to go in front and use its stern light to show the rest of the English fleet the way. Howard on the Ark sailed right behind. As darkness fell, the Revenge”s navigation light suddenly disappeared and only after some time did the lookouts find another light source far to the east. Howard stayed on this course and approached. When it became light, however, he discovered to his horror that his ship, along with the White Bear and the Mary Rose, was in the Armada”s half-moon; he had been following the lanterns of the rear ships of the Spanish center! The Revenge was nowhere to be seen.
Even before the Spaniards could react, the three ships sailed hastily back to their own fleet. There it turned out that Drake had first deceived Frobisher the day before with an agreement to take the Rosario together the next morning, and then, after extinguishing his lights during the night, had sneaked off to prize the Spanish ship with the privateer Jacob Whiddon on the Roebuck and two of Drake”s own pinasses. He found it abandoned by the guide ships and De Valdés almost immediately surrendered the Rosario on condition that the lives of the crew be spared. De Roebuck brought the ship, with 55 000 ducats of soldiery on board, up to Torbay; more importantly, the gunpowder was immediately distributed among the large English ships to replenish the considerably shrunken supplies. It is a sign of the state of affairs in the English fleet that the excuse for Drake”s gross insubordination was accepted that he had sailed south, fearing that the Spaniards would make a U-turn during the night, and that he had then discovered the Rosario by pure chance.
Around eleven in the morning, the Spaniards abandoned the sinking San Salvador, leaving behind the wounded. Thomas Fleming, however, managed to bring the ship into Weymouth harbor, which provided the English with another 132 barrels of gunpowder, together with the gunpowder from the Rosario an amount equal to one-third of the supplies of the entire English fleet.
In the evening, Medina Sidonia decided to leave the crescent and adopt a more stretched formation with the freighters in the middle, the strongest ships in the rear and the galleons in the vanguard. Diego Enríquez was appointed to succeed Pedro de Valdés as captain of the Andalusian squadron. That discipline on the Spanish side was a lot stricter was shown by the order that any captain who still broke formation had to be hanged without mercy. He also sent another pinas to Parma with the urgent message to send a counter message as soon as possible. During the night De Moncada, the captain of the galleons, refused to carry out a surprise moonlight attack on the English fleet.
Also read, biographies – John Evans (archaeologist)
Fight of 2 August
The next day the wind turned to the northeast and the Armada now had the windward side, off the coast of Dorset. Medina Sidonia decided to go on the attack. Howard in the center and Drake on the south side of the fight, again kept effortless distance. A huge cannonade erupted, the fiercest the world had yet seen, in which the much faster-firing English ships in particular fired a significant portion of their powder. Again, the effect was limited due to the great distance.
Frobisher on the north side, however, got stuck between the Armada and the Portland Bill cliff near Weymouth, along with five armed merchantmen, the Merchant Royal, Centurion, Margaret and John, Mary Rose and Golden Lion. The six ships were attacked by the four galleons. Frobisher, who knew this hunting ground like the back of his hand as a pirate, anchored right in the calm water between the strong tidal current and the down, counter-current; the galleons failed to reach him. Howard attempted to come to Frobisher”s aid, and when Medina Sidonia noticed this, he wanted to exploit this ideal opportunity to finally engage in close combat; but his squadron had to change direction because De Recalde had become isolated on the south side and was cornered by Drake. On her own, the San Martín then set course for Howard”s Ark Royal and, arriving at his ships, lowered his fore-marine sail, the usual challenge to boarding. The Ark, Elizabethan Jonas, Leicester, Golden Lion, Victory, Mary Rose, Dreadnought, and Swallow did not accept the offer but shelled the Spanish admiral”s flagship from a distance for an hour before it could be dislodged by De Oquendo”s squadron; sails, masts, rigging, and the Holy Standard, consecrated by the Pope, suffered badly, but the hull was not pierced anywhere although the ship was struck some five hundred times.
In the meantime, the wind had shifted again to south-west and the Armada resumed its course eastward, without making any further attempt to land in Portland, as the English had feared. Medina Sidonia sent a pinas to the Duke of Parma for the third time, urging him to embark his troops.
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For Wight
On the morning of August 3, the large freighter El Gran Grifón appeared to have fallen behind the rest of the fleet. It was immediately attacked at dawn by Drake who, now approaching closely in the hope of winning this tempting prize, damaged it very badly. The Spanish left wing, however, sagged and unseated the ship, which was taken in tow by a galley.
Around noon the Armada reached Wight, the place where they wanted to wait for Parma”s reply. Philip had explicitly ordered in his written instructions that the island should not be conquered right away. The Spanish court-martial had not wished to oppose this openly, but to wait on the open sea was extremely reckless; in fact, an attempt would be made to enter the Spithead, the eastern strait between Wight and the mainland, a maneuver that would only make sense if followed by a capture of the island or of the opposite port of Portsmouth. The English were very concerned about this possibility: if Wight became a Spanish base, it would have to be kept under constant blockade, both on land and at sea, something which, if it could be done at all, there was simply no money for. To avoid this catastrophe, Howard decided to launch a nightly attack by 24 armed merchantmen – otherwise not too useful ships anyway – on the night of August 3 to 4, hoping to throw the Spaniards off course. However, a lull in the wind prevented the execution of this plan. To bring more unity to the growing fleet, each ship was assigned to one of four squadrons, those of Howard, Drake, Hawkins or Frobisher.
On August 4, it happened to be spring tide at noon, and the Armada had until then to enter St. Helen”s Roads, the entrance to the Spithead, with the incoming tide; after that, the descending tide, due to the strong tidal effects in The Channel of tremendous force, would be stronger than the incoming tide for three days and make the slow Armada”s entry impossible. In the morning, however, the galleon San Luis and the merchantman Santa Ana were found to have stayed behind, and Howard now made every effort to distract the Armada with these, despite the lull in the wind. He had his ships towed by rowboats in the direction of the two stragglers. Three galleons went on the counterattack, dragging La Rata Encoronada along for more firepower. The rowboats pulled the English galleons across on this so they could give the galleons the full brunt, which had to take damaged quarter. A westerly breeze came up and both fleets now began to battle full on, with the English, aided by possessing the windward side, pressing on more fiercely than the previous days because so much was at stake. At the same time, they thus feared driving the Spaniards right into the Spithead. To prevent this, Frobisher again placed himself between the Armada and the coast, this time off Wight, advancing so far to the northeast that he threatened the San Martín. As two days before, De Oquendo”s squadron came to the aid of the flagship, and again Frobisher applied the ruse of placing himself between the incoming tidal current and the countercurrent, forming a seemingly defenseless prey that was in fact barely accessible. After the Spaniards lost precious time trying to contain the countercurrent, Frobisher had his boats drag the Triumph into it and, setting all sails, he disappeared south, pursued in vain by the San Martín.
On the south side, meanwhile, a fierce flanking attack centered on the damaged San Mateo had driven the left wing of the Armada eastward past St. Helen”s Roads. To avoid running into the English coast, the Spanish fleet was forced to seek the open sea. The chance to occupy Wight had been lost and with it the last opportunity to find a sheltered port. There was now no other option but to sail for Dunkirk.
On the morning of August 5, Howard knighted many captains, including Hawkins and Frobisher. He had reason for a certain satisfaction: every landing attempt on the English south coast had been foiled, and the English fleet had clearly shown itself superior to the Spanish, which had mostly been pressed into defense. What still made him pessimistic was that this defense had largely succeeded. Only two Spanish ships had been lost, and that not even at the hands of the English, but by pure chance; a chance that had averted total defeat for England, for without the gunpowder captured on those ships they would already have run out of supplies. Howard begged the fortresses on the coast to send him their gunpowder but because of Elizabeth”s thriftiness there was almost nothing in storage on land either. The fleet had just enough for one more battle and until the decisive battle to prevent Parma from joining the Armada, they had to leave her alone for the time being and limit themselves to a pursuit.
That Friday and the following Saturday the Armada sailed on unhindered, to anchor in the roadstead of Calais, thirty kilometers from Dunkirk, in the afternoon of August 6. On both days Medina Sidonia sent a total of three pins to Parma, first to ask if fifty light ships could leave from Dunkirk for support and then to announce the arrival of the fleet. He had not yet received any message from Parma, but he assumed that Parma and his army and a whole fleet of barges were ready for swift embarkation and passage.
The actual situation was entirely different. In June, Parma had sent several urgent messages and even a special messenger, Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, to Spain to urge Philip to call off the whole enterprise. He reported that he still had not found a solution to the problem of the Dutch blockade. Although Parma claimed that he would nevertheless make every effort to bring the operation to a successful conclusion, his actual measures were not in line with this; it was more like he did not want to risk his army. Few barges had been assembled, and a building program at Dunkirk itself was only half-heartedly carried out; nor was his force assembled in that place. He had, however, assembled a fleet of some three dozen light craft and sixteen freighters, but they made no attempt to challenge the Dutch blockade fleet. In fact, it was so clear to Lieutenant Admiral Justinus van Nassau, Prince Maurice”s bastard brother, that Parma did not dare to go to sea that he withdrew his fleet from Flushing in the hope that Parma”s Army of Flanders would still sail out so that he could ambush and destroy its rearguard between the sandbanks. However, because there was no good contact with the English, Seymour took over the blockade in shock. On the approach of the Armada, the 36 ships of his English eastern squadron joined Howard”s main force, which thus grew to 147 ships; Justin then repositioned himself off Dunkirk with some 30 flying boats – warships with little draft.
On Sunday, August 7, Medina Sidonia was informed of the true situation when finally one of his messengers, don Rodrigo Tello, returned to the Armada. It turned out that Parma, who had established his headquarters in Bruges, had only received word in late July that the Armada was coming and even then had not begun to assemble and embark his army. He indicated that he now needed six days to do so – an estimate that Spanish officials on the spot still considered richly optimistic, although that army was a lot smaller than originally envisioned: about 13 000 men. Parma complained that the Armada had not defeated the English fleet, but had taken it with them, so that the safe route over which his barges, hardly seaworthy in the best of circumstances, had to travel was now full of three hundred warships preparing for a new sea battle. In any case, the Armada first had to chase off the Dutch blockade ships.
This demand presented Medina Sidonia with a major problem. He could not enter the strait to Dunkirk, ”t Scheurtje, with his entire fleet because, as the name suggests, it is too narrow to navigate against the prevailing southwest wind – and the route to the northeast past Flushing was far too long and dangerous to convoy barges. He could only sweep the entrance with his pinas and galleons. The fleet at anchor, however, badly needed these more maneuverable ships to repel a possible attack with burners. So there was nothing left to do but wait and hope for a victory in a decisive confrontation with the English fleet.
Meanwhile, contact had been made with the French governor of Calais, Giraud de Mauleon, who very politely allowed supplies, but refused delivery of gunpowder. Later writers have often pointed out that Medina Sidonia missed an excellent opportunity on 7 August to take Calais by surprise, which would have given him exactly the port he needed: one with sufficient depth and close to Parma, whose army could have helped in the conquest of the city, which was very vulnerable to the Spanish Netherlands. He also had a nice excuse at hand in the support this could offer the French Catholic League. Philip”s instructions, however, made no mention of this option and Medina Sidonia was not the man to take the initiative in such a sensitive matter that could also turn the unstable mood in France to the disadvantage of the Sainte Ligue.
On August 7, Howard had indeed decided to launch an attack with burners. Since he only had powder left for one fight, the superior firepower of the English ships had to be fully utilized, and that meant approaching the Spanish ships as closely as possible this time. To avoid a general boarding battle with a packed mass of enemy ships, however, the Armada had to be broken up first. Fire ships were the traditional means of doing this.
In the 16th century, however, it was not yet customary for fleets to carry large burners of their own; on a case-by-case basis, they used to provisionally equip small boats for the purpose. In Dover, nineteen such vessels were ready and waiting, filled with pitch and brushwood. However, it would take some time before they were transported to the fleet and Howard, who did not know that Parma”s army was delayed, did not even dare to wait a day. Eight armed merchantmen were therefore sacrificed from the fleet, which were quickly furnished for their task by overloading their guns with gunpowder and placing all the barrels of pitch, resin and sulfur that could be found, together with scrap metal and a few barrels of gunpowder. As darkness fell, the ships were let go with the rising tide that quickly propelled them in the direction of the Armada.
Medina Sidonia had prepared well for the possibility of a burner attack. Smaller vessels lay ready to steer the burners off course, and the larger ships were instructed to remain calmly in position as much as possible, and in extreme cases to slip their anchors – so that they could be recovered on their floating ropes. However, as the eight burners approached and only two could change direction, a great panic broke out. The reason for this was that rumors had been circulating for months that the British were going to use “Antwerp Fire” or hell-burners as a last resort. Three years earlier, during the Siege of Antwerp, engineer Frederigo Giambelli, who had started working for Elizabeth in 1584, had turned two seventy-ton ships with a few thousand kilos of gunpowder and two timing mechanisms into floating time bombs and thus (partially and temporarily) destroyed Farnese”s ship bridge over the Scheldt. The gigantic explosion had killed almost a thousand Spanish soldiers instantly. The story, increasingly exaggerated, had gone all over Europe, and the “infernal machines” had gained a reputation not dissimilar to that of today”s atomic bomb. After the fall of Antwerp, Giambelli had left for England to continue his work.
Now, that work actually consisted of designing fortifications, and in August Giambelli was busy constructing a huge geminiated ship”s boom across the Thames, but the Spaniards didn”t know that: the first to draw the erroneous conclusion at the sight of approaching burning merchantmen of two hundred tons that a whole new generation of weapons of mass destruction was being launched at the Armada was Diego Flores de Valdés who gave the general order to cut the anchor ropes, with the result that the fleet was blowing apart on the tide. Because the sails of the ships at anchor were down, it was difficult to steer them. No Spanish ships were hit and the burners passed without doing any damage, but the defensive formation was completely broken up. The galjas San Lorenzo, De Moncada”s flagship, in the confusion slid over the anchor hawser of the San Juan de Sicilia and struck the shore with a broken rudder.
At daybreak on August 8, the Armada made frantic efforts to get back in formation, but it proved too difficult for the mass of unwieldy armed merchantmen to quickly reach Calais Roadstead again against the current and wind. The main force of the English fleet pounced on the now isolated and vulnerable actual warships, which had managed to hold their position.
The first victim was the San Lorenzo. The galley tried to reach the port of Calais but ran into a sandbank just below the fortifications and capsized, drowning some of the 312 galley slaves; the others broke loose in their agony and engaged in a fight with the crew, most of whom went to safety across the mud flats. Soon about a hundred Englishmen mingled in the fray, coming from the rowboats of Howard who hoped to personally win the capital ship as a prize. Admiral De Moncada was killed and the English killed all the remaining crew and slaves, but suffered considerable losses themselves, also because the French fortress opened fire after a delegation claiming the ship was beaten and robbed; eventually the wreck was left to the French.
Meanwhile, the rest of the fleet had caught up with some galleons that were deviating to the east off Grevelingen (today”s Gravelines in French Flanders). Drake”s squadron surrounded the San Martín and approached within a hundred yards so that the hull of the Spanish flagship could be shot through for three hours. Then Frobisher”s and Hawkins” squadrons did it all over again. Focusing on one ship in this way gave the other Spanish ships time to re-form and come to the aid of the San Martín. The first ships to arrive were also given a good beating by Drake, who had gone to meet them, such as the San Felipe (São Filipe) which was surrounded by seventeen ships. The English were much quicker to reload their pieces, but this meant that by the end of the morning, most of the ships had used up their last gunpowder. Still the English did not board any ships; the only reference to anything like this came from the San Mateo which reported that a single English sailor jumped aboard but was immediately cut to pieces.
For Henry Seymour”s squadron on the Rainbow, this was the first time it had fought a battle and it still had powder in stock; it used this to fire on the San Felipe and San Mateo for three more hours during the early afternoon, until both galleons drifted in sinking state towards the Flemish sandbanks. Apart from this success, the English did not manage to exploit their numerical superiority and superiority in firepower further decisively, a consequence of their orderly way of fighting; the much more effective line tactics would take another two generations to come. The wind, which had turned to the north and threatened to throw the entire Armada onto the coast, now posed the greatest danger. About six o”clock, however, both fleets were assailed by a thunderstorm with fierce driving rain from the southwest; when it cleared, the Armada appeared to have broken away from the English and was even sailing in the half-moon again. Howard seemed to think the whole action had essentially failed.
In reality, the condition of the Spanish fleet was very serious. The number of real warships had been reduced to nineteen, all of which were damaged, some so badly that only with great effort was they prevented from sinking. Many of the other ships had also been severely beaten; that very evening the armed merchantman María Juan sank, taking most of the crew of 255 with her into the depths. In the battle itself about six hundred men on floating Spanish ships were killed and eight hundred seriously wounded (because in the fighting in the Channel 167 were killed and 241 seriously wounded, the total losses amounted to the often mentioned figure of about two thousand men); in addition hundreds of sailors deserted to the English fleet or the Flemish coast – already before the battle the hulk San Pedro el Menor, under Portuguese command, had defected to the enemy. English losses were limited to about two hundred men, incurred mainly in the fight around the San Lorenzo.
That very evening a Spanish council of war was held on the question of how to proceed. Only Diego Flores de Valdés voted in favor of an immediate effort to try, against the prevailing winds, to reestablish a position off Calais so that Parma”s army could still cross. The condition of the fleet was so bad for the time being that merely sailing south would be too difficult, even if no English fleet had been ready to prevent it. That the enemy had run out of gunpowder was not known. At the same time, many were speculating about what the Armada would do. Drake wrote to Elizabeth that they would surely sail east to repair the fleet at Hamburg or Denmark and thus establish a permanent Habsburg base in the North Sea. Parma hoped they would still take Flushing. The Spanish ambassador to Paris, Bernardino de Mendoza, who directed the many pro-Spanish plots in Western Europe, assumed they would make contact with Catholic rebels in Scotland. Medina-Sidonia, however, was not inventive enough for such a drastic change of strategy. Only the pilots were consulted about the possibility of returning around Scotland. They pointed out that this was a detour of three thousand kilometers, to be covered without good sea charts or sufficient water and food supplies. It was decided not to make a decision until the expected attacks by the English had been repulsed.
The next day, the battle damage worsened when the San Felipe ran into a sandbank near Flushing and the San Mateo ran into a sandbank near Fort Rammekens. Both ships were taken by the Dutch insurgents; the noblemen were kept prisoner for ransom; the prisoners of war of lower rank were “flushed”: they were whipped from the deck, so they had the choice between being beaten to death immediately or jumping into the sea to drown. Since 1587 this had been prescribed by the States General to deter Dutchmen from entering Spanish sea service and to avoid maintenance costs. According to the then prevailing law of war, one always surrendered on mercy or disfavour. The banner of the San Mateo can still be seen in the Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden. The freighter La Trinidad Valencera also ran into the shore, near Blankenberge, and surrendered to Captain Robert Crosse on the Hope.
How unrealistic the idea of sailing south was, became clear when a northwest wind blew in that morning, which should have made it easier. In fact, a mood of doom shook the fleet: they feared running en masse onto the banks of Zeeland where all would be murdered by the Dutch “heretics”; anchoring was out of the question because most ships had lost both anchors in the panic of two nights before. Medina Sidonia was advised by weeping officers to take the Holy Standard and flee on a boat to Dunkirk. People knelt for a common prayer and went to confession in preparation for impending death. When at eleven o”clock in the morning the wind suddenly turned to the south, people experienced it as a divine intervention. The English fleet continued to pursue the Armada, which was giving way to the north, except for Seymour”s squadron, which again took up a blockade position near Dunkirk. That evening another council of war was held; now only De Recalde wanted to attempt to resume the attack. The others, however, did not dare to make an immediate decision to return, so it was decided to wait another four days for a favorable northern wind. If this did not occur, they would sail around Scotland.
On August 10, the English fleet pressed a little harder and Medina Sidonia gave three signal shots to the fleet to put up a front; however, most of the ships continued to sail just north. It did not come to a fight but Medina Sidonia ordered 21 captains to be sentenced to death, one of whom, Cristóbal de Avila, was immediately hanged. On August 12, they reached the Firth of Forth in Scotland, pursued by the English. On Saturday, August 13, the wind turned to the northwest and the English gave up the chase, due to lack of food. Thus, if the Armada had wanted to abide by the decision of August 9, they would now have had to turn around to the south. In fact, the course remained north. Without any discussion, everyone understood that the return was inevitable.
On August 18, when all danger had passed, Elizabeth went with her courtiers to Tilbury to address the army the next day, gathered there to repel a possible invasion via the Thames. In retrospect, it has often been suggested that the speech was made on the eve of the battle. Elizabeth sat on a white gelding and was dressed in a white silk gown under a silver breasted cuirass; in her right hand she carried a silver command staff. She made a short impromptu speech of which only fragments have been handed down and which was not easily understood because Elizabeth used to speak in a muffled voice to hide her bad teeth. The following day, upon request, the key points were noted down by Doctor Lionel Sharp and read aloud to all the men once more. In 1588, the event apparently did not make much of an impression; the speech is not mentioned in any 16th-century source. It was not until 1654 that a printed version was published based on a 1623 letter by Sharp. The letter contains a very different and much more polished text, which was clearly intended to impress a large readership and which is indeed still widely quoted in English history books. It contains the famous phrase: “I know that I have only the body of a weak and powerless woman but I have the heart and courage of a King and thereby a King of England (…)”. The speech contained the pledge: “I already know that for your triumphalism you have earned rewards and laurels and We assure you, on the word of a Prince, that they will be duly paid to you.” The reality was different.
The same day, ships of the English fleet began to enter their ports. According to the prevailing customary law, sailors could only be scrapped after their wages had been paid. However, no money had been made available for this purpose. But if the crews were to remain on board, they would also have to be fed. There was no budget for that either. So Elizabeth ordered 14 472 of the 15 925 men but without pay to be dismissed. Some were close to home; thousands of others, already malnourished on their return and afflicted with the usual dysentery, paratyphoid and scurvy, roamed the streets of the port cities begging; hundreds died of starvation. To make matters worse, an epidemic of typhus broke out, killing thousands. Within a month, two-thirds of the sailors had perished from disease and starvation. The government did nothing to help the wretched. Because Elizabeth”s father, Henry VIII of England, had destroyed the monastic system, there was no longer any institutionalized sick care available to provide assistance. Howard was so ashamed of the situation that he, yet a notoriously stingy man, tried to alleviate as much need as possible out of his own pocket. In 1590, although the three of them were by no means friends, he and Drake and Hawkins founded the Chatham Chest, England”s first health insurance and pension fund, for the benefit of sailors.
Medina Sidonia”s chosen route became an ordeal: he was unfamiliar with the local currents and winds and, by his own account, even got caught in a hurricane – which is rare at such a northern latitude. In the North Sea, the fleet had been patched up as much as possible for the distant voyage. Nevertheless, two damaged ships strayed and ran into the Norwegian coast. On August 17, a storm separated El Gran Grifón, the Barca de Amburg, Trinidad Valencera and Castillo Negro from the rest of the fleet. The Grifón would perish on Fair Isle on September 27. Meanwhile, they had rounded Scotland and the decision was made to sail as westerly a course as possible to avoid Ireland. On August 21, they had reached an altitude of 58° north latitude and attempted to turn south but the usual southwesterly winds prevented this at first. By September 3, the San Martín had not made it any further south; seventeen other ships had moved away from the fleet in the meantime. It is often assumed that the Armada was ravaged by exceptionally severe storms during this phase, but there is actually no supporting evidence for this. It is likely that the damaged and unwieldy ships were already unable to cope well with the normal rough seas here.
The delay caused drinking water to run out; rainwater collected did not sufficiently compensate. Many captains now decided on their own authority to go to Ireland to replenish their water supplies. They expected to receive support from the Catholic population there. For most this turned out to be a fatal mistake. Their sea charts of this area were too sketchy and gave Ireland eighty nautical miles to the east; often the anchors were missing. At least 26 ships crashed into the cliffs of Ireland”s west coast, most between September 16 and 26. The Recalde on the San Juan, the San Juan Batista, and the hospital ship San Pedro el Mayor were among the few “lucky ones” and managed to take on water on Great Blasket Island; the Recalde reached La Coruña on October 7 on which day it died of illness and exhaustion, the Juan Bautista a week later Santander, and the San Pedro, in an unsuccessful attempt to reach France, struck the coast of Devon on November 7. The galjas Zuniga also forcibly provided water and food at Liscannor Castle, departed again on September 23, and finally reached Le Havre.
At times it seemed that they had managed to get by, then disaster struck anyway. De Leiva stranded his Rata Santa Maria Encoronada in Tullaghan Bay but managed to reach the coast safely with his crew. From there he marched thirty kilometers to Blacksod Bay where they boarded the Duquesa Santa Ana which arrived there. In an attempt to reach Scotland, this ship also ran aground, 150 kilometers north at Loughros More. Now all marched thirty kilometers south to Killybegs where the galjas La Girona had sought shelter. With an estimated 1,300 men on board, this ship also attempted to sail to Scotland; on 28 October it struck the Giant”s Causeway and was wrecked with all hands.
Of the six to seven thousand men who were shipwrecked off Ireland in total, the majority thus drowned; the three thousand remaining posed a serious threat to England”s rather shaky authority over the island. England had only 1250 foot soldiers and 670 cavalrymen there to keep the hostile population down. The governor, Lord Deputy of Ireland William Fitzwilliam, therefore decided to exterminate the castaways, regardless of nationality, age, rank, station or sex. All were killed – even noblemen who had been able to raise a handsome ransom – even if they had surrendered on the condition that their lives would be spared. Over two thousand were thus executed, sometimes after torture, by hanging or the sword. In the nineteenth century, British historians were ashamed of the event and therefore created the myth that the Spaniards were killed mainly by the “Wild Irish.” The Irish had never been feudalized, still lived in tribes and clans, and even still wore tunics instead of pants; such savages could be nicely blamed for the massacre and proved that Ireland was not ready for independence even in the nineteenth century. In fact, a thousand managed to escape death by going into hiding among the Irish population, often through the intercession of priests.
Some ships reached Scotland. The San Juan de Sicilia landed on Mull and those on board were recruited by clan chief Lachlan MacLean. However, on November 18, English secret agent John Smollett managed to blow up the ship at night with crew and all. Hundreds of those on board were later smuggled from Ireland to Scotland. In August 1589, the Duke of Parma paid five ducats a man to the Scottish crown to bring six hundred Spaniards to Flanders on four Scottish ships. He had even received a safe-conduct from Elizabeth for the transport. However, she informed the Dutch of the arrangement, and they intercepted the ships; one was taken at sea and the footwash applied; the others ran onto the Flemish coast and 270 men were killed on the beach by the sword. In retaliation, Parma had four hundred Dutch prisoners of war beheaded.
The small thousand prisoners of war in England itself, such as those of the Rosario, were not killed but it took some until 1597 before they could return; most had by then died of forced labor and malnutrition; they usually depended on charity for their upkeep. The nobles who were “discharged” received better treatment; yet Pedro de Valdés was not able to leave England until 1593 for £1500.
In late September, parts of the Armada began to enter Spanish ports; only now did Philip learn the fate of his fleet. The first to arrive, on September 21, was Medina Sidonia”s San Martín at Santander. He then had only eight further ships with him. Miguel de Oquendo reached Guipúzcoa with six ships and Flores de Valdés reached Laredo with 22 ships. The condition on the vessels was terrible. The crews had had to keep themselves alive with urine and rainwater; the majority had died of disease and hardship, some ships, such as the San Pedro el Menor, ran aground on the Spanish coast because the sailors were too weakened to operate the rigging.
It is not known exactly how many ships of the original 137 in total were eventually lost, but that number was at least 39; some 20 are believed to have been lost at sea without a trace. At least 67 ships are known to have reached Spain or a safe haven elsewhere, many of them heavily damaged; some, such as the galleons San Marcos and the Tuscan San Francesco, were written off on arrival. At least two-thirds of those on board perished. The total English loss of ships was zero.
Philip considered himself personally guilty of the failure. He had assumed that, since the expedition served the cause of God, God would also provide a victory. He saw the defeat as a punishment for his sinful lifestyle, of which others had now become the innocent victims. According to a late seventeenth-century legend, he is said to have said gruffly: “Mandé mis barcos a luchar contra los ingleses, no contra los elementos” (“I sent my ships to fight against the English, not against the elements”), but in fact he allowed the survivors, as far as circumstances permitted, to be taken care of and cared for, sent out ships with supplies to meet ships still suspected at sea, and punished no one for failure, except Diego Flores de Valdés, against whom an extremely negative mood had developed on the rest of the fleet – and even that got off with a light prison sentence. Medina Sidonia did not receive a second fleet command – but then, he had written to Philip that he was determined never to set foot on a ship again. Philip did begin to doubt Parma”s reliability. The English allowed a rumor to spread that he had sabotaged the expedition in exchange for kingship of the Netherlands.
However, Philip also believed that failure could be a God-sent test, the endurance of which would be rewarded by eventual victory, if only he patiently persisted in attempts to conquer England. The result was the Second Armada of 1596 and the Third Armada of 1597, both of which failed due to bad weather; after his death there was the Fourth Armada of 1601. So Spain was by no means counted out as a naval power by the defeat of 1588; in fact, its navy would grow in strength until the early 17th century. Nor is it true that England remained the dominant naval power after 1588; under James I of England, the fleet faded again.
Philip was not alone in seeing God”s hand in events. The Protestant regimes in England and the Republic had every interest in presenting the operation first and foremost as a Catholic crusade against Protestantism. At that time the majority of their population still adhered to the old faith. In the 16th century it was generally believed that the course of natural events was not accidental but the expression of God”s will. The meteorological setback experienced by the Armada was therefore taken as a sure sign that Protestantism was the True Faith.
On December 10, Elizabeth held a thanksgiving service in St Paul”s Cathedral that included a song of praise to God, the lyrics of which she herself had penned, giving full credit to the “Breath of the Lord” that had kept her from destruction. Both the English and the Dutch struck many commemorative medals. A Dutch one bore the Latin inscription, Flavit יהוה et Dissipati Sunt (“Yahweh blew and they were scattered,” with the tetragrammaton YHWH in Hebrew letters), a reference to Job 4:9-11. That the weather had also worked in the Armada”s favor at crucial moments was not mentioned. Thus, a distorted picture of the campaign was given, as if it had been a miracle that the expedition failed, while in fact the strategic and tactical situation was unfavorable for the Spaniards: they were technologically behind the English fleet and it would have been more of a miracle if Parma had succeeded in reaching the Armada.
After the defeat, songs and pamphlets appeared in England praising the victory and speaking of the Spaniards in jest. Lord Burghley, an advisor to the English and Irish Queen Elizabeth I, issued a pamphlet in late 1588 that ended with: ”So ends this account of the misfortunes of the Spanish Armada which they used to call INVINCIBLE”. However, the Spaniards did not call the fleet that, or: the description was an English fabrication.
In the 17th century, interest in the Armada waned; but there were revivals in England during the Anglo-Spanish wars of 1625-1628 and 1655-1658. The publications that appeared at that time greatly thickened the story: for example, the Spaniards were said to have planned to exterminate the entire adult Protestant population of England and to brand their children on the forehead with the letter “L” for Lutheran. That the notion of the “Armada” was alive and well in the Netherlands at the time is shown by the fact that major Spanish fleet expeditions of the period were also so named. One of these, the fleet that tried to transport troops to Dunkirk in 1639 but was defeated devastatingly by Maarten Tromp at the Battle of Dunkirk, was later given the designation Fifth Armada.
In the 19th century, nationalist historiography came into vogue, which sought to study the past to find an explanation and justification for the nation”s greatness; simplified and romanticized versions of it were used in historical novels and textbooks for the great mass of the population. In England, too, the epic of the Spanish Armada, along with the many legends that had formed around it, was transformed into a standard story, many elements of which were not based on truth: small but brave English ships, manned solely by patriotic naval heroes, were said, spurred on by the inspiring words of Elizabeth, to have taken on the largest fleet in history, sent out by the evil religious fanatic Philip, and through a miraculous storm won the victory, the foundation of England”s greatness as a naval power. The 19th-century British historian Edward Creasy counted the destruction of the Spanish Armada among his fifteen most decisive battles in the world.
The Dutch contribution remained mostly unmentioned. The Dutch version used roughly the same elements but in a different vein: the English ships proved powerless against the Armada, but because the Dutch successfully carried out their mission to blockade Parma, the miraculous storm was able to scatter the Spanish fleet. Both versions lamented the Irish atrocities, but forgot their own systematic massacre of prisoners of war.
Today, the great fame of the Spanish Armada is still due to the 19th-century story being retold over and over again, albeit slowly incorporating more results of modern historical research. That the myth is still alive is evidenced by a 2007 film like Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
The Spanish Armada was also taken as inspiration for a neighborhood in ”s-Hertogenbosch. In the Paleiskwartier ten buildings, with 255 apartments, were built with the profile of Spanish galleons. The project was realized in 2002 to 2005 by English architect Anthony McGuirk.
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