How did Sir Francis Drake defeat the Spanish Armada?
29 April 1587 – Singeing of the King’s beard
“Prepare in England strongly, and mostly by sea. Stop him now and stop him forever.” (Francis Drake)
There was a fine line betwixt privateering and piracy, acclaim and the gallows. Captains would operate a ship with a commission from their government which authorized them to attack the enemy’s merchant shipping, though when wars ended these could be swiftly withdrawn and leave captains operating outside of the law as pirates. That was assuming their papers would even be recognized if they were apprehended, or if corrupt officials would make them disappear instead to portray their quandary as a pirate. While the Eighteenth Century would see “Blackbeard” Edward Teach and “Calcio” Jack Rackham vilified as pirates, the Sixteenth Century saw Francis Drake manage to remain on the lawful side of the precarious line.
Religious toleration is a relatively new concept, and one that still struggles today. The vast majority of history was one of religious intolerance, with pre-Christian pagan times often romanticized as different to the reality that saw particular pantheons reign supreme (Egyptians could carry on worshiping Horus, as long as they worshiped Caesar too). Religious intolerance was long directed as Jews, betwixt Muslims and Christians, and often betwixt even the competing factions of the same religions, such as the iconoclast clashes in the Byzantine Empire or the Islamic fitnas.
While that early Byzantine split sought to have a state-enforced ban on idols. The Reformation that Martin Luther would be among the triggers of in the early Sixteenth Century, sought to empower people against the doctrines of state, such as translating the Bible to make it more accessible.
Having begun in the German and Dutch states, the Reformation took hold of England with Henry VIII famously splitting from Rome to enable his divorce and then holding a precarious court as his fickle religious nature saw him take turns favoring radical and then conservative factions. Queen Elizabeth I was excommunicated by Pope Pius V in 1570 while Spanish King Philip II signed the Treaty of Joinville in 1584 to unify his realm, flush from the success of the longest war in history, the Reconquista which concluded by expelling the Moors from Granada in 1492, with the French Catholic League to eradicate Protestantism.
The Age of Sail had ushered in the competing claims for the New World, and English privateers constantly harried the Spanish territories in the West Indies and the crown’s vaunted treasure fleet. The English supported the United Provinces of the Netherlands in their struggle for independence from Spain, solidifying this in 1585 with the Treaty of Nonsuch to form an Anglo-Dutch alliance.
English support for the Portuguese pretender Dom António caused further strife.
With Spain entering a dynastic union with Portugal in 1580 while expanding in the Americas with the support of German Habsburgs and the Italian princes. Tensions between the two powers spilled over with the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585, which would last for 19 years. Philip ordered the arming of a great fleet, his Invincible Armada, which was hastily assembled in Cádiz and Lisbon to invade England.
Queen Elizabeth gave Drake, a proven leader from previous naval expeditions, command of a fleet to inspect Spanish preparations, intercept their supplies, and attack their ships if possible. The Royal Navy galleons Elizabeth Bonaventure (his flagship), Golden Lion, Rainbow and Dreadnought comprised his fleet, along with 20 merchantmen and armed pinnaces. London merchants footed the cost of the expedition based on the profits they would make, with the monarch set to take half of the profits.
On 12 April 1587 the fleet set sail from Plymouth.
Seven days later Elizabeth sent countermanding orders to Drake to not engage the Spanish, though the ship carrying this was forced back to port by headwinds and he never received it. It was later suggested that this message was never intended to reach Drake, and was merely plausible deniability for the queen for the whole affair should the expedition fail. A storm off the coast of Galicia dispersed the fleet, and when they regrouped two Dutch ships from Zeeland informed them of the epic Spanish fleet being assembled at Lisbon and Cádiz.
At dusk on 29 April the English fleet entered the Bay of Cádiz, where there were 60 carracks and various smaller boats in the port, plus 20 French ships in the bay. The Mayor of Cádiz alerted the local troops to defend the main square, and the Spanish galleons sailed out to meet the threat. Superior English gunnery forced them to retire, and artillery on the shore that began shelling Drake’s fleet had little effect, aside from repulsing an attempted landing. Battle raged in the bay throughout the night and the following day. At dawn on 1 May the English withdrew, having destroyed either 27 or 37 Spanish ships with a shipping capacity of 10,000 tonnes, while also capturing four ships laden with provisions.
Drake’s fleet left Cádiz and sailed along the coast of southwest Spain and Portugal.
Destroying shipping as they went.
On 14 May a thousand men stormed a series of Algarve fortresses, before the fleet then attacked Spanish preparations in Lisbon. On 2 June Drake evacuated his sick and wounded back to England, before a storm prevented further sailing for three days. Drake relieved his adjutant when he contradicted orders to sail to the Isle of Terceira, then on 8 June Drake sighted the Portuguese carrack Sáo Filipe returning from the Indies with treasure.
After a brief firefight it was captured, with an enormous treasure of £108,000 of gold, spices and silks in its hull, on which Drake would pocket 10 per cent. That wealth is worth around £21 million in today’s money, and at the time would have bought over 13,000 horses, or 58,000 cows, or 60,000 quarts of wheat, and was equivalent to 216,000 days’ (592 years) wages for skilled laborers.
The fleet returned to England on 6 July.
Drake’s expedition had been a resounding success, with over a hundred Spanish vessels of varying tonnages destroyed or captured. The economic hit to Spain would delay its invasion plans for a year, and Philip’s vaunted Invincible Armada would not set sail until August 1588. Documents seized from the Sáo Filipe which detailed East Indies maritime traffic would be used as vital founding information for the notorious East India Company which would secure the country’s foothold on the subcontinent and prepare the way for the British Raj.
Drake’s actions in the West Indies had already humiliated Philip, though this expedition had taken his raiding from distant colonies to the doorstep of the European juggernaut, raiding Spain’s premier Atlantic port for three days and razing ships and stores with impunity. These bold actions have heart to Spain’s enemies and dismayed her allies, with Drake publicly boasting that he had “singed the King of Spain’s beard”.
Yet the Catholic behemoth was not defeated, merely frustrated, and Drake was wise enough to know that he had merely delayed an invasion rather than preventing it. He wrote to Elizabeth and urged her:
“Prepare in England strongly, and mostly by sea. Stop him now and stop him forever.”
Little over a year later the Spanish Armada would set sail, determined to invade England to crush the Protestant power and ensure the dominance of Catholicism in Europe.
How did Sir Francis Drake defeat the Spanish Armada?
Written by Jack Tappin
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