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 Channel to escort an invading army to be ferried on barges from Flanders to England. 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 return home by a detour around Scotland. On the return trip, many ships perished on the Irish coast. The failure was a serious setback for Philip, but the Spanish navy quickly recovered in the following years.

The Netherlands also speaks of a Second Armada of 1639, but its sole purpose was to bring troops to Flanders.

With the invasion, Philip II wanted to overthrow the Protestant English Queen Elizabeth I and take possession of the English throne himself. The Spanish merchant fleets and especially the silver and gold shipments from the Americas were regularly attacked by English and Dutch privateers and pirates, usually by direct order of the English high nobility and crown and using loaned English warships. In the process, Elizabeth provided covert support to insurgents in the Netherlands early in the Eighty Years' War. When Philip placed himself on the Portuguese throne by military intervention in 1580, he thereby acquired the naval power needed to fight England effectively. As early as August 9, 1583, 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 openly supporting the Dutch Republic with the Treaty of Nonsuch. Then the English privateer Francis Drake was dispatched for a plunder tour of the Spanish northern coast. Although explicit declarations of war would never follow, Philip considered himself at war with England after this.

Alessandro Farnese, the commander of the Habsburg troops in the Netherlands, now came up with a much cheaper plan to invade England: he would draw his army of 34,000 men together at Dunkirk, after which it could be transferred in one night on seven hundred barges, protected by only 25 warships. That, however, Philip considered far too daring, and he himself began to combine the two plans: a medium-sized war fleet, itself accompanied by a small landing army, was to convoy Farnese's large army to England.

During 1586 and early 1587, preparations for the expedition were slowly being made. It was difficult to gather enough cargo ships without damaging Spanish trade. The Spaniards therefore hired many foreign vessels, including 23 "urcas" from Ragusa, or seized them flatly. Philip was at first very hesitant about going through with the whole enterprise. A major problem was that Elizabeth held the Catholic Scottish ex-queen Maria Stuart captive. After a victory, he would not be able to avoid honoring her right to the English throne as great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England. However, Mary was also the mother of King James VI of Scotland 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 Feb. 18, 1587, however, Mary Stuart was beheaded. She had transferred her claim to the English throne to Philip II in her will. Now that a successful invasion would make him himself king of England and he who could give the appearance of punishing the injustice done to the "Catholic martyr," Philip began to put more haste into the operation, having recovered from a severe bout of pneumonia in the summer of 1587. Farnese, now become Duke of Parma, on the contrary, felt less and less in favor of the plan. He had captured Sluis that summer. From there he had the canal system to Nieuwpoort improved. This allowed him to bring barges inland to the coast of Dunkirk behind Ostend, which was still in the hands of the rebels. In the process, he had gained a good and disturbing picture of the real situation on the ground. He warned Philip that, if he managed to get enough vessels ready for sea at all, the Armada would have to at least first eliminate Justinus of Nassau's blockade fleet, but that this was unlikely to succeed because of the many sandbanks and the greater draught of the Spanish ships. Also, his army had been severely under strength due to illness and losses. However, Philip did not allow himself to be dissuaded from his plan: Parma would just have to improvise when the time came and otherwise rely on God. Parma's proposal to let the Armada first capture the port of Flushing, whose harbor did have sufficient depth, was rejected. Communication between the Netherlands and Spain was very slow and good coordination between fleet and army was lacking.

Meanwhile, the English did not remain idle 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 strengthen English defenses, she tried to come to terms with the Spanish king. In secret negotiations, she offered to restore the Netherlands fully to his control, albeit with religious freedom to be granted for two years, if in return he would leave England alone. Philip, however, no longer intended to make any concessions. He did 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 get the fleet ready for battle 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 was now headed 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 gunpowder 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 at 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 flagships of a squadron, four galleys and four galleys. In addition, there were 34 light pinasses. 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 merchant ships, 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 of this was manned by 8450 sailors and 2088 galley slaves, reinforced by 19 295 soldiers - and of these, half again consisted of untrained recruits, mostly unemployed farm workers, beggars and criminals 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 those on board to over 35,000 men.

The Spaniards had given great publicity to the expedition to frighten their opponents. They even published a special pamphlet with precise information intended to impress the reader with the great strength of the force. Indeed, at that time, no such heavily armed fleet had ever ventured into the Atlantic Ocean, with about 58 000 tons of displacement - in a few generations, by the way, such size would no longer be anything special. The fleet was officially called the Grande y Felicísima Armada ("great and most fortunate war fleet"). The flag officers and also Philip himself were well aware that the fleet was already totally obsolete in conception.

By the mid-16th century, a major change in ship technology and tactics had occurred. A new type of ship, the galleon, with a straight front above a lowered bow, allowed a large firepower to be concentrated 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 kraak type could not prevent a galleon from firing at its weakest point again and again at close range. A galleon was especially dangerous if it was equipped with a new type of cannon, the upright cast serpent, or its shortened version the kartouw, in which the fluid pressure during casting made the bronze or iron rear stronger so that more powerful buoyant charges could be used. Both improvements combined made the cannon the decisive weapon in ship combat, whereas before it had been primarily a support 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 upon the people's militia, the Trained Bands, but they were usually armed only with handbows, and of the twenty thousand militiamen in southeastern 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 men-at-arms at their disposal. Taken together, it did not produce a cohesive field army that had any chance of winning a battle against Parma. Falling back on strong fortified towns 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 fell, English resistance would collapse because the north and west of the country were still predominantly Catholic. So all the English's hopes were pinned on the fleet.

On April 26, the fleet began to embark and on May 11, the Armada left the port of Lisbon. One then lingered near the Torre de Belém due to headwinds and the first vessels did not reach 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 naval forces were pooled - mostly led by experienced and famous sailors.

In addition to these 125 squadron 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 downwind. 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, the drinking water was nearly exhausted and the meat supplies were found to be insufficiently pickled so 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 gather again in the port of La Coruña, where fresh water and food could immediately be stockpiled. There he also wrote a letter to Philip asking if he did not think that after such bad omens the expedition should be cancelled, also because it was now obvious that the cargo ships could not make headway on the Atlantic. On July 6, he received an answer: the Spanish king patiently pointed out that ships of this kind regularly sailed to England and that, above all, the Duke should not lose heart. On July 19, when all the 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 beset by a storm on July 25, this time with much more serious consequences: the galley Diana was shipwrecked off 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 dwindled to 23. On July 29, the English coast came in sight. Fire beacons were lit there to warn the country, but contrary to legend, this did not spread the news very quickly. To prevent abuse, a justice of the peace first had to be obtained at each beacon to grant permission to light the fire. In fact, icemen provided the first warning.

The squadron commanders now held a council of war in which they decided not to sail further into the Channel than the Isle of Wight. Once there, they would wait until Parma gave word 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 waiting period: they assumed that the fleet would sail to the Strait of Dover as quickly as possible. The commanders, however, had no intention of lying at anchor for weeks in such a vulnerable position. They did, however, adhere to Philip's instruction to sail along the English coast rather than the French.

Meanwhile, the English fleet had been trying to prepare for the Spanish attack. It had been decided to split the naval forces: 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 to the east. The main force had as Vice Admiral Drake and as Rear Admiral (Rearadmiral) the privateer John Hawkins, who had organized the fleet buildup in previous years. On reports that the Armada had been spotted at Finisterre, they had started cruising the Bay of Biscay from July 4, hoping to intercept the Spaniards. 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 from the setbacks with the Spaniards that she first decided to just dismiss the crews of most of the ships again. At least an enraged Howard could have dissuaded her from this austerity measure, but the food situation remained poor; the ships' powder stores were standard - but thus only sufficient for a few days of fighting; there was no replacement supply.

In the evening of July 29, under pressure from the other commanders, Medina Sidonia decided to deviate from Philip's instructions on a second point as well: they would try to surprise the English fleet in Plymouth harbor. 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 beat the Spaniards, too." In reality, the fleet rushed out of the harbor but was hampered by a southwest wind. By having sloops throw the anchors a little farther and farther, the ships pulled out into the 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 laved west of the Armada, winning the windward mark. The windward position, on the side from which the wind blows, offers great advantages in sailing combat. Attacking downwind, one can force the moment and place of confrontation on the defender; in the process, the ship rolls much less, significantly 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 journey through The Channel rather than be driven back defensively.

First skirmish on July 31

So on July 31, the Spanish fleet was forced to sail eastward in a defensive formation. To do so, they chose the half-moon: the galleys went in front, the cargo ships stayed in the middle, and to the left and right there were two sloping 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 12 kilometers apart at the ends.

The English had neither a fixed formation nor a squadron division. Howard's fleet consisted of sixteen regular naval ships supplemented by merchantmen and privateers, who now arrived from all ports, eager for booty: within a week his force would grow to 101 ships; eleven had already arrived that day. Discipline was poor and the ships had never battled together in a fixed formation. 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 were 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 arrangements with lighter ships for support and the distribution of booty money.

Howard, on the Ark Royal (formerly the Ark Ralegh), attacked the Spanish right horn from astern and put Alfonso de Leiva's Rata Encoronada in trouble but that ship was quickly displaced by others. The Armada's left horn was attacked by a group of ships under the explorer and pirate Martin Frobisher on the Triumph, the strongest ship in the English fleet, working with Drake on the Revenge. The Recalde now turned the stern 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 halted its fleet to restore order. As the cloistered ships drifted back toward the Armada by the westerly winds, the English ceased their attack. Medina Sidonia now tried for a few hours to pursue the enemy to the west but the faster English ships were impossible to catch up with and so the Spaniards just turned again.

Around four o'clock, two serious accidents occurred in quick succession in the Armada. First, the flagship of Pedro de Valdés, the giant squat Nuestra Señora del Rosario, collided with the Catalina: its bowsprit broke off and the jib mast snapped off. A few minutes later, an explosion knocked off the aft mast of the San Salvador. As two galleys took this badly damaged galleon in tow, a sudden heavy seaway caused the Rosario to pound so much that the jib mast broke and fell aft into the main mast, rendering the ship rudderless. A tow with the San Martín 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 try to bring it to safety as yet. The number of heavy ships was thus reduced to 22.

August 1

On the night of Aug. 1, the Armada continued to sail east. Howard decided to follow at night, a risky maneuver. Drakes Revenge had to go ahead and show the rest of the English fleet the way with its stern light. Howard on the Ark sailed close behind. As darkness fell, the Revenge's navigation light suddenly disappeared, and only after some time did the lookouts far to the east find a light source again. Howard stayed on course on this 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 crescent; he had been following the lanterns of the stern ships of the Spanish center! The Revenge was nowhere to be seen.

Even before the Spaniards could respond, the three ships hastily sailed back to their own fleet. There it turned out that Drake had first tricked Frobisher the day before with an agreement to take the Rosario together the next morning and then, after extinguishing his lights at night, had sneaked out to make off with the privateer Jacob Whiddon on the Roebuck and two of Drake's own pinasses to prize the Spanish ship. He found it abandoned by the lead ships, and De Valdés surrendered the Rosario almost immediately on the condition that the lives of the crew be spared. De Roebuck brought the ship, with 55,000 ducats of pay on board, up at Torbay; more importantly, the gunpowder was immediately distributed among the large English ships to replenish the substantially dwindled supplies. It is indicative of English fleet relations that the excuse accepted for Drake's gross insubordination was that he had sailed south, fearing that the Spaniards would make a detour in the night, and then discovered the Rosario purely by chance.

Around 11 a.m., the Spanish abandoned the sinking San Salvador, leaving behind the wounded. Thomas Fleming, however, managed to bring the ship into Weymouth harbor, giving the English another 132 barrels of gunpowder, together with the gunpowder from the Rosario a quantity equal to a 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 cargo ships in the middle, the strongest ships in the rear and the galleys in the vanguard. Diego Enríquez was appointed to succeed Pedro de Valdés as captain of the Andalusian squadron. That discipline was much stricter on the Spanish side was evidenced by the order that any captain who still broke formation should be hung without pardon. He also sent another pinas to Parma with the urgent message to send counter-messages as soon as possible. During the night, De Moncada, the captain of the galleys, refused to launch a surprise moonlight attack on the English fleet.

Fight of Aug. 2

The next day the wind turned northeast and the Armada now had the windward mark, off the coast of Dorset. Medina Sidonia decided to attack. Howard in the center and Drake on the south side of the battle, again effortlessly kept their distance. A huge cannonade erupted, the fiercest the world had yet seen, with the much faster-firing English ships in particular firing a significant portion of their powder. Again, the effect was slight due to the excessive 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 as a pirate knew this hunting ground like the back of his hand, anchored right in the calm waters between the strong tidal current and the down, countercurrent; the galleys failed to reach him. Howard attempted to come to Frobisher's aid, and when Medina Sidonia noticed this, he wanted to take advantage of 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. Alone, 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 take up the offer but instead fired at 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, blessed by the Pope, suffered heavily, but the hull was not pierced anywhere, although the ship was struck some five hundred times.

Meanwhile, the wind had shifted again to south-west and the Armada resumed its course eastward, with no further attempt to land at Portland, as the English had feared. Medina Sidonia sent a pinas for the third time to the Duke of Parma urging him to embark his troops.

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 hopes of winning this enticing prize, damaged it very badly. However, the Spanish left wing sank and dismasted the ship, which was taken in tow by a galleon.

Around noon, the Armada arrived at the level of Wight, the place to wait for Parma's reply. Philip had explicitly ordered in his written instructions that the island not be captured immediately. The Spanish war council had not wanted to openly oppose this, but waiting on the open sea was extremely reckless; in fact, one was going to attempt to invade the Spithead, the eastern strait between Wight and the mainland, a maneuver that made sense only if it was followed by a capture of the island or of the opposite port of Portsmouth. The British were deeply 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 that, if it succeeded, simply was not affordable. To avoid this catastrophe, Howard decided to launch a night attack by 24 armed merchantmen - otherwise not too useful ships anyway - on the night of Aug. 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 around noon, and the Armada had until then to enter St. Helen's Roads, the entrance to the Spithead, with the incoming tide; thereafter, the descending tide, due to the strong tidal action in The Channel of tremendous force, would be stronger than the incoming tide for three days and make the sluggish Armada's entry impossible. In the morning, however, the galleon San Luis and the merchantman Santa Ana were found to have lagged behind, and Howard now put everything in place to distract the Armada with this, despite the lull. He had his ships towed by rowboats in the direction of the two stragglers. Three galleys counterattacked, dragging La Rata Encoronada along for more firepower. The rowboats pulled the English galleons crosswise on this so they could give the galleons the full blast, which had to take damaged quarters. A westerly breeze picked up and both fleets now began to fight full battle, with the English, aided by possession of the windward mark, pressing more fiercely than in 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 from Wight, advancing so far northeast as to threaten 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 reachable. After the Spaniards lost precious time in subduing the countercurrent, Frobisher had his boats drag the Triumph into it and, setting all sails, he disappeared southward, pursued in vain by the San Martín.

On the south side, meanwhile, a fierce flank attack centered on the damaged San Mateo had driven the left wing of the Armada east beyond St. Helen's Roads. To avoid running onto 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 harbor. There was now no alternative but to sail as yet to Dunkirk.

On the morning of Aug. 5, Howard knighted many captains, including Hawkins and Frobisher. He had reason for some satisfaction: every landing attempt on the English south coast had been foiled, and the English fleet had clearly shown itself superior to the Spanish, who had mostly been pressed into defense. What still made him pessimistic was that those defenses 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, due to 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 now and confine themselves to a pursuit.

That Friday and the following Saturday the Armada sailed on unhindered to anchor in the afternoon of August 6 at the roadstead of Calais, thirty kilometers from Dunkirk. Medina Sidonia sent a total of three pinasses to Parma on both days, first to ask if some fifty light ships could not leave from Dunkirk in support and then to announce the arrival of the fleet. He had not yet received any return message from Parma, but assumed that the latter was ready with his army and a whole fleet of barges for rapid embarkation and passage.

The real 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 still not having found a solution to the problem of the Dutch blockade. Although Parma claimed he would nevertheless make every effort to bring the operation to a successful conclusion, his actual measures did not reflect this; it was more like he did not want to risk his army. Few barges had been assembled and a construction 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 about three dozen light craft and sixteen cargo ships, but these made no attempt to challenge the Dutch blockade fleet. Indeed, Lieutenant Admiral Justinus van Nassau, Prince Maurice's bastard brother, was so clear that Parma did not dare to go to sea that he withdrew his fleet to Flushing in the hope that Parma's Army of Flanders would sail out after all, so that he could raid and destroy its rear guard between the sandbanks. Because there was no good contact with the English, however, Seymour, startled, took over the blockade. On the Armada's approach, the 36 ships of his English eastern squadron joined Howard's main force, which thus grew to 147 ships; Justinus then re-embarked off Dunkirk with about 30 flying boats - warships with little draught.

On Sunday, August 7, Medina Sidonia was informed of the true situation when at last one of his messengers, don Rodrigo Tello, returned to the Armada. It turned out that Parma, who had established his headquarters in Bruges, had not received word that the Armada was coming until late July and even then had not begun to gather and embark his army. He indicated that he now needed six days to do so - an estimate that Spanish officials on the ground still called richly optimistic, although that army was a lot smaller than originally anticipated: some 13,000 men. Parma complained that the Armada had not defeated the English fleet, but had brought it with it so that the safe route over which its barely seaworthy barges should have sailed in the best of circumstances was now crowded with three hundred warships preparing for another naval battle. In any case, the Armada first had to chase off the Dutch blockading ships.

That requirement presented Medina Sidonia with a major problem. He could not enter the sea current to Dunkirk, 't Scheurtje, with his entire fleet because, as the name implies, it is too narrow to turn back sailing against the prevailing southwest wind - and the route to the northeast past Flushing, was far too long and dangerous to convoy the barges. He could only sweep the entrance with his pinasses and galleys. However, those more maneuverable ships desperately needed the anchored fleet to repel a possible attack with burners. So there was nothing left but to 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 a prime opportunity on August 7 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 assisted in the capture of the city, which was very vulnerable in relation to the Spanish Netherlands. He also had a nice excuse at hand in the support this could offer the French Catholic League. However, Philip's instructions 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 against the Sainte Ligue.

On August 7, Howard had indeed decided to carry out an attack with burners. Since he had only powder left for one battle, the superior firepower of the English ships had to be fully utilized, and that meant this time approaching the Spanish ships as closely as possible. To avoid a general boarding battle with a crowded mass of enemy ships, the Armada did first have to be broken up. Fire ships were the traditional means for this.

In the 16th century, however, it was not yet customary for fleets to carry their own large burners; on a case-by-case basis, small boats were provisionally equipped for that purpose. In Dover there were nineteen such vessels ready and waiting, filled with pitch and brushwood. However, it would take some time to transport them to the fleet, and Howard, unaware that Parma's army was delayed, did not dare to wait even a day. Therefore, eight armed merchantmen were sacrificed from the fleet, which were quickly equipped for their task by overloading their guns with gunpowder and placing all the barrels of pitch, resin and sulfur they could find, along with scrap metal and a few barrels of gunpowder. When darkness fell, they let the ships go with the rising tide that propelled them rapidly toward the Armada.

Medina Sidonia had prepared well for the possibility of a fire attack. Smaller vessels were ready to throw the fire ships off their course, and the larger ships were instructed to remain calmly in position as much as possible and, in the extreme case, to let the anchors slip - so that they could be recovered on their floating ropes. As the eight burners approached and only two could be changed direction, however, great panic broke out. The reason was that rumors had been circulating for months that the English were going to use "Antwerps 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 from 1584, had turned two little ships of seventy tons with a few thousand kilos of gunpowder and two time mechanisms into floating time bombs, destroying (partially and temporarily) Farneseses ship bridge over the Scheldt. The gigantic explosion had killed nearly 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 there.

Now that work in fact consisted of designing fortifications, and in August Giambelli was busy constructing a huge mined ship boom across the Thames, but the Spaniards did not 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 on the Armada was Diego Flores de Valdés, who gave the general order to cut the anchor ropes, with the result that the fleet blew apart on the tide. Because the sails of the anchored ships were lowered, it was difficult to steer them. No Spanish ship was hit and the burners passed without doing damage, but the defensive formation was completely broken. The galjas San Lorenzo, De Moncada's flagship, slid in the confusion over the anchor mooring of the San Juan de Sicilia and struck the shore with a broken rudder.

At daybreak on August 8, the Armada made frantic attempts to get back into formation, but it proved too difficult for the mass of unwieldy armed merchantmen to reach Calais roadstead again quickly against current and wind. The main force of the English fleet pounced on the now isolated and vulnerable actual warships, which did manage to hold their positions.

The first casualty was the San Lorenzo. The galleon still tried to reach the port of Calais but ran aground on a sandbar just below the fortifications and capsized so that some of the 312 galley slaves drowned; the others broke loose in their terror and engaged in a fight with the crew, most of whom made their way across the mud flats to safety. Soon about a hundred Englishmen mingled in the fray, coming from the rowboats of Howard who hoped to win the capital ship personally as a prize. Admiral De Moncada was killed and the English killed all remaining crew and slaves, but suffered significant losses themselves in the process, including as 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 overtaken some eastward receding galleons off Grevelingen (today's Gravelines in French Flanders). Drake's squadron surrounded the San Martín and approached within a hundred yards, allowing three hours to shoot through the hull of the Spanish flagship. Then Frobisher's and Hawkins' squadrons did it again. By focusing so much on one ship, they gave the other Spanish ships time to re-form and come to the aid of the San Martín. The first ships to arrive were given a beating by Drake, who had sailed towards 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 led to most ships having shot their last powder by the end of the morning. Still the English did not board any ships; the only reference to anything of the sort comes from the San Mateo who reported that a single English sailor jumped aboard but was immediately cut to pieces.

For Henry Seymour's squadron on the Rainbow, this was its first battle, and it still had gunpowder in stock; this it used to keep the San Felipe and San Mateo under fire for another three hours during the early afternoon, until both galleons drifted in a sinking state toward the Flemish sandbanks. Apart from this success, the English failed to further decisively exploit their numerical superiority and superiority in firepower, a consequence of their orderless way of fighting; the much more effective line tactics would take two more generations to develop. The wind that had turned to the north and threatened to throw the entire Armada onto the coast now posed the greatest danger. Around six o'clock, however, both fleets were beset by a thunderstorm with fierce driving rain from the southwest; when it cleared, the Armada appeared to have detached itself from the English and even sailed back into the crescent. It seemed to Howard that the whole action had essentially failed.

In reality, the condition of the Spanish fleet was very serious. The number of true warships had dwindled to nineteen, all of which were damaged, some so badly that only great effort prevented them from sinking. Many of the other ships were also grazed heavily; 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, on Spanish ships still afloat, about six hundred men were killed and eight hundred seriously wounded (because the fighting in the Channel had left 167 dead and 241 badly wounded, the total losses amounted to the oft-quoted figure of just under two thousand men); in addition, hundreds of sailors deserted to the English fleet or the Flemish coast - even 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 how to proceed. Only Diego Flores de Valdés voted for an immediate attempt against the prevailing winds to try to regain 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 sailing south alone 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 eastward 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 in Paris, Bernardino de Mendoza, who directed the many pro-Spanish plots in Western Europe, assumed they would contact Catholic insurgents in Scotland. Medina-Sidonia, however, was not inventive enough for such a drastic change of strategy. They only had the pilots 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. So it was decided not to make a decision until the expected English attacks had been repulsed.

The next day, battle damage increased when the San Felipe ran into a sandbar near Flushing and the San Mateo ran into a sandbar near Fort Rammekens. Both ships were taken by the Dutch insurgents; the noblemen continued to be held captive for ransom; the prisoners of war of lower rank on board were "flushed feet": they were whipped from the deck, giving them a choice between being immediately beaten to death or jumping into the sea to drown. Since 1587, this had been prescribed by the States General to deter Dutchmen from entering Spanish naval service and avoid maintenance costs. According to the then prevailing law of war, one always surrendered at mercy or disfavor. The banner of the San Mateo is still on display at the Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden. The freighter La Trinidad Valencera also ran aground on the coast, off Blankenberge, and surrendered to Captain Robert Crosse on the Hope.

How unrealistic the thought of sailing back south was became apparent when a northwest wind blew in that morning, which should have made such a thing easier. In fact, a mood of doom shook the fleet: people feared running en masse on the Zeeland banks 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 11 a.m. the wind suddenly turned to the south, they experienced it as divine intervention. The English fleet continued to pursue the northward receding Armada, except for Seymour's squadron, which again took up a blockade position near Dunkirk. Another court-martial was held that evening; now only De Recalde wanted to make another attempt to resume the attack. The others, however, did not dare make an open decision immediately to return, so they decided to wait four more days for a favorable northerly wind. If this failed to materialize, they would sail around Scotland.

On Aug. 10, the English fleet pressed somewhat more strongly, and Medina Sidonia gave three signal shots to the fleet to provide front; however, most of the ships simply continued northward. It did not come to a battle but Medina Sidonia had 21 captains sentenced to death, one of whom, Cristóbal de Avila, was immediately hanged. On Aug. 12, they reached Scotland off the Firth of Forth, pursued by the English. Saturday, Aug. 13, the wind turned to the northwest and the English gave up the chase, due to lack of food supplies. Thus, if the Armada had wanted to abide by the August 9 decision, 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 and her courtiers went 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 battle. Elizabeth sat on a white gelding and was dressed in a white silk dress under a silver breasted cuirass; in her right hand she carried a silver command staff. She delivered a short impromptu speech of which only fragments have survived and which was not easily understood due to Elizabeth's habit of speaking indoors to hide her bad teeth. The following day, upon request, the key points were noted down by Doctor Lionel Sharp and read aloud once more to all the men. In 1588, the event apparently did not make much of an impression; the speech is not mentioned in any 16th-century sources. It was not until 1654 that a printed version was published based on a letter written by Sharp in 1623. The letter contains a significantly different and much more polished text, which was clearly intended to impress a large readership and which is indeed still widely cited 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 included the pledge: "I already know that for your triumph you have earned rewards and laurel crowns and We assure you, on the word of a Prince, that they will be duly paid to you." The reality was different.

That same day, the ships of the English fleet began entering their ports. According to customary law in force, sailors could be discarded only after their wages had been paid. However, no money had been made available for that purpose. But if crews were to be kept on board, they also had to be fed. No budget existed for that either. So Elizabeth ordered 14 472 of the 15 925 men but without pay to be laid off. Some were close to home; thousands more, 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 typhoid fever broke out and killed 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 institutionalized infirmary to provide assistance. Howard was so ashamed of the situation that he, nevertheless a notoriously stingy man, tried to relieve as much need as possible out of his own pocket. In 1590, although the three were by no means friends along with Drake and Hawkins, he founded for the benefit of sailors the Chatham Chest, England's very first health insurance and pension fund.

The route chosen by Medina Sidonia became an agony: he was unfamiliar with the local currents and winds and, by his own account, even got caught in a hurricane - rare at such a northern latitude. By the North Sea, the fleet had been patched up as much as possible for the distant voyage. Nevertheless, two damaged ships strayed and ran aground on the Norwegian coast. On Aug. 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 sink on Fair Isle on Sept. 27. Meanwhile, they had rounded Scotland and the decision was made to sail as westerly as possible to avoid Ireland. By 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 Sept. 3, the San Martín had not moved any further south; seventeen other ships had moved away from the fleet in the meantime. It is often assumed that the Armada was plagued by exceptionally heavy storms at this stage, but there is actually no supporting evidence for this. Probably the damaged and unwieldy ships were already unable to cope well with the normal rough seas here.

The delay depleted drinking water; captured rainwater did not compensate adequately. Many captains now decided on their own authority to defect to Ireland to replenish 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 too east; often the anchors were also missing. At least 26 ships crashed on the cliffs of Ireland's west coast, most between Sept. 16 and Sept. 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 Oct. 7 on which day it died of sickness and exhaustion, the Juan Bautista a week later Santander and the San Pedro, in an unsuccessful attempt to reach France, struck the Devon coast on Nov. 7. The galley Zuniga also forcibly provided water and food at Liscannor Castle, departed again on Sept. 23 and finally reached Le Havre.

At times it seemed that they could have saved themselves, then disaster struck anyway. De Leiva stranded his Rata Santa Maria Encoronada in Tullaghan Bay but managed to reach shore 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, too, ran aground 150 kilometers north at Loughros More. Now all marched thirty kilometers south to Killybegs where the galley La Girona had sought shelter. With an estimated 1,300 men aboard, this ship too attempted to sail to Scotland; on October 28 it struck the Giant's Causeway and sank with all hands.

Of the six to seven thousand men in total shipwrecked off Ireland, the majority thus drowned; the three thousand remaining posed a serious threat to the rather shaky English authority over the island. England had only 1,250 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 could have raised 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 supposedly 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 19th century. In fact, a thousand or so managed to escape death by going into hiding with the Irish people, 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. On Nov. 18, however, English secret agent John Smollett managed to blow up the ship at night, 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 the 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 by the sword on the beach. In retaliation, Parma had four hundred Dutch prisoners of war beheaded.

The small thousand prisoners of war in England itself, like those of the Rosario, were not killed but it took some until 1597 before they could return; most had died by then from forced labor and malnutrition; they mostly depended on charity for sustenance. The nobles who were "discharged" received better treatment; still, Pedro de Valdés was not able to leave England for £1500 until 1593.

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 Sept. 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 with 22 ships reached Laredo. The condition on the vessels was terrible. The crews had had to sustain themselves 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 were eventually lost in total, but that number was at least 39; about 20 were probably lost at sea without leaving a trace. At least 67 ships are known to have reached Spain or a safe haven elsewhere, many of them badly 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 ensure victory. He saw the defeat as punishment for his sinful lifestyle, of which others were now 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 had the survivors, as far as circumstances permitted, taken in and cared for, sent out ships with supplies to face ships still suspected at sea, and punished no one for failure except Diego Flores de Valdés, against whom an extremely negative mood had arisen among the rest of the fleet - and even he got off with a light prison sentence. Medina Sidonia was not given a second fleet command - but then again, he had written to Philip that he was determined never to set foot on a ship again. However, Philip did begin to doubt Parma's reliability. The English allowed a rumor to spread that the latter had sabotaged the expedition in exchange for kingship of the Netherlands.

However, Philip also believed that failure could be a God-sent trial, 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. Spain was thus by no means counted out as a naval power by the defeat of 1588; in fact, its navy would increase 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 decayed 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 populations still adhered to the old faith. In the 16th century there was a widespread belief that the course of natural events was not accidental but the expression of God's will. Therefore, the meteorological setback experienced by the Armada was offered 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, and in which all honor was given to the "Breath of the Lord" that had preserved 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, when in fact the strategic and tactical situation was unfavorable for the Spaniards: they were technologically behind the English fleet and it would have been rather 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 adviser to the English and Irish Queen Elizabeth I, released 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. Publications published at the 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 term "Armada" was alive and well in Holland at the time is evidenced 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 devastatingly defeated by Maarten Tromp at the Battle of Duins, was later given the designation Fifth Armada.

In the 19th century, nationalist historiography came into vogue, which sought to study the past in order to find an explanation and justification for the greatness of the nation; 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 purely by patriotic naval heroes, were said to have taken on, spurred on by Elizabeth's inspirational words, the greatest fleet in history, sent out by the evil religious fanatic Philip, and through a miraculous storm achieved 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 input mostly went unmentioned. The Dutch version used much the same elements but with a different thrust: the English ships proved powerless against the Armada, but because the Dutch successfully carried out their mission to block Parma, the miraculous storm was able to scatter the Spanish fleet. Both versions lamented the Irish atrocities, but forgot their own systematic slaughter of prisoners of war.

Today, the great fame of the Spanish Armada is still due to the 19th-century story being retold again and again, albeit slowly incorporating more results of modern historical research. That the myth is still alive is evidenced by a film like 2007's Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

The Spanish Armada was also taken as inspiration for a neighborhood in 's-Hertogenbosch. In the Paleiskwartier, ten buildings, containing 255 apartments, were built with the profile of Spanish galleons. The project was accomplished in 2002 through 2005 by English architect Anthony McGuirk.

Sources

1. Spanish Armada
2. Spaanse Armada
3. a b c Martin, C.; Parker, G. (1999): The Spanish Armada, Manchester University Press
4. a b Kinard, J. (2007): Artillery. An Illustrated History of Its Impact, ABC-CLIO
5. Von Salamis bis Dien Bien Phu, S. 105.
6. Kampf um die Meere, S. 152.
7. Kampf um die Meere, S. 152.
8. Leśniewski S., „Magazyn Historyczny Mówią Wieki”, 05/2003.
9. ^ Although the English attempted the same tactic in Portugal the following year, the army under Norris' command marching on Lisbon expecting Drake to simultaneously attack the city with his ships.Gorrochategui Santos 2018, p. 123[150]