ARMADA, THE SPANISH

A naval expedition sent in 1588 by philip ii, king of spain to rendezvous with the Spanish army in the Netherlands and to escort it across the English Channel in order to effect the conquest of England. Philip II embarked on this enterprise against Queen Elizabeth I after the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, on Feb. 18, 1587. Mary's failure to accede to the English throne had removed the threat of strong alliance between England and France that might have effectively closed the English Channel to Spain, thereby rendering Philip's position in the Spanish Netherlands intolerable. Until 1587 many cogent economic, strategic, and diplomatic reasons favored peace between Philip and Elizabeth. Since 1567, however, seamen such as John Hawkins and Francis Drake had encroached on Spain's trade monopoly with her American colonies, and had acted as privateers against Spanish ports and shipping. Elizabeth, moreover, fearing the effects that a victorious Spanish suppression of the Dutch revolt would have on the Protestant cause and on England's national security and commerce, had supplied the Dutch with men, money, and material.

Preparation of the Fleet. In 1587 Philip II began to fit out the expedition against England, but was delayed by Drake's pillaging of Cadiz harbor and his blockading operations off the Portuguese coast. His destruction of available supplies of seasoned barrel staves destined for the preservation of the Armada's provisions further jeopardized its success. In February 1588, Philip II placed Alonzo Pérez de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia, in command. Although he was inexperienced as an admiral, Medina Sidonia nevertheless quickly organized the fleet; by May 30, there were 130 assorted ships carrying 30,000 men at Lisbon, led by a fighting core of 20 galleons. It was forced by storms to put into Coruña for refitting and reprovisioning. On July 22, a fair wind for England blew the Armada northward, forcing at the same time the fortuitous turnabout of an English fleet that had been sailing to engage the Spaniards in their home waters.

To prevent any landing on the English coast and to destroy the Armada were the objectives of the English fleet, comprising 21 of the fastest, most modern, and best-armed galleons in Europe, equal to and often larger than their Spanish counterparts. These warships, commanded by the experienced Admirals John Hawkins, Martin Frobisher, and Francis Drake under First Lord Howard of Effingham, were supported by 151 other armed vessels.

The Encounter. As the Armada, arrayed in an impregnable crescentlike formation slowly plodded up the Channel between July 31 and August 6, two concepts of naval warfare clashed in the greatest sea battle in history to that time. The Spanish with their high forecastled and pooped galleons filled with soldiers strove to lure the English ships within grappling distance and capture them. The English with their more seaworthy and faster galleons hoped to sink their opponents with long-range culver-in cannon. When the Armada anchored at Calais roads, both sides had practically exhausted their supply of shot without having inflicted significant damage on each other.

Medina Sidonia had up to this point succeeded according to the royal plan, but the Spanish general, Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, was not prepared to embark his troops at the rendezvous near Dunkirk. He considered the venture impossible from a military point of view and had so advised Philip II several times. Heavily armed Dutch flyboats controlled the intervening waters between the Armada's anchorage and the coast, so that before Parma's troop barges could have reached the protection of the galleons' guns, these flyboats would have decimated them.

Defeat. On the night of August 7, five English fireships threw the anchored Spaniards into a panic, causing them to slip their cables and scatter. Medina Sidonia again reassembled his fleet and on August 8 the last battle began. The English finally realized that if they were to destroy the enemy they must move in close to deliver really damaging broadsides. Having exhausted their supply of large shot, the Spanish sustained serious damage, which ended short of complete destruction when the English also ran out of cannon balls. On August 9, after escaping destruction again on the Zeeland sandbars, the Armada sailed into the North Sea. The English pursued the Spanish northward until on August 12, they turned wearily into the Firth of Forth, satisfied that the immediate danger of invasion was past.

Medina Sidonia now issued orders that the desperate fleet would sail north around the Shetland Islands and southward into the Atlantic, giving wide berth to the inhospitable western coast of Ireland. Sixty-four battered hulks, which had followed the Admiral's instructions, limped into northern Spanish ports at the end of September carrying 9,000 sick and dying men.

Bibliography: g. mattingly, The Armada (Boston 1959); The "Invincible" Armada and Elizabethan England (Ithaca, NY 1963). m. a. lewis, Armada Guns, A Comparative Study of English and Spanish Armaments (London 1961). t. woodrooffe, The Enterprise of England (London 1958). j. a. williamson, The Age of Drake (London 1938); Hawkins of Plymouth (London 1949). j. s. corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, 2 v. (New York 1898). a. l. rowse, The Expansion of Elizabethan England (New York 1955). r. b. merriman, The Rise of the Spanish Empire in the Old World and in the New, 4 v. (New York 1934). l. van der essen, Alexandre Farnèse, 5 v. (Brussels 1933–37). a. mckee, From Merciless Invaders: An Eye-Witness Account of the Spanish Armada (London 1963). c. martin and g. parker, The Spanish Armada (New York 1988). r. whiting, The Enterprise of England (Gloucester, UK 1988).

[r. h. trame]