Guns
in the Narrow Sea
The
Armada’s Fire Power and the English Navy’s
 |
| Battle During the Armada Campaign |
One of the most perplexing problems in
Military history is the question of just how did the Armada campaign fail? The
after all it was called “The Invincible Armada”. The Spanish were upon the
sailing of the Armada almost comically confident but it ended in disaster and
defeat.
In two previous postings I looked at
Elisabeth I’s handling of her war effort and at Alonzo Perez de Guzman el Bueno
Duke of Medina Sidonia the commander of the Armada. In the case of Elisabeth I
to show that her handling of the war effort was quite reasonable and in the
case of the Duke of Medina Sidonia to show that the myth of his incompetence
was/ is just that a myth.1
Here I will examine the contentious issue
of fire power.
It is now generally recognized that the
odds were against the Spanish and that the chances of the operation actually
succeeding were not high. Certainly a commander of genius might have done so
but the Duke of Medina Sidonia although a supremely competent bureaucrat and
administrator was no military genius. Further the Duke was hamstrung by orders
that he dare not deviate from that quite effectively constrained his freedom of
action.2
3. Despite all this the Duke carried out
his assigned task with success up to a point. The Duke was supposed to sail up
the English Channel and rendezvous with the Duke of Parma’s army in the Low
Countries off the Belgian coast and convoy the combined force to Kent where
they would land and impose peace on England. Well amazingly the Duke of Medina
Sidonia did get to the Belgian coast and was lying in wait for Parma’s army. He
did this despite the superiority of English ships in terms of maneuver and the
lack of a port to dock in after leaving Spain. It was in its own way rather
remarkable.
The initial engagements in the channel
showed the quite significant superiority of the English fleet which forced the
Spanish to fight defensively all the way down the channel. However the English
were quite unable, to their consternation, able to break up the Spanish fleet
or cause it significant harm. Despite the fact that Spanish gunnery was
pathetic and the Spanish inflicted little harm on the English. It appears that
if the Spanish had been able to keep their fleet intact they would have been
able to escort Parma’s army to Kent. And since the Duke of Parma was without a
doubt one of the thee finest soldiers of his day it is likely that he would
have swiftly imposed a peace on England that would have satisfied all Spanish
demands and driven England out of the war with Spain.3
There are two big ifs in all of this. The
Dutch and the sandbanks of the Low Countries. All of the coast line of area of
the low countries were the Duke of Parma was supposed to embark his army had
numerous shoals and sand banks which the Armada could not cross because could
not navigate such shallow water, This created a gap between the Armada and the
Duke of Parma’s army any were from 10 to 40 miles in width. Parma’s army would
have to cross that gap in barges to join the Armada to be escorted to England.
And in those shoals and among the sandbanks was the shallow draft boats of the
Dutch led by Justin of Nassau. The Dutch had repeatedly defeated the coastal naval
forces of the Spanish in the Low Countries and now enjoyed uncontested
supremacy in coastal waters. Also Justin’s boats were paroling these coastal
waters precisely to prevent such rendezvous. It would appear to be the case
that any attempt by the Duke of Parma to send his men to meet the Armada in barges
from ports like Gravelines would end in his men being massacred by the Dutch
and the Armada because of the shoals and sand banks would be powerless to
intervene.
It is likely also that the Duke of Parma
did not take the invasion plan with complete seriousness and that his
preparations were last minute and dilatory because he had little fate in the
whole idea. This may have led him to devote a less than full effort to making
it succeed.4
So despite the fact that the Duke of
Medina Sidonia got the Armada precisely where it was supposed to be the whole
scheme may have been impossible to complete right from the start. And that for
reasons entirely beyond the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s control.
Of course the English could not know this
for certain. And it doesn’t explain just how the Armada was in fact defeated.
After all mere failure to be able to fulfill its mission for reasons beyond the
control of its commanders does not explain the defeat of the Armada and its
partial destruction.
After all the decisive battle of the
whole Armada expedition was the sea engagement off Gravelines usually called
the battle of Gravelines, which occurred on July 29 1588. It was this defeat
that sealed the defeat of the Armada and marked the beginning of disaster for
it.
The engagement presents puzzles. In it
the English for the first time closed in on the enemy and got into close range
of the Armada ships. The English stopped the long range cannon fights of the
previous engagements, which had done little damage and stopped, mostly, chasing
after single ships and instead closed in for a close engagement with the main
Spanish ships.
To briefly describe the engagement. When
the Armada was anchored off Calais and the Duke of Medina Sidonia waiting for
the Duke of Parma to reply to his messages about when will the army be ready to
embark the English who were convinced that if they didn’t do something Parma
would have embarked his army and the Armada, whose formations the English had
singularly failed to shake would then escort it to England. The English had for
no good reason little faith in the Dutch being able to block the embarkation of
Parma’s troops.
The English sent fire ships against the
anchored Armada. Despite the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s rather sensible and
successful precautions against fire ships the Armada largely dispersed by the
morning of the 29th of July. With the Armada dispersed the English
decided to close. The Spanish wanted to board, and with their masses of
soldiers on their ships they could not fail to win that sort of engagement. The
English closed but their more nimble ships easily avoided being boarded. The
Duke of Medina Sidonia had bravely stood back to fight the English and allow
the Armada to reform. The resulting battle of Gravelines lasted all day.
The end result was defeat for the
Armada. 1 ship was sunk, 2 were grounded and lost. 800 men were killed and over
1,000 were wounded among the Spanish. Many Spanish ships were severely damaged
by cannon fire and were in very poor shape. If the Spanish fleet was defeated
it was not destroyed. But it was also driven well past the point that it could rendezvous
with Parma’s army.5
In subsequent days the Armada barely
avoided being driven onto the sand banks and shoals of the Dutch province of
Zealand and in the end it was forced to retreat back to Spain by going round
the British Isles.6
The decisive encounter was the battle of
Gravelines and here in contrast to the Spanish losses, English losses were
negligible, apparently less than 50 men killed or wounded and damage to the
English ships was equally negligible. For in contrast to the English ships many
of the Spanish ships had experienced not just significant casualties they had
pretty significant damage and that played a role in the heavy losses
experienced by the Armada in the voyage around the British Isles to get home.7
The contrast in damages and losses in
the battle of Gravelines needs an explanation. Certainly it decisively refutes
any idea of a huge invincible Armada and a tiny, but heroic English defending
force. Such disparity of losses indicates that there was something
fundamentally wrong with the losing side.
Let us start with ships. The Armada was
largely composed of transports and supply ships. The actual number of warships
was minimal c. 20-30 out of c. 127. Of those warships many of them were simply
not built for voyaging and fighting in the Atlantic. This of course applies to
the 4-5 galleys which were built for the Mediterranean not the Atlantic. Thus the
Spanish ships were less maneuverable than English ones.
The English fleet was built around a
core consisting of the Royal fleet which had c. 24 ships. These ships had
during the previous decade been built or rebuilt to the so-called new “race
built” design. This design made ships easier to maneuver and also important
enabled them to hold more cannon. There was also a small number of privately owned
ships in the English fleet that were also loaded with artillery and “race built”.
The Spanish ships in contrast were less heavily built and correspondingly less
able to withstand damage.8
In terms of cannon there are various
estimates. Sadly this type of bean counting isn’t has useful as it appears
because people at the time used different words for different types of cannon
all of which makes attempting to compare the cannon in the English and Spanish
fleets difficult. But for what it’s worth here are the estimates.
Cannon Periers Culverins
English 55 43 1,874
Spanish 163 326 635
9
Another list is as follows:
Whole Whole Galleons
and Queen’s
Spanish Fleet English Fleet Galleasses Ships
Cannon 163 55 163 55
And Demi Cannon
Cannon Perier 326 43 196 38
Culverin 165 153 165 130
Demi-Culverin 137 344 47 200
Saker 144 662 27 220
Minion 189 715 132 40
10
Although the above would seem to
indicate that the Spanish had an advantage in the heavier guns, i.e., cannon
and periers it appears that overall the English had an advantage in cannon. As
I said the figures are disputable in the extreme. The saker and minion were
basically anti personal weapons not ship smashers. Also some of the Spanish
cannon etc., were not ship cannon but siege weapons their utility at sea was
minimal. One estimate is that the English fleet had twice the gun armament than
the Spanish fleet. In another it is calculated that the Spanish had 150 cannon
firing 16 lbs. or more has against the English having 250 cannon in their fleet
that could do so. 11
Of course one should also take into
account that the English ships were far more maneuverable than the Spanish
ships. To add to the problems it appears that the English ships had more men to
serve as gunners. The Spanish warships rarely had more than 10 gunners per
ship. At least in the Royal navy part of the English fleet the number of
gunners per ship varied between 20 – 40. Also it appears that the Spanish cannon, (I
mean cannon her in the generic sense.), were not set up like the English cannon
to be re-loadable easily. The result was that the Spanish rate of fire was
extremely low, perhaps has little has 1 or two shots per day!12
Two other factors made things even
worst. One was that the Armada ran out of small shot and given that they seem
to be only able to fire small shot while in combat. It appears to be the case
that during the Armada Elizabeth I’s ships experienced light damage that was
easily repaired.13
In fact digs at wreaks of ships of the
Armada reveal large amounts of heavy shot that were never fired. It does appear
to be the case that the Spanish warships were simply unable to fire very much
in combat, certainly compared to the English warships.
It does appear to be the case that the ships
in the Armada contained a smorgasbord of cannon types not fewer than 12 calibers
among 150 canon firing balls of 16 lbs. or more. The English royal fleet only 3
calibers among there 250 cannon that could fire 16 lbs. or more balls. It also
does appear to be the case that the Spanish cannon in their ships rested on
carriages that were poorly designed for reloading at sea during combat.14
One final problem from the wrecks of the
Armada ships it has been discovered that much of the shot used was defective,
too much carbon and ferric oxide. This would have made the shot very brittle
and liable to break up upon being fired by the cannon or upon impart with a
hull. Thus doing very little damage. English shot on the other hand was better
made and much less likely to break up upon being fired or hitting a target.15
In fact it appears that the crucial deficiency
in the Armada was that the English not only had faster ships and over all
better armament but were able to reload and fire while in combat while the
Armada’s ability to do so was significantly less. The fact that the Armada had
bad shot was icing on the cake. The result was when the English finally closed
was the one sided battle of Gravelines which was the decisive battle of the
Armada campaign. It appears that the Spanish were able to reload and fire their
quite ineffective small armaments but not the heavier ship smashing cannon
giving the English who were able to fire their cannon repeatedly in combat a
crushing advantage.
Thus right from the beginning the Armada
sailed under a severe disadvantage. It is likely that if the English had closed
earlier and assuming they managed to avoid a ship to ship boarding melee, where
the huge Spanish advantage in soldiers would come into play, that the results
would have been the same. One sided defeat.
2. Mattingly, Garrett, The Armada, Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston,
1959, pp. 76-78, 757-267.Howarth, David, The
Voyage of The Armada, Cassell & Co., 1981, pp. 46-59, Rodger, N. A. M.,
The Safeguard of the Sea, HaperCollins,
New York, 1997, p. 263.
3. IBID, Parker, Geoffrey, The Grand Strategy Philip II, Yale
University Press, New Haven Conn, 1998, pp. 179-203.
4. Howarth, pp. 41-42, Parker, pp.
229-250.
5. Howarth, pp. 195-191, Parker, pp.
266-267, Mattingly, pp. 326-334, Fuller, J. F. C., A Military History of the Western World, v. II, Da Capo, New York,
1055, pp. 30-32.
6. Mattingly, pp. 335-341.
7. Footnote 5.
8. Rodger, pp. 215-220, Parker, pp.
252-253.
9. Fuller, p. 14.
10. Howarth, p. 98.
11. Rodger, p. 264.
12. Parker, pp. 255-262, Rodger, p. 270.
13. Parker, pp. 259-260.
14. Parker, pp. 260-262..
15. Howarth, pp. 190-191.
Pierre Cloutier
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