The Spanish Armada - From its Origins to the Lizard (Part 1)

foreign [Music] [Music] at the end of July 1588 a massive Fleet Hove interview just off the lizard Cornwall the fleet had left its port in karuna at over 137 strong it was now slightly reduced but it still numbered well over 120 vessels but why this massive and expensive collection of shipping was sailing under the banner of the king of Spain to attack the kingdom of England ultimately is answered by two events that took place over half a century before will be rather interestingly they took place over only two years apart back in the early 1530s in 1534 King Henry VII Fed Up of negotiating with the Pope to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon declared that the Church of England would be separate from the Roman Catholic Church although initially the beliefs of the two organizations remained relatively aligned they would diverge more and more rapidly over the coming decades to a degree such that an attempt to return England Duke Catholicism by his daughter Queen Mary which also included a marriage alliance with Spain met with great resistance and a shift even further into what was becoming known as protestantism under the rule of Mary's successor Queen Elizabeth the first this set up a great amount of religious tension between the two kingdoms that in turn led to a number of specific political decisions from both sides from Elizabeth tacit support for Dutch Rebels who are attempting to throw Spain out of what was at this stage the Spanish Netherlands to King Philip II calling for and receiving the Pope's blessing for his expedition making the eventual sailing of the Armada as much a crusade as a political move two years prior to this Divergence in 1532 was another starting point for tension between the two kingdoms in that year Francisco Pizarro led a group of conquistadors into the Andes mountains and began what would eventually become the overthrow of the Inca Empire although the Aztec empire had been taken over by Hernan Cortes sometime earlier the Inca Empire was Far richer in gold silver and gems these were then extracted and shipped along the Pacific coast all across Central America loaded onto treasure ships and sent across the Atlantic to Spain which subsequently became fabulously wealthy and used the precious metals which were then turned into coins to finance ever larger military Expeditions amongst other things of course dumping so much gold and silver into a relatively limited economic pool results in inevitable inflation but when you have more than 60 percent of the world's silver production in your control much of it coming out of the Mountain of Potter sea in what is now Bolivia you just extracted even more of the metal the natives across the Spanish Empire of South and Central America were often seen at this stage as entirely Expendable labor in the service of resource extraction and initially they were enslaved on a wide scale whilst the introduction of new laws technically forbade this various forms of effective slavery continued mostly by abusing the pre-established Inca labor as tax system this along with European diseases ravaged the native populations and so in turn African slaves were imported to both make up further numbers generally and rather specifically to fill roles where slaves were explicitly required since the Spanish colonies had little need for the most common English trade goods at the time various captains sought other ways to get their hands on some of this massive wealth that was being transported out of the new world one of these attempts was a series of slave trading voyages conducted by John Hawkins and Francis Drake but the Spanish authorities wanted a closed economic system so that as much wealth as possible remained within Spanish hands where of course it could be heavily taxed and thus returned back to the crown this resulted in the 1568 Battle of San Juan de alua destroying much of the Squadron that Hawkins and Drake had brought with them and setting them on a path of immunity with the Spanish Empire as a whole with the prospect of any kind of trade with the Spanish colonies rather stymied Drake and others turned instead to privateering and began a series of attacks on Spanish settlements and shipping which aimed to Simply steal as much of the gold silver and gems as humanly possible such was The Wealth disparity involved between Spain and England at the time that some of the more successful English missions returned more money to the queen and Court who were often investors in the schemes than the entire annual government revenue for the kingdom for reference that would equate today to somebody rocking up on the Thames with a convoy of ships carrying just over 2 trillion pounds in stolen goods and put that into perspective there are Modern Day Drake would have to show up with a complete conga line consisting of vessels carrying almost every single barrel of oil produced in the course of the entire past year or just one of the world's current largest oil tankers with its holds two-thirds full of color printer ink anyway between the depredations of English privateers English interference in the Netherlands and the execution of Mary Queen of Scots Philip II of Spain felt he'd had more than enough of English Shenanigans and decided to put an end to all of these issues at a stroke by invading the country and making it yet another part of the Spanish Empire this is of course a very shortened version of 50 years of on-again off-again hostilities and occasional alliances between the two countries but we could be here for hours just going over the prologue to the main event if we went into it in extreme detail but we will cover the final run-up in a little bit more detail now more immediately therefore in 1580 less than a decade before the Armada would sail Philip had managed to get himself crowned king of Portugal in something of a hostile takeover this added the considerable power and skill of the Portuguese Fleet tier Zone as tension spiraled over the course of the 1580s so too did the idea of some kind of major attack on England grow in 1583 the Marquee of Santa Cruz a man with a deserved reputation as a fearsome and successful Admiral completed the conquest of the Azores one of the last holdouts of Portuguese resistance and he suggested that his Naval and amphibious attack be modified for use against England in 1584 the following year this plan would sail the fleet up the Thames straight into London seizing the capital and then drawing on troops from the army of Flanders to help occupy the rest of the country however whilst this was discussed in some detail the plan was eventually shelved as Philip initially saw a more immediate need to use Santa Cruz's veteran troops to ethnically cleanse Castile although ultimately they are actually sent up to the Spanish Netherlands where they bulked up the army of Flanders and would eventually assist in the capture of Antwerp a few years down the line this helped partially tick the box that the Duke of Palmer Phillips nephew and commander of the army of Flanders had set out in his own scheme namely that the subjugation of the Netherlands should be holy or at least substantially complete before any major portion of his forces were earmarked for cross-channel operations then in 1585 a new pope sixtus V came to power and he seemed to be very keen on the crushing of Heretics in general and the invasion of England in particular at this stage with the Netherlands campaign very much still underway Philip was initially a little bit resistant to the idea of splitting his forces but open War was declared that same year as the Dutch Rebels desperate with the siege of Antwerp entering its final stages at that point signed the Treaty of non-such which fully committed England to assisting their War efforts openly including the occupation of four fortified towns on the approaches to Antwerp the treaty also offered Elizabeth sovereignty over the Netherlands but this was actually one Clause that she declined in an effort to avoid all-out war with Spain this series of events led to the seizure of any English ships that were found in Spanish ports and that in turn led to attacks on Spanish fishing fleets in the North Atlantic and so you were effectively in a state of open War even though technically the formal letters of Declaration had actually been exchanged the English moved first with a series of further attacks on Spanish Holdings in the Americas which included the capture of the treasure ship Santa Ana this combination of English threats to his territory his financial supply lines and his resource supply lines made Philip change his mind about leaving them until after the Dutch had been fully crushed in October 1585 he accepted the Pope's call to invade England but cautioned that since the decision was being made so late in the year there was no chance of the Expedition being launched in 1586 and it would have to wait until 1587. three options were initially considered first forming a massive Fleet smashing straight through the English ships and transporting the army of Flanders across to the English South Coast in one brutal iron-listed assault alternatively the fleet could land its troops somewhere on British soil in a surprise attack ironically similar to how Elizabeth's grandfather who would later become Henry VII had landed his own initial forces in Wales and then Advanced to confront King Richard III or the fleet could attack Ireland drawing off English forces to fight there which would then be followed up by the army of Flanders going straight for the now undefended London in February 1586 Santa Cruz offered to command any such assault and came up with his own variation on the theme this called for a fleet of 150 ships which would carry 55 000 troops with 400 additional support vessels that were not part of the main Fleet this formation would sail strictly defensively perhaps with a diversionary attack on Ireland but the main portion of the fleet would head for Kent where 200 purpose-built landing craft would be supported by no less than 40 galleys and six galliases which were much more suited for close Coastal work than the larger deep sea galleons and these vessels would convey the men and The Siege train to the shore where it would then March for London and then on to the rest of the Kingdom perhaps overestimating things against an inevitable scaling down of his Ambitions Santa Cruz might have been a bit surprised when in April Philip issued his instructions Santa Cruz would form up the fighting ships in Lisbon the Duke of Medina Sedonia would reprise the troops and Supply vessels in the area of Andalusia whilst another experienced sailor Juan Martinez delacalde would form up a large Squadron of Transport in the cantabrian area these were then all combined in Lisbon and sailed to carry out Santa Cruz's plan under his overall direction but this plan was thrown out of balance when an English Fleet led by Drake captured and sacked Santo Domingo capital of the Spanish Caribbean which then caused some of Santa Cruz's carefully prepared ships to be sent across the Atlantic to drive out the English forces meanwhile the Duke of Palmer proposed using Santa Cruz's Fleet as a diversion only whilst he got 30 000 of his own men on to see going barges and sailed for Dover this all resulted in Philip issuing a revised plan a much reduced 120 ships would attack either Ireland or Wales Landing all of their troops there this would provide the opening for Palmer to enact his idea and go for London with Medina Sidonia following up with fresh troops and supplies to enable the fleet's troops to advance as the hammer against Palmer's Anvil to crush any remaining resistance Mary Queen of Scots should then be placed on the throne with a Spanish husband or Philip's choosing and in the event of the worst possible outcome in the English somehow fighting the veteran Spanish troops to a standstill they should only leave the country when full freedom for English Catholics a withdrawal of English troops from the Netherlands and a large amount of money in the form of an Indemnity had all been secured to both pay for this massive Expedition and to impoverish England which would then prevent it from being easily able to turn back on its word once the Spanish troops had left this was all planned to be carried out over the summer of 1587. one final Revision in July 1586 came from Philip the attack on Ireland would proceed but Palmer's forces were to sit tight after two months which would allow for the maximum number of English troops and ships to be sent over to Ireland to try and stop the Spanish the Army would then re-embark and sail up the channel linking up with Palmer Landing its own troops and Palmer's troops in Kent and then Marching for London as work on the fleet and the troops got underway Philip moved to cut England off diplomatically although as it turned out in February 1587 Elizabeth did most of his work for him by executing Mary Queen of Scots this put a crimp into the plans of who would actually be in charge of England afterwards but otherwise it only spurred on Spanish efforts recognizing that the full force of the Spanish Empire under such an experienced battle leader as Santa Cruz was unlikely to allow particularly successful defense in early 1587 Drake was ordered to take a fleet to Spain to prevent or at least delay the Spanish Fleet from sailing although a number of storms got in the way by late April the English Fleet had reached the Bay of cardiz where a good portion of the enemy fleet was assembling raiding Spanish shipping on their way down on the 29th and 30th the English Fleet forced aside these small force of galleons that were present to guard the port and fell on the supply ships burning 27 and capturing another four fully loaded vessels leaving just six intact in the various harder to reach areas of the port capturing a Spanish Treasure Galleon on the way home this Expedition labeled by Drake as the singing of the king of Spain's beard delayed the launching of the Armada as new ships and suppliers were need to be gathered but this only meant the fleet would sail in 1588 instead of 1587 as Philip was determined that his plans would not be denied quite aware of this Drake returned with both the good news of his success and the warning that England now needed to be prepared as much as possible to resist a Seabourn assault mainly by strengthening its Fleet however this episode serves to illustrate just how powerful Spain was at this time apart from being a minor inconvenience that would result in a simple delay Drake's raid on Cardis was by any reasonable standard of the period at a completely unmitigated disaster for the Spanish this was a time period where surplus food which could then be preserved for long-term storage was not exactly present in any great Supply the loss of thousands of tons of carefully gathered supplies acquired from across Europe was bad enough but the ships themselves also represented massive Investments every Spanish vessel of any size that could be spared from running the Empire had been pulled into the Armada as were good chunk of Europe's largest Merchant vessels Dutch German Venetian genoan and other great ships had been seized in Spanish ports for service in the Armada the equivalent of a Modern Nation preparing for war seizing the flagships of MSC Maersk Evergreen and Harper Lloyd today in modern terms The Raid alone caused about 600 billion pounds of damage but further efforts by the English Fleet to capture various positions on the Portuguese coast and seize a Spanish Squadron that was at Sea came to nothing and the English fleet was gradually forced home but despite these catastrophic losses Spain could deal with this the supply of gold and silver from South America was largely uninterrupted and so orders went out again to every port and city that Spain owned or traded with to send replacements for the food drink barrels ships and other equipment that had been lost all of this would be supplied in a few short months albeit with some of the best cargo vessels in Europe now nothing more than burned out Hulks and not enough time to build new ones to the same oval size and quality if not quantity the armada's supply vessels would suffer somewhat in the in the round whilst all this was being carried out there was also a period of confusion since of course the Spanish had no idea where Drake's Fleet might have gone after it left card is which meant ships and fleets from the Caribbean to India were left in chaos as orders and counter orders to sail together to wait to sail immediately to form escort groups or to attempt to present too many individual targets ran back and forth across land and sea via the somewhat unreliable 16th century messenger system the incident also hardened Spanish resolve seeing the ordered Spanish imperial and trading empire thrown into chaos as various officials tried to guess where the English might turn up next Phillips Secretary of State Don Juan de idiakes wrote with the English established in Holland and Zealand together with their infestation of the Americas and the high seas it seems that defensive measures cannot deal with everything rather it obliges us to put their house to the torch the final effect of the radon card is was to compel a revision to the armada's plan of attack the Duke of Palmer was not a great fan of it in any case in October he pointed out that it would probably Beyond even Spain's ability to field enough troops to defend the gains he'd made in the Netherlands and an army to try and hold on and invade Ireland and an army to invade and hold England all at the same time it was also pointed out that by this stage almost everyone in the entirety of Europe seems to know what the existing Spanish plans were and thus it was a laughable thing to say that there would be any element of surprise switching Ireland for the Isle of Wight was suggested but this also met with resistance in a somewhat prescient statement that Philip somehow later forgot he noted that sailing up the channel without a safe and secure deep water port for the Armada already in Spanish hands would leave it at the mercy of the weather and enemy forces Who would know the coastal conditions and weather far better than the Armada did ideas continued to be raised and knocked down at one point the plan was for the Armada to hold Island to Ransom instead of proceeding up the channel leaving Palmer to attack England itself on his own a more permanent change though was the combining of Santa Cruz's main Attack Force with Medina sedonia's second wave into a single larger Fleet which was further supplemented by the galleons and larger transports that had previously been dedicated to the transatlantic gold and silver convoys and were now thrown in for good measure June 1587 saw Island dropped out of the running completely with the Armada now aiming to attack somewhere on the English South Coast whilst Palmer hit Kent and Scottish Catholics which Philip would send money to would ostensibly rise up and cause distractions in the North but now things started to go wrong Don Juan de Zuniga who had come up with the original plan and had been vital in organizational efforts ever since died and shortly after Philip's Health collapsed under the strain of trying to micromanage an Empire and a major military operation pretty much single-handed Medina Sedonia took over arranging the various squadrons sailing from their respective ports to the much larger single Gatherings and so things continued quietly over the summer of 1587 until the king recovered in the Early Autumn with his health somewhat recovered and now back in the driving seat Philip issued yet another plan which would remain essentially unchanged until the Armada sailed the fleet assembled in the tagus would sail for Margate securing it and sending word of its arrival ahead to Palmer the objective of this move was to prevent English ships on the south coast from linking up with reinforcements from the East Coast which would leave either Fleet too weak to contend with the Armada the Armada would then land its troops in conjunction with Palmer's Army and March on London it did not specify if the Armada would escort Palmer's troops across the channel or just simply wait for him to arrive Philip wanted the fleet to sail that winter but storm damage and simple Logistics saw Santa Cruz resist such demands even threatening to resign command of the fleet entirely and sail with it simply as a volunteer however there was also a series of confused letters to Palmer at first telling him to wait for the Armada then to go it's solo and as the English Fleet had moved to Plymouth then not to risk it uh the thought that Palmer might have risked it caused Philip to ask Santa Cruz to sail urgently with just 35 ships at one point just in case which occasion Santa Cruz to effectively tell Phillip to back off as much as he possibly could tell his King such a thing Palmer was equally confused by the missives but being a seasoned professional decided to stay put as he knew better than to sail his troops in barges completely unprotected into the teeth of a rapidly growing shallow draft Fleet of Dutch vessels all this did have one unintended beneficial consequence for Spain thanks to Burley Elizabeth spymaster English officials were reading most of Philip's Communications with regards to the whole thing which would normally be a good thing for them but the endless and bewildering series of mutually contradictory orders and counter orders left the English completely confused at what as to what the Spanish were or were not doing as a result two English fleets under Howard and Drake were left to wander up and down the Seas trying to cover the entire English and Irish coastlines plus keep an eye on Palmer it took some time and a lot of arguing before the English fleet was eventually ordered to concentrate at Plymouth with an objective to take on stores and then head for the Western Iberian Coastline to try and intercept and destroy the Armada in or near its home ports 87 vessels set sail to this purpose but will force back a week later after making little progress against strong headwinds unknown to them by that time the Armada was actually already at sea but winding the clock back just a little in the space between the close of 1587 and late spring 1588 over in Spain Philip had faced one last and very concerning hurdle a deputation from the King arrived in Lisbon on January the 30th 1588 to find Santa Cruz desperately ill and trying to continue Fleet preparations from his sick bed when he had the energy and lucidity ten days later he was dead it seemed that the Armada was fading with him ships were rotting in Port through lack of use and hence lack of Maintenance the freshly gathered supplies were mouldering in their barrels and the men of the fleet Soldiers and Sailors both were dropping to the same typhus outbreak that had just claimed their Commander into all of this a new Commander was swiftly appointed Don Alonso Perez De Guzman El Bueno better known to history is the Duke of Medina Sedonia who as we've already seen and contrary to myth that he was just dropped into this role completely out of the blue had in fact already been heavily engaged with the preparations for the Armada and in the initial plan had been supposed to lead the second wave of ships he was a superb administrator and organizer and he'd only need two months to turn the entire situation around and get the Armada to see in good order he also had extensive combat experience on land he had huge experience preparing the annual treasure Fleet for departure but he had exactly zero experience when it came to actually commanding a fleet at Sea and he knew it he actually refused the appointment outright stating he was willing to get the fleet into shape and out to sea but another more experienced sailor must be placed in command once this was done but the letter was intercepted by Phillips counselors who then browbeat him into accepting the post without showing the letter to the king accepting his fate Medina Sedonia then threw himself into the work first locating the most experienced sailor in the fleet and demanding he be appointed as the second in command this was Juan Martinez derekalde who flew his flag from the mighty 50 gun San Juan de Portugal then he set about locating everything from fresh water supplies to gunpowder more ammunition muskets and then redistributed most of the heavy artillery so that it could actually be used by the ships the guns were mounted on Spanish money now ensured that an uprising in Paris crippled France and the Duke of Leicester sent to the Netherlands to help managed at every turn to make the situation so much worse that some speculated that he might have been bought off by Palmer having boxed the Dutch into a corner Palmer then moved to contain them whilst stringing the English along with various negotiations the Dutch cause was not yet lost but the majority of their forces were stuck in garrisons and without English help their field Army was now too small to threaten Palmer's preparations for cross-channel invasion the only flies in this particular ointment were the continued English and Dutch garrisons in various fortified towns that blocked the approaches by sea to Antwerp and the small Fleet of shallow draft Dutch ships that was patrolling the coast but if the Armada could make it to Palmer then the fleet's galleys and galliases at least would be able to clear a path to the majority of the fleet for Palmer's ships and thus his men aware of recent depredations by new Swift English galleons on the convoys that he'd previously organized to the new world Medina Sedonia took a number of the largest galleons and Merchant ships in hand reasoning that if none of the Spanish Fleet were capable of chasingling the English ships down then they should instead be armed with the heaviest longest ranged artillery possible so as to smash anything that happened to come into gun range with a single devastating volley he also significantly built up the ship's castles to provide cover and additional advantage to the soldiers once a presumably crippled English vessel could be boarded he also attempted to increase the number of galleys in the fleet since these Swift vessels might catch an English Galleon in any case and particularly if the winds were light or hindered retreat in this latter effort he was however unsuccessful whilst there were 18 galleys in the area of his operations Philip would only authorize the four oldest and least well maintained to join the Armada insisting that the others were needed to keep the harbors safe from a repeat of Drake's raid whether by Drake or by pirates from the Mediterranean Medina Sedonia was semi-successful in re-arming the big ships stripping anything he could find of heavy artillery including a monstrous Siege gun that had been taken from an ottoman Flagship at Lepanto which was then duly mounted on the Trinidad valencera like some primitive form of spinal Nova Cannon however attempts to speed up the production of heavy guns in Lisbon's gun foundries were of a more mixed nature some guns worked fine others proved to be somewhat less so and many hastily assembled guns would later burst or leak gases in combat Medina Sedonia did however also invent a mass mailing system for his orders creating a number of pre-printed order sheets with spaces left for the exact numbers and a few additional blank spaces for special items which massively cut down on the time that it took for him to issue orders to various ships and formations since it meant that about 80 of all the handwriting that needed to be done had been eliminated he was much more successful at eliminating rot amongst the fleet's provisions and then set about keeping the men healthy designating two large transports as Hospital ships loading them with relevant suppliers and sending basic medical packs to All Ships In the fleet he also sent out navigational equipment and ordered the six Sailors with the most knowledge of the channel coastlines to meet each day to prepare a series of 60 charts which would then be copied for each of the Squadron flagships and other larger ships to use 104 battered and unfit ships thus transformed by May 1588 into 150 large vessels ready for combat along with a number of small auxiliaries between his own forces and Palmer he would have about 45 000 veteran troops available to face in England which had its best 12 000 men split equally between propping up the Dutch and keeping an eye on Scotland on the 11th of May the Armada began to move out to sea although a storm then forced a three-day delay as the fleet resumed its passage into Open Water each ship received instructions on various locations to meet up if the fleet or a portion of it ended up being scattered by the weather another week of country wins saw the fleet to Anchor off Lisbon just using up supplies but on the 28th of May the wind shifted and a final total of around 140 ships left Lisbon behind and headed out to sea initially constantly shifting wind patterns saw the fleet heading south almost to the very Southwestern tip of the Iberian Peninsula before gradually working around North and then on the 9th of June setting a vaguely straight course for Corona on the Northwestern tip of Spain to replenish their supplies unfortunately misread or missed signals meant that only 35 vessels made it into Harbor nine ships headed continuously North for the English Channel and the rest anchored outside the harbor since they didn't make it close enough before nightfall and then a storm came up and Scattered everyone who wasn't in Harbor badly damaging several vessels Medina cedonia saw this as an ill Omen and asked Philip to consider calling off the whole thing but gradually the various ships were reassembled and even those who'd gone on ahead and had anchored off of the silly Isles the assigned Rendezvous for the leg of the trip north of Spain to the channel entrance were recovered back and repairs and resupply could begin Philip refused to countenance canceling the Expedition and so with increasing trepidation Medina Sedonia quickly began readying his ships to sail out as a fleet once more worried about an English counter-attack like Drake's radon card is while he was in Harbor he was correct to be worried as we mentioned earlier whilst the initial English attempt to sail South to attack the Armada in Lisbon had failed another had been launched but the same storm systems that had scattered the Armada along the Spanish Coast had moved North and slowed the English Fleet until the storms blew out which left Lord Howard's ships be calmed just 70 miles from where the Armada lay in karuna a wind from the south then blew up and on the 22nd of July the English fleet was back in Plymouth to resupply which was just as well because the same wind was bearing the Armada North they having left port on the 21st the day before on the 25th the fleet stood at the Channel's entrance where it was spotted by a Cornish fisherman who turned about and sailed for home with the news it seemed that everything was going well until yet another storm blew up scattering the fleet once again and causing the four galleys to quit the Endeavor entirely and head for safety as their structure proved too weak to stand up to the weather Additionally the powerful Santa Ana Flagship of the viscayan Squadron got lost and wound up stuck at the half but the fleet shortened sail the stragglers caught up and on the 29th of July the Armada cited the English Coast for the first time ahead of them less than a day sailing away lay the bulk of the English combat Fleet still taking on supplies in Plymouth but what sort of fleet was that the Royal Navy had technically come into existence hundreds of years earlier with Alfred the Great but as a continuous fighting force specifically Built For War as opposed to a collection of sometimes armed private yachts with occasional use for maritime security one needs to look to Elizabeth the First's father Henry VIII he'd first built up a fleet that in was initially based on an evolved form of medieval Naval Warfare ships armed with a handful of guns mostly anti-personnel and the main focus being on boarding actions this tactic had changed during his lifetime and new ships with more Firepower had been built or purchased whilst older ones had been refitted to carry more heavy artillery this latter effort had had varying degrees of success as the refit of the Mary Rose had left the ship very vulnerable to a wind gust that sent her over on her side in the middle of the battle of the solent the newer ships were however still mostly built around the theory of a single massive broadside or maybe two or three before they closed into board after her two siblings had had their turns on the throne at the start of Elizabeth's Reign a number of these ships had been somewhat aged and thus farmed out on loan to various Expeditions the Jesus of Lubeck being one serving as the flagship of Hawkins and Drake's Expedition which we mentioned near the start of this video but there were a few small seeds of what was to come in Henry VII's Fleet as not all of his ships had accepted this particular Paradigm the grand mistress for example carried a much lower superstructure for her size and for her size also carried a powerful gun Armament whilst lacking many of the other specific additions that were made to facilitate and defend against boarding actions as a fast low-lying and primarily gun-equipped vessel even if she was small she was a hint of what was to come when Henry Died the Royal Navy had numbered 53 ships but the fleet had suffered under the Reigns of his son Edward and daughter Mary dropping down to 30 and most of those 30 were in poor condition in a fit of historical irony in many ways the unlikely rescuer of the English fleet was actually Philip II of Spain the very same King who was now seeking to conquer the country and had to get through that Fleet to do so this was because Philip had been married to Mary the first and as such took an interest in the defense of what at least he thought of as his latest acquisition even if that wasn't quite How England regarded that particular arrangement in an extremely prescient letter to the privy Council which she later probably came to regret Philip wrote his Royal Majesty understands that the chief defense of the realm of England consists in this that her ships are always ready and in good order so that they can defend the realm from all Invasion it will be fitting that they are always prepared and in readiness this not only could look caused large sums to be spent in repairing the remaining Fleet but four large galleons were freshly laid down a new ship carrying the name Mary Rose the lion and two ships which would be renamed with Mary's death and Elizabeth's Ascension eventually carrying the names non-parai and Elizabeth Jonas all four of these ships now lay at Plymouth awaiting the arrival of a fleet that was carrying the banners of the same King who had caused them to be built this meant that when Elizabeth took the throne she had a total of 34 warships of which the Navy reckoned 22 were worth keeping and the others all needed replacing Elizabeth agreed with this assessment broadly except for one of the older ships the aforementioned Jesus of Lubeck three more large ships in the style of the old broadside and board were laid down the aid the Triumph and the victory however across the fleet the number of soldiers carried was dropping and the number of guns and sailors was increasing and the guns themselves were heavy ship smashes for this most part indicating the refitting of the fleet to a new battle Doctrine then came the 1570s and a brand new type of great ship history as we have seen is not without a sense of irony for in 1573 a new ship hit the water her castles were low her length to beam ratio was greater her gun decks were longer her Heavy Artillery was more numerous and her tumble home was greater she was faster more agile and harder to board than any other capital ship of the time her name was of course dreadnought she was followed Into the Water by a number of successes some of them built for the crown others privately commissioned but near identical to their Royal counterparts as the designs were carefully modeled and drawn out before being shared across various shipyards the Revenge which would become famous in the upcoming conflict was near enough copied a year later by The Galleon Leicester privately ordered for use in privateering all three ships were now also anchored in Plymouth in the latter part of the 1570s the veteran sailor John Hawkins had been put in charge of the royal Navy and determined that an additional 11 of these race-built galleons would be constructed and 12 of the most suitable older ships were to be modernized to as close to the same standard as was possible other Innovations were folded into this program the ships were equipped with taller masts capstans instead of windlasses chain pumps instead of suction pumps stronger and more frequent Framing and a sacrificial layer of planking to Shield the hull itself from the worst effects of shipworm which prolonged the whole life of the vessel so equipped other ships were brought into the fleet from Private Industry so Walter Raleigh commissioned a ship named partially after himself as was common practice at the time this was the ark rally but upon its sale into Royal Service it became the first bearer of a name that would appear many more times down the centuries the arc Royal but for all this effort when the Armada looked ready to sail in 1588 the disposal of the old unfit ships had only just been matched by the construction of the new ones and so the Royal Navy itself still only totaled 34 vessels not even close to the number of ships that the Armada approached with and so the call had gone out for all vessels capable of fighting to assemble to defend their Homeland this had worked well to raise the fleet that had attacked Cardis and even more so it worked now port cities and the powerful Merchant Guilds of London committed many of their vessels and variously privately owned warships the privateers and even single owner Merchant ships arrived in Plymouth and other English ports most were already heavily armed for such were the hazards of operating at Sea in those days and those that were considered lightly equipped managed to find a few more guns one way or the other this resulted in a fleet that consisted of everything from large vessels like Triumph and art Royal that were arguably the match of all but the very largest galleons in the Armada all the way down to craft that had tonnages measured in the double digits whose only real utility was in the bombardment of the generally larger Spanish ships at long range the names of the ships also reflected the difference in Fleet makeup and culture between the opposing sides the armada's vessels carried names that were almost all religious in some way a good portion of them were named after various Saints whilst the English ships were almost all named after people animals qualities or more generally legendary figures in fact the lack of religious names is quite marked reflecting the somewhat iconoclastic phase that England was going through at the time the gift of God virgin God save her and the Raphael were three of very few with any direct religious connotations although the flagship Arc Royal is another obvious one but scattered through the fleet were names that like Arc Royal itself would turn up time and again in the annals of the royal Navy in the future many because of their performance in the forthcoming days most akate's Antelope Arc Royal disdained Dreadnought lion Merlin non or Sans parai Revenge tiger Triumph Vanguard and victory were already Royal ships others such as diamonds Centurion Hercules defense and unicorn were Merchant vessels there were also a lot of repeated or very similar names in some cases because of a tendency at the time to use the ship's type as part of the name the bark lamb bark Bond bark Bonner bark buggins bark bur bark Hawkins bark Mannington barks and Ledger Bach Tolbert Barker Bridgewater bark pots bark web bark Halls bark Sutton of Weymouth along with the Galleon Dudley Galleon Leicester Galleon of Weymouth gallian Hutchins and Gally go of Plymouth are all examples of these the queen was also a popular subject with at least nine ships having Elizabeth as at least a part of their name and then there were the slightly amusing names the Royal Fleet included the mighty warships fancy sun and moon along with the clue to my role is in my name Scout and the slightly too obvious spy amongst the rest of the fleet could be found the chance spark pansy passport Toby Pippin revenge of lime Hazard of feverisham Fly Boat Heathen of Weymouth rat of white and at least three different ships called minion in command of this fleet was Lord Howard of Effingham his father had been Lord Admiral and this iteration of Lord Howard had some experience at Sea as well mostly gained as a Young Man serving with his father he was grown to the office of Lord Hyatt Mall in 1585 but this was as much or more on account of his pedigree than any real experience actually leading ships into battle albeit as mentioned he did have a bit more of an idea of how things were done at Sea than his direct opposing number in the Armada but he was sensible enough to rely on the Council of three experienced Traders turned privateers turned leaders of squadrons in his Fleet John Hawkins Francis Drake and Martin frobisher along with a number of other experienced Sailors privateers and a few noblemen who had some idea about the sea note that being a nobleman didn't necessarily exclude you from also being a privateer and so it was that word came to Plymouth aboard the Golden Hind on the 28th of July that the Armada had been spotted clearing the silly Isles and breaching the line of scout ships deployed to watch for its Advance the description of the particular Scout ship in question that turned up with the news is somewhat varied depending on the source some indicating it was a small ship of 50 tons that happened only to share a name with Drake's Flagship on his previous circumnavigation of the world whereas other sources indicate a larger vessel that would then go on to serve in Drake's Squadron with a captain that was related to both himself and Hawkins which might indicate that this Golden Hind was in fact the Golden Hind brought down from the Thames in the hour of need although as I said it remains a little unclear this incident is where we get the famous scene of a messenger scrambling up a hill to find Drake and other senior officers playing a game of bowls urgently the man spills out the news that the Armada has been cited to which Drake laconically replies there's time to win this game and thrash the Spaniards too whilst often cited as an example of bravado in the face of overwhelming odds and more recently denied by some more incredulous historians It's actually an entirely plausible encounter the wind and the tides at that moment were against the English Fleet being able to leave Plymouth and it would take several hours for the tides to turn and the ships to begin slowly making their way out of Harbor so finishing up the game would take only a fraction of the interval until Drake and his fellows were actually kneaded down in the port mustering about 105 ships at this stage in Plymouth the English Fleet thus began the slow process of raising anchor and heading for the sea other formations are weighted in ports further up the coast and none of the English officers were under any illusions of stopping the Armada cold at the entrance of the channel but nonetheless both forces were now on the move the next day the 29th of July 1588 the Mast formation of Spanish ships was spotted from the mainland for the first time as they passed the lizard in Cornwall which is very nearly the southwesternmost point of England the hour had arrived for the whole country to be mobilized in its own defense and in accordance with plans now years in the making a fire Beacon was lit by the Watchers on the high Cliffs the signal was seen by another of the beacon networks some miles away the first two in a chain of hundreds Beacon followed Beacon as they fled into Life along the coast and further Inland they could not of course convey any detailed message only that which had been pre-arranged as the meaning of the Flames that being the Spanish were coming if you'd been there with a view from an aircraft you would have seen the signal rapidly carrying across the kingdom faster than any man or horse could run within hours the last of a chain that ran all the way from Cornwall to London crested over the lip of the Thames River Basin somewhere in this vicinity These Days A View From Here overlooks a city of more than 10 million people that stretches to the Horizon in all directions back then there was still another 15 or so miles of scattered towns and Villages before you reached the city itself but this was the home stretch and as the beacon was lit and the last few downslope took their cue and ran down towards their attempts the palace and the anxious Court knew that the Reckoning had come all that stood between the Spanish and London was the royal Navy the Dutch allies further up the channel and the weather both sides appealed to God for a miracle to guarantee their success but it seemed an answer would be a long time coming back out in the Channel with gusting winds and squalls being the order of the day and English Penance flashed out of the Gloom near the leading ships of the Armada its guns spoke in Rapid succession before it wheeled about and vanished once more into the Merc chased by spouts of great shot blasted after it by one of the biggest ships in the Spanish Fleet shots which fortunately failed to land on target the first shots of the campaign had been fired and the great struggle between the English and Spanish fleets had formally begun that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for dry dock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 249,112

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Age of Sail, Spanish Armada, San Martin, Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, Ark Royal, MEdina Sidonia, Elizabeth I, HMS Revenge

Id: zE47eoE64Io

Length: 49min 9sec (2949 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023