the english navy from henry vii to the end of the...

Travail de maturité

2006

Land of Hope and Glory

The English Navy from Henry VII to the End of the Elizabethan Era

BEUCHAT Nicolas 3M01

The English Navy from Henry VII to the End of the Elizabethan Era 30/11/2006

Contents FOREWORD ............................................................................................................................................ 3 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 4 2. HISTORICAL CONTEXT .................................................................................................................. 5

2.1 THE OPENING OF THE SEA BY CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS .................................................................. 5 2.2 THE TUDOR REIGN ............................................................................................................................ 6

2.2.1 Henry VII.................................................................................................................................. 6 2.2.2 Henry VIII ................................................................................................................................ 7 2.2.3 Edward VI ................................................................................................................................ 9 2.2.4 Mary I..................................................................................................................................... 10 2.2.5 Elizabeth I .............................................................................................................................. 11

3. THE NAVY DURING HENRY VIII’S REIGN............................................................................... 19 3.1 STRUCTURE..................................................................................................................................... 19 3.2 DEVELOPMENT................................................................................................................................ 21

3.2.1 Storehouses and Dockyards ................................................................................................... 21 3.2.2 Ships....................................................................................................................................... 21 3.2.3 The Mary Rose ....................................................................................................................... 27 3.2.3 Tactics .................................................................................................................................... 30

3.3 ITS IMPORTANCE ............................................................................................................................. 34 4. THE ROYAL NAVY IN THE ELIZABETHAN ERA.................................................................... 35

4.1 STRUCTURE..................................................................................................................................... 35 4.1.1 The privateers ........................................................................................................................ 35 4.1.2 How is the navy organized ..................................................................................................... 36

4.2 THE LONG VOYAGES ....................................................................................................................... 38 4.2.1 Consequence on the navy ....................................................................................................... 38 4.2.2 The circumnavigation of the world by Sir Francis Drake...................................................... 39

4.3 THE POWER OF THE FLEET............................................................................................................... 42 4.3.1 The ships ................................................................................................................................ 42 4.3.3 The officers and the crew ....................................................................................................... 47 4.3.4 The strategies and battles....................................................................................................... 52

4.4 FROM WHEN THE NAVY IS THE NAVY ROYAL.................................................................................. 65 4.5 THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE NAVY TO ENGLAND............................................................................. 66

5. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 68 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................................... 69

BOOKS .................................................................................................................................................. 69 ARTICLES.............................................................................................................................................. 70 WEBSITES ............................................................................................................................................. 70 ILLUSTRATIONS .................................................................................................................................... 71

APPENDIX.............................................................................................................................................. 72 APPENDIX I: GENEALOGICAL TREE OF THE TUDOR FAMILY .................................................................. 72 APPENDIX II: MAP OF THE CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE WORLD ......................................................... 73 APPENDIX III: LIST OF SHIP IN THE CADIZ EXPEDITION IN 1587 ............................................................ 74 APPENDIX IV: THE ARMADA’S SHIP AND THEIR ENGLISH OPPONENT ................................................... 74

Spanish Armada .............................................................................................................................. 74 The English fleet.............................................................................................................................. 76

Gymnase de Nyon sur 77 Nicolas Beuchat / 3M01


Foreword

The idea of writing my “Travail de Maturité” on the navy was given me by the teacher

who followed me for this work, Mr. Reeves. If I have chosen the theme on England, it

was foremost because of its title, Land of Hope and Glory. As I didn’t quite know

anything about English History apart from Hollywood films, from few visits in London

museums or from very little reading. And what about the navy? I didn’t know much

more of it. The only thing I had was a model ship I have at home which I determined

after my TM to be a 17th century galleon and not an English one. But I was very

interested in this subject because I had this image of majestic ships notably because of

the model I have. Another motivation for me was that two other students, Pedro Franco

De Carvalho and Alexander J. Kung wanted to work on the English Navy and it gave

us the opportunity to have interesting discussion on the subject.

When we talked about the period I could study, Mr. Reeves suggested I study the

period of a certain fellow whose name was Francis Drake… or to study Admiral

Nelson. I didn’t know Drake and I had only heard a bit about Nelson and so, I decided

to study the two periods and to compare them. It had been changed to study more

precisely the period encompassing Drake, which means the Tudor’s reign. And I

discovered a fascinating subject.

Basically, I didn’t want to do my TM in Shakespeare’s language, even if I knew that I

had to deal with English sources. But it gave me another goal for doing this TM which

was to make progress and train in writing and reading in a foreign language. I think my

objective is accomplished.

I would like to truly thank Mr. Reeves for having encouraged me, helped me and

corrected my English mistakes. I would also like to thank him for his patience with my

slow work during the school year. I would also like to thank Mr. Honoré for his lesson

“La création des identités nationales aux 18ème siècle” which was useful for me in the

end of my TM.



1. Introduction

“Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!

Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!”

These lyrics I heard in a DVD that Mr. Reeves lent me, when we were trying to find

out the subject of our TM, raised a lot of questions. In the DVD, it was a question of

patriotism in the 18th century but the “rules the waves” made me have other questions. I

wanted to know how they ruled the waves, if they really did. And so, I wanted to know

more about the Royal Navy, its creation, its importance. And I arrived after several

readings and after different attempts to a problematic like this. What was the English

Navy like in the Tudor era and why is this an important period for the growth of the

Navy in England?

In order to answer these questions, I had to proceed step by step. First of all I had to

write a precise historical background in order to understand very well each point that I

would potentially confronted in my reading and writing. Then, I divided my subject in

two main parts: Henry VIII’s reign and his daughter’s reign, Elizabeth. The idea was to

develop different aspects of the navy as precisely as possible to have an idea of how the

English Navy was at this time. So, I wanted to talk about the ships, the men but also the

strategies or the economic aspect.

In order to better understand some details in the TM which sometimes had their

importance, I add here some precisions about the calendar and the tonnage.

In 1582, the new Gregorian calendar had been promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII but it

hadn’t been accepted by several non-Catholic countries like England and Scotland. The

latter had still used the old Julian calendar until 1752. The difference between the two

is that the Gregorian calendar was 10 days in advance and the year began on the 1st of

January (while in England, the year began on the 25th of March). So, in this TM, I will

give all the dates in the old style but the year will be given as if it begins on the 1st of

January to prevent confusion.

When we talk about the tonnage of a ship, we do not talk about the weight of a ship.

The tonnage calculation was based basically on the capacity of a ship to transport wine

barrels. But it differed in accordance to the country and it could also be the volume of

water displaced by the ship and it was obtained by calculation based on variable

parameters. So, the two countries that will interest us the most in this paper are England



of course and Spain. The calculation of the English gave some lower result than the

ones of the Spanish. Those generally obtained a number of around 25% higher than the

English.

I would also like to precise that in this TM, I won’t talk about the morality of different

acts and decisions that happened in this century. It would be fastidious and

uninteresting to talk about it on a subject in which a lot of points can seem extremely

barbarous and morally inappropriate to a 21st century reader.

2. Historical context

2.1 The opening of the sea by Christopher Columbus

Before the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492, the main trade

roads used were in the Mediterranean by sea and to Asia by land. For the Northern

countries, this meant using the sea to bring goods from the Continent. So, they couldn’t

really expand their market at this time. The Italians dominated the whole commercial

routes, with the great power of Genoa and Venice for example, because they never had

to sail by the ocean. The most of the goods transited by Italy and after were distributed

to the rest of “Christendom”.

With the discovery of the New World by Columbus huge new markets opened

westward across the ocean. It seemed logical then that the countries which had contact

with the Atlantic Ocean like Spain, Portugal, France or England would become the

rising powers of this time.

The Spanish and the Portuguese took the initiative and quickly became the dominant

powers of these trade routes. They colonized South and Central America which were

rich in gold, spices and goods of great value in Europe. They only left North America,

in which there was less gold and little manpower readily available, to the following

newcomers. Spain and Portugal also advanced with discovery in Africa and on the way

to Asia by establishing trading posts, down the west coast of Africa

On the other hand, France wasn’t very implicated in oceanic traffic because she was

already occupied with her conquest on the Continent. Later, in the mid-1500s, France

was in the middle of a religious war. The French Huguenots were the good sailors of

this time in France but they lost this religious war. Apart from the Huguenots, the other



French had no real tendency to be implicated in the conquest of the ocean and so,

France wasn’t a main economic competitor.

Until Elizabeth, England wasn’t really involved in the race for the supremacy of the

seas. When they came to the “fight”, the world outside Europe was already divided in a

duopoly between Spain and Portugal. This was settled with the Treaty of Tordesillas, in

1494, by Pope Alexander VI. The Spanish had the western part of the world and the

Portuguese, the Eastern part.

This was the situation at the beginning of the 16th century, almost corresponding to the

beginning of the reign of the second Tudor monarch, Henry VIII.

2.2 The Tudor reign

2.2.1 Henry VII

1485, Henry VII took the throne of England by force, and, according to certain

historians, ended the civil war named The War of the Roses with his accession. The

Tudor dynasty could begin. His reign saw an increase of English income from about

£52,000 a year to £142,000 by the end of his reign. Financial stability and a relative

peace in the kingdom, only marked by the execution of all the rivals he could catch.

This would be a fine description of Henry VII’s reign. His only concern was to increase

the finances of the country and to have peace. For that, he came to terms with France

by signing a treaty with them. He also married his son, Arthur, to Catherine of Aragon

who was the King of Spain’s daughter (and who would be the future wife of Henry

VIII after Arthur’s death). His daughter Margaret had also been married to King James

IV of Scotland. By doing so, Henry VII secured alliances with the greatest power of

Europe.

On the other hand, the past military glory of England, showed in the past by the great

military power of Edward III or Henry V’s reign, was blown away because he didn’t

want to conquer, or re-conquer, any land. He learnt the lesson of the Hundred Years

War and thus, was reluctant to fight for continental possession.



To strengthen his position in England, Henry developed the navy by subsidizing

shipbuilding. Thus, he assembled a small fleet, lead by two big carracks1: The Regent

and the Sovereign.

Figure 1 - A drawing of a carrack

In fact, Henry had encouraged maritime adventure to find new markets but he couldn’t

rival with the two greatest naval powers of this time, Spain and Portugal. For example,

there were John Cabot2 and his men who sailed as far as the American Continent but

this wasn’t of the same importance as the Spanish or Portuguese adventures.

According to the right of succession, Arthur, the elder brother of Henry VIII, should

have been the King after his father’s death. Unfortunately for him, he died from an

infection at the age of eleven making Henry VIII the legitimate heir of the King. This is

another way to see the stability of his reign, because he had been able to secure his

succession with two sons.

2.2.2 Henry VIII

Henry VIII, being more vigorous than his father and having a dose of impetuosity,

wanted to recover the past glory of the old Kings like Edward III or Henry V.

1 According to N.A.M Rodger’s glossary, a carrack is “a large ocean-going merchantman distinguished by high superstructure fore and aft (15-16th century)” to which we can add that they were sometimes armed. 2 John Cabot, by his Italian name, Giovanni Caboto, was in fact an Italian but England was his second “base” for his operations. Henry VII granted him to travel and discover unknown places “under our banners and ensignes”.



When Henry took the throne in 1509, the two great powers that were leading Europe

were France, under King Louis XII, and the Holy Roman Empire which contained a

considerable part of Germany as well as the Low Countries and Italy. The latter was

part of the “Holy League” which also included Spain, Venice and Pope Julius II, who

was the nominal leader of this league. Due to its geographical and historical situation,

England could only fight against France if Henry wanted to regain English lost glory. A

quotation from J.D. Mackie shows well the historical “pressure” that was on Henry’s

shoulders to engage a war against France.

“A king of England must be a foe to France and Scotland, the ally of France; he

must, if possible, assert his own right to the crown of one country and the

suzerainty of the other; he must, if he was to attain to full majesty, wage a

successful war.”

Henry joined the Holy League in 1511, leading him in 1512 to his first war against

France in the War of the League of Cambria for the League’s interests in fact. In 1513,

England and France stopped fighting each other. However, Franco-Spanish relations

deteriorated when Charles V became the Holy Roman Emperor, a function that the new

King of France, Francis I greedily wanted. In 1520, Spain and France were urging an

English alliance. Henry preferred to be allied with Charles because he wouldn’t lose a

fruitful market with Holland, which was under the dominion of Spain. In addition,

England and Spain were linked because of Henry’s marriage with Charles’ aunt. The

English also participated in an alliance with Charles V to a war in the Northern France

which began well but ended by a lack of cooperation between the two allies.

One of the greatest worries for Henry was that his wife, Catherine of Aragon, couldn’t

give him a son. She had been pregnant seven times but only one girl survived, Mary. It

became clear for him that he needed another wife to have a legitimate heir and that’s

why he asked Pope Clement VII for a divorce. The latter was almost totally under the

influence of Charles V, the Spanish King and Holy Roman Emperor. Charles was also

Catherine’s nephew and maybe the Pope feared him and refused to annul the marriage.

Despite this refusal, Henry married Anne Boleyn in 1533 and Catherine had her title

withdrawn. Elizabeth was born in September of the same year but like Mary, she would

later be declared illegitimate because they were girls and Henry absolutely wanted a

son to be his heir.



The Pope excommunicated Henry for this affront. The English government took its

own autonomy and declared Henry as “the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church

of England”. So, the State took the religious authority for itself. He also suppressed all

local immunity in the country, the old cosmopolitan order and some Catholic practices

like image-worshipping. He also earned money with the seizure and the sale of

monastic estates. The country began to be less and less close to Catholicism. It wasn’t

yet Protestantism but the breach with Rome brought a “new” English Church, and anti-

clericalism. The breach with Rome wasn’t only due to the divorce but also by the fact

that a foreign power had authority over a country that is situated miles and miles away,

and didn’t care about English interests.

After the breach with Rome, Henry feared that Catholic powers such as France or Spain

would invade England. To secure his position, he strengthened his coastal defence. This

didn’t happen in his reign but this conflict with Catholicism didn’t secure his relations

with the great Catholic powers.

Henry wanted his son, Edward, to be married to Mary Stuart, who was the

granddaughter of Henry’s sister, Margaret (see appendix). Mary, being the daughter of

James V of Scotland, inherited the throne of Scotland and so Henry wanted his son to

be married to her, making their potential heir, King of England and Scotland. In

addition to the marriage, Henry wanted the Scots to break their traditional alliance with

the French. All of this was refused and in consequence, Henry began what is called the

“rough wooing” which consisted of a series of raids on the whole Scottish territory. It

finished after Henry’s death in 1551 aided by the French.

In 1544, both Henry’s daughters were reinstituted on the list of succession with the

support of Catherine Parr, Henry’s last wife. When he died in 1547, he left only a

sickly son and two daughters although he had had six wives in his life.

2.2.3 Edward VI

As Henry’s first son, Edward was on the top of the list of succession. In spite of this, he

was an extremely sick child and when Henry died, he was too young to govern the

country. So, some protectors had been chosen to govern in place of Edward until his

majority which was accorded to him to be at the age of sixteen, instead of eighteen.

His reign was marked by the fact that he was the first English King to be Protestant,

even if his father had breached with Rome before him. With the most influential person



on Edward, the famous Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and the Duke of

Somerset, Edward led the country to adopt its own form of Protestantism, the Anglican

Church. But there was no encouragement of persecution because of the fear of the

powerful European Catholics monarchs like the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.

Edward died very young in 1553 and was succeeded, after diverse political schemes, by

Lady Jane Grey but she reigned for only 9 days before being executed. The first

daughter of Henry took the throne after that, following the list of succession instituted

by Henry.

2.2.4 Mary I

Also known as “Bloody Mary”, the new Queen Mary I was a profound Roman

Catholic. When she got the throne, Mary tried to convince the Parliament to undo

everything that her father had done to breach with Rome. The old law of the Inquisition

had been restored with her and so, in the three years of her reign, 283 Protestants were

burnt. In addition to her unpopularity, this massacre showed the faith of those

Protestants who were ready to die for this cause.

The first thing that made her unpopular was that in 1554, she married Philip II, future

King of Spain (1556). She did so because she wanted an heir to continue her Catholic

policy and to prevent her sister, Elizabeth, taking the throne after her death. People

feared that England would be dependant on Spain. Maybe, this fear appeared because

she was the first regnant Queen, meaning that she wasn’t a Queen by marriage but by

succession, and so, the King might take too much power. Her marriage didn’t give her

any advantage on the trade route to the New World. It only led to a war with France.

With this marriage, Philip II became King Consort of England. His aim was obviously

to take power in England and to re-establish the Roman Catholicism in England.

Mary’s reign was too short to realize the objectives of Philip.

In 1558, the French led by Francis, Duke of Guise, took Calais from the English. That

day, England lost its last continental possession. This was a great disillusionment for

the Queen and for Englishmen.

When Mary died in 1558, she left the Crown to her half-sister, Elizabeth, because of

her failure to become pregnant, and so, to give an heir to Philip. If she had had a son, he

would have been the heir of both Spain and the English throne.



During the short reign of Edward and then Mary (1547-1558 for both), the

development of sea-power, begun by their father, didn’t follow as well. For example,

shipbuilding decreased a lot between the father’s reign and the two children’s reigns;

Henry’s reign saw a little bit less than forty ships (of more than 100 tonnes) built or

rebuilt versus about half a dozen for the two others. Regarding those numbers on the

length of the reigns, we can say approximately that Henry developed the navy twice as

much as his first two heirs. I will pick up this part and offer some suggestions on why

in a following chapter.

2.2.5 Elizabeth I

On 17th of November 1558, Elizabeth acceded to the throne despite everything Mary I

had tried to do to prevent this. After Elizabeth’s death, this day will be a national

holiday for about two centuries. Elizabeth, also known as the Virgin Queen because she

has never been married, became the fifth and the last Tudor monarch. Her reign will be

known as the Elizabethan Era.

During Elizabeth’s youth, it seemed improbable that she could take the throne one day

because, like her older sister, she was declared illegitimate and her brother would take

the throne when Henry died. However, in 1544, she and her sister were replaced on the

list of succession, thanks to the last wife of Henry VIII, Catherine Parr, who reconciled

Elizabeth with her father. Elizabeth received a good education and she was often under

Protestant influence, an allegiance that she will keep all her life. When Mary was

Queen of England, while she wanted to marry Philip for political purposes, she feared

that people would rebel and put Elizabeth on the throne. So, after Wyatt’s Rebellion

which took place because of the marriage promise, Elizabeth was put in prison. Mary

also tried to put out Elizabeth from the list of succession instituted by her father but she

couldn’t because of Parliament’s refusal. Philip let her go out from the prison because

he preferred her to be the successor of Mary, in case his wife couldn’t have a child

which began to be clear at this time, instead of the other Mary, Mary Stuart, Queen of

Scots even if the latter was a devout Roman Catholic which wasn’t the case of

Elizabeth.

So, when Mary died, Philip tried to marry Elizabeth but she refused. She even reduced

the Spanish influence in her realm although Philip aided her in the Italian Wars. In fact,

she refused to be married at all. An interesting hypothesis is that she might have feared



that if she married a foreign fellow, he would have probably used this marriage for his

own country on purpose as Philip did with his marriage with Mary, and if she married

an Englishman, it might create factional trouble. A more emotional reason should be

that she might have been shocked by the treatment that her own father did with his

numerous wives. In addition, marrying someone would mean losing a bit of

independence and it would cost a lot to her because before being married, everything

that she inherited from a descendant was hers. Finally, she would rather use the

marriage prospect as a tool for foreign and internal policies.

Fortunately for England, when Elizabeth took the power, there was a great rivalry

between Spain and England. This saved the English because they couldn’t resist any

invasion at this time. In addition, the Dutch revolted against Spain and there were

religious Wars in France. So, Elizabeth skilfully managed to consolidate those tensions

to keep her realm safe from a potential invasion.

Even if the Anglo-French relation was tense in the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign,

peace was made in 1564 although England secretly helped the French Huguenots

against the Catholics during the French Wars of Religion. By making peace with

France, she accepted to forget the idea of claiming any English possession on French

soil after not having succeeded in taking LeHavre. Later, in 1572, France and England

made an alliance and in addition, Elizabeth used her marriage prospect to strengthen

that alliance even if no marriage was finally made.

One of the main concerns during Elizabeth’s reign was religion. In the beginning of her

reign, for about a dozen years, she was profoundly religious tolerant even if she was

deeply Protestant. She removed some Catholic practices that were reinstituted during

Mary’s reign and added some Protestant ones. In fact, she wanted to reinstitute the

Anglican Church of her father and so, she found a compromise between Catholicism

and Protestantism with a tendency to favour the latter a bit. She also changed the title

that Henry gave to himself from “the Supreme Head of the Church of England” to “the

Supreme Governor”. This religious policy didn’t suit everybody but it had the

advantage of giving the realm religious stability, preventing religious wars like the one

that shook France for half a century. Elizabeth won’t keep this religious toleration

during all her reign, we will see why later.

A very important character that I’ve written about a little before must be presented

here: the Catholic Mary Stuart, also known as Mary Queen of Scots, descendant of the



famous Robert I, the Bruce since Mel Gibson’s film, Braveheart. She was born in 1542

and her marriage was arranged in 1548 with the French (François, the newborn son of

the new King, Henri II). This marriage that was concluded in 1558 united France and

Scotland and it seemed the only solution for Mary’s mother to solve the problems that

had been created by refusing to marry Mary to Edward as we saw in chapter 2.2.2. She

was seen by Elizabeth as a dangerous rival after her husband became King of France in

1559.

In Scotland, as in England, the beginning of the Elizabethan Era brought the

permanence of the Reformation. It was possible because the English on their side were

exhausted by the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, in a way by Spain itself, and

the Scots, on their side, couldn’t bear French domination anymore. The relation

between France and Scotland was strengthened politically but for people, it was

unbearable. This general discontent was in large part due to the rising of national pride

and patriotism (which is almost the same). So, people wanted more than ever the

independence of their country and so, the independence of their religious belief. We

can suppose that, for the English, as for the Scottish, patriotism led to a desire for a

certain kind of religion. This hypothesis is based on the fact that in the forties, the Scots

wanted Catholicism; their oppressors at this time were the English, and around 1559,

they wanted Protestantism while they were under French influence. For the English,

they wanted to break with the Continental Catholic Powers, so they chose Anglicanism

which goes in the same direction as Protestantism.

So, Elizabeth helped the Scottish Protestants to make their Reformation and to get the

French troops evacuated. This was done with the Treaty of Edinburgh. When Mary

returned to Scotland, she married a Catholic despite the will of Elizabeth to make her

marry the Protestant Robert Dudley and the will of people. Two years later, her

husband was assassinated and she married the presumed murderer shortly after. She

was imprisoned for being presumed involved in the murder. But she escaped and came

to England where she was imprisoned too. Despite the threat of plots that Mary could

do, Elizabeth imprisoned her in England.

In the end of the sixties, there was a Catholic rebellion known as the Northern

Rebellion. It was aided by Pope Pius who excommunicated Elizabeth and added that



she was deposed in a Papal Bull3. After having seen the Papal Bull which arrived after

the rebellion had been suppressed, Elizabeth totally changed her mind for religious

purposes and she stopped her principle of religious toleration. So, she began to

persecute her religious opponents, bringing her numerous conspiracies to take her away

from the throne.

“[Elizabeth] has once again reduced this same kingdom – which had already been

restored to the Catholic faith and to good fruits – to a miserable ruin. […][We]

declare the foresaid Elizabeth to be a heretic and favourer of heretics […]. We

charge and command all and singular the nobles, subjects, peoples and others

afore said that they do not dare obey her orders, mandates and laws. Those who

shall act to the contrary we include in the like sentence of excommunication.”

Extract from Pope Pius V’s Bull against Elizabeth (1570)

Anglo-Spanish relations had been friendly since Philip’s marriage with Mary Tudor.

Philip II of Spain became an enemy around the end of the sixties. He attacked John

Hawkins’ and Francis Drake’s ship but what is more important is that he wanted to

remove Elizabeth from her throne.

By his character, Philip, called “the Prudent”, wanted to appropriate new territories

without opening a war, using the “Habsburg method” which consisted of marrying a

foreign queen and obtaining some rights on her country. It is exactly what he had done

with Mary Tudor and he even tried to do the same with Elizabeth, despite their

different religious point of view (Philip had it in mind to convert her), but it failed. In

fact, nobody will succeed to marry Elizabeth. So, the Spanish King hoped that

Elizabeth would be killed as soon as possible, in order to marry Mary Stuart, Queen of

Scots (him or one of his devoted subjects of his choice) who was the one that seemed to

have the biggest chance to accede to the throne. That’s why he participated in some

plots to put her down but they all failed. But, Philip preferred to have Elizabeth, “the

heretic”, on the English throne than a potential ally of the French with Mary Stuart,

who was, remember, very close with the French throne. If Mary Stuart took the throne,

and that no Spaniard marries her, the Channel would be probably blocked for Spain and

its commerce with the Low Countries would be impossible.

3 A Papal Bull is, according to the “Oxford, Advanced Learner’s Dictionary” an “official order or statement from the Pope (=the head of the Roman Catholic Church)”



Philip and Elizabeth had in common their taste for prudence which often exasperated

some of their councillors. The two didn’t want to engage an open war, mainly because

of the expenditure needed for that, even with the tensions that were growing. This

period, from around 1569 to 1585, can be calling the “Cold War” as each protagonist

did everything possible to avoid a war. One of these tensions, and not the least, was that

the English “secretly” helped the Dutch in their rebellion against Spain by sending

them a lot of money and some troops. Elizabeth also set some privateers4 like Sir

Francis Drake on the commercial routes to the West Indies, attacking the unprotected

merchantmen (even if for the other countries, those men had to appear as pirates). In

addition, John Hawkins, a privateer and later an official of the Navy, provoked Philip

by doing three expeditions for the slave-trade despite the Spanish monopoly. The third

time was blocked by Spain and it nearly cost the life of the great Hawkins and Drake.

On the other hand, Philip answered by sending some priests to try to make the English

Catholics rebel against their Queen. The crucial year is 1585; Philip took a small fleet

of English merchantmen carrying wheat even if he assured them that they could come

safely. Philip was embargoing England and Holland, angering the merchants that

wanted to make commerce with Spain or other countries. It excited English people and

they wanted their revenge. So, Elizabeth responded by sending Drake another time

furnishing men and royal ships. The fleet was composed of 29 ships including four

from the Queen with a landing force of 2,300 infantry men. This time, Drake made

carnage; he began by serving himself victuals and booty in the Cape Verde which were

Spanish propriety and he took and burnt there Santiago and Porto-Praya. He continues

by going to the Caribbean, sacking Santo Domingo and Cartagena and destroying the

new colony of San Agustín in Florida. It is commonly said that the Anglo-Spanish War

began here, ending the “Cold War”, because it was without contest a “public operation

of war”5.

4 The definition given on Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopaedia of a privateer is as follow: “A privateer was a private ship (or its captain) authorized by a country's government to attack and seize cargo from another country's ships.” 5 N.A.M Rodger, p.250


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo


Figure 2 - Drake’s raid on the Spanish possession

At this time, the idea of invading England began to seriously be in the mind of Philip

like a lot of his councillors who really wanted it. But he hadn’t yet decided to act. But,

in 1587, Mary Stuart had been executed, because of her non-proven participation in the

Babington Plot which aimed at the death of Elizabeth. At this moment, Philip II saw

that an invasion would be the only way to conquer England and he didn’t have to worry

about a future Franco-English alliance with the accession to the throne of Mary Stuart.

This “Enterprise” was called by the Spanish, the Grande y Felicísima Armada6. The

goal was to use a great fleet to meet the troops of the Duke of Parma which were

located in Flanders to escort them to England. Then, the force had to be landed on

English soil to invade the country. The Armada was sent in 1588, composed of 131

ships of different sizes. It was defeated by the English and they had to make a

catastrophic retreat to Spain.

The consequence of a Spanish win would have been damageable not only for England

which would be in Spanish hands but also for other European powers and the Protestant

6 It can be translated by “the large and most fortunate fleet”



cause. Spain would control the sea near England and so, the Dutch would have no

possibility to resist an embargo. It would be then suicide to resist. In addition, the

Protestant cause in Northern Europe would be reduced almost to nothing, probably

making the Huguenots of France abdicate. So, the Civil War that kept Henri III on the

French throne would be probably over and the only possibility for the French King to

stay on the throne would be to make a compromise and be under Spanish control. This

would make the Spanish empire absolutely huge as you can see on the map below (to

which all of America had to be added).

Figure 3 - The probable Spanish empire if Spain had triumphed

Meanwhile, it seems probable that Philip’s objectives were more modest than what was

exposed above. Pr Wes Ulm of Harvard University in his essay on the “Top 10 myths

and muddles about the Spanish Armada, history’s most confused and misunderstood

battle” advances that:

“King Philip’s objectives in the “Enterprise of England” were comparatively

modest; above all, he was seeking English non-interference in what he considered

to be internal Spanish affairs, cessation of military and financial support for the

rebellious Dutch provinces [...] Philip also sought to clamp down on the English

privateers, the “sea dogs” and crafty pirates of renown […] The Spanish monarch

also endeavoured—at the very least— to secure tolerance for English Catholics,

though a wholesale transformation of the island country from a Protestant bastion



into a Catholic nation was a non-starter. […] It is, furthermore, doubtful that the

Spanish king intended to supplant Queen Elizabeth I with a Catholic English

usurper, as is often supposed, in spite of Pius V’s papal sanction. […] Nobody else

[Mary Stuart] could have been installed on the throne and been legitimately

accepted by enough of England’s population to remain in power for more than a

fortnight, and Philip was no stranger to this important difficulty. […][Philip]

could not have maintained a sufficiently large occupation force in such a foreign

and distant nation for long, especially with all the added logistical headaches

presented by an island country”

The next to last argument can have a lot of credit because Philip contained with

difficulty a rebellion in one of his territory, the Low Countries. So, we can easily

imagine that a foreign ruler on the throne of England would quickly be confronted with

a rebellion that he would certainly not be able to contain.

After the English win over the Armada, a counter expedition was sent known as the

“English Armada” which was aiming to take Portugal from the hands of Philip. It was a

failure. In fact, after the Armada, the war was clearly to the advantage of Spain, by land

and by sea. In addition, this win couldn’t prevent the commerce of Spain developing.

On the contrary, Spain brought back three times more silver and gold after the Armada

than before.

The Anglo-Spanish War continued until 1604 after the Queen’s death (and after Philip

II’s death in 1598) with the Treaty of London which was largely in Spain’s favour. This

point seems absolutely normal because of the domination in the war by Spain after the

failure of the Armada campaign.

Let’s now have a look at the social condition of people under Elizabeth’s reign. At this

time, social class demarcation was rather important. This meant that there were

privileged people by their birth, the noblemen and a poorer class. Nevertheless, this

system was more flexible than it was in Spain because it was possible for a man of the

first category to lose his title and vice versa. It was still marked by the old feudal

system, meaning that it was hardly conceivable for a noble to be under the command of

a lower class man. This is important to understand some decision in the role

distribution in a following chapter.

As we have seen, some councillors of the Queen were sometimes exasperated by her

prudence and reluctance to spend money for their initiative. In fact, she did not have


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I_of_England


much choice because her Treasury was almost empty and the government was

weighted down with debt. Her father had spent a lot without counting, emptying the

Royal treasury. Their heirs inherited an empty treasury that they had to deal with

parsimony.

3. The Navy during Henry VIII’s reign

3.1 Structure

During the major part of Henry’s reign, the navy had not an organized administrative

structure. This failure by the King to put in place a naval administration, while he made

his navy growing a lot quickly, was probably due to the fact that he didn’t see the real

value of the sea by the time. As we have seen before, the ocean had been opened by

navigators and new trade routes could be opened. This is the real importance to

dominate the sea and it seemed that Henry didn’t attach much value to this. Until 1524,

they were only two officials who worked in the administration, John Hopton, the

Keeper of the Storehouse and the Clerk Controller and Robert Brigandine who hadn’t a

central role. In addition, they were no budget for the naval administration. Obviously,

such an administration cannot help the navy to grow and develop.

When John Hopton died in 1524, two successors took his functions. William Gonson

became the Keeper of the Storehouse while Thomas Spert became Clerk Controller.

The two men had in common the fact that they were ship-owners, merchantmen and

sea-captains. From this point, the highest minister of Henry, the Lord Chancellor,

Cardinal Wolsey and his successor, Thomas Cromwell began to be interested in this

naval administration. The minister didn’t want to have an administration that had its

own authority, so they preferred to have a trusted group of subordinates at the head of

this so-called administration to keep their eye on it. That’s what they had with Gonson.

Then, in 1539, he received a small budget of £500 from the higher sphere of the

kingship and he had the responsibility to deal with it. He was considered as the

Paymaster of the Navy when he committed suicide in 1544.

Shortly before the end of Henry’s reign, the Council of the Marine was created. Also

known as the Navy Board, it was created in 1546. It consisted of a united corporate

body with seven functions. They were three that already existed which were: The Clerk

Controller, the Keeper of the Storehouse and the Paymaster of the Navy. Four other

functions were created by the time: The Lieutenant of the Admiralty who is also known



as the Vice Admiral of England, the Treasurer, the Surveyor and Rigger of the Ships

and the Master of Naval Ordnance. Each member was responsible of one particular

aspect of the Naval Administration but they met frequently. The Lieutenant of the

Admiralty acted as the Lord Admiral’s deputy and the others as an all-purpose

committee. So, the Lieutenant advises the Lord Admiral, the King or the Privy Council7

following the different requests of the administration. At this time, the Lord Admiral

wasn’t part of the Naval Administration but was the single officer on the Board of the

Admiralty which was created years ago. He was responsible for the command of the

King’s ships at sea but wasn’t really involved in administrative affairs. On the other

hand, the Lord Admiral wasn’t really a seaman. Usually, it was a noble to whom this

title had been given as a privilege; it wasn’t given by merit.

This new system is of outstanding importance for the Navy. It allowed the Navy to be

more permanent and to be more organized. It brings the structure that accompanies the

fast growth of the fleet at this time and so it was then possible to learn more from the

mistake of the past because it wasn’t each ship-owner that made his ship without

having an overall view.

The new administration seemed excellent with that clear command and those well-paid

and able officials because they had great experience at sea and in port. However those

able officers were all ship-owners or merchantmen and their accession to the rank of

officials in the Navy Board didn’t take away their first occupation. So, their new

position can bring them some interesting advantages and they did not hesitate to use it

for private interests. They had considerable control on the King’s ships and so, their

private business interfered with public affairs. Here are a few examples of what we

would call nowadays, corruption: they used the king’s ship for private voyages; they

dealt the navy stores and equipment for themselves or they appeared with different

titles when it was useful for them (Royal Captain, Admirals, Officers of the Admiralty,

etc.).

7 According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, a privy council is a “body that advises the head of state of a nation, especially in a monarchy. The word “privy” means “private” or “secret”. A privy council was thus originally a committee of the monarch's closest advisors, who could give him confidential advice on matters of state.”


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_of_state

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_of_state

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidentiality

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Matters_of_state&action=edit


3.2 Development

3.2.1 Storehouses and Dockyards

Apart from the new organization that was put in place during Henry’s reign, new

constructions were built or increased. During and after the war (1512-1513), two new

storehouses were constructed in Erith and Deptford to help Henry with his growing

fleet. Erith quickly became the main centre for the naval administration until it acquired

a house at Deptford Strand. Three dockyards were increased at Portsmouth, Woolwich

and Deptford. In 1517, the construction of the Deptford Pond was an innovation, it was

next to the storehouse and it had to be able to keep big ships in reserve like the Great

Galley, the Mary Rose, the Peter Pomegranate, etc. It consisted of three basins of 8

acres each, deep enough for the big ships. In addition to this, a second dock was built at

Portsmouth in the mid-twenties and the opening of Trinity House, which had the role of

caring for the entire lighthouse system of the kingdom, providing aids to navigation and

serving as a charitable organization for mariners.

3.2.2 Ships

At the beginning of Henry VIII’s reign, the ships used for war were merchant ships

armed with small but numerous guns. This does not concern the two big carracks

inherited from his father’s “navy”, the Regent and the Sovereign. As we will see in a

following chapter, Henry had to make his naval force bigger. So, he began a

shipbuilding program and made some warships that were only designed for war,

nothing else. But the vast majority of his new fleet was also constituted of old

merchantmen armed for war. As usual for an Englishman, Henry built up some sailing

ships instead of galleys. The advantage of Henry’s fleet was at this point the big size of

his ships and so, boarding tactics.

Here, an important evolution, or revolution, was made by the English8. The idea was to

put some guns on the broadside of the warships. This would replace the old carracks

and galleys with what we call the broadside-armed sailing ships. The strategy relating

to this new evolution will be related in a following sub-chapter.

8 There is no sure source that proved that the English were the first to do this. It is disputed with the Portuguese.



By the early 16th century, there had been light guns on ships for many years. Bombards,

placed in the waist of the ship for a question of stability, had also been on carracks for a

long time. The evolution of the beginning of this century was to adapt the gun deck so

that heavy guns could take place on the ships thanks to their lower position in the hull.

If their positions were higher, the gravitational centre would have been too high

because of the huge weight of heavy guns, and the ship wouldn’t have been stable. So,

it was then possible to increase the weight of the armament and to have more guns.

The big guns carried at this time were iron breech-loader guns. They could be very

large, more than 20 feet long for 5 tons for the biggest of them; the basilisks. The

problem was that those guns couldn’t be used with great pressure. So, the charge had to

be small. But it was nevertheless effective because the munitions were, to fire against

the ship, not the crew, a large caliber stone shot. Stone being less dense than iron, the

shot could fly slowly but surely and it was really damageable for the enemy at short

range. When those guns were used against the crew, they put some irregular pieces of

iron. It was call a “dice” or “hail” shot.

When Henry acceded to the throne, England was late in the bronze technology for

guns. His father imported the main part, if not all, of their bronze cast guns from the

rest of Europe. Only one gun founder expert was known at this time. So, when Henry

came to power, he “imported” some gun foundery experts from the continent to make

up for lost time. The fact is that bronze was very expensive and it was seldom found on

English territory but Henry’s treasury wasn’t very full. So, at the very beginning of his

reign, or in the 1540s9, a very important step was made for the improvement of

artillery. This step was the beginning of cast iron gun founding. The iron industry was

encouraged to cast guns in iron. In 1543, the first cast iron muzzle-loader was made.

Despite the enthusiasm of the war lords, not only in England, for iron which was

around 80 to 90 % cheaper than bronze, it had a lot of disadvantages. In addition, an

advantage for the English was that there was a lot of iron on their territory. The first

disadvantage is the melting point. While that of bronze is around 1000°C10, that of iron

was of 1536°C11. It was difficult to obtain such temperature and in addition, there were

9 Depending on the source used. Some say that the date of 1543 was given by an “uncorroborated statement” by a certain Holinshead who was a 16th century chronicler. 10 This is not a precise data because bronze is an alloy which isn’t always in the same proportion. 11 Periodic table, HECHT E., Physique, de boeck, 1999



more hidden imperfections after the casting. But it is the only technical consideration

for the construction. The main problem was for the gunners; at high pressure, iron guns

could explode suddenly and there was no way to prevent it apart from putting less

charge in the gun. The bronze gun was less dangerous because the gunners could see

when a failure would happen because the gun bulged and then it split. So, because the

crew had not any material to measure the pressure, they had to see experimentally what

the maximum charge they could put in it was. Knowing that the explosion could be

mortal, it is easy to understand that gunners preferred bronze guns to iron. But at this

point, it was possible to have numerous and cheap guns of small and medium size

(bronze was preferred for heavier guns). Meanwhile, the Navy was still equipped with a

lot of bronze guns almost until the end of Elizabethan reign and there was more money

used for forging small-caliber breech-loader than for cast muzzle-loader made of

brass12 or iron.

Now, we will have a look at a boat that was almost never used in the British Navy but it

will interest us as you will see. The galley was most common in the Mediterranean. A

galley is a boat which is very flat, meaning that its hull isn’t curved a lot. The main

characteristic of a galley is that its main propulsion system is its oars, accompanied by

triangular rigging. Obviously, a galley can’t be too big if it must be moved by human

strength. It is very efficient inshore because the water is calmer than in the ocean.

Then, a great improvement that will cause so many problems to the sailing ships is to

arm the galley with a single large heavy gun on the bow. This meant that the galley had

now the possibility to fire forward. At the beginning, the gun was a breech-loader gun

of the basilisk type but it would be quickly replaced by the high-tech bronze muzzle-

loader gun. They could fire stone shots as well as iron shots at a very long range. For

example, the Venetians who were the best at this time could fire at a range of 500

yards! A little bit later, they add two to four lighter guns on either side of the heavy one

and so, they had a great forward-firing power. The fact is that when they approached

the enemy they could fire at him from a relatively long distance. It was absolutely

destructive against the English broadside-armed sailing ships because they couldn’t fire

ahead while they were under the enemy’s gunshots.

12 Brass is a type of bronze in which there is a part of zinc in the alloy.



Figure 4 - A Mediterranean galley painted by Lorenzo A. Castro in the 17th.

Henry had to find a solution to this new threat. He had two options: also to build some

galleys for his own navy or to arm a sailing ship so that he could win against a galley.

The two solutions had their disadvantages. For the first it was the fact that a galley isn’t

very seaworthy and it is only effective inshore. Indeed, Henry built three galleys in

1512 and another big one, the Great Galley, in 1515. The second option was

technically difficult because the ships of the time couldn’t be armed to fire forward. Of

course, you can’t fire with broadside, even less astern, guns while you are approaching

the enemy. The first attempt was to put two guns on the first level of the aftercastle so

that they could approximately fire ahead but there was a consequent blinding zone that

proved the limit of this system. Even with the growing power of artillery, the carracks

couldn’t match a galley squadron.



Guns on the

aftercastle

Blinding Area

Figure 5 - The blinding area when firing with guns on the aftercastle

So, they built some new ships. The first was a very small oared vessel of about 20 tons

but this was abandoned as soon as Henry VIII died. Other galleys were constructed and

in 1543, a pure Mediterranean-galley style was built, the Galley Subtle. But the most

interesting and important construction was the galleasses. They are quite big ships and

the interesting thing is that they are a hybrid between a sailing ship and a galley. They

had a complete bank of oars. England began to build two of them, quite big, the Grand

Maitresse and Anne Gallant. They were around 300-400 tons each. By the end of

Henry’s reign, the galleass was as follows. It was generally a three-mast ship and it

had, as we can see on the following picture, a forecastle and an aftercastle. Like the

galley, the hull had almost no curve but it had the transom stern13 like the big sailing

ship. There were two stern-chasers and some guns on the broadside on a deck which

was situated above the bank of oars meaning that the oarsmen didn’t work in the “open

sky”. The bow was really adapted to skirmishing and fighting against galleys because it

had a beak head on which lay a heavy gun.

13 A transom stern is when the boat has a flat back (vertically).



Figure 6 - A Spanish galleasses, 1585

For the English, it seems that the galleass was at the origin of the famous galleon14.

This ship had been developed in different countries around the same time in the mid-

16th. It was created in England between 1540 and 1570. Even if it goes a bit further

than Henry VIII, I’ll develop it in this section. The characteristic of a galleon is first of

all its forepart of a galley and its afterpart of a ship. With that information, we are not

surprised that a galleon had high stern and a low bow. The ratio length/beam was

higher for a galleon than for a carrack. The galleon was really adapted against galleys

because it had two heavy chase gun under the forecastle and sometimes, for the big

ships, two more on the lower gun deck. So, it had a very powerful forward-firing

armament, in addition to which it was fast and manoeuvrable. The solution was found.

But all these developments had a cost, and a high cost. For shipbuilding, repairing,

arming the ships, feeding and paying the crew, a lot of money was needed. In the last

five years of his reign, he spent an average of £53,000 which corresponds to more or

less one-fifth of his annual revenue. Adding to this all the expense for other purposes

and you obtain the incredible result of spending £650,000 for a revenue 2,6 times

smaller. The money came from the dissolution of monasteries but it meant that there

was no more reserve for his heir. We can easily understand why Edward and Mary

developed the Navy around twice less than their father. Mary spent “only” £21,000 a

year on the Navy. But Elizabeth won’t expend more than that in the first dozen years of

her reign. In addition, we can suppose that Mary, having married Philip II of Spain had

a great sea-power as an ally. Thus, it seems probable that she didn’t need to develop the

Navy as much as her father. This is only a supposition but it seems quite probable that a

14 The word galleon had been used in many different way by modern author but it seems that it had a more precise meaning (more or less the same meaning for different countries).



powerful power on her side could have convinced her to keep her money for something

else.

3.2.3 The Mary Rose

Mary Rose, Mary, like the name of Henry’s favorite sister, Mary Stuart. Rose, like the

symbol of the Tudors. This ship was one of the most powerful when it came out of the

dockyard for the first time. It was a 600-ton carrack with a single-purpose: war. It was

armed for close-range fighting having a total of 78 guns. It was built between 1509 and

1511, apparently in Portsmouth but the original sources aren’t sure and it may be

possible that it was built in Southampton. This ship had had a beautiful career, as

Admiral, Sir Edward Howard wrote in a letter addressed to the King after the first war

against the French.

“Your good ship, the flower, I trow, of all ship that ever sailed…”

The Mary Rose had some specific characteristics. The first is that, contrary to the ships

the King inherited from his father, it was carvel built. It means that a “skeleton” was

made with the internal structure of the hull and then, planks were added on it. It differs

from the old method which was to make the hull with overlapping planks and then to

consolidate it, adding light frames15. The other is that it carried heavy guns near the

waterline through gun ports. We do not have to forget that we are in the very beginning

of Henry’s reign and it wasn’t current to have gun ports and heavy guns aboard.

In 1528, between June and July, the Mary Rose was refitted with several other ships.

For this purpose, a new dock had to be built in Portsmouth. The operation cost £4 13s 3

½ d which would represents nowadays a sum of around 3800 CHF16. After the

rebuilding, the Mary Rose was about 100 tons heavier and it looks like a prototype of a

galleon even if it didn’t have the galley-type bow that characterized the galleons. The

high castles of the “old” Mary Rose were cut down while the decks were strengthened.

Numerous guns were added. It carried then 15 large bronze guns, 24 cast iron guns on

carriage and 52 smaller guns destined to kill the enemy’s men. It was also easier for the

15 According to N.A.M Rodger’s glossary, a frame is “a pair of timbers erected on the keel to support the ship’s sides, in the manner of a pair of ribs.” 16 This approximation had been made with the help of the website: http://eh.net/hmit/ppowerbp/ which calculates approximately the purchasing power of different periods in time. This is just to give a general idea of the cost of the different thing at this time. The website gives the result in pounds (£). The rate of exchange used to pass from pounds to the Swiss franc was £1 = 2.33 CHF.


http://eh.net/hmit/ppowerbp/


crew to move the guns onto the deck because they used some advance naval carriage.

Two of the most powerful guns were carried at the stern castle because at this time,

stern-chasers were often the place where the ship was the best armed. In addition to the

guns quoted above, the ship was equipped with 50 handguns, 250 longbows, 300 pole

arms, 480 darts that could be thrown at the enemy and a good stock of arrows. These

weapons were there because a close fight was expected as the preferred naval tactic

was still the same: boarding. In 1536, another refitting was done.

Guns of brass Calibre [in] Weight [tons] Number Shots (iron) Cannons 8 2,8 2 50 Demi cannons 6,5 1,8 2 60 Culverins 5,5 2 2 60 Demi culverins 4,5 1,5 6 140 Sakers 3,5 6 2 80 Falcons 2 1/3 3,5 1 60

Figure 7 - Table showing the heavy brass guns carried by the Mary Rose

The guns showed in the table above are the 15 heavy cast muzzle-loader guns made of

brass. The calibre is the internal diameter of the tube at the muzzle end. Obviously, the

calibre determined the maximum size of the shots. For example, a cannon could fire

shots just a little bit bigger than a handball while a falcon could use a shot a bit smaller

than a tennis ball.

20 m 5.5 m 15 m 4.5 m

32.06 m

45 m

1.4 m 4.6 m

Breadth = 11.66 m

Figure 8 - A few dimension of the Mary Rose



Being a carrack, the Mary Rose had two castles: the aftercastle and the forecastle.

These high platforms could permit soldiers to fire on the enemy with individual guns or

a longbow and to have the place to fight in case of a boarding. This was again in a

boarding-tactic mode because archers were here to clear the enemy’s deck before

boarding. We can easily see the place offered by the castle and the main deck on the

illustration below. As we can see, the Mary Rose was a four-mast ship with square

rigging. As we saw, the real improvement was the addition of a gun deck below the

main deck with gun ports to fire with heavy guns. These gun ports were very close to

the waterline, being only separated by 4 feet and 7 inch (1.4 meter). This was normally

sufficient to forbid the water to come too much inside the ship but a theory advanced

that the Mary Rose sank because its gun ports were too close to the waterline.

Unfortunately, on the 19th of July 1545, the Mary Rose sank in the beginning of a battle

against the French without having fired a single shot. The real cause of the sinking is

not quite certain. There are different theories but nothing is proved for any of them.

Almost the whole crew unfortunately drowned, including Sir Edward Howard, in the

main because of the anti-boarding net that imprisoned them on the deck.

Figure 9 - An impression of the Mary Rose, as she was in 1545



The Mary Rose had been in its career the flagship or the vice-flagship in battle. This

means that it was the Admiral or Vice-admiral’s ship, this status giving him a great

importance. Being a flagship, it would be interesting to have a look at the flag of this

ship. The one on the main mast seems to be the King’s flag which was the same as his

old predecessor Henry IV:

“Quarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or and Gules three lions passant guardant

in pale Or”.

A ship could carry this Royal ensign when the King was aboard or sometimes the

Admiral could carry it in a form of royal privilege. On the three other masts, we can see

the St-George’s cross, the English national flag. Those long triangular flags are what

we call streamers. They were very long and seemed to have no function but

ornamentation. The design was the St-George’s cross for the square part and a bicolour

green and white scheme for the triangular part which was the two colours often used on

the ship flags. Another scheme of colour that we haven’t here was the more seldom

bicolour yellow and white scheme.

Figure 10 - Different flags that could be seen on the Mary Rose

3.2.3 Tactics

I will describe now the classical technique used in the beginning of the century by

broadside-armed sailing ship against the same kind of ship. In spite of the development

of artillery mounted on to the ships, the tactics didn’t change quite for a long time. The

mariners had a tendency to board the enemy as soon as possible even if they had

powerful artillery that might sink the enemy’s ship.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleur-de-lis


The first step for the attacker was to approach the enemy’s ship trying to get the

windward position. The objective is to put the ship between the enemy and where the

wind is coming. There are several advantages to take such a position. First, the attacker

can move toward the enemy and control when the action will take place. The opponent

is in fact as paralyzed because the wind that he needs to go away is in part taken by the

attacker if he’s close enough. On the other hand, the ship which is on the leeward17

position can’t go towards the attacker because in realty the maximum angle that a ship

can advance toward the wind is of 70° from a right-angle axe with the wind.

Sometimes, ships turned round during hours to take the windward position, even during

days and nights to take when the battle implicated two quite big fleets. There is only

one situation where having the windward position can be a disadvantage; it is when the

weather is extremely bad and the wind very strong. Having the windward position

means having the gun ports close by the wind while from the leeward position, the guns

can show all their strength.

Red moves to get to windward position

WIND

Figure 11 - boarding tactic.18

When the attacker gets to the windward position, the other ship can hardly fly away. On

the scheme the blue ship is turn on the same direction than the red one but it could have

been turned in another way and the he would have had to lose time to get in a position

to fly.

17 The opposite of the windward position. 18 Those schemes could have been done thanks to the scenario editor of the video game Empire Earth.



Red gets to Windward of Blue

WIND

Figure 12 - boarding tactic.

When the attacker approaches the enemy, he fires with as many small guns and arrows

as he can. At that time, archers were often present on a ship, using longbows in English

ships and crossbows for the French. That firing was done to try to clear up the enemy’s

deck to board easily after.

Red fires with small guns and arrows while approaching the enemy

FIRE

WIND


When the two ships are separated by only a few feet, bombards fire. Again, this is for

clearing the deck just before the boarding. In addition, it creates great confusion and the

visibility is very low because of the smoke. Then, the soldiers board the other ship if

the attacker thinks that the deck is clear enough. If it is not the case, the ship can fire

again or withdraw.



Bombards fire at short range then red boards blue

FIRE &BOARD

WIND


We have seen a usual one versus one tactic that used to happen on the sea. Now, we

will have a more general overview and I shall try to show some tactics that could be

used by a fleet.

By the early 16th, the tactic showed before was generally used. For example: A battle

opposed the twenty-five ships of Sir Edward Howard to the French Admiral Rene de

Clermont’s fleet constituted of twenty-two ships on the 10th of August 1513. At the

very beginning the two fleets were facing in a line abreast formation but they quickly

broke their initial position to go as fast as possible to board the enemy in a one on one

fight. Howard’s ship engages the flagship and each ship tried to engage an enemy ship

of similar size. The “battlefield” seemed to be only a big melee with no tactical

placement or action. Nevertheless, England won this battle thanks to gunpowder.

Gunpowder made great damage to the French flagship and the power of the artillery

helped to prevent the enemy from boarding. It is a foolish action to board an enemy that

has guns with several chambers meaning that more than one shot can be fired before

reloading. In addition, to prevent boarding, both sides covered the top deck with nets.

The individual weapons, like longbows or crossbows, helped against boarding too.

What we clearly see here is that the technology had too much advance compared to

naval tactics. Boarding was more and more difficult to do but it was the main and

preferred tactic for each side. The problem resides in the fact that the commander can’t

give orders as easily as on land battlefield. On the sea, there is some distance between

the different ships and it’s impossible for the commander to send a message with a



sound or with a messenger. A solution was to use different flag to communicate during

the battle but the visibility decrease quickly with all these guns firing. In addition, the

commander often went to fight on the front line, making impossible for him to see how

the battle evolved.

Later, there will be some set of instructions that were published, notably one from a

ance

he Navy resides in the defense of the country. The closest

ay to understand this fast development of the navy is that Henry VIII was

Spanish Alfonso de Chaves. In those sets, some suggestions for different formations

and a division of the fleet were made. The tactics were not at this point at a highest

point of perfection but the important point is that there was a beginning of an attempt to

keep cohesion during the battle. At this point in time, the fleet was sometimes divided

into different blocks; like the vanguard, the battle or the wings and each of these blocks

had its own role. It was easier then to control the battlefield because each group had its

own objectives.

3.3 Its import

The first importance of t

neighbors, the Scots had a fleet of great importance and moreover, they had a new huge

four-mast ship of 1000 tons, the Great Michael. This ship was the largest warship in

Europe. Its dimension was 240 feet long and 35 feet abeam. The important thing is that

it carried a huge number of guns: 24 guns, 3 basilisks19 and 300 smaller guns. It also

carried 300 sailors, 120 gunners and to 1000 soldiers. Henry must have had really

something to fear with the alliance of Scotland and his centuries-enemy, France.

Adding to this the fact that Henry wanted to fight against France as we have seen in the

historical context, the quick layout of a navy seemed logical. In addition, his breach

with Roman Catholicism could bring him some new enemies which were very

powerful at sea, so that was quite a good idea to develop a war fleet to defend his

borders.

Another w

much more aggressive in his foreign policy than his prudent father. Wanting to recover

a past glory and give much more importance to England, and to himself of course,

Henry VIII need to be aggressive and he choose for that their neighbors across the

Channel. Because the development of the navy cost a lot and because Henry wasn’t the

19 A basilisk is a heavy gun of 20 feet long or more which weighted approximately five tons.



wealthiest, he used the money that came from the selling of the monastic estates to buy

or make new cannons, ships and consolidated his coastal defense. But this was a little

bit later in his reign.

However, it seems that Henry didn’t really saw the potential benefit of the control of

he Elizabethan Era

eers

ey did almost the same job as the pirate, were not considered

re used to acting as a military force that could be sent in peace time. Making

the ocean for commercial purpose. The Portuguese and Spaniards saw that quickly and

installed trading-posts all around the known world. England would have to wait until

Elizabeth to really develop this commerce. Of course, England used ships to commerce

with others countries but it was above all with European countries. So, we can say that

Henry’s navy was almost exclusively used for Northern purposes such as home-defence

or war with the French.

4. The Royal Navy in t

4.1 Structure

4.1.1 The privat

The privateers, although th

as outlaws. They were given some “letter of marque” by their government which

authorized them to attack a specific enemy. In addition to the permission, the

government often gave the privateer some ships, men and money for the success of the

expedition. But it was aiming to finance the expedition with the enemies’ own money.

In exchange, the privateer gave a large part of the seizure of treasury to his employers.

Privateering was especially done by the English, the Dutch and the French Huguenots,

in fact, the Protestant countries. This is not surprising because the Atlantic trade was

monopolized by Spain (and Portugal before its annexation), which was a Catholic

power.

They we

war without being personally engaged was the aim of the Crown with those piratical

expeditions. The fact is that for the privateer’s victim, it was only pirates that attacked

them and it was exactly what the government wanted. So, the Crown often claimed that

they were only pirates that had to be punished… But the knighting of a privateer

doesn’t seem to be a great sentence. Indeed, those expeditions were also financed by

merchantmen and private investments from wealthy people. During Elizabeth’s reign,

more than 70 expeditions were sent, paid by the government or by private people. Most



part of them was sent against the Spanish empire but also against other pirates, who

could be dangerous in home water.

The most famous privateer of this time was Sir Francis Drake. He was born around

is the navy organized

ery few changes compared to the one put in

1540 but the exact date isn’t known. He was from a modest family but he had some

family link with famous people like Sir Richard Grenville or the Hawkins’ family. He

began his career on the sea at the age of 13 and at 20 he was the master of his own bark

in which he could improve his skill on the North Sea. His first voyage to the New

World, and his first piratical action by the way, was with John Hawkins on the three

slave-trade expeditions started in 1563. It was after the third voyage that Drake began

to hate the Spanish because he nearly lost his life when they had been taken by surprise

in the enemy’s port. He then made several expeditions against the Spanish like the one

at Nombre de Dios in 1573 where he took a big treasury of silver from the mule-train.

From 1577 to 1580, he circumnavigated the world on the Pelican (renamed the Golden

Hind during the voyage). It was the second time that the voyage round the world had

been completed but it was the first time that the captain survived the expedition. The

interesting thing is that Drake became commander on royal ships. It shows that

England accorded a lot of credit, to what was considered by other countries as

“pirates”. Another example is the accession to the post of Treasurer of the Navy by Sir

John Hawkins. It had the advantage of giving power to men that had great experience

of the sea by their numerous expeditions, as much on their skill for navigation as their

experience in naval warfare. During the battle against the Spanish Armada, Drake was

named Vice-Admiral of the fleet. After the Armada, he didn’t make a lot of expeditions

and they were unsuccessful for the most part. He died from dysentery in 1596 in an

unsuccessful expedition to San Juan with Sir John Hawkins who also died in the

expedition.

4.1.2 How

The naval administration remained with v

place under Henry VIII. One of the main differences is that the power passed clearly to

the Treasurer’s hand. This would be important with the accession of John Hawkins to

this post later. Another important step that was made at the very beginning of the

Elizabethan reign in 1558 was that there was a commission put in place to plan the

requirement in ships for the navy. The proposed size of the royal fleet in William

Winter’s report was to have 24 big ships (200 to 800-tons) with 6 smaller ships (bark



and pinnaces). In fact, it wasn’t followed as well and in 1565, only 17 great ships were

in the royal fleet. In addition, this report also listed 45 merchantmen that could be

mobilized and armed, and 20 more to be the victuallers. The effort was also put on the

mobilization program. It was possible then to ready a fleet in two or three months

which was only possible with a well-organized administration. It is very important

because it was impossible at this time to keep an entire fleet afloat a too long time.

The structure of the commandment on a fleet was as follows. At the top, there was the

Fi Diagram of a big fleet organization

The choice of the com determine victory or

Admiral or general, followed by the vice-admiral and then by the rear-admiral. On an

expedition, the three could represent different parties. For example, on the Cadiz

expedition in 1587, Drake (general) represented the Plymouth squadron and the West

Country investors, Borough (vice-admiral) represented the Navy Royal while Flicke

represented the London merchantmen. In a big fleet, like the one that sailed against the

Armada, the fleet was divided into different squadrons, generally four. As we can see

on the diagram, there were the four highest grades of the fleet who led a squadron. But

in each squadron, the four men mentioned above were the admiral of their squadron

and they had their subordinates. So, a single man could have more than one role,

depending on what is regarded, the fleet or the squadron. On the ships that didn’t carry

one of these men, they were commanded by a captain.

Of the n

Lord Admiral

Joint general

Vice-admiral

Rear-admiral

Admiral

Vice-admiral

Rear-admiral

Also

Of the fleet

squadro

gure 15 -

mander at this time was a crucial point to

defeat. The commander could be from two social categories. They could be noblemen

or big land-owners but also some more modest men that raised the “social ladder” with



their ability on the sea. It was the case of men like Sir Francis Drake that had been

knighted by the Queen after his circumnavigation of the world or like Hawkins,

Frobisher, Fenner, etc. But a man of the second could hardly manage to command

noblemen that were often on the ship. In addition, a commander should be on good

terms with his close subordinates. These two points explained why the one that had the

best capacity, Sir Francis Drake, wasn’t named Admiral of the fleet against the Spanish

Armada. It was, in fact, Lord Charles Howard of Effingham who had this post. He was

of very high birth and was able to unite his subordinates, who sometimes didn’t

appreciate each other, like the tension between Drake and Frobisher. Even if he wasn’t

the most capable at sea (but he made a lot of effort), he had the quality that even Sun

Tzu, 2500 years ago, recognized as a main part of a ruler’s ability.

“The Way causes men to be of one mind with their rulers, to live or die with them

of War”

In addition to the quality mentioned in the last paragraph, Howard had the quality that

e navy

e Crown or by private investments brought

and never to waver. […] For this deliberation, for the making of comparisons, and

the assessing of conditions, discover: […] Which ruler has the way? Which

general has the ability? […] On which side is discipline more effective?”

Sun Tzu, “The Art

he listened to his subordinates. The way that Howard proceeded to make decisions was

as follows. He had seven advisors: Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher and Fenner (mariners);

Sheffield & Thomas Howard (noblemen); Roger Williams (soldier). Drake could here

lead the major part of the operation because what he wanted was always to win by at

least 5 vs. 3. It was because Charles Howard was quickly convinced by all the strategic

ideas of Drake, adding the two Howards who followed the Lord Admiral and Fenner

who followed Drake. So, Howard was the high commander and Francis Drake was the

general of the naval operations. We can say that the one who “has the ability” was the

one who lead the fleet in operations.

4.2 The long voyages

4.2.1 Consequence on th

The long voyages financed either by th

many things to the navy, apart from the financial revenue which does not interest us in

this chapter. The fact that these seamen traveled on the high seas of the Atlantic and

later of the Pacific, brought them a huge knowledge of navigation. Those voyages were



the best training that they could have. Even in naval warfare, in fact, because those long

voyages were made essentially by privateers, who often financed their expeditions with

the enemy’s treasury. So, they were used to fighting on the sea which brought them

considerable experience.

This experience acquired at sea helped the navy to develop. Men like John Hawkins

obscured

the

Hind later in the voyage)

-tons)

ns)

He s and sufficient men”20. In order to better

could use their great experience to develop shipbuilding and on the other hand, those

privateers could improve the naval tactics in advance compared to their time.

4.2.2 The circumnavigation of the world by Sir Francis Drake

In 1577, Francis Drake began an expedition in which the objectives are still

nowadays. It wasn’t primarily aimed at circumnavigating the globe and it seems quite

probable that the original mission was to see and probably to attack the South America

trading post of the Spaniards. This expedition was financed by diverse people, like

some members of the Privy Council and of the Navy Board, but also John Hawkins

who wasn’t yet the Treasurer of the Navy at this time and some other private investors.

The Queen is said to have participated in the investments but what is sure is that she

took a very large part of the income. Drake himself spent £1,000 on the expedition.

Nevertheless, Drake set sail on the 15th of November 1577. Francis Drake was

captain general of a fleet (admiral) of 5 ships:

- The Pellican (100-tons)(renamed Golden

- The Elizabeth (80-tons)

- The Marigold (bark of 30

- The Swanne (flyboat of 50-tons)

- The Christopher (pinnace of 15-to

wa accompanied by a crew of 164 “able

follow the voyage, a map of the voyage has been added in Appendix (II). They parted

from Plymouth and sailed to the North-Western coast of Africa, which he followed

until he went to the Cape Verde Islands. There he took victuals and he captured a

Portuguese pilot, Nunho da Silva, who could guide him across the Atlantic and the

Brazil coasts. It was usual at this time to take pilots in strange waters. Even if they were

captured against their will, it seems that they were well treated on board, almost being

20 The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake



part of the crew. On the 2nd of April 1578, he left Cape Verde and sailed across the

Atlantic towards South America for two months, fighting against the elements. He then

reached the very Southern part of modern Brazil. He lost then two of his smaller ships

in a storm and then he sailed southward. After having passed the Strait of Magellan

(and having visited several islands in the southern part of the Strait), he was driven

south by a storm. It was then that he discovered Cape Horn (but he almost certainly did

not reach it) and what would be called later the Drake Passage (but the passage will be

passed only in 1616). He also discovered there that Tierra del Fuego was part of an

archipelago composed of several small islands and not a “continental land mass”21.

Figure 16 – The Drake Passage

But the storm also separated t” and he continued with his

thought it not good to return by the Straits, for two special causes; the one,

him from the rest of his “flee

lone ship northward following the Pacific Coast of South America. The decision to

continue this way and not come back is well explained by one of Drake’s gentlemen on

the ship:

“He

lest the Spaniards should there wait and attend for him in great number and

strength, whose hands, he, being left but one ship, could not possibly escape. The

other cause was the dangerous situation of the mouth of the Straits in the South

Sea; where continual storms reigning and blustering, as he found by experience,

21 “Sir Francis Drake, a pictoral biography” by Kraus



besides the shoals and sands upon the coast, he thought it not a good course to

adventure that way.”

Francis Petty22

At this time, he was the first man who passed the Strait who wasn’t a Spaniard or a

coast of North America in a place near San

e Pacific to reach the Portuguese Moluccas (some

Portuguese. It is an important fact because the West Coast America was almost without

any defence because there were supposedly no enemies. So by the end of the year,

Drake attacked different ports along the coast of the actual Chile, like Valparaiso,

capturing valuable treasury from the Spanish hands. Near the equator line, Drake

attacked and seized the 120-tons vessel, the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (also

known as the cacafuego). He could board this ship by boarding it by night, taking it by

surprise as there was no pirate usually on this coast. The total amount of this capture is

nearly £360,000 in jewellery, gold, silver, etc. After having taken the treasury on his

own ship, Drake continued his way but he sailed less close to the shore in order to

preserve his newly acquired treasury.

Then, on June 1579, he reached the

Francisco, in Upper California. There, he claimed an area, which didn’t belong to

anyone, above New Spain, to belong to the English throne. This place was named Nova

Albion. The fact is that the exact location is still nowadays uncertain because after the

voyage, the Queen wanted this information to be kept secret in order to prevent any

Spanish attack on the new territory. But it had been kept too secret in fact. It is said that

Drake was looking for a Northern passage above the North American continent.

Englishmen had long been looking for this passage from the other side of the continent

but without success. Drake also didn’t find one (we can see on the map in the appendix

the way Drake intended to find).

After that, Drake sailed across th

islands of modern Indonesia) where he almost lost the Golden Hind. He stopped on

various islands and finally set sail from Java across the Indian Ocean. He arrived in the

Eastern part of South Africa before passing the Cape of Good Hope. He then sailed

northward and arrived 15th of July 1580 at Rio de Sesto and in Sierra Leone seven days

22 Extract from “Modern History Sourcebook: Francis Pretty: Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World, 1580”, from the website: www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1580Pretty-drake.html


http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1580Pretty-drake.html

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1580Pretty-drake.html


later where they rested two days. Then, they sailed without reaching land directly to

Plymouth. He there arrived with 59 seamen and a lot of treasury.

“And the 26. of Sept.[…] we safely with ioyfull minds and thankfvll hearts to God,

arriued at Plimoth, the place of our first setting forth after we had spent 2. yeares

10. moneths and some few odde daies beside, in seeing the wonders of the Lord in

the deep, in discouering so many admirable things, in going through with so many

strange aduentures, in escaping out of so many dangers, and ouercomming so

many difficulties in this our encompassing of this neather globe, and passing

round about the world, which we haue related.”

Drake’s narrator in “The World Encompassed”

The result of the circumnavigation was first, in a short-term perspective, a tremendous

financial revenue. The investors are said to have earned £47 for each pound invested,

meaning an income of 4,700%. From a geographical point of view, Drake discovered

two main things; the first one is that Tierra del Fuego wasn’t part of a continent. The

second one was the discovery of Upper California. But this was moreover a splendid

human exploit because he was the first captain to survive a voyage around the world

with a crew in good health.

4.3 The power of the fleet

4.3.1 The ships

The main power of the English fleet at this time was the great galleon. As we have

seen, it had been developed in many countries at about the same time. In general, its

advantages were its manoeuvrability because the new form of the hull gave less

resistance to the water so that much more water could flow around the hull. In addition,

other improvements made the galleon have better stability and it could sail closer to the

wind.

But the English galleon was a bit different than the ones from the Continent. Under Sir

John Hawkins’ supervision, improvements were made. There were aimed at giving

better manoeuvrability, seaworthiness and stability to the galleon. So, the length had

been raised compared to the breadth. It also permitted the ship to carry more guns. The

two castles, that a lot of traditionalists thought gave all the majesty of a ship, were

considerably reduced as we can clearly see on the diagrams below. The waist had been

decked so that, again, more guns could be carried. All of this offered a considerable



advantage from point of view of placement and movement but it also meant that the

ships weren’t fit for hand-to-hand fighting anymore. It was a considerable, precocious

improvement which would revolutionize naval warfare for the next centuries.

Figure 17 – A comparison between an English and a Spanish galleon.

This “revolution” had to concord with the types of guns carried on the ship and the way

of using them. Before, the guns were used for two reasons. The first one was to kill as

many men as possible, so that the boarding would be much more efficient. The second

one, which was useful against manoeuvrable ships, was to destroy the “propulsion

system” so that the enemy can’t fly away. It means to fire at the enemy’s masts, sails,

ropes, rudder, etc. If the opponent’s ship was sufficiently damaged, it would be

immobilized and then it would have been simple to board her whenever they wanted,

with as many ships as they wanted.

We will zoom in the guns themselves. To fire at the maximum range, a gun had to be

inclined so that it had a curved trajectory as on the scheme below. So, when the shot,



by luck, hit the enemy’s ship, it would penetrate the hull of the ship with an angle of

less than 90° degrees.

Figure 18 – Range compared to gun inclination

It means that, as we can see on the scheme, a shot that enter with a smaller angle will

have to destroy more wood than if it had entered it at a right-angle. We can clearly see

that the blue part for a long-range shot is wider than the one for a short-range shot.

Long-range shot

Short-range shot

Short-range shot Long-range shot

Figure 19 - The impact zone of a shot

So, this fact plus the fact that a shot fired from long distance lose speed because of air

resistance, means that a long-range shot can hardly ever make a hole in the hull; Or

only a small hole that could be easily repaired, but it was impossible to sink a ship at

too long a distance. The fire at this time weren’t precise, apart from point-blank shot,

for different reasons. The first one is that a shot is of course a little bit smaller in

diameter than the calibre of the gun. So, this “windage” (varying a lot between two

shots) made the shot hit the edge of the gun-end and the shot could only divert from the



aiming trajectory. The second one is that the gunners didn’t have a lot of practice

because by that time gunpowder was expensive and it was rare to practice in peace

efficient than a gun that has to shoot in a

to the

cannon. At this time, the length of a cannon more or less determined the range.

time. In addition, there was no gun sight to help the gunner to aim.

A gun that fired at point blank will be more

curved trajectory, even if the shot is lighter.

We will now have a look at the main category of heavy guns that were carried on the

ships. The first one, the heaviest, is the cannon type. It included the cannon and the

semi-cannon. They were around 10 feet long, fired at short-range and fired shot

between 30 and 60 lb. The second one is the cannon-perier. It was a bit old fashioned

because it fired lighter shot than the cannon (24 lb) and fired at shorter range, but the

damage was considerable at this distance. The last one is the couleuvrine type. It

included at least 7 guns (couleuvrine, demi-couleuvrine, saker, minion, etc.). All these

guns fired at long-range and had a very high ratio length/calibre, contrary

Figure 20 - The three types of heavy gun plus the mortar (proportion respected)

On the table below, we can see that if they wanted a cannon that fired at about the same

range as an entire couleuvrine, with the same shot size, they would have to double the

length. But a 20-feet long cannon was simply impossible to carry on a ship, especially



when they were put on the broadside. In fact, the 14-feet noted on the table is the

longest couleuvrine the English had.

16.5

Type Calibre (in) Length (ft) Shot weight (lb) Ratio length/calibre

Cannon 7 1/4 ~10 ~50 ~Couleuvrine 5 1/4 ~14 17 ~32

Figure 21 – Comparison of the cannon and the couleuvrin

To conclude on guns, we can say that, at this time, they had to choose between the

range and the shot weight. In a few words, the English chose the range while the

like the English, not divided

a heavy

ommunication. As for the bark and

the frigates, they were used to bring messenger or commander where they were needed.

But the principal role was for scouting the enemy.

Spanish chose the weight, but we will see some precise numbers in detail in chapter

4.3.4.

The 17 galleons of the Queen by 1588, including the ships that are presumed to be

galleons, carried an average of 34 guns for a tonnage of about 380. If we add to this

calculation the other big ships that had been modified to have approximately the same

advantages as the galleons (see Appendix III, Queen’s ship, “other big ships”), we

arrive at an average of 37 guns for each. The rest of the English fleet, including the

Queen’s pinnaces, the merchantmen, etc. carried an average of only 9,5 guns while the

Spanish had a total average of 9 guns per ship (but

equally). So, we can clearly see where the power of the English fleet was and in fact,

the other ships didn’t make any damage to the Armada.

But it doesn’t mean that they served no purpose. For example, the pinnace had a very

important role. The pinnace was a small ship or a large boat and they had almost the

same advantage as the galleon, their speed, manoeuvrability and carried

armament for a ship of this size. Their role was, as Rodger puts it, “scouting, cruising

and piracy, either operating on their own or in conjunction with bigger ships.”23

In addition, the pinnaces had an important role for c

23 N.A.M Rodger from “The Safeguard of the Sea” p.219



Figure 22 – An English pinnace (1580)

4.3.3 The officers and the crew

On a 16th century English ship, there were numerous officers and petty officers. The

highest rank on the ship was the captain, followed by the master of the ship and then by

different specialized officers. We could find the boatswain who was responsible for

every task that had a link with the sails and the rigging, the master carpenter, the master

gunner, the purser or every kind of role that could be on a ship. We also could find on

the biggest ships some smiths, tailors, bakers, apothecaries, etc. each with an officer

(who could be the only one in this function). The officers were not always better paid

than the other seamen (as we can see on a table on figure 24). The main reason is that

the term officer was given to diverse functions and the one that was responsible for an

office was an officer.

On a ship we can make three general categories among the crew: The sailors, or

mariners, the soldiers and the gunners. Let’s have a look at some interesting statistics:

Date Ship(s) Soldiers % Mariners % Gunners % Total Henri Grace à Dieu 400 57 260 37 40 5.7 700

1513 Great Bark 150 60 88 35 12 4.8 250 Henri Grace à Dieu 349 50 301 43 50 7.1 700

1546 Great Bark 136 45 138 46 26 8.7 300

1588 English fleet vs the Armada 1'540 9.7 14'385 90 inc. in mariners - 15'925

Figure 23 - Proportion evolution among the crew

As we can see in the table, the proportion passed from around two soldiers for one

mariner (which was the usual proportion) in the beginning of Henry VIII’s reign to

only one-tenth of the crew composed by soldiers. This evolution evolved with naval

tactics, which I will discuss in the following chapter. But in few words, this table shows

the tendency by the English to avoid contact with the enemy ships to try to win only

with gunnery. The fact that the gunners are included in the mariners’ number is not



surprising because they often did the two jobs. In addition, the armament of soldiers

afloat began to change in time. At the beginning, they used longbows for firing and

lances, swords, knives, etc. for hand-to-hand fighting. Then, the arquebuse and other

handguns replaced the bow while the hand-to-hand weapons were progressively

diminished. The main thing was again to avoid boarding. Despite the fact that the

sailors and soldiers seemed to have a well-defined role, the soldiers often helped the

first because their strength could be helpful with ropes or with guns.

There were numerous functions for the seamen. Below the officers, there were the

mates of the higher grade men, the deputies, and then the quartermasters who were

responsible of one-fourth of the ship’s company’s fighting organization; they are what

we can call “petty officers”. There is also another officer who had an important role on

the ship called the purser. His job was to care about victualling and in fact everything

that has a link with money on the ship. After them, we can see that there were some

specialists in various domains. We can name the most common of them: the cooks,

stewards, coopers, smiths, musicians, etc. The musicians weren’t only ones on ship to

play music but also to communicate in a primitive way to other ships. It was very

useful to know where the different ships were in bad weather conditions for example.

Apart from them, there were also, and not the least important, the surgeons. At a time

when disease was the principal cause of death on ships, their skills were really

welcome. When we have a look at the rate of pay24 of the crew, the pay for the widest

part of the crew seems quite low. The surprising thing is that what seemed to be some

very important roles on the ship, the gunners and the surgeon because of the evolving

tactics of the time and the important disease, are in fact the lowest paid, apart from the

master in this role. I can suggest that at this time, the important work should be done by

the master of each function and that their mate job could be done by almost everybody

and were not too constraining.

24 Before decimalisation in 1971, in England, a pound (£) was equal to 20 shillings (d) and one shilling was equal to 12 pence (s). For example, the notation for a seaman rate of pay would be: £0 10d 0s, or, for a more compact notation: £0-10-0d.



FunctionMasterBoatswainQuartermasterMaster CarpenterPurserSurgeonTrumpeterCookStewardMaster GunnerSeamanMate (avrg)(not counting the master's mate)Gunner (avrg)Surgeon's man

Rate of pay per month

16s 8d

£2 1s 8d£1 1s 8d16s 8d

16s 8d15s

6s 8d

10s9s 7d7s 6d

15s11s 8d11s 8d

10s

Figure 24 - Rate of pay on an 800-tons or more ship in 1582

From 1565, each man had a standard ration that was more or less respected. A one-day

ration was composed as follows. For the so-called “Flesh Days” which include

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, each man received:

- 1 gallon25 of beer

- 1 lb26 of bread (often biscuits)

- 2 lb of “fresh” beef or ½ lb of salt beef or ½ lb of bacon.

The other days, the “Fish Days”, the ration was:

- 1 gallon of beer

- 1 lb of bread (often biscuits)

- ¼ of a stockfish or 4 herrings27

- 4 ounces of butter

- ½ lb of cheese

This official ration is theoretical because what they could eat depended on diverse

factors like the season. In winter, for example, they had to eat almost exclusively salt

beef because it is what could be best preserved.

On a ship, especially on a long voyage, disease created carnage. They were principally

caused by rotten food and drink. Because the conservation methods were really bad at

this time, the only way was salting everything that had a chance to be conserved. The

25 One English gallon = 4.54609 litres 26 One pound (1 lb) = 0.454 kg 27 The fish that could be eated depended of course on fishing and where the ship was.



food quickly rots because it was difficult to keep enough proper food for more than

four months. The problem with water and other drinks is that when you have stagnant

water without contact with the air, bacteria tend to develop very quickly. All of this, in

addition to the fact that there are numerous people very close on a ship, grave diseases

tend to kill a lot of men. Typhus, scorbutic, dysentery, influenza were some diseases

that decimated the crew, the usual ratio for a more or less long voyage was around one-

third of the men being killed.

It leads to a major problem that occurred in the Elizabethan Navy, the lack of sailors for

the Queen’s ships. The royal fleet needed more than 5,000 seamen for a total of around

16,000 in the whole of England. It seems to be enough but the royal ships were not the

only ones to need sailors. The first ones were the privateers. They were much more

attractive for the common seamen for diverse reasons. The first one was that the

discipline aboard the Queen’s ships was really much harder than on privateer’s where

indiscipline was current. The second one is that on a royal ship the rate of pay was

always the same, apart from if they were not paid at all which was unfortunately too

frequent, 10 shillings per month plus food and drink. On a privateer, they were not

guaranteed to earn anything but it was luck and they could get a very big amount of

money if they captured a rich enemy. The adventure of privateering was often preferred

to the royal ships company. In addition, the high mortality rate made it difficult for the

Navy to find sailors, especially during a campaign. So, they had to recruit unskilled

men, like peasants or poor Londoners. Firstly they were recruiting in the counties near

the sea but they also called men from the inland counties to avoid a lack of men to

make one of the most important activities for coastal counties: fishing. But those men

from the poorer neighborhoods of London were not accustomed to the difficult life at

sea and were more sensitive to diseases, accelerating the process.

The lack of sailors on the royal ship is a consequence of the fact that there was not any

permanent employee mariner. When the Queen’s ship went to sea, they had to proceed

with the recruitment. But when the fleet wasn’t used or was repaired in the docks, each

sailor returned to ‘normal’ life, not being engaged and paid by the Crown anymore. The

only men that were permanently employed by the Queen in the Navy were the ones that

worked in the dockyard or storehouse. These men were the shipwrights, storekeepers,

etc. But they kept their independence and worked by contract with the Queen but they



were lodged and victualled by Her Majesty. So, we can consider them as permanent

employees.

This temporary employment wasn’t only for the seamen but also for the higher rank

officers. It seems that during Elizabeth reign, there were only two permanent officers

which were not the great commander that we could think. Meanwhile, the

administration made great efforts to take inventory of every captain that could take the

command of a ship when they mobilized. So, they listed 76 potential captains in which

we can find:

- The Lord Admiral

- 4 noblemen

- 8 knights (courtiers, soldiers or country gentlemen)

- 18 esquires

- 28 gentlemen

- 17 others

In general, these commanders had a good experience of seafaring, which is in contrast

to the Spanish method to choose their captains. In Spain, the system was really

aristocratic and it was inconceivable that a man that had less title than another could

command him. So, they managed to choose some incompetent commander, even

Admiral, to lead them. The most astonishing example is that when they sent the

Spanish Armada, they chose the Duke Medina-Sidonia, who had so numerous titles that

it would be too long to cite them all. He had been named commander-in-chief of the

fleet despite the fact that he had no experience at sea and he recognized it, in a touching

letter to his King.

“My health is not equal to such a voyage, for I know by experience of the little I

have been at sea that I am always seasick and always catch cold. My family is

burdened with a debt of nine hundred thousand ducats, and I could not spend a

real in the king's service. Since I have had no experience either of the sea, or of

war, I cannot feel that I ought to command so important an enterprise. I know

nothing of what the marquis of Santa Cruz has been doing, or of what intelligence

he has of England, so that I feel I should give but a bad account of myself,

commanding thus blindly, and being obliged to rely on the advice of others,

without knowing good from bad, or which of my advisers might want to deceive or

displace me. The Adelantado Mayor of Castile is much finer for this post than I.



He is a man of much experience in military and naval matters, and a good

Christian, too.”28

But Medina-Sidonia wasn’t the only unskilled chief in the Armada’s campaign. The

historian Micheal Lewis29, advanced that there were not more than 6 able commanders

in the Armada and that it wasn’t their advice that was often applied. On the other hand,

we can easily cite a lot of able commander in the English fleet such as Drake, Hawkins,

Frobisher, Thomas Fenner, William Winter and many more. That is not surprising that

the English fleet dominated the Armada from a strategic point of view during the

campaign as we’ll see in the following chapter.

4.3.4 The strategies and battles

We will now have a look at two 16th century improvements in naval tactic by looking at

two confrontations between England and Spain:

- Drake’s expedition on Cadiz in 1587

- The battle of Plymouth and the battle of Gravelines versus the Armada in 1588

The first battle was a raid that Sir Francis Drake led, being the general of this fleet on

the Elizabeth Bonaventure, with 25 other ships. The best of them were the 4 Queen’s

galleons and the 3 ships of the Levant Company which were heavily armed to protect

themselves on the trade routes. Drake received the Queen’s order to sail on the 15th of

March and he left on the 2nd of April. She changed her mind but apparently in a

diplomatic way, sending her message nine days after Drake’s departure, in order not to

compromise her last chance of negotiation with the Duke of Parma. This attack had the

objective, in Drake’s own words:

“Pour entraver les desseins de la flotte espagnole et arrêter son rassemblement à

Lisbonne.”30

Arriving at the Rock of Lisbon, a Council of War was done. At this time, a Council of

War didn’t occur only in urgency as it was in the following century. In fact, the

communication problems between the ships could only be resolved by sending men, the

captains in case of a Council of War, with smaller ships, like pinnaces or frigates. In

28 From the website, www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/002295.html 29 History teacher at the « Royal Naval College » of Greenwich and member of the Royal Historic Society. 30 This is the French version of a quotation in Garrett Mattingly’s book (see Bibliography).



this case, Drake did what he wanted without listening to his councillor and ordered to

attack the port as soon as possible, even if his fleet was in total disorder.

Cadiz was defended by 8 galleys, led by Don Pedro de Acuna, which were ready for

the battle because they had arrived there from Gibraltar a few days before. The galleys

showed here their inferiority to the galleons. It wasn’t the first time in history that this

difference had occurred and numerous specialists knew that a galley was made to fight

another galley, not a galleon. In fact, the principal tactic of a galley was to go strait for

the enemy, firing forward with its guns (usually five), and making damage to the oars,

hull, etc. of the other galley with its bronze beakhead. But here, the 8 galleys could

only harass the enemy’s fleet, hiding themselves in shallow waters because it was

inconceivable to “charge” at the big hull of a sailing vessel. Despite this harassment,

Drake succeeded in destroying or capturing 37 ships of different sizes according to

him, 24 according to the official statement made for Philip II.

After this attack, that took three days, Drake and his fleet sailed to Sagres where he

took the castle when he landed his forces. He could steal cannons and food. He stayed

there for several days. During those days, his ships systematically destroyed every

fishing-boat and fishermen’s village. But the most important action was to destroy

every ship that carried the material for making wooden barrels. At this time, the barrel

had a very important role because it was the only way to preserve drink and food on a

ship. But the material to build them had to be very dry to make it watertight and to

prevent it rotting. In addition, it took a very long time and there was not a lot of dry

wood available at this time.

Drake and his fleet disturbed Spain in its trade because the fleet controlled Cape St-

Vincent and blocked the trade between the Mediterranean and Lisbon. They also had

the advantage that the Spanish fleet was separated and they can’t take to sea because of

a lack of victuals and ammunition that should be brought to them from the

Mediterranean.

Meanwhile, Drake left his position to sail to the Azores. There he found the big carrack

San Felipe, coming back from the East Indies with a huge treasure estimated at

£114,000. It was enough and they sailed back to England with the result of having

“singed the King of Spain's beard”. After this attack, Phillip II decided to delay the

Armada by one year because he needed to rebuild ships but also to prepare again the

barrels that had been destroyed. This was an important time for the English to prepare



themselves against this force. Historically, this expedition didn’t show the supremacy

of the galleon over the galley because it had yet been demonstrated before (notably by

the Portuguese) but it showed it to the Spanish, especially to Philip. All his principles

of a war fleet led by 40 powerful galleys to invade England were put back into

question. So, in 1588, when the Armada finally sailed, only four galleys took to sea.

We don’t know why he took them because they were absolutely useless against sailing

ships as we have seen but also difficult to manoeuvre in deep-water. In fact, they never

reached the Channel during the Campaign. Michael Lewis’ opinion on the importance

accorded by Philip to the galley before the Cadiz raid is as follows:

“En fait, les 40 galères et les six galéasses devaient former l’épine dorsale de la

flotte… erreur, certes, mais erreur naturelle. Bien que prêts à les compléter par

d’autres unités, Philippe et Santa Cruz [Leader of the Armada before Medina-

Sidonia] considéraient les galères comme le noyau de leur puissance maritime.”31

On the 29th April of 1588, the Grande y Felicisima Armada set sailed towards England.

The fleet must have been majestic, a huge number of 130 ships sailing, or rowing,

northward. It was the first time in history that so big a war fleet of sailing vessels was

launched for an invasion.

Basically, in Santa Cruz’s plan in 1586, the Armada had to be a great force of invasion

composed of vessels carrying the landing force protected by a huge fleet of warships.

The number of ships, men and materials he wanted was so enormous that it seems

clearly inconceivable that any kingdom of this time could realize it. Santa Cruz wanted,

in a quote addressed to the King, the huge number of 556 ships for a total of 110,250

tons. It was more than four times the number of ships that set sail to England in 1588

and around twice the tonnage. Because the goal was to make only one fleet with the

invasion troops, the number of men was incredible: 94,222 in the original plan. In

1588, three times less men will take to sea. The following tables show the difference

between the Santa Cruz plan and what part of the Armada was really in 1588.

31 This is a French version of Michael Lewis’ book, “Spanish Armada”



Type Number Tons Number Tons Difference (%) (number)Galleons and big ships 150 77250 65 45522 -56.7Urcas 40 8000 25 10271 -37.5Small ships 320 25000 32 2075 -90.0Galleasses 6 N/A 4 N/A -33.3Galleys 40 N/A 4 N/A -90.0

Total 556 110250 130 57868 -76.6

Class Difference (%)Mariners -51.5Rowers -78.7Soldiers -67.8Others -82.6

Total -67.5

Difference (%)Guns 111.4

1586 1588

1150 2431

16612980058920889094222

1586 1588

8050

Artillery

Men

Ships

Number1586 1588

208818973154530656

Figure 25 – The difference between the plan (1586) and the final realization (1588)

An interesting point, and not negligible, is that the number of guns in 1588 is more than

twice as high as the original plan. We can understand this by the fact that Philip II, after

Drake’s attack on Cadiz learnt from his enemies of the power of guns. Here Philip did

something that is, in Nicolò Machiavelli’s book, The Prince, an important reflection to

win a war:

“[The Prince] ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this subject of

war, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in war; this

he can do in two ways, the one by action, the other by study. […] the prince should

read histories, and study there the actions of illustrious men, to see how they have

borne themselves in war, to examine the causes of their victories and defeat, so as

to avoid the latter and imitate the former.”32

But the histories he had to read were contemporary histories because sailing ships

fighting history was being written in those days. So, he tried to rise as much as possible

the quantity of guns but Spain wasn’t as well organized as the English in gunfoundry.

They had to buy and build guns from the whole of Catholic Europe, from Italy to the

Holy Roman Empire. They had guns but in their mind, the objective of these weapons

32 From the edition found on internet on: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/machiavelli-prince.html#CHAPTER%20XIV



was different from the objectives of the English. The Spaniards wanted to use the

heaviest guns possible to fire at close range to make as much damage as possible to the

enemy’s ship in order to immobilize it by smashing the masts, the rudder, the ropes,

etc. And so, the goal was to prevent the enemy flying in order to board him with their

better trained soldiers who were often considered as the best ones in the world.

Even with the decrease of around 75% of the ship, the Armada was the biggest fleet of

sailing ships that ever took to sea at this time. But in fact, the fleet was composed of

only 50% of warships, or ships fitted to act as warships. When Philip took the decision

not to take the 40 galleys, he had to find a solution to have a powerful group of

warships. The solution laid in the 10 great Portuguese galleons that were used for

Atlantic trade. They were heavily armed mostly with cannons because they had to

protect themselves against pirates, privateers, etc. They had higher superstructures, like

the castles, than the English galleons, meaning that they were less manoeuvrable and a

bit slower. But they were more resistant, were fitted for a battle at very close range and

for boarding.

The major change between the original plan and the final one in 1588 was the division

of the landing force and the war fleet. The Armada had to cross the Channel and join

the powerful troops of the Duke of Parma that were in Flanders, at Dunkirk and

Nieuport. By doing this, the fleet could be considerably reduced, notably by dividing

the number of men by two thirds. From an economic, and practical, point of view, it

rendered the enterprise possible. But from a strategic point of view, it was a great

mistake. Santa Cruz had probably known that if Spain wanted to invade England, it had

to carry the landing troops with the “protecting” fleet. So, it had to be a huge project. It

seems that in Santa Cruz’s mind, it had to be everything or nothing. But instead of this,

Philip made a compromise that maybe cost him victory.

At this, it was difficult, almost impossible to know exactly how long it takes to travel

from one point to another, even more so as when the ships used were sailing ships,

depending on the wind and the whim of the ocean. In addition, the only way to

communicate between the two forces that had to join was by sending small ships that

could be intercepted, or at least, the communication was by no mean instantaneous. So,

even before sailing to England, the Armada enterprise was slightly weighted towards

failure. In addition, the Duke of Parma wasn’t convinced of the potential success of the



enterprise because for him, the only way to invade England was the effect of surprise of

a landing, which was in fact, totally impossible to hide from the English and the Dutch.

This doubtful successful plan wasn’t all. As we have seen, the Spaniards had ships that

were fitted to board for hand-to-hand fighting. But the problem was that they were

really slower and less manoeuvrable than their English opponent and so, the English

could choose where the fight would take place and avoid contact with the enemies.

It is also interesting to analyze the difference between the English artillery and the

Spanish one. As we have seen before, grosso modo, England chose the range while

Spain chose the weight and the power of the shots. Let’s have a look at some numbers,

certainly not precise because of the lack of information, especially in the Spanish camp.

Figure 26 – Table showing the English and Spanish situation of the artillery in the campaign.



We can clearly see here that the Spanish put their main effort on the heaviest pieces

like the cannons, the cannon-perier and the culverin while the English preferred the

culverin and the smaller pieces so that they could fire at longer range, in fact, out of

range of the heaviest Spanish pieces. But, unlike the English, the Spaniards were better

furnished in ammunition. They had the great total of 123,790 shots of diverse weight

(even under 4 lb), meaning that one gun had around 50 shots while the English were

said to have between 20 and 30. The English numbers aren’t precise because nobody

made precise reports on it and because the stock of ammo was restocked during the

campaign.

This accumulation of imperfection on the Spanish organisation wasn’t unknown by

certain people at the time. But the enterprise having taken a religious role, being

transformed into a kind of crusade against the enemies of the real Faith, it was

inconceivable in Philip’s mind, and other Catholics, to think that they could lose the

battle. But some were uncertain as we can see in a report from a papal diplomat to the

Pope in a conversation with a Spanish officer.

“It is well known that we fight in God’s cause. So, when we meet the English, God

will surely arrange matters so that we can grapple and board them, either by

sending some strange freak of weather or, more likely, just by depriving the

English of their wits. If we can come to close quarters, Spanish valour and

Spanish steel (and the great masses of soldiers we shall have on board) will make

our victory certain. But unless God helps us by a miracle the English, who have

faster and handier ships than ours, and many more long-range guns, and who

know their advantage just as well as we do, will never close with us at all, but

stand aloof and knock us to pieces with their culverins, without our being able to

do them any serious hurt. So we are sailing against England in the confident hope

of a miracle.”

A Spanish officer33 to a papal diplomat

We will now follow the trail of the Armada to England and its catastrophic return to

Spain. We will have a more precise look at the first and the end of the fourth battle that

took place along the Channel.

33 Garrett Matingly thinks that it was Juan Martinez de Recalde while Rodger thinks it was Bertendona.



Figure 27 - The route followed by the Armada in 1588

The Armada took to sea much later than when it was supposed to leave. Just after its

departure from Lisbon, the Armada already had some problems with provisions and

moreover, with the slow smaller ships that they needed to wait in order to keep a

cohesion. They finally arrived in the Channel on the 20th of July, around two months

after the departure. The Armada sent a vessel ahead to capture a fishing boat in order to

have information on their enemies. At the same time, an English pinnace whose name

was Golden Hind brought the new of the Armada to Plymouth. The wind usually blew

from the West in the Channel and so, if the English went out of Plymouth to block the

passage of the Armada, they would have left the advantage of the wind to the

Spaniards. Having the windward position was very important for the English because if

they didn’t, they could have been easily boarded by the Spanish which would mean

their certain death. So, during the night, the English circled the Spaniards by the North,

placing themselves behind Rame Head, in order to be north-west compared to the

Spanish. The movement was as great as it was discreet because for the first



confrontation between the two fleets, they had been surprised to see them behind

because they had seen and followed some sailing ships in front of them the day before.

Figure 28 - Engraving showing a vessel of each side bringing news to their camp (16th)

The Spanish fleet was organized in a crescent form as we can see on the figure below.

But the exact formation is unknown because we do not have any precise document

showing the place of every ships or squadron. In addition, everything was seen from a

sea point of view and it must have been difficult to distinguish the real formation. The

wings of the formation weren’t as powerful as the centre with four squadrons of 10 big

ships and the four galleasses. The problem was that the main strength resided in the two

squadrons of galleons in the centre. There, the density of ships was really high, notably

because of all the small ships that couldn’t really fight. The flagship, the San Martin,

with Medina Sidonia was placed in the centre with the best ships of the fleet, meaning

the Portuguese galleons and the Castillian squadron. It was originally oriented eastward

but they had to change their position to face their enemies.

The English didn’t have a special position as they will have later in this campaign.

They followed the nearest ships of one of the commanders, meaning Howard, Drake,

Hawkins and Frobisher. They attacked the left wing, in a vague line formation. Having

the windward position and the manoeuvrability, the English could choose the distance

between the ships as they wanted. Even if the brave Spanish officer, Recalde, went

straight on the middle of the English fleet to provoke them to board him, thinking that a



boarding would block the English while the other Spanish ships came. But the English

kept their distance, of around 300-350 yards.

Figure 29 - The first battle known as the Plymouth Battle and the position of the fleets after.

The result of this battle was deceptive for each side. The Spanish were frustrated

because they couldn’t board their enemies and they had to endure the small shots of the

English. But the English couldn’t make any serious damage because their shot were not

powerful enough at this distance to sink a ship. They could choose whenever and

wherever to fight but they couldn’t do much damage. The problem for them was that if

their shots weren’t efficient at this range, they would have to find another way to win

against these resistant enemies. They couldn’t approach the Spaniards too much and

they were worried about it.

After this battle, the Armada continued its way along the Channel and the two fleets

fought each other twice. In the third battle, the Spaniards were unable to take the Isle of

Wright which could have been an excellent strategic position. During this time, the

English fleet had been better organized and each ship was put in a squadron led by the

four commanders cited before. The fleet disposition was still a bit anarchic because

after the approach, each ship attacked individually or sometimes by two. We are far

away from the great disposition that will be seen more than two centuries later with the

famous Nelson. The biggest problem they had was the lack of ammunition. During the

first two battles, the gunners fired a lot of shots, too many shots, for a minimal result. In



the third battle, the English didn’t shoot a lot to keep the little stock they had, waiting

for new stocks. In a letter from William Thomas to Burghley, we can clearly see this

need of shots:

“Que dire sinon que nos péchés ont été la cause de ce que tant de poudre et de

projectiles aient été gaspillés, et pendant un si long combat, et pour faire, en

revanche si peu de mal”

On the 26th of July, at around 5 p.m. the Armada anchored. They were still

communicating with the Duke of Parma but he didn’t seem very enthusiastic and

cooperative. The English, like during the whole voyage along the English coast,

followed the Armada at the same distance of around three kilometres. During the night,

the English used the old tactic of sending fireships to the enemies. But the Spanish

couldn’t know that the English didn’t have a lot of powder. This is an important

psychological point because the Spanish still had in memory two modified fireships in

Anvers which were full of powder and that had killed as many men as it was possible to

in an entire naval battle. These Hellburners were a psychological arm that had to be

used by the English.

Figure 30 - The fireships sent by the English toward the Armada.

So, during the night, seven fireships were sent, creating a huge panic in the Spanish

fleet. No ships were damaged but the fleet was disorganized and, moreover, the

Spaniards had, for the most part, to cut their anchor and so, the Armada had lost a



precious instrument to manoeuvre (the sailors sometimes used their anchors to turn and

manoeuvre their ships). In addition to their misfortune, the Armada moved from its

goal, the meeting with the Duke of Parma.

The Armada retook its crescent formation rapidly but the wind came from the south-

west and they were pushed northward. The day after, the last battle, the battle of

Gravelines began. Here the fight was done much closer, at a range of around 100-150

yards. The reason is that the best ships of the Spanish Armada were always on the first

line, firing as much as they could, during the first three battles. But now, they were out

of ammo, and so, the English could come as close as they needed to be efficient. The

best ships of the Armada suffered great damage and after a Council of War on the San

Martin, they decided that a retreat was the only solution if the wind continued to blow

in this direction. But they also decided that if the wind changed, they would come back

to accomplish their mission. But it is also possible that the reason was that they thought

that the return to Spain would be a suicide because they didn’t have a lot of food and

drink and they didn’t really know the North Sea and the passage to the North Atlantic.

Figure 31 - The Battle of Gravelines.

But the wind didn’t change and the Armada sailed northward to go back to Spain. On

their way home, a lot of ships, much more than the loss than the English had done,

wrecked on the coast of Ireland and Scotland. The number of ships that had been lost



during the whole campaign was 51, a little bit less than 40%. But the real catastrophe

was the loss in men. We do not have any precise number but as Michael Lewis thinks,

we can hardly place this number under 20,000. Two third of the men were dead, a few

by the enemy’s weapons, but the mostly part from illness during the return.

To conclude this chapter, I shall point out the probable causes of the defeat of the

Armada. During the first three battles, the English ships couldn’t do great damage to

their opponents but in return, they suffered no damage. Thanks to their better

manoeuvrability and speed they had the initiative in the fight. In addition, their

commanders were more capable than their Spanish counterparts. They better knew the

sea and made some decisive movements to keep the wind advantage or to surprise the

Armada.

Above all, they lost because of their King, Philip II who was too stubborn to listen to

his advisors and friends. It was quasi impossible to fix a precise meeting date when

travelling with sailing ships, especially when the ships couldn’t sail at the same speed.

In addition, the deficient organization, concerning the victuals and the ships fitting,

created great problems of illness aboard. A lot of people put only the cause of the

defeat on the Duke of Parma’s shoulders, for his lack of cooperation to make this

enterprise a success. He is said not to have well prepared his army and the boat that had

to carry them across the Channel. But Parma was a man of great intelligence and he

probably knew that the junction would be very difficult, and so, that Philip’s plan was

dedicated to fail.

But the important point in maritime history is that this campaign made the step to pass

from the tactic of boarding to the tactic of firing at long range. It was a crucial step that

would eventually evolve in the future to arrive to the famous ships of the line of Nelson

and its contemporaries. The Spaniards one more time learned from their enemies and

made a lot of work to rebuild their navy and to change their tactic in order to have a

powerful and modern fleet.

But the achievement for England wasn’t as superb as some historians and people think

like H.P. Kraus who wrote in Sir Francis Drake, A Pictoral Biography:

“The defeat of the Armada was one of England’s greatest victories and one of the

world’s decisive battles; it was the “beginning of the end” of Spain as the

dominant nation in Europe, and the beginning of English ascendancy.”



It is a false affirmation because after the defeat, England couldn’t confirm its victory

and didn’t take any advantage. The Spanish, on the contrary, won almost everything

after 1588 and were the real winner of this war when it ended after Elizabeth’s death.

Another possible reason of the defeat of the Armada is the potential Anglo-Ottoman

alliance suggested by Jerry Brotton, a lecturer at Royal Holloway College, London. He

thinks that the Turks were urged to distract the Armada from the east and so, according

to Mr. Brotton’s interpretation, split the Spanish forces and helped the English to win. I

can hardly consider this as a cause of the defeat because it was at the battle of

Gravelines that the Armada had been eventually defeated. I think that the Armada

wouldn’t have gone so far inside the Channel without its entire force. And as the

Spanish didn’t suffer any damage from the enemy until late in the campaign, it is

hardly conceivable that the Turks could have taken any decisive action.

4.4 From when the navy is the Navy Royal

The creation of the Navy Royal, or later the Royal Navy, can be attributed to Henry

VIII. Before him, there wasn’t any permanent navy with an organization that could

bring continuity. The fleets were in fact a group of King’s ships that were bought or

built only for the King’s purpose in his reign. For example, Henry V had a fleet of

impressive size but when he died, the ships were sold and the fleet was almost reduced

to nothing. To understand the difference between the King’s ships and the Navy Royal,

we shall have a look at the definition of navy in the dictionary Le Petit Robert:

“Marine : (XVIe) 1.[…] Ensemble des administrations et services qui régissent

l’activité maritime; ensemble des gens de mer.

2. Ensemble des navires appartenant à une même nation ou entrant dans une

même catégorie.”

What we can see here is that to have a “navy”, an administration is needed. Thus, we

can, without taking too much risk, consider that the creation of the Navy Board in

Henry VIII’s reign made the passage from the King’s ships to the Navy Royal. From

this point, as we have seen, the Navy could be permanent and continue existing even if

the King died. The difference between the Navy Royal and the Royal Navy isn’t that

clear in the source I’ve dealt with. But the change seems to have happened in the Stuart

Era when Charles II reached the throne in 1649:



“When the King Charles II came to the throne in 1660 he inherited a huge fleet of

154 ships. This was a permanent professional national force and the beginning of

the Royal Navy as we know it today.”34

4.5 The contribution of the navy to England

The Navy in England was as we have seen of great importance to protect the country

borders. As England was an island, it was of major importance to prevent enemy’s

ships to attack the coast or land troops on it. The success of the Navy Royal in doing

this in the Elizabethan era permitted and brought a lot to England.

The first thing is that the Navy gave the possibility and the impulsion, to put in motion

the process of colonization. In the 16th, it was only an embryo of colonial policy but an

embryo that will be able to develop the following centuries. The first step was the first

English possession in America which was Virginia, named after the nickname of

Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. The name was given after Sir Walter Raleigh’s

exploration of this place in 1584. At this time, it seems that Virginia included the entire

coast from the actual South Carolina to Maine. Even if the real settlement took place

just after Elizabeth death, with the first colony of Jamestown, the impulsion was given

under Elizabeth and thank to this newly attachment to the seagoing affair by the

English. It also probably gave impulsion to the re-colonization of Ireland and the

colonization of India but these subjects would need another study to be developed. So,

the Navy opened the way for the future centuries to what will be a powerful imperialist

country notably with its colony in India.

During the Elizabeth’s reign, around the 1580s, the precocious idea of nation was

formed in England. On the Continent, this idea of nation only took form in the 18th

century but in Northern Europe, this was done much earlier. Without entering the

detail, because it would probably need another year to study such a vast subject,

nationalism was developed in England earlier in part because of its isolated geographic

position but also because of its Constitutional Monarchy.. But foremost, nationalism

resides in people and so, the liberty of initiative that English people had with Elizabeth

was of great importance for the nation. The Navy had a role, perhaps not the most

34 From the website: www.royal-navy.mod.uk/ which use, as its main source, N.A.M Rodger and D. Loades, "From the Kings Ships to Royal Navy" in J.R. Hill (Ed.) The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (Oxford, 1995).


http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/


important, in the creation of national identity. Rodger wrote in The Safeguard of the

Sea:

“Though the deeds and sufferings of the common sailor remained remote from the

attention of great men ashore, ships and the sea were rapidly becoming subjects of

absorbing interest, and symbols of national identity.”

But it wasn’t only the ships and the sea that the Navy brought to people as symbols of

national pride. The sailors like the famous Drake, Hawkins, etc. could have the role of

living heroes. And heroes were needed to personify an ideal in the constitution of

national identity.

“Next to the Queen he personified the hopes and the ideals of an emergent nation.

He was the David challenging Goliath and laying him low. He had that charisma,

that personal magnetism, which is the possession of all great leaders. […] the life

of Francis Drake illustrates, as others have done before and since, man’s hunger

for freedom and his determination to achieve it at whatever cost. […] He and his

compatriots saw the world confined and restricted by power and privilege, and

they were determined to break the shackles.”

Norman J.W. Thrower

As we have seen, the demarcation between the different social classes was still strong

at this time, even if it was more flexible than in other countries like Spain. But men like

Drake who rose by their work in the social ranks must have been of great importance to

have a united nation in opposition to absolutism and the strict classes division. In the

book La création des identités nationales by Anne-Marie Thiesse, we can see this need

of unification with the example of France in the 18th:

“[…] La France allait-elle continuer à se réclamer d’un classicisme ailleurs battu

en brèche et associé à l’absolutisme ou bien saurait-elle trouver d’autres

fondements culturels? […]La question est d’autant plus cruciale qu’il importe de

montrer l’unité de la nation après l’abolition des différences et des privilèges –

sociaux et géographiques – de l’Ancien Régime.”

We can’t say that the Navy had the major role in the creation of national identity but it

seems obvious that it had a role as we have seen before, notably in Norman J.W.

Thrower’s text.



5. Conclusion

In my piece of work, I mostly used English sources by English writers. The “language

barrier” and the difficulty to obtain some texts didn’t allow me to use a lot of foreign

sources. I could however use an American source which was very helpful (Wes Ulm’s

article) and the Spanish version of the defeat of the Spanish Armada on wikipedia. I

tried to be as neutral as possible in my writing but I had sometimes only the English

point of view and I had to deal with it as well as I could.

Methodologically, I proceeded as follows. First of all, I tried to have a very general

overview of the situation of the navy but mostly of the historical context. The best way

I think to have a good summary of the subject is to look in an encyclopaedia. I chose

for this the free encyclopaedia on the net, wikipedia. Then I had to go into detail with

more specialized books. My aim was to make a kind of synthesis of different authors

and different points of view. I needed to look at what I thought were the most pertinent

and argued sources.

The problem was sometimes that, because it is a subject covering a distant period, the

historians I’ve read made their own suggestions and interpretations that weren’t always

the same. So, I had to deal with it as well as I could in order to try to give you the most

exact and coherent information I could. I cannot pretend that my work is historically

exact because I have mostly based my work on 20th century books, websites or articles

and I seldom looked at the original document. So, I used some kind of intermediaries

between me and the original source that maybe could have changed the real fact.

The result is a very descriptive piece of work but it seems to me quite normal because

of the nature of the subject. I sometimes add some suggestions but I always tried to

base them as closely as possible on the facts I could find in my diverse sources.

I will finish by giving you my feeling after having written about this very interesting

subject. I think my objectives have been accomplished. First of all, I think I now have a

good vision of what the navy at this time was, its role and its importance. I feel that I

am now able to understand the different events, which had a link with maritime affairs

of course, that happened in this century. My second objective, a more personal one,

was to deal as well as I could with a lot of English, reading and writing, which is a

foreign language for me. It gave me a great opportunity to progress in this language.



Bibliography

Books

ANGELUCCI E. & CUCARI A., Encyclopédie des navires, 1000 embarcations du

monde entier, des pirogues primitives au porte-avions géants, Bruxelles, Elsevier

Séquoia, 1979, 256 p.

DRAKE F., The World Encompassed, USA, University Microfilms, 1966, 108 p.

KRAUS H.P., Sir Francis Drake, A Pictoral Biography, Amsterdam, N. Israel, 1970,

236 p.

LEWIS M., Traduit de l’anglais par GILLE E., L’Invincible Armada, titre original :

Spanish Armada, Paris, Payot, 1962, 214 p.

LEYLAND J., The Royal Navy, Its Influence in English History and in the Growth of

Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1914, 167 p.

MACHIAVELLI N., Le Prince, France, J’ai lu, 2001, 123 p.

MATTINGLY G., Traduit de l’anglais par DE LESGUERN A., L’épopée de

l’Invincible Armada, titre original : The Armada, France, Presses Universitaires de

France, 1963, 444 p.

RANDELL K., Henry VIII and the government of England, England, Hodder &

Stoughton, 1991, 146p.

RODGER N.A.M., The Safeguard of the Sea, A Naval History of Britain, 660-1649,

England, Penguin Books, 2004, 691 p.

SCAMMELL G.V., The World Encompassed, The first European maritime empires,

c.800-1650, USA, Methuen, 1981, 538 p.

SUN-TZU, Translated from old Chinese by J. MINFORD, The Art of War, England,

Penguin Books, 2005, 101 p.

THROWER N.J.W., Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyage, 1577-1580, Essays

commemorating the quadricentennial of Drake’s circumnavigation of the Earth, Los

Angeles, University of California Press, 1984, 214 p.

THIESSE A-M., La création des identités nationales, France, Seuil, 1999

TREVELYAN G.M., A shortened history of England, England, Penguin, 1988, 608 p.



Articles

EZARD J., “Why we must thank the Turks, not Drake, for defeating the Armada”, The

Guardian, June 1, 2004

ULM W., “Top 10 myths and muddles about the Spanish Armada, history’s most

confused and misunderstood battle”, Harvard University personal website, 2004

Websites

- www.wikipedia.org The free encyclopaedia, very useful to understand each point before developing it with more detailed sources.

- www.maryrose.org This website contains everything you want on the “Mary Rose” - www.royal.gov.uk Website of the English government useful for the historical context. - www.greatgridlock.net Very complete website about the ships from the 15th century to the 18th. - www.nmm.ac.uk National Maritime Museum website with a lot of nice pictures. - www.aquarius.geomar.de Useful site to create maps. - www.herodote.net Many historical articles useful to have a general overview of the situation. - riv.co.nz/rnza/hist/gun/index.htm Very complete website about the history of guns. - www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~ben/meagher.htm Drawings of 16th century ships by David Meagher. - www.tudorplace.com.ar/Documents/defeat_of_the_armada.htm

An interesting website on the defeat of the Spanish Armada: Description of the events, quotations, etc.

- www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/gb-en-tu.html Useful to see the flags used at this time. - www.vamos-wentworth.org/seadog Some useful information on different type of ships. - memory.loc.gov

This website contains the Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake, containing the eight engraving of the Spanish Armada’s campaign by Robert Adams and Augustine Ryther.

- www.wordreference.com Dictionary online. Very useful.


http://www.royal.gov.uk/


Illustrations

Figure 1 - A drawing of a carrack - www.vamos-wentworth.org/seadog

Figure 2 - Drake’s raid on the Spanish possession - www.nyc.gov and www.aquarius.geomar.de

Figure 3 - The probable Spanish empire if Spain had triumphed - www.aquarius.geomar.de

Figure 4 - A Mediterranean galley painted by Lorenzo A. Castro in the 17th. - www.nmm.ac.uk

Figure 5 - The blinding area when firing with guns on the aftercastle - Video game Empire Earth

Figure 6 - A Spanish galleasses, 1585 - www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk

Figure 7 - Table showing the heavy brass guns carried by the Mary Rose – www.maryrose.org

Figure 8 - A few dimension of the Mary Rose - www.maryrose.org

Figure 9 - An impression of the Mary Rose, as she was in 1545 – www.nmm.ac.uk

Figure 10 - Different flags that could be seen on the Mary Rose - www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/gb-en-

tu.html

Figure 11 - Boarding tactic. - Video game Empire Earth




Figure 15 - Diagram of a big fleet organization

Figure 16 - The Drake Passage - wikipedia

Figure 17 - A comparison between an English and a Spanish galleon. – www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk

Figure 18 - Range compared to gun inclination

Figure 19 - The impact zone of a shot

Figure 20 - The three types of heavy gun plus the mortar (proportion respected) – M.Lewis (book)

Figure 21 - Comparison of the cannon and the couleuvrin – M.Lewis (book)

Figure 22 - An English pinnace (1580) - www.wolfson.co.ac.uk

Figure 23 - Proportion evolution among the crew - N.A.M Rodgers (book)

Figure 24 - Rate of pay on an 800-tons or more ship in 1582 - N.A.M Rodgers (book)

Figure 25 - The difference between the plan (1586) and the final realization (1588) - M.Lewis (book)

Figure 26 - Table showing the English and Spanish situation of the artillery in the campaign. - M.Lewis

(book)

Figure 27 - The route followed by the Armada in 1588 - wikipedia

Figure 28 - Engraving showing a vessel of each side bringing news to their camp (16th). - The Kraus

Collection of Sir Francis Drake, http://memory.loc.gov (same for the 3 followings) by Robert Adams and

Augustine Ryther.

Figure 29 - The first battle known as the Plymouth Battle and the position of the fleets after.

Figure 30 - The fireships sent by the English toward the Armada.

Figure 31 - The Battle of Gravelines.



Appendix

Appendix I: Genealogical tree of the Tudor family

Source: http://www.royal.gov.uk/files/pdf/stuarts.pdf



Appendix II: Map of the Circumnavigation of the World

Source: http://www.drakenavigatorsguild.org/circumnavigation.html


http://www.drakenavigatorsguild.org/circumnavigation.html


Appendix III: List of ship in the Cadiz expedition in 1587

Queen’s ship: Elizabeth Bonaventure (600 tons), Golden Lion (Borough, vice-admiral,

500 tons), Rainbow (500 tons), Dreadnought (400 tons), Spy and Cygnet (pinaces)

London merchants: Merchant Royal (400 tons), Susan (350 tons), Edward

Bonaventure (300 tons), Margaret & John (210 tons), Solomon (200 tons), George

Bonaventure (150 tons), Thomas Bonaventure (150 tons).

Private men-of-war: Lord Howard: White Lion (150 tons); F. Drake: Thomas (200

tons), Drake and Elizabeth (pinnaces); J. Hawkins: Bark Hawkins (130 tons); W.

Winter: Minion (200 tons); Others: Makeshift, Speedwell, Little John, Post (pinnaces).

Appendix IV: The Armada’s ship and their English opponent

In this appendix, the sign † means that the ship has been lost, in one way or in another.

You have to notice that very few of the Spanish ships were destroyed or captured by

the English themselves. The elements made much more damage on their way back to

Spain.

Spanish Armada

Total: 131 Ships, 51 losses.

Portuguese

São Martinho (section flag, Duke of Medina Sidonia), São João (section vice-flag), São Marcos† (Don Diogo Pimental or Penafiel), São Felipe (captured), San Luis, San Mateo (captured), Santiago, Galeon de Florencia (“lend” by the Duke of Toscana), San Crístobal, San Bernardo, Augusta, Julia

Biscayan

Santa Ana (section flag, Juan Martínez de Recalde), El Gran Grin† (section vice-flag), Santiago, La Concepcion de Zubelzu, La Concepcion de Juan del Cano, La Magdalena, San Juan, La María Juan†, La Manuela, Santa María de Montemayor, María de Aguirre, Isabela, Patache de Miguel de Suso, San Esteban

Castillian

San Crístobal (section flag, Diego Flores de Valdés), San Juan Bautista (section vice-flag), San Pedro, San Juan, Santiago el Mayor, San Felipe y Santiago, La Asuncion, Nuestra Señora del Barrio, San Medel y Celedon, Santa Ana, Nuestra Señora de



Begoña, La Trinidad, Santa Catalina, San Juan Bautista, Nuestra Señora del Rosario, San Antonio de Padua

Andalusian

Nuestra Señora del Rosario† (section flag, Don Pedro de Valdés), San Francisco (section vice-flag), San Juan Bautista, San Juan de Gargarin, La Concepcion, Duquesa†, Santa Ana†, Santa Catalina†, La Trinidad, Santa María de Juncal, San Bartolome, Espiritu Santo

Guipúzcoan

Santa Ana (section flag, Miguel de Oquendo), Santa María de la Rosa† (section vice-flag), San Salvador†, San Esteban†, Santa Marta, Santa Bárbara, San Buenaventura, La María San Juan, Santa Cruz, Doncella†, Asuncion, San Bernabe, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, La Madalena

Levant

La Regazona (section flag, Martín de Bertandona), La Lavia (section vice-flag), La Rata Santa María Encoronada (Leiva), San Juan de Sicilia†, La Trinidad Valencera†, La Anunciada†, San Nicolas Prodaneli, La Juliana, Santa María de Vison, La Trinidad de Scala

Hulks

El Gran Grifón† (section flag, Juan Gómez de Medina), San Salvador (section vice-flag), Perro Marino, Falcon Blanco Mayor, Castillo Negro, Barca de Amburg†, Casa de Paz Grande, San Pedro Mayor, El Sanson, San Pedro Menor, Barca de Danzig, Falcon Blanco Mediano†, San Andres, Casa de Paz Chica, Ciervo Volante, Paloma Blanca, La Ventura, Santa Bárbara, Santiago, David, El Gato, San Gabriel, Esayas

Neapolitan

San Lorenzo (Don Hugo de Moncado) (captured), Zúñiga, Girona†, Napolitana, Bazana†

Others 22 pataches and zabras (Don Antonio Hurtado de Medoza)

4 galleys of 5 guns each (Diego de Medrano)

Vessels under Parma



The English fleet

Total: 182 ships and 15 victuallers, no loss.

Queen’s ships

Ship Tonnage Crew Construction GunsArk Royal (Flagship)(Charles Howard) 800 400 1587 55Rainbow (Henry Seymour) 500 250 1586 36Vanguard 500 250 1586 36Tramontana 150 70 1586 21Nonpareil 500 250 1584 40-50Golden Lion 500 250 1582 40-60Antelope 340 160 1581 28-38Elizabeth Bonaventure 600 250 1580 40-47Swallow 300 160 1580 30Revenge (Drake, Vice Admiral) 500 250 1577 40Scout 120 70 1577 20Dreadnought 500 200 1573 34Swiftsure 360 180 1573 34Achates 100 60 1573 28Foresight 300 160 1570 28Tiger 200 100 1570 24Bull 200 100 1570 21White Bear 900 500 1564 60Triumph (Frobisher) 1000 500 1562 58Victory (Hawkins, Rear Admiral) 800 400 1562 52Aid 250 120 1562 30Hope 500 250 1560 33Elizabeth Jonas 800 500 1559Mary Rose 600 250 1557Bonavolia (Galley) 250 256 1584Charles 70 40Moon 60 40Spy 50 35Merlin 50 35Advice 50 35Sun 40 24Cygnet 30 20George (hoy) 120 30Brigandine ? 36

Average: 365 183

Pinn

aces

Gal

leon

sO

ther

big

shi

ps

Private ships

34 merchant ships

63 other ships and barks

66 coasters



Disdain (included in above)

Margaret and John (included in above)

15 victuallers (included in above)

Netherland

30 Dutch cromsters blockading the Flemish coast

Fireships expended 7 August: (included in above)

Bark Talbot

Hope

Thomas

Bark Bond

Bear Yonge

Elizabeth

Angel

"Cure's Ship"
