09 - Chronicles of America - Elizabethan Sea-Dogs by William Wood

Step back into the dawn of American history with Elizabethan Sea-Dogs, where the spirit of the citizen, colonist, and pioneer comes alive! This captivating exploration reveals the daring adventurers of the Elizabethan era who paved the way for future generations in the New World. Under the brilliant leadership of Sir Francis Drake, the first of the modern admirals, English sailors claimed their dominion over the sea. Known as Sea-Dogs, they opened the gateway for explorers and settlers seeking their fortunes in America. Discover how this century of maritime quests and naval warfare laid the foundations for Anglo-American history and secured the path for countless pioneers eager to carve out their destinies.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter nine of Elizabethan Sea Dogs by William Wood. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter nine Drake
and the Spanish Armada with fifteen hundred eighty eight. The
final crisis came Philip, haughty, gloomy and ambitious. Philip, unskilled

(00:23):
in arms but persistent in his plans, sat in his
palace at Madrid like a spider, forever spinning webs that
enemies tore down. Drake and the English had thrown the
whole scheme of the Armada's mobilization completely out of gear.
Philip's well intentioned orders and counter orders had made confusion

(00:45):
worse confounded, and though the Spanish Empire held half the
riches of the world, it felt the lack of ready
money because English sea power had made it all parts
and no hole. For several months together. Then, when mobilization
was resumed, Philip found himself distracted by expert advice from

(01:07):
Santa Cruz, his admiral, and from Parma, Alva's successor in
the Netherlands. The general idea was to send the invincible
Armada up the English Channel as far as the Netherlands,
where Parma would be ready with a magnificent Spanish army
waiting aboard troopships for safe conduct into England. The Spanish

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regulars could then hold London up to ransom or burn
it to the ground. So far, so good. But Philip,
to whom amphibious warfare remained an unsolved mystery, thought that
the Armada and the Spanish Army could conquer England without
actually destroying the English fleet. He could not see where

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raids must end and conquest must begin. Spaniards agreed with him.
Parma and Santa Cruz did not. Parma, as a very
able general, wanted to know how his over sea communications
could be made quite safe. Santa Cruz, as a very admiral,

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knew that no such sea road could possibly be safe
while the ubiquitous English navy was undefeated and at large,
some time or other unaval battle must be won, or
Parma's troops, cut off from their base of supplies and
surrounded like an island by an angry sea of enemies,

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must surely perish when first at sea and then on land,
said the expert warriors. Santa Cruz and Parma get into
hated England with the least possible fighting risk or loss,
said the mere politician, Philip, and then crushed Drake if

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he annoys you early and late persistent, Philip slaved away
upon this enterprise of England with incredible toil. He spun
his web anew. The ships were collected into squadrons. The
squadrons at last began to wear the semblance of a fleet,
but semblance only. There were far too many soldiers and

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not nearly enough sailors. Instead of sending the fighting fleet
to try to clear the way for the troop ships
coming later on, Philip mixed army and navy together. The
men of war were not bad of their kind, but
the kind was bad. They were floating castles high out
of the water, crammed with soldiers, some other landsmen, and stores,

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and with only light ordnance, badly distributed so as to
fire at rigging and superstructures, only not at the halls,
as the English did. Yet this was not the worst.
The worst was that the fighting fleet was cumbered with
troop ships, which might have been useful in boarding, but

(04:08):
which were perfectly useless in fighting of any other kind.
And the englishmen of war were much too handy to
be laid aboard by the lubberly Spanish troop ships. Santa
Cruz worked himself to death. In one of his last dispatches,
he begged for more and better guns. All Philip could

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do was to authorize the purchase of whatever guns the
foreign merchantmen in Lisbon Harbor could be induced to sell.
Sixty second rate pieces were obtained in this way, then
worn out by work and worry. Santa Cruz died, and
Philip forced the command on a most reluctant land lubber,

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the Duke of Medina Sedonia, a very great grandee of Spain,
but wholly unfitted to lead a fleet. The death of
Santa Cruz, in whom the fleet and army had great confidence,
nearly upset the whole enterprise of England. The captains were
as unwilling to serve under bandy legged Sea six Sedonia

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as he was unwilling to command them. Volunteering ceased compulsion
failed to bring in the skilled ratings urgently required. The
sailors were now not only fewer than ever Sickness and
desertion had been thinning their ranks, but many of these
few were unfit for the higher kinds of seamanship, while

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only the merest handful of them were qualified as seamen gunners. Philip, however,
was determined, and so the doomed Armadas struggled on fitting
its imperfect parts together into a still more imperfect whole,
until in June it was as ready as it ever
could be made. Meanwhile, the English had their troubles too.

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These were also polite, but the English navy was of
such overwhelming strength that it could stand them with impunity.
The Queen, after thirty years of wonderful, if torturous diplomacy,
was still disinclined to drop the art in which she
was supreme, for that in which she counted for so

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much less, and by which she was obliged to spend
so very much more. There was still a little peace party,
also bent on diplomacy instead of war. Negotiations were opened
with Parma at Flushing, and diplomatic feelers went out towards Philip,
who sent back some of his own. But the time

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had come for war. The stream was now too strong
for either Elizabeth or Philip to stem or even divert
into minor channels. Lord Howard of Effingham, as Lord High
Admiral of England, was charged with the defense at sea.
It was impossible in those days to have any great

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force without some great noblemen in charge of it, because
the people still looked on such men as their natural
viceroys and commanders. But just as Sir John Nories, the
most expert professional soldier in England, was made Chief of
the Staff to the Earl of Leicester or Shore, so

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Drake was made Chief of the Staff to Howard Afloat,
which meant that he was the brain of the fleet.
A directing brain was sadly needed, not that brains were lacking,
but that some one man of original and creative genius
was required to bring the modern naval system into triumphant.

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Being like all political heads, Elizabeth was sensitive to public opinion,
and public opinion was ignorant enough to clamor for protection
by something that a man could see. Besides which there
were all those weaklings who had been discre described as
the old women of both sexes in all ages, and

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who have always been the nus since they are still
adding together the old views of warfare which nearly everybody held,
and the human weaknesses we have always with us. There
was a most dangerously strong public opinion in favor of
dividing up the navy so as to let enough different
places actually see that they had some visible means of

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divided defense. The thirtieth of March fifteen hundred eighty eight
is the day of days to be remembered in the
history of sea power, because it was then that Drake,
writing from Plymouth to the Queen Inn Council, first formulated
the true doctrine of modern naval warfare, especially the cardinal

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principle that the best of all defense is to attack
your enemy's main fleet as it issues from its ports.
This marked the birth of the system perfected by Nelson,
and thence passed on with many new developments to the
British Grand Fleet in the Great War of today. The

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first step was by far the hardest, for Drake had
to convert the Queen and Howard to his own revolutionary views.
He had last succeeded, and on the seventh of July
sailed for Kurana, where the armada had rendezvous. After being
dispersed by a storm. Every man afloat knew that the

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hour had come. Yet Elizabeth, partly on the score of expense,
partly not to let Drake snap her apron strings completely,
had kept the supply of food and even of ammunition
very short, so much so that Drake knew he would
have to starve or else replenish from the Spanish fleet itself.

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As he drew near Kurana on the eighth, the Spaniards
were again reorganizing hundreds of perferred clad useless landlubbers shipped
at Lisbon to complete the absurdly undermanned ships were being
dismissed at Corona on the ninth, when Sidonia assembled a
council of war to decide whether to put to sea

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or not. The English van was almost in sight of
the coast, but then the north wind flowed, failed and
at last chopped round. A roaring southwester came on, and
the great strategic move was over. On the twelfth, the
fleet was back in Plymouth, replenishing as hard as it could.

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Howard behaved to perfection. Drake worked the strategy and tactics,
but Howard had to set the tone afloat and ashore
to all who came within his sphere of influence, and
right well he said it. His dispatches at this juncture
are models of what such documents should be, and their
undaunted confidences, in marked contrast to what the doomed Spanish

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officers were writing at the self same time. The southwest
wind that turned Drake back brought the armada out and
gave it an advantage which would have been fatal to
England had the fleets been really equal or the Spaniards
in superior strength. For a week was a very short
time in which to replenish the stores that Elizabeth had

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purposely kept so low. Drake and Howard, so the story goes,
were playing a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe on
Friday afternoon, the nineteenth of July, when Captain Fleming of
the Golden Hind rushed up to say the Spanish fleet
was off the Lizard only sixty miles away. All eyes

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turned to Drake, dividing the right way to calm the people,
He whispered in order, and then set out loud, there's
time to end our game and beat the Spaniards too.
The shortness of food and ammunition that had compelled him
to come back instead of waiting to blockade now threatened
to get him nicely caught in the very trap he

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had wished to catch the great Amata in himself, for
the Spaniards coming up with the wind might catch him
struggling out against the wind and crush his long emerging
column bit by bit, precisely as he had intended crushing
their own column as it issued from the Tagis or Kurna.

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But it was only the van that Fleming had sighted.
Many a Spanish straggler was still hauled down Astern and
Sdonia had to wait for all to close and form
up properly. Meanwhile, Drake and Howard were straining every nerve
to get out of Plymouth. It was not their fault,
but the Queen's in council that Sedonia had unwittingly stolen

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this march on them. It was their glory that they
won the lost advantage back again. All afternoon and evening,
All through that summer night, the sea d dog crews
were warping out of harbor torches, flares and cressets through
their fitful light on toiling lines of men hauling on

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ropes that moved the ships apparently like snails. But once
in Plymouth Sound, the winnying sheaves and long yeo hoes
told that all the sail of the ships could carry
was being made for a life or death effort to
win the weather gage. Thus beat the heart of naval
England that momentous night in Plymouth's Sound, while beacons blazed

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from height to height ashore, horsemen spurret off posthaste with
orders and dispatches, and every able bodied landsman stood to arms.
Next morning, Drake was in the channel near the Eddystone
with fifty foresail when he sighted a dim blur to
windward through the thickening mist and drizzling rain. This was

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the Great Armada. Rain came on and killed the wind.
All say it was taken in aboard the English fleet,
which lay under bare poles, invisible to the Spaniards, who
still announced their presence with some show of canvas. In
actual size and numbers, the Spaniards were superior at first,

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but as the week long running fight progressed, the English
even up with reinforcements. Spanish vessels looked bigger than their tonnage,
being high built, and Spanish official reports likewise exaggerated the
size because their system of measurement made their three tons
equal to in English four. In armament and seamen gunners,

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the English were perhaps five times as strong as the Armada,
and seamen gunners won the day. The English seamen greatly
outnumbered the Spanish seamen utterly surpassed them in seamanship, and
enjoyed the further advantage of having far handier vessels to work.
The Spanish grand total for all ranks and ratings were

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thirty thousand men, the English only fifteen, but the Spaniards
were six thousand short on arrival, and their actual seamen,
many of whom were only half trained, then numbered a
bare seven thousand. The seventeen thousand soldiers only made the
ship so many death traps, for they were of no
use afloat except as boarding parties, and no boarding whatever

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took place. The English fifteen thousand, on the other hand,
were three quarter seamen and one quarter soldiers who were
mostly trained as marines, and this total was actually present
on the whole. It is hardly an exaggeration to say
that the Armada was mostly composed of armed transports, while

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all the English vessels that counted in the fighting were
real men of war in every one of the armades
one hundred and twenty eight vessels, says an officer of
the Spanish flagship, our people kneeled down and offer prayer,
beseeching our Lord to give us victory against the enemies

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of His Holy faith. The crews of the one hundred
and ninety seven English vessels, which at one time another
were present in some capacity on the scene of action,
also prayed for victory to the Lord of Hosts, but
took the proper naval means to win it. Trust in
the Lord, and keep your powder dry, said Oliver Cromwell,

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when about to ford a river in the presence of
the enemy. And so in other words, said Drake. All
day long on that faithful twentieth of July. The visible Armada,
with its swinging canvas, was lying two fifteen miles west
of the invisible, bare masted English fleet. Sedonia held a

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council of war which landsmen like believed that the English
were divided, one half watching Parma, the other the armada.
The trained soldiers and sailors were for the sound plan
of attacking Plymouth first. Some admirals even proposed the only
perfect plan of crushing Drake in detail as he issued

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from the sound. All were in blissful ignorance of the
astounding feat of English seamanship, which had already robbed them
of the only chance they ever had. But Philip, also
landsman like, had done his best to thwart his own
armada for Sidonia produced the royal orders forbidding any attack

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on England till he and Palmer had joined hands. Drake, however,
might be crushed piecemeal in the offing when still with
his after most ships in the sound. So with this
true idea unworkable because based on false information, the generals
and admirals dispersed to their vessels and waited. But then,

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just as night was closing in, the weather lifted enough
to reveal Drake's astonishing position. Immediately, Pinnis's went Scary to
Sidonia for orders, but he had none to give. At
one in the morning he learned some more dumbfounding news
that the English had nearly caught him at Karana, that
Drake and Howard had joined forces, and that both were

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now before him. Nor was even this the worst, for
while the distracted Sidonian was getting his fleet into the
eagle formation, so suitable for galleys whose only fighting men
were soldiers, the English fleet was stealing the weather gage,
his one remaining natural advantage. An English squadron of eight

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sail maneuvered coastwise on the armada's inner flank, while unperceived
by the Spanish lookout Drake stole away to sea, beat
round its outer flank, and then making the most of
a westerly slant in the shifting breeze, edged into starboard.
The Spaniards saw nothing till it was too late, Drake

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having given them a berth just wide enough to keep
them quiet. But when the sun rose there only a
few miles off to windward was the whole main body
of the English fleet coming on in faultless line ahead,
healing nicely over on the port tack before the freshening breeze,
and far from waiting for the great armada, boldly bearing

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down to the attack. With this consummate move, the victory
was won. The rest was slaughter, borne by the Spaniards,
with a resolution that nothing could surpass. With dauntless tenacity,
they kept their eagle formation so useful at Lapanto through
seven dire days of most one sided fighting. Whenever occasion

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seemed to offer. The Spaniards did their best to clothes,
to grapple, and to board, as had their heroes at Lapanto.
But the English merely laughed, ran in just out of reach,
poured in a shattering broadside between wind and water, stood
off to reload, fired again with equal advantage at longer range,
caught the slow galleons and on raked them from stem

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to stern, passed to and fro in one long, deadly
line ahead, concentrating at will on any given target, and
did all this with well nigh perfect safety to themselves.
In quite a different way close to, but to the
same effect, either distance long or short, the English had
the range of them, as sailors say today close to.

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The little Spanish guns fired much too high to hul
the English vessels, lying low and trim upon the water,
with whose changing humors their lines fell in so much
more happily than those of any lumbering Spaniards could far off.
The little Spanish guns did correspondingly small damage even when
they managed to hit, while the heavy metal of the English,

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handled by real seamen gunners, inflicted crushing damage in return.
But even more important than the Englishmen's superiority in rig
hull armament and expert seamanship was their tactical use of
the thoroughly modern line ahead. Anyone who will take the
letter T as an illustration can easily understand the advantage

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of crossing his T. The upright represents an enemy caught
when in column ahead, as he would be for instance,
when issuing from a narrow necked port. In this formation,
he can only use bow fire, and that only in
succession on a very narrow front. But the fleet represented

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by the cross piece moving across the point of the
upright is in the deadly line ahead, with all its
near broadsides turned in one long, converging line of fire
against the helplessly narrow fronted enemy. If the enemy, sticking
to medieval tactics, had room to broaden his front by
forming column abreast as galleys always did, that is, with

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several upright side by side, he would still be at
the same sort of disadvantage, for this would only mean
a series of teas, with each nearest broadside crossing each
opposing upright. As before, the herded soldiers and non combatants
aboard the Great Armada stood by their useless duties to

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the last. Thousands fell killed or wounded. Several times. The
Spanish scuppers actually ran a horrid red as if the
very ships were bleeding. The priests behaved as bravely as
the Jesuits of New France, and who could be braver
than those undaunted missionaries were soldiers, and sailors were alike.
What shall we do now, ask Sedonia. After the slaughter

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had gone on for a week, order up more powder,
set Aquendo as dauntless as before. Even then the eagle
formation was still kept up. The van ships were the head.
The biggest galleons formed the body, lighter vessels formed the wings,
A reserve formed the tail. As the flinching armadus stood

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slowly up the channel, a sail or two would drop
out by the way dead beat. One night, several strange
sail passed suddenly by Drake. What should he do? To
go about and follow them? With all astern of him
doing the same in succession was not to be thought
of as his aftermost vessels were merchantmen, wholly untrained to
the exact combined maneuvers required in a fighting fleet, though

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first rate individually. There was then no night signal equivalent
to the modern disregard the flagship's movements. So Drake doubtsed
his stern light, went about, overhauled the strangers, and found
they were bewildered German merchantmen. He had just gone about
once more to resume his own station, when suddenly a
Spanish flagship loomed up beside his own flagship, the Revenge.

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Drake immediately had his pinnace lowered away to demand instant surrender.
But the Spanish admiral was Don Pedro de Valdez, a
very gallant commander and a very proud ground who demanded terms,
And though his flagship, which had been in collision with Runamuck,
seemed likely to sink, he was quite ready to go
down fighting. Yet the moment he heard that his summoner was Drake,

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he surrendered at discretion, feeling it a personal honour, according
to the ideas of the age, to yield his sword
to the greatest seamen in the world. With forty officers.
He saluted Drake, complimenting him on valor and felicity so
great that Mars and Neptune seemed to attend him, as
also on his generosity towards the fallen foe, a quality

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often experienced by the Spaniards. Whereupon, adds this eye witness
Sir Francis Drake, requiting his Spanish compliments with honest English courtesies,
placed him at his own table and lodged him in
his own cabin. Drake's enemies at home accused him of
having deserted his fleet to capture a treasure ship, for

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there was a good deal of gold with Valdez, but
the charge was quite a founded. A very different charge
against Howard had more foundation. The Armada had anchored at
Calais to get its breath before running the gauntlet for
the last time and joining Parma in the Netherlands. But
in the dead of night, when the flood was making
and a strong west wind was blowing in the same

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direction as the swirling tidal stream, nine English fire ships
suddenly burst into flame and made for this Spanish anchorage.
There were no boats ready to grapple the fire ships
and tow them clear. There was no time to wait,
for every vessel had to anchors down. Sedonia, enraged that
the boats were not out on patrol, gave the order

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for the whole fleet to cut their cables and make
off for their lives. As the great lumbering halls, which
had of course been riding, had to wind swung round
in the dark and confusion, several crashing collisions occurred. Next morning,
the Armada was strung along the Flemish coast in disorderly flight.
The impossibility of bringing the leewardly vessels back against the

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wind in time to form up. Sidonia ran down with
the windward Ones and formed farther off. Howard then led
in pursuit, but seeing the capitana of the renowned Italian
Galiases in distress near Calais, he became a medieval night again,
left his fleet and took the Galias. For the moment

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that one feather in his cap seemed better worth having
than of general victory, Drake forged ahead and led the pursuit.
In turn, the Spaniards fought with desperate courage, still suffering
ghastly losses, but do what they could to bear up
against the English and the wind. They were forced to
of Dunkirk and so out of touch with Parma. This

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was the result of the Battle of Grave Lines, fought
on Monday the twenty ninth of July fifteen hundred and
eighty eight, just ten days after Captain Fleming had rushed
on to the bowling green of Plymouth Hoe, where Drake
and Howard, their short work done, were playing a game
before embarking. In those ten days, the Gallant Armada had
lost all chance of winning the over lordship of the

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Sea and shaking the sea dog grip off both Americas.
A rising gale now forced it to choose between getting
pounded to death on the shoals of Dunkirk or running
north through the North Sea, in which the British Grand
Fleet of the twentieth century fought against the fourth attempt
in modern times to win a world dominion. North and

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still north, round by the surf lashed workneys, then down
the wild west coasts of the Hebrides in Ireland went
the forlorn Armada, losing ships and men at every stage,
until at last the remnants straggled into Spanish ports like
the mere wreckage of a storm end of Chapter nine,