28
May 1588 A.D. Spanish
Armada Sails Against England
Graves, Dan. “Spanish Armada Sailed to its
Doom.” Christianity Today. Jul 2007.
http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1501-1600/spanish-armada-sailed-to-its-doom-11630036.html.
Accessed Apr 24, 2014.
On this day, May 28, 1588, Medina
Sidonia's flagship, the San Martin led the greatest fleet ever assembled up to
that time, out of the Lisbon River to sea. They were bound for England. Philip,
King of Spain, had had enough of the pesky English, who pretended to be at
peace with him while waging war. Above all, the Spanish loathed Sir Francis
Drake, who harried and harassed them at sea and along their coasts in Europe
and Latin America. [DPV: And who forced captured Spanish sailors to listen to
readings from Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, accounts
of martrys by Queen Mary 1 and her Spanish husband, Philip.]
There were religious reasons for
the attempted invasion, too. Spain was Catholic, England Protestant. Nothing
would please the Spanish empire more than to return the island nation to the
Roman fold. Its policy had been aimed at this for decades.
Aboard the 130 newly-outfitted
ships of the Armada were 19,000 soldiers, ready to invade and conquer England.
But from the start, the Spanish fleet experienced difficulties. Its ships met
bad weather. Getting so many ships with unequal abilities into formation proved
difficult. Furthermore, Drake's bold attack on Cadiz in 1587 had delayed the
invasion a year. More importantly, Drake had burned vast quantities of wood and
hoops intended to make barrels. As a result of this and of having eaten its
freshest supplies over winter, the Armada found itself with spoiled rations.
Plague began. The ships had to regroup at Finnisterre and deal with these
problems. It cost them a month's delay.
Drake wanted to attack the
Spanish in their own waters. Elizabeth said no. She did not want to commit her
nation to war. Drake brought the fleet into Portsmouth harbor. The wind
turning, it was almost trapped there. But the English captains quickly
"warped" out (hauled their ships around on anchors). Sailing under
Philip's inflexible orders, the Spanish missed a golden opportunity to
seriously maul the English fleet.
The English strategy proved
flawed when they harassed the Spanish from a distance: shells from the long
range guns to which they had committed their fleet could not penetrate the
Spanish hulls. The Spanish formation, briefly impaired by storms, remained
substantially intact and arrived in the straits of Dover, on August 6th, more than
two months after setting sail.
The English launched fireboats
against the Spanish, who panicked and broke formation trying to get free. The
Armada, harassed by the English and Dutch, put up a fight, but when its shot
ran out, the English sailed in close and began pounding the big ships to
pieces. Attempting to stick together, the Armada sailed in the only direction
it could go: north. The sailors attempted to take their ships around Scotland
and back down the Atlantic past Ireland home. At least 51 ships perished and
thousands of men.
The defeat of the Armada helped
preserve the Reformation. Philip, when he heard of the magnitude of the
disaster wrote, "I hope that God has not permitted so much evil for
everything has been done in his service." But Protestants issued gloating
letters, pamphlets and medals. "God breathed and they were
scattered," said one of Elizabeth's medals.
Bibliography:
1. "Armada." Encyclopedia
Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968.
2. Martin, Colin and Parker,
Geoffrey. The Spanish Armada. New York: Norton, 1988.
3. Mattingly, Garrett. The Armada.
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1959.
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