In Our Time - The Spanish Armada

Episode Date: October 7, 2010

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Spanish Armada. On May 28th, 1588, a fleet of a hundred and fifty-one Spanish ships set out from Lisbon, bound for England. Its mission was to transport a huge invasion force across the Channel: the Spanish King, Philip II, was determined to remove Elizabeth from the throne and return the English to the Catholic fold. Two months later the mighty Spanish Armada was sighted off the coast of Cornwall. Bad weather, poor planning and spirited English resistance defeated the Spaniards: after a brief battle the remnants of their fleet fled. This tale of religious dispute, shifting political alliance and naval supremacy has entered our folklore - although some historians argue it changed nothing.With:Diane PurkissFellow and Tutor at Keble College, OxfordMia Rodriguez-SalgadoProfessor in International History at the London School of EconomicsNicholas RodgerSenior Research Fellow at All Souls College at the University of OxfordProducer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, on the 28th of May 1588, a fleet of 151 Spanish ships set out from Lisbon bound for England. Its mission was to transport a huge invasion force across the channel

and assist in the overthrow of Elizabeth I. Two months later this mighty Spanish Amada was sighted off the coast of Cornwall. Elizabeth was to inspire the English sailors with a famous speech in which she declared, I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too. Appalling weather, poor planning and spirited English resistance defeated the Spaniards. After a brief battle, their battered fleet fled. This tale of religious dispute, shifting political alliance and naval brilliance, has entered into our national folklore,

although some historians argue that it changed nothing. With me to discuss the Spanish Armada are Diane Perkis, fellow and tutor at Keeble College Oxford, Mia Rodriguez-Salgado, Professor in International History at the London School of Economics, and Nicholas Rogers, Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College at the University of Oxford.

Diane Perkins, Elizabeth came to throne in 1553. 1558, that's a misprint, yes. How powerful... Sorry, that's time again. It shows that it's alive and there we are. How powerful was England at that time? What was its international standing? Pretty rubbish, really, in comparison with the international standing of Spain.

A good indication of this is that Philip was able to raise almost any amount of money he wanted in loans from Europe's bankers. And Elizabeth couldn't so much as raise a plug-knickle. Because everyone supposed Spain, superpower, England, weedy little country, they're absolutely bound to win in whatever they undertake. And this, I think, kind of tells us that England was, it was on the margins of Europe. It was doing its best, its entrepreneurial best in the new world. But what it was principally doing was robbing the Spanish treasure fleets and treasure ships. It hadn't found any treasure of its own, unlike Spain, who had the wealth of the conquistadors to draw upon,

though it was spending it pretty fast in the various wars in which it was engaged. So Spain, world superpower, England, tiny marginal country. But this is still the same in the 1519. is that England hasn't progressed in anyway by then. We know it's progressed in all sorts of other ways, in its language, in its literature, and its laws, but he hasn't progressed in terms of power. No, in terms of power, England is still really a minority player,

but it's got involved. It stuck its nose into a bunch of acts in Europe, particularly the Dutch revolt, the revolt of the Dutch provinces, which the Elizabethan government, really, with Elizabeth, a very reluctant leader in this, was supporting, trying to support the Protestants in Holland against Spain.

There was the particular events of the Leicester expedition to the Netherlands in an effort to support that Dutch revolt. That kind of tweaked Spain's tale.

And as well, England was also perpetually really kind of privateering around the Spanish treasure fleet. Primateria was a sort of lightly legally cloaked form of piracy.

Yeah, privateering is kind of a well-heeled, posh piracy, really. Drake in particular The Queen was supposed to get it straight. Privacy was supposed to be licensed by the Crown. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Can I just come in?

So there we are. Little off shores of Western Europe, Ireland, towards the ends of the world, whatever, uttermost ends of the... Spain was in South America. It was all over Europe. It was in Italy. It was a superpower.

It was not wrong to say it was a superlap. Yeah. So, I mean, if you think of it in modern world terms, you know, Spain really equates with America, massive world dominance, cultural dominance too, linguistic dominance. England, you know, pretty much on a part with, you know, maybe Poland or the Czech Republic. You know, small but interesting. Religion is massively important then, and wars were fought in the name of religion,

although wars were fought in my view always because people wanted to fight wars for power. But religion was used. Now, England in the 15th is in a very tricky state. We have an Anglican monarch who has somehow, he's got the Catholic. Catholics and you've got the Puritans. But let's talk about the Catholicism. I think Philip himself would have seen this, would have seen the Armada in the invasion of England.

In terms of a war for human rights, he would have seen himself as fighting for the rights of Catholics, who were, and it's fair to say, in increasingly underwater position as the 1580s unfolded. And this was because the Elizabethan government started by being very lenient towards Catholics when Elizabeth took the throne. But that was because they thought that Catholics

were just going to disappear. were going to kind of die out as time went on, and they didn't. As a result of various kind of intellectual endeavors on the part of English Catholics, what actually happened was some very high-profile conversions, particularly among Oxford intellectuals. The best known of these are Edmund Campion, who was a fellow of St. John's, and Robert Parsons, also an Oxford fellow. Because of their conversion, the government actually became afraid

that English Catholics were going from strength to strength rather than disappearing, and thus the laws against Catholics got more. and more and more draconian. Not only were they not allowed to practice their religion, but it became a crime even to harbour a priest. And Emond Campion himself ended up, arrested as soon as he landed, very nastily tortured and hanged drawn and courted at Tyburn. Here Rodriguez-Salgada, let's talk a bit more about Philip the Second of Spain. One thing that my surprise was that at one time was King of England. Absolutely. People tend to forget that. They think it's natural that England and Spain should be in conflict. But this was a very

unusual situation that people found themselves in in the later part of the 16th century. In fact, England and Spain had been allies for centuries. That doesn't stop them from fighting on occasion, but they were natural allies because they shared a common enemy, and that was France. And that alliance was both political, but it was also commercial. There were very close commercial ties between England and Spain, on the one hand, and England and the possessions in the Netherlands, in modern-day Belgian and Holland, which were also ruled by Philip the second. So strong commercial ties. And that closeness was manifest in a number of marriages. We tend to forget that Catherine of Aragon married two

English princes for the price of one, Arthur and then Henry the 8th. And after that, it's their daughter, Mary Tudor, who marries the Prince of Spain, Prince Philip, who becomes King of England from 1554 until Mary's death in 1558. So this man had been a king. He had lived in England. He knew the English. And he had real affection, at least for English Catholicism, if not always for the English nobility.

As a footnote while I was reading notes for this programme, he helped to reorganise the British Navy. Is that true? He did. He did live to rue the day, but he was a very effective monarch, wherever he went, and whatever part of the world he either inherited or obtained, he organised defence. And he came to England and found that Henry VIII's great navy had been allowed to essentially rot.

And he thought this was very sad, and that the real strength of the English was their navy, and so he reorganized it. and some of the ships that he had either built or rebuilt in his period as King of England fought against him at the time of the Armada. Amdain gave us some idea of the stretch of the Spanish power. Can you just amplify it even a little more? At the time of the Armada, Philip II was king over the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. But he also was the lord of the Netherlands, of the low countries.

He possessed most of Italy, a lot of the Western Mediterranean islands. He had possessions in North Africa and, of course, the ever-growing colonial empires in the Americas, but also in Asia. So he was a global power, a superpower. But with a great power comes great responsibility and very grave problems. So the idea of this David and Goliath, this major power can raise any amount of money, this tiny power. I mean, let's be sensible here. Great powers, great problems,

and they cannot raise enough money, usually to defend themselves. So this is a power that is in very great problems in terms of finance. There have been two bankrupts. He is severely hampered by the distance between his states. So although great power, he has great problems.

We mustn't get this idea that he was capable of just walking in and wiping the map, or wiping little powers off the map. But there is reality in perception. The perception was of this great power. He had several fleet, but the perception was that there was one enormous fleet. He had several armies, but the perception was that these were the best armies in Europe, very well trained.

You face them at your peril. You were bound to be beaten because they were so strong. That was a very strong perception. Of the best armies, yes. In terms of the Navy, he certainly had one of the greatest navies in the Mediterranean, but not necessarily the greatest. And as far as navies outside of the Mediterranean, now this was much more in doubt.

In fact, the English had grave concerns that Spain might well attack them one day. But until that armada came to the channel, neither they nor the Dutch really believed that Philip II could get a navy up to the channel. Nicholas Roger, Philip turn, why did he decide to send an armada out when he did in the mid-50s and 80s?

There's still some room for disagreement about this, but my interpretation is that it arose some mutual miscalculation. That it's perfectly certain that Queen Elizabeth could never have deliberately intended to provoke a war with Spain, but my reading of the situation is that she, or perhaps even more of her advisers, concluded in the early 1580s that Spain had in fact already taken a decision to crush England, that the jaws of a trap were slowly closing on her and that her only choice was to fight now

when she still had some freedom of manoeuvre and when she still had at least one ally, namely the Dutch rebels, or to wait until it was too late. And so she set out to try to mount operations more or less semi-proxy distant operations which were designed to send a signal to Philip II that she was not powerless. What were they?

In particular, a quasi-royal expedition to the Caribbean under Drake. The West Indies expedition. And Philip II for his part, I think, had not in fact decided that it was unavoidable to engage in this appallingly difficult and costly operation. Until this point, when he came to the conclusion that he was never going to be able to solve all his other foreign policy problems, in particular never going to be able to crush the rebellion of the low countries, unless he dealt with the English first.

And therefore, at this point, I think, committed himself to a war, which I believe he hadn't fully decided on before then. What part did two factors play? One is the religious factor, the perceived persecution of the Catholics. He was a very religious man, and he saw himself as the defender of the Catholic. Catholics, you can talk better about that than I can, of course. And the other was the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587, the year before the Armada.

What part did those two things play in his decision? You can't isolate religion from any matter of international politics in this period. And Philip II is unquestionably a man of real devotion who would have loved to restore England to the Catholic fold. He would have regarded that as justifying being a king, doing a service to God like. that. On the other hand, he'd done absolutely nothing for the previous 20 years, apart from diplomatic overtures to Queen Elizabeth. I gravely doubt if religion alone would ever have driven him to this extraordinarily expensive and risky operation if there had not also, or perhaps primarily, been, reasons of state. And of course, when he had made the decision,

the whole business of justifying it to the outside world, had to be. essentially two-faced. To the Catholic world he had to say this was an enterprise to restore the faith, I need your support. But to the Protestant world, there were many Protestant princes whose alliance, or at least whose neutrality he desperately needed, he had to present it as an operation of state having nothing to do with religion at all. And in fact, this is essentially what he tried to do to sing a different song to different audiences. And succeeded? Before he set off? To a limited extent, succeeded. Because he had his fleet blessed. That was fairly public declaration of where he was, isn't it? Yes, he had his fleet blessed and he got a papal blessing.

On the other hand, Sixters' Fifth, who was nobody's fool and who was not in the least keen on aggrandizing the Spanish Empire, however much he wanted England returned to the Spanish throne, actually gave strictly limited support on very tight conditions. And this is important because it, in fact, distorted the strategy, at least on my interpretation, it distorted the whole strategy of the Armada, the conditions the Sixth is the Fifth imposed. Can you elaborate a little? Sixties the fifth was happy to see England return to the Catholic throne but wanted to ensure that it was not returned to the Spanish Empire. His condition for providing, amongst other things, an extremely large sum of money, which he promised only on cast iron evidence that the Spanish army

was already ashore and not beforehand. A shore on our shore. A shore in England, was that the enterprise should be commanded by a non-Spanish prince of independent standing. And his choice was the Duke of Palmer, of course, is an Italian prince, but is also, firstly Philip II's nephew, and secondly his commander-in-chief in the low countries. So the papal conditions effectively mean that the landing force cannot be carried in ships from Spain,

at least not the primary landing force, that it has to be transported across the channel from what is now Belgium. Diane Perkins, so what was his plan? He's decided to, was there a little, we've got very, very comprehensive view of the background now, and brought right up to speed, as it were. But what was his plan? How did he calculate how many ships, what sort of ships, and so on? A lot of debate about exactly how many ships even set sail from Spain

and how big the fleet was, but estimates sort of suggest something in the region of 130 to 150 ships. How they've calculated it, the basis of the plan, as Nick just said, really importantly, was this idea of rendezvousing with Palmer, in and around the low country. So they're going to go through being pick up the fighting force in the Netherlands. Yeah.

So that was the big idea. 30,000 of them. Yeah. And therefore that completely dictated the way they sailed. They had to sail basically right along the south coast of England in order to rendezvous

with Palmer's army. This was really tricky because actually the commander of the Armada, Medina Sedonia and Palmer, didn't have any contact with each other despite sending repeated messages that didn't get through for the entire

duration of the Armada's voyage. So Medina Sidonia, commanding the ships, had no way of knowing where Parma's army was, whether it was ready to embark. In fact, it Palmer's army had been overtaken by illness and the sort of disasters that always happened to early modern armies massively reduced its size from the expectation that Medina Sidonia had. And moreover, they couldn't really find a sensible place to rendezvous because once they've been, they were traversing the south coast of England, the English fleet was in hot pursuit, and they couldn't get to a deep water harbour safely and securely where they could rendezvous with Palmer. So the whole thing was based on a premise that turned out to be completely invalid.

Can we stick with detail, because it's fascinating, isn't it? Mere Rueges-Selgada. How long did it take to put the fleet together? What sort of ships did he want for different purposes? He's got to pick up an army of 30,000 people. He's got a fighting ships, because he knows the British have got, English, you've got fighting ships. So how did he put it together? It was a very complex operation. He had his best soldiers fighting in the low countries and it was going to be a complete waste of time and money to bring them over from there to Spain. But he had his best ships in the Iberian Peninsula.

So, I mean, one of the problems of this great empire is that its forces are scattered. And what he decides to do is to attack England, but for a very long time the nature of that attack remains open, remains up for grabs, and even the target is undecided. There's a lot of talk perhaps of attacking Ireland, rather than

going against England directly. But in the end, they come to the conclusion that the best thing is to send a large fleet from Spain that will act as a convoy and a defence shield for the army that will be put together in the low

countries. And people think of the armada as the main force, but it wasn't. This is an auxiliary force. What the majority of that fleet contains is a very large convoy that is carrying absolutely everything for the army that is in the low countries, which is going to be transported in very small boats. And so they're carrying food, they're carrying tents, they're carrying wooden spoons and bowls for the army. It's a huge convoy, and around that convoy there is a... a relatively small group of, if you like, first frontline vessels of fighting ships that are protecting it.

But that's why the armada is so slow. That's why the armada has to stay in a very tight formation throughout its voyage, because the majority of those ships are not fighting ships. And in the end, Philip II tries to get as many ships as he can, as with every early modern power, he does not have very many ships of his own. What they do, Elizabeth, that's the same.

When there is a crisis or a war, you simply embargo or impound all the good-quality ships that happen to be in your ports and you make adjustments to them and then they are incorporated into your navy. Tight formation, what was the formation? It was in a sort of half-moon with the majority of the ships in the middle

surrounded by these larger and much better armed ships that both protected them, but also when necessary, broke off to tackle the English fleet. Nicholas, sorry. quoting Testudo, really, in which there was a kind of outer perimeter wall formed by the actual gun warships around the weaker ships in the centre. Nicholas, can you give us a... Can you give us some idea of the comparisons between the Spanish fleet,

we've begun to get an idea of that, what that looked like, and the English fleet who were to oppose it? Well, Queen Elizabeth had, and some of her subject had as well, a small number of very powerful warships of a new class. The English had specialised in trying to combine two things which were pretty new at sea, the first was carrying very heavy battering guns, and the second was what we call the ship rig,

a really effective, powerful, fast sailing rig. And they had got quite a lot further than the Spaniards had with this. The Spaniards, on the whole, were in the business of open ocean navigation, which they were practically 100 years ahead of the English. Hardly anybody in the English fleet had experience a deep sea navigation, whereas the Spaniards have been crossing the Atlantic, Obviously, ever since the discovery, almost 100 years before,

they've been running big convoys across the Atlantic for 40 years. They were deeply experienced on all its kind of thing. But what they were essentially in the business of was armed convoy escorts, whereas the English were in the business of attacking and had built up this small but impressive force of powerful ships. The Queen's ships probably the most powerful of all for defensive purposes, but some of her subjects, of course, with rather smaller but also powerful ships using them for aggressive and profit-making war are in the Atlantic. So can you give us some idea of the numbers involved on?

We've got a 120 to 150. I chose the larger number in my introduction of the programme. Let's say around there. What did the English have? Because the view is, we still have the Agincourt view of it, don't we? Which was very good at school. We few and bash the big ones. I mean, we like that. That's what we like to keep doing.

After it was all over, the Elizabethan government actually produced an official list of all the ships which he'd thought had taken some share in the campaign, and it's 197 ranging from the biggest warship down to a tiny pinnace called the Pippin. But they certainly weren't all there at the same time, and many of these were very small ships, essentially, in auxiliary roles.

In terms of serious fighting ships, there were probably 30 or 40. So the Amard has set off in May 1588. It's going to be a long voyage. Briefly, Diane, what happened between then and when it reached the English Channel? Well, they had a series of minor disasters. One kind of storm hit them so badly that Medina Sidonia actually wrote to Philip to say, do you sure God really bless us our voyage? Do you think we should call it off now?

Because we've just been struck by a wind and probably God sent it. they finally made it to ushant on the 29th of July and that's quite slow going to Spain ushant uhshund is the last of France the northwest tip of France it's an island belongs to brittany and it's also the gateway to the English Channel so it was really a slog

even just to get up from the Spanish ports as far as ushant and it also meant that every intelligence in Europe knew they were coming everybody had seen them they were finally cited in the channel on the 30th of July and Drake had watches all along the channel. This is something that everybody will know about the beacons.

They lit the lizard beacon on the 30th of July and the messenger duly had off to Plymouth to tell Drake that the beacon had been lit. Drake was delighted because this was his plan coming beautifully into effect. It had been his risky strategy to put those relatively few English fighting ships at Plymouth rather than putting them in the narrow part of the channel

adjacent to the low countries, which is what some campaigners had wanted him to do. His bet had been that the Spanish would come along the coast, that they would arrive in the west first, and that he, Drake, could therefore get the weather gauge, could kind of trap them almost. So this, he duly did. They then had to whelter their way out of Plymouth Harbour

on an ebb tide, which is not too easy, and that's why he had time to finish that famous game of bowls, unless that's a complete myth. But it's why he would have had time. He would have had ages to finish a game of bowls while they sort of mugged about. They maneuvered and they got the weather gauge. They got to winward at the Spanish fleet.

And that placed them absolutely ideally just where you want to be in a naval battle behind the enemy. And this they duly did. They had a totally different set of tactics to the Spanish. And the Spanish were actually horrified. We have records to say this at what the English did. The English formed into a lot of language. long line, broadside on to the Spanish, which Spanish tactics said, you must never do.

You must absolutely be face on to the enemy, because the Spanish way was to try to close with a ship, board it, and thus take it. The English way was to use this terrific ordinance that they had on the race ships, this terrific cannon fire to destroy the enemy ships. Nicholas, Dianz raised the idea of Drake moving some of the fleet down to Plymouth. Who was in charge on the British side? Who was doing the plan? and that suggests that there's a division in the planning. Can you, and the beacon obviously suggests that, and so on, can you just give us a bit more idea of how we got sorted out for it?

Well, ultimately, the Queen and her council are in charge, and they are taking the major strategic decisions, certainly on the disposition of the fleet. The actual commander-in-chief of the fleet is the Lord Admiral of England, Lord Howard of Effingham, and Drake is his second in command, one of a number of experienced seamen who advise him. They don't all agree, and Howard, though he's a less experienced seaman than the rest of them,

is there, amongst other things, to be the man who takes the ultimate decision and listens to the advice. By this point, he'd been converted to Drake's argument that, since the prevailing winds blow up the channel from the south-west, in order to command the situation, the English needed to be down at the mouth of the channel

otherwise there was a grave risk that the Spaniards might land in the West country, which they had been known to have been thinking of doing in the past. So, Mia Rodriguez-Salgardo, let's just take something that Nicholas said a bit further. The key people on each side, we've heard about Medina Sidonia. He wasn't the first choice, we'll see it, and then we've heard about Lord Hart and Sir Francis Drake. Can we just elaborate on these? Yes. The original commander for the fleet was the Marquis of Santa Cruz.

but he had died in February of 1587. He'd won the Battle of Le Panto, hadn't it? Well, he'd taken part. But he was an extremely experienced seaman and ideal commander for this type of force, and he had also fought in the Azores and combined an operation,

an amphibious operation. However, once he died, he was very rapidly replaced by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who was also highly experienced. He had been putting together the defensive squadrons for the Indies. He was a very high-ranking aristocrat, and those were the two crucial criteria

that you needed for somebody to command that fleet. So this myth that he got seasick and that he was hopeless and he knew nothing about the sea is just that a myth. He was a deal commander, of his status, because of his capacity to organise a navy, and his capacity to enforce obedience. How strong was Howard's command?

Nicholas Rogers mentioned that they had these persons under him, most eminently Drake, and then he took their advice in some ways, but had the final say. Do we know anything more about the dynamics of those relationships? Well, I mean, the dynamics are actually quite similar. what you have at the head of both the naval forces and the military forces are nobles, high-ranking nobles, and what you have below them are either sort of experts or members of the lower nobility who have much more practical technical exercise. Now both Howard of Effingham and Medina,

Macedonia, depend on these naval experts and these military experts to advise them. But they take the decision, and they take the wrap if they get the wrong decision and they're all used to this. Now, what we have in the two navies, though, is a different level of, if you like, authority and obedience. In the case of the Spanish fleet, those below Medina Sidonia obeyed his orders. Mind we, he had a habit of hanging anybody who didn't.

So that had a very sort of... Assault to you think. It had the right of fact. Let's put it that way. So there was never an issue of disobedience. The lower level commanders of the fleet obeyed orders and kept to them. In the case of the English fleet, this wasn't the case. Drake and some of the others were used to acting on their own.

And there was this famous incident quite early on in the crisis, if we can call it that, where two Spanish ships had been damaged, one of them got left behind. and Drake simply abandons the English fleet and goes back to take the prize. Now that does not happen at all in the Spanish fleet, but in many ways there are sort of similarities between them. When did first contact take place then, Diane? Well, first contact took place on the 30th of July

and then the subsequent two days. That was when Drake's fleet in... countered the armada for the first time, I'm keen to come back to defend Drake against the idea that he was nothing but a pirate. Privateer. We called him a privateer. Well, yeah, but I think we were calling him a pirate when he took the Rosario, and I completely understand that.

But what we also have to understand is that on the English ships, the captain was in sole command of everybody on board that ship, which wasn't straightforwardly the case on the armada ships. And the captains, Drake had this kind of rule of leadership, which he picked up from classical lit, amazingly, that the captain should take a hand with the ropes in a crisis and haul on a sheet if necessary. And we've actually got a letter from one commander on an English Navy ship

saying, I can't write this letter, I have to get a scribe to do it because I hurt my hand hauling on a rope. This is a nobleman. My bet is that Medina Sidonia wasn't hauling on too many sheets. No, but nor was Howard of Effingham. No, that's certainly true. You've got to make a difference, whereas the equivalence of drakes, people like Bertendona or Don Hugo de Moncada,

who dies with an archibus shop through the head, are doing exactly that. A good military commander or a naval commander will get down and get his hands dirty when there is a crisis, but not the commander-in-chief. And I think, you know, you have to compare like with life. That's certainly fair.

I never did hear of hard of effing. I'm hauling on any sheets. And I turn to Nicholas Roger now. In the early days of August, as I mean, the crucial event of him out took place the bottle of Grave-Elein. Can you tell us how that bottle unfolded and what significance it had, Nicholas, Roger?

Well, we've jumped, as it were, over a number of days of very slow progress as the armada works its way up the channel with the English constantly skirmishing and firing at them, avoiding coming to close quarters and firing their famous heavy guns. What the English hoped and what the Spaniards feared was that this very very,

heavy armament. No Spanish ship had anything like that kind of armament was going to knock the Spanish ships to pieces. But actually it didn't happen. There was a good deal of damage but nothing fatal. And the Spanish fleet arrives in due course at

the narrows and anchors off Calais, which is a French port but with a governor friendly to the Spanish interests. They're only 30 miles or so away from where Palmer's army is known to be. The crisis of the campaign has arrived. Everybody's aware

of this. The Spaniards are asking the question, where is the Duke of Palmer and his troops? Why are they not lining the beach at this moment? The English are asking precisely the same question. Where is the Duke of Parma and his troops? He can't be far away. And for the English, the

critical thing is that the Spanish fleet cannot be allowed to lie in Calais roads a moment longer while Palmer's troops presumably are marching rapidly. Was it? No, not that rapidly. actually, but both sides thought they were, and there was every reason to think that they were.

So the English have to get the Spaniards out of Calais roads as fast as possible, and since the English themselves are anchored only a mile or two away to Windward, there is an obvious way of doing it, namely fire ships. And this is what they do. The Spaniards had anticipated it. Can you just tell listeners who are not familiar with fire ships how these things operated?

Simply, you get an expendable, small ship. In fact the English basically grabbed any small ships they could find. Stuff them full of everything that will burn. Ships are full of things that will burn anyway, so it's not terribly difficult. You get some bold volunteers who will volunteer to sail the ships towards the enemy fleet

and when they get fairly close, light the blue touch paper and pile into a boat and pull like hell to get away. And since wooden ships were very, very inflammable and of course full of powder as well as everything else, this is a dangerous, very dangerous weapon, it's liable to terrify people and cause panic. It didn't, I think,

caused panic in the Spanish fleet. They were prepared for it. It was the obvious means of attack. They had orders, what to do. They actually managed to get hold of these fire ships and tow them away. But what they did have to do was to cut their cables, which means, of course, losing precious anchors and clear a way to sea. And they never got back to their anchorage. And the English were able, the following morning to mount a major attack in which I think because they were desperate they came to much closer range than they had risk before close enough for people actually to shout to one another

from one ship to another so we're probably talking about a fighting range down to 50 yards or less and at that range the English heavy guns began to cause really serious damage Mayor Rodriguez-Sangada is this the turning point do the Spanish fleet then turn north and abandon Mission A

and start Mission B, which is to get back. And the way they sought to get back was to go right around the British Isles, past the north of Scotland, down past Ireland, and do not. Is this the point where that happened? It is for the reasons that Nicholas Rogers has explained, that they lose their anchorage. Now they try to get back to it, but they can't. The winds are against them.

And they hold on as much as they can, simply because they believe the army is ready. And it was almost ready. I mean, people are very critical of this strategy, but it almost worked. I mean, they were hours from making it work. So, you know, it is risky, certainly. But it isn't that outrageous.

So what they do is they try to hang on there as long as they can. And then the wind changes and start, pushing the armada towards the sandbanks of the low countries. And for a time, the Spanish fleet believes it's going to be destroyed, not by the English, but just they're going to run aground and some of them do, by the weather. And then miraculously, as far as their concern, the wind changes and gives them this prospect of actually going northwards and on the 12th. of August, Medina, Siddonia

gives the order to go northward, but he tells everybody, go slow, if the wind changes, will turn back. And in fact, the English are not at all sure that the armada will not come back to the channel. However, the weather doesn't change, and they decide that what they're going to do is go roundabout Britain, as you mentioned,

in order to get back to Spain. And it's there very briefly, at this, after Gravelyne, Dan, that Queen Elizabeth gives her famous Tilbury speech, not before the whole... Yes, after the crucial battle, she gives this speech that's so historical, in the wrong place.

I mean, why they assembled what troops they could muster at Tilbury when the Spanish plan was always probably to go to Kent in the kind of correct historical manner is a bit of a mystery, and anyway, the troops that they'd assembled at Tilbury were an extremely ramshackle group. There was one group of men who had bows and arrows but hadn't been trained to use them, for example.

But yes, that's why she does the speech. I'm sure it was very motivational. But it does illustrate what actually Mia just said, that they didn't see the threat as over. They didn't kind of feel that the events on the Flanders banks had settled things, that they felt that there was still a danger. And they felt, therefore, that the speech was still worth making, that they still had to rally the infantry troops

that they managed to muster up. So we're still in flux, Nicholas Roger. The Spanish fleet, which is still powerful and feared, hasn't by no means been defeated at this stage. It has been battered, and the English are snapping around and coming close and getting rather desperate and hammering away, but it's still a big mass of ships, well manned in terms of seamanship and so on, but headed north, trying to go with the weather.

Yes, the English, at this point, and the English had a whole series of major fears, but nobody thought they'd won a great battle, or indeed that the issue was actually decided. The English had virtually run out of ammunition, they had been firing at a faster rate than anybody had ever done before or they themselves had expected to do and they were virtually bluffing at this point because many of the ships had no powder and shot left at all

and the natural expectation was that Philip II had prepared a port somewhere in the North Sea there were a number of available potential allies Hamburg was a possibility Scotland was a possibility there seemed to be some obvious it would have been obvious, they thought, for the Armada to have a base prepared where it could take refuge,

repair damage, and return when the wind served to renew the campaign, and that was what the English were really frightened of. I haven't been looking at the clock properly. We're nearly up. Can you just cut to the significance of this, Mia? What significance did this happen? They went round Scotland, they were battered by awful weather,

round island, they ran out of food, they ran out of water when they got on the shore, they were butchered and so forth. But quite a considerable number got back to Spain, about three quarters. But what was the significance to Spain of this episode? In the short term, of course, they were devastated, but three quarters of the fleet, as you say, returned. The loss of men, of experienced soldiers and sailors,

was actually much more serious than the loss of ships. They can be replaced far more easily. But Philip II simply got on with it. He immediately started repairing them and thought in terms of sending another, fleet the following year. In fact, that fleet isn't ready at the time when the English do a counter armada and try to invade Spain the following year. And that expedition was a complete failure. And by 1589, both Philip II and Elizabeth have, in fact, if not entirely disengaged,

decided to refocus and get involved in the French Civil War. So they don't really fight each other for a number of years. And what effect did this have on England when it was clear that when the sea settled, as it were? I think it's fair to say that if Philip had hoped to improve the situation of English Catholics, then nothing could have been more disastrous. Because the English really didn't believe they'd won a great and final victory even in the 1590s. They were expecting Philip to re-engage with them. And they were terrified of a fifth column of Catholics within their midst.

and the result was a really crushing persecution campaign with torture and inquisitorial tactics for people who had done nothing much worse than import a few forbidden books. Finally, Nicholas, what effect did it? Did it have a big effect on English morale and sense of itself? I think it did, though in the long term, rather than immediately, but in the long term, it is the key event in a long process of creating an English national myth,

which identifies the sea and war at sea as the way in which the English nation in arms is at sea and not on land. Thank you very much indeed, Dan Perkis, Mir Rodriguez-Halgardo and Nicholas Roger. And next week, Sturm undrang, Germany in the 1770s. Thank you very much for listening. If you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast, why not try others, such as Thinking Aloud, where Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research. To find out more, visit bbc.co.com.uk forward slash radio four.