The Spanish Armada, July–August 1588

The battle, stage by stage

1. 31 July 1588, morning (21 July Old Style)

   Off the Eddystone

   The Armada — about 125 ships under the Duke of Medina Sidonia, sent by Philip II to escort the Duke of Parma's army across from Flanders — has come up the Channel from the Lizard. Lord Admiral Charles Howard of Effingham and Sir Francis Drake warped and towed their ships out of Plymouth Sound on the 30th; by 3 PM they were near the Eddystone, and in the night they worked round to windward, so that at dawn the English are behind (west of) the Armada with the wind in their favor. The Spanish fleet forms a great half-moon: the strongest ships on the horns and in the center, the hulks and supply ships inside. The pinnace Disdain fires the first shot, by tradition Howard's formal challenge. The crescent's exact size and the placing of each squadron are not reliably known and are drawn schematically.

2. 31 July, afternoon – 1 August

   The Rosario and the San Salvador

   Howard's Ark Royal attacks La Rata Encoronada on the Armada's left flank, while Drake's Revenge, Hawkins's Victory and Frobisher's Triumph fall on the rearguard; Recalde's San Juan de Portugal stands and fights alone for over an hour until other galleons come up, and the skirmish ends around 1 PM. Afterward the Andalusian flagship Nuestra Señora del Rosario fouls another ship, loses her bowsprit and foremast and drops astern, and a powder explosion wrecks the stern of Oquendo's San Salvador. That night Drake, who was to lead the fleet with his stern lantern, leaves his station; at dawn on 1 August he takes the surrender of the Rosario and Don Pedro de Valdés, and she is sent into Torbay. The abandoned San Salvador is later taken into Weymouth. Medina Sidonia reorganizes, putting his best warships in a strengthened rearguard.

3. 2 August (23 July Old Style)

   Off Portland Bill

   At dawn a north-easterly breeze gives the Spanish the wind. Howard tries to get inshore of the Armada and is blocked. Frobisher's Triumph, with five armed merchantmen (the Merchant Royal, Centurion, Margaret and John, Mary Rose and Golden Lion), is left cut off close under Portland Bill, where the four galleasses under Don Hugo de Moncada attack him, rowing but unable to close. The Levant ship Regazona engages the Ark Royal, and the Nonpareil, Elizabeth Jonas and Victory join; the San Mateo, the Rata and the San Juan de Sicilia come up on the Spanish side. When the wind shifts toward the south the English recover the weather gauge: Drake strikes at the Armada's seaward wing, and the San Martín, alone for about an hour, takes fire from many English ships. Both sides use great quantities of powder and shot; no ship is lost.

4. 4 August (25 July Old Style)

   The Isle of Wight and the Owers

   Off the Isle of Wight the English, now organized in four squadrons under Howard, Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher, attack again. In the dawn calm Hawkins's boats tow his ships against the stragglers San Luis and Duquesa Santa Ana, and the galleasses come back to cover them; the Ark Royal and Golden Lion are towed into action. As the breeze rises, Frobisher, inshore, assails the San Martín's wing and is nearly trapped before his boats tow him clear. Drake and Hawkins press the Armada's seaward wing, in one reading of the evidence pushing it toward the Owers shoals off Selsey Bill. Medina Sidonia, unable to make the English close and in danger of the banks, stands out to sea and on toward Calais; the Solent, the only anchorage on the coast large enough for his fleet, is left behind.

5. 6–7 August (27–28 July Old Style)

   The anchorage off Calais

   On the afternoon of the 6th the Armada anchors in a close crescent in the roads off Calais, intact but short of shot and with no deep-water harbor to shelter in. Medina Sidonia's messages ask Parma to be ready, but Parma's army at Dunkirk and Nieuwpoort cannot come out in its barges while Dutch ships under Justinus of Nassau watch the Flemish banks. The English anchor to windward, by Spanish accounts about two leagues off; that evening Lord Henry Seymour's squadron from the Downs, with Sir William Wynter, joins Howard, giving the English roughly 140 sail.

6. Night of 7–8 August

   The fireships

   Around midnight (accounts vary from 8 PM to after midnight) the English send eight fireships, taken from merchant vessels in the fleet, down on wind and tide into the anchored Armada. None sets a Spanish ship alight, but fearing the 'hellburners' of Antwerp the Spanish captains cut their cables, leaving hundreds of anchors on the seabed, and the crescent breaks up as ships drift north-east toward Gravelines. Medina Sidonia anchors again nearby with a few ships. Moncada's galleass San Lorenzo fouls another ship's cable, loses her rudder and runs aground on the bar of Calais harbor.

7. 8 August (29 July Old Style)

   Gravelines

   At dawn the San Martín and a handful of galleons try to rally the scattered fleet off Gravelines. Howard turns aside with part of his squadron to take the stranded San Lorenzo, where Moncada is killed and the French guns of Calais later make the English give her up, while Drake leads the attack on the San Martín. For some eight hours the English fight at much closer range than before, firing into the hulls; Seymour and Wynter batter the Portuguese galleons San Felipe and San Mateo, which are left drifting toward the Flemish coast. The María Juan of Biscay sinks (one account says two days later). The Armada partly re-forms its crescent as the fight drifts north-east past Dunkirk; around 4 PM, with English shot running low, a squall ends the battle. Positions are conjectural.

8. 9–12 August

   The Zeeland banks and the flight north

   On the 9th a north-westerly wind drives the battered Armada toward the banks off Zeeland; Spanish pilots expect to lose the fleet until the wind backs to the south-west and carries it clear into the North Sea. The San Felipe and San Mateo, aground off the Flemish coast between Nieuwpoort and Ostend, are taken by the Dutch and brought into Flushing. With the wind against any return to Dunkirk, Medina Sidonia's council decides to go home north-about, round Scotland and Ireland. Howard follows to about the latitude of the Firth of Forth and turns back on 12 August, short of food and shot (arrows show the route only roughly). Storms on the voyage home wreck many more ships off Scotland and Ireland.