“Two things, Killigrew. One, naval success and greed of gain have always been uppermost in the minds of your English admirals. Two, their evacuation of Cadiz after they had captured it last year proves that the conquest of Spain territorially is quite beyond their resources or their desires … So we believe they will sail for the Azores and leave England open for our invasion.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Looking back on that momentous time with the after-sight of the years, it is sometimes hard to untangle the sensations and apprehensions of each day from the knowledge that came later.
I did not at first think there was any likelihood of the Spanish manoeuvre being successful; Ralegh or Essex would sail into the very jaws of El Ferrol harbour to establish the whereabouts of the Spanish fleet for themselves. It was not until the ruse had already succeeded that I began to believe it.
One day I met Richard Burley in the street. It was an unpleasant shock, for though he greeted me in a friendly way and without apparent surprise, the presence of this man always seemed an ill omen in my life. He told me he had slipped away from Cawsand near Plymouth on the 18th August and at that time the English fleet was ready to sail and waiting for the first breaks in the weather.
Soon after this, Mark of Gloucester left commanded by Captain Pennell of Bristol, and manned by a mixed crew. She carried a cargo of wine and salt from Oporto and Coruna for Weymouth. Other small vessels left at the same time.
That week I was given a broadsheet to read written in English, and was asked to go carefully over it for printing mistakes. The pamphlet was addressed to the English people offering mercy and advancement to all who turned Catholic, but threatening the sword to all Protestants. That week also I entered a room at the Cornmissariat and found it piled with English flags … they were to be distributed throughout the fleet.
News came that the King was gravely ill. Temporarily this disrupted everything, for though he was old he held all decisions in his own hands. It was as if a sudden palsy had struck the town. What if he died? Would his son, who must now be about nineteen, in any way alter the urgent command to sail and conquer England? Prince Philip was spoken of everywhere and openly as a weakling and dissolute.
Unknown to me at this time, the English fleet under the supreme command of Essex, was not 100 miles off the Spanish coast. So far they had progressed well but now they were struck by another of the great storms of that vindictive summer. The two Spanish galleons captured at Cadiz and adapted to English designs were totally disabled and forced to make for Biscayan ports. Sir Walter’s Warspite was part dismasted and Lord Essex’s Due Repulse sprang a dangerous leak. The rest of the fleet was scattered, and Ralegh, missing the other ships at the agreed meeting point, and unable in his damaged state to do more than run before the wind, made off south for the second rendezvous above Lisbon. Near Finisterre a frigate of his squadron captured one of the small vessels sent out from Ferrol with the false news.
In El Ferrol, de Soto more and more dropped his guard in my presence. I was competent, discreet and always willing. So I learned of many decisions almost as soon as they were come to.
Once or twice he tried to sound me as to my exact purpose with the invading fleet, as if he sensed a plan he was not entirely aware of, but, mindful of Andres Prada’s warning, I would not be drawn.
News arrived that once more the King was recovering, and all began to move again. But there had been a full week’s delay, and the grinding machinery of preparation took time to gather pace.
The painful decision was reached that bare supplies on all vessels should be cut from ten weeks to five. For a voyage of conquest this seemed ample but everyone knew the hazards of that reasoning.
Daily flyboats which patrolled the seas from Cape Finisterre to Cape Ortegal came in to report on what they had seen, and presently we heard that a large English fleet had been sighted off Finisterre. (This was the main English fleet under Essex gathering after the storm.)
For a time we did not know what success, if any, the decoy ships with their false tales had had. Then the news broke in a flood among the senior officers: three different flyboats reported that Essex and the rest of the fleet had been sighted off Muros heading south.
They were gone and the way was open. It was the 9th September.
At once embarkation began. Final stores were brought aboard, messages to the King sent, troops and equipment and ammunition ferried to the transports and the galleons, mules and horses and cattle shipped. To my disappointment I was put aboard San Bartolomeo with Enrico Caldes. The fifty Irish were to travel in her as combatants and I was needed as interpreter. Another company of 1.00 Irish soldiers under their own captain travelled in the urea San Juan Bautista.
Capitan de Mar of San Bartolomeo was Ferdinando Quesada, a thin ascetic man, wealthy in his own right, who kept two pages by him to play music in the evenings. The Capitan de Guerra, or general commanding the soldiers aboard, was Diego Bonifaz, his rank being equal to that of Quesada; and he had absolute control of his own forces as if army and navy were travelling together only by accident.
Richard Burley sailed aboard San Mateo, a galleon just delivered from the new shipyards of Renteria to replace the one of the same name destroyed at Cadiz. Captain Elliot joined the fleet with Dolphin, his own crew and his own arms, as an independent privateer.
Embarkation took two days; it was the morning of the 12th before the first galleon shook down her sails and began to make a way out of the long narrow jaws of the harbour.
Orders were to assemble in Betanzos Bay to await a favourable wind. The great fleet took thirty hours to assemble in the bay fifteen miles from Ferrol on the western side of the rocky cape. The weather was still rough and the wind gusty and treacherous when I went up on deck on the morning of the first inspection. The ships were anchored in six lines, each line consisting of ten galleons and fourteen other ships from Easterlings to transports. This made 144 major warships. There were another sixty caravels, flyboats, supply boats and frigates. In all these vessels, as I well knew from going over details, there were 5,000 sailors, masses of field artillery, mules, horses, oxen, siege trains and over 10,000 trained soldiers.
The Adelantado conducted his inspection from a decorated barge rowed by twenty-four picked oarsmen. From the maintop of San Pablo, the galleon next to ours, the Adelantado’s own pendant fluttered, a bread swallow-tailed flag in green, so long that when the gusty wind faltered the ends of the standard dipped in the water. The whole fleet was dressed with flags and standards. Men stood in lines and cheered, guns were fired, the galleons dipped and nodded in the swell, the wind clutched viciously at mast and rigging, and the Adelantado’s barge lurched and rolled with flecks of salt water glinting off the oars and fine mists of spray lifting and breaking across the bows.
I slept that night in my usual sickly unease of a first night at sea. The Spanish galleon is a much more comfortable vessel than the English fighting ship, there being more accommodation for the men and greater spaces between decks. Of course, San Bartolomeo was half as big again as Warspite. No one in our galleon yet knew our destination in England. I heard the officers speculating at supper and Falmouth was never mentioned. Some thought the Isle of Wight, some Scotland, some Milford Haven; others thought we should sail right up the Thames and capture London.
The next morning it was known that we would wait a few more days for Admiral Arumburu and the Seville squadron.