My knowledge of the Spanish Armada was hazy till I read this – Drake’s (un)interrupted game of bowls, fireships at Calais, wrecks on the Irish coast. In some respects it still is hazy as Lewis makes the point that very few reliable accounts exist and a high degree of interpretation, even guesswork, is required to make sense of the several running battles that took place over the days that the Armada spent hauling up the English Channel.

The book underlines the unwieldy, and unlikely, enterprise that the Armada represented. It was compromised from the outset by financial considerations which led to the watering down of the original concept of carrying all the necessary invasion troops itself, burdened by the concomitant necessity to link up with Parma’s army in Flanders and saddled with a commander, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who did not want the job as he thought he wasn’t up to it. Yet had the Spanish landed on and taken the Isle of Wight it might have been game over. The smaller, more nimble English fleet harried them all the way up the Channel and successfully prevented this.

Lewis is excellent on the gunnery aspects of the conflict. I had not realised before that the battles took place at one of those turning points in military history, in this case when oar-propelled galleys were being overtaken by full sail and the principal naval tactic since ancient times, ramming, by gunnery. The English had smaller guns, firing lighter shot with greater range than the generally larger Spanish weapons and took great care not to close with their opponents and so run the risk of damage or, worse, boarding. The Spanish thought this standing off ungentlemanly at best and unwarlike, even cowardly, at worst. Yet the damage the English could inflict was minimal. Only when the Spanish had begun to run out of shot and after the fireships at Calais had finally broken the Armada’s formation did closer encounters occur, at Gravelines. The fireships were, though, crucial in the Armada’s final demise as, to escape them, most Spanish ships cut their anchor cables and consequently had reduced means by which to secure themselves when later facing Atlantic storms. That the Armada declined to sail back the way they had come – favourable winds allowed the English ships to do so – speaks volumes for their reluctance to engage the English again, though.

Aside:
At one point Lewis refers in passing to the matter of Mary Queen of Scots, and praises Francis Walsingham’s “brilliant” detective work. Now, while that poor deluded woman certainly did not help herself, it is possible, even likely, that the final conspiracy may have been more a case of agent provocateurship or, in modern terms, entrapment, by Walsingham’s operatives.

Mention is made of the foul, insanitary conditions aboard ships in those days. Disease, particularly typhus, was rife. The privations the sailors endured are also touched on. That many Spanish ships did make it back to Spain reflects well on their commanders, specifically Medina Sidonia and his (unnamed) navigator. Others, of course, ended up on the shores of Ireland or Scotland. One was even blown back all the way to Fair Isle. Surviving the wrecks in Ireland did not guarantee safety. Unless they were highly ransomable most captives were executed out of hand. Such was the way of the late Tudor age. ( )