Conflict with Spain and the Spanish Armada (1588)

From Cold War to Open War

By 1588 England and Spain had been drifting towards war for two decades. Three pressures converged. First, religion: Spain was the leading Catholic power in Europe, England was Protestant, and the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570. Second, the Netherlands: when Dutch Protestants rebelled against Spanish rule in 1568, Elizabeth gave them quiet financial help, then in 1585 sent the Earl of Leicester with 6,000 English troops — an open act of war. Third, the sea: English ‘Sea Dogs’ like Drake and Hawkins had been raiding Spanish treasure ships in the Caribbean since the 1560s, and Drake’s circumnavigation (1577–1580) returned with around £400,000 in Spanish silver. The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in February 1587 was the final trigger; Philip II of Spain decided invasion was now the only answer.

Philip’s Plan

Philip’s plan was an enterprise of England. The Armada — around 130 ships carrying 19,000 soldiers and 8,000 sailors — would sail from Lisbon up the English Channel, link with the Duke of Parma’s veteran army of 30,000 in the Spanish Netherlands, and ferry them across to land in Kent. London would fall, Elizabeth would be deposed, and a Catholic government installed. The plan depended on something Philip never quite secured: a deep-water port in the Netherlands where Parma’s flat-bottomed barges could meet the Armada in safety. Without that, the rendezvous would have to take place at sea — a far harder operation.

Drake delayed the launch by a year. In April 1587 he led a raid on Cadiz harbour, burning around 30 Spanish ships and destroying barrel staves needed to hold the Armada’s salt pork and water. Spanish supply, already strained, was set back by twelve months. Drake called it ‘singeing the King of Spain’s beard’.

English Naval Reform

By 1588 the English navy had been quietly transformed. Sir John Hawkins, as Treasurer of the Navy from 1577, had redesigned the fleet around race-built galleons: longer, narrower, lower in the water, faster, and carrying long-range bronze cannon along the side. Spanish ships, by contrast, were built for boarding: high-sided, packed with soldiers and short-range guns, designed to come alongside an enemy and fight hand to hand.

English crews trained to use this advantage at distance. Their tactic was to stand off, fire broadsides at long range, then turn away before the Spanish could close. The Spanish fleet, commanded by the inexperienced Duke of Medina Sidonia after the death of his predecessor, sailed in a tight crescent formation designed to keep the English boarders out — but unable to chase a faster enemy.

The Battle in the Channel, July 1588

The Armada was sighted off the Lizard on 19 July 1588. According to legend, Drake refused to leave his game of bowls at Plymouth Hoe, saying there was time to finish it and beat the Spaniards too. The story is probably fiction; the tide was wrong for sailing immediately. Over nine days the two fleets fought running battles up the Channel — off Eddystone, Portland Bill, and the Isle of Wight. Neither side scored a decisive blow. Spanish ships proved hard to sink with cannon fire alone; English supplies of powder and shot ran low.

On 27 July Medina Sidonia anchored at Calais, expecting Parma’s army to be ready. It was not — Parma had no deep-water port and his barges were still inland. The Armada was caught in an exposed roadstead with no rendezvous and no clear next move.

Fireships and Gravelines, 28–29 July

At around midnight on 28 July, the English sent eight fireships — old hulks packed with pitch and gunpowder, set alight and aimed at the Spanish anchorage. The Spanish cut their cables in panic to escape, breaking the crescent formation. The next morning, off the Flemish coast at Gravelines, the English fleet caught the scattered Spaniards in close action and pounded them at short range for nine hours. Several Spanish ships were sunk or captured; many more were damaged. The fleet was driven north into the North Sea.

The Long Way Home

Unable to return down the Channel, Medina Sidonia took the surviving Armada north around Scotland and west of Ireland. Atlantic storms wrecked dozens of ships on the Irish coast; thousands of Spanish sailors and soldiers drowned or were killed by English forces ashore. Of the original 130 ships, only around 67 returned to Spain. Some 20,000 men were lost — most to disease and shipwreck, not battle. Elizabeth’s famous speech at Tilbury — ‘I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too’ — was given on 9 August 1588 to the army assembled to repel an invasion that was already failing.