Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker began publishing on aspects of the Armada in the early 1970s: Martin on the archaeology of shipwrecks, Parker on the Spanish army and Philip II. In 1988, the authors melded historical and archaeological research into a landmark analysis of 1588, and they revised that work in 1999, incorporating the findings of other publications from the quatercentenary. Now, they announce that ‘it is time to examine the original sources anew’ (p. 3), and revisit written sources and material remains, perhaps more closely than councils, captains, and clerks did so at the time. The tome under review adds chapters (21 compared with 14 in the 1999 edition) and maps, illustrations, and tables (161 compared with 35), and extends the story of Spain’s special military operation temporally and geographically. An introduction lays out the traditional story of heroic England defeating the Spanish fleet, and briefly overviews the sources that might question that interpretation.
Part I includes chapters on the creation of the Spanish fleet, the English navy, and the situation in the Spanish Netherlands, where the Duke of Parma assembled and maintained an army intended to be ferried across the Channel protected by the Armada for the assault on England. The experience of the early 1580s foreshadowed aspects of the 1588 campaign. For example, Spain’s 1582 amphibious assault on the Azores, part of Philip’s successful bid to claim the Portuguese throne and its empire, showed Spanish ability to assemble and deploy an armada. And the Spanish did not soon forget the horror of exploding ships, ‘the hellburners’ which the Dutch defenders of Antwerp deployed against them in 1585. Ironically, the Elizabethan Navy benefitted from initiatives by Queen Mary and her consort, Philip (for example, the Philip and Mary, renamed Nonpareil, was Sir John Hawkins’s flagship in 1586). The English side of the engagement is an oft-told tale (and told in detail as recently as 2005 in James McDermott, England and the Spanish Armada, also Yale University Press), though Martin and Parker suggest shipwrights should loom as large as the usual heroes such as Lord Admiral Charles Howard, Hawkins, and Sir Francis Drake. The authors suggest a degree of peculation enabled Elizabeth’s chief naval officers to make huge bequests. But they also note their repeated invocations to the divine, and both the English and the Spanish officers shared what the authors term ‘pre-Armada millenarian pessimism’ (p. 93).
Part II considers Anglo-Spanish relations from the 1560s onwards, from Philip’s endorsement of an ‘Enterprise on England’ to the proxy war of the early 1580s, as the English sought avenues to pester the Spanish, from attacking Spanish fishing vessels off Newfoundland, to supporting Don Antonio’s claim to the Moluccas after he lost his Azores base, to making overtures to the Ottoman Sultan. Philip used embargoes and diplomacy to isolate England. Discussion of how Philip ruled his far-flung empire uses ‘modern organizational theory’ (p. 157) to argue he attempted to micromanage crises from the Escorial. El Rey Papelero received more accurate information than Elizabeth, but a surfeit of advice resulted in a hybrid and ponderous Grand Design, dependent on illusory perfect communication between its many parts. A chapter on the ‘Phoney War’ recounts the situation in the wake of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. Elizabeth’s government long doubted reports of the Spanish military build-up and pursued a diplomatic solution. Still, Elizabeth allowed Drake to take to the seas. The raid of El Draque on Cadiz demonstrated to the Spanish ‘the superior range and power’ (May 1587, quoted, 189) of English artillery. Several chapters detail the creation of the Armada and its slow movement up the Iberian coast. Philip tinkered with his masterplan, abandoning a planned feint to Ireland, and musing about a rising of Scottish Catholics. (English Catholics were relatively absent in the planning or the execution, apart from a few on board the Spanish fleet. And even their on-board discussions were less about hearts and minds and more about planned pillage and carnage.) Philip’s flurry of contradictory orders, intercepted by English spies, left the Elizabethan government ‘confused and exhausted’ (p. 203). More directly, his changes, delays, and the death of Santa Cruz meant that Medina Sidonia took over an Armada whose requisitioning and outfitting were in shambles. Medina Sidonia, nevertheless, managed to increase both his fleet and army, and put on-board provisioning in some order. His full Armada reached northern Spain on 18 June, only for several ships to be scattered by a heavy storm. Yet, the officers of the shrunken Armada decided to press on.
Part III details the Channel engagement. One chapter establishes the final plan the Spanish attempted to follow (as well as alternate back-up plans should either rendezvous fail or siege get bogged down), how what was included in the Armada would affect that plan, and the fleet make-up of the opposing English fleet. The section notes the practical issues that would complicate the Spanish fleet in any naval engagement: the stationing of many soldiers on board and long cannon barrels and relatively high carriages which crowded the gun decks and hampered reloading. The English not only had shorter barrelled guns and lower carriages, they also had more accurate charts of the Channel. Still, the English Council recognized their land defence was weak, and planned to imprison all Catholics. The English fleet was able to move windward (west) of the Armada and, during the desultory fighting from 31 July to 4 August, kept out of range of the Spanish guns and grappling hooks. Yet, they were unable to stop the Spanish advancing to their intended rendezvous with Parma, nor to put out of commission more than a handful of Spanish ships (the seizure of the Rosario, a major exception, allowed the capture of a handful of English Catholics on board). Overall, the authors argue Medina Sidonia ‘had shown great skill’ (p. 294) in shepherding the Armada, but fault him for showing little awareness of the difficulty of communicating with Parma. Parma received word that the Spanish were in the Channel only as the Armada approached the rendezvous, while the Armada reached Calais with no word from Parma. Moreover, neither Medina Sidonia nor Philip reckoned with the Dutch ships contesting the access of Parma’s troop to the Channel rendezvous. In any case, the Armada scattered from their anchorage when the English sent in fireships. The Spanish fleet regrouped slowly. But Medina Sidonia decided to return the intact Armada to Iberia northward around Scotland and Ireland. The English pursuit was all bluff, exhausted of both shot and provisions. Several chapters trace the routes of the various Spanish ships. The effects of shot and storm led to foundering and wrecked vessels all along the Irish coast. The English in Ireland were so afraid of a Catholic rising that they ordered Armada survivors there executed. Some survived, but very few. Of the tens of thousands of sailors and soldiers that left Spain in 1588, almost half never returned. What went wrong in the Channel? The authors draw heavily on the archaeological evidence to argue that the Spanish fired their big guns rarely, and the English more often and shot further and, arguably, lower. Yet the drama was in what should have been the denouement as damaged ships with few provisions attempted to navigate the Irish coast only to be hit by one of the worst gales in decades.
Part IV examines the aftermath, beginning with the Spanish search for scapegoats. The authors note, however, that if the fireships had not broken up the fleet, the plan might have succeeded. Philip immediately ordered the construction of new galleons, and the refurbishment of those surviving the 1588 campaign. But neither Spain’s repeated attempts at a new Armada nor England’s Counter-Armada succeeded. Indeed, the naval arms race virtually bankrupted both sides. The Spanish threat, however, did provide some breathing room for Catholics in Ireland. A counter-factual chapter, ‘If the Armada had Landed’, compares the plan with the successful landing by William in 1688. One difference left largely unremarked upon is that Philip assumed little support from English Catholics, whereas William meticulously planned to gin up support from English Protestants. One chapter discusses the Armada remembered in words and images. The storms featured heavily in the English iconography. As for the Armada in Iberian memory, one wonders how families recalled the departed (one lost ship was known as the ‘ship of the women’) over the next decades. The authors consider each centenary of the Armada. A final chapter historicizes the recovery efforts of the shipwrecks over the many centuries.
This volume reflects an Annales-school drive to total history: empirical and all-encompassing. Given that Parker recently authored Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (2013), one might also ask about the influence of climate beyond the admittedly huge influence of storms and winds. Was, for example, England better positioned because of the bumper harvest in 1587? Contemporary maps, portraits, and paintings (many reproduced in colour), and images of the material culture of shipboard life recovered from shipwrecks of the Armada, richly illustrate the narrative. This massive volume, with over 200 pages of glossary, chronology, notes, and bibliography, also includes the URL (only on the UK version of the Yale University Press site) to 140 pages of downloadable appendices. The appendices list details of the Spanish ships and seamen and their fate, the Spanish soldiers and ordnance, and the English ships and their sailors and soldiers. They also include an article-length, well-illustrated primer on artillery gun types, and a descriptive essay on sources (archaeological, printed, and manuscript) organized by place and then by chapter. Researchers will want to consult this online essay alongside the notes and bibliography in the printed volume.
