I enjoyed reading this book, and it gave me a much better take on the Armada. Before this, I had known that many of the ships had been destroyed in a storm, but I had no idea about how much chaos the fireships caused at Gravelines (even though they didn’t actually ignite any Spanish ships). I also didn’t realize the whole mission for the Armada was as poorly thought out as it was, and the degree to which religion was behind it was also surprising – I hadn’t realized it had been treated as a crusade by both Spain and the Catholic Church. King Philip was convinced God was behind him to the extent that he believed God would work any necessary miracles to ensure the Armada was victorious:

“As the vast Armada set sail on the afternoon tide, the Pope’s special emissary to Lisbon sent a report to the Vatican of a conversation he had held with one of the highest officers in the Spanish fleet.

“If you meet the English Armada in the Channel do you expect to win the battle?”

“Of course.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It’s very simple. It is well known that we fight in God’s cause, so when we meet the English, God will surely arrange matters so that we can grapple and board them, either by sending some freak of weather, or, more likely, just by depriving the English of their wits. If we come to close quarters, Spanish valour and Spanish steel (and the great masses of soldiers we have on board) will make our victory certain. But unless God helps us with a miracle, the English, who have faster and handier ships than ours and many more long-range guns, and who know their advantage just as well as we do, will never close with us at all but stand aloof and knock us to pieces with their culverins without us being able to do them any serious hurt. So we are sailing against England in the confident hope of a miracle.” (Page 116).

Hence the title of the book.

I also didn’t know that King Philip didn’t stop at one Armada: “Before the year was out, Philip was laying plans for a further armada to achieve the success that had eluded its predecessor and fulfil his destiny as the warrior of Christ.” (Page 427). Ultimately, four others were sent after the most famous fleet. But the efforts were unsuccessful, not least because “each reverse only served to strengthen Philip’s belief in his God-given destiny, and further armadas were launched without apparent thought to the season, the weather or the likelihood of success.” (Page 427).

An interesting sidelight was the discussion of scurvy. While no one knew what caused it in the days of the Armada, I was surprised to learn that even back then people had noted that eating fresh fruits and vegetables would cure the problem. In fact, Richard Hawkins, who also invented a “water still” that could distill potable water from sea water, even pointed out that sour oranges and lemons were “a certain remedy for this infirmity.” However, no one acted on this knowledge, not least because fruits and vegetables were considered inferior food by everyone involved. This attitude, combined with the complacency, indifference, and incompetence rampant within the British navy at the time, meant that scurvy raged unabated for another two hundred and fifty years despite the cure being known. I found this particularly surprising given the danger of scurvy not only to life but also property – there were recorded cases of the disease wiping out every member of a ship’s crew and leaving only a ghost ship adrift on the ocean. And ships – especially battleships – have never been cheap to build.

This also definitely provided a different perspective on Queen Elizabeth the First, and it is not sympathetic. Apparently, she had the tendency to postpone painful or difficult decisions and was vacillating and indecisive, and this may have been why she never married rather than any Machiavellian scheming to play the continental powers against one another. She also appeared very stingy (“parsimonious” was the word the book used but it sounded a lot worse than that) and more like a villain than anything else. The idea that she wouldn’t call on Parliament to raise money to protect England against the Armada because she thought foreign affairs were something no one but “princes” should conduct, and because Parliament would naturally attach conditions to the money and want a say in how it was spent, just sounded outrageous and more like something a short-sighted egomaniac might do. I also got a different take on the “progresses” – from the point of view of this author, the progresses were self-aggrandizing wastes of money, instead of part of a strategy aimed at generating and maintaining good PR (as has been argued elsewhere). The famous Tilbury speech was also shown in a different light:

“Like so many of Elizabeth’s actions, the Tilbury appearance had been pure theatre, mere show, and the speech to her forces that has echoed down the ages was a sham, delivered after the danger from the Armada had passed. The demobilization of her forces that began while her words were still ringing in their ears shows that she knew that as well as any. Such cynical exercises suggest a very modern queen, more surface and style than substance.” (Page 382).

Of course, a modern queen acting primarily as head of state and not of government might not have ever made the speech to begin with. I think a more appropriate comparison would be to a modern politician primarily acting as head of government, who might very well behave similarly. But to the extent it shows that cynical political ploys are nothing new, I agree.
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I enjoyed reading this book, and it gave me a much better take on the Armada. Before this, I had known that many of the ships had been destroyed in a storm, but I had no idea about how much chaos the fireships caused at Gravelines (even though they didn’t actually ignite any Spanish ships). I also didn’t realize the whole mission for the Armada was as poorly thought out as it was, and the degree to which religion was behind it was also surprising – I hadn’t realized it had been treated as a crusade by both Spain and the Catholic Church. King Philip was convinced God was behind him to the extent that he believed God would work any necessary miracles to ensure the Armada was victorious:

“As the vast Armada set sail on the afternoon tide, the Pope’s special emissary to Lisbon sent a report to the Vatican of a conversation he had held with one of the highest officers in the Spanish fleet.

“If you meet the English Armada in the Channel do you expect to win the battle?”

“Of course.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It’s very simple. It is well known that we fight in God’s cause, so when we meet the English, God will surely arrange matters so that we can grapple and board them, either by sending some freak of weather, or, more likely, just by depriving the English of their wits. If we come to close quarters, Spanish valour and Spanish steel (and the great masses of soldiers we have on board) will make our victory certain. But unless God helps us with a miracle, the English, who have faster and handier ships than ours and many more long-range guns, and who know their advantage just as well as we do, will never close with us at all but stand aloof and knock us to pieces with their culverins without us being able to do them any serious hurt. So we are sailing against England in the confident hope of a miracle.” (Page 116).

Hence the title of the book.

I also didn’t know that King Philip didn’t stop at one Armada: “Before the year was out, Philip was laying plans for a further armada to achieve the success that had eluded its predecessor and fulfil his destiny as the warrior of Christ.” (Page 427). Ultimately, four others were sent after the most famous fleet. But the efforts were unsuccessful, not least because “each reverse only served to strengthen Philip’s belief in his God-given destiny, and further armadas were launched without apparent thought to the season, the weather or the likelihood of success.” (Page 427).

An interesting sidelight was the discussion of scurvy. While no one knew what caused it in the days of the Armada, I was surprised to learn that even back then people had noted that eating fresh fruits and vegetables would cure the problem. In fact, Richard Hawkins, who also invented a “water still” that could distill potable water from sea water, even pointed out that sour oranges and lemons were “a certain remedy for this infirmity.” However, no one acted on this knowledge, not least because fruits and vegetables were considered inferior food by everyone involved. This attitude, combined with the complacency, indifference, and incompetence rampant within the British navy at the time, meant that scurvy raged unabated for another two hundred and fifty years despite the cure being known. I found this particularly surprising given the danger of scurvy not only to life but also property – there were recorded cases of the disease wiping out every member of a ship’s crew and leaving only a ghost ship adrift on the ocean. And ships – especially battleships – have never been cheap to build.

This also definitely provided a different perspective on Queen Elizabeth the First, and it is not sympathetic. Apparently, she had the tendency to postpone painful or difficult decisions and was vacillating and indecisive, and this may have been why she never married rather than any Machiavellian scheming to play the continental powers against one another. She also appeared very stingy (“parsimonious” was the word the book used but it sounded a lot worse than that) and more like a villain than anything else. The idea that she wouldn’t call on Parliament to raise money to protect England against the Armada because she thought foreign affairs were something no one but “princes” should conduct, and because Parliament would naturally attach conditions to the money and want a say in how it was spent, just sounded outrageous and more like something a short-sighted egomaniac might do. I also got a different take on the “progresses” – from the point of view of this author, the progresses were self-aggrandizing wastes of money, instead of part of a strategy aimed at generating and maintaining good PR (as has been argued elsewhere). The famous Tilbury speech was also shown in a different light:

“Like so many of Elizabeth’s actions, the Tilbury appearance had been pure theatre, mere show, and the speech to her forces that has echoed down the ages was a sham, delivered after the danger from the Armada had passed. The demobilization of her forces that began while her words were still ringing in their ears shows that she knew that as well as any. Such cynical exercises suggest a very modern queen, more surface and style than substance.” (Page 382).

Of course, a modern queen acting primarily as head of state and not of government might not have ever made the speech to begin with. I think a more appropriate comparison would be to a modern politician primarily acting as head of government, who might very well behave similarly. But to the extent it shows that cynical political ploys are nothing new, I agree.
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Armada, 16th Century History, Elizabethan History, Naval History, Military History, English History