But mortal damage was done: the weight of sea had broached the hatchways, and the galleon was half full of water which was drained slowly from gun ports and scuppers.
As soon as she began to lift, men who had been kept below decks fought their way out through the hatchways, many of them making for the forecastle to lash themselves to the foremast or any other part of the ship which might survive. From the noise and the behaviour of the galleon it was clear that some of the guns had broken loose between decks. The Irishman beside me who had been so terrified left his place of vantage and struggled to drag three of his injured friends to the rail beside me. I helped him tie them to the yard which had been taken down and lashed to the rail when the storm began.
The coast had gone except for a glimpse now and then of the Lizard far astern. Santiago still kept us company, but having suffered in the same sea as had mortally injured us she was looking to herself and gradually being blown ahead. One flyboat appeared and disappeared like a piece of flotsam a mile or so on our starboard bow.
The wind was still backing. A tiny rag of sail on the foremast was holding our head up and giving the four helmsmen a chance of control. But we could see the squalls coming up one after another, and each one left us in poorer case to meet the next. Men still worked in relays of ten at each of the pumps, but every wave that came aboard undid the little they could do.
As the day progressed we lost both our last escorts, Santiago drew ahead, and the flyboat sank, disabled by one crested wave and swamped by the next.
It was not long before we followed. By now the galleon was so low in the water that her waist was never clear of it: we existed as two separate ships, the forecastle and the poop, both crowded with men. I was isolated from all the men I knew: Quesada, Bonifaz, Enrico Caldes; by coming to the forecastle I was with sailors and some Irish and half a hundred soldiers.
About noon the sun leered out at us from behind a ragged mass of clouds that darkened half the sky; then the light was gone and the last squall broke.
It fell on us. Wind tore at everything: the last trysail went; the foremast collapsed, a double lashed anchor broke loose. As the sea came aboard it was as if the forecastle were an island about to be submerged in a smother of white foam. The Irishman and his mates beside me were clinging to the yard and were slowly tipped into the sea; I clutched my broken spar, determined not to go, and saw the poop raised high, water and men pouring off it as San Bartolomeo plunged Hatches and wooden blocks and chains slithered past, and then the water swirled round and I held tight to the spar as ship and men went down.
The water was no colder than the air had been; perhaps that saved me, for I could hold breath that a sharp chill would have taken. I went deep and only came to the surface after long seconds, among wreckage and cries and the grey wind-angered sea. I saw two sailors trying to hold up Quesada who had been struck by something as the ship sank. The Irishman and his friends clung to their yard near by. Twenty men struggling to get on a hatch that would support five. Two others tried to grasp my spar but I kicked them away. On the crest of a new wave I saw Enrico Caldes swimming away from a mat of twisted rigging. I shouted and tried to make towards him, but the waves hid him and when next I rose to the top of one of them he was nowhere to be seen.
The sea was black with bobbing heads; fully half the complement had survived the plunge, but some were injured, some could not swim, some were already half-drowned. It began to rain, a heavy continuous downpour so that cloud and sea became one. Small waves splashed in my mouth, but the rain had the effect of slowly flattening the sea, and in time when it eased the violence of the gale had eased too.
When the rain cleared many of the survivors had sunk. Near by were still the four Irishmen and about eight Spaniards clinging precariously to a raft. Within sight were another forty or fifty, but well scattered.
Nothing else was to be seen but the heaving sea.
Late in the afternoon I was picked up together with two of the Irishmen and one Spaniard by a fishing boat, the Angel of Fowey, and landed that same evening. Sixteen men were saved out of the 356 aboard San Bartolomeo.
BOOK FIVE
CHAPTER ONE
A man at the centre of great events can often at the time see only the small ones which surround him and oppress him with their personal demands. Even an awareness that events have moved past him and left him behind perhaps to his danger or detriment can become sunk in a cushion of fatigue which prevents urgency and anxiety from coming to the front of the mind.
Looking back I cannot believe that the whole week I spent with my cousins the Treffrys at Fowey was passed in a state of mental abeyance. There must have been times when I made some effort to learn from them what was happening, and even to get up and go. But all memory is of a sense of being home again after sixteen months away, of dry blankets after the exposure and the sea, of gulping hot drink to combat the cold, of fresh food and good food, of sudden overwhelming collapse after months of tension and alarm. I was alive. I existed. I ate and drank and slept and breathed deep.
So it was days before I knew what had happened in England, and some of it I learned only weeks later of the panic in Westminster when the news was brought by an exhausted messenger from Plymouth that the whole Spanish Armada was off the Lizard, of the immediate proroguing of Parliament, of the hasty appointment of a new commander for the Channel squadron, of the orders which flew for the commissioning of the remaining ships at Chatham, of orders recalling all English troops abroad, wherever they might be, of the mustering of all land forces for the defence of the exposed counties.
In the midst of this emergency rumours of a sea battle off Rame Head vied with others of a Spanish landing on the north Devon coast. Fishermen from the Scillies came in with a report of another fleet assembled there and about to strike. No one had any word of the English fleet from the Azores. No one knew if it had even started for home.
Then, within a few days of the first alarm, four galleons appeared off Plymouth. Soldiers rushed to the fortifications, guns were run out, the people prepared to barricade their houses and fight as the Spanish had done at Cadiz; and not even the English flags at the mastheads could reassure them until the ships were recognised by name. They were the first four of the Azores fleet under Lord Mountjoy, who had commanded the land forces of the fleet. He reported a great storm which had damaged and dispersed the English fleet, but thought that the rest of the ships if they had survived should not be far away. By some chance in the wild waters of the Channel he had seen nothing of the Spanish; but he immediately assumed command of the port and ordered his four ships to prepare for battle.
Soon after this Sir Walter Ralegh with remnants of his own squadron was blown into St Ives, and, hearing the alarm, landed and hurried overland to command the defences of Cornwall. Another English ship or two drifted in at the south coast ports of Devon; then Lord Thomas Howard at Plymouth, and finally Essex himself with the rest of the fleet.
None had seen the whole Armada, but some at the height of the gale had seen groups of enemy ships near the Scillies and off the Lizard.
All the English were exhausted with the storm, and Essex and his squadron sailed straight up the Catwater where they were pinned down by the wind and unable to go out again, even had they been in a fit condition to do so.
In the meantime feverish preparations went on while the country waited. The Queen wrote a letter to Lord Essex which years later’ I was privileged to see. It ended: “Seeing already by your late leaving the coast upon an uncertain probability that no army would come forth from Ferrol until March, you have given the enemy leisure and courage to attempt us. Now take heed according to your duty and allegiance that you do not in any case upon any probability or light advertisements again adventure to leave our own coast whereby our own kingdom may lie open to serious dangers; but that you proceed in this great affair according to the rules of advised deliberation as well as affection of zeal and diligence. For treasure, for victual, and what may be fit for us to send, you shall find that you serve a prince neither void of care nor judgment what to do that is fit in cases of this consequence.”