I thought with a shudder how terrifying it must have been to be roused from sleep to see a monster of fire bearing down on you, with nowhere to escape except by a leap into the midnight sea. And I knew that most sailors, superstitiously, refused to learn to swim, for they believed that, if you fell or were cast overboard, it was better to drown quickly than to struggle against death, only to drown in the end.
I saw the captain coming toward me and caught him by the sleeve.
‘The fireships were certainly ours, then?’
‘Aye.’ He grinned mercilessly, rubbing his hands together in glee. I had not seen him so animated before. But I thought of those men, leaping into the Channel, their clothes perhaps on fire, weighed down by their breastplates and helmets.
‘Will any still be alive, the men from the ships? You said you would come to try to save them.’ I knew it was a poor chance, after the time it had taken us to arrive, but a few might still be struggling to stay alive, or stranded on sandbanks amid the rising tide.
‘Save them? I came to save Englishmen.’
‘What will happen to them?’ I asked.
‘Who?’ He stared at me blankly.
‘The men in the water.’
‘They will drown, of course. Do you expect us to rescue them? Spaniards?’ He laughed incredulously and I was silenced.
Yes, they were Spaniards. But. . . the stench of burning flesh, the breastplate pressed to the chest like a branding iron, the drag down, down into the green depths of the sea. Fire and water. Lungs struggling for air. No kindly landfall now, only the dark hell of the ocean bed.
‘There are English galley slaves on some of those ships,’ I protested.
He shrugged. ‘If a ship goes down, the galley slaves go with it. They are chained to their rowing benches.’
He turned his back on me and hurried away. English galley slaves or Spanish sailors, he had no mercy for them.
Never caught up in a battle before, on land or sea, I found it difficult to understand what was happening. It was clear that the enemy ships were no longer in the formidable crescent formation which had sailed inexorably up the lower reaches of the Channel. Our fireships, if they had done nothing else, had cut a swathe through Sidonia’s careful formation and even I could see that the Spanish ships were randomly scattered across the sea in front of us. Already it was clear that one or two had sailed too near the shoals and were stranded there. Our English navy, bearing down on the Armada with all the strength of a following wind, were keeping their distance, so that the enemy could not execute their favourite tactic of grappling and boarding. Instead, the English ships kept up a regular bombardment from their guns from windward, so that, as the Spanish turned broadside to them, in an attempt to level their own cannon, they heeled over, exposing their lower hulls. The English gunners were taking careful aim, intent on holing them below the waterline, which would inevitably sink them.
Our own Good Venture had swept away to starboard, and was now aiming to swing round and join the English fleet. As one of the sailors ran past, I called out to him, ‘Why aren’t the Spanish ships firing back?’
He paused only for a moment, grasping the rigging he was about to climb.
‘Poor gunners, the Spanish,’ he said. ‘They fire once, then get ready to board and fight hand-to-hand. Can’t reload fast enough, see? No match for our lads.’
With that he began to swarm up the mainmast as easily as if it had been a ladder on dry land, though we were heeling over so far that he was half laid over on his back as he climbed. It made me dizzy to watch him. I dragged my eyes away and saw that we were approaching very near one of the outlying Spanish ships, a large carrack at least twice our size, probably one of the merchant ships commandeered for the Spanish fleet. I realised that Captain Faulconer did not mean to sail tamely round to join the fleet. He meant to attack now.
Almost as soon as I grasped what was happening, I heard the gunports on our port side flip open. The gun crews were standing ready and as the captain dropped his hand, holding, absurdly, a red silk handkerchief, another officer, standing at the bottom of the steps leading down to the gundeck, dropped his hand. Below us, the gunners lit the powder in the pans and the three guns fired simultaneously. The ship bucked like a frightened horse and for a moment I thought we had been hit, before I realised it was the recoil of the cannon. Already the men were reloading and they seemed to be cheering, but the sound came muffled to my ears, which were deafened by the noise.
They had scored a hit. I could see timbers falling from the superstructure of the Spanish ship, caught up in a tangle of ropes and canvas. Then, before our crew could let fly a second volley, I watched a single Spanish gun run out, pointing directly at us. So they did not always abandon their guns. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, in a silent world – the Spanish cannon lifting its muzzle like a pointing hound, the captain raising his hand to signal the next firing from our ship, while all around a tangle of ships lumbered though the smoke and flashes of the gun battle.
Then somebody hit me hard on the back so that I fell to my hands and knees on the deck. Even deaf as I was, I sensed something fly over my head and crash into the rigging where moments ago the sailor had been climbing. Dust and fragments of rope fell around me, and there was a heavy thump that I could feel through the planks of the deck. For a few minutes I was dazed and confused, then I managed to get to my feet. Apart from a few bruises I was unhurt.
I looked around, still unsure what had happened. Then I realised an enemy cannon ball must have hit the rigging of the mainmast close to where I had been standing. Whoever had pushed me over had almost certainly saved my life. The thump I had felt on the deck was the sailor falling from the mast. Still weak in the knees, I staggered over to him. There was no blood that I could see, but his eyes were closed and he was not moving. I knelt down beside him and felt for the pulse in his neck.
‘Is he dead?’ It was one of the other sailors, leaning over me.
I shook my head. ‘Stunned. And he may have broken some bones. Did you see how far he fell?’
‘About half the height of the mast. Lucky bugger! Any higher and he’d have gone into the sea. Lower and the bastards would have got him with their shot.’
‘Was it you pushed me over?’
‘Aye.’ He grinned, showing a set of broken and missing teeth. ‘Near thing, that was. Want to keep your head down when there’s shot flying.’
‘I’m grateful. You saved my life.’
He shrugged. ‘Any time. Watch yourself.’ And he went away whistling, as if he was enjoying a day of leisure, instead of leaping along a deck that shuddered as another round blasted out from our cannon.
I spared a glance at the Spanish ship. Somehow we had manoeuvred round to their windward side and had already broken two great holes through the ship’s port side, one below the waterline and one above. They could not keep her heeling over like that for long. As soon as she was on an even keel the sea would rush in through that lower hole and the ship would soon founder. Through my muffled ears I could hear faint cries from the bowels of the ship, from the trapped galley slaves or the doomed sailors. There was nothing I could do for them. Our own fallen sailor, however, I could help.
Captain Faulconer soon abandoned the maimed ship to her fate and brought the Good Venture round to head toward the rest of the English fleet. The mainsail drooped, for the damage to the rigging meant it could not be properly trimmed, but the strong wind on our port bow bore us along on staysail and foresail. The heavy Spanish ships were wallowing about, scattered across the sea and seemingly unable to make such good use of the wind as our small, nimble English ships could. They were being blown inexorably up the channel towards the German Ocean.