DISASTER LOOMS

The Duke of Medina Sidonia, commander of the Armada, was pleased enough as he anchored off Calais. He was where he was supposed to be, and he had got there with relatively few losses. Now it was just a matter of meeting up with the Duke of Parma's army.
But then, it all began to go terribly wrong for Medina Sidonia. He was informed that Parma's army, 30 miles away at Dunkirk, could not possibly come out to join the Armada without escort ships - and he had none.

While Medina Sidonia pondered this gloomy news, the English struck a shattering blow. At midnight on 7th August they packed 8 ships with exploding cannon and inflammables, set them alight and launched them straight down wind at the Armada. This threw the Spanish into terrible confusion. They cut their cables in a desperate attempt to escape the fire-ships, and then began to drift before the wind. The great galleons began crashing into one another as the panic mounted.

At daybreak, the English moved in for the kill. In their lighter, faster ships Drake and his men wheeled around the scattered ships, pounding them with deadly cannon fire. All day the battle raged off the coast at Gravelines.

The Spanish suffered terribly. Canon balls smashed through the sides and superstructure of once proud galleons, tearing their sails and rigging to shreds. Sailors fell screaming to the deck, mangled by shot and sliced open by flying splinters. Dead and dying men lay everywhere and blood poured through the Spanish ships' gun hatches and scuppers.

The English sailors sensed a victory. It could only be a matter of time before the hated enemy would be utterly destroyed. Then fate intervened. A sudden gust of wind separated the two fleets, giving the Spanish a desperately needed breathing space.

But to their horror they saw that they were drifting before the wind in an easterly direction - towards certain destruction on the sandbanks of Zeeland. Then, at the very last moment, the wind suddenly shifted, allowing the battered Spanish fleet to slide by the deadly banks and on towards the open waters of the North Sea. The Spanish had been saved by a miracle - only to face disaster.

The Armada ploughed slowly north, around the British Isles to the Atlantic and then home to Spain. It as a journey of some 2,500 miles, with shattered ships, wounded and diseased men, rotting supplies and slimy drinking water. Off Newcastle, most of the English ships - out of ammunition - had turned for home, leaving the poor Armada to its fate.

Many ships were wrecked on the stormy west coast of Scotland, many more on the even more treacherous west coast of Ireland. Starving, half-drowned Spaniards who managed to crawl ashore were butchered by the English and Irish. Fifty-one ships and 20,000 men were lost.

Philip's great 'Enterprise of England' had ended in the greatest possible calamity.