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Ralegh's ‘Revenge’: Great Victories in Words

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Leonard Casper
Leonard Casper*
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Extract

In late summer, 1591, Sir Richard Grenville's ship The Revenge grappled, for hours, with from eight ships (Van Linschoten's estimate) to fifteen (Ralegh's) and struck her colors only after beginning to sink. Within days Sir Richard died of his wounds. Later, Sir Walter Ralegh (who although absent took depositions from survivors) expressed his contempt for those Spaniards who ‘fill the world with their vaine glorious vaunts, making great appearance of victories; when on the contrary, themselves are most commonly and shamefully beaten and dishonoured … In support of his accusation Ralegh recalled the recent defeat of 240 Spanish by 30 English warships (in which conflict the Revenge had been Drake's ship): ‘ … they were not ashamed in the year 1588, when they purposed the invasion of this land, to publish in sundrie languages in print, great victories in words….

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance News , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , Summer 1960 , pp. 129 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1960

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References

1 Sir Walter Ralegh, ‘A Report of the Truth', in The Last Fight of'The Revenge' at Sea, ed. Edward Arber (London, 1912), p. 15.

2 More accurate figuring places 30,493 men on Sidonia's 130 ships, as against 18,000 on 197 English ships. See The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, ed. John Knox Laughton, Publications of the Navy Records Society (London, 1894), 1, xl-xli. Garrett Mattingly also estimates 130-odd Spanish vessels and at least 100 English from Plymouth, later augmented by 35 from Seymour's eastern squadron. To provide grounds for more significant comparisons, he attempts to assess ship-models, tonnage, and armament on both sides. By no means were the English underdogs. See The Armada (Boston, 1959), pp. xvi-xviii; pp. 208-213,247, 305,314.

3 Arber, The Last Fight, p. 15.

4 Voyages of the Elizabethan Seamen, ed. Edward John Payne (Oxford, 1907), p. iii.

5 Dissenting from such commonplace speculation, Mattingly interprets the event as being decisive only inasmuch as, by adding to the confusion of geopolitical with religious lines, it prevented forceful imposition of any single ideology on Western peoples and so, negatively, helped make modern self-determinations possible: Armada, pp. 400-401.

6 Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, Obras Escogidas (Madrid, 1946), II, 457-472.

7 Trevor Davies, R., The Golden Century of Spain, 1501-1621 (London, 1937), pp. 192-193.Google Scholar

8 Hakluyt's Voyages (London, Everyman), IV, 283.

9 Mattingly, Armada, pp. 263-264. In a book which, incomparably, makes the Channel engagement understandable as epitome and result of international counterconspiracies and political-religious conflicts, only this one perspective is lacking— placement within a long-lasting period of European naval encounters. His concern is limited to more immediate contexts, treated with admirable thoroughness.

10 D. Luis Ulloa Cisneros and D. Emilio Campos Cazorla, Historia de España (Barcelona, 1936), IV, 181-182.

11 James A. Froude, English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1895), p. 188. As Mattingly suggests (Armada, p. 197), Elizabeth's decision kept the crews on shore, safe from ‘ship fever', and kept their vessels from winter tempests. Nevertheless, whatever good emerged accidentally from her penury, Elizabeth's fleet surely was not appreciative of it.

12 Froude, The Spanish Story of the Armada and Other Essays (New York, 1892), p . 85.

13 Cabrera de Cordoba, ‘La Invencible’ from Historia de Felipe II in Lecturas de Historia de Espaiia, ed. Claudio Sanchez-Albornoz and Aurelio Vinas (Madrid, 1929), p. 436.

14 Froude, The Spanish Story, pp. 3-4, 28-81. See also Laughton, Spanish Armada, I, xl-xliv; and Mattingly, Armada, pp. 201-217,245-375. Where Froude and Laughton accept archivist Fernandez Duro's estimate of Spanish losses at half their original ships and two-thirds of their personnel, Mattingly (Armada, pp 424-426) argues convincingly for maximum Spanish losses of one-third (44 ships). Nevertheless, many surviving hulls were never fit for service again.

15 Mattingly, , Armada, pp. 314-322.Google Scholar

16 Laughton, Spanish Armada, II, 366.

17 Arber, The Last Fight, p. 6.