THE SPANISH MENACE 



with wrecks, while the sick and wounded died in hundreds on board the 

 foul ships. Water ran out, and many of the parties who landed to obtain 

 it were cut to pieces. No mercy was shown to shipwrecked mariners in 

 nine cases out of ten, and the only excuse that can be made for their 

 treatment is that experience in the Low Countries and the Indies had 

 shown our people just what they could have expected had the Most 

 Happy Armada been successful. Only about half the ships of the fleet 

 struggled back to Spain with a miserable fragment of their crews. The 

 King was resigned and ascribed his bitter disappointment to the Will of 

 God. It was just another example of the futility of carrying out sea 

 operations with anybody but men born and bred to the sea, and with 

 the love of the sea in their very blood. Sailors had beaten soldiers 

 at sea. 



Drake and Norrys at Corunna. 



Although the Great Armada was defeated the English realised that 

 the danger was not yet over, and accordingly in the following year Sir 

 Francis Drake and Sir John Norrys with a syndicate of their friends and 

 a number of royal ships sailed, partly to worry the Spanish and partly 

 to support the claims of Dom Antonio to the throne of Portugal. The 

 expedition was badly fitted out and quite inadequate for its job. They 

 had some success at Corunna, but failed to capture the whole of the 

 town, and eventually the force had to re-embark after doing a good deal 

 of damage. The troops were then landed at Peniche, captured the 

 place and marched towards Lisbon, while the fleet went round to the 

 Tagus. Eventually the force was compelled to seek refuge in its ships 

 with heavy casualties due to sickness, but the Navy captured over seventy 

 ships taking stores for the projected new Armada. 



Minor Expeditions. 



After this time-honoured fight there followed a long succession of 

 attacks on the Spanish, with just as many Spanish attacks on our com- 

 merce when it appeared that the job could be carried through with 

 impunity. The capture of treasure-ships from the Indies became a 

 famous method of rebuilding fallen fortunes, although it is to be feared 

 that it is only the successful adventures of this sort whose history has 

 come down to us. Drake, Frobisher, Raleigh, Cumberland, and many 

 others led expeditions, some of them making fortunes and others ruining 

 themselves. It is difficult to know just whether some of these operations 

 should be classed as piracy, privateering, or operations of war, but in 

 any case they were what were called into being by the circumstances of 

 the time, and without them it is difficult to believe that the British Navy 

 and British shipping could have survived. 



The Last Fight of the Revenge. 



The British administration was not content with any single expedi- 

 tion to annoy the Spaniards, but kept up a constant campaign. In those 

 days Spanish commerce meant nearly as much to the country as it did to 

 us in the war with Germany, especially the annual treasure-fleets from 



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