Drake’s Raid on Cadiz

Inside the Spanish harbor of Cadiz, the English Protestant Sir Francis Drake could see a mass of some 60 warships, troopships, tenders, and supply ships, many of which Philip II—King of Spain and Portugal and self-appointed protector of the Catholic Church—was readying to sail against England. Many of the Spanish ships were without sails; most were unarmed. To the southeast beyond the Puental rocks and beneath Cadiz’s land batteries, the inner harbor was crowded with small caravels and mizzen-masted barks.

Drake had breached the Spanish port on board the galleon Elizabeth Bonaventure with the remainder of his fleet flared out behind him. No flags were flying from their masts. Don Pedro de Acuña, the Cadiz Commander of Galleys, quickly arranged several of his small and pesky galleys in a line across the entrance of the upper harbor and sent one forward with its “oar blades flashing, arquebusiers and pikemen in steady ranks on the forecastle, bronze ram gleaming and the banner of Spain fluttering at the masthead,” as Garrett Mattingly wrote in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Armada.

It was 29 April 1587, the feast day of the Catholic saint Catherine of Siena.

Tensions between Reformation England and Catholic Spain had expanded in the 80 years since Martin Luther’s 95 theses had launched the Protestant Reformation. English privateers, including Drake, regularly attacked Spanish treasure ships from Spain’s New World colonies, and England had aided the Dutch in their rebellion against Spanish rule. Then, in 1587, the 29th year of her reign, England’s Queen Elizabeth I executed her Catholic cousin and heir, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who went to the scaffold with a crucifix in hand.

Elizabeth realized a Spanish attack on England was likely and became aware Philip was assembling and provisioning a great armada at Cadiz on Spain’s Atlantic coast.

And she picked Drake to lead a preemptive strike against the Spanish.

A Puritan Upbringing, a Naval Prodigy

Francis Drake had been born around 1540 in Devon, on England’s Cornish Peninsula, the oldest of the 12 sons of a Protestant tenant farmer and lay minister named Edmund Drake and his wife, Mary Mylwaye, both of whom resided and worked on the estate of Lord Francis Russell, second earl of Bedford. Francis, however, was placed at an early age in the household of a relative, the Plymouth-based sea captain (some say pirate) William Hawkins.

Francis had learned from his father, Mattingly wrote, “a simple Puritan faith. Everything that happened, happened by God’s will. One thing God certainly willed was the destruction of the bishop of Rome and all his works.” So, while Philip II of Spain was a staunch Catholic and a son of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Drake was a Puritan and strongly anti-Catholic. But despite their religious differences, Mattingly observed, “King Philip and Sir Francis Drake were much alike in the unquestioning filial piety with which they held their basic convictions.”

In Plymouth, the boy Drake proved to be a naval prodigy. By the time he was 20 years old, he was a seasoned seaman, and by age 28 he was commanding a ship. Beginning in December 1577 and ending in September 1580, when he sailed into Plymouth on board the galleon Golden Hind, Drake circumnavigated the globe—the first Englishman to do so. (See “The Replica Golden Hinde: Drake’s Famous Treasure Ship),” April 2023, pp. 58–59.) Fifty-six of his original 80 crew members returned with him. The ostensible voyage of exploration had included bounteous opportunities for raiding Spanish ports and amassing plundered treasure. Queen Elizabeth knighted Drake on board the Golden Hind upon his return.

For the 1587 attack on the Spanish coast, Elizabeth put four Royal Navy galleons under Drake’s command: the Elizabeth Bonaventure, Drake’s flagship; the Golden Lion, captained by William Borough; the Rainbow, under a Captain Bellingham; and the Dreadnought, under Captain Thomas Fenner. Besides the four galleons, Drake had three tall ships belonging to the Levant Company of London and seven smaller men-of-war, frigates, and pinnacles—in all about 26 vessels.

He had been given “a commission wide enough to satisfy even so tempestuous a venturer as Sir Francis Drake,” British historian A. E. W. Mason wrote in his 1941 Life of Francis Drake. “He could choose his moment of attack and his object, and he could seek them in whatever seas he would.” Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spymaster, had added to Elizabeth’s commission that Drake was to “distress the ships within the havens themselves.”

Stormy Seas to the Spanish Coast

On 12 April Drake sailed with his makeshift fleet from Portsmouth. A week after his departure, Elizabeth appeared to have second thoughts about the mission and sent word to Plymouth canceling her earlier orders to Drake. The royal courier, however, missed the fleet’s sailing, and Drake never received the change to his orders. There is some disagreement among historians as to whether Elizabeth meant the changes to take effect or was only providing the means for “plausible denial” should anything go wrong. In either case, Drake, unaware of Elizabeth’s changes, led his force south along Europe’s Atlantic coast.

Two and a half weeks out, Drake paused off the Rock of Lisbon to gather his fleet, which had been scattered in a storm. One pinnacle had been lost, but several prizes already had been taken, including what Mattingly called “a handy Portuguese caravel.”

Then, at 1600 on 29 April, Drake charged with his fleet behind him into the outer harbor of Cadiz and found himself facing Don Pedro’s galleys.

It was an uneven fight. “Each of Drake’s ships, smaller and more maneuverable, had more power than the entire Spanish naval presence in the harbor,” wrote Laurence Bergreen in his book In Search of Kingdom. As Don Pedro’s lead galley approached, Drake fired, and the heavier and longer-range guns of the Elizabeth Bonaventure easily drove off the Spanish vessel. With this, the identity of the English ships became clear, and panic gripped the harbor as the fleet’s banners unfurled and trumpets blared from their quarterdecks.

Drake quickly formed his four great galleons, which by then were all in the lower harbor, in a line and sailed them across the bows of the galleys, each English ship firing a full broadside as she passed. The number of galleys is unclear, but Drake would later report there had been 12. The galleys were doomed from the beginning but fought to buy time for the few seaworthy Spanish ships to escape to the inner harbor. Don Pedro finally abandoned the fight and fled, wrote Mattingly, “with wounded stretched on his foredecks and two of his ships hurt so badly that Drake thought he had sunk them,” retreating to St. Mary’s Port on the other side of the Bay of Cadiz.

Meanwhile, a Genoese argosy—a 700-ton ship built and armed for trading in the Levant—had been readying to leave the harbor when Drake arrived. She too came forward to confront the English ships. Drake’s four galleons opened fire and “methodically pounded” the argosy to pieces and sank her. On shore, the crowds that had gathered along the bay ran toward the safety of the castle, and in the chaos, at least 25 civilians were trampled to death in a narrow passage leading to the castle’s gates. Troops rallied. Cannon fired. Spanish cavalry and infantry rushed to the Puental—the rocks that guarded a narrow channel between two points of land jutting into the bay and separating the inner and outer harbors.

In the harbor itself, some of the smaller ships scrambled to the seawall of the old fort where the galleys had been moored. Others ships that were familiar with the channel or had a shallow enough draft risked the shallows and ran for the upper bay. But many of the larger ships either did not have enough crew to make sail or were without sails. Others were paralyzed by the sudden English attack or blocked in by neighboring ships. These ships swung helplessly at anchor “huddled together like sheep who scent the wolf,” wrote Mattingly.

Drake anchored his great galleons among the entangled and immobile Spanish ships. The Merchant Royal and some pinnacles anchored outside the range of the Spanish land batteries, blocked the entrance to the inner harbor, and pinned down whatever naval power Spain had left.

The English began reaping the outer harbor clean, attacking and looting the Spanish ships trapped there. Drake’s men set fire to the Spanish ships they had captured and many of the smaller ships without sails. Spanish ships that were already outfitted and with sails were kept. The English spent the night plundering the cargoes of the Spanish ships as flaming and abandoned hulks drifted in the harbor and came to rest in the bay’s shoals. The occasional shots launched from the Spanish land batteries and the attacks from Spanish galleys were more a nuisance to the English than any real danger. Only Drake’s captured Portuguese caravel was overrun and captured.

A Wounded Lion

At dawn, Drake transferred from the Elizabeth Bonaventure to the Merchant Royal and, with a force of pinnacles and frigates, charged through the entrance to the inner harbor. He seized a great Spanish galleon (the property of the marquis of Santa Cruz), looting her and then setting her ablaze.

Meanwhile, the Golden Lion had strayed to within range of the Spanish land batteries and had taken a shot at the waterline. Her crew was launching small boats to tow her out of danger when six Spanish galleys attacked the wounded ship. Seeing the Lion in distress, Drake dispatched the Rainbow, six of the armed merchantmen, and a pinnacle to scatter the galleys, and the Golden Lion was able to rejoin the English fleet. The damage to the Golden Lion and the loss of the Portuguese caravel were the only depredations the English fleet would suffer in the raid.

The work done, Drake ordered sails “shaken out, the admiral’s flagship glided to the head of the [English] column, banners were displayed, and trumpets and kettle drums brayed their derision at the vain cannonading from the town,” wrote Mattingly.

And then the wind died.

The English fleet was becalmed and trapped in the Spanish harbor, a condition that lasted into the second night. Drake and his men continued to capture and loot vessels. The Spanish, meanwhile, had been moving troops to Cadiz and using them to relocate the harbor’s land batteries on the sand hills and beaches of the inner harbor. They also dispatched small boats loaded with burning pitch, flowing with the tide toward the English fleet.

The English dealt with the land batteries and the fireships without serious difficulty, with one seaman even writing that the fireships were “a pleasant sight for us to behold.” The looting and torching of Spanish vessels continued until about 0200 when the wind finally rose again, and the British ships were able to flee the Bay of Cadiz.

‘The Daring . . . Was Very Great Indeed’

Spanish galleys approached the English again just outside the bay and again were repelled. Drake and his fleet had destroyed more than 10,000 tons of supplies, most destined for the Spanish Armada, and they had taken 30 to 35 prizes, five of them great ships. The raid disrupted the plans for Philip’s Armada and delayed its sailing against England for a year. The Drake raid, Mason wrote, gave England, “so invariably unready, an invaluable year of preparation.”

Drake paused outside the harbor to resupply his ships from the prizes he had taken and to give his men a day’s rest, during which “he sent in under a flag of truce to the [local Spanish] commander a proposal for the interchange of such English prisoners as he had rowing in his galleys,” Mason wrote. “The Spanish commander replied, with presents of sweetmeats and compliments on Drake’s seamanship and bravery, that he had no English prisoners at all.”

With that, Drake sailed away to the west along the coast of Spain and north past Portugal, destroying whatever shipping he encountered, including fishing vessels. On 14 May, he and a thousand of his men launched an unsuccessful land attack against the fortress at Lagos, Portugal, but they were able to sack nearby Frago. Before returning to England, Drake also captured a Portuguese carrack, the San Felipe, which was laden with gold, spices, and silks valued at £108,000.

After hearing of Drake’s raid on Cadiz, King Philip II, apparently trying to “spin” what had happened, praised Drake, saying that “the daring of the attempt was very great indeed” but also trying to downplay the damage Drake had done.

On 27 May, Drake reported back to Elizabeth that “it had pleased God that we should take ships, barks, carvels and diverse other vessels more than a hundred, most laden, some with oars for galleys, planks and timber for ships and pinnaces . . . [as well as] 16 or 17 hundred of hoops and pipe-staves which would have made 25 or 30 thousand tons of casks,” all of which were burned. That loss meant the Spanish would be required a year later to supply the 130 ships of its great Armada with food and wine in barrels made of newer wood that leaked and allowed for greater spoiling.

. . . And the Sea Kept Calling

When the Armada did approach England in late July 1588, the Spanish ships, many of them towering galleons and armed merchantmen, were scattered by the faster and more maneuverable English warships, by British fireships, and by bad weather. A third of them never returned to Spain.

After the Armada was repulsed and the Spanish threat subsided, Drake remained in England, serving several terms in Parliament as the representative of Tavistock in Devon, and for a time he was mayor of Plymouth.

But he periodically returned to sea to harass and loot Spanish ships and settlements in the Americas. He died in January 1596 of dysentery while anchored off the Isthmus of Panama. He was about 56 years old.

His body was dressed in a full suit of armor, placed in a lead-lined coffin, and buried at sea.