The dilemmas of command at sea at the strategic and operational levels evident during the Armada campaign were no less severe at the tactical level. Naval battles fought under sail before the mid-sixteenth century more closely resembled contemporary land engagements than they did the epic sea battles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Sailing ships were not designed with ramming bows. Ships rammed each other in battle, but as a prelude to boarding, not, except in rare cases, in an effort to sink an opponent. Nor did the development of more advanced ranged weapons— the arquebus and cannon—alter battle tactics. Reload times were too long and ranges too short. Since early sailing warships mounted only a few cannon, galley-fashion to fire forward, commanders continued to rely on the mêlée in battle.
The ad hoc nature of most early sailing navies reinforced reliance on military—that is, land—tactics. Since no northern European state could yet afford a large standing navy, in wartime monarchs impressed merchant vessels, and their small crews, into service. These trading ships were refitted for combat. Workmen constructed raised structures on the forward and stern sections of the ships, giving them appropriately lubberly names such as forecastle and sterncastle. When the ships were ready, an army detachment arrived, led by a captain assisted by lieutenants, bearing a commission from the monarch and orders to join the fleet. To command the fleet itself, the monarch appointed a trusted general, who might or might not have had any experience at sea. Not surprisingly, once afloat, landlubber lieutenants, captains, and generals sought to fight their battles as they did ashore, relying on massed formations and the mêlée to sweep the enemy from the field.
Reliance on soldiers to fight on the monarch’s ships not only delayed but also contorted the evolution of a naval officer corps. A dichotomy developed between the army officers, who were responsible for doing the fighting on a man-of-war, and the ship’s “petty” officers, who were responsible for handling the vessel. Even in Elizabeth’s day, command of ships generally went “to noblemen and gentlemen, who often had little knowledge of the naval art.” Experienced seamen fortunate enough to work their way into positions of command, referred to in the seventeenth century as “tarpaulins,” found themselves at a disadvantage in any political contest with the “gentlemen.”
The Spaniard Alonso de Chaves, who about 1530 published The Seamen’s Glass, was one of the earliest authors to write about naval tactics. Because Chaves understood that his audience was not a corps of sea officers but soldiers confounded by the nature of warfare afloat, he attempted to explain naval tactics by using analogies to land warfare. The strongest ships, he advised, should be deployed in the center, as were men-at-arms ashore. Faster, lighter ships should cover the wings, as did cavalry ashore. The commander should control a centrally deployed heavy division, holding it in reserve as long as possible to allow him to monitor the progress of the battle. Yet another force, deployed behind the commander’s, should bring up the rear of the fleet and could be dispatched to support any threatened flank or to reinforce success. Ships in all of these formations were to be deployed massed, in line abreast, prepared to fire their weapons during the approach and then to grapple and to board enemy vessels.
Chaves, like the chronicler of the battle of Sluys, took into account some of the peculiarities of naval battles. The wind figured prominently in his instructions. So did seamanship, which he viewed as a force multiplier that could allow a weaker force to defeat a stronger one. He also noted the difficulties of commanding a naval force in combat. He exhorted the commander to avoid diving into the battle lest he lose control of the engagement. Instead, haves advised the commander to stay in the rear and to use the communicative means at hand—a handful of colored signal flags, raising and lowering the topsail, and the speaking trumpet— to send the fleet into battle and to direct the ships of the reserve to “give succour wherever the captain-general signals.”
As long as most ships’ guns were mounted to fire forward and the mêlée remained the ultimate arbiter of victory, land-style tactics based on massed formations of ships deployed in line abreast made sense. During the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, at sea as ashore, infantry decided most battles; artillery was still too immobile, and too impotent, to dominate the battlefield. But late in the sixteenth century, as men-of-war began to mount their batteries broadside and the gun gradually became a potential ship killer, the need for a purely naval tactical system became obvious. Volley and charge tactics no longer worked, since the axes of a ship’s movement and its fire now lay at right angles. Ships maneuvering in line-abreast formation could not use broadside-mounted guns effectively. But then again, the killing power of the new guns was limited.
The resultant confusion is evident in the tactics used during the Armada campaign. Despite developments in gunnery, the Spanish continued to deploy en masse and to depend on the mêlée to decide battles. The more maneuverable English avoided close quarters and relied on their gunnery. While English tactics appear more advanced, they were little more successful than those employed by the Spanish. The English had yet to devise a means by which their ships could maneuver in formation and fire their guns with effect. Elizabeth’s ships sailed in figure-eight pat terns, taking turns discharging their broadside batteries into the Spanish formations. This tactic, combined with the limited destructive power of the relatively light guns, was fine for harassing bewildered Spaniards but offered little hope of destroying an enemy fleet.
To further complicate matters, the evolving naval tactical system stretched already inadequate methods of command and control. As the fleet began to deploy in something other than standard army-like formations— with a center, wings, and a reserve—two new problems arose. First, new concepts were needed to provide a doctrinal framework for commanders and subordinates. It was no longer sufficient to advise would-be admirals that the campaign they were about to begin could be understood within the framework of ground warfare. In 1588, for example, most senior Spanish naval officers, as well as King Philip himself, recognized the novel and asymmetrical nature of the tactical challenge the Armada would face in the Channel, with the English relying on maneuverability and long-range gunnery and the Spanish trusting to grappling, boarding, “valor,” and “steel.” But how could the less maneuverable Armada force the English fleet to fight at close quarters? The Spanish sailed without having devised a tactical solution to that problem. They simply hoped, or trusted in God, that favorable weather conditions or English mismanagement would allow them to fight at close quarters. As one of Philip’s high-ranking naval commanders informed a papal emissary, “We are sailing against England in the confident hope of a miracle.”
Second, as fleets began to fight in looser formations and to rely somewhat more on maneuver, ship-to-ship communications became more necessary and also more difficult. Communicating in the midst of a sea battle fought under the old system had been far more complicated than communicating ashore. The standard method employed during a land battle—sending a staff officer with a message or riding oneself to a threatened sector—was fraught with hazard afloat, although well into the seventeenth century naval commanders did summon subordinates to the flagship during lulls in engagements. The use of speaking trumpets, never truly satisfactory, became even less so as distances between ships increased and the roar of ever larger and more numerous cannon drowned out auditory communication. Visual signals offered some hope of a solution, but were far too primitive and cumbersome to convey meaningful directions.
