‘But . . .’ I stared at him. ‘We cannot turn back. It would take as long to sail back to England as to sail on to Lisbon.’ For a moment I had hoped the whole wild scheme would be abandoned, until I saw this flaw.
He nodded, and motioned me to follow him.
‘Come. You might as well listen to the discussion, though I do not think anything either of us can say will have any influence on the decision.’
When we reached the main deck, Sir John Norreys, Ruy Lopez, Dom Antonio and the captain of our ship were huddled together. Captain Oliver held a chart in his hand. He looked up as we approached.
‘Directly to Coruña, then?’ he said, addressing Sir John.
Norreys, who had joined us by pinnace from his own ship, the Nonpareil, nodded his agreement. ‘We must reprovision. The harbour is large enough to accommodate the fleet, and the garrison will be taken by surprise. From reports we received before leaving England, Spain has been stockpiling provisions there. We will attack and seize enough stores to take us on to Lisbon, as well as eliminating as many of the Spanish warships as possible. We will also take the town.’
Those reports about stockpiling provisions, I thought, were probably sent to Walsingham by Titus Allanby, the man I must try, somehow, to rescue from Coruña. How, I could not imagine.
‘But . . .’ I said, emboldened by this alarming turn of events to speak out amongst such high company, ‘but won’t that give warning to the Spaniards? If we made a swift attack on the ships, as was intended, then sailed quickly on our way, there would be little time for word to reach the Spanish military command and allow them to marshal their forces. If we stay longer, not just to load with provisions but to attack and take possession of the town, won’t they realise this is no mere raiding expedition, but we are heading for Portugal?’
Even as I spoke, I was torn two ways. For the main purpose of our mission to succeed, we needed to make the greatest possible speed to Lisbon. Yet if I were to find Titus Allanby, a delay at Coruña would help.
Norreys shrugged. ‘The men must be fed. Otherwise we will have a full-scale mutiny on our hands.’
‘But we do not need to make an attack on the town with a view to taking it.’
He gave me a quelling look and turned to Captain Oliver.
‘Run up the signal,’ he said. ‘We make for Coruña as swiftly as possible.’
I was silenced. From the very start the plans for the expedition had begun to fall apart. First the wholesale looting of the provisions in Plymouth by the new recruits, then the delayed arrival of the troops from the Low Countries and the contrary winds which had kept us held up for days at Plymouth, then the storm in the Channel, then the abandonment of the raid on the main part of the Spanish fleet at Santander, and now, instead of a swift attack on the ships at Coruña and an equally swift departure, we would be delayed here, not only seizing and loading provisions but attacking the town. For what purpose? What was the strategy? Who could guess how long we would be held up there? Our goal was in southern Portugal, not northern Spain.
A few hours later at dusk, we sailed into Coruña harbour, Drake joyfully in the lead, with his personal standard flying at the masthead of his flagship, the Revenge. We learned the next morning from the embittered and frightened inhabitants of Coruña that the Spanish garrison had been so terrified by the sight of the standard belonging to the man they called El Dracque – the Dragon – that they had fled at once to the walled citadel in the upper town, abandoning the port, the lower town, and the citizens to their fate. However, our first and most urgent objective was to find where the stores of food and drink were held. Our seasick and rebellious soldiers were wonderfully cheered at the sight of land and the prospect of booty. When half of them were put ashore to hunt out provisions and load them on to the ships’ boats to restock the fleet, the remainder begged to join their comrades.
While the men were being ferried ashore in the pinnaces and skiffs of the fleet, I stood on deck beside Captain Oliver, looking out over the water. To starboard and some distance away I could see a massive castillo, guarding the western side of the harbour.
‘Why is Sir Francis not attacking that fortress?’ I asked. It seemed the one place that threatened us.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The new fortress. The Spanish began building that island fortress two years ago, when King Philip was preparing his Armada to attack England. After mustering the following year, it was from here, the harbour at Coruña, that the Armada fleet set out.’
‘So it was built to protect this harbour,’ I said. ‘I can understand why. It’s the most important port on the northwest coast of Spain. So why are they not using it to defend the harbour now? They have not fired a single shot at us since we arrived.’
‘Great stone-built fortresses do not arise overnight. Even now it’s incomplete.’
He studied it and gave a nod of approval. ‘It’s well placed. It lies on a small island just off that peninsula on which the town is built. From land it can only be reached by a narrow causeway, easy to defend. Do you see? Originally a small chapel to St Anthony stood on the island, so the fortress is known as the Castillo de San Antón.’
‘Our ships could attack it from the harbour, couldn’t they?’
‘Aye, they could. Have you noticed the strength of the fortifications on this side?’
From here I could see that the huge stone walls on the seaward side of the new fortress rose from the sheer rocky sides of the island, which looked impregnable.
‘The unfinished fortress is of no real importance to us at present,’ he said, ‘since we’ve been told that the Spanish garrison has abandoned it in favour of the citadel formed by the walled upper town. They believe they can hold out in safety there, while the inhabitants of the lower town suffer our attack undefended. Our ships’ guns could indeed attack the fortress from the harbour, but, as you can see, the strongest fortifications, already complete, are on the seaward side, since it’s from this direction that they would expect attack.’
‘So we will ignore it?’
‘There is no point in wasting gunpowder and shot in taking it. There seems to be only a token garrison left there, if any.’
Later I heard that one small detachment of our soldiers had been deployed near the town end of the causeway, the most vulnerable part of the fortress. Here the walls were only partially complete, for the builders had not envisaged attack from the town. The lower courses were already laid in stone, but above this nothing yet protected the landward side of the fortress but roughly constructed wooden ramparts. If our soldiers had possessed siege guns, they would have made short work of taking possession of the castillo, but, as the captain had said, it was not worth the wasted ammunition. If any men of the garrison had been left there, they did not show their faces.
Even so, Drake and Norreys seemed bent on capturing Coruña itself, though the seizure and occupation of any Spanish town was no part of the expedition’s orders from the Queen. Our goal was Portugal. Taking possession of a Spanish town could serve no purpose and would cost us dear. I could not imagine how our leaders could have any hope of taking the citadel and doubted their wisdom in lingering here at all. Why did we not sail on, immediately, for Lisbon?
In the meantime, the most urgent task was to reprovision the fleet. On the Portuguese ship we could only watch what happened once the men went ashore. This was no part of Dom Antonio’s campaign of triumphant return to his kingdom. And we did watch. We watched, helpless, as our band of villains ran amok in Coruña. Instead of obeying orders and loading the boats with barrels of beef and fish and casks of wine and fresh water, that filthy rout of masterless men went berserk in the town. There were provisions a-plenty to be found, for it seemed the Spaniards had indeed been laying in supplies for a fresh Armada against England. Before an hour was out our gallant soldiers had smashed and murdered and burned their way to the wine and were reeling in drunken splendour through the streets, looting shops and churches, raping and cutting throats as they went. From the heights of the citadel the garrison fired down on them, but our men made no attempt to counter-attack. Some of them fell, wounded or dead, rolling in the gutters amongst the spilt wine and the piles of salted sardines. Their fellows let them lie, too intent on their own drinking and looting to care what happened to the wounded and dead.