Today in Sasha's history.
Author: Sasha
This article was originally written by Sasha, please refuse any media to reprint it British: On May 28, 1588, the Spanish Armada of as many as 130 ships and 30,000 people set off from Lisbon, Portugal, to fight against the British Royal Navy in the English Channel.
Why was the powerful Spanish Armada defeated by the British?
In fact, the so-called Armada does not have much advantage in the face of the British fleet.
The Spanish fleet consists of 130 ships, about 20 of the truly combat-capable Galen , 44 armed merchant ships, 23 round ships, 22 bad ships, 13 light sailing ships, 4 medium ships and There are 4 longships with a total of more than 30,000 personnel, an army of about 19,000 people, and a total tonnage of 60,000 tons.
However, the British are not weak either.
Britain is defending its homeland this time. Once the Armada transports the Spanish Army to and lands in the UK , the UK will be unstoppable and may even be destroyed.
There are 34 galleons in the UK this time, and 163 armed merchant ships, 30 of which are over 200 tons, and 30 fast punts, for a total of 227 ships.
Here, we're going to look at Galen's sailboat. Galen sailboat is the warship in today's sense.
The Spaniards once proudly claimed that they invented the Galen sailboat.
For a long time, Galen sailboat was also called Spanish sailboat.
This does make sense. The first people to use the Galen on a large scale were the Spaniards.
It is an ocean-going warship, mostly equipped with three to five masts, which can sail across the ocean with good maneuverability and speed. It generally has 4 masts, the front two masts are hung with horizontal sails, and the latter two are hung with jibs, which is enough to ensure its power and flexibility.
Don't underestimate this point, the most critical thing in naval battle is not artillery , but mobility of ships . Only by maintaining enough mobility can you be invincible in naval battles.
Sailings before Galen, mainly Clark sailing .
This Clark sailboat is similar to the ship of China , with a tall gun turret and strong firepower.
However, the cannon turret of the Clark sailboat caused serious wind resistance, resulting in slow speed and poor maneuverability. It was not suitable for long-distance sailing in the ocean, but was only suitable for patrolling around the coast of England or Spain.
Naturally, the Clark sailing ship was eliminated, and the Galen sailing ship with stronger sailing performance became the main force.
The boat is so strong that it can even ram, and the deck has many layers, up to 7, with a lot of artillery.
The early galleons used to be small, usually one or two hundred tons.
In actual combat, it was found that the Galen sailboat has excellent performance. One ship once defeated many turkish Arabian sailboats.
As a result, Galen sailboats were valued and mass-produced.
In this armada, the Spaniards have 10 large galleons of 800 to 1000 tons.
As for the artillery that ships are equipped with, there are many kinds.The most common
is the half-snake gun, which is a bronze front-loading smoothbore gun , with an effective range of about 550 meters, loaded with 3 to 5 kilograms of shells , which is destructive to warships.
However, the Spanish Galen is still different from the British Galen, and the capital ships of the two countries are also very different.
Spain was a colonial power back then, and the challenges it encountered were mainly colonial rebellion. While colonial rebellions rarely appeared in the navy, Spain's repression was still dominated by land warfare .
In short, the battleship that Spain needs must be large enough to transport a large number of soldiers as a landing battle. At the same time, Spanish warships rarely engage in naval battles, and do not need a large range of artillery, only need to carry out artillery cover during the landing battle.
Many Spanish warships are not equipped with half-snake guns at all, but use the army's old two-wheeled guns.
The reloading speed of this type of artillery is extremely slow, and it is even operated by the gunner alone. He needs to load gunpowder, shells, aim, fire, return the fired gun to its original position, and repeat the process.
Because it is an army gun, the range is also very close, which cannot be compared with the real naval gun .
In fact, the Spanish battleship is more focused on land warfare, just as a tool for land warfare.
However, naval warfare still exists after all. In addition to a large number of army guns, Spanish warships also use traditional hand-to-hand combat and impact warfare .
Their warships are very large, generally 46 to 55 meters in length, with a displacement of 500 to 1,000 tons. This time there are 10 large ships of about 1,000 tons.
These ships are so large that they can ram and sink enemy ships at close range.
At the same time, these large warships can have large numbers of soldiers. In addition to land combat, soldiers can also jump onto enemy ships for hand-to-hand combat.
The number of sailors on Spanish warships is not as many as soldiers. Generally speaking, a 500-ton warship has about 90 sailors and 125 soldiers. Compared with
, the British warships are completely different.
At this time, the British were far from maritime hegemony, and could only be said to challenge the Spaniards.
The most popular in the UK is privateer , which is actually a pirate ship. The purpose of this kind of ship is not to sink the enemy, but to give the enemy a certain blow, forcing them to surrender in order to loot the property.
Therefore, the tonnage of the British Galen sailboat is relatively small, generally the largest is five or six hundred tons.
The number of artillery on ships is small, but it is fast, flexible, and has strong combat effectiveness under the control of excellent sailors.
It's not that the British don't want to fight hand-to-hand, but how many people can a pirate ship carry? It would be nice to be able to cobble together a boat of pirate sailors.
There were not enough manpower for hand-to-hand combat, and the British Galen had to use artillery with a longer range and use flexible maneuvering to distance itself from enemy ships.
Their continuous shelling caused the enemy ship's to lose , so that they raised their hands and surrendered in fear of sinking .
British pirate chief Drake, representing the first official looting, targeting the Spanish transport ship Cacafogo laden with gold and silver treasures. Drake set up an ambush off the coast of Panama, and after a brief artillery battle, the Carcafogo surrendered. Drake captured 80 pounds of gold, 20 tons of silver, 13 boxes of silver coins, and several boxes of pearls and gems. It took Drake and his mates four full days to load all the loot onto the boat.
The strength of the Armada and the British fleet is actually similar.
The Armada's expedition was marked by a series of battles.
In short, the purpose of the Armada is not to destroy the British fleet, but to cover the Spanish army on the European continent to board the ship in the port of Calais and land on the British mainland to attack. At the same time, the Armada is also responsible for transporting part of the army soldiers to prepare for landing operations.
During the initial voyage, the Armada did not engage in serious combat with the British fleet, but merely escorted it.
Facing the long-range shelling of British warships, the Armada remained in its original formation, with the warships outside and the transport ships inside, heading towards Calais.
The losses on both sides were minor, but the British discovered the weakness of the Armada, that is, the guns were too weak.
The British's four-wheeled and half-snake cannon has a range of more than 500 meters. The precise range of the Spaniards' two-wheeled artillery was only one-third of that of the British.
This is secondary, the key Spanish artillery fire rate is too slow to cause fatal injuries to British warships.
As a result, the British warships gradually dared to enter the range of the so-called musket , which is 100 meters, and carried out several rounds of violent shelling.
The two sides fought for several days. Although the Spaniards lost several warships, it had nothing to do with the overall situation. They docked outside the port of Calais, waited for the army to arrive, and then began landing in England.
In this case, the British were in a desperate situation and had to use the navy to fight the Spaniards so that they could not land.
Thus, a decisive naval battle broke out.
The British had the advantage of artillery, but the power of artillery at that time was insufficient.It is of course very difficult to sink a few hundred tons of warships with a solid bullet of a few kilograms. The main ship of the Armada, the San Juan, suffered more than 200 bombardments and still did not sink.
So, the British first used 8 ships for the fire attack. In those days, boats were all wood, and if they caught fire, they would die.
The port of Calais is too small, the Armada is too large, and most of the warships are docked in the sea outside the port. And this is not a calm pond, there is a certain storm , all the warships will drop all the iron anchors.
After the fireboat rushed over, the Armada was shocked.
In a hurry, the fleet had no time to lift the anchor, and could only cut off all the anchors.
At this time, the sea was very windy and waves were very strong. Under the strong wind, the camp of the invincible fleet was scattered, and most of the fleet was blown to the sea far away from the port.
The British acted decisively and used most of the 150 warships to storm the 5 Spanish battleships that remained in port.
The Spaniards were outnumbered, and all five battleships were hit hard. Soon the warships outside the port came to the rescue, and the two sides fought in a melee.
The British suffered minor losses, and the Spanish lost several capital ships.
On August 8, the two sides exchanged fire again, and the Spaniards lost another 6 warships.
Even so, there are more than 100 warships in the Armada after all, and this loss does not hurt.
The strength of the two sides is still evenly matched this time, and Spain is slightly inferior. In a short time, the Armada was clearly unable to defeat the British fleet and cover the landing of the Army.
To make matters worse, Spain made too many enemies to get supplies from continental Europe. In the fierce naval battle, the supply ships of the Spanish mainland did not dare to come.On the contrary, the British fought at their doorstep. Although the gunpowder was consumed at a high rate due to the fast firing rate of naval guns, they could still be replenished at any time.
Gunpowder and other supplies were gradually exhausted, and the Armada could only consider retreating.
In a sense, the Armada cannot be said to be defeated, but to temporarily retreat under unfavorable circumstances to preserve its strength.
However, the Spaniards were so reluctant that they encountered a typhoon when they returned home.
The damage caused by typhoons was several times greater than that of the British. Most of them sank in the wind and waves of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, or ran aground along the coast of the British Isles. The crew and soldiers sank with the ship, died of illness and starvation, or were surrounded by local military and civilians. hunt and kill.
There are as many as 35 warships whose whereabouts are unknown.
1588 When they returned to Spain in October, the Armada was left with 65 broken ships and lost most of its strength.
However, the Armada was mostly destroyed by the typhoon, not the British.
And the failure of the Armada in this battle, it cannot be said that the Spaniards lost their dominance.
In fact, the Spaniards quickly learned the characteristics of the British, equipped with more powerful artillery, and still had the advantage of the sea.
1596 British Admiral Drake died of wounds and dysentery after a failed surprise attack on the Spanish colony.
The British are still not the opponents of the Spaniards, and the ones who dared to challenge the Spaniards for a hundred years later were the coachmen of the sea.The Netherlands..
It was not until 1704, more than a hundred years later, that the British navy occupied Gibraltar with the support of the Dutch, and it was completely declared that the Spanish had the upper hand.
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