![]() In person - The subordinate officers could meet the commander on his ship to receive orders. So what methods were available to pass orders? Trying anything too complicated when most of your ships have little or no fleet experience is risking collisions or worse. Even relatively simple fleet maneuvers require coordination and practice to pass off without incident. This greatly limited the tactical options available to both sides. As can be seen from the make up of both the Spanish and English fleets, the actual number of warships on both sides is dwarfed by the number of armed merchants and transport ships. This lead to some friction between the two because the Duke insisted on sticking to King Philip's plan of attack, while de Recalde would have prefered to have dealt with the English fleet (especially when the opportunity arose to attack them in the Solent).Īt the time of the Armada, the standing national navies of the European states were quite small and there were few professional naval officers. We do know that the Duke of Medina Sidonia wasn't a naval man whereas his second in command, Juan Martínez de Recalde was an experienced Admiral in the Spanish Navy. So we know at a strategic level who said what and when but don't know in any detail how, and if, these orders were transmitted down the chain of command. Most of the documentation that has survived from the Armada is correspondence that is essentially at the political level, i.e. There's very little concrete evidence about how command and control of the Spanish Armada worked, or indeed, how naval tactical control was exerted during that period, which pre-dates what we now call the Age of Sail.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |