The connection between God and the wind is as old as Genesis 2:7: “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (NIV). In Exodus 14 a strong wind enabled the Israelites to cross the Red Sea, and in 2 Kings God whisked Elijah to heaven in a whirlwind. All four gospels attest to Jesus’ control over the wind when he calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee. In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit arrived with a sound “like the blowing of a violent wind,” bringing tongues of fire. Jesus enigmatically likened Christian life to the movement of air, telling Nicodemus in John 3:8, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
The essential ambiguity of wind did not prevent Christians in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early modern period from trying to determine where the Spirit was blowing, and why. Legally, storms were classified as “acts of God” from Roman times onward, and the interpretation of celestial and weather phenomena constituted a lively branch of the study of miracles. The Reformation took place around the beginning of modern science, and early Protestants showed some interest in separating natural from supernatural occurrences. John Calvin, for example, mocked the Roman Catholics who attempted to confirm their faith with constant miracles. Over in Germany in the second half of the 16th century, however, a profusion of Wunderzeichenbücher, or “wonder-sign books,” put a Protestant, apocalyptic spin on such apparitions as blood rain, comets, and the Northern Lights.
This background helps explain responses to a storm that was interpreted by seemingly all of Europe as a decisive, divine intervention.
On July 29, 1588, English Lord Admiral Charles Howard and his wily vice-admiral, Francis Drake, received word that Spanish ships had been spotted at the mouth of the English Channel. The news came as no surprise. Spanish King Philip II had declared his intention to assemble a massive naval force, the Armada, back in 1581, and while details about the fleet’s composition and objectives were murky, the project as a whole was, in one historian’s estimation, “the worst-kept secret in Europe.”
Even so, the English still did not know exactly what the Spanish hoped to accomplish. As it happened, the Armada constituted only half of Philip’s plan. The ships, under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, were supposed to gain control of the Channel and then help transport an army, under the command of the Duke of Parma, from the Netherlands over to southern England—a bit like the D-Day invasion of Normandy in reverse. Neither duke viewed his task with much enthusiasm. Medina Sidonia feared that his fleet, which had sailed from Lisbon, Portugal, way back on May 30, lacked sufficient provisions for the battle. Parma thought it would be better to complete his campaign against the fractious Dutch Protestants before taking on their English abettors. Philip, however, had run out of patience and compelled his commanders to proceed.
The complexity of this operation hinted at the complexity of the overall conflict. Spain was, at the time, the preeminent power in Europe. Philip ruled not just Spain but lands that are now Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and much of Italy. During his short marriage to “Bloody Mary” Tudor (1554–1558), he even counted England and Ireland among his territories. Lucrative Spanish colonies spanned the globe.
Additionally, Philip saw himself as the champion of Catholic Christendom, divinely appointed to bring rebellious lands back into the Roman pope’s fold. Philip inherited this responsibility, as well as many of his lands, from his father, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who had been the nemesis of Martin Luther. Medina Sidonia’s orders (rendered in a 19th-century translation) specified that his fleet sailed “to serve God, and to return to his church a great many of contrite souls, that are oppressed by the hereticks, enemies to our holy catholick faith, which have them subjects to their sects, and unhappiness.” In keeping with this mission, the ships’ sails bore red crosses—the Crusader emblem—and all on board were to confess and take Communion.
Philip’s multifaceted power earned him an array of enemies. Some Europeans who supported his religious aims were leery of his political and economic power. Muslim Moors still resented the Reconquista that had pushed them off the Iberian Peninsula a century earlier, while Ottoman Turks challenged Spain for dominance in the Mediterranean and central Europe. Philip’s chief antagonist, though, was England. Its Protestant queen, Elizabeth I, persecuted Catholics at home while supporting the Dutch rebels and sending privateers, such as the notorious Drake, to plunder Spanish ships carrying treasure from the colonies. Elizabeth had to be stopped. For added incentive, Pope Sixtus V offered Philip a million gold ducats if he could prove that his forces landed on the English shore.
Battle commenced on July 31, 1588, with about 130 ships on the Spanish side and 200 on the English. The fleets were more evenly matched than these numbers might indicate, as they had different capabilities and fighting styles. The Spanish ships were bigger and sat higher in the water. This height was an advantage if they could get close enough to their enemies to board them, raining down men to overwhelm the hostile crew and seize control of their ship. The English ships, lower in the water but faster and more maneuverable, refused to come within grappling range. They preferred to sit at a safe distance and hassle their foes with long-range bombardment.
Though there were moments of high drama, for the most part the battle for the Channel was a slow-moving series of skirmishes, retreats, and accidents. Both sides shot off large quantities of ammunition without much damage to show for it. By August 6, the English had chased the Spanish to Calais, France, where Medina Sidonia hoped to resupply and join forces with Parma. The Armada did secure some much-needed food and drinking water, but while the fleet waited in the harbor for Parma to get his troops and transport barges together, Admiral Howard launched a nighttime attack of fireships—eight unmanned boats, set ablaze, guns loaded, towed toward the Spanish and then unleashed on the tide. No Spanish ships actually caught fire, but several were damaged in the scramble to escape. The next day, England took advantage of the disarray and a favorable wind to press its attack. After fierce fighting at the Battle of Gravelines (named for a nearby port in the Spanish Netherlands), the hobbled Armada opted to head home—not by the direct route, back through the English Channel, but by sailing all the way around the British Isles, counter-clockwise.
Spain had lost a few ships and scores of men by this point, but it was the Armada’s retreat that made the campaign a disaster. A strong wind set the fleet on its circuitous course, and storms continued to batter the ill-supplied ships as they fled. Dozens of ships wrecked off the coasts of Scotland and western Ireland, which jutted farther into the Atlantic than the Spanish maps had indicated. Sailors who survived the wrecks were often slaughtered onshore by English garrisons wary of invasion. The remnants of the Armada that straggled home stood at maybe half the strength of the force that set out. England’s ships fared much better, but it lost perhaps as many as half of its sailors by the end of the year, too, mostly killed by disease.
Although many problems contributed to the Armada’s failure—low supplies, bad communication, unwieldy ships, unreliable guns—one has stood out in nearly every account of the defeat: the wind. The English and Dutch struck celebratory medals with the inscription, “God blew, and they were scattered,” a reference to Job 4:9. Philip also attributed the result of the contest to the elements, telling his unsuccessful veterans, “I sent you out to war with men, not with the wind and waves.”
The assignment of divine thanks or blame served different purposes on either side of the Channel. By displacing responsibility onto (super)natural forces, Philip preserved the belief that his navy could have won the battle, and could very well win the next one. Elizabeth, meanwhile, could plausibly claim that God favored Protestants and would aid them in the future. This claim was the most important legacy of the defeat of the Armada. With England, a rising power, firmly in the Protestant camp, the dream of a reunified Catholic Christendom ended, and control of the New World became an open, and very hotly contested, question.
It lies beyond the historian’s skill to judge whether God blew to bless England or punish Spain. Perhaps, as in 1 Kings 19:11, “the Lord was not in the wind.” Whatever its origin, though, the gale, coupled with human imagination (a perennially potent combination), had tangible results. While Elizabeth’s naval victory over Spain did not lead inexorably to the ascendance of English-speaking Protestant America, the defeat of the Armada made such a development thinkable, a necessary prelude to its actualization. The event altered visions of the future across Europe. In the assessment of Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Garrett Mattingly, “For the spectators of both parties, the outcome, reinforced, as everyone believed, by an extraordinary tempest, was indeed decisive. The Protestants of France and the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia saw with relief that God was, in truth, as they had always supposed, on their side. The Catholics of France and Italy and Germany saw with almost equal relief that Spain was not, after all, God’s chosen champion. From that time forward, though Spain’s preponderance was to last for more than another generation, the peak of her prestige had passed.”
Elesha Coffman is assistant professor of church history at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. Adapted from the author’s forthcoming book, tentatively titled Turning Points in American Church History (Baker Academic, 2017). Used by permission
