The Drake-Norris expedition: English Naval strategy in the sixteenth century.

Abstract

With the exception of Flanders, tiere was probably no country with which sixteenthcentury Englisi seamen were more familiar than Spain, the destination of several of the most important branches of Englisi overseas trade. Though by the latter part of the century the Reformation had cut off the once flourishing pilgrim trade to Santiago, which for centuries had been the only long-distancc passenger traffic carried by English ships, there remained many commercial links which brought English ships to Spanish ports. These were mainly to the ports of the North and West coasts, and by the 1570s the most valuable was probably to Andalusia. Many English merchants were settled in the Dukc of Medina Sidonia’s port of Sanlucar de Barrameda, conveniently close to Seville and the Carrera dc Indias. Either legally, through the agency of members of the Casa de Contratacion in Sevilie, or illegally by means of false papers, many of them traded hcavily in colonial imports from the Americas. Their principals and partners in England were the leading London merchants dealing in colonial goods, and the provincial exporters of wheat and other Englisi commodities which could be sold in Spain. This flourishing traffic necessarily passed by the coasts of Galicia. England was far behind Spain, Portugal or France in the development of occan navigation, but by the 1 570s even the most backward Englisi skippers were competent to make the ron across the Bay of Biscay from Ushant to a landfall at Cape Finisterre (tIc «Norti Cape» in contemporary English parlance). Cape Prior or Cape Ortegal, thence to coast down to Cape St. Vincent