The French Armada

 6-28 July 1545: The French Armada

Spies sent out by King Henry alerted him to plans by Francis I to send his whole armada - 300 ships and twenty-four galleys - from Dieppe and Newhaven to disembark soldiers on the south coast and the Isle of Wight while a land army harasses Boulogne. By 14 July, the king had arrived at Portsmouth to oversee the defence of his realm. Four days later, twenty-two French galleys anchored at St Helen's Point off the Isle of Wight, facing Portsmouth Haven with over 100 sail in sight behind them, landed 2,000 men. The calm weather was advantageous to the galleys, which came abroad at every tide, complacently shooting their ordnance at the becalmed English fleet.

Without warning a gale arose. As the waves rose the galleys could 'not endure the rage of the seas'. English ships, at last under sail, set out towards them shooting. At shipmasters' directions, the English fleet was told to sail directly towards the French ships, forcing them to loose anchors so that, with the 'strainable wind' from the west, they would not be able to reach the Isle of Wight again. As the English ships manoeuvred, the Mary Rose, laden with much ordnance and with low ports left open, turned and the water entered her. She suddenly sank.

All the men, save forty, were drowned including Captain Sir George Carew.
Despite the loss of the Mary Rose, so many Frenchmen were slain or driven back into the sea and drowned that by 24 July the coast was clear of Frenchmen. The French navy departed eastwards, but with the beacons fired the men of the counties came to the coast so thick that the French could not land anywhere; wherever they sailed they saw men ever ready to receive them. Eventually, they had to return to France.

Source ~ by Jan-Marie Knights
‘The Tudor Socialite: A Social Calendar of Tudor Life’