The English fleet had the resource of retiring to its own harbours, but there was no such escape for the Spaniards. There was no port of their own available for the heavy ships nearer than the Bay of Biscay. Parma did indeed advise the duke to betake himself to the free city of Hamburg, where, as he was well provided with money, he would have no difficulty in finding stores, and from whence he could issue later on for the purpose either of renewing the attack on England, or of co-operating in a serious effort to reduce Holland and Zeeland. Whatever the worth of the advice may have been, and whether it was physically practicable or not, the Duke of Medina Sidonia was in no condition to act upon it. He had become completely cowed. Indeed, he had just had a demonstration of the utter unfitness of his fleet for the work his master the king had sent him to perform. The battle of Gravelines was followed by strong breezes, for they do not seem to have attained to the dignity of a storm, from the S. and S.W. Under the impulse of these winds, the heavier ships of the Armada began to drift on the shallows of the coast of Zeeland. By the confession of the Spaniards, their vessels were wholly at the mercy of the wind and the currents. They drifted along quite unable to help themselves, and only a lucky shift of the wind saved them from going ashore. When the wind did turn to a point more favourable to them, the Spanish ships, still very little diminished in number, but entirely broken in spirit, straggled out into the North Sea, and then, by the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, all stood to the northward for the purpose of making their way back to Spain by the west of the British Isles.
When the Armada was seen to be in retreat, Howard told off Lord Henry Seymour to remain in the Downs for the purpose of operating with Justinus of Nassau in the blockade of Parma's ports. He himself followed the Spaniards as far north as the Firth of Forth. That he made no attack upon them, shows either that his own vessels were wholly destitute of stores, or that the enemy still inspired him with an amount of respect not justified by their real condition. At the Firth of Forth, Howard left the enemy and returned to the mouth of the Thames. For a time there was a belief that the Duke of Parma might still sally out, and there was even in the opinion of some of our leaders a fear that the Armada might return. It was not, indeed, until months afterwards that the world began to know what had been the fate of the King of Spain's great fleet. It had stood to the north until the pilots, by whose advice the Duke of Medina Sidonia acted, thought it safe to turn to the west, and up to this period it had apparently not suffered much. Nine vessels had in all been lost by capture or abandonment to the enemy. But on the way home fifty-four perished by shipwreck. Almost from the very day in which the galleons and _urcas_ of the King of Spain turned the north of Scotland on their way home, they were subjected to a succession of storms of extraordinary violence for the season of the year. Being ill provided with pilots and charts, as well as essentially unseaworthy, they were quite unable to struggle with the violence of the weather. Nineteen vessels were wrecked on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Those of the Spaniards who were wrecked within the dominions of Queen Elizabeth were massacred by orders of her officers, many of them being put to death in cold blood, after they had been received to quarter. About one-half of the King of Spain's ships were lost. Those which reached his ports were almost unmanned, for the scurvy broke out during the miseries of the return home, and, as the provisions were exhausted, the crews died from actual starvation. Few of the leaders lived to return home. Alonso de Leiva perished in the wreck of the _Rata_. Oquendo and Martinez de Recalde did indeed live to cast anchor in Spanish waters, but they died almost immediately afterwards from the effect of the sufferings they had endured, and the shame of the great disaster. The Duke of Medina Sidonia spent his time, while returning to Spain, sitting in his cabin with his face buried in his hands, in complete prostration and stupor, while Diego Flores and Don Francisco de Bobadilla carried on the duties of commander. The duke had left Spain a very prosperous gentleman; he returned a white-haired old man.