I have previously published articles in which I briefly talked about the organization of the Royal Army, Royal Guard and the military industry of Spain in 1808, when the devastating Iberian War began. But this entire cycle as a result turned out to be incomplete without information about another component of the Spanish armed forces of that time - the Royal Armada. The state of the Spanish fleet during all the Napoleonic wars up to 1808 will be considered, and a description of its strengths and weaknesses will be given. Of course, ships of the line will be considered as the main force of the fleet, for the fate of the war at sea at that time was decided only by them.
Real Armada Española
It is generally accepted that after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Spain itself ceased to represent some kind of serious force at sea. This, to put it mildly, is not so - without strong naval forces, Spain would not have been able to maintain contact with the colonies and protect them, and she did this for more than two hundred years after the defeat of the Armada. It would be appropriate to argue that Spain ceased to be the unequivocally dominant power at sea, but the power of her fleet was more than enough to remain among the leading maritime powers of Europe. However, like any other fleet, the Armada experienced a rise and fall at various times. The next rise of the fleet was outlined at the beginning of the 18th century.
When the Bourbons came to power in Spain, under Philip V, the active Bernardo Tinahera became the Secretary of the Fleet, and the famous Spanish engineer Jose Antonio Gastagneta had been working in the shipyards for several years. Spanish shipbuilding at that time was characterized by a large number of small shipyards [1] and complete chaos in terms of the organization of construction, which made construction more expensive and significantly complicated. Gastagneta, with the support of the king and the Secretary of the Navy, published in 1720 his work "Proporciones más esenciales para la fábrica de navíos y fragatas", which made recommendations on how the construction of a modern navy should be organized - how to store timber, how to use it, what design features of ships contribute to their speed or structural strength, etc. This led to the emergence in Spanish shipbuilding of the so-called "Gastagnet System", which determined the development of the fleet in the first half of the 18th century. And although Gastagneta soon died, ships were already built according to his system. The largest brainchild of his theory was the Royal Felipe, armed with 114 guns. However, this ship could not be called successful: launched in 1732, it was scrapped already in 1750, and not at all because of the poor quality of the building (although there were complaints about this as well).
From the middle of the 18th century, the English school of shipbuilding began to gain popularity among Spanish shipbuilders, which gained recognition at the beginning of the reign of King Carlos III. Its main supporter was the Spanish engineer Jorge Juan. Along with the construction of new shipyards, British specialists were invited, who, in cooperation with Spanish engineers, began to build ships according to the "English" system, also called the Jorge Juan system. These ships were characterized by heavy but sturdy hulls with relatively low maneuverability. Among these ships belonged including the famous "Santisima Trinidad". Simultaneously with the English school in Spain, the French began to establish itself. It became widespread thanks to the French engineer Gaultier, who had worked in Spain since 1765 and studied the system of Jorge Juan - he pointed out the critical shortcomings of the methods of harvesting and processing wood, and also made a list of recommendations for improving the design of ships. The main shortcomings of the "English" system, he called the low speed and maneuverability, as well as the too low location of the battery deck, which is why, at the slightest excitement, the gun porticos were flooded with water. On his recommendations, a number of ships were built, including the San Juan Nepomuseno, which was celebrated in the Battle of Trafalgar.
But the pinnacle of Spanish shipbuilding was the shipbuilding system composed by engineers Romero de Lando and Martin de Retamos. They combined all the best aspects of the three techniques - Gastagneta, Jorge Juan and Gaultier. A series of seven ships of the "San Idelfonso" class became a rather successful type of ships that combined strong weapons, good speed and maneuverability, and excellent seaworthiness. Three ships of the Montanes class became the development of the San Idelfonso, and were rightfully considered one of the best 74-gun ships in the world - with a strong hull and powerful armament, they were extremely fast and maneuverable, 2-4 knots surpassing all modern ships. battleships and sailing as well as a frigate. Finally, the Santa Ana-class battleships, armed with 112-120 guns and built in an amount of 8 units, became a significant achievement of Spanish shipbuilding. [2] … These ships were also distinguished by good maneuverability and impressive seaworthiness, even in stormy weather. It was these last battleships of Spain that Sir Horatio Nelson spoke of, calling them excellent. In addition, the San Jose, which is structurally close to Santa Ana, after being captured by the British during the Battle of San Vicente, served as a flagship for the British Admiral Duckworth for quite a long time, which is also evidence of the high performance of Spanish ships.
In total, from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th, more than two hundred battleships were built [3] … The year 1794 is considered to be the date of the maximum heyday of the Armada of Hispaniola - then it included 76 battleships and 51 frigates; by 1805, the number of Armada was reduced to 54 ships of the line and 37 frigates. Along with this, the ships built under Carlos III and shortly after his death became the last ships of those times when Spain was still something at sea. The title of the last battleship of the empire belongs to the "Argonaut", launched in 1794 in Ferrol. After that, Spain, ruled by the rag-king, the lustful queen and her lover Godoy, completely forgot about shipbuilding, for which there were no longer enough funds, and the Iberian War sentenced Spain to death as a maritime power for a long time.
Shipyards and artillery
At the beginning of the 18th century, Spanish shipbuilding consisted of a large number of small Royal shipyards scattered along the coast. The exact list of them, alas, is not known to me, because I did not dig so deeply, but from what I found, one can single out the shipyards Reales Astilleros de Falgote, Real Astillero de Santoña, Real Astillero de Guarnizo, Reales Astilleros de Esteiro, Real Carenero and the totality shipyards on the territory of the current city of Bilbao. A long time ago, in a distant, distant Galaxy, even under the Habsburgs in Spain, ships were built centrally, with a sufficiently high standardization and unification, which should have made construction cheaper and easier, but those days are long gone. The contracts were handed over to private firms, the work at the shipyards was done carelessly - slowly and of poor quality, while the cost of construction remained quite high. The initial reorganization of the existing shipbuilding under Philip V did not help either - small enterprises could not jump over their heads. Powerful shipbuilding centers were required, combining all the necessary infrastructure not only for the construction of ships, but also for timber harvesting, ship repair, modernization, fleet maintenance, etc.- in simple terms, it was required to build full-fledged shipbuilding arsenals.
The first such complex in Spain was the grandiose Cartagena arsenal, whose construction took as long as 50 years - from 1732 to 1782. During its construction, the labor of prisoners was actively used, and slaves were even brought from America - although slavery was prohibited on the territory of the metropolis for a long time (since the time of Isabella the Catholic). Despite the fact that the general work was completed only 50 years after the start of construction, the first large ship was laid here in 1751 ("Septentrion"). The second arsenal, the famous La Carraca near Cadiz, began to be built in 1752 on the basis of stunted local enterprises, and very quickly turned into a large industrial complex - the first battleship was laid here simultaneously with the beginning of construction. Finally, the third arsenal was Ferrolsky, also built on the basis of local small shipbuilding enterprises. The first large ship was laid down here in 1751. At all three arsenals, the organization of production met high standards, the construction of ships proceeded quickly enough, cheaply and, most importantly, high quality. Before that, Spain had to build ships in the colonies, or even order them abroad - from the middle of the 18th century, the Spanish fleet completely switched to self-sufficiency in the metropolis. By the end of the reign of King Carlos III, the power of shipbuilding in Spain had become such that the arsenals of Ferrol or Cartagena could build a frigate in a month and a half from the moment the order was issued - an excellent result for that time!
The armament of the Spanish fleet was supplied by the famous La Cavada, which I already talked about in the previous article. The main armament of Spanish ships at the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars were guns and carronades in caliber 36, 24, 12 and 8 pounds, as well as howitzers in caliber from 24 to 48 pounds. The popularity of carronades in the Spanish fleet was rather small - as far as I know, they were placed on ships in a fairly limited number, although there is unreliable information that the Santa Anu was completely re-equipped with these short-barreled guns before the Battle of Trafalgar. In general, the Spanish naval artillery was quite good, but in one thing it was seriously inferior to the British - if the Spaniards continued to use wick locks, then the inhabitants of foggy Albion had already completely switched to flint percussion, which were more reliable and simple. However, French ships of that time went into battle with the same matchlock gun locks. Another drawback is the low saturation of Spanish ships with carronades, which is why the overall rate of fire, which was already low, dropped even lower.
A little about the effectiveness of artillery
It is worth telling separately about the armament of ships and its effectiveness at that time, although all further reasoning will rather be "sofa analytics" than the truth in the first instance. The fact is that regarding the effectiveness of naval artillery during the Napoleonic Wars, there are two diametrically opposed points of view: that heavy guns shot through the ships, and that they did not pierce the thick wooden skin at all. According to my impression, after studying statistics and some sources, the impression can be concluded that both sides are mistaken, and at the same time, both are somewhat right.
The fact is that, according to Spanish sources, a 36-pound cannon, when fired with a full charge of gunpowder, under ideal conditions and for some average target (a wooden board made of ordinary wood, in one layer, with an average spacing of frames) pierced 65 cm of the side skin from a distance of a kilometer and 130cm from a pistol shot distance. Meanwhile, such ideal conditions in the battle between battleships were often simply absent - high quality material up to mahogany, plating in several layers, its structural reinforcement with additional internal linings, or even the simplest angles of inclination of the sides obtained relative to the trajectory of the projectile as a result of maneuvering could reduce Penetration of 36-pounder guns two, three or more times. But the skin of battleships of that time could be very, very thick! So, in "Santisima Trinidad" only the thickness of the outer skin made of very strong mahogany species reached 60 cm, which, together with the inner skin, which was at some distance from the outer one, gave the effect of spaced protection. As a result, the guns of SEVEN British battleships were working on the Santisima in the Battle of Trafalgar for several hours, but the ship did not sink, but was taken on board. From the holes received in the waterline area, the ship of the line was taking water, but only the storm that had begun finally sentenced him to death, otherwise the British would have been able to tow it to Gibraltar.
Of course, this is an extreme case, and the survivability of wooden ships of the line in that era was somewhat lower, but if you look at the general statistics of losses in more or less large sea battles of that time between ships of the line and compare the numbers of sweats and captures, it turns out that for every dead in a classic battle, the ship had 10-12 captured after the destruction of the upper decks, where the skin was usually somewhat weaker, and the demolition of all masts, which made it impossible for the ship to move. In such cases, usually the crew of a captured ship previously suffered noticeable losses due to wood chips flying in all directions on the upper decks, which acted no worse than fragments. At the same time, various carronades became much more useful weapons for such purposes - they were enough to break through the sides on the upper decks, and the high rate of fire made it possible to literally throw the enemy with cannonballs or buckshot. The active stake of the British Navy on carronades during the Napoleonic Wars was probably another reason for their victory at Trafalgar.
Personnel
The naval tradition in Spain was one of the oldest in Europe, and the training of sailors, in particular naval officers, has been put on stream since ancient times. So, in Spain for a long time there were naval academies, where officers were trained, the largest of which was the Academia de Guardias Marinas, located since 1769 in San Fernando, near Cadiz. All Spanish naval officers had regular naval practice, as did those sailors who remained on permanent naval service for many years. In this regard, the personnel of the Royal Armada were not inferior to the leading maritime powers of the world, although it is traditionally believed that its quality was below average at best. These high standards especially concerned officers who, in addition to professional selection, underwent "natural selection" when promoted - people who did not know how to earn the respect of a team were simply not allowed to high positions. However, there were also certain drawbacks - so, in some cases, simply inexperienced people, who somehow got a position, could command the ships: there were no restrictions for increasing the length of service in the Royal Armada.
Speaking about the quality of the commanding staff of the Royal Armada of Spain, one cannot but recall its two outstanding officers - Federico Gravina and Cosme de Churruca. In general, both of these people deserve a separate article, because the scale of their personality, military abilities and popularity among sailors significantly exceeded everything that is usually attributed to the Spanish admirals of that time. So, Gravina was highly appreciated by Napoleon, considering him a better commander than Villeneuve, and directly pointing out that if he commanded an allied squadron at Finisterre, they would have won the victory. He was an experienced officer who had gone through more than one war and had an important talent for the commander - organizational: he easily managed to organize large squadrons and turn them into, at least, but an interacting set of ships, which was even noted by King Carlos IV. Churruka was a bird of a slightly different flight, in something even higher - his scientific activity in America before the Napoleonic wars enjoyed such success and popularity that his highest qualities were recognized by both the French and the British. But what can I say - at one time Napoleon personally talked to him, who spoke well of the Spaniard after that! But not only this was strong Churruka - like Gravina, he was distinguished by outstanding organizational skills. After finishing his career as an explorer, he joined the navy, and his ships quickly went from disheveled to exemplary. Based on his own experience of working with teams, Churruka drew up plans for the modernization of the Armada - to improve the qualifications of personnel, to create an adequate combat training system, to create a unified weapons system for battleships, to improve ship discipline, which was traditionally lame among the Spaniards …
The battle of Trafalgar was the decline of the Spanish Armada, and the fate of its two best officers was very tragic. Both Gravina and Churruca opposed the withdrawal of the allied squadron from Cadiz, but Villeneuve insisted on his own, and the Spaniards had to come to terms with his decision. During the battle, Gravina was on the 112-gun "Principe de Asturias", was seriously wounded, but withdrew his ship and some others from the battle when it became clear that he was lost. On this Gravina did not calm down, and hastily repaired his ships, he sent them in pursuit of the British - to repulse the captured Spanish battleships. Alas, the impulse was almost fruitless - only one "Santa Ana" was repulsed, further actions were prevented by the beginning storm. Cosme de Churruca commanded the San Juan Nepomuseno in battle, which had a chance to fight six British ships. Churruka's actions in battle were brave, and his crew was probably the best of all the Spanish ships thanks to the talent of their commander, who brought up the necessary qualities in his crew. But in the midst of the battle, the brave Basque (Churruka was from the Basque Country) was blown off by a shell by a shell, and he soon died of blood loss. The surviving members of the ship instantly lost heart, and soon surrendered, when the ship was already badly beaten and lost the opportunity to continue resistance. He was mourned not only by his allies, but also by his enemies - he was a man of this magnitude. But not long before the Battle of Trafalgar, Churruka got married for the first time…. Federico Gravina briefly outlived him, dying from the effects of his injury at Trafalgar. The names of these two naval officers are still revered in Spain.
Starting for health, we end up for peace
Unfortunately, all of the above-mentioned good aspects of the Armada were covered by significant shortcomings. The biggest problem was the general low quality of training of sailors - in wartime, the overwhelming majority of them on ships turned out to be inexperienced recruits or generally random people. The reasons for this situation were closely intertwined with other reasons for the decline of the Armada, as a result of which four major points can be distinguished that sentenced the Spanish fleet.
… The fact is that under the Bourbons in the 18th century there was a redistribution of treasury expenditures - if under the Hapsburgs huge sums were spent on maintaining armies or outside expenses, then under the Bourbons, finances began to be invested in internal development. However, to get out of a long decline, and even begin to develop, it took a lot of money - and it was decided to save on the armed forces. If in the ground forces of that time the states of peace and wartime differed little (in Russia the difference was about 200 people per regiment, or in the region of 10%), then in Spain the staff of the regiment in peacetime and wartime differed by 2, 2 times! The regiment was replenished by recruiting new recruits and veterans who had previously been dismissed from service - but adequate deployment and training of these people took a significant amount of time. A similar situation developed in the navy - peacetime states were very different from military states, as a result of which, in the event of war, professional sailors "dissolve" against the background of a large number of recruits that were required for the full functioning of warships. This system still functioned somewhat under Carlos III, but every year under Carlos IV and Manuel Godoy, the savings only worsened - the Spanish treasury could not withstand both military costs and the huge subsidies that it was obliged to allocate to France. So, before the Battle of Trafalgar, many officers had not been paid their salaries for many months, although they used to receive money regularly. Moreover, there is evidence that putting the ships in order before the battle (meaning painting) some captains had to pay from their own wallet, since the treasury of the fleet did not have money for this, and many first-class ships of the line were already rotting for the same reason at the walls, left without carriages! Mediocre leaders and an alliance with France ruined the Spanish economy, and this could not but affect its fleet.
Judging by the information that I happened to see on the Internet, the quality of the recruits who got into the Armada was quite low. Some blame geography for this - they say that most of the recruits were recruited in the countryside and were illiterate, but the same alignment with recruits did not prevent the Russian Imperial Navy from having sufficiently well-trained personnel. Most likely, the reason was different - in the event of a war, the best people were taken into the army, a significant number of volunteers went there (including so as not to get into the fleet, because the army at least paid regularly), and the fleet had to deal with the remnants, and these were most often various vagrants, criminals and other low-quality human material. It cannot be said that, for example, the situation in the British Navy was better - everyone rowed there, but Great Britain did not have such a large army that competed with the Navy for human resources, in peacetime the crews were not reduced to the very minimum, and the combat training of personnel was still better there - which brings us to the next point.
If the British navy scammed its crews to the fullest (with rare exceptions), then combat training in the Spanish navy, it seems, was minimized in wartime. But what is there - even in peacetime, Spanish professional sailors could really be masters of their craft in terms of navigation, but they practically did not have experience in handling naval artillery. This was further aggravated by the dilution of this professional unit with recruits in case of war, which led to a truly catastrophic result - in the Battle of Trafalgar, for each shot from the Spanish 36-pounder cannon, the British could respond with two or three of the guns of the same caliber [4] … The Spanish naval officers also understood this, but due to the inertia of the thinking of the headquarters and the economy in the navy, the combat firing plan aimed at improving the quality of the training of gun servants proposed by Churruka was adopted only in 1803, but was never implemented until the Battle of Trafalgar! There were also problems of fusion - in peacetime, the main service of ships took place in splendid isolation, rarely in small formations. When, for a big war, it was necessary to act as part of numerous squadrons, almost any command maneuver turned into an insurmountable task, and the Spanish ships, as a result, “went like a herd”. This shortcoming was also pointed out by Churruk, but who listened to him in 1803-1805….
… In the process of studying the organization of the army and navy of Spain in the 18th - early 19th centuries, you very quickly begin to get confused and surprised, because where there was a clear structure in Russia, Prussia or France, real chaos was created in Spain, albeit as organized as possible. This was expressed in different ways, and could be closely related to the peculiarities of the Spanish mentality - for example, Spanish soldiers and sailors have always been sensitive to the quality of the command staff: if the commander did not enjoy their respect, then discipline fell below the plinth, like combat effectiveness. But with the proper motivation and a commander from the category of "servant to the king, father to soldiers", the same Spanish soldiers and sailors could work wonders of courage and fortitude. Discipline in general was a problematic place for the Spaniards - here, perhaps, the peculiarities of the mentality of the Spaniards also affected. The salary situation did not at all contribute to an increase in this very discipline - the sailors on the ships were paid less than the soldiers in the regiments, which also caused the problem of desertion from the fleet of people, including experienced professionals. The mess also touched upon organizational issues - for example, there was a practice, in the event of a shortage of gun servants on a ship, to remove artillerymen from coastal batteries, or even "borrow" them from the active army. Needless to say, finding themselves on an unfamiliar ship and at unfamiliar guns, these people could not be compared with the English professionals, even if these Spanish gunners were masters of their craft on land?
Of course, these are all just the most general estimates, but in total they would give exactly the effect that was obtained in reality - first of all, bad wartime footage did not allow realizing the good sides of the Royal Armada, and other reasons, to which you can also add embezzlement in rear structures, especially developed under Carlos IV, only exacerbated the situation. As a result of all this, Spain, despite all the efforts under Carlos III, still lost its sea power. After the Battle of Trafalgar, the fleet in Spain was completely forgotten, and during the years of the Iberian War there was simply no time for it - and 20 years after the famous battle in which Nelson, Gravina and Churruka died, the Armada practically disappeared from the seas and oceans.
Notes (edit)
1) I found mentions of at least five royal shipyards on the shores of Vizcaya, Asturias and Galicia; thus, the theses expressed by some about the absence of shipbuilding in Spain itself are groundless.
2) Some sources call the number 9, but most likely it is wrong.
3) For comparison: in Great Britain, only by force of large shipyards during the same time, 261 ships of the line were built.
4) However, the secret of the high rate of fire of the British also lies in the accumulation of gunpowder and cannonballs for the first shots at the beginning of the battle - this increased the risk of the ship to take off into the air or at least suffer serious losses from the explosion of the stock of "first shots", but on the other hand, it significantly reduced time to reload guns due to the absence of the need to drag ammunition from the cellars.
