Note 17 — THE YEAR AFTER THE ARMADA
Reading edition
On the eve of departure Norris and Drake officially told the Council that the total number of all sorts was 23,375. Captain Fenner, Drake's vice-admiral, gives the number as 21,000 (Bacon Papers). Captain Baillie, of the Mary German, in a letter to Lord Shrewsbury says the landsmen alone were 20,000; whilst Drake himself, in one of his many letters begging for supplies, says, "20,000 men cannot be kept for a trifle."
Camden, the historian, speaks of 12,500 soldiers, and Speed, following Pricket's tract, puts the number of landsmen at 11,000 and mariners at 2,500. There is a letter in the British Museum from one of the Portuguese nobles (Count de Portalegre) to Philip II., in which the army before Lisbon is spoken of as 12,000 men; and the Spanish diarist whose MS. I have mentioned says 16,000 men-at-arms left England and very few sailors. The terrible mortality from sickness, &c., and the comparatively small number that came back made English writers of the time anxious to minimise the disaster by underrating the numbers of the expedition.