Entry taken from the book The Plantagenets
Edward III is probably one of the best kings England has ever had in her history. He won the right to govern when he was barely seventeen years old, he was the initiator of the Hundred Years' War, he won the crucial battles of Crécy and Poitiers, he managed (not without effort) to solve many of the problems that his predecessors had with the nobles and the forces of the English Parliament and only illness prevented his eldest son Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, from successfully continuing his enterprises on French soil.
But, although Edward III died in 1377, there was an episode that almost cost him and his son their lives more than a quarter of a century before; specifically on August 29, 1350. In those years it was common for Castilian ships to travel across the English Channel to Flanders to trade with the wool of the Castilian sheep. It was also common for Edward III to receive complaints from his subjects in which it was noted that the Castilian ships used to take advantage of these trips to attack the English ships they encountered. In addition, rumors had reached the English king that the new Castilian king, Pedro I, was preparing an invasion of England.
Determined to put an end to both threats, on the indicated date of August 29, 1350, Edward III personally led a fleet of fifty English ships that boarded a group of twenty Castilian vessels off the coast of Winchelsea. He was accompanied by his son the Black Prince and the Earls of Lancaster, Northampton and Warwick.
What followed was a fierce and bloody naval battle. The limited technical means of the time did not allow any other tactic than engaging in hand-to-hand combat with enemy ships, boarding them and fighting on the decks of each other. The ship of the English king was attacked by the commanding galley of the Castilian fleet, which launched a rain of arrows and metal bars on the vessel of Edward III, which began to sink. The monarch was about to drown and had to board the Castilian ship to avoid being defeated.
The Black Prince's ship also suffered from the Castilian attack and the heir had to be rescued by the Earl of Lancaster. Another of the English vessels, in which most of the monarch's entourage was travelling, was attacked by the Castilians and only the presence of mind of one of its occupants, who cut the rope that united both ships, prevented a significant number of English nobles were taken prisoner by the Spanish.
If there is a battle in which the term pyrrhic victory is perfect to describe what happened, that is without a doubt the naval battle of Winchelsea. The English ended up being the winners (they captured a good part of the Castilian ships, destroyed the rest and ended up throwing hundreds of Castilian sailors into the sea who ended up drowning), but the cost could have been enormous. If Edward III and his eldest son had not been saved from the sinking of their ships, as happened to other English ships, the chaos that would have occurred in the British kingdom due to the power vacuum would have been enormous.
The Battle of Winchelsea went down in history with the French name of Les Espagnols sur mer, in recognition of the brave behavior of the members of the Castilian fleet who, clearly outnumbered, were able to put the cream of the English aristocracy in such serious trouble.
Interestingly, Edward III of England and Pedro I of Castile ended up being allies in the civil war for the Castilian throne that the latter held with his half-brother Enrique de Trastámara and two sons of the English king they married two daughters of the Castilian king… but that is another story. Part of it has already been told on the blog in the entries dedicated to Catherine of Lancaster and Isabella of Castile.
Font| Dan Jones. The Plantagenets, the kings who made England.