In the summer of 1545, an invasion armada of more than two hundred ships, carrying as many as sixty thousand men, appeared in the English Channel and descended upon the Isle of Wight. "In power of offense it was scarcely, if at all, inferior to the Invincible Armada" that appeared in the Channel forty-three years later. The fleet landed a force on the Isle of Wight, the last time in history that a true invasion force would ever set foot on English soil. Once ashore, the modern and powerful French army won some successes against the English militia defenders. In one rout, an English captain fleeing on foot French advance on foot was heard to cry out "a hundred pounds for a horse!" just before he was overtaken--eerily foreshadowing a line that William Shakespeare would later put in the mouth of Richard III.
The invasion of the Isle of Wight, though momentous in its way as the last episode of its kind, was short-lived, and it failed for a reason that more profoundly foreshadowed things to come. The Isle of Wight lies just opposite the English naval base of Portsmouth, and in Portsmouth Harbor waited the English Royal Navy. Then as now, no amphibious operation could safely be carried forward in the face of a hostile "fleet in being," so the French troops were withdrawn from the island, and the French fleet advanced into the Solent, the body of water between the island and the English mainland. On the morning of July 20, 1545, as King Henry VIII looked on from the shore, the English fleet got underway to meet it.
The action that followed was no glorious English victory. The engagement itself never became more than a skirmish, and the only major loss on either side was the English carrack Mary Rose, which capsized due to mishandling by its own crew. Most of the four hundred or more men aboard went down with her. Nevertheless, the French fleet withdrew. Several weeks later, the two fleets again met, this time in the open wa...