Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife ( 1657 ) The Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife was a military operation in the Anglo - Spanish War ( 1654 – 1660 ) in which an English fleet under Admiral Robert Blake attacked a Spanish treasure fleet that had already landed the treasure at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands . Most of the Spanish merchantmen were scuttled and the remainder were burnt by the English . Background . England had decided to support France in her war in the Low Countries with the Spanish . War was openly declared in October 1655 and endorsed when the Second Protectorate Parliament assembled the following year . One of the prime enterprises was the blockade of Cadiz , which had not previously been attempted on such a scale . Robert Blake was to be in charge and also to come up with methods that he had used in his previous encounters with the Dutch and Barbary pirates . Blake kept the fleet at sea throughout an entire winter in order to maintain the blockade . A further six ships were sent from England as reinforcements towards the end of 1656 , including the " George " , which became Blake ' s flagship . In February 1657 , Blake received intelligence that the convoy from Mexico was on its way across the Atlantic . Although his captains wanted to search for the Spanish galleon s immediately , Blake refused to divide his forces and waited until victualling ships from England arrived to re - provision his fleet at the end of March . In the meantime a Spanish convoy was destroyed by one of Blake ' s captains : Richard Stayner . After this Blake ( with only two ships to watch Cadiz ) , sailed from Cadiz Bay on 13 April 1657 to attack the plate fleet , which had docked at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands to await an escort to Spain . Blake ' s fleet arrived off Santa Cruz on 19 April . Santa Cruz lies in a deeply indented bay and the harbour was defended by a castle armed with forty guns and a number of smaller forts connected by a triple line of breastworks to shelter musketeers . In an operation similar to the raid on the Barbary pirates of Porto Farina in Tunisia in 1655 , Blake planned to send twelve frigates under the command of ( now ) Rear - Admiral Stayner in the " Speaker " into the harbour to attack the galleons while he followed in the " George " with the rest of the fleet to bombard the shore batteries . Battle . The attack began at 9 o ' clock in the morning of 20 April . Stayner ' s division manoeuvred alongside the Spanish ships , which protected the English ships to some extent from the guns of the castle and forts . No shot was fired from the English ships until they had moved into position and dropped anchor . Blake saw what the Spanish had not ; that the six galleons masked the fire of the other ten ships . While the frigates attacked the galleons , Blake ' s heavier warships sailed into the harbour to bombard the shore defences . Blake ordered that no prizes were to be taken ; the Spanish fleet was to be utterly destroyed . Most of the Spanish fleet , made up of smaller armed merchantmen and were quickly silenced by the superior gunnery of Stayner ' s warships . The two great galleons fought on for several hours . Blake ' s division cleared the breastworks and smaller forts ; smoke from the gunfire and burning ships worked to the advantage of the English by obscuring their ships from the Spanish batteries . Around noon , the flagship of the Spanish admiral Don Diego de Egues caught fire ; shortly afterwards it was destroyed when the powder magazine exploded . English sailors took to boats to board Spanish ships and set them on fire . By 3 o ' clock in the afternoon , all sixteen Spanish ships in the harbour were sunk , surrendered or ablaze . Contrary to orders , the " Swiftsure " and four other frigates each took a surrendered ship as a prize and attempted to tow it out of the harbour . Blake sent peremptory orders that the prizes were to be burnt . He had to repeat his order three times before the reluctant captains obeyed . Having achieved its objective of destroying the Spanish vessels , the English fleet was faced with the hazardous task of withdrawing from Santa Cruz harbour under continuing fire from the forts . According to accounts the wind miraculously shifted from the north - east to the south - west at exactly the right moment to carry Blake ' s ships out of the harbour ; however , this story is probably based upon a misunderstanding of a report pertaining to general weather conditions on the voyage as a whole . The English fleet worked its way back out to the open sea by warping out , or hauling on anchor ropes , a tactic Blake had introduced during the raid on Porto Farina . The " Speaker " , which was the first ship to enter the harbour and last to leave , had been badly damaged , but no English ships were lost in the battle . Aftermath . The Spanish treasure from Mexico had been unloaded and secured ashore . Blake was unable to seize it but it was also temporarily unavailable to the government in Madrid . Having had no more than 48 men killed and 120 wounded , Blake ' s victory established England ' s reputation as a leading European naval power . News of the victory reached England the following month . On 28 May , Parliament voted to reward Blake with a jewel worth £500 , which was equivalent to the reward voted to General Thomas Fairfax for his victory at the Battle of Naseby in 1645 . Richard Stayner was knighted by Oliver Cromwell . Blake received orders to return home in June . He made one further voyage to Salé in Morocco , where he succeeded in concluding a treaty to secure the release of English slaves . He returned to Cadiz in mid - July and handed command of the fleet to his flag captain , John Stoakes . Leaving nineteen ships to maintain the blockade , Blake sailed for England with eleven ships most in need of repair . However , Blake ' s health was in terminal decline . Worn out by his years of campaigning , he died aboard his flagship the " George " on 7 August 1657 as his fleet approached Plymouth Sound . Ships involved . Blake ' s fleet comprised 23 vessels :