Spanish Armada

Also known as the Great and Most Fortunate Navy, the Spanish Armada was a grand fleet of warships sent by Spain in 1588 to attack England. Spain's goal was to end English interference in the Spanishcontrolled Low Countries, and return the English kingdom to the Catholic fold. Philip II, the husband of the late queen Mary I of England, saw the return of the Protestant Church under Queen Elizabeth as a mortal threat to the Catholic Church, which he staunchly defended, and a challenge to Spanish domination in the Netherlands. He sent the Armada under the command of the Duke of Medina Sedonia, whose orders were to bring Spanish soldiers from the Low Countries to the vicinity of London, where a direct threat to the city would change English minds about supporting revolts against Spanish rule in the Netherlands. A secondary aim of the Spanish Armada was to end English interference with Spain's colonial empire in the New World.

In the spring of 1588 the Armada set sail with 130 ships, eight thousand sailors, and eighteen thousand soldiers. In the meantime England was fully informed of Spanish intentions through a network of spies in the Spanish royal court. On July 19 the Armada arrived in the English Channel, intending to rendezvous with a company of twenty thousand Spanish infantry on the continent. An English battle fleet of 55 ships immediately set out from the port of Plymouth, engaging the Armada at skirmishes at Eddystone and Portland. When the Spaniards took harbor at the Isle of Wight, the English commander Sir Francis Drake attacked, chasing the Armada out of the Channel. After passing the southern English coast the Spanish anchored off the port of Calais, where the English attacked with fireships. Greatly fearing these dangerous ships that were packed with explosives and gunpowder, the Spanish scattered from Calais and sailed north to Gravelines, prepared to rendezvous with the Spanish infantry under the Duke of Parma.

At Gravelines, the faster and more maneuverable English ships dodged the heavy Spanish cannons that were used ineffectively by the Armada, and stayed well out of grappling range in order to avoid hand-to-hand fighting. Several Spanish ships were lost, and the Armada retreated from the coast under strong northwesterly winds. With the threat of a land invasion thwarted, the English shadowed the Armada as it sailed up the eastern coast of England, then attempted a return home via the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. With food and water running low, the Spanish commander ran into a heavy storm that destroyed 24 of his ships off the western coast of Ireland. Hundreds of sailors were drowned or captured after swimming to land, where the Irish—always hostile to English power—gave some of them food and shelter.

As the Spanish fleet limped home, the English gathered an armada of their own and prepared for a counterattack. This expedition failed, but the defeat of the Spanish Armada gave a boost to the Protestant cause in Europe and to the prestige of Queen Elizabeth, who at a crucial moment had rallied her country's troops with a stirring speech. England continued its support of the rebellion in the Low Countries and also supported the efforts of privateers and its navy against Spanish interests in the New World.

See Also: Drake, Sir Francis; Elizabeth I