Armada, Spanish. The invasion fleet sent against England by Philip II of Spain in July 1588 comprised some 138 vessels (including warships, ancillary craft, and requisitioned transports), perhaps 7,000 seamen, and 17,000 soldiers, and siege equipment for use in England. The number of soldiers would be doubled once the forces of the duke of Parma in Flanders were embarked in the Armada at Calais for passage to England. The English naval forces comprised 34 royal warships and some 170 privately owned ships, preponderantly drawn from East Anglia and Kent. Variable in quality, these ships did have a national identity, whereas the Armada included ships from Portugal, Naples/Sicily, Venice, Ragusa, and north Germany. Quite apart from the unmanageable scale of the Armada's preparation and the Spanish government's financial weakness, the quality of English guns and their handling were of an order with which the Spaniards could not compete. Yet the English, in their turn, could not compete with Spanish soldiery if it came to hand-to-hand fighting at sea, or in a land campaign. Hence the English fleet, under Lord Howard of Effingham's overall command out of Plymouth, and including Lord Henry Seymour's patrols in the Dover Straits, looked to its more manœuvrable ships and more effective fire-power to avoid being grappled by the enemy.

Philip II's purposes behind the Armada were to end English attacks on Spain's commerce with her American dominions, to assert his sovereignty in Flanders, which Elizabeth had been impugning since 1585, and, above all, to bring heretic England back into the fold of Rome. He had himself a claim to Elizabeth's crown which, if success was granted to the enterprise, Philip would use in the best interests of Spain and the true faith. On the English side the issues were the defence of a protestant realm that included catholic Ireland, vigilance against the threat posed by Spanish power in Flanders, and the protection of Elizabeth's person and the ‘Englishness’ of her queenship.

Under the command of the duke of Medina-Sidonia, not a professional commander but experienced in fleet logistics, the Armada took three weeks to make Corunna from Lisbon. From the Lizard Point in Cornwall on 29 July its disciplined crescent formation was only twice broken by English forces (two of its ships were lost) before it reached Calais on 6 August. Here Parma had failed to prepare his troops, and had critically underrated Dutch naval forces, which sealed off his sea exits. The Armada's congestion made it vulnerable to Howard's fireship attack on the night of 7 August, and on the following day there was heavy Spanish loss of life in a sustained battle off Gravelines. The shoaling coast and southerlies of increasing strength prevented Medina-Sidonia from standing in again for Calais, and deteriorating weather drove a dispersed Armada up the North Sea, pursued by Howard whose ordnance, and the health of his crews, were now spent. Driven round Scotland and Ireland, in unseasonably severe weather, two-thirds of the Armada were brilliantly navigated back home, but upwards of 30 ships were lost in the Hebrides and western Ireland. Some 11,000 Spaniards may have died. Although the elements had principally saved England, the campaign brought her high international repute, while Spain proved she could place a huge naval force in northern latitudes. The campaign's outcome saw neither state radically altering its policies.

David Denis Aldridge