The 30th of May of 1588, the Spanish Armada left towards English waters from Lisbon, Portugal, after the Pope had blessed the attack. Almost two months later, the Spaniards arrived to the English Channel, where they fought for a whole week. Nevertheless, the English avoided close-in combat as the Spanish desired, and preferred using their long-range cannons to heavily damage the Armada. The ships under the Duke’s leadership had nothing to do against them, since they owned big galleons with short-range, and slow rechargeable cannons. The Duke of Parma, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, was supposed to pull together 30,000 soldiers and cross the channel into England with the Spanish protection. However, Dutch gunboats did not allow them to meet, which predestined the Spaniards to failure; besides, even if the Dutch moved out of the way, they could not have met because the Duke of Parma did not show up.
As the Armada was so large and slow, the English, commanded by Lord Howard and Francis Drake, decided to use an old trick. On the 29th of July, the English sent off eight of their own ships upwind, filled with gunpowder set on fire directed in the way of the Armada. This incident happened at night with the Spanish anchored at Calais. Seeing the ships on fire coming, they cut their anchor lines to escape the flames, which worked, since they were barely able to flee from the English vessels, however, from then on the Spanish were at the mercy of the winds. This supposed that they were unable to keep off the rocks, and dozens of ships sank. Sixty galleons were attacked later that morning by an equal number of warships. The Spaniards lost two galleons, and others were severely harmed during that assault (Burke).
The crippled Armada fled towards the North Sea, and tried to return to Spain sailing around the British islands. A heavy tempest wrecked many of the Spanish ships off Ireland’s coast, which supposed that only just over half the ships sent by the Spaniards (67) reached Spain on the 23rd of September of the same year. Most of the remaining ships were in poor conditions, as well as the surviving soldiers and sailors. Spain had lost 63 ships, and 20,000 men, while England had only lost the eight ships that were set on fire deliberately plus 100 men (Goldman).
The question still remains: How could England crush the Spanish Armada? There are quite a number of reasons for it. First of all, and the most important was the communication. The messenger ships travelled at the same speed as the Armada, so they were nearly useless. Another great mistake that made the Spanish fail was the poor timing of the Duke of Parma, who did not show up. The Armada had received notice that Parma’s army was not ready when they were at Calais; however modern research shows that the army would have been ready in just 5 hours but the Armada did not know this because of Parma's plan to keep it a secret (The Spanish…). Unfortunately it did not just fool the English; it fooled the Spanish as well. While the Spanish were anchored at Calais they were surprised by the English, which was a great movement since, if the Spanish had met the Duke’s troops, there would have been no way for them to beat the Armada.
Many people died during the battle between England and Spain, however, the number is not accurately known. Even though most of the deaths were casualties of war, some of those were also due to diseases, or drowning. During the fight with the English, the Spanish lost almost half its fleet. Things got even worse after the battle, though Spain did not officially lose it, their kingdom was in a great financial problem. Despite the fact that many people think Spain slipped into an immediate decline, there are motives to believe that Spain was even more powerful after the defeat than before, since they recovered more riches from the colonies than in any other previous fifteen-year period (Goldman).
It was in 1603 when its great decline started and England became a major power in Europe. Even though Spain looked towards battles very confidently, they always ended up defeated, which hurt them greatly. This added to the continuous decline of the Spanish economy, production, and common well-being. It became obvious that Spain was not anymore such a powerful country as it used to be. There were permanent revolts by the citizens against its government. Nowadays, Spain is a popular country, but not nearly as influential and successful as they once were. The battle of the Spanish “Invincible” Armada against the English will forever remain as one of the most popular naval wars of all time.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burke, John. History Of England. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1976.
Goldman, Steve. “The Defeat Of The Spanish Armada.” The History Buff Articles. 24 November 2002 <http://www.historybuff.com/library/refspain.html>
Mazour, Anatole G. and John M. Peoples. World History People and Nations. United States of America: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1993.
Shenkman, Richard. “The Defeat of the Spanish Armada.” Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths Of World History. New York: Harper Collins, 1993. <>.
The History of the Spanish Armada: (1588). 18 November 2002 <>
The Spanish Armada. 20 November 2002 <http://tbls.hypermart.net/history/1588armada/>