American Minute with Bill Federer
The Sinking of Invincible Spanish Armada
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S
pain led the
Holy League
to defeat the
Ottoman Turkish Navy
at the
Battle of Lepanto
near Corinth, Greece, in 1571.
Hilaire Belloc
wrote in
The Great Heresies
(1938):
"This violent Mohammedan pressure on Christendom from the East made a bid for success by sea as well as by land.
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... The last great
Turkish
organization working now from the conquered capital of Constantinople,
proposed to cross the Adriatic, to attack Italy by sea
and ultimately to recover all that had been lost in the Western Mediterranean.
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... There was one critical moment when it looked as though the scheme would succeed.
A huge Mohammedan armada
fought at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth against the
Christian fleet
at
Lepanto.
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... The Christians won that naval action
and the
Western Mediterranean was saved.
But it was a very close thing, and the name of
Lepanto
should remain in the minds of all men with a sense of history as
one of the half dozen great names in the history of the Christian world."
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Funded by gold from the New World, the Spanish navy helped save Western Civilization from being overrun by Islam, but it declined to follow up on the victory of
Lepanto.
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Instead of freeing Mediterranean coasts and islands from Ottoman control, Spain decided to crush the
Reformation in
Holland and
England.
In 1572, the Spain sent the
Iron Duke of Alba to subdue
Antwerp and surrounding
Dutch cities, killing thousands, in what is called
"The Spanish Furies," 1572-1576.
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In 1588,
King Philip of Spain
was the most powerful leader in the world, after whom the
Philippines
were named.
On MAY 19, 1588, he sent his
invincible Spanish Armada
to invade
England.
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Consisting of
130 ships
with
1,500 brass guns
and
1,000 iron guns,
carrying
8,000 sailors
and
18,000 soldiers,
they were planning on picking up another
30,000 more soldiers
from the Spanish Netherlands.
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Spain's Dunkirk Privateers
raided
English
and
Dutch ships.
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Queen Elizabeth
put on her armor and rallied England with
her most famous speech,
August 9, 1588:
"Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself, that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects ...
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... I am come amongst you ... resolved, in the midst and heat of battle, to live or die amongst you all -- to lay down for my God, and for my kingdoms, and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust.
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... I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king -- and of a King of England too,
and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm ...
By ... your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people."
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Queen Elizabeth
relied on
Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Martin Frobisher
and
Lord Howard of Effingham,
whose smaller, faster vessels were able to elude the
enormous Spanish galleons
which attacked at port of Plymouth, England.
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After Spain's initial attacks, the
English counter-attacked.
The
Spanish Armada regrouped
on the other side of the English Channel near the
French port of Calais.
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The fast
flyboats
of
Dutch Admiral Justinus van Nassau
captured two
Spanish galleons,
whose deep-drafts put them at a disadvantage in shallow waters.
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With weather getting tempestuous and with no deep water port, the
Spanish Armada anchored
off the coast in a tightly-packed defensive crescent formation.
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At midnight, July 28, 1588,
Sir Francis Drake
set
8 ships on fire
and drifted them downwind
toward the Spanish Armada.
In a panic,
Spanish ships
cut their
anchor cables
and drifted apart.
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The English then attacked in the
Battle of Gravelines,
July 29, 1588.
Hurricane force winds and currents
drove the fight north toward
Scotland.
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As the
Armada
tried sailing on the
west side of Scotland and Ireland
, intense winds
dashed their ships against the rocks.
In all the
Spanish Armada
suffered
56 ships wrecked, sunk or captured,
10 ships scuttled,
and over
20,000 dead
from battle, storms and disease.
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When
King Philip II of Spain
learned of the loss, he exclaimed:
"I sent the Armada against men, not God's winds and waves".
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A
coin
minted in
Holland in 1588
had engraved on one side
Spanish ships sinking
and on the other side men kneeling under the inscription
"Man Proposeth, God Disposeth."
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Prior to the attack of the Spanish Armada, Sir Walter Raleigh
had sent settlers in 1584 to settle
Roanoke Island, Virginia.
The seriousness of the Spanish attack resulted in the colony being neglected,
and no supplies were sent to the colony for years.
After the battle, when ships finally returned to the colony in 1590, they found it completely abandoned, thus it is referred to as
"The Lost Colony."
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In 1601,
King Philip III
tried
one last time
to conquer the British Isles.
He sent Spain's navy to the southern shores of Ireland and landed thousands of Spanish troops.
Their intention was to persuade the Irish into joining them in an attack of England.
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Spanish and Irish Catholics
were defeated at the
Battle of Kinsale.
The victorious
Protestant English responded by selling into slavery thousands of the Irish who had sided with Spain.
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Woodrow Wilson
wrote of the
Spanish Armada
in
History of the American People
(1902, Vol. 1, Ch 1):
"For
England
the
end of Spain's powe
r was marked by
the destruction of the Armada,
and the consequent dashing of all the ambitious schemes that had been put aboard the imposing fleet at Lisbon ...
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The great
Armada
came ...
Spain recognized in the smartly handled craft which beat her clumsy galleons up the Channel the power that would some day drive her from the seas.
Her hopes went to pieces with that proud fleet, before English skill and prowess and pitiless sea-weather."
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Describing the English ships,
Theodore Roosevelt
and
Henry Cabot Lodge
wrote in Hero Tales From American History (1895):
"The ships ... which ... won glory in the War of 1812 were essentially like those with which
Drake and Hawkins and Frobisher
had harried the
Spanish armadas
two centuries and a half earlier.
They were wooden sailing-vessels, carrying many guns mounted in broadside."
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Woodrow Wilso
n continued, giving background details:
"Henry VIII
interested himself in improved methods of
ship-building;
and when he had time to think of it he encouraged instruction in seamanship and navigation; but he built no navy.
He even left the English coasts without adequate police, and suffered his subjects to defend themselves as best they might against the pirates who infested the seas not only, but came once and again to cut vessels out of port in England's own waters.
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... Many public ships, it is true, had been built before the Armada came, and fine craft they were; but they were not enough.
There was no real navy in the modern sense. The fleet which chased the Spaniards up the Channel was a volunteer fleet.
Merchants had learned to defend their own cargoes. They built fighting craft of their own to keep their coasts and harbors free of pirates, and to carry their goods over sea.
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... They sought their fortunes as they pleased abroad, the crown annoying them with no inquiry to embarrass their search for Spanish treasure ships, or their trade in pirated linens and silks.
It was this self-helping race of Englishmen ..."
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Woodrow Wilson
added:
"Devonshire had the great harbor ... where a whole race of venturesome and hardy fishermen were nurtured.
All the great sea names of the Elizabethan age belong to it.
Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, and the Gilberts were all Devonshire men; and it was from Plymouth that the fleet went out which beat the great Armada on its way to shipwreck in the north."
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
wjfederer@gmail.com
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The sinking of the
Spanish Armada
broke Spain's monopoly of the New World, held since the time of Columbus, and opened up a rush of European countries staking their claim in North America.
Adam Smith
wrote in The Wealth of Nations, 1776:
"The Spaniards,
by virtue of the first discovery,
claimed all America as their own,
and ... such was ... the terror of their name, that the greater part of the other nations of Europe were afraid to establish themselves in any other part of that great continent ...
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But ...
the defeat ... of their Invincible Armada ...
put it out of their power to obstruct any longer the settlements of the other European nations.
In the course of the 17th century ...
English, French, Dutch, Danes, and Swedes
... attempted to make some
settlements in the new world."
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Had
Spain
succeeded in their attempts to invade and conquer England, there would have been
no Pilgrims, no Puritans, no New England, and no United States of America.
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American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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