'Great and Most Fortunate Navy') was a Spanish fleet that sailed from Lisbon in late May 1588, commanded by Alonso de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia, an aristocrat without previous naval experience appointed by Philip II of Spain.

The Armada suffered further losses in the ensuing Battle of Gravelines and was in danger of running aground on the Dutch coast when the wind changed, allowing it to escape into the North Sea.

[citation needed] By the mid sixteenth century Habsburg Spain under King Philip II was a dominant political and military power in Europe, with a global empire which became the source of her wealth.

[25] In comparison, England was only a minor European power with no empire, and it could exercise little influence outside of its shores – although, in alliance with Spain, it had gone to war three times against France during Henry VIII's reign.

[citation needed] In retaliation, Philip planned an expedition to invade England to overthrow Elizabeth and, if the Armada was not entirely successful, at least negotiate freedom of worship for Catholics and financial compensation for war in the Low Countries.

[31] A raid on Cádiz, led by privateer Francis Drake in April 1587, had captured or destroyed about 30 ships and great quantities of supplies, setting preparations back by a year.

[27] Alexander stressed that three conditions would need to be met to achieve success; absolute secrecy, secure possession and defense of the Dutch provinces, and keep the French from interfering either with a peace agreement or by sowing division between the Catholic League and the Huguenots.

Philip ultimately combined Parma's plan with that of Santa Cruz, initially entertaining a triple attack, starting with a diversionary raid on Scotland, while the main Armada would capture either the Isle of Wight or Southampton to establish a safe anchorage in The Solent.

He wrote to Philip expressing grave doubts about the planned campaign, but his message was prevented from reaching the King by courtiers on the grounds that God would ensure the Armada's success.

From Plymouth Harbour the Spanish would attack England, but Philip explicitly forbade Medina Sidonia from engaging, leaving the Armada to sail on to the east and towards the Isle of Wight.

As the tide turned, 55 English ships set out to confront the Armada from Plymouth under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham, with Sir Francis Drake as vice admiral.

While the Spanish center manoeuvred to support the Santa Ana, the Nuestra Señora del Rosario collided with a number of ships, losing her bowsprit and setting in motion a series of mishaps.

Drake in the Revenge sailed to the Rosario during the night and she was taken in action; Admiral Pedro de Valdés [es] (commander of the Squadron of Andalusia) surrendered along with his entire crew.

[52] If the Armada could create a temporary base in the protected waters of the Solent, the strait separating the Isle of Wight from the English mainland, it could wait there for word from Parma's army; Farnese did not get news of this until 6 August.

[55] On 7 August, the Armada anchored off Calais in a tightly packed defensive crescent formation,[56] not far from Dunkirk (Farnese only learned of this on that same afternoon)[57] where Parma's army, reduced by disease to 16,000, was expected to be waiting, ready to join the fleet in barges sent from ports along the Flemish coast.

[58] The Dutch flyboats mainly operated in the shallow waters off Zeeland and Flanders where larger warships with a deeper draught, like the Spanish and English galleons, could not safely enter.

Before dawn on 8 August, Medina Sidonia struggled to regather his fleet after the fireships scattered it, and was reluctant to sail further east than Gravelines, knowing the danger of running aground on the shoals off Flanders, from which his Dutch enemies had removed the sea marks.

During all the engagements, the Spanish heavy guns could not easily be reloaded because of their close spacing and the quantities of supplies stowed between decks, as Drake had discovered on capturing the Nuestra Señora del Rosario in the Channel.

[74] The next day, the severely crippled galleon San Mateo ran aground in between Sluis and Ostend; it was taken by a combination of Dutch ships and English troops led by Francis Vere.

Because of the potential invasion from the Netherlands, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester assembled a force of 4,500 militia at West Tilbury, Essex, to defend the Thames Estuary against any incursion up-river towards London.

[76] The San Juan de Sicilia, heavily damaged during the Gravelines engagement, had struggled North and limped into Tobermory bay on the Isle of Mull on 23 September, but was later destroyed by an English agent sent by Francis Walsingham with most of the crew on board.

There being no way of accurately measuring longitude, the Spanish were not aware that the Gulf Stream was carrying them north and east as they tried to move west, and they eventually turned south much closer to the coast than they thought.

[91] One of the last, the Spanish hospital ship San Pedro El Mayor, carrying some 200 sick and wounded survivors, came into Hope Cove in Devon on 7 November, the commander trying to find a suitable place to ground her.

[92][93] After the Duke of Parma was certain that the Armada had sailed away from the coast of Flanders and his participation in the invasion project was no longer feasible, he ordered his soldiers to disembark so as to avoid an epidemic of disease.

Vice Admiral of the fleet and commander of the Guipuzcoa Squadron, Miguel de Oquendo, suffering from battle wounds and a fever, died at Coruña two days after arriving.

In contrast, the English style was taking advantage of the wind (the "weather gage") and line-to-line cannon fire from windward, which exposed the opponent ship's hull and rudder as targets.

The English also had the advantage of fighting close to home, whence they could be easily and frequently resupplied so as not to be weighed down, unlike the Armada ships which were loaded with all the materiel needed for their invasion force to wage a ground-based war.

Nevertheless, when the fleets actually came to blows at the Battle of Gravelines, the Armada was outnumbered 10:1,[66] and during the 8-hour fight, the English managed to sink one carrack and forced two galleons, a pinnace and an armed merchant, to run aground.

[citation needed] However, the Whig historians, led by James A. Froude, rejected Hume's interpretation and argued that Elizabeth was vacillating and almost lost the conflict by her unwillingness to spend enough to maintain and supply the Royal Navy's fleet of ships.

[164] This enabled the leading naval scholar of the day, Julian Corbett, to reject the Whig views and turn attention to the professionalization of the Royal Navy as a critical factor.