Spanish Armada in Ireland

Following its defeat at the naval battle of Gravelines, the Armada had attempted to return home through the North Atlantic, when it was driven from its course by violent storms, toward the west coast of Ireland.

Up to 24 ships of the Armada were wrecked on a rocky coastline spanning 500 km, from Antrim in the north to Kerry in the south, and the threat to Crown authority was readily defeated.

The Spanish Armada was a fleet of 130 ships that sailed from A Coruña in August 1588 under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia with the purpose of escorting an army from Flanders to invade England.

It met with armed resistance in the English Channel, when a fireship attack off Calais broke its formation, and was driven into the North Sea after the Battle of Gravelines.

Also, the Armada commanders made a large navigational error that brought the fleet too close to the dangerous Atlantic coasts of Scotland and Ireland.

The admiral made his choice, and orders were issued to the fleet: The course that is first to be held is to the north/north-east until you be found under 61 degrees and a half; and then to take great heed lest you fall upon the Island of Ireland for fear of the harm that may happen unto you upon that coast.

Once out in the broad Atlantic, the ships were to steer to a point 645 km beyond the Shannon estuary on the west coast of Ireland, giving themselves a clear run to northern Spain.

The navigators' charts were primitive,[3] and their best training and experience in the techniques of dead reckoning and latitude sailing fell far short of what was needed to bring the fleet safely home.

The paymaster of the San Juan Bautista, Marcos de Aramburu, recorded a log of his progress from late August onwards, when the rest of the fleet was within sight.

The experience of Spanish mariners in the intricacies of north Atlantic conditions was largely confined to trading voyages to the south and south-west of Ireland, and it is likely that the fleet's pilots preferred to maintain Sidonia's course, despite the hardships on board their ships.

The ships seem to have maintained contact until the beginning of September, when they were scattered by a south-west gale (described in the contemporary account of an Irish government official as one "the like whereof hath not been seen or heard for a long time").

But reliable intelligence was soon received at Waterford and Dublin that the ships were fetching up in a chaotic manner at disparate locations in the provinces of Ulster, Connacht and Munster, along a coastline spanning 300 miles (480 km).

Fitzwilliam received orders from London to lead an expedition there, and intelligence from the governor of Connacht, Richard Bingham, soon confirmed that further landfalls were being made throughout the west and north of the country.

Thomond: Many ships were sighted off the coast of County Clare: four at Loop Head, two of which were wrecked, including San Esteban (700 tons, 264 men) at Doonbeg, and probably the heavily damaged San Marcos (790 tons, squadron of Portugal, 409 men, 33 guns) at Lurga Point (modern day Seafield, Quilty, County Clare) inside Mutton Island.

All survivors were put to death by the sheriff of Clare, Boetius MacClancy (some, according to tradition, at Gallows Hill, but more likely at Cnoc na Crocaire, Spanish Point).

Blasket Islands: One Armada commander, Juan Martínez de Recalde, did have experience of the Irish coast: in 1580 he had landed a Papal invasion force in the Dingle peninsula, in the run up to the Siege of Smerwick, and had managed to evade an English squadron of warships.

In the Armada he had command of the galleon São João de Portugal (1,150 tons, 500 men, 50 guns) of the Biscayan squadron, which engaged with the English fleet in the Channel and held off Francis Drake in Revenge, John Hawkins in Victory, and Martin Frobisher in Triumph.

After the defeat at Gravelines Recalde's galleon led San Juan de Bautista (750 tons, 243 men) and another small vessel (almost certainly a Scottish fishing smack seized to assist with navigation and inshore work).

As these ships approached the coast of Kerry, Recalde's lookouts sighted Mount Brandon on the Dingle peninsula and, to the west, the lofty Blasket Islands, a complex archipelago studded with reefs.

As the tide ebbed, Recalde's ships held their anchorage in the more sheltered part of the sound, while Santa Maria de la Rosa drifted and then simply sank — perhaps on striking Stromboli Rock — leaving one survivor for the English to interrogate.

But the wind blew from the south-east, and San Juan de Bautista finally escaped on 25 September and made it home to Spain through a terrible storm.

At Liscannor the oar-powered galleass Zuñiga (290, Naples) anchored off-shore with a broken rudder, having found a gap in the Cliffs of Moher, which rise sheer from the sea over 220 metres.

Zuñiga escaped the coast with favourable winds, put in at Le Havre, and finally made it back to Naples the following year.

La Rata Santa Maria Encoronada carried an unusually large number of noblemen from the most ancient families of Spain — chief among them Don Alonso Martinez de Leyva — as well as the son of the Irish rebel, James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald.

La Rata Santa Maria Encoronada was skillfully handled along the northern coast of Mayo, but could not clear the Mullet Peninsula, and so anchored in Blacksod Bay on 7 September.

Stormy weather soon hit Duquesa Santa Ana and she was grounded in Loughros Bay in Donegal, with all aboard reaching shore in what was friendly territory.

With the assistance of an Irish chieftain, MacSweeney Bannagh, Girona was repaired and set sail in mid-October with 1,300 men on board, including de Leyva.

Following the failure of the Armada the English sent their own fleet against the Iberian peninsula, but failed to press home their advantage and returned with tremendous losses.

The wrecking of La Girona was commemorated in illustrations of the Armada and the Antrim coast which appear on the reverse side of sterling banknotes issued by the First Trust Bank in Northern Ireland.

The Luck of the Irish and Darby O'Gill and the Little People are American films that make reference to the wrecking of the Spanish armada as an explanation for leprechauns having pots of gold.