The Voyage of the Armada: The Spanish Story

The Armada (No other descriptors are required) is mythic history in the UK. I was brought up on tales of Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, etc., always the heroes. Even Professor Mattingly's exemplary Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1959) favours the British version. Here is a refreshingly complete account of the Armada relying on Spanish sources. From them it was clear that the Armada was essentially a failure before it even sailed - under supplied, no real co-ordinated planning, divided between the sailors and military. Its few real warships were designed for a different type of warfare than that being fought by its English opponents. They were encumbered with large numbers of poorly fitted out merchantile conversions, and all ships were show more overcrowded with soldiers and undercrewed by professional sailors.
The British ships were a mix of older and newer, lower, faster, better armed warships. But the ships were in advance of naval tactical thinking.
The net result being that neither side was able to achieve a complete victory - despite centuries of British claims to the contrary.
The real victor was the weather.
David Howarth writes with a novelist's style and historian's attention to detail. The whole is a very satisfying read. show less

An excellent exposition of what happens when a ruler of a nation runs a military campaign with basically no input from those in the military and depends on God sending a miracle to make up for any errors he makes.