The Spanish Armada: The Experience of War in 1588

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's book is a well-written, succinct, and thoroughly documented book that casts the Armada confrontation in a more balanced light. He does not, as a previous reviewer seems to claim, offer up some revisionist argument about how the Spanish Armada actually won; Fernandez-Armesto simply notes that the David-Goliath aura of the battle is grossly inaccurate, that Spain's and England's navies were actually quite evenly matched, and that if anything the naval battle itself was rather anticlimactic, with the Atlantic storm doing by far most of the damage. Moreover, the author notes a detail-- so foolishly omitted from most accounts-- about how Spain actually rebuilt its navy following 1588, making it far stronger than the one before the Armada set sail. All of these are borne out by the facts.The author points out that the Spanish invasion plan was rather harebrained from the start, and that Spain's lack of a deep-water port up the Atlantic coast posed a severe hindrance to the logistics of any landing. It is a credit to the English fleet, to Drake and Howard and Hawkins and all the salty sailors on the sea, that they were able to exploit this deficiency and force the Armada into an evacuation of the English Channel after Gravelines. However, a measured appreciation of this tactical accomplishment has been vastly overstated by historical mythmakers, and it is here that Fernandez-Armesto's account provides a valuable check-and-balance. As he discusses here, most of the Spanish fleet actually did make it back to port in Iberia, despite the hurricane-like storm that the Spanish sailors encountered. Indeed, many of the ships that sank, as Fernandez-Armesto describes, were small, damaged a priori, and already of only marginal sea-worthiness, having been designed for more pacific Mediterranean waters anyway. The large Atlantic warships and hulks, the core of the attack force, largely returned to Spain and Portugal intact. Fernandez-Armesto demonstrates a lucid mastery of the technical details of nautical affairs when he praises the achievements of both the English and Spanish fleets under tremendous strain, in doing their duties. Conversely, Fernandez-Armesto notes that all was not so auspicious on the English side, as thousands of English sailors suffered and perished from disease, exposure, and starvation as their salaries went unpaid and rancor broke out among the ranks. The author debunks the myth of a potential Spanish "conquest" of England in the event of an Armada landing, demonstrating that King Philip II had far more modest objectives (chiefly the cessation of English assistance to the Protestant Low Countries, toleration of English Catholics, and a shutdown of state-sponsored buccaneering). It should be further noted that the English themselves launched an enormous, Armada-sized fleet against Spain and Portugal in 1589, which itself failed entirely in its objectives and suffered heavy losses. As Fernandez-Armesto

This book, one of the best of the Armada books published for the five-hundredth anniversary in 1988, tells the story from the Spanish side. The author's convincing thesis is that the Armada never had a chance. Those who have read other Armada history will know that the English did have several advantages and that their victory was not the miracle portrayed by Elizabethan propaganda. But Fernandez-Armesto explains why the Armada's plan was nearly hopeless from the outset and why the Spanish - whose commanders knew that - sent it anyway. This very well-written history explains not only the technicalities (logistics, ship design, tactics) but also the motivations, opinions, and emotions of those involved on the Spanish side. Highly recommended for the Armada afficionado.