Position:Home>History> Hey can anyone give me a summary on the spanish armada

The purpose of the Armada was not to land troops it was carrying, but to allow the ferrying of Spanish troops already in the Netherlands across to England!. To do that, the Armada needed to secure a port!. To understand the English tactics you have to understand that the Spanish ships were very inefficient at sailing into the wind!. Once they had passed a port it was effectively impossible to return upwind!.

The English tactics were to keep the Spanish moving downwind through the English Channel, passing successive ports on the way!. The English captains did this by exploiting their greater maneuverability and also their local knowledge of wind variation and tidal currents!. By the time the Spanish fleet was panicked by the fireships at Calais the English had pretty much achieved their aim!.

After the Spanish fleet ran they were faced with a long voyage around the north of Britain to get home!. On the way, they were hit by a savage storm!. The storm did far more damage than the Armada suffered in battle!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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The Spanish Armada sailed to make war with England in 1588!. The point was to conquer the country so as to stop the British from attacking Spanish possessions in the Americas, and to stop them from aiding anti-Spanish rebels in the Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium)!. Only 50 ships out of the original 130 actually made it back to Spain and the Armada was defeated by the English!. If the Spanish had won in the campaign, it is likely the British would speak Spanish instead of English today, strange as that may sound!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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The Armada entered the English Channel with about 125 ships (five had to turn back), but many were refitted carriers originally designed to transport grain!. These old, clumsy hulks were not really warships, and their poor sailing qualities severely impeded the fleet's progress!.

Entering the Channel, the Armada adopted a compact, disciplined battle formation, even while harried by the faster English vessels!. Although many of the Spanish ships were larger than the English ships, they were less maneuverable and not as well armed!. The Spanish planned to fight a traditional naval battle: close on the enemy ship, fire a broadside to cause damage and confusion, then grapple and board!. Under these conditions the Spanish ships, carrying large numbers of crack infantry, would have triumphed!.

But the sort of battle fought by the English was something the Spanish were not prepared for!. They had plenty of ammunition, but their guns could not easily be reloaded, and the gunners were actually soldiers who were supposed to return to their battle stations after firing an initial salvo!.

All the English crews were seamen, not land infantry!. Furthermore, their gunners were trained specialists who reloaded and fired repeatedly!. Since their guns had a longer firing range than the Spanish guns, the English were able to avoid getting close enough to be boarded by Spanish troops!. Instead, they darted around the slower Spanish vessels, without ever coming within range of the Spanish guns!.

Even so, in their first encounters with the Spanish the English caused more confusion than actual damage, and they seriously depleted their own stores of ammunition in the process!.

As the Armada sat in the waters off Calais, the English prepared eight fireships to send against them!. As the fireships approached, most of the Spanish captains cut their anchor cables and fled, destroying the impenetrable battle formation that the Armada had maintained since entering the English Channel!. At dawn, only five ships remained to face the English fleet!. The Battle of Gravelines was fought at very close range, and this time the English guns did great damage to the Spanish vessels, sinking one and causing a high rate of casualties on all that remained!.

The attempted invasion of England had been an overwhelmingly expensive disaster!. Of the 130 ships that sailed from Spain in 1588, only 60 were finally accounted for!. One-third or more of the fleet had been sunk or wrecked!.
Spain's loss, both in ships and in men, was enormous, and Spain's status as a world power was destroyed!. Following the defeat of the Armada, the English and Dutch began in earnest to establish their own empires in the New World!. Although Spain continued to fight expensive territorial and religious wars in Europe for several decades afterward, the defeat of the Spanish Armada decidedly marked the beginning of Spain's decline as an actor on the world stage!.



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