Spanish Armada Castaways
Spanish King Philip II said he had sent his ships to fight the British not the elements. And he was right. Just battled against the British a few skirmishes in the English Channel and had a little bit more than words in Gravelines, but nothing serious for the Spanish fleet. The truth is that the main objective was to transfer the Flanders troops to Britain and this was not achieved. The odyssey begun homeward bound.
The England Enterprise was basically a Philip II messianic idea to return the Anglican reformist church to Catholic beliefs and in the process, end the Flemish Protestants uprising supported the last twenty years by the British.
The king instructed Don Alonso Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno, twelfth lord and fifth Sanlucar de Barrameda Marques, ninth Earl of Niebla and seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia, the command of one hundred twenty five ships and more than thirty thousand men, twelve thousands of them sailors, other nineteen thousand soldiers. They were to meet in Dunkirk, in Spanish Flanders, with twenty thousand men of Flanders Thirds commanded by Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, who, once crossed the Canal would land in Kent.
In late May 1588 the Armada left Lisbon. It took two days to group the fleet at sea, but on July 30 they already sighted Cornwall coast and after several minor encounters anchored off Calais. The attack of Lord Howard of Effingham and Francis Drake British fleet barely harm the navy, losing five ships. But the fleet was dispersed and winds send them away Flanders coast making impossible the encounter with the Thirds. Target lost and following the winds Medina Sidonia decided to return to the peninsula surrounding the British Isles. Three days later, on 12 August, the British fleet, out of supplies, had stopped to harassing the Armada. The Spanish, also short of supplies decided to throw overboard mules and horses.
Skirted north of Scotland Orkney and under the most southerly of the Shetlands, Fair Island. From this point, without the English harassing, they would face only the elements. The gales, unusual for its intensity hit North Atlantic viciously day after day without respite, between mid-September and October. Of the forty ships that were thrown by the sea on the northwest coast of Ireland twenty-six wrecked.
Beyond the sheer cliffs of Moher, near the Blasket Islands, two of the ships commanded by Juan Martinez de Recalde, the San Juan de Portugal and San Juan Bautista saw before sinking Mount St. Brandan profile, in the tip of the Dingle Peninsula. More vessels disappeared off the coasts of Connacht and Donegal: the Concepción de Juanes del Cano against Galway, Falcón Blanco against Connemara, the San Esteban in Doobeg and many others.
The English had given orders not to leave a live Spanish. A gallowglass, Scottish mercenary, put a special effort with an axe on Tyrawly beach killing eighty unfortunate who had managed to reach land. Further Sligo there is a stretch of coastline that extends northward. It is a strip of land that forms a small peninsula. It defends from the sea in the sandy beach known as Streedagh Strand. In the background the green and rugged Benbulben mountain observed were dragged mercilessly the San Juan de Sicilia and other two ships... y fuimos á embestir con todas tres naos en una playa de arena bien chica, cercada de grandísimos peñascos de una parte, porque en espacio de una hora se hicieron todas tres naos pedazos, de las cuales no se escaparon 300 hombres y se ahogaron más de mil, y entre ellos mucha gente principal, capitanes, caballeros y otros entretenidos. (We were driven ashore with all three ships upon a beach, covered with very fine sand, shut in on one side and the other by great rocks. Such a thing was never seen: for within the space of an hour all three ships were broken in pieces, so that there did not escape three hundred men, and more than one thousand were drowned, among them many persons of importance, captains, gentlemen, and other officials.)
On the shore they were beaten and robbed. But not yet had reached the coast the author of those lines. He was Captain Francisco de Cuellar. He had been in command of the San Pedro until he was left out due to orders given by a subordinate. After the sinking he was wounded in a leg. Warned by an elderly woman he avoided main roads, found compatriots who had seen British soldiers killing hundreds of shipwrecked. Barefoot and barely dressed passed Glenade Valley to Lake Melvin. Cuellar and seventy Spanish found refuge in lands of Sir Brian O'Rourke, Catholic and with few friends among the English. In November they reached Lord Mac Glannagh’s Rosclogher castle, whom Cuellar will call Manglana. Here resisted a seventeen days siege against British troops arrived from Dublin led by the Deputy Lord Fitzwilliam.
They had news of a Spanish ship docked nearby for repairs, but before they could tackle were informed of her departure. Ten days before Christmas left again marching northwards. They sought help in the person of the Catholic Bishop of Derry, Redmond O'Gallagher, who assist them in reaching Scotland, where Cuellar remained for half a year before getting passage to Antwerp, in Flanders.
Not far from where Cuellar sank, in the northern side of Donegal Bay is Killibegs Bay currently closed marked by two lighthouses, that of Carntullagh Head and the Saint John’s. Here fled to repair the galley called La Girona, led by Hugo of Moncada. Eight hundred survivors of merchant carrack La Rata Santa María Encoronada, 35 guns, stranded in Blacksod Bay, and the Duquesa de Santa Ana, 23, stranded in Loughross Mor Bay were added to the remaining survivors crowding La Girona. They would sail eastward, to Scotland, Oct. 26, with 1300 men on board, with the assistance of an Irish chieftain, Mac Sweeney Bannagh and four local pilots, three of them Irish and one Scot. On the 28th skirted Inishowen and Logh Foyle in Derry estuary, where they were surprised by a violent gale. One of Sorley Boy McDonnell's men spotted the ship from Dunluce, an indication that they were sailing too close. Two hundred twenty-four galley rowers force were trying to keep the vessel off the coast until, at midnight, with the damaged rudder and north-west wind increasing, the ship turned one hundred and eighty degrees, irretrievably crashing the bow against the rocks of Lacada Point, Leac Fhada in Gaelic, which simply means Long, four miles away the basaltic blocks of the Giant's Causeway. The Girona lined up catching most of its occupants, those who fell into the sea had no greater fortune thrown by the furious waves against the rocks. In addition, there is any chance to land safely on the sharp cliffs reaching four hundred feet high. The place is now known as Port na Spaniagh, the Spanish Point. Legend says the ship fired its guns against the rocks called The Chimney Tops confusing them with the shape profile of a castle. Although it is hard to believe that in the very wreck and trying to save their lives they worry about artillery.
Of the men who were on board only nine would see dawn. The rest of the recovered bodies were buried in the nearby cemetery of Saint Cuthbert. They were welcomed in neighbouring Dunluce Castle by Sorley Boy Mac Donell, a hierarch of Scottish origin whom Queen Elizabeth had given him the strength a couple of years ago. Mac Donnell look after survivors of the shipwrecked Girona with other vessels survivors would arrive to Scotland. From the remains of the galley recovered three guns that would install on the wall of his castle.
When Captain Francisco de Cuellar was already safe in Antwerp, wrote in October 4, 1589, already a year after his shipwreck, a long letter to the crown in which related his plight in lands of Ireland, claim for himself the months of salary owed to him. Cuellar even served many years in the strife of the Spanish crown and crossed the Atlantic to transport silver from America. Previously he had made the crossing of the Ocean and the Straits of Magellan and had docked in Brazil.
The Carta de uno que fué en la Armada de Ingalaterra y cuenta la jornada (sic) (Letter of one who went to Spanish Armada and tells the journey) spent three centuries in the Royal Academy of History archives in Madrid, until it was revealed by Cesareo Fernandez Duro in his work Los náufragos de la armada española en Irlanda, (The castaways of the Spanish Armada in Ireland), published in 1890. Shortly after it was translated as Captain Cuellar adventures in the Connacht and Ulster by Hugh Allingham in 1897. Interestingly Cuellar's letter became one of the few witness that describe the customs and usages of the late sixteenth century in Ireland. He described its inhabitants as brutos en las montañas, que las hay muy ásperas en aquella parte de Irlanda donde nos perdimos ( ) y lo que ordinariamente comen es manteca con pan de avena, beben leche aceda por no tener otra bebida; no beben agua, siendo la mejor del mundo: Las fiestas comen alguna carne medio cocida, sin pan ni sal, que es su usanza ésta. (... the brute beasts among the mountains, which are very rugged in that part of Ireland where we lost ourselves. () They do not eat oftener than once a day, and this is at night; and that which they usually eat is butter with oaten bread. They drink sour milk, for they have no other drink; they don't drink water, although it is the best in the world. On feast days they eat some flesh half-cooked, without bread or salt, as that is their custom.)
On 27 June 1967 Belgian Robert Stenuit diver’s team had to descend as much as thirty three feet east of Punta Lacada, Port na Spaniagh, just to find the wreck of La Girona. Along three seasons of underwater excavations they were rescuing wreck hoard. Gold and silver coins and common objects among the sailors and nobles who lived on board. Perhaps the most prominent were a gold pin salamander shaped with rubies embedded, a locket with a book or the Knight's Cross of the Order of Malta which belonged to Captain Don Fabricio Spinola.
These treasures along others found by the Derry Sub-Aqua Diving Club in 1971 belonging to the Trinity Valencera are exhibited in the Ulster Museum in Belfast.
It has also been created a route called Cuellar's Trail, to go on foot or bike, the path walk by the Spanish Armada captain in his rough Irish tour.
© J.L.Nicolas
