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Title: The Spanish Armada: The Experience of the War in 1588 by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto ISBN: 0-19-822926-7 Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr (Sd) Pub. Date: 01 September, 1989 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (3 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: A much-needed antidote to common Armada confusions
Comment: 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 notes, the Spanish navy was rebuilt and, contrary to numerous myths, was in fact far stronger after the Armada than before it. Spain won most of the naval battles against England in the next decade, and several English attempts to wrest control of lands in the Western Hemisphere from the Spanish Main failed entirely, as a retooled Spanish fleet managed to demolish attacks on Puerto Rico, Panama, and Hispaniola on several occasions.

Even though Fernandez-Armesto does not discuss the broader post-Armada naval war in detail, his book provides an excellent tonic to put the Spanish Armada confrontation into a more sensible perspective-- as one battle of a broader war that proved to be a setback for Spain, but not a severe one and, in any case, a reversal upon which it would immediately capitalize to build a more solid, efficient navy that would rule the high seas for decades to come. His book, in conjunction with those of RB Wernham, helps to illuminate an extraordinarily fascinating chapter of European naval history that has been neglected for far too long.

Rating: 2
Summary: News flash: the Armada lost
Comment: Fernandez-Armesto's book is not a bad introduction to the story of the Spanish Armada; it will acquaint you fairly readily with how and why the Spanish attacked England and why they failed. However, in the course of his research, Fernandez-Armesto has managed to convince himself that the Armada campaign was in fact a Spanish triumph, albeit a costly one, and in defending this thesis he fails completely.

There are many useful facts to be gleaned from this book that you may not have encountered in your history class. The corruption and inefficiency of both sides' naval administration prevented either from marshaling its full strength, but this probably hurt the Spaniards' chances more, as they had far more resources than the English and had to project their power further to win. Fernandez-Armesto demonstrates the importance of the wind-gauge to tactics; i.e., the side upwind of its opponent controlled the engagement, and the English consistently seized this advantage over the Spanish. The author reports the surprising ineffectiveness of both sides' gunnery; on the Spanish side this was due to extremely poor-quality powder and ammunition, but there is no explanation why the English guns were almost equally impotent. Spanish tactics were based on grappling and boarding, while the English emphasized gunnery and were able to keep well out of the Spanish ships' reach. The book also explains the importance of the Dutch fleet to the English victory; the shallow-drafted Dutch vessels controlled the Dutch coasts, where the deep-drafted Armada vessels could not enter, and thus the Duke of Parma's army could not cross the Channel for fear of being cut to pieces by the Dutch. I put the book down feeling much better informed about the Armada campaign.

While most people who know about the Armada at all know that storm and shipwreck caused more losses to the Armada than the English did, Fernandez-Armesto's research indicates that storms caused almost all of the Spanish ship losses; the English captured only one Spanish vessel and sank few or none. However, Fernandez-Armesto apparently does not grasp that this was normal for naval warfare, not only in the sixteenth century but in the seventeenth as well. The English-Dutch wars were also notable for very few ships being sunk, because it was almost impossible to hole ships below the water line; the water surface tended to deflect cannon balls, and the few holes produced "between wind and water" could be patched quickly. Naval forces were weakened by casualties to the men and damage to the sails and rigging more than by loss of ships, and Fernandez-Armesto does not convey this point adequately; he appears to think that the mere absence of ships sunk means that the English were ineffective or even that the English lost the battle. Nevertheless, he does argue convincingly that losses inflicted by the English accounted for a trivial portion of the total Spanish losses on the voyage.

Fernandez-Armesto fails in his attempt to show the campaign as a Spanish success. By the end of the book, he is describing the mission of the Armada as a kind of show-the-flag gunboat diplomacy, intended to intimidate Queen Elizabeth by reminding her that Spain could put a fleet off her coast whenever it wished. That mission, Fernandez-Armesto argues, was achieved. Of course, the mission of the Armada was not to show the flag, but to land a Spanish army in Kent, take London and drive Queen Elizabeth from her throne. That mission failed miserably. Through superior naval maneuvering, the English prevented the Spanish landing; the fact that they inflicted relatively few casualties on the Spanish in the process does not make it less an English victory. Fernandez-Armesto even attempts to describe the English fire-ship attack on the Armada in the Calais roads as a Spanish victory and an English defeat, because the Armada managed to scurry out relatively undamaged, despite the fact that the English attack deprived the Armada of its last opportunity even to land its own troops in England, much less escort Parma's troops across the Channel. Fernandez-Armesto's argument is a transparent attempt to rewrite the Spanish objectives and thereby transform a military defeat into a semantic victory.

Rating: 5
Summary: The Armada Story from the Loser's Side
Comment: 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.