Posted on 06/17/2015 9:53:38 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
credit: Heather Humphries (Twitter feed)
(Excerpt) Read more at utv.ie ...
Artefacts uncovered at Streedagh, Co Sligo, from the wreck of the Spanish Armada ship La Juliana (Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht/PA) -- Belfast Telegraph, 'Armada artefacts taken from seabed'
Very interesting. The Spanish Armada story is always told from a “nationalist” perspective, even going back to the 70s in schools in Ireland.
I also have to say that “UTV Ireland” threw me for a loop. There are only three counties of Ulster in the Republic (Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan), and Ulster Television (UTV) was always understood to be a TV station from the North.
That cannon is in excellent condition. How long before the Spanish demand it back?
If it were made of gold, they’d be all over this.
The ridiculous Spanish claim for recovered plunder — plunder by the Spanish — is that it is from a military vessel. What are these cannon? Punchbowls from a cruise ship buffet table?
The armada soldiers who managed to swim to shore after their ships foundered were for the most part killed by the locals. But y’know, they were part of an invasion force and it was centuries before the Geneva Convention.
That is extremely well preserved. Imagine the metallurgical technology needed to manufacture a cannon that withstands centuries of salt water exposure.
Spanish cannon were high-quality bronze; the later Roman Empire bronze coins by contrast are generally in lousy shape when excavated on land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze#Properties
Beautiful cannon. What would the world be like today if the armada has succeed?
But with all the corruption the decedents would be lucky to get a 1/2 of percent of the plunder back.
I just read a scholarly work on that period, Garrett Mattingly's The Armada, Cambridge (1959), and it was fascinating; even if a bit dry, t'was worth it. The popular accounts were, and still are, well-known but the incredible logistics, the delays, the situation in the Low Lands and in France, on the continent, as well as on the Thames and within the walls of the Escorial, were breathtaking.
The details of how the fleet was constucted and how it evaporated are a monument to so many things.
I may have to re-read it, following some further investigations into the Wars of Religion from the prespective of France.
SunkenCiv is knocking them out of the ballpark this morning!
That’s a tough “what-if” ... the English Civil War might never have taken place, replaced by years or decades of popular resistance to Spanish rule, a Scottish invasion or more than one, perhaps an early beginning to the united monarchy, perhaps an early end to the monarchy, and of course, no industrial revolution. The American colonies might have stayed under Spanish rule, or might have thrown it off 150 years earlier, or might have preferred French rule.
Thanks Prospero!
The size of the planned ground invasion force seems too small to have prevailed, but it would have been the largest since the days of the Roman Empire, which were actually the largest ever made. :’)
It was a pivotal event. We’re likely better off but then, that’s a Protestant bias.
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH ARMADA!
Their chief weapon is surprise.
Yeah, cannons are nice, but where are the gold and jewels? Yargh !
An Iberiophile friend tells me they were accepted ashore, and eventually left an enduring "genetic present" of dark hair and eyes. (Dark Irish).
They were just going to stop and have one beer but no one can stop at just one beer.
They were too few to make a lasting genetic imprint. The Dark Irish were the pure blooded Gaels, who moved to Ireland from the Spain and France area.
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