[SunkenCiv]

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'

[Olog-hai]

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.

[BBell]

That cannon is in excellent condition. How long before the Spanish demand it back?

[FlyingEagle]

That is extremely well preserved. Imagine the metallurgical technology needed to manufacture a cannon that withstands centuries of salt water exposure.

[JimSEA]

Beautiful cannon. What would the world be like today if the armada has succeed?

[Prospero]

That cannon looks almost too intact for four centuries.

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!