Routes of the Spanish Armada, 1588
The route of the Spanish Armada's 1588 campaign against England, and its scattered flight around the British Isles.
Philip II of Spain sent some 130 ships up the English Channel in the summer of 1588, intending to link up with a Spanish army in the Netherlands and invade England. English fireships sent into the anchored fleet off Calais broke its formation, and in the ensuing Battle of Gravelines gunfire and a shifting wind forced the Armada north, cutting off any orderly retreat back through the Channel. Fleeing around Scotland and Ireland into the teeth of autumn storms, the Armada lost roughly half its ships and thousands of men — a disaster that dented Spanish naval prestige even though the war with England dragged on for another sixteen years. Read more in our article on the Spanish Armada of 1588.
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