Hearing that a 17th Spanish galleon replica is to visit Ayr in August this year, I had one of those memory flashes. This: Watching Lucy Worsley in December 2022, I was shocked, deeply, to hear of the disastrous Counter Armada of 1599 when more than 20 000 lost their lives, twice the Spanish losses the previous year. Following the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, Queen Elizabeth I of England sought to exploit Spain’s temporary naval vulnerability. The English Armada, also called the Counter Armada or the Drake–Norris Expedition, was launched on 28 April 1589 during the undeclared Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) … Continue reading 16th/17th Century English Propaganda – so good even I (!) knew nothing of this event