Ship traces journey Spanish Armada sailors made in 1588 | Hacker News Reader

Ship traces journey Spanish Armada sailors made in 1588

irishtimes.com

24 pointsaustinallegro12 comments

This is pretty cool. One of the parts I love the most of boats/sailing is how they're basically the culmination of thousands of years of human science, engineering and technology. I especially like how this is published in an Irish paper about the ship sailing along the coast there.

When I was in my late teens a Spanish cousin took me to the maritime/naval museum in Madrid and I didn't have much context for things at the time. Look forward to visiting again at some point.

I am finding an interest in this subject as well. Just wondered if you (or any reading) had any good book recommendations about the age of sail. I seen one of the Spanish first ship of the line's flags and the scale was incredible. Plenty of stuff going on in the UK as well, but I'd like to visit Netherlands and Spain's museums too. Hopefully we both make the trip some day to learn more.

Not quite "age of sail" but I find Endurance one of the most captivating stories.

If the names of the ships that sank there are known, along with the numbers of sailors who perished, does that mean there were some survivors? Or other ships witnessed the sinking but managed to make it home? That part of Ireland in 1588 was indeed very wild and at that time Gaelic speaking.

Although amongst the local clergy perhaps there were some people who could speak Spanish or Latin if any shipwrecked sailors made it ashore.

About 300 survivors of different fate, according to this Spanish source (you can probably ai translate, there is a survivors section): https://www.armadainvencible.org/desastre-la-playa-streedagh...

The short of it is that only 5 can be said for certain to have returned, plus one person that stayed in Ireland under the service of Hugh O’Neill.

The idea seems to be Catholic Irish nobility "such as the O’Rourke or the Mc Clancy" may have helped them, while the English army searched for survivors and killed those who found.

Francisco de Cuellar survived in Sligo, and escaped inland to O'Rourke's Castle where he got refuge and found 70 or so other Spanish survivors. The path he took from the shore inland is marked to this day by signposts and you can follow it yourself. Granted he didn't leave us a Strava trail but roughly speaking we know the way they went.

We know what happened to him in amazing detail because he escaped north, to the Hebrides, through Flanders, Dunkirk and eventually back to Spain where he lived out his days.

O'Rourke was executed by the English for harboring survivors

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Cuellar

Francisco de Cuéllar survived a shipwreck near Streedagh beach, in Co. Sligo (Ireland).

The film Armada 1588 tells that story: https://youtu.be/2LxjGGzjtAE

Every year in September, Spanish Armada Ireland organises an event called Remembering the Armada, to pay tribute to those fallen in that coast: https://youtu.be/xTUwTmjauLg

This year will happen between September 17th and 20th: https://spanisharmadaireland.com/full-programme-2026/

There's a lot of Spanish DNA in the south of Ireland cus of this.

Aka Black Irish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Irish_(folklore)

That wikipedia article is pretty clear that it is a myth and there is no genetic evidence of shipwrecked Spanish sailors having children.

Yes. There is an Iberian connection that explains Irish folks with dark features, but that would be from Neolithic farmers migrating there 5000 years earlier.

And you see a similar connection in he other direction in northwestern Spain. Regions with redheads and bagpipes. It's not a majority, but you can see it from families tracking their roots to that area from 700+ years.

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