This is the answer to the Spanish article on La derrota de la armada invencible.
First: of course the Armada should have been planned and led by the Marqúes de Santa Cruz, but as he was dead, it would have proved difficult, unless he had been strapped to one of his galleons’ masts, like El Cid was strapped dead on his horse during the final moments of the siege of Valencia.
Second: of course the Armada should not have been led by the Duque de Medina Sidonia, who by his own admission did not know one end of a ship’s cannon from the other; had no knowledge of navigation; thought nothing of English ships, crews, captains or abilities, calling them ‘piratical pigs’.
What we mean by this expression was (formerly) an apparently haphazard collection of lands throughout the world linked by common allegiance to the British throne. In 1800, though Britain had lost her Thirteen Colonies in North America, she still retained Newfoundland, scarcely populated parts of Canada and many West Indian islands, plus other islands useful for trading purposes. Britain held Gibraltar from Spain following the Treaty of Utrecht which ended the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1788 she had created convict settlements in New South Wales, Australia, which greatly helped the condition of overcrowding in prisons at home.
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