Girona

1588

Spanish Armada galleass, the Giant's Causeway Location: Lacada Point, Giant's Causeway, County Antrim, Northern Ireland · Coordinates: 55.24°N 6.48°W · Casualties: ~1,300 · Survivors: 5 · Depth: 20 m · Cause: grounding · storm — Struck the rocks at Lacada Point on the north Antrim coast on the night of 26 October 1588, during the retreat of the Spanish Armada around Scotland and Ireland. She was overloaded with survivors from two earlier Armada wrecks. Broke up in minutes against the basalt cliffs of the Giant's Causeway. · Fate: excavated 1967-69 · Ulster Museum · Type: galleass · Neapolitan · Tonnage: ~700 tons · Crew: 550 · Flag: Spanish Empire · Launched: 1586 Neapolitan-built galleass of the Spanish Armada, hybrid of oars and sail. Limping home around Scotland after the Armada's defeat, she took aboard the survivors of two earlier wrecks and struck the rocks at Lacada Point on the Giant's Causeway on 26 October 1588. ~1,300 died. Five survived. Rediscovered in 1967 by the Belgian diver Robert Sténuit, her gold crosses and Neapolitan jewellery now sit in the Ulster Museum in Belfast. The Vessel The Girona was a galleass of the Spanish Armada, a hybrid sail-and-oar warship of the characteristic Neapolitan type, built at Naples in 1587 under Spanish administration of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. She was approximately 55 metres long, 650 tons, and was designed to combine the firepower and capacity of a galleon with the oared manoeuvrability of a Mediterranean war galley. The four Neapolitan galleasses of 1588 were the most advanced hybrid warships in European service. Her complement at her assignment to the Armada included 122 sailors, 300 rowers (mostly Spanish, Italian, and North African conscripts and prisoners), 197 soldiers, and a command staff of Neapolitan nobles and Spanish officers. She carried 50 heavy bronze cannon on three decks, a heavier main battery than any English ship of the Armada campaign. Her commander was Fabrizio Spinola, scion of the Genoese banking house, with overall galleass command under Don Hugo de Moncada. The Spanish Armada's four galleasses were, on paper, the most formidable ships of the invasion fleet. They sailed from Lisbon in May 1588 with the overall fleet of 130 vessels under the Duke of Medina Sidonia, reached the English Channel in July, and fought at the running engagements of Eddystone, Portland Bill, Isle of Wight, and Gravelines between 31 July and 8 August. The galleasses' heavy guns were effective in those actions; their rowed manoeuvrability less so in the open Channel. The Disaster She lost her steerage on the night of 26-27 October 1588 in a full westerly gale off the Antrim coast of what is now Northern Ireland. Driven eastward by the wind, she struck the rocks of Lacada Point on the Giant's Causeway some time before midnight on 26 October. The Giant's Causeway basalt is characteristic north Antrim coastline: a forty-metre cliff face rising from deep water, fronted by hexagonal basalt columns that form a natural serration at the waterline. She broke up in minutes. The galleass design, with its high upperworks for the oar banks and its narrow waist, was particularly vulnerable to basalt serration; her hull was destroyed before most of those aboard could reach the weather decks. Of the approximately 1,300 aboard, five made the shore alive; the rest drowned in the surf or were crushed on the rocks. She is, by casualty count, one of the worst losses of the entire Armada campaign. Survivors of the wreck who reached land were, under the standing orders of the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir William Fitzwilliam, to be executed as Spanish invaders. Five of the Girona's survivors apparently escaped this fate through the protection of the O'Neill and O'Cahan Irish Gaelic chieftains, whose Counter-Reformation sympathies with Catholic Spain ran stronger than their fear of English reprisal; they were smuggled eventually to Scotland and from there to the Spanish Netherlands. The 1,295 dead went into the North Antrim surf; some of their bodies were recovered over the fo