By the end of the summer of 1588 Spain's attempt to invade England had failed. The Spanish Armada-130 ships carrying 30,000 men- had entered the English Channel from the west on the 29^th of July 1588. Ten days later, off the French coast, an English fleet half the size delivered a crushing defeat to the Spanish.

The surviving Spanish ships many badly damaged, could not risk returning through the English Channel the way they had come, so they set sail on a eastward course which would take them around the coast of Scotland and out to the Atlantic Ocean.

The damaged fleet had just reached Cape Wrath, on Scotland's northwestern coast, when it met the first wave of fierce Atlantic storms. The ships were leaking and crippled and crewed by starving and sick men. The ships swayed back and forth helplessly. Many of the ships were driven onto the rocks others were simply swamped and disappeared beneath the waves.

The storms raged on for a month. Further ships were lost off the coast of Ireland. Thousands of men drowned. Many of the survivors, who managed to scramble ashore in Ireland, were killed or starved to death. Of the 130 Spanish ships that set out only half limped home.