Riddled with cannonball holes from their stunning defeat by the English Navy after trying to invade Queen Elizabeth's Protestant realm in 1588 to restore Catholicism, the Spanish Armada sailed north around the Orkneys and Hebrides in their attempt to return home. The worst storms in fifty years, however, drove 24 Spanish ships relentlessly onto the rocky Irish coast, tearing them apart.

Thousands of sailors and soldiers drowned; hundreds of unarmed Spaniards were slaughtered on the beaches. Those who fled across Ireland to reach Scotland faced daily peril for months.

The story of...

Riddled with cannonball holes from their stunning defeat by the English Navy after trying to invade Queen Elizabeth's Protestant realm in 1588 to restore Catholicism, the Spanish Armada sailed north around the Orkneys and Hebrides in their attempt to return home. The worst storms in fifty years, however, drove 24 Spanish ships relentlessly onto the rocky Irish coast, tearing them apart.

Thousands of sailors and soldiers drowned; hundreds of unarmed Spaniards were slaughtered on the beaches. Those who fled across Ireland to reach Scotland faced daily peril for months.

The story of...