The Failure of the Spanish Armada

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The Failure of the Spanish Armada The Armada could have succeeded the plan was simple and could have been effective. The Spanish had the strongest army in Europe and the English defences were not exactly good. The plan was very simple, but could have been deadly if it had worked. The main reasons for it not working out were the communication problems. The messenger ships travelled the same speed, as the Armada so they were nearly useless and the communication between Parma's army and the Armada were not good. On top of all of this the Armada had received message that Parma's army was not ready when they were at Calais, which caused a big problem for the Spanish. Communication was not the only problem the planning was put together so quickly, King Philip hadn't thought of the area at all. The coast where Parma's army were waiting the coast was very shallow and not a very steep gradient at all. The sand was less than 20 metres deep for up to a mile out to sea and the Armada's ships needed at least 20 metres. This meant that the ships couldn't pick up the army. That problem was soon solved when the army managed to get lightweight barges to transport the army across. A new problem arose, how they got across to the Armada without the Dutch fleet seeing them and attacking them. If they were spotted the Dutch could kill them all and the Armada couldn't do anything about it because of the shallow water. The main commander for the Armada died in February 1588 so the King had to pick a new leader. He chose the Duke of Medina Sidonia. He was chosen because he was the greatest noble in Spain at that time. He had no experience and not much... ... middle of paper ... ... if they had known that they probably would have gone back through the channel and all of them (probably) would have got back safely. You could say that the English was very lucky. The defeat of the Armada may not have been due to the superiority of the English. Examination of cannonballs found on the bottom of the North Sea has shown that Spanish cannonballs were not all the same size. Different sizes of gun required different sizes of cannonballs. It has been suggested that the Spanish ships were not equipped with the right cannonballs for the guns on board their ships and were therefore unable to fire on the English ships that attacked them. They therefore chose to retreat, possibly to the Netherlands. The high winds prevented them from reaching port and dashed the ships against the rocks of northern Scotland.

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