2nd Spanish Armada 1596. Spain and England had been at war for nearly twelve years with neither side gaining the upper hand. The result of the intervention of Philip II in the religious war in France in support of the Catholic League, meant that Spanish forces had established coastal garrisons along the French and Flemish coast by the late 1580s. These bases had a huge strategic value because they allowed England to be threatened by the Spanish fleet and troops. England on the other hand had also intervened in France, but in support of King Henry IV of France, as a result of
Spanish ship Fenix (1749) Spanish ship Fenix (1749) Fénix was an 80-gun ship-of-the-line of the Spanish Navy, launched in 1749. In 1759, she was sent to bring the new king, Carlos III, from Naples to Barcelona. When Spain entered the American Revolutionary War in June 1779, "Fénix" set sail for the English Channel where she was to join a Franco-Spanish fleet of more than 60 ships-of-the-line under Lieutenant General Luis de Córdova y Córdova. The Armada of 1779 was an invasion force of 40,000 troops with orders to capture the British naval base at Portsmouth. As the flagship of Admiral Juan de Lángara, the