Maritime history only when his ship was too disabled to offer any resistance. The Spanish Armada was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidona in 1588. The Spanish Armada was sent by King Philip II of Spain, who had been king consort of England until the death of his wife Mary I of England thirty years earlier. The purpose of the expedition was to escort the Duke of Parma's army of tercios from the Spanish Netherlands across the North Sea for a landing in south-east England. Once the army had suppressed English support
3rd Spanish Armada Sir Ferdinand Gorges the Governor of the Fort at Plymouth put a 500-man guard on the town and a pinnace was sent out to feedback sightings of the Spanish fleet. Gorges was fed reports of the landings in Cornwall and Wales and sightings of Spanish ships and immediately sent the information to parliament and the Queen in London in the quickest possible time. An excited panic set in motion across much of England and Wales. Troops were being recalled from Amiens in France (it had recently been captured by the Anglo-French force the previous month) and for the mobilization of