From Merciless Invaders: The Defeat of the Spanish Armada

by Alexander McKee

‘This is a fresh, interesting and richly detailed account of the Armada campaign’ — The New York Times

A dramatic narrative account of the 1588 English victory over the Spanish Armada.

Perfect for fans of John Barratt, N. A. M. Rodger, Ben Wilson and everyone interested in naval history.

The overthrow of the Spanish Armada in 1588 has come down in history as one of England's ‘finest hours’. A small, inadequately equipped fleet put to rout the mightiest naval force ever assembled; great squadrons of ships, drawn from all the provinces of the Spanish empire, were sent scuttling in disarray round the north of Scotland, many to founder on the shores of Ireland.

Drawing upon contemporary reports, diaries and letters, as well as original eyewitness accounts, Alexander McKee presents a dramatic reconstruction described by those who actually took part in the campaign, on both sides. The result is living history, a reassessment that reveals many parallels with the critical summer of 1940.

Four-hundred-year-old voices speak to us of armies massing on the coast of the Low Countries; of the bumbling incompetence that eventually brought the cumbersome Armada within sight of England; of swift and devastating assaults by the English galleons; of the panic-stricken flight into the North Sea; and of hardship and death and, throughout the action, a desperate need for more ammunition and food. Seen as a vivid documentary, the reasons why the deadly threat of Spain collapsed in ruins are thrown into high relief.

Written by the discoverer and excavator of the Mary Rose, an historian and diver well able to understand the eccentricities of wind and current that Drake and Hawkyns used to such good effect, From Merciless Invaders is an outstanding contribution to the study of naval warfare.

360 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Alexander McKee was no "yes-man", he dared to criticise many military, political, economic, media and academic icons and he always kept an open mind. He was fanatical about making his works as accurate as he possibly could. He was ever alert to plain-wrong, biased, distorted or sloppy reports and hidden agendas; wickedly delighting (the more so as a self-educated man) in criticising and exposing assertions that did not fit the evidence. Among his targets were those who tended to emphasise media-image-managment, the accumulation of personal wealth and career progression over both personal integrity and respect for other people's contributions. He gleefully highlighted all the many lapses of integrity that he found. Equally, many established experts, often highly educated people and indeed experts regarding the theoretical aspects of their disciplines, but whom he considered scandalously remiss when they complacently failed to complement such theoretical understanding with practical knowledge as a way to test their theories empirically. Consequently, some of them came in for some harsh criticism on occasion. One gets the impression from his work that some of them appeared reluctant to venture outside the academy at all; out into the "real world": let alone to mix with ordinary people. Implicitly, he urged them to converse with the fishermen, the builders, the soldiers, the doctors, the nurses, the shipwrights and the firemen to glean practical understanding from these practical people, who had to be willing and able to carry out the ultimate tests on their theories to provide demonstably working solutions in order to fulfill their typical working roles. Then he urges such experts in the theory to re-test their theories against the empirically derived knowledge gleaned from their excursions among the working classes, and to do so conjunction with their own senses, out in the "real world": rather than limiting themselves and risking their reputations on the results of thought experiments alone. He dug deep into eye-witness testimonies and spent countless hours searching libraries and museums for the documentary evidence surrounding each his-story. One may find this slightly comical that viewed against the background of established caricaturisations, when the elevated "pillars of wisdom", went "building castles in the air" around about the "ivory towers" and he found strong contradictory "real world" evidence he often lambasted them mercilessly, although it does sometimes seem to be overdone. In contrast, he made the point that some of the sloppy documentary historical works such as that of Sir Robert Davis, that temporarily led his own research astray (and much to his annoyance caused him to repeat untruths in public lectures) while causing the propagation of serious errors until he uncovered them, were nevertheless probably a consequence of the pressures of work, owing to the high quality of the rest of the publication.

Reviews

[Chaos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only did I get a massive education but I adored the history. This was a concise and well written book about the fall of the Spanish Armada. Alex again does a beautiful job, not just in his meticulous research, but in the way he paints the stories. He writes it from the pov of the people that were around this time. Building up how the Spanish Armada came to be all the way until its destruction. A historical book researched to perfection. And yes im 100% continuing on with Alex's next book!