Armada
F1. Maritime HistoryDefinition
Spanish fleet of 1588 dispatched by Philip II against Elizabethan England; its defeat marked a shift in Atlantic naval power.
The Spanish Armada was the fleet of about 130 ships dispatched by Philip II in 1588 to escort an invasion force from the Spanish Netherlands to Elizabethan England. English galleons under Howard and Drake, using fireships at Calais and superior gunnery and maneuverability, broke the crescent formation; storms then wrecked many ships on the voyage home around Scotland and Ireland. Roughly half the fleet was lost. The defeat checked Habsburg ambitions in the Atlantic and is a foundational episode in the rise of English sea power.