For any foreign visitor to Northern Ireland finding a First Trust Bank ten-pound note in their possession, the obverse illustration may seem a rather odd one. It shows an oared sailing ship bearing the name La Girona. The oars are reminiscent of a Roman galley, while high on the vessel’s stern is a large lantern common to ships of the Elizabethan era. Next to the currency numeral is a lizard-like emblem, the hollows in its back suggesting settings for jewels. To explain the story of how this curious ship ended up on the back of a Northern Irish banknote, one must return to the year 1588 and the aftermath of one of England’s most famous victories at sea.
Vessels combining sails and oars, known as galleasses, were a relatively common sight in the calmer waters of the Mediterranean up to the 17th century, adding extra power and steerage capabilities in an era of imperfect sail technology. Henry VIII’s navy had contained several warships of this type and so too did the navy of Naples, a colony of Spain at the time of the Armada. Assembled to transport troops for the planned invasion of England, the Armada comprised more than 130 men-of-war and merchant ships drawn from the diverse fleets of Spain and her Mediterranean empire, La Girona being one of four 50-gun galleasses that formed the Neapolitan squadron. Commanded by a Genoan ‘knight of the order of Malta’ named Fabrizio Spinola, her 56 oars (28 on each side) were manned by more than 200 convicts and prisoners of war.
Histories of the Spanish Armada tend to focus on the events of early August when the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s invasion fleet, having failed to link up with the Duke of Parma’s 30,000-strong army in Calais, came under attack at anchor there by English fire-ships launched on the initiative of Sir Francis Drake. Forced out to sea, the Armada was then set upon by Lord Howard of Effingham’s superior ‘raze-built’[1] galleons at the Battle of Gravelines, which resulted in the loss of six Spanish ships, including the galleass San Lorenzo, and heavy damage to many others. Though roundly defeated in its purpose of embarking the Spanish invasion force, Sidonia’s fleet was still largely intact, and with the English ships running short of ammunition, it continued to represent a potential threat to the realm.
Unfortunately for Sidonia, his fleet was now on the wrong side of the weather. Unable to counteract a strong south-westerly wind, the Armada was pushed northwards up the Channel and into the North Sea, the English in dogged though ineffective pursuit. By 12th August, when Howard’s ships gave up the chase, the Spanish had been pushed as far north as the Firth of Forth. With their crews exhausted by battle and short of provisions, Sidonia and his captains faced the arduous task of charting a course back to Spain via the Atlantic. Little did Queen Elizabeth know as she boasted of her kingly heart and stomach to her doubtful troops at Tilbury Fort that the Armada was scattered on the seas between the Orkneys and Shetland, with fight left in it only to return home.
In the 16th century such a circumnavigational voyage around the British Isles was risky even in the most benign weather conditions. Not only were the ships of the age unable to precisely calculate their longitudinal positions, Spanish nautical charts of the Scottish and Irish coasts were wildly inaccurate. Many Armada ships were battle-damaged and ill-equipped for an Atlantic detour, some having lost their anchors. On top of these handicaps, they also had to contend with weather and sea conditions that were malignant. Soon after passing between the Shetlands and Orkneys, far to the south of their plotted course, Sidonia’s ships were confronted with strong northerly gales that together with the uncomprehended easterly motion of the Gulf Stream drove many ships inexorably towards the treacherous coastline of western Ireland.
Ireland was at the time a volatile land, as English protestant armies sought to suppress an assortment of powerful Catholic-aligned clans. The situation was especially tense in the western provinces of Munster and Connaught. Ignorant of the Armada’s predicament and now fearing an invasion of his own jurisdiction, the Crown’s Lord Deputy William Fitzwilliam issued draconian orders that all invaders be summarily put to death along with any Irishman that might be found to have aided them. This strict edict remained in place even after it became apparent that the Spanish landings were haphazard and chaotic.
Throughout a stormy September, units of the Armada made precipitous landfall all along the west coast of Ireland; from Kerry and County Clare in Munster, to Mayo and Sligo in Connaught and even as far north as Donegal, the most westerly county in Ulster. Some vessels arrived in groups, others in isolation. Some ships, most often those whose pilots knew the coastline, were able to put to sea again after finding a temporary anchorage from the weather. Most of these eventually succeeded in returning to Spain. Others were driven on to rocks and their crews drowned. In most cases where men did manage to survive wrecking, they were swiftly rounded up by Crown forces and put to death. In Connaught alone, more than a thousand survivors from around a dozen shipwrecks were executed.
At Blacksod Bay in Mayo, men from the stranded merchant Rata Santa Maria Encoronada, led by Sidonia’s deputy, Don Alonso Martinez de Leyva, briefly took refuge in a pair of coastal forts before boarding another straggler, the Duquesa Santa Ana. Owing to serious damage, it was decided to sail this ship to Scotland, but the Duquesa got no further than Loughros Bay, in Donegal, where her expanded complement of 600 were once again forced to seek shelter ashore. Unbeknown to these desperate men, just across the peninsula another Spanish ship had taken refuge. La Girona had put in at the fishing town of Killibegs to repair a damaged rudder. There, Spinola and his crew had received assistance ashore from a local chieftain. On learning of La Girona’s presence, de Leyva and his men immediately moved south to join her, raising her total complement to more than 1,200.
Around 26th October, La Girona set sail for Scotland, a journey those aboard hoped could be completed in around four days. However, two days out, the ill-fated galleass encountered another storm coming from the north, which disabled her rudder a second time. Despite the efforts of crew and oarsmen to keep the ship away from the coast, she foundered at night on the rocks off Lacada Point, a few miles east of the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim. The precise number of those drowned has never been established, but it is known that only nine men aboard La Girona came out of the sea alive.
Among the dead of La Girona were Spinola, de Leyva, the captains of the two other crews aboard ship, and more than 60 other members of the nobility. Such men wore their jewels as a mark of distinction even in battle. Among a variety of treasures subsequently salvaged from the wreck site was a gold pendant in the form of a salamander, its spine set with rubies. Its provenance is unclear although Hernan Cortes recorded seeing a ‘winged lizard’ among Aztec ornaments carried back to Spain, which it may have been copied from. It is now on display in the Ulster Museum in Belfast. Its original owner was one among more than 5,000 men aboard 24 ships of the Armada believed to have met their end in Ireland; a colossal misadventure worthy of commemoration.
[1] Designed by John Hawkins to have ‘the head of a cod and tail of a mackerel’, reduced poops and forecastles further enhancing manoeuvrability and stability.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 