In the Year of Our Lord, 1588, Elizabeth of England and Philip II of Spain were seen throughout Europe as the champions respectively of the Protestant North and the Catholic counter-Reformation in the South.
When it came to skirmishes between the two, popular opinion in England was that Philip was the right hand of Antichrist, and that the Lord of Hosts was on the English side; naturally enough, the view in Spain was quite the opposite.
It was in this atmosphere of Divine ambivalence that the Spanish Armada set sail in early summer, with the ambitious goal of the invasion and total conquest of Elizabeth's kingdom.
The plan was that the fleet should proceed through the English Channel, take on board an army of 30,000 men assembled in the Spanish Netherlands, and launch an attack from there.
As it happened, after a few wounding encounters in the Channel with the English fleet, the Spaniards abandoned their ill-fated escapade and opted for the long route home, around the north of Scotland.
"Take great heed lest you fall upon the island of Ireland," the Duke of Medina Sidonia advised, "for fear of the harm that may happen to you on that coast." And he was right.
The Armada encountered one of the stormiest Septembers of the century, and 25 ships and more than 5,000 men were lost between the Giant's Causeway and Valentia Island.
Unfortunately, it ill-behoved the native Irish to bid the weary Spaniards welcome, since those who did would themselves receive harsh treatment from their English overlords.
On September 10th, for example, when the San Estaban was grounded off Doonbeg in Co Clare, 60 of the 300 Spaniards who made it to the shore were promptly slaughtered; the rest were executed by the local sheriff.
But September 21st, 1588, was one of their blackest days. During the morning, the San Juan de Portugal and San Juan Bautista, sheltering from the storms in Blasket Sound, collided with each other and suffered serious damage.
Then, in the afternoon, the Nuestra Senora De La Rosa struck the submerged Stromboli Rock that lies between the Blaskets and the mainland. Of 600 souls on board, just one survived.
Colin Myles-Hook, in Stromboli Rock, his evocative short story on the subject, describes the fate of one who perished:
"Don Diego was swept away on the tide and never seen again until his body was washed ashore on to the rocks of Glanleam Bay in Valentia Harbour. He was buried on the steep wooded hillside above his landing place, and a worn stone cross marks his grave to this day."