Since I said that I would give you a little background on what's going on before we start RPing, I'll post everything here so you have something to go off of.
Basically, the Spanish Armada occurred as a result of a few factors:
[1]The Reformation pitted the Protestants against the Catholics, which caused a rebellion against the Catholic rule in Spanish Netherlands. England took the opportunity to fund the rebels and keep the conflict going.
[2] Queen Elizabeth I commissoined "seadogs" to go after Spanish ships that were sending funding and supplies to the Netherlands. This added more financial burden to the kingdom and was just pretty annoying in general. They also plundered Portugal and tried to attack ships in the Spanish bays as well.
[3] Queen Mary I had granted King Phillip II the right to rule England after her death, but as we all know, that didn't happen. So Phillip II decided to use force!
[4] Queen Elizabeth I had Mary, Queen of Scots, executed when she sought refuge at her place -- probably because she posed a threat to the English throne (tried to claim right to throne before). The fact that Mary was also Catholic did not help matters either.
So basically, the Armada sets sail and the English try to intercept at the Bay of Biscay, but were unable to (not that big of a detail in the grand scheme of things) and the Spanish reach Cornwall. But Spain's ruler
is dumb forbade the Spanish to attack so the admiral (who was very loyal) just kept sailing until the English intercepted them at Plymouth. The next night, the English basically navigated their ships upwind of the Spainish Armada and gained an advantage over them and drove them out of the seabanks (and basically used their advantage in speed to continually harass the larger, cumbersome Spanish ships).
Armada flees to Calais, where they meet a blockade set up by the Dutch. They could have engaged the Dutch and then try to break through and meet up with the fleet in the Netherlands, but their admiral decides that he did not want to do that. So the English came with fireboats and broke up their battle formation before attacking. This leads into the Battle of Gravelines.
Battle of Graveslines basically was a disaster for the Spanish. The English figured out the weaknesses of the boats and decided to use it to their advantage. So they would come in and attack and pull away when the Spanish tried their offensive. I wish I could give you more, but basically that's what happened. Oh... and Spanish boats get destroyed.
Then the Spanish turn tails and run... around Great Britain and Ireland... and lose more men and ships along the way. Sad story.
So as you can see, you get to harass! You get to sail and loot and destroy! However, I know that can also be a lot, so let me know what you want to focus on and we can always fast forward through the seabank skirmishes. I started with the Spanish Armada sailing because I figured that would give us a lot of leeway.
Okay. That was my ghetto-rigged version of what happened. Some better sources include:
Whew. That was long. Thanks for looking at this!
