Whilst Sue and I were in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, she wanted to visit a tabac to buy some cigarettes. As there was a very high step up into the shop, I decided to stay outside and browse the magazines that were on sale at a small newspaper kiosk.
Whilst I was standing there looking, the owner - who spoke excellent English - asked me if I was looking for anything in particular, and when I replied that I was interested in wargaming and military history, he suggested that I ought to have a look at a very glossy magazine entitled DESPERTA FERRO*: HISTORIA MILITAR Y POLITICO DEL MUNDO MODERNO, SIGLOS XVI - XIX (which translates into English as AWAKE IRON: MILITARY AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD, 16TH-19TH CENTURIES).
I bought the latest issue (No.79) which was entitled CONTRAARMADA: EL CONTRAATTAQUE INGLÉS 1589 which was devoted to the story of England's disastrous post-Spanish Armada attack on Spain in 1589.
The magazine contained the following articles:
- El interludio de la Contraarmada (The interlude of the Counter Armada) by Porfirio Sans Camañes
- "Nuestro sencilla flota de barcos pesqueros": Finanzas, hombres y recursos de la Contraarmada ("Our simple fleet of fishing boats": Finances, men and resources of the Counterfleet) by Phillip Williams
- La Monarquía Hispánica frente a la Contraarmada (The Spanish Monarchy against the Counter-Armada) by Guillermo Nicieza Forcelledo
- La defensa de La Coruña (The defence of La Coruña) by Maria del Carmen Saavedra Vázquez
- La red de espionaje naval de Felipe II (Philip II's naval espionage network) by Guillermo Nicieza Forcelledo
- El desembaro inglés en Peniche y la defensa de Lisbon (The English landing in Peniche and the defense of Lisbon) by Augusto Salgado
- La retirada de la Contraarmada (The retreat of the Counter-Armada) by Alberto Raúl Esteban Ribas
- Los Doce Apóstoles: El rearme naval español (The Twelve Apostles: The Spanish naval rearmament) by José L Casabán
The magazine is printed on heavy, glossy paper, and this issue includes numerous colour illustrations and seven detailed maps.
I wish that there was an English language edition of this magazine or a similar English publication that was available for sale online or in High Street outlets. I’m sure that it would sell well.
DESPERTA FERRO is published by Desperta Ferro Ediciones SLNE, Paseo del Prado, 12 – 1.°dcha, 28014 Madrid, and costs 7.50 Euros (approximately £6.60).
* Desperta Ferro! (Awake Iron!) was an Medieval Aragonese battle cry used by the Almogavars. These were light infantry raised from the farmers and shepherds who lived in the countryside, woods, and frontier mountain areas of Aragon and then – somewhat later – from Catalonia, Castile, Valencia, and Portugal.
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Cheers for putting me on to this site yesterday on the VWC, lots of interesting stuff.
ReplyDeleteWillz.
Tiberian general (Willz),
DeleteIt's certainly something that I am going to follow up myself.
All the best,
Bob
Oh! that looks interesting. I'll keep an eye out for it next time I'm in España. thank for flagging it up Bob.
ReplyDeleteNundanket,
DeleteCheers! Glad to have been of help. I will certainly be looking out for future issues when I am next in Spain.
ll the best,
Bob
I'd offer these comments on the counter-Armada.
Delete[a] Such has been the focus on events of 1587-89, that it's all too easy for modern readers not to be aware that the major expeditions (even if they both failed) were part of a whole series of naval or amphibious plans. The Spanish had planned an expedition in 1587, postponed it to 1588, and thereafter planned several further attempts -- summarised in Winston Graham's "The Spanish Armadas" (Collins, 1972). And apart from the 1589 counter-Armada, there was also a major English expedition in 1596 (e.g. Stephen and Elizabeth Usherwood, "The couner-Armada 1596"; The Bodley Head, 1983).
[b] The last word on the 1588 Armada, at least in Engish, must surely be the epic works of Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, "The Spanish Armada" (Hamish Hamilton, 1988; rev. ed. Mandolin, 1999) and their more extensively reworked "Armada" (Yale UP, 2022). Among other things, they point out Spain's major effort to up-gun the Armada between 1587-88, including the hasty production of aditional cannons, though "production pressures...took their toll on quality, and many corners were cut. Horrifying accidents occurred when inadequately-baked moulds burst, or when guns faied their proofing tests... many pieces were not propertly proofed..." (Mandolin ed., 130). And "the wreck of the 'Gran Grifon'... revealed... crucial weakness in the Armada's artillery. The ship had been issued with 8 bronze pieces from the crash gunfounding programme at Lisbon just before the fleet sailed: 4 medias culebrinas and 4 medios sacres. An example of each types has been recovered... but the intense production pressures evidently caused a dramatic drop in technical standards: the media culebrina... was bored so far off-centre that in all probability it could never have been fired... Nor was this an isolated case" (Mandolin ed.,194).
[c] There is also important work on the Armada's gunpower in I A A Thompson's "Spanish Armada guns" (Mariner's Mirror 61:4, November 1975) and his "Spanish Armada gun policy and procurement" (in P Gallagher and D W Cruickshank, ed.s, "God's obvious design: papers for the Spanish Armada symposium, Sligo, 1988"; Tamesis Books, 1990). Dr Thompson's research completely supersedes that of Michael Lewis in his "Armada guns" (1961). But what's clear about the arming of the Armada is that some of the guns were decades old: gun technology hadn't changed sufficiently over 1/2 century that it was worth the time/money to re-cast old guns.
[d] This speaks to a wider point on technology adoption. We're used to living in a world that, when some new gadget is designed, if can be produced in massive quantities within a year or so. But in Philip II's day, there was a significant lead-time in terms of producing significant quantities of a new gun design, let alone deploying such guns across a global empire. An example of this can be seen in the last fight of Sir Richard Grenville's "Revenge" in 1591, when she was cut off and assailed by ~53 Spanish ships, including some of those built after 1588. A detailed study by Peter Earle ("The last fight of the Revenge"; Collins & Browne, 1992) notes: "San Felipe [one of the new 'Apostles'] went to sea with just 37 guns and even the flagship San Pablo [another Apostle] had only 42. The [fleet's] other three Aspotles had only 24 or 25 guns. Most of the other ships in the fleet were similarly under-gunned. The former flagship San Martin had had 48 guns in the [1588]...campaign and 45 in [early 1591]... but only 32 when she sailed after being stripped for the sake of the Apostles. Santiago de Portugal was reduced from 26 to 23, San Cristobal de Portugal from 26 to 21..." (p.92). Thus, 3 whole years after the great Armada, and in during a major shipbuilding effort, the world's richest empire had difficulty in arming her major warships.
Toby E,
ReplyDeleteThanks yet again for the very detailed comments. I certainly learned a lot from reading them!
It’s interesting to note that even during the seventeenth century, it took longer to produce the armament to be fitted to a ship than to build the vessel itself, and that older ships might be stripped of their guns to arm newer ships. It rather put me in mind of the good old HMS Vanguard, whose guns and turrets were ‘saved’ from the conversion of Glorious and Courageous from light battlecruisers/large cruisers into aircraft carriers. One wonders what might have happened if the guns and turrets of ships scrapped as a result of the Washington Treaties had been stored rather than scrapped.
As an aside, I was told by someone who used to work in Woolwich Arsenal that when the site was being cleared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they found a storage shed full of 15-inch diameter steel ‘pipes’. These were cut up for scrap before anyone realised that they were the barrel liners for 15-inch naval guns!
The site was full of stuff like that. I was at a meeting of the Board of Friends of the Firepower Museum one day when we had to evacuate the Old Laboratory building because a workman thought that he’d found a World War II bomb. An RLC bomb team turned up and excavated … and found a stash of Congreve rocket bodies that had been buried back in the middle of the nineteenth century!
All the best,
Bob