The Spanish Armada in Doona
By Dan Conway
In February 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed at Fotheringhay Castle after nearly two decades of imprisonment. Dressed in the crimson robes of Catholic martyrdom, she met her fate with composure. But her death shocked Europe. For King Philip II of Spain, it was the final provocation. Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, had eliminated the last Catholic claimant to the English throne, extinguishing hopes of a peaceful restoration of the old faith.
King Phillip was enraged, and all of Spain with him. Bearing the papal blessing, Philip launched the mighty Armada of 1588 — over 130 ships and nearly 30,000 men — to dethrone Elizabeth and restore Catholic supremacy.
After a late start, ineffective leadership, and skirmishes in the English Channel, the Armada was greatly weakened. Then, in what seemed an act of providence, nature dealt its fiercest blow. Weeks of savage storms ensued, often with hurricane-force winds.
The fleet was scattered and driven northward around Scotland and then headed west toward the Atlantic to go around Ireland in hopes of returning to Spain. However, the storms and wild seas would not relent.
Many vessels, stripped of anchors and rudders, were driven helplessly onto the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Nearly thirty ships were lost — twenty-six along Ireland’s shoreline — and thousands upon thousands of sailors and soldiers perished from drowning, starvation, or execution, if they happened to be captured by forces loyal to the Crown, which, in those days, depended on where you went ashore. In this chaos, the western coast of Ireland became the graveyard of Philip’s grand ambition.
The Spanish Armada and the Wreck at Blacksod Bay
The Origin of Term “Black Irish”
In the wee hours of the morning in mid-September 1588, Blacksod Bay and the villagers of Doona in Ballycroy, County Mayo, found themselves at the very heart of one of the Armada’s most remarkable chapters, where Spanish survivors and Irish villagers crossed paths in a drama of faith, survival, and tragedy.
What the more than 400 sailors who wrecked in Blacksod Bay near the Sandy Banks of Doona could not have known was that they would endure two further shipwrecks before their ordeal was finished — and most, if not all, would never see Spain again.
Shipwreck
The Santa María Encoronada, one of the Armada’s largest vessels, commanded by Don Alonso Martínez de Leyva, limped past Slievemore Mountain and into Blacksod Bay after storms and shortages separated her from the fleet. She grounded on a large strand that jutted into the bay, not far from Doona Castle, then broke apart on the sands. Remarkably, all 419 soldiers and sailors survived.
Don Alonso and his men salvaged arms, treasure, and cannon, and took shelter in Doona Castle, now associated with Grace O’Malley, the Pirate Queen of Ireland. For three days, they camped in the fields between the castle and the ancient Fahy Church and cemetery, regrouping while the villagers of Doona watched with fascination and, we may imagine, offered what aid they could.
News soon came that two other Armada ships had anchored to the north in Elly Bay, off the great peninsula that runs southward from Belmullet. These ships were the Duquesa Santa Ana and the Señora de Begoña. Don Alonso gathered what he could carry and led his weary company north, joined along the way by survivors from another wreck of a ship named Santiago.
The march from Doona Village to Elly Bay was roughly twenty-five miles, but over bogs, rivers, and rocky terrain. For exhausted shipwreck survivors, it was a punishing journey that took several days.
When they reached Elly Bay, the Begoña sailed immediately south for Spain, and as history tells us, that ship reached home. But hundreds of others, including Don Alonso and most of his men, boarded the Duquesa Santa Ana. Soon after it sailed, storms struck again, and the ship was driven into Donegal, wrecking in the shallows of Loughros More Bay. But fortune had smiled again — all survived and were sheltered by friendly Irish chieftains.
The Final Disaster
From Loughros, the survivors learned that the great ship La Girona lay at Killybegs Harbor, under repair with the help of the MacSweeney Bannagh clan. Hope stirred again.
Don Alonso’s company set out, facing a march of thirty or more miles through lands that included the Bluestack Mountains and a boggy, rocky, roadless country. It was late September: rains poured, winds howled, and the men were hungry, many barefoot or bearing heavy wounds.
English patrols were a constant fear. And the word had spread that the English had hung hundreds of captured Spanish at Streedagh Beach in County Sligo. The march likely took five days, but at last they reached Killybegs Harbor, their last chance of escape.
When La Girona repairs were complete, she took on more than a thousand survivors from earlier wrecks, including Don Alonso himself. Overcrowded and ill-fated, she set sail in October, opting to head north to avoid the English warships they feared were to the south.
On the night of October 26th, as they rounded the top of Ireland, a fierce gale drove her onto the rocks that jutted out into the sea at Lacada Point, near the Giant’s Causeway on the Antrim coast — a place now remembered as the Spanish Rocks, in honor of those who lost their lives. The ship broke apart in the black Atlantic, and of nearly 1,300 souls, only nine lived. Don Alonso perished with his men.
Legacy
From Doona to Donegal to Antrim, the journey of these Armada sailors is remembered as one of endurance, faith, and ultimate tragedy. Artifacts from La Girona, including gold coins and the famed salamander brooch, are preserved in the Ulster Museum, testifying to the grandeur and sorrow of 1588.
This story has been imaginatively and dramatically retold in Night of the Armada, part of my Dear Ireland historical fiction series, under the pen name D.P. Conway. Through historical fiction, imaginatively dramatized for modern readers, the memory of the Spaniards who camped at Doona and ultimately sailed to their doom at the Spanish Rocks endures in the heritage of Mayo and Ireland.
For the people of Mayo, and the many other counties along Ireland’s western coast, the story of the Armada is more than a tale of foreign sailors and distant monarchs. It is part of our landscape, our folklore, and our memory. On those same strands where the Spaniards camped, our own ancestors toiled, endured, and kept faith through centuries of hardship. The courage and suffering of Don Alonso’s men, and the kindness shown to them by many villagers along the way of their long marches, echo the resilience of the Irish spirit itself.
To remember their story is to honor the past and the enduring strength of those who still call Ireland home — as well as the more than 60 million people of Irish descent who call America home. The spirit that once gave shelter to strangers in need still flows through the generations, linking the people of Mayo, the people of Ireland, and their millions of descendants in America into one family of common ancestry and a shared heritage of endurance, generosity, faith, and hope.
Daniel Conway is a CPA. He can be reached at conwaycpa@gmail.com.
To purchase his books, search DP Conway Books, or go to www.dpconway.com.
