96mm
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100mm
• Governor of the Isle of Wight, Sir George Carey, supplied another of his ships ‘Cure’s Ship’ (a play on his name) which was used as one of the eight Fire Ships adopted by Drake to scatter the Armada off Calais.
101mm
THE ARMADA COAST 1588
• Carey was secretly involved in Raleigh’s first colony at Roanoke in America in 1585 to import sassafras for its supposed medical qualities. • Of the Spanish off Dunnose, Recalde had slipped ashore at Cowes from the earlier intelligencegathering ‘Covert’ Spanish Armada of 44 ships that visited south coast harbours in 1575 feining bad Channel weather and in 1580 charted the coast around the Irish Dingle Peninsula when establishing a Papal fort and harbour at Smerwick Bay. Recalde’s brilliant seamanship enabled him to shepherd a number of crippled vessels through the jagged Irish coast back to Spain only to die just a few days after. • Fortifications manned against the Spanish Armada included Yarmouth Castle designed by Giambelli, creator of ‘hell-burner’ fire ships that destroyed Farnese’s fortifications across the Sheldt at Antwerp in 1585 – inspiring Drake to deploy fire-ships off St John’s Roads Calais in 1588 causing the Armada to chop anchors and sail at the mercy of the ‘great storm’. • Lee’s ‘Rat o’ Wight’ sailing with Effingham’s squadron to Dunnose subsequently chased the Armada to Newcastle, ‘Rat’ eventually joining Drake’s captured ‘Rosario’ at Chatham as a dry dock exhibit in 1589.
Three beacons lit at The Needles
Solent: Recalde slips ashore from ‘covert’ Armada of 1575 anchored off Cowes Castle
OUTER
Secret zabra raid
St Catherine’s beacon
Carisbrooke Castle
Beacon Downs
All Saints Church, Godshill bells rung and beacon lit above Beacon Alley nearby
APPROX SITE OF BEACONS
St Andrew’s Church bells rung Captain George Fenner’s Whitwell Manor St Lawrence Church bells rung
Brading Cannon hauled to Culver Cliff and Captain Story’s secret intelligence voyage
Triumph is towed below by longboats
Further reading
BACK COVER
Drake’s Revenge attacks Gran Griffon
Recalde chases Frobisher to Dunnose
Triumph vs San Martin Bonchurch Church bells
Pirate Gilbert Lee sailed past on 5 July 1588 with first news of Armada
Go to The Isle of Wight Armada Coast, 1588 by David Baldwin MVO RVM available at The Longshoreman’s Museum, Ventnor Esplanade PO38 1JT and Medina Bookshop, Cowes PO31 7RR
Acknowledgements Ventnor Town Council, South Wight Chronicle and Abby Wilkinson Map ofMap the isleof of Wight 1600of by Wight William White showingby Beacon locations White the inIsle in 1600 William
showing Beacon locations
Beacon Trail
South Wight
FRONT COVER In 1588 the Spanish Armada were spied sailing off our South Coast. With this Heritage Trail you will see the locations of the Beacons that alerted the Realm and view the scenes of extraordinary sea battles
Vischer’s 1588 engraving of the Spanish Armada at the Battle of Dunnose with four Beacons alight, from left to right: St Boniface Down; Nansen Hill, Shanklin Down above the Chine and Mersley Down Beacon above Haseley Manor
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