PIRATES OF CORK

Our story begins in the 1588th year of our Common Era with my eleventh great grandfather, Captain de Croix, on his ship under way with the rest of the Spanish Armada bound for English shores with the intent of subduing the emerald isles and planting the Spanish flag in the midst of that potentially pliant country with Queen Elizabeth I at its helm.
But battles do not always follow the plans that others in palatial castles draw up. In the Armada’s first skirmish things had not gone to plan, and even though the prevailing winds favoured the Armada, Sir Francis Drake & Lord Effingham, having been dispatched by the Queen of England to stem the incoming Spanish attack, exacted a heavy toll on the Spanish ships. Later, in the Battle of Gravelines they utilised fireboats to reduce many a wooden hulled vessel to ashes off Calais, all while Dutch flyboats kept them in one place.
Many of the ships were merchantmen carrying the cream of Spanish soldiery who were unused to the privations of ship life, and since the ships were unable to put in for water and supplies, many died of starvation and lack of water. The remnants of the Armada slunk around Scotland harried by the English. Those ships that survived were headed for a vicious storm that sank many of the surviving galleons, leaving their hulks to Davy Jones’ Locker. Captain de Croix had steered a course south along the west coast of Ireland then north up the east coast to Cork to avoid the storm’s ravages. He eventually made landfall at a secluded cove, and it was here that he met an Irish beauty by the name of Elizabeth O’Sullivan . . .