Pam and I woke early on June 8 for that 138 mile drive to my cousin’s farm on the Cooley peninsula, County Louth, Republic of Ireland. Learning the day before, from the Giants Causeway visitor center, of treasure recovered from a shipwreck off that coast, we planned to visit Belfast, where the Ulster Museum has a permanent exhibit, “Treasures from the Girona”. This is just a taste of the historical provided by this excellent exhibit….if you visit Northern Ireland make time to visit the Ulster Museum.
In this post we explore, using my photographs of the museum exhibits, how the Spanish galleass La Girona came to be in the North Atlantic off the Irish coast. The ship was part of a fleet supporting an invasion of England from Flanders.
Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Religion was the crux, Catholic Spain wanted to forestall Queen Elizabeth I’s establishment of Protestantism initiated by her father King Henry VII and support of Dutch protestants against Spain. State sponsored piracy of Spanish ships was a secondary justification.
To be continued….. (Click for the first post of this series)
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Michael Stephen Wills Photography 
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