Sir, - Thank you for the stimulating review (Books, April 28th) of James Macdermot's life of the Elizabethan corsair Frobisher.
Probably Frobisher knew Stucley, almost certainly the ablest and most unscrupulous Elizabethan corsair, who diverted the ships, troops and supplies wheedled from the Pope to help rebels in Munster to a disastrous "crusade" against Morocco.
Stucley (with the backing of the Spanish Admiral Menendez) had supplied Philip of Spain, to whom he had deserted with a very carefully programmed plan for an attack on England which remained the nightmare of English admiralties and was constantly in the minds of their continental enemies for over two centuries. Had Philip used Stucley's plan in 1588, rather than the more complicated one that the commander of his Armada told him was foredoomed, much history might have been different.
Anyway, must we continue propagating the myth of England's triumph in 1588? Elizabeth had good ships (one bigger than any of Philip's) and skilled leaders. Nevertheless, the Armada battled its way up the Channel as no big naval force did again until the Scharnhorst episode in the 1939 war.
It landed nobody in England because that was never planned. It failed to land troops in Flanders for the real planned invasion from there, partly because of Dutch naval intervention, and because the Spanish in Flanders were not ready. But it fought its way out of the North Sea largely intact, to round Scotland, and then suffered overwhelming storm losses off the coast of Ireland and elsewhere before returning, a much depleted but still manageable force, to Spain.
A great English triumph? - Yours, etc.,
John de Courcy Ireland, Honorary Research Officer, Maritime Institute of Ireland, Dalkey, Co Dublin.