http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Armada

Well, history has improved since we were taught 'what the scholars knew' in 1980...and our teacher had made such a thorough research point of this historical battle...that let me think...was it a PHD paper that he had written upon it...anyway, after quoting all of the stuff about the ARMADA going around SCOTLAND and also IRELAND...we found out that none of this was in fact true...they hadn't at all...simply crawled up the coast of FRANCE and gone for a direct attack down the THAMES...to then retreat rapidly with only a couple of ships actually lost...so no 'big deal' but I suppose that then the whole thing got hyped up out of proportion in relation to what was really a 'non-battle'...a total NON EVENT.

There is a lesson to be learnt here somewhere...