Fraught with Hazard: The Heroic Saga of Shipwrecked Armada Survivors in Ireland

by Paul Hemenway Altrocchi, Julia Cooley Altrocchi (Contributor)

Riddled with cannonball holes from their stunning defeat by the English Navy after trying to invade Queen Elizabeth’s Protestant realm in 1588 to restore Catholicism, the Spanish Armada sailed north around the Orkneys and Hebrides in their attempt to return home. The worst storms in fifty years, however, drove 24 Spanish ships relentlessly onto the rocky Irish coast, tearing them apart.

Thousands of sailors and soldiers drowned; hundreds of unarmed Spaniards were slaughtered on the beaches. Those who fled across Ireland to reach Scotland faced daily peril for months.

The story of those few who didn’t die was told only once, by Captain Francisco de Cuellar. This true saga of survival against all odds, based upon Cuellar’s manuscript which lay hidden for 300 years, is vividly described in remarkable detail by historical novelists Paul Altrocchi and Julia Cooley Altrocchi, placing Captain Cuellar among the great heroes and legendary wanderers of history alongside Jason, seeker of the Golden Fleece; Sigurd, ancient Norse hero; and Homer’s Odysseus.

268 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2015