Captain Francisco de Cuellar: The Armada, Ireland, and the Wars of the Spanish monarchy, 1578-1606

Captain Francisco de Cuellar was an officer who served with the ill-fated Spanish Armada. He was shipwrecked on the coast of Co. Sligo in September 1588. Known to Irish history for the extraordinary account he wrote of his experiences in Ireland, he survived a hurricane-force storm that destroyed his ship and killed most of those on board. A castaway, he found shelter among the Gaelic Irish of the northwest for seven months before he was helped to reach Scotland, and later, the Low Countries. But Captain Cuellar’s Irish adventure was only one of many in a remarkable military career. Drawing on previously undiscovered documents from Spanish and Belgian archives, this book chronicles, for the first time, Cuellar’s entire military service - from the earliest evidence of him as a soldier in 1578, to our final glimpse of him in 1606.