Battle of Las Palmas
1595 naval battle during the Anglo-Spanish War
The Battle of las Palmas was an unsuccessful English naval expedition in 1595 during the Anglo-Spanish War against the Spanish island of Gran Canaria. The English Fleet was originally directed towards Puerto Rico, but had taken a detour in hopes of an easy victory and taking supplies. The English expeditionary fleet under Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, and Sir Thomas Baskerville failed to achieve victory and was forced to withdraw from the Canary Islands towards the Spanish Caribbean, where Francis Drake died of dysentery at Mosquito Gulf.
Background
Captain Drake proposed an attack on the Canary Islands in order to get provisions and plunder. Hawkins utterly refused to consider it, because an attack would have put the whole enterprise that sailed from England two months ago in risk; while the main purpose of the voyage (control the Isthmus of Panama in the Spanish Main) would be delayed. A day later they agreed to discuss the issue at dinner on the Garland. Captain Baskerville was sure he could take Las Palmas in four hours and persuade the inhabitants to ransom it within four days. John Troughton, captain of the Elizabeth Bonaventure, reported in his journal that there was talk of Hawkins threatening to press on to Puerto Rico and leaving Drake and Baskerville to do whatever they chose, but the old man eventually succumbed to persuasion with an ill grace, and the English fleet remained together for the unplanned assault on Gran Canaria. After the English arrived, at eleven o'clock Drake sent one of the smaller ships forward to reconnoitre along the shore, past the Caleta de Santa Catalina and down to the fort of Santa Ana.
He went himself in one of the Defiance's boats to take soundings off the Caleta and to lay buoys to guide the landing, after which he returned to the fleet.
“Battle of Las Palmas” enters the record as 1595 naval battle during the Anglo-Spanish War. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Battle, Palmas and naval can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle of Las Palmas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.