INTRODUCTION

The Armada of the Strait under Captain General ¹ Diego Flores de Valdés (hereafter Flores) set out from south-western Spain in the fall of 1581, with twenty-three ships and 3,500 people, including officers, royal officials, sailors, soldiers, and settlers with their families. The year before, as Philip II of Spain made good his claim to the Portuguese throne, ² he planned the armada to demonstrate Habsburg authority in the Americas, in response to Francis Drake’s incursions into the South Atlantic and Pacific oceans in 1577–9. He had been persuaded that a strong armada could bolster the defences of Portuguese Brazil and Spanish Chile and Peru, and defend the Strait of Magellan with forts and a colony. ³ Despite careful planning, the expedition suffered terrible losses from the very beginning and hardships throughout. Hundreds of people drowned in shipwrecks and hundreds more perished from disease and privation. Several ships were lost or so damaged by storms that they could not continue. A contingent of the armada finally was able to establish 338 persons at the Strait, following two earlier failed attempts. ⁴ Other contingents from the armada skirmished with an English expedition under Edward Fenton, expelled French interlopers from north-eastern Brazil, and improved the defences of several coastal regions. ⁵ The armada officially ended when Flores arrived back in Spain 2with five ships and some 600 men in July of 1584. In September of that year, another three ships and 200 men arrived with the armada’s second in command, Almirante Diego de la Rivera, ¹ who had carried the colonizers to the Strait.