Spanish Sailors

 Last week I heard someone on the radio talking about the West Coast of Ireland, he talked about the most westerly point and how legend has it that Spanish sailors from the Armada came ashore there and that they are responsible for the many olive skinned beauties in the area. This snippet reminded me of a funny incident with my mother.

Once we were talking about surnames and their origins. She told us that in Cornwall there were many Spanish sounding names and she said that she had read that it was because many of the Spanish sailors from the great Spanish Armada had come ashore in Cornwall and for reasons best known to themselves they had decided to settle there. They married local girls and their off spring still carried these Spanish names. A few days later when we were all in our living room Mom walked in and said, without any preamble “Talking of Spanish Sailors” It took us girls a moment or two to remember that we had been ‘talking of Spanish Sailors’ but when we did we just burst out laughing. Mom was a bit put out that we had laughed and said “Well we were talking of Spanish Sailors” and we just laughed all the more and said “Yes but that was three days ago”. So in our house the phrase is still used. If you want to change the topic of conversation completely and talk about something different you just have to say “Talking of Spanish Sailors” before you start and then everyone knows that you are going to turn the conversation and it will not matter if no one has any idea why you are doing so.

I can’t find any reference to Spanish Sailors in Cornwall but I have found out that after the Spaniards had been defeated by Sir Frances Drake the remaining ships had to sail north and around Scotland as the English fleet were blocking the English channel and they could not get back to Spain that way. Off the coast of Scotland they were hit by a terrible storm and the few remaining ships sailed on around the north of Ireland and are said to have landed south of Galway in a place that is still called Armada Island. As the Spaniards were Catholics they hoped to receive help from Catholic Ireland in their fight against Protestant England but the Irish saw them as intruders and fought them off.

But I suppose with a fleet of 130 ships there must have been a huge number of Spanish Sailors and some of them could have deserted their posts and made new lives for themselves in Cornwall or Ireland. My Mom was always fascinated by surnames, she liked to look at the local telephone directory whenever she came to visit us and try to work out where the people in that area had come from.