Qualla: Battle off Lizard Point

Battle off Lizard Point: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Miguel de Horna was nobody's idea of a knight-errant. He commanded the Armada of Flanders - the Spanish naval squadron operating out of Dunkirk - and his job was practical, not romantic: hunt Dutch shipping, raid the herring fleets, and bring prize cargoes back to a king who needed every ducat. On 18 February 1637 his five ships and two frigates fell on an Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels off the southernmost point of England, the toe of the Lizard Peninsula. By the time the smoke cleared and the winter night came down, twenty ships were lost to the Dutch and Horna was sailing for Dunkirk with seventeen prizes loaded with ammunition and stores. It was, in the brutal accounting of the Eighty Years' War, one of the better days the Dunkirkers ever had.

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Battle off Lizard Point: The Dunkirkers

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dunkirk in the 1630s was a problem the Dutch had not solved. Held by the Spanish Habsburgs, the port sat right on the flank of the Dutch Republic, and from it sailed a permanent squadron of fast, lightly-armed warships and privateers whose business was Dutch trade. The Armada of ...

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Battle off Lizard Point: Off the Lizard

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Horna sailed from Dunkirk on 18 February with his five ships and two frigates and a roster of captains drawn from across the polyglot Spanish empire - the Basque Antonio de Anciondo, the Flemings Marcus van Oben and Cornelis Meyne, the Castilians Antonio Diaz and Salvador Rodrigu...

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Battle off Lizard Point: Seventeen Prizes for Dunkirk

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Horna ran for Dunkirk with three captured warships and fourteen captured merchantmen, all of them loaded with the supplies that Dutch armies and Dutch cities required to keep fighting. The Dutch lieutenant-admiral Philips van Dorp was at sea with twenty warships, dispatched to in...

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Battle off Lizard Point: Why Here

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Lizard Point is the southernmost cape of mainland Britain, a wedge of serpentine and hornblende schist running out into the western entrance of the English Channel. Every ship sailing between northern Europe and the Atlantic - from Amsterdam to Cadiz, from London to Lisbon - ...

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