The three ships sailed from Lisbon on 29 May 1588 as part of the Armada's Levant squadron, a group of ten large merchant vessels requisitioned to carry soldiers and equipment for the planned invasion of England. La Lavia, a Venetian carrack displacing 728 tons with 25 guns, served as the squadron's vice-flagship. La Juliana, a Catalan merchantman built in 1570, was the largest at 860 tons with 32 guns and may have carried siege equipment. The Santa Maria de Vison, from Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik), displaced 666 tons and may have functioned as a hospital ship -- half the fleet's medical supplies had been transferred to her from another vessel deemed unseaworthy. Together they carried at least 807 soldiers and 206 sailors, though transfers from damaged ships likely pushed the number much higher.

The Levant squadron had already been badly mauled. In the English Channel, they were among the first ships engaged. Near Gravelines, they cut their main anchors loose to escape English fireships. These large carracks -- designed for cargo, not Atlantic storms -- could not sail well to windward. Unable to round Erris Head against a southwesterly gale, the squadron was driven toward the coast. On 17 September, they dropped anchor two miles offshore at Streedagh and waited. For four days the anchors held. Then on the 21st, the wind shifted to the west-northwest, leaving the ships with no shelter. Hit broadside by enormous waves, the anchor cables snapped. The ships were hurled onto the beach and broke apart rapidly. De Cuellar's account captures the horror: wreckage everywhere, men drowning in the surf, those who made it to shore robbed and murdered.

For nearly 400 years, the wrecks lay hidden beneath the sand. In 1985, after three years of documentary research, the Streedagh Strand Armada Group identified the site. It consists of three locations roughly parallel to the shore. Site 1, just off the center of the beach, covers 165 meters by 40 meters at a depth of 3.8 to 5.2 meters -- almost certainly the Juliana. Bronze cannons recovered there bear the mark of the Genoese gunfounder Gioardi Dorino II and the date 1570, matching her build year. One gun shows evidence of Turkish manufacture, possibly captured at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Site 3, the largest, spans 270 meters by 72 meters and likely holds the Lavia. In 1987, two wooden gun carriages with their bronze guns were found there, including a truck-type carriage previously unrecorded on Spanish vessels of that era.

The wrecks are protected under Ireland's National Monuments Acts, and diving is permitted only under government license. But the Atlantic does not respect legislation. In 2015, storms exposed timber wreckage on the shore, prompting a salvage operation by the National Monuments Service. Divers recovered nine guns, a gun carriage wheel, and a cauldron. The site remains in a high-energy environment, frequently battered by the same storms that destroyed the ships. Monitoring and surveying continue. Another wreck visible at low tide, long called the "butter boat" and assumed to be Armada-related, was dated in 2016 to the 18th century and identified as the Greyhound, a trading vessel lost in December 1770 with twenty people aboard. Streedagh gives up its dead slowly, one storm at a time.