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Updated: June 14, 2025
It was a day of jubilee and rejoicing when a ship known to be freighted with these "good things" and "creature comforts" arrived safely in port. At the proper season, in 1814, the good ship Corunna, of Bristol, was expected at Greenville.
Surely God did not smile upon the beginning of a warfare carried on in his name! It was not until July 12th that the fleet finally sailed from Corunna on its mission of destruction, and to meet its fate. To cope with this formidable force, the whole British navy could muster only thirty-six vessels, all much smaller than the largest of the Spanish ships.
Some short five years more, and the great Armada will have come and gone; and then that avenging storm, of which they, like Oxenham, Hawkins, and Drake, are but the avant-couriers, will burst upon every Spanish port from Corunna to Cadiz, from the Canaries to Havana, and La Guayra and St. Yago de Leon will not escape their share.
True it is, the Spanish government alleged, in their own justification, that the prize was taken under the guns of Corunna, insomuch that the shot fired by the privateer entered that place, and damaged some houses; but this allegation was never properly sustained, and the prize was certainly condemned as legal by the court of admiralty at Gibraltar.
But the Spanish ships had no sooner reached the Orkneys than the storms of the northern seas broke on them with a fury before which all concert and union disappeared. In October fifty reached Corunna, bearing ten thousand men stricken with pestilence and death. Of the rest some were sunk, some dashed to pieces against the Irish cliffs.
In the same year Stephen Gomez sailed from Corunna, to endeavour to discover a strait in the northern parts, by which ships might sail from Europe to the Moluccas. This person had been refused employment in the fleet commanded by Loaisa; but the Count Ferdinando de Andrada, with the Doctor Beltram, and a merchant named Christopher de Sarro; fitted out a galleon for him at their joint expence.
He had a winter march of 300 miles before he could join Sir David Baird, who would have 200 miles to march from Corunna to join him, and there was then a. distance of another 300 miles to be traversed before he reached the Ebro, which was designated as the centre of his operations. And all this had to be done while a great French army was already pouring in through the passes of the Pyrenees.
Dispersed by a storm on their departure from Lisbon, the fleet again assembled at Corunna, their victuals already rotten, and their water foul and short. Medina Sidonia even now counseled abandonment; but religious faith, the fatalistic pride of Spain, and Philip's dogged fixity of purpose drove them on.
But with these facilities offered to him, he sails in June, 1799, from Corunna, whence he reaches Teneriffe, makes short explorations of that island, ascending the peak, and sailing straightway to America, where he lands in Cumana in the month of July, and employs the first year and a half in the exploration of the basin of the Orinoco and its connection with the Amazon.
Having made up his mind, he started at once, and in three hours was at the foot of the hills on the other side of which ran the road from Lugo to Corunna, which proved so disastrous to the army. He presently arrived at a small hamlet, and the children in the streets ran shrieking away as they saw him.
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