Even after centuries of study, stories about the Spanish Armada of 1588 still capture the imagination. Among these we can count the fates of ships wrecked off the coast of Ireland on their way back to Spain and the men who were on them. Perhaps most famously, Francisco de Cuéllar, a sailor and soldier, has left a historical imprint, especially because he left for posterity an account of his perambulations through Ireland, Scotland, and eventually Flanders: the Carta de uno que fue en la Armada de Inglaterra y cuenta la jornada (Letter of one who was with the Armada of England, and an account of the expedition). Though this source gained notoriety in the nineteenth century, Cuéllar's time came in the aftermath of 1988 during the Armada's quinquecentennial and the resultant scholarly activity. With time, Cuéllar became more than a subject of academic interest—he entered popular culture by means of television specials, novels, music, and theater. Cuéllar's story inspired Francis Kelly to the point that he sought to retrace his steps, starting by bicycle in Streedagh, Ireland, and ultimately arriving in the sleepy town of Simancas, Spain, where a different kind of journey began. Amid boxes and boxes of old papers in the Archivo General de Simancas, Kelly began a quest to uncover the minutiae of Cuéllar's life and experiences. The result is a book that reveals the fruits of Kelly's impassioned communion with the remnants, the ghosts of an individual who evokes a whole landscape of the past.
Kelly provides, as far as can be reconstructed, an exhaustive narrative of Cuéllar's career. He first takes the reader to his early career in the infantry company attached to the Indies Guard, his eventual captaincy and his participation in a dramatic battle against English forces off the coast of Brazil, in San Vincente. Then Kelly traces Cuéllar's European career, starting with his participation in the Armada as captain of the San Pedro, through to his seven-month odyssey in Ireland, and ultimately his efforts as a soldier in and around Flanders. Cuéllar's career—or at least what survives of it on paper—ended with a captaincy in the Armada of Barlovento that would take him back across the Atlantic. The Irish story, given Cuéllar's own detailed report, is the most fleshed out element of this biography, but Kelly's archival trawling unearths much more than derring-do. We learn, for example, of a career in the shadows of controversy. From his earliest days in the Americas, Cuéllar was accused of failing to follow orders and was duly arrested for insubordination, a matter later adjudicated in his favor. Kelly describes how, during his service to the 1588 Armada, Cuéllar was among several captains court-martialed for failing to follow orders, but, again, he survived to tell his tales. It seems, though, that the curse of ill-repute remained in some quarters. Indeed, the Spanish secretary of state, Esteban de Ibarra, described him as “useless”. Kelly also discusses Cuéllar's more pedestrian experiences, especially his interactions with the Habsburg (not-so-well-oiled) bureaucratic machine. Cuéllar's ongoing petitions for payments were almost as harrowing as his many near-death experiences in Ireland.
Kelly writes about more than one man. Cuéllar's bureaucratic entanglements open vistas into the experiences of sailors and contemporary men of war that Kelly deepens with fine-grained and detailed descriptions of the systems within which Cuéllar operated. Take, for example, a description of the petition process for wages and pensions or an arresting discussion (in light of Cuéllar's legal troubles) of the administration of military justice. There are also extensive discussions about the geopolitical contexts that enveloped soldiers and sailors of Cuéllar's generation, including the lead-up to the Armada, and issues related to Flanders and its defense.
Taken as a whole, there are very few quibbles to be had with such a formidable work. However, paradoxically, the book's virtues occasionally raise some narratological issues. Although Kelly's extensive contextual discussions are among the book's many strengths, their exhaustiveness—especially with reference to geopolitics—sometimes diminish the propulsive quality of the narrative and submerge the book's central figure.
I also wished for an expanded treatment of Cuéllar's most lasting work—the Carta describing shipwreck and his Irish experiences. Kelly ably uses the source to construct a story, reading it with appropriate rigor and an occasional dose of skepticism. Still, I wondered if there could have been deeper discussion about the source itself as a kind of political act, as a text rhetorically structured, politically sensitive, and with self-fashioning intent. A more expansive discussion along these lines would not be completely new, but it would have enhanced Kelly's already arresting narrative. This greediness for just a little bit more, however, was partially quenched by the appendix, which includes (among other key sources) Cuéllar's letter (in translation) for the interested reader's perusal.
Cuéllar ultimately finished his career with a whimper. The last information known of him is that he sought and was granted permission for travel to New Spain, a virtual handout for a man who had served the Spanish monarchy for so long. It may be that he finished his life there contentedly, but, when he last appears in the historical record, Kelly tells the reader, he was destitute, having “virtually nothing to show for his efforts” (223). Perhaps Kelly's most admirable trait as a writer is that he reminds us of the extraordinary lives lived by men of war, so many now forgotten. As Kelly shows, occasionally they can be revived through the patient excavation of sources and the application of a lively historical imagination.
