Francisco de Cuellar

Francisco de Cuéllar was a Spanish sea captain who sailed with the Spanish Armada in 1588 and was wrecked on the coast of Ireland. He gave a remarkable account of his experiences in the fleet and on the run in Ireland.

Cuéllar's place and date of birth are unknown, but undoubtedly he was of Castilian origin. The surname refers to a village in the province of Segovia called Cuéllar, and is a common Castilian family name. According to recent research ("El capitán Francisco de Cuéllar antes y después de la jornada de Inglaterra", by Rafael M. Girón Pascual), there was a captain named Francisco de Cuéllar, perhaps our man, born in the city of Valladolid, who was baptized on March, twelve, 1562 in the parish of San Miguel.

Cuéllar was a member of the army that conquered Portugal in 1581. Following Rafael Giron, he served in the Diego Flores Valdés navy, which sailed to the Strait of Magellan, aboard the frigate Santa Catalina. He was later in Paraiba, Brazil, where he participated in expelling French settlers from the area. After that he served under the Marquis of Santa Cruz in the Azores islands.

The Spanish Armada in Ireland suffered heavy losses during an extraordinary season of storms in the autumn of 1588. Cuéllar had been captain of the San Pedro a galleon of the squadron of Castille, one of the front line squadrons of the Spanish Armada, when the ship broke the Armada formation in the North Sea. He was accused of disobedience and was sentenced to death by hanging by the Major General of the fleet, Francisco de Bobadilla. Cuéllar was sent to the galleon, San Juan de Sicilia, for execution of the sentence by the Auditor General, Martin de Aranda.

Sentence was not executed, and Cuéllar remained on board until the galleon, a member of the Levant squadron, which suffered heavy losses on the return voyage (less than 400 survivors returned out of 4,000 who set sail), anchored along the Irish coast, a mile off Streedagh Strand in modern County Sligo, in the company of two other galleons. On the fifth day at anchor all three ships were driven onto the strand and broken in pieces. Of the 1,000 men on board the ships, 300 survived.

Local inhabitants beat, robbed and stripped those who came ashore. But Cuéllar, having clung to a loose hatch, floated to shore unobserved and concealed himself among rushes. He was in poor shape, and was joined by a naked fellow survivor who was dumbstruck and soon died. Cuéllar kept drifting in and out of consciousness; at one point he and his fellow survivor were discovered by two armed men, who covered them with rushes before going to the shore to loot. At another point he saw 200 horsemen riding across the strand.

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