THE VISITOR · AUG 1588 · THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
A modern destroyer meets the Spanish Armada
The English Channel, August 1588. Between the Armada and the English fleet, out of a rain squall, comes a hull of grey steel that belongs to no century either side has seen. No bridge of causes leads here. The atlas keeps it anyway.
AUG 1588 · THE CHANNEL
No bridge of causes leads to the timeline recorded here; the atlas files it among the fables, where the question is not how but what then. In August 1588 the Spanish Armada, a hundred and thirty ships and thirty thousand men, fought its way up the Channel to carry an invasion into England. Between the fleets, out of a rain squall at dusk, came a hull of grey steel four hundred feet long, without sails, without oars, and without a century it could name as home.