The Spanish Galleon in Tobermory

 

There is a Galleon sunk off Tobermory, on the West coast of Scotland. It's from the Spanish Armada, and was blown up by witches or a magical cat, or an English spy. But it's there. Ask the divers. It really is.

My hunt across the Internet to find the truth behind all this was set off by a friend in Walberswick in the summer, and the details of the story sounded so interesting that I had to go looking. 

But it turns out that nearly everything to do the with the Spanish Armada has been so perfectly prone to mythologising and national imagery that it is very hard to find the truth (and come on, lets be honest the truth can be boring and the myth can be much more what you are looking for). "You know what we did to the Spanish Armada, and we'll do the same to you! And smoke a pipe and play bowls before we do it, too". How lovely to have the Armada and the Battle of Britain in our lockers. Everyone needs their stories and those who own the present (whatever time you are living in) are the ones who own the past too. I always laugh when I hear people criticising any change to the history curriculum in schools or universities. They say you are trying to 'Change history'. For goodness sake, that's what history is for isn't it? To use the past to make you lords of the present. Everyone has done it, always. It is a historical constant.

But back to the galleon. Well actually, it wasn't a galleon. It was a carrack, a bit smaller, but still had about thirty cannon on it, several of which now grace Tobermory, apparently. It wasn't actually Spanish either, because the Spanish had all kinds of friends and employees in the Armada (some actually came from Germany). This ship had started out in what is now Croatia, so quite a run.

The Armada, having been blown to the four winds by a Storm eventually (whatever Drake did before) were running up the coasts of Scotland and Ireland in an awful state (some eventually passed north of the Orkneys!) and this particular galleon/carrack put in at Tobermory to ask help with repairs, food and shelter from the storm.

Now the local Lord of the time was a McLean, and not just any McLean. He was Lachlan Mor McLean, and as Mor means 'big' in Gaelic, you get the idea. He was involved in power struggles on the whole West coast his whole life, and you would be surprised how vicious clan wars can be. He was taken by the idea of some military assistance and it seemed he asked the Spanish, in exchange for his help, to come and help him massacre or scare off some of the Clan McDonald on one of the islands, whether Eigg or Rhum or Muck (or another one). There was apparently a massacre done by Big Lachlan at this time, but because clans were always calumniating each other, the evidence of it is a bit weak, and the McLeans might well claim it no more than was done to them.

But the upshot for the Spanish sailors was the while they were away (luckily I suppose) the magazine of gunpowder on their crippled carrack mysteriously exploded. Magic spells could have been involved, but a person of interest with the un-Scottish name of Smollet may also have been involved, and may well have been an English spy seeking to limit the chances of Armada 2.

My friend says that there are people who can still pick out the apparently olive-skins of people living around Tobermory, who are obviously descended from the unshipped Spanish. In just the way, I have to say that there are black curly-headed sorts on the West coast of Ireland who look suspiciously French, if you squint a bit.

So far, so changeable and un-pin-downable, which is not a bad thing. But there is in fact, apart from the remains of the ship, a very concrete proof of some very bad acts, which still throws up evidence now. There is a cave called the Massacre Cave on the island of Eigg, where nearly 400 of the MacDonald clan are known to have been killed by McLeans in a punitive raid. They hid in the cave when the McLeans came and were discovered and had vegetation piled in front of the cave and set light to, killing them by asphyxiation. Bones had been taken from the cave over the years (one skull by Sir Walter Scott) and this year more bones were found by tourists. 

So a definite fact, at last? Well, apparently not, as this link to a seminar on the 'alleged cave massacre' makes clear. Nobody has the slightest regard for truth when there is history and rivalry at stake!

http://cscs.academicblogs.co.uk/the-massacre-of-eigg-in-1577/