HistData (version 0.9-3)

Armada: La Felicisima Armada

Description

The Spanish Armada (Spanish: Grande y Felicisima Armada, literally "Great and Most Fortunate Navy") was a Spanish fleet of 130 ships that sailed from La Coruna in August 1588. During its preparation, several accounts of its formidable strength were circulated to reassure allied powers of Spain or to intimidate its enemies. One such account was given by Paz Salas et Alvarez (1588). The intent was bring the forces of Spain to invade England, overthrow Queen Elizabeth I, and re-establish Spanish control of the Netherlands. However the Armada was not as fortunate as hoped: it was all destroyed in one week's fighting.

de Falguerolles (2008) reports the table given here as Armada as an early example of data to which multivariate methods might be applied.

Usage

data("Armada")

Format

A data frame with 10 observations on the following 11 variables.

Fleet

designation of the origin of the fleet, a factor with levels Andalucia, Castilla, Galeras, Guipuscua, Napoles, Pataches, Portugal, Uantiscas, Vizca, Vrcas

ships

number of ships, a numeric vector

tons

total tons of the ships, a numeric vector

soldiers

number of soldiers, a numeric vector

sailors

number of sailors, a numeric vector

men

total of soldiers plus sailors, a numeric vector

artillery

number of canons, a numeric vector

balls

number of canonballs, a numeric vector

gunpowder

amount of gunpowder loaded, a numeric vector

lead

a numeric vector

rope

a numeric vector

Details

Note that men = soldiers + sailors, so this variable is redundant in a multivariate analysis.

A complete list of the ships of the Spanish Armada, their types, armaments and fate can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_Spanish_Armada. An enterprising data historian might attempt to square the data given there with this table.

The fleet of Portugal, under the command of Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia was largely in control of the attempted invasion of England.

References

Pedro de Paz Salas and Antonio Alvares. La felicisima armada que elrey Don Felipe nuestro Senor mando juntar enel puerto de la ciudad de Lisboa enel Reyno de Portugal. Lisbon, 1588.

Examples

data(Armada)
# delete character and redundant variable
armada <- Armada[,-c(1,6)]
# use fleet as labels
fleet <- Armada[, 1]

# do a PCA of the standardized data
armada.pca <- prcomp(armada, scale.=TRUE)
summary(armada.pca)

# screeplot
plot(armada.pca, type="lines", pch=16, cex=2)

biplot(armada.pca, xlabs = fleet,
  xlab = "PC1 (Fleet size)",
  ylab = "PC2 (Fleet configuration)")