Irregular Wars Wargaming

Having recently finished watching the Hiberno-Canadian series of The Tudors (2007-2010),  I thought I'd post a few pictures of Henry VIII and his wives as a bit of light relief. For all that the four seasons of the show treated history as a malleable, plastic art form, it can't be denied that it was visually stunning and vibrant; it certainly attracted (and held) the viewer's attention. Henry VIII 1491-1547 Henry VIII - Jonathon Rhys Meyers Catherine of Aragon, 1485-1536 (divorced for not giving birth to a son) Catherine of Aragon - Maria Doyle Kennedy Anne Boleyn, 1500(?)-1536 (beheaded) Anne Boleyn - Natalie Dormer Jane Seymour, 1509-1537 (died following birth of the future Edward VI) Jane Seymour - Annabelle Wallis Anne of Cleves, 1515-1547 (divorced on account of her looks) Anne of Cleves - Joss Stone Kathryn Howard, 1521-1542 (beheaded) Kathryn Howard - Tamzin Merchant Katherine Parr, 1512-1548 (survived to marry Thomas Seymour)...

This is the second of three posts dealing with replica 16th century ships... Scratch that - this post has little to do with replicas at all. In this post I wanted to show a couple of pictures of the armament from the Spanish galleass, La Girona , on display in the Ulster Museum (incidentally, for a regional museum, the Ulster Museum in Belfast is pretty fantastic and well worth the visit < http://www.nmni.com/um/Collections/World-Cultures/The-Armada-Collection >). Of the 130 Spanish ships that set out in 1588 to invade England, over 20 of them were wrecked off the North and West coasts of Ireland.The Ulster Museum owns the excavated remains of three of these ships, the galleass La Girona which was wrecked at Lacada Point, near the Giant's Causeway, Co. Antrim, La Trinidad Valencera which ran aground in Kinnagoe Bay, Co. Donegal and the Santa Maria de La Rosa which sank suddenly in Blasket Sound, Co. Kerry. There are no known representations of the Girona but other gall...