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yd March, 1903. 



Mr. J. Brown, F.R.S., President in the Chair 



THE ARMADA WRECKS ON THE IRISH COAST. 

 By Rev. W. S. Green, M.A. 



(Abstract.) 



Rev. W. S. Green said that during the last dozen years a 

 great deal of his life had been spent in the West Coast of 

 Ireland. In the early part of that time he had to make a 

 survey of the fishing grounds when Mr. Arthur Balfour was 

 Chief Secretary for Ireland. It was natural that his interest 

 should be awakened in the history of the past. There were a 

 great many periods pressed on their attention when they were 

 wandering round those places and had time to think, and there 

 was no time more remarkable or striking when they tried to 

 picture it than those days when the galleons of the great 

 Spanish Armada were drifting ashore on all the bays of the 

 West of Ireland. 



At first it was difficult to get at any history on that point, 

 but ail the time he had been wandering in the West a good 

 deal of publishing had been going on, publishing of the State 

 papers not only British, but Spanish and Venetian, and all 

 those documents had been made accessible by order of the 

 Master of the Rolls. Anyone who took the trouble could find 

 out in those pages the facts he would tell them, though a good 

 deal of digging was required to get at the ore. 



From days long before the dawn of history traffic appeared 

 to have existed between the Iberian Peninsula and Ireland. It 

 mighc have commenced when the Phoenician colonists were 

 exploring the Western ocean. When history opened they 

 found trade with Spain thoroughly established. Several 



