Are the Spanish Armada and the English Counter Armada comparable failures?

by samuel79s

The first is widely known while the other is a relatively obscure episode that even most Spaniards ignore. They seem to be comparable in terms of human and material losses, so are there other reasons that could explain the difference?

jschooltiger

I wrote about the English armada here, and the Spanish Armada here and most recently here, including some comparisons of the two. The short version is that, while it's natural for English-lanugage sources to play up the success of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada and the converse, they were not directly comparable military operations -- the Spanish Armada sought to conquer England and quash the English church; the English armada had a set of confused war aims. Both if anything point to the massive administrative failures of navies in the late 16th century.

Please let me know if you have follow ups after reading those older threads, and I'll see if I can pull more sources together. Thanks.